Category: Recruitment

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Morgan Stanley CEO Brokerage Recruiting Wars Are Overfor Now

The battle for brokers, which led scores of reps to hop from one wirehouse to another in early 2009, came to a grinding halt at end of the year—a development that could last for years, said James Gorman, new chief executive at Morgan Stanley & Co.


After a transformational year, turnover at Gorman’s Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in the top two producer quintiles was at a historic low of less than 1 percent in the fourth quarter, the firm revealed in its quarterly earnings Wednesday, January 20.


“We went through a frenetic period as an industry over the last couple of years in terms of deals and dislocation,” Gorman said in response to a question about turnover on Morgan Stanley’s quarterly conference call. “I truly believe the industry is moving toward a more rational recruiting model.”


“The lower turnover is for real,” he added. “For the next couple of years it should stay low and relatively stable.”


Gorman’s remarks, and Morgan Stanley’s report of lower broker turnover, came on the same day that Bank of America also revealed that headcount in its 15,000-broker Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management group also stabilized.


Morgan Stanley’s purchase of Smith Barney, which closed in May, created the largest brokerage firm in the world, with 18,135 representatives as of the end of 2009. In the third quarter, Morgan Stanley had 18,160 representatives. Leading up to the close of the acquisition, both firms saw a notable number of reps depart for other wirehouses—or in some cases, regional and independent advisory firms.


With attrition stabilizing in the fourth quarter at Morgan Stanley, each rep brought in $692,000 in revenue, on an annualized basis. Client assets totaled almost $1.6 trillion, more than doubling from a year ago as a result of the merger, but up just 2 percent from the third quarter, mostly from higher asset prices, according to the firm.


This year and next, consolidation expenses related to the merger will continue to rise, peaking in 2011, Morgan Stanley said. Gorman took over from John Mack earlier this month. He has a background in wealth management at Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and Morgan Stanley, whereas his predecessor had an investment banking background.


Gorman expects costs of $450 million this year, due to the rationalization of real estate and information technology following the merger.


In response to a question from an analyst on dealing with these costs, Gorman responded, “We’re obviously in the middle of a complex integration program. These items will all come to a head full-year 2011. It’s kind of a two- to three-year program.” 



Filed by Hillary Johnson of InvestmentNews, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.


Stay informed and connected. Get human resources news and HR features via Workforce Management’s Twitter feed or RSS feeds for mobile devices and news readers.



 

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Dear Workforce How Do We Improve Our Recruitment of Topnotch Nurses?

Dear Getting Ready for the Rebound:

As you have discovered through trial and error, many people no longer turn to the newspaper to find a job.

There are some high-tech “want ad” replacements, but in today’s market, leveraging the relationships of nurses already on board is probably the best way to find new talent.

First, let’s talk briefly about online job posting. You mention you have avoided large job boards because they are expensive, but there are several popular online venues where job posting is free. These include LinkedIn, Craigslist and some alumni sites. You might want to experiment with these and see if a posting attracts quality candidates.

Another electronic recruiting option is your own Web site. Job seekers today are doing targeted job hunts. It is not unusual for candidates to research many companies and then focus all their efforts on a chosen few. If you improve your Web site to clearly show why you are a great employer and let job seekers know that you are hiring, this can yield good talent.

The most effective recruiting doesn’t involve technology at all. Experienced hiring professionals believe that networking remains the most effective approach. That means you should ask all the nurses who work with you to recommend their friends, former colleagues and mentors.

One successful way to engage your existing staff is to build a referral incentive program. Many companies offer a small cash bonus to any employee who recommends an individual who gets hired. You could also hold an open house or host a series of presentations on topics of interest to nurses and ask your current team to bring their friends and former co-workers.

Last, it makes sense to ask the nurses you employ already where they would look if they were going to find a candidate (or search for a job). This will help you spot recruiting methods and sources you have not identified.

SOURCE: Ellen Raim, vice president of human resources, Cascade Microtech, Beaverton, Oregon

LEARN MORE:Solutions and strategies for recruiting minority nurses
The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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One Firm Finds Passive Candidates Offer a Safe Selection Process

Synaptics Inc., a touchpad technology developer, blazed through the recession with fiscal 2009 revenue up 21 percent and net income up 75 percent compared with 2008.


Based in Santa Clara, California, the company generates $900,000 in annual revenue per employee—the highest rate in the hardware industry. Maintaining such a record requires extraordinarily selective hiring. For every 10 candidates that enter the company’s extensive interviewing process, only one leaves with a job offer, and the acceptance rate is an overwhelming 92 percent.


The high levels of unemployment triggered by the recession have altered the company’s stance toward active and passive job candidates.


“We hire only the top 10 percent of performers, but just because you’re still employed doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a top performer,” says James Harrington, vice president for global human resources. “We look at the individual case. Maybe the candidate is from a startup that just shut down. And we’ve seen a lot of acquisitions where not all of the people were absorbed.”


Not all employers have adjusted their longstanding preference for passive candidates.


Thirty million Americans are either unemployed or underemployed, but employers continue to poach those who are still on the job. In a June survey by the social networking site LinkedIn, 60 percent of employers said that passive candidates were better employees.


In a recent study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, one-fourth of the companies reported that they recruit new talent by directly contacting their competitors’ employees. More than 40 percent said they actively source competitors’ employees in certain positions to a moderate or higher extent.


Recruiting risk-adverse passives
Companies that still recruit passive candidates find them more difficult to reach.


“There are some active candidates for us in the market, and the same time, the recession has actually made it harder to hire passive candidates because of their fears about the uncertainty of a new position,” Harrington says.


Synaptics relies on ongoing informational interviews to keep its pipelines full and pull in risk-averse passive candidates.


“We get to know people before we need them,” Harrington says.


Synaptics hired 100 new employees in fiscal 2009 and expects to hire 50 more by July 2010. The company conducts exploratory interviews with potential candidates on an ongoing basis.


“We may not hire them until three years later,” Harrington notes. He works with a tactical plan for one to two years out and a five-year strategic plan.


Synaptics does not ask candidates for a résumé until it is well into the interview process.


“Passive candidates don’t have résumés,” Harrington notes. “At some point we want to share a candidate’s résumé with our own line organization, and we ask for it.”


