Recruitment – Page 3

October 22, 2018August 3, 2023

AMB Group: Optimas 2018 General Excellence Winner

Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium opened Aug. 26, 2017, with a preseason football game between the hometown Falcons and the Arizona Cardinals.

The clock for hiring, training and prepping some 4,000 employees to open the $1.5 billion domed palace started ticking just four months prior. In short, there was no time for a fumble.

The stadium needed to staff virtually every function — ticketing, food and beverage services, security, leadership, finance and beyond. More importantly, the 4,000 workers had to embody the organization’s core values, and culture building efforts had to be highly impactful.

The AMB Group — the stadium ownership organization in charge of hiring and training — knew the importance of finding quality staff in a short amount of time. But they also strived to do so in a way that benefited Atlanta’s nearby Westside neighborhood, according to Karen Walters, director, training and associate engagement at AMB Group.

AMB Group is the 2018 Optimas Awards winner for General Excellence, an award given to the organization that has excelled in at least six out of 10 Optimas categories. AMB’s efforts to hire and train its Mercedes-Benz Stadium workforce showed excellence in corporate citizenship, innovation, managing change, partnership, recruiting, training and vision and place it among this elite group of organizations.

AMB Group: Optimas — Karen Walters, director, training and associate engagement at AMB Group, LLC, and Kali Franklin, director of human resources operations at AMB Sports and Entertainment at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

“Arthur believes the stadium project will be a failure if the transformation of the Westside communities around the stadium is not a success. The team was challenged to proactively collaborate with community partners to weave Westside residents into the stadium family,” Walters said in her Optimas application, referring to Arthur M. Blank, chairman of the Blank Family of Businesses. Blank, 75, the co-founder of Home Depot, leads this family of businesses made up of the AMB Group, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United FC of Major League Soccer and PGA Tour Superstore, among others.

The Westside community partners include Westside Works, a neighborhood program focused on creating employment opportunities and job training for Westside residents, and the Center for Working Families, an organization whose mission is to ensure economic success for Atlanta’s families and which provides job training, work support and financial literacy.

The stadium is a catalyst for transformative change, said Alison Sawyer, director of foundation communications at the Arthur M. Blank Family of Businesses. “For us, what that has meant is the power of the many and the collective in creating long-term, positive change in the Westside communities,” she said.

Blank leads his businesses by six core values: give back to others; lead by example; innovate continuously; put people first; listen and respond; and include everyone. Although financial success is important to the company, equally important is following these six values to attain that success.

These six core values were present in the recruiting process for the stadium from the start. The AMB Group HR team partnered with Utah-based software company Hirevue, which uses video interviews and artificial intelligence to help companies make hiring decisions. Blank was involved, asking values-based interview questions, as was Falcons head coach Dan Quinn and running back Devonta Freeman.

Also read: Webasto, Optimas 2017 General Excellence Winner

Also read: AbbVie, Optimas 2016 General Excellence Winner

Candidates who passed the video interview attended a Draft Day Hiring Fair at Mercedes-Benz Stadium where they participated in a group interview with more values-based questions. In these group interviews, candidates got the opportunity to show their “smile on the face and smile in the heart,” according to Walters.

“The interviews are fairly light-hearted because we want to see who lights up the room with their energy, care and warmth,” she said. “We ask candidates to get to know each other, introduce each other to the group in a fun way, and seek to understand times in the past when they have positively impacted the lives of others.”

After AMB made its hiring decisions, it invited the new associates to an onboarding event in which they were warmly greeted by the HR staff and then got the chance to take an “I’ve Been Drafted!” picture with the Falcons NFC Championship trophy. This experience also included a personal, one-on-one onboarding process between an HR associate and the new hire, which was enabled through a partnership with Workday.

After onboarding, the 4,000 new employees participated in an eight-hour training program called Welcome Home. HR designed this training in partnership with professional training and coaching company LDR Worldwide, and much of the training involved building trust and family bonds, as well as instilling the six core values in trainees.

New staff watched a video detailing Blank’s career, then met in small groups to have more intimate and personal discussions.

During the training, “trust-based connections formed, and the organization continues to benefit from these early, positive interactions,” Walters said. “We are reaping the benefits of this strong start through daily accolades given to Mercedes-Benz Stadium associates.”

Meanwhile, stadium supervisors had their own two-day Welcome Home training program in which they also learned more about the core values and the importance of building that culture among their employees.

“The energy in the building from the staff and fans was palpable,” Walters said of that first preseason game. “The guest-services associates were electric as they welcomed guests to their new home and the fans seemed to be in awe.”

Fans were enthusiastic to experience the game in the new stadium, she added, saying that there was an aura of excitement as they engaged with stadium staff and explored the concourses and concessions.

Beyond that first game, the hiring and training initiative has sparked positive feedback from NFL fans, according to the fan surveys conducted by the NFL. In the 2017 survey, the Falcons earned “Most Improved” club. The team also ranked in the first quartile among all NFL clubs for fan satisfaction.

Meanwhile, thanks to its community outreach efforts, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium has hired more than 150 Westside residents, and through the youth-centric Westside Ambassadors Program, more than 100 internship positions were filled by Westside neighborhood youths.

Also, each of founding sponsors of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium has committed to transforming the Westside in some way, “whether it is time, talent or treasure,” said the Arthur M. Blank Family of Businesses’ Sawyer. Financially, that has resulted in more than $15 million committed by sponsors, she added.

The supervisors’ Core Leader training continues, and HR has selected 30 of these core leaders to act as culture builders, Walters said. In this role, they continuously and strategically try to instill the Welcome Home spirit from the initial training. This could be by including that spirit in event-day huddles or by rewarding employees with a Values in Action award when they exhibit that Welcome Home spirit.

For its workplace initiative, which demonstrates excellence in the Optimas categories of corporate citizenship, innovation, managing change, partnership, recruiting, training and vision, AMB Group is the 2018 Optimas Award General Excellence winner.

Go here to read about the rest of the Optimas winners for 2018.

Go here to learn more about the Optimas Award program.

October 17, 2018October 28, 2020

Employers Find Sports Score Employee Engagement and Retention Points

employee engagement and retention, employee performance

The Major League Baseball postseason is well underway with some games taking place during normal work hours.

The Chicago Cubs had their midday National League tiebreaker on a Monday, while Game 3 of Houston Astros-Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series also was a mid-afternoon start. Games happening early in the day has both hurt and helped workplaces nationwide.

When sporting events occur during work hours, employers could face productivity issues, which can include employees calling in sick, leaving early or arriving late. But there’s an opportunity to flip that thinking and use such events as an employee engagement and retention tool.

Joyce Maroney, executive director of the Workforce Institute at workforce management software company Kronos Inc., studies workplace issues and ways to manage and engage workers. Maroney said one of the ways employers can avoid these issues is by making the sporting event available in the office, whether on TV in a break room or conference room, or an office-watch party with food provided.

“It can definitely be a tool to stimulate camaraderie, just as would be departments having gatherings during the holiday season, or doing a charity event together,” Maroney said. “All these things engage people at work and can make people feel like they’re part of something that’s a little bigger than just getting the job done.”

Maroney may be onto something.

A survey conducted in March 2018 by employee and recruitment agency Randstad U.S. said 79 percent of employees believe sporting events in the office “greatly improves their levels of engagement at work.” In the same study, 73 percent of workers say they look forward to going to work more when they participate in office sports bracket contests like college basketball’s March Madness tournament. Also, a 2017 study conducted by employee time-management app TSheets found that 68 percent of employees said watching games increases or has no effect on their productivity.

Chicago-based staffing and recruiting firm LaSalle Network embraces sports in its office. The big sporting events they consider as employee engagement and retention tools in the workplace are March Madness, the Olympics and the World Cup soccer.

Founder and CEO Tom Gimbel said doing this has resulted in better relationships with fellow employees and clients as they have a viewing party for the annual March Madness tournament.

“It empowers employees because they don’t have to sneak around to participate in something they enjoy,” Gimbel said. “It also makes our clients feel valued. We want them to know we appreciate our relationships with them. It helps builds trust.”

The Super Bowl, arguably the biggest U.S.-based sporting event every year, normally attracts over 100 million viewers annually. Even those who don’t consider themselves sports fans watch the Big Game.