Candidates go through two or three interviews, with a total of eight Synaptics employees participating.


“We hire not just for talent but for culture,” Harrington says. “We want head and heart. We want to know the candidate’s work values and personal values. We can do this because all of our managers are trained in behavior-based interviewing.”


Overcoming the risk aversion of passive candidates requires more extensive discussions to reassure them about the company’s intentions.


“Our turnover is low; we’re not a hire-and-fire organization,” Harrington says. “Candidates don’t see our actual turnover numbers, but we talk about it with them. They get to know us well.”


Harrington says that Synaptics’ employees are the best recruiters for passive candidates.


“Our secret weapon is that 36 percent of our total hires are from employee referrals,” he says. Harrington is not concerned that the company’s heavy reliance on employee referrals and social networking will lead to a lack of diversity or simply replicate the existing workforce.


“We hired from 45 companies and seven universities in 2009,” he notes.


Synaptics uses a uniform recruiting process worldwide, with some modifications based on location to take account of cultural differences. In 2009, the company expanded development centers in China, Japan and South Korea, and used social networking to help reach candidates.


“Social networks help build the pipeline, and this is a global phenomenon,” Harrington says.


Bypassing starts and stops
Ron Selewach, CEO of Human Resource Management Center Inc., based in Tampa, Florida, says that there is still a strong employer preference for passive candidates, but the preference is misplaced given the ongoing layoffs that mark the current market.


“The first people to hit the street are dispensable,” Selewach says. “But companies have cut so deeply now that they have surplused some top performers. Employers who don’t consider active candidates are missing out on top talent.”


Selewach believes that a résumé-based recruiting process is ineffective for both active and passive candidates.


“The best way to recruit passive candidates is to bypass résumé submission, onerous online application forms, phone screens, preliminary interviews and all the starts and stops in what we call ‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,’ ” he says. “Passive candidates are not sufficiently motivated to tolerate all those starts and stops. They need to be recruited through a system that whips them through the vetting process. Recruiters can set in place a system or a procedure that does not ask passive candidates to present a résumé or fill out a burdensome application.”


A résumé-based recruiting process also handicaps active candidates who have experienced long stretches of unemployment. In November, the average duration of unemployment hit 28.5 weeks, compared with the previous recession’s peak of 18.5 weeks in December 2002.


“This recession has vastly increased the number of active candidates with substantial gaps in their résumé,” Selewach notes. “Employers need to examine the gaps, but résumés rarely provide an explanation of the breaks.”


“Recruiting methods need to change,” Selewach says. “The current method is focused on who can write the best résumé, not who can perform the job. Résumés look at what the person did in the past and force companies to read between the lines about whether the person has specific skills.”


Selewach suggests that employers should replace résumés and cumbersome online applications with automated interviewing systems based on questions that reveal critical skills for the job.


“Employers can create a career site that uses artificial intelligence to interview candidates for specific jobs and handle a large number of candidates very quickly,” he says. “We have systems that allow employers to focus on interviewing for job-specific questions, but many employers are still unwilling to give up résumés.”


Selewach believes that it may take a whole new generation of recruiters, hiring managers and human resources professionals to ditch résumés and move to more efficient methods for evaluating candidates. “But a first step is to move the résumé to the back of the process rather than keeping it in the gatekeeper position,” he says.

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What Are Your Organizations Critical Positions

While most global corporations or multimillion-dollar enterprises require work to be coordinated across hundreds of jobs, there typically are only 20 to 40 jobs at each of these companies that are actually key to fulfilling the strategic mission and stakeholder obligations. These jobs, called critical positions, are ones that significantly affect key performance measures such as revenue, costs, quality or customer-engagement metrics, or are critically important to the business strategy. Because of how tightly coupled these positions are to the business strategy, an absence of qualified workers for a critical position can have devastating results.


Yet, conventional wisdom has many believing that our supply of workers is abundant. Events such as corporate downsizings, rising unemployment and a faltering economy lend support to the belief. However, critical-position data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics is quietly telling a different story.


My organization, Talent Strategy Advisors, conducted a 12-month study of U.S. workforce data to determine the supply of workers, as measured by the unemployment rate, who are immediately available for critical positions. Determining the supply is important because as the economy rebounds, companies whose growth depends on hiring additional critical-position workers will need a labor supply to source. If low unemployment levels exist for a critical position, then organizations may not have a reliable supply of workers to fuel growth.


To facilitate reporting, this study grouped similar critical positions into occupations for its analysis. For example, the sales occupation consists of such critical positions as salesperson and sales engineer.


Each critical-position occupation’s unemployment rate was evaluated relative to full employment, which is a situation where every qualified worker who wants a job is employed. Because labor markets always have a pool of workers who are between jobs, full employment is not equal to zero unemployment. Instead, full employment is often associated with a rate of 4 percent or less.


The findings reveal that of five critical-position occupations selected for the study, two have a supply of unemployed workers that is too little, two have a supply that is about right and only one has an excess supply of workers. In summary:


• Health care and sales critical positions have unemployment rates of 2.4 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively, signaling low supply levels.


• Production and information technology critical positions have unemployment rates of 8.3 percent and 6 percent, signaling a supply that is about right.


• Construction critical positions have an unemployment rate of 18.9 percent, signaling an excess supply of workers.


Each critical-position occupation was further assessed across eight core sectors: construction, financial services, health care, manufacturing and transportation, mining, oil and coal production, retail, and utilities and telecom. Key critical-position occupation findings from the sector analysis include:


• Construction critical positions have a supply of workers that is too low in two sectors: health care and oil and coal products.


• Health care critical positions have a supply of workers that is too low in the three sectors analyzed: manufacturing and transportation, retail and health care.


• Production critical positions have a supply of workers that is too low in three sectors: utilities and telecom, financial services and health care.


• Information technology critical positions have a supply of workers that is too low in six sectors: mining, construction, manufacturing and transportation, utilities and telecom, health care, and oil and coal products.


• Sales critical positions have a supply of workers that is too low in five sectors: mining, construction, retail, health care, and oil and coal products.


So while the macro-economy continues to displace workers, several critical-position occupations have a low supply of unemployed workers, a situation counterintuitive to the national unemployment picture.


• Here are four scenarios that employers can expect to encounter for critical positions in a rebounding economy:


• Higher turnover: Business leaders can expect rising turnover in critical positions that are pivotal to growth.


• Longer search periods: Business leaders can expect longer search periods for critical positions that are pivotal to growth.


• Lower workforce capabilities: Business leaders can expect a gradual reduction in critical-position capabilities if managers respond to the prospects of longer search periods by relaxing employment standards to fill open critical positions.


• Higher compensation: Business leaders can expect higher compensation costs if managers respond to the prospects of longer search periods by increasing the offer’s compensation package. This appears likely in sectors where the critical position requires a higher degree of technical skills and the sector has above-average profit potential.


The net result is that unless business leaders address low supply levels of critical-position workers, sub-optimal business growth is likely during the economic rebound.


Executives who want to resolve workforce supply issues should begin by identifying the organization’s critical positions. This can be accomplished with little investment and in three quick steps.


Step 1: Generate critical-position criteria


The first step is to generate specific criteria for two characteristics that must be present if a position is indeed critical. Is the job core to the organization’s mission? Does the job have a significant impact on the business? The criteria consist of specific, measurable and time-based statements that act as reference points for determining whether a critical position satisfies a characteristic. The criteria are created because the terms “mission-critical” or “business-affecting” are too general and are likely to engender more arguments than actual determinations of which positions are indeed critical.


Two to three statements for each characteristic are generally sufficient. For example, one organization determined that “business impact” meant that a vacancy in a critical position would “result in the organization missing its fiscal-year revenue target by $5 million or more.” The specific, measurable and time-based components of this statement make it easier to engage others in a productive conversation regarding whether or not a position is critical.


Step 2: Identify critical positions


Once the critical-position criteria are determined, the next step is evaluating jobs against each set of criteria. Using the criteria as a reference point, each critical position is evaluated to determine whether it satisfies them. Most business executives agree that when a critical position has multiple criteria, a position needs to satisfy only one to be considered critical. For example, one company determined that a position is business-affecting if a vacancy causes the organization to miss only one of the following:


• Revenue projections


• Profit projections


• Customer satisfaction scores


So, while this company determined that business impact has three different meanings, a position only needs to satisfy one to be critical. The end result, after evaluating an organization’s positions, is that, at most, 20 to 40 are really critical positions.


Step 3: Determine key critical positions


The final step of critical positions is a transition activity that bridges this effort with the framework for developing workforce solutions. This final step determines which of the 20 to 40 critical positions are key to the organization’s current business scenario and objectives. This step is an acknowledgement that while the organization has critical positions that are pivotal to its success, some are more important than others at any given time. The following process will help you determine the importance or prioritization of critical positions:


1. Document current business scenario: The business scenario describes the immediate objectives of the organization. The reality is that while business strategy changes infrequently, business objectives can, and often do, change due to external forces. For example, 12 months ago, most organizations were focused on reducing costs. Now, with an economic rebound approaching, organizations are focusing on increasing revenues. The critical positions associated with those two scenarios are very different. It’s best to begin with documenting the current business scenario.


2. Determine talent requirements: Each business scenario has an associated set of talent requirements or key capabilities fundamental to the achievement of its objectives. In the example of an organization focusing on increasing revenues, the talent requirements might be “new-customer acquisition capabilities,” “new-customer revenue production capabilities” or “new-product revenue production capabilities.” In general, this step produces three to five strategic-talent requirements.


    3. Evaluate critical positions: Each critical position is evaluated to determine whether its profile contains the talent requirements for generating the objectives of the current business scenario. For example, most organizations are anticipating an economic rebound and are crafting a business scenario of aggressive revenue growth. To fulfill this scenario, organizations will manage to business objectives such as “new revenue growth” or “new account openings.” In this example, each critical position would be evaluated to determine whether its profile has the talent requirements or capabilities to achieve the business objectives.


Critical positions such as sales executive or plant manager are key to our example objectives. The positions of internal auditor or IT application architect, while critical, have little impact on revenue or new-account openings.


The result of this activity is usually the identification of five to seven critical positions that satisfy more of the business objectives than others. These critical positions should then be evaluated to determine whether the critical- position workforce strategy is still relevant or whether it requires updating because of the changing business scenario.


While many think we have an overabundance of workers because of rising unemployment, it’s clear that the supply for some critical positions may actually be low. This has the potential to create competitive disadvantages, particularly as the economy begins a rebound and organizations restart hiring in response to organizational growth objectives and workforce turnover. Resolving your own organization’s supply concerns begins with determining its key critical positions. Only then can you have confidence that your workforce interventions—whether that means your hires, your training programs or even force reductions—have the intended results.

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A Social Networking Solution for Retail Recruitings Challenges

We’re all aware of the challenges facing the retail and restaurant industries during this recession. In fact, Aon Consulting’s 2009 Holiday Retail Survey reports that most companies’ hiring volumes will be the same or lower this year compared with 2008.


Few have escaped the effects of the recession, and certainly very few retailers can say the recession has not upset their business in some material way. Consumers are closing their checkbooks and are shredding their credit cards.


Is there anything positive? Is there relief on the horizon? The short answer is that we are seeing a glimmer of hope: 19 percent of retailers plan to hire more than last year.


A perfect example is the news that Toys R Us is slated to hire 35,000 employees for the holiday season. This report and other major retailers’ hiring moves are an indication that markets may be looking up and consumers may indeed be spending money again.


The holiday staffing survey reinforces the ongoing challenges that face retail organizations when researching candidates they want to hire, whether it’s for two holiday months or two years. I’ve worked in retail staffing and understand the challenges of hiring great customer-focused individuals who understand retail or restaurants and are quick on their feet. Here are some insights that retail managers face, according to respondents to the Aon survey:


• Store managers said their best source for quality holiday-season candidates are the tried-and-true methods of employee referrals and walk-ins, followed by job boards and the company Web site.


• Store managers indicated their biggest seasonal challenges are finding quality candidates and time wasted on unqualified candidates.


I’ve felt their pain. And now I know there is a way to tip the hiring equation in their favor.


I believe it lies in an integrated approach that uses social media channels to engage the business’s target audience. Once the audience is engaged, you can create a strong community of candidates, employees and customers for future needs while marketing your regional stores in the process.


I am an avid user of social media channels and have daily challenges weeding through all the noise, spam and misinformation that can dilute my focus on finding quality candidates and talent.


Despite those distractions, I most often find myself having many positive networking experiences via social media channels.


They frequently result in the discovery of quality candidates (as well as new business leads, media placements and, most important, new like-minded friends and professional contacts).


I see the unlimited hiring and discovery potential that can be had by tapping into current employees’ online communities via the holy trinity of social media: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.


Let’s contrast the current state of affairs with what was going on several years ago when I was a corporate recruiter for an upscale quick-serve restaurant chain.


I was in charge of hiring retail staff in new markets with an aggressive growth strategy and I was constantly reaching out to regional store managers and employees for referrals. The idea that “employees of a feather flock together” was our hiring mantra.


At this company, we would host weekly job fairs in the existing or newly built stores, and we’d advertise these fairs on Monster and in leaflets posted in every restaurant shop window, community bulletin board and college campus we could find within a five-mile radius of a store. This was 2004, the year after Facebook started.


The strategy foundered, though, because our employees didn’t have the resources to go to school, work two jobs and refer great candidates to us for the restaurant’s burgeoning demand. In fact, the weekly job fairs were something of a crapshoot: There was either heavy candidate traffic that was impossible to manage or there were no candidates whatsoever.


Back then, I could see that job fairs and other traditional ways of advertising open positions were falling short. What I couldn’t envision then, I can more easily see now thanks to social media. Just imagine:


• Qualified candidates served up to store managers every day.


• Empowering your regional and store managers to hire great people without a great deal of effort.


• Hosting a daily employee-referral driven job fair through a trusted Twitter or Facebook community.


• Providing a predetermined, targeted in-market recruiting event that can be scheduled without taking valuable time from your store managers (they have a store to run) or you (you have a recruiting strategy to execute).


• Finding virtual places to host job fairs driven by employee referrals each day—even on weekends or after hours.


• Solidifying and implementing a recruiting strategy that, in addition to attracting the right candidates, also helps drive a groundswell of new customers to your door.


Social media is an easy way to tap into existing groups of employees outside of their direct friends and family. It’s a way to organize a Meetup or a Tweetup to pull together a consistent in-market recruiting event that keeps great candidates available for future anticipated upticks and seasonal influxes. It’s a way to help motivate current employees and valuable store alumni to stay connected for future needs.


I wish I’d had this resource seven years ago when I was going storefront to storefront down Beltline Road in Dallas in 100-degree August heat. If you would have told me I could find and develop relationships with the best retail candidates from my BlackBerry, I would have thought you were crazy.


But now I think we’d be crazy if we didn’t grab these tools and run with them.

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The Four As of Recruiting Help Enhance Search for Right Talent

Companies recruiting online face the challenge of knowing where their candidates and hires are coming from.


The situation becomes critical when considering two factors: Most companies don’t know there is a problem, and it’s those very companies that are spending billions of dollars a year on recruitment advertising.


It’s a matter of dollars and cents—what job sites, search engines, social networking sites and other advertising sources are providing the best return on investment? Top recruiting teams and HR departments understand that without accurate candidate-source data, you can’t conduct that analysis.


The good news is that this challenge can easily be conquered by asking the proper questions and putting some simple tracking measures in place. One of the advantages of online recruitment advertising versus traditional avenues like print is that it’s 100 percent measurable, but companies need to take advantage of the tracking opportunities. Job sites and search engine marketing (SEM) are two of the growing sources of hire, so it’s imperative that companies act now to really know where those hires are coming from.


There are four steps in making the most of a recruitment advertising budget:


• Assign: Make someone in your company responsible for tracking and measuring the effectiveness of your recruitment advertising.


• Automate: Implement automated candidate-source tracking with your applicant tracking system (ATS) or career site vendor.


• Analyze: Review your cost-per-applicant and cost-per-hire data to determine which sources perform the best.


• Adjust: Optimize your recruitment advertising investments by shifting the budget to sites and sources that deliver the best ROI.


For each of the four A’s, there is a checklist of best practices to implement a concise approach within the organization.


Step 1: Assign
The most important piece of the candidate-source tracking puzzle is not technical at all; it’s human. Companies that do not have someone specifically responsible for measuring the effectiveness and resulting ROI of recruitment advertising often have no idea what their investments are delivering in terms of candidates and hires.


As recruiting teams become more accountable for their recruitment advertising decisions and more strategic in their individual roles, this type of analysis is critical for their future success.


The good news is that there is a shift toward adding this responsibility within recruiting teams, especially in larger organizations. Having someone responsible for recruiting operations and the day-to-day analysis of the company’s recruitment advertising performance can reveal budget-saving opportunities.


Some argue that this job is handled by the ATS or HRIS administrator and doesn’t need to be its own position. Those same arguments contend that the recruiting team can request source-of-applicant and source-of-hire reports whenever they want, so why make it someone’s job to look at them?


Candidate-source tracking needs to be a priority, and leaving it in the hands of recruiters and ATS administrators means it can get forgotten. Considering that some companies’ job site contracts are hundreds of thousands—even millions—of dollars per year, assigning this responsibility is critical.


Assign: Checklist for success
• Think like a CFO—always be thinking about ROI.


• Make candidate-source tracking a real priority within the organization by becoming accountable for what the investments are delivering.


• Assign someone within the recruiting team to measure ROI as a significant responsibility within his or her job.


• Don’t rely on ATS or HRIS administrators to handle ROI measurement.


Step 2: Automate
Along with having someone responsible for looking at candidate-source data, you also need to be able to rely on that data, especially when making business decisions about what recruitment advertising to undertake or continue and where to focus the budget. The default behavior of most applicant tracking systems and company career sites is to ask job seekers how they found out about a job when applying.


Many companies with this type of tracking think they have reliable candidate-source data. However, that is not the case.


Any manual candidate-source reporting leaves the door open for inaccuracies. In fact, research shows the majority of applicant data provided this way is incorrect. Relying on job seekers to accurately choose where they found out about jobs is not realistic because the sources and sites often are omitted, too numerous or expired.


Applicants may not be careful, as they are going too fast; not know, as they came from multiple sites; or pick the wrong source on purpose.


The result of this manual reporting is inaccurate data in companies’ ATSes, which lead to confusion and ill-informed decisions about which sites and sources are delivering candidates and hires. An example of an expired source causing havoc with candidate-source data is America’s Job Bank, a job board previously subsidized by the Department of Labor that many government contractors used to meet their Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs posting requirements.


Because of its popularity with both companies and job seekers, it was listed in every ATS as an option when job seekers applied online. That was fine until July 2007, when AJB lost government funding and was shut down. What happened in those companies’ ATSes?


Often, nothing at all. Even today, two years after AJB went away, some companies continue to think it is providing applicants and hires because of bad candidate-source data. Whose job is it to remove these sources as they expire, and how can you prevent this bad candidate-source data from continuing to pollute a bigger-picture analysis of what job sites are working best?


The best way to acquire accurate candidate-source data is behind the scenes, without the job seeker choosing from menus. The benefits are twofold:


• Faster job-seeker experience for your candidates.


• More reliable candidate-source data for your organization.


Automation is easy, and many of the popular ATSes support automated candidate-source tracking in their off-the-shelf configurations. However, sometimes employers have no idea it’s possible because they never asked or the topic wasn’t covered as part of the ATS training. Systems that support automated tracking do so via an additional piece of information that’s added to the end of the job URL to record the source of candidates when they apply.


By researching if your ATS supports this tracking and providing the job sites you use with the proper information, automated candidate-source tracking is well within your reach. So what are the challenges?


• Many companies don’t know what their ATSes are capable of. Some have automated tracking available to them but have not pursued it properly.


• Not every applicant tracking system supports such automation; ask your ATS contact for the details.


• Not every company knows its ATS contact.


• There is no industry standard for this URL information, yet almost every ATS uses a different URL parameter and code format.


These same automation steps can be applied to a career site, and sometimes it’s actually easier. Ask the IT team or the company that built the career site how to implement automated tracking using the URL parameter.


Automate: Checklist for success
• If you don’t already know, ask your ATS administrator or representative if your system supports automated tracking. If the answer is no, find out when it will be added (customer demand goes a long way).


• Once you have the proper tracking codes for the job sites you use, provide the information and verify that it has been added to all jobs.


• Submit some sample applications from your job postings or ads to make sure that the proper source information is being provided.


Step 3: Analyze
Once you have automated, reliable candidate-source data in your ATS, it’s important to review and analyze it on a regular basis and not be afraid of what you might find. Often, a company’s perception of what sites are delivering quality candidates and hires shifts considerably when real data illustrates exactly what’s working and what isn’t.


Many recruiters are driven by brand recognition and needing to have their jobs on certain sites, but this process is dependent on the data supporting the spend.


So what are the metrics? The most common metrics for measuring recruitment advertising are cost per applicant (CPA) and cost per hire (CPH), although different organizations may have variations in the specific reports they look at on a regular basis.


CPA and CPH are easy to measure:


• Cost per applicant (CPA)
   Total media outside cost / number of applicants
   Example: $5,000 / 750 applicants = $6.67 CPA

• Cost per hire (CPH)
   Total media outside cost / number of hires
   Example: $5,000 / 6 hires = $833 CPH

While some secondary factors are excluded from these calculations, such as the effort required to maintain job sites and review the resulting candidates, they provide a good overview of how a site or source is performing compared with others.


In your ATS, look for reports called “applicants by source” and “hires by source” to review this data. Every ATS is a little different, and you may have to ask your representative for an export of the data, rather than being able to run a report yourself.


Most systems won’t know your outside media costs, so it’s important to have those available to combine with the raw applicant and hire volume.


Analyze: Checklist for success
• Run source-of-candidate and source-of-hire reports on a scheduled basis.


• Integrate your outside media costs with the raw applicant and hire data that comes from your ATS to determine cost per applicant and cost per hire.


• Compare all recruitment advertising media being used to calculate your ROI from each site. Determine the top performers and underperformers.


Step 4: Adjust
It’s important to measure recruitment advertising ROI, but it’s this final step that will help you maximize that ROI by adjusting your recruitment advertising strategy and budget based on the candidate-source data you have collected. This is where many companies stall—they identify a job site or source that is outperforming others, but are unable to make the budgetary shift to take advantage of that disparity.


This happens most often because of brand awareness or perceived brand loyalty, that the company’s recruiters or hiring managers “have to have” their jobs on certain sites despite the disappointing ROI. It’s hard to stop using a service that you’ve trusted in the past, but it’s essential if the data telling you to do so is compelling.


It’s important to communicate disappointment with the performance of a particular site and find opportunities to optimize your campaigns. If you have a goal CPA or CPH, don’t hesitate to communicate it—that will only help the job site determine ways to make your recruitment advertising perform better. Being shy is not helpful when you are trying to get the most for your money.


Also, try new sites and recruitment advertising approaches to see how they compare with your historical data. Options like search engine marketing (SEM), which is pay-per-click advertising rather than pay-per-post advertising, can provide a lower cost per applicant and cost per hire than those traditional sources. SEM also is a low-risk option that is easy to test, without any long-term obligations.


Once you have made adjustments to your recruitment advertising budget or if you have pursued a pilot SEM or social networking campaign, it’s important to continue analyzing the results. Maximizing your recruitment advertising ROI is not a one-time event; it’s an ongoing process.


Your jobs change, sites’ audiences change and grow, and new options in recruitment advertising emerge (while others fade) every day. Trust your recruitment advertising strategy, measure everything and don’t be afraid to make adjustments if one of your media options is not performing well.


Adjust: Checklist for success
• Use your candidate-source data, analysis and comparisons to shift the recruitment advertising budget to sites that are performing best.


• If you have underperforming media, communicate with those sites to identify optimizations and ways to improve your ROI.


• Test new options in your recruitment advertising strategy that have the potential to provide a lower CPA and CPH.


• Always keep tracking, and measure any adjustments you make in your strategy and the complexion of recruitment advertising investments.


Every company with a job ad on the Web should know what it’s getting for its investment—how many clicks, how many applications, how many hires.


The technical aspects of candidate-source tracking are in most cases easy to implement, but companies need the personnel and initiative to pursue automated tracking and conduct the ongoing analysis to understand how sites are performing. You also need to be willing to adjust your strategy and budget to truly maximize your recruitment advertising investments.


In many cases, it may require not taking no for an answer, either from an ATS or a job site, and that’s OK. Not knowing the return on your advertising is not OK.

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RPO Business Surges as Employers Look to Restart Hiring

Recruitment process outsourcing providers are seeing an increase in interest from employers that have cut their internal recruiting staffs but are now realizing the need to start hiring again in the next few months.


Just in the past month, Findlay, Ohio-based The RightThing has signed on three Fortune 500 companies that have gotten rid of much of their recruiting staff, said CEO Terry Terhark.


“Over the last 45 days we have seen a surge in activity,” he said. “Generally when you see a downturn like this, the recruiting department is the first to be impacted, and so many of these recruiting organizations have been decimated.”


Similarly, Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Spherion has seen a 40 percent increase in new customer prospects on average just over the past four months, said Rebecca Callahan, senior vice president of Spherion’s RPO division.


“For many companies, their recruiting departments were the first to go, and as things started to turn around they are realizing that they don’t have the capacity to get back to where they were,” she said. “All of a sudden RPO becomes a favorite item for them.”


ABB North America signed on with The RightThing in May to reduce its recruiting costs.


During the past several months, the company has eliminated seven recruiting positions and 20 HR jobs which also had some ABB North America signed on with The RightThing in May to reduce its recruiting costs. During the past several months, the company had laid off 20 HR managers who had recruiting responsibilities, said Shelia Gray, director of talent acquisition.


“The cost of recruiting is going up,” she said, noting that ABB North America plans to hire 4,000 people this year. “We expect that within the first year of working with The RightThing, our recruiting costs will be one-quarter of what they were before.”


RPO providers are also benefiting from the economic downturn in that they have access to recruiters who are being shed from large companies, experts say.


The RightThing has hired 100 recruiters in the past six months. Spherion has also been hiring, but Callahan declined to elaborate.



RPO seems to be a  bright spot in HR business process outsourcing, said Gary Bragar, lead HR outsourcing analyst at NelsonHall, a global business process outsourcing consultant.


“All of the providers that I have spoken to are seeing their pipeline bigger than ever,” Bragar said. “Even though contracts haven’t all been signed, they are seeing people realizing that they need to get their recruiting capabilities back.”


RPO will grow to 3.5 percent this year, according to  NelsonHall. The firm predicts growth will hit 12 percent in 2010.


“This is the time to test out RPO because most companies don’t have the pressure to fill hundreds of positions right away,” Bragar said. “Companies can start out with a smaller number of hires and assess how things are going before going full speed ahead.”


—Jessica Marquez


Workforce Management’s online news feed is now available via Twitter.


 

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Avoid Hiring an HR Dud Behavioral Interview Questions for Finding Stars

We’ve all been there. You’re coming off of one of the most chaotic years ever within your HR practice, with volume up, internal customers irritable and total FTEs down. You’ve been asked to do more with less, and tribute to you, the HR team has hung in there like Joe Torre at a Steinbrenner family barbecue.

 

    Then a key manager or director-level member of your team resigns.

    Crisis time!

    So the search begins, and you face the classic Catch-22 presented to all hiring managers. Do you conduct a quick search and hire the best available talent within a specific time frame, or do you keep the position open as long as needed to land a star? Like Judge Smails in Caddyshack, I’d be the first to tell most managers that the world needs ditch diggers too.

    But HR spots are different. With HR pros facing a barrage of articles touting why line managers "Hate HR", and industry consultants comparing the profession to prehistoric reptiles, you can’t afford the reputation hit that comes with hiring a "B" or "C" player. You need a star, a rainmaker who is capable of being a Tony Robbins one day, and Jason Bourne the next.

    The best way to find this rarest of talents is through behavioral interviewing, which makes the assumption that past behavior is the best predictor of future performance. I won’t waste your time here regurgitating how behavioral interviewing works (for a full tutorial, check out a vendor that specializes in it or click here). Instead, I’m going to assume you are already a competent behavioral interviewer and focus on the questions you need to ask to find the star.

    Are you ready to find a star? Great! By the time you master these questions, you’ll be interviewing HR candidates with the style of Barbara Walters, the tenacity of Geraldo Rivera and the effectiveness of Mike Wallace.

    Here are my first five questions of the HR Rock Star Interview, focused on competencies that separate the players from the pretenders:

Interview Dimension: "The Innovator"
The Question: "Tell me about a time when you developed and executed a value-added project for your company by yourself. How did you come up with the idea? Walk me through the development and execution stages of the project."
Why You Ask This Question: It’s not enough for your next hire to simply execute your HR platform. You need someone capable and motivated to assess needs, then react accordingly with innovative solutions and the ability to execute the resulting projects. Without the innovation strand in their DNA, candidates are destined to be viewed as simple administrators.
What to Listen and Probe For: Does the candidate talk about what she did or is she talking about corporate initiatives she simply executed? Be on the lookout and probe for team projects, which require extensive drill-down to figure out if the candidate was the brainpower behind the initiative. Finally, ensure the candidate can deliver execution of resulting project work and isn’t simply a dreamer.

Interview Dimension: "The Talent Agent"
The Question: "Tell me about a time when you were the sole recruiter for a difficult-to-fill position. How did you develop candidate flow? What nontraditional means did you use to locate passive candidates? How did you communicate with these candidates to generate interest?"
Why You Ask This Question: It’s not enough to simply post a job to Monster or CareerBuilder and then screen résumés. In a labor market destined to get tighter as the baby boomers hit the beach, difference-makers in HR are going to secure talent through nontraditional means.
What to Listen and Probe For: Does the candidate have a proactive approach to talent that transcends simply posting a job? The real talent agents among HR types will be able to describe their networking efforts in detail, including social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Listen hard for tales of their "selling skills" as applied to passive candidates, because the best candidates aren’t looking, and have to be sold.

Interview Dimension: "The Performance Consultant"
The Question: "Walk me through a situation in which you served as a consultant, assisting a line manager in the development of performance objectives for their team. What research did you do to prepare? How did you help the manager prioritize the objectives and link them to other roles within the company?"
Why You Ask This Question: Difference-makers in HR understand their business well enough to engage line managers in the development of customized performance management systems. You’re looking for people who can parachute into a department and drive the development of performance objectives from the top down or the bottom up.
What to Listen and Probe For: Has the candidate ever done more than send out reports about late appraisals? Be on the lookout for experience the candidate had with helping a manager understand the objective measurements that drive their department’s success. Also key is experience in pushing managers to set levels for "meets" and "exceeds" performance that rewards top talent while managing the expectations of the average performance.

Interview Dimension: "The Actor"
The Question: "Tell me about a time when you developed and executed training for managers at your company. Walk me through how you incorporated role-playing into the training, and how you displayed the skills on which you were training. Can you role-play with me now? I’ll be the manager and you’ll be the HR pro; let’s role-play so I can see how you followed up with that manager after the training was complete to ensure they were using the skill."
Why You Ask This Question: In order for HR pros to have a lasting impact on an organization, they have to be role models for the skills necessary for managers to thrive in today’s organization. If they can’t display the skill more effectively than the managers they serve, they’ll fall short in grooming first-time managers.
What to Listen and Probe For: Experience and presentation skills. Run the role-playing as a part of the interview, and you’ll have what you need.

Interview Dimension: "The MBA"
The Question: "Walk me through a situation in which you put together a ‘people metrics’ package for the organizations you served without being asked to do so."
Why You Ask This Question: HR pros have to be business professionals. If your candidate hasn’t grasped how to use metrics to enhance his position as a consultant to the organization, he’ll be viewed as the ultimate "soft side" of the business.
What to Listen and Probe For: Proactive efforts to look at human capital metrics for the organization without being asked to do so. You’ll also want to see proactive communication and distribution of metrics from the HR pro. Distribution mandated by the company is fine, but it doesn’t tell you anything about the analytical skills of the candidate.

    Master these questions and the follow-ups necessary to figure out what the candidate has actually done as an individual, and you’ll be on your way to identifying HR difference-makers. (Note: You have to attack generalities such as "we" and "usually" like a pit bull as a behavioral interviewer.)

    Keep in mind that these questions are designed to separate the stars from the also-rans. It’s assumed that all the candidates you put through this interview have the technical skills to do the job. We’re on the prowl for difference-makers, not administrators.

    Stay tuned for future columns, where we’ll move from competencies to traits that HR stars have in common.

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Should Recruiting Be Part of Marketing

Should the recruiting function of a company be part of the marketing department? If so, why? If not, why not?

Several experts offer their opinions below:

Cynthia Kay Stevens, associate professor, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland

“The suggestion to shift recruitment to marketing has greater merit than it might initially seem.

Recently, many recruitment researchers have found that prospective applicants rely on product or services marketing campaigns to form ideas of what it would be like to work in the firm. Thus, brand image plays a critical role in the decision to apply. In fact, many job-seekers fail to reconsider a decision not to apply even when they simply lack information about the firm they disregarded.

For these reasons, marketing staff should be actively involved in recruitment initiatives and should consider spillover effects of marketing campaigns on recruitment. Then again, recruiters need specialized knowledge that marketers may lack about particular jobs–how to interview, compensation trends, etc. I suspect that the best organizational structure is one involving cross-functional teams of marketing and recruitment specialists that can capture natural similarities involved in outreach to prospective consumers and applicants.”

Stephen A. Sasser, president and CEO, Peopleclick, a recruiting and workforce-technology company

“Recruitment is and should remain ‘the business’ of the human resources function. Human resources should have the domain expertise to drive and manage the recruitment process more effectively than any other function within a company. Just as marketing’s traditional responsibility is to support the selling efforts of the company’s products and services, the same should apply to supporting human resources and its selling efforts in recruitment.

Human resources needs to ensure that the recruitment process is viewed as important enough to command a similar level of assistance. By using marketing’s capabilities, human resources can increase its effectiveness and accomplish one of its main business goals–attracting quality people to the company.”

Mike Temkin, vice president, strategic planning and development, Shaker Recruitment Advertising & Communications

“While recruiting should not be part of the marketing department, HR and recruiters should rely on marketing expertise to enhance employment strategies.

Recruiting prospective employees–as well as retaining current employees and encouraging referrals from your current workforce–is clearly a sales strategy, not a clerical function. From establishing and maintaining an employer brand to converting an inquiry into an actual hire, the recruitment function is part of a sales process as crucial to your company as the marketing of a new product or service.

As a recruiter, you want to have access to every possible means for identifying appropriate applicant pools, reaching prospective applicants with compelling messages and then persuading qualified candidates to consider and accept your offer of employment. You need more than just a job description, a list of benefits and an initial offer of compensation. You must be able to market your company as a preferred employer, create interest in an immediate job opening and establish a commitment to a possible long-term career path with your company.

To begin this process, a human resources department has to partner with either an internal marketing department or an outside marketing/advertising agency. You need to use all the tools of motivation and persuasion to attract top talent to your company. You have to consider various aspects of advertising and public relations to support the marketing of your human resources objectives.

As part of this marketing partnership, you should evaluate your investment on more than just the cost per applicant and cost per hire. Your messaging and interaction with unqualified employment candidates can be just as crucial as your ability to reach highly qualified candidates. Each prospective applicant will most likely be a possible customer or client for your company; no one can afford to alienate a possible employment candidate who then might decide not to patronize a company.”

Julia Long, marketing director of service excellence, Clarian Health Partners, Indianapolis

“Historically, the department of human resources assumed the sole responsibility for seeking applicants who possessed the appropriate skills to fill a vacant position. These responsibilities included the posting of positions, interviewing, processing and some degree of orientation. While these functions are still necessary, attracting talent and finding a good fit for an organization is the role and expertise of marketing.

These activities–attracting talent, finding a good fit–are increasingly difficult in this shrinking job market, and many organizations make the mistake of filling positions on the basis of skill qualifications alone. Hiring talent involves the selection of applicants with behavioral skills and personal values that are in alignment with the organization.

To attract talent aligned with the organization, a company must first create a strong product or image that increases customers’ trust in and loyalty to the organization. However, if customers’ (in this case, job candidates’) experiences differ from the advertising message, customers will believe their experiences and not the advertising. Therefore, it’s equally important that marketing also brand the organization as an Employer of Choice®–in a way that connects with people’s emotions–in order to attract a pool of talent.”

David Pantano, national recruiting manager, Boston Scientific, a $3 billion medical-device manufacturer

“Recruiting is best based within human resources. There are a lot of legal issues you need to pay attention to from a recruiting standpoint, and you need to be sensitive to different legal requirements in different regions of the country. You also have a lot of EEO reporting. Rules and regulations change, and the focal point for regulations affecting recruiting and affecting labor is human resources.

Yes, there’s a certain component of salesmanship with recruiting. I get out and talk to groups of people about how great Boston Scientific is to work for, so in effect I’m selling the company to them. But you have to look at the skill sets of the people doing the recruiting. Part of that skill set has to be salesmanship, but that’s only one part of it. Being a good listener isn’t a skill set every salesperson has to have, but it’s a skill set every recruiter has to have. Also, a lot of the selling has already been done, and by the time recruiters talk to a candidate, they already have an interest in Boston Scientific.”

Farhan Yasin, vice president of business development for the CareerBuilder job site

“The recruitment function of an organization should fall into the hands of the human resources department and/or the hiring managers of a specific department. These individuals are closer to the open positions and respective job requirements and bring expertise to the process of finding the right candidates that will be a good fit for the company culture.

However, to attract the right candidates, human resources departments and hiring managers should team up with their marketing departments to create an employee brand for the company. Every company has two unique brands–their customer brand and their employee brand. People buy Nike shoes because they offer high quality and sporty comfort. People work for Nike because they see a good career opportunity. When you message your brand to customers, you are selling a product or service. When you message your brand to employees, you are selling a work experience.

Knowing this, the question at hand is: How do you market your company to attract the right candidates? Different messages will appeal to different candidates. How do you present your culture? Is it developmental, diverse, quick-paced? Do you offer autonomy and opportunities for career advancement? How do you present the benefits of your industry and your financial strengths? How do you present your leadership style and what the employee will get out of working for you?

Human resources departments, hiring managers and marketing departments working together to sell the company’s work experience effectively is key to finding top performers.”

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A Sample New-Hire Survey

    As part of a solution to deal with employee turnover, Ceridian’s HRdepartment saw an opportunity to increase employee satisfaction and retentionand improve its staffing processes. The staffing department created a quarterlysurvey in 2002 (below) to help gather information from each new hire regardingtheir satisfaction of the hiring process, training, impression of manager, andorientation.




We appreciate your feedback on this brief survey to help us understand whatwe’re doing well, and what we need to improve regarding: the interviewprocess, new hire introduction, new hire training, and job specificsatisfaction.


    The survey has 34 questions and will take you 10 to 15 minutes to complete.Your answers will be kept completely confidential.


Section 1 – Pre-Employment


1. How were you recruited to Ceridian?


  • Employee Referral
  • External Recruitment Agency
  • Ceridian Staffing Department
  • Re-hire
  • Worked for previous customer
  • Other

2. How satisfied were you with the number of on-site interviews withCeridian?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

3. If dissatisfied, please tell us how many interviews were conducted:_________


4. How satisfied were you with the organization and scheduling of yourinterviews?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

5. How satisfied were you with the explanation of Ceridian’s benefitprogram?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

6. How satisfied were you with the length of time it took from the time youapplied to the time you were hired?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

7. During the interview process, did you receive a folder with companyinformation?


  • Yes
  • No

8. Overall, how satisfied were you with Ceridian’s interview process?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

Section 2 – New Hire Introduction


9. Do you work virtual (off-site)?


  • Yes
  • No

10. How did you receive your “first day” new hire orientation?


  • Teleconference conducted by Ceridian Human Resources associate
  • On-site
  • Did not receive ‘first day’ orientation. If so, skip to question #14

11. How satisfied are you with the first day new hire orientation?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

12. How satisfied were you with the welcome you received from yourdepartment?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

13. How satisfied were you with the knowledge and skill of your assignedmentor or co-worker?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied
  • N/A

14. How satisfied are you with your manager’s ability to lead and providedirection to you?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

15. How satisfied are you with the necessary tools (i.e. computer, phone,etc.) provided to complete your job?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

16. How satisfied are you with the time it took to receive your benefitspackage?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

17. How satisfied are you with the benefits automated enrollment process?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

Section 3 – Training


18. When you were hired, what percentage of your skills matched thoserequired to perform your job?


  • 100% Match
  • 80% Match
  • 50% Match
  • 20% Match
  • No Match

19. How satisfied are you with the computer-based new hire orientationtraining?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied
  • N/A

20. How satisfied are you with the flexibility and ease of completing thecomputer-based new hire orientation training?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied
  • N/A

21. How satisfied are you with the job-specific training opportunitiesprovided by the Learning and Development Organization?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied
  • N/A

22. How satisfied were you with the assistance of your manager in completingyour training?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

23. How satisfied were you with the availability of your mentor or co-workerto assist you in completing your training?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied
  • N/A

24. How satisfied are you with the length of time given to complete trainingduring work hours?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

Section 4 – Job Specific


25. How satisfied are you with how the job was described during the interviewprocess compared to what you are actually doing?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

26. How satisfied are you with the review of Ceridian’s PerformanceManagement Process with your manager?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied
  • N/A

27. How satisfied are you with the review of Ceridian’s goals andobjectives explained by your manager?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied
  • N/A

28. Considering everything, how would you rate your overall satisfaction withCeridian at this time?


  • Extremely Satisfied
  • Very Satisfied
  • Somewhat Satisfied
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very Dissatisfied

29. Would you recommend Ceridian as a good place to work?


  • Strongly Agree
  • Agree
  • Neither Agree or Disagree
  • Disagree
  • Strongly Disagree

30. What recommendations do you have that would improve the new hire process?


31. Please share any additional feedback or recommendations you may have.


Used with permission from Ceridian.


Workforce Online, April 2003 — Register Now!