Research conducted before this year’s Super Bowl by the Workforce Institute at Kronos and Mucinex found that nearly 14 million employed Americans planned to call out of work after watching the game. Another 25 percent of working Americans, 38.5 million people, said the Monday after the Super Bowl should be considered a national holiday.

https://soundcloud.com/user-745793386/talent10x-should-the-monday-after-the-super-bowl-be-a-holiday

Gimbel said companies that attempt to “squash the fun and energy” coming from a big sporting event are missing out on a great opportunity to engage their staff.

Looking at the current state of Chicago’s core sports teams right now, Gimbel might be planning a little something for his firm in February.

“We’re not ruling out anything for the Super Bowl,” Gimbel said. “If the [Chicago] Bears make it, who knows what we’ll do?”

October 10, 2018February 16, 2024

Generation Z’s Job Interests Lie in Future-proof Jobs

Generation Z is making waves in the workforce.

Job seekers in Gen Z , people born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, have different interests than the oldest millennials, according to “What Jobs Are Winning the Interest of the Next Generation to Enter the Workforce?” This recent Indeed report analyzed job search patterns among Gen Z graduates. It found that while older millennials in their late 30s are taking leadership positions, Generation Z prefers something else.

The study found that Gen Z has a strong infatuation with “future-proof” jobs, jobs that provide stability. This doesn’t compare with millennials’ “job-hopping” stereotype. Generation Z is here to stay, and for a long time.

Paul Wolfe, senior vice president of human resources at Indeed, has a theory for why Generation Z is mainly interested in job stability.

Also read: Everything Old Is New Again for Gen Z

“Having grown up during the Great Recession, the idea of job instability was the norm for much of this age group,” Wolfe said. “Because Gen Zers grew up in a time of economic turmoil, their parents probably instilled the idea that hard work and dedication is necessary for success.”

Unlike millennials, who grew up with landlines and AOL, Gen Z had access to smartphones during their childhood. The report claims Generation Z may be the first true “digital natives.”

Paul Wolfe, senior vice president of human resources at Indeed

Indeed conducted a popularity index, which evaluated how much more frequently graduation-aged Gen Zers clicked on certain full-time jobs compared to all other job seekers. The index provided a list of the top 15 job interests in that age group.

It consisted of mostly tech jobs, like iOS developers, computer vision engineers and machine learning engineers. Gen Zers’ digital native reputation just became more credible. Wolfe believes this has a lot to do with what Gen Zers experienced in their childhood.

“This is the first generation to grow up with an iPhone,” he said. “[Gen Zers] were 10 years old when the iPhone launched, so they have a different experience with technology than the previous generations.”

Another common interest among Gen Z was healthcare jobs. Anesthesiologists and associate dentists cracked the top 15 most coveted jobs.

Also read: What HR Leaders Need to Know About Generation Z

It’s no coincidence that these two career options resonate with Gen Z’s future-proof craving. Technology and healthcare jobs are in fields that have suffered major talent shortages over the past couple years. This young generation is looking into the right departments and could significantly benefit from their desired fields’ job security.

Although Generation Z has some popular, common job interests, not all Gen Zers share the same traits. A shocking finding from the index was the number 10 job — bookseller, a job that contradicts Generation Z’s digital native narrative.

Knowing Gen Zers have various interests, Wolfe has a firm idea regarding how that can help them in the future.

“Because we know this generation is marked by looking for future-proof, secure jobs, they likely understand the need for constant skills development in order to grow in their careers,” Wolfe said. “This generation is expected to be hard working, but they will want to be rewarded for their efforts.”

Also read: Advice for Gen Z: Demand a Better Workplace Than We Did

July 10, 2018June 29, 2023

Sector Report: Navigating the Patchwork of Screening Regulations

Background screening is often considered the most tedious and stressful aspect of the recruiting process. While it will never be a pleasant experience, companies and vendors are focused on making it as painless as possible. “If recruiting gets bogged down during background screening you run the risk of losing candidates — and all the resources you spent recruiting them in the first place,” said Dawn Standerwick, vice president of strategic growth for Employment Screening Resources, a background screening company in Boulder, Colorado. You also the run the risk that they will complain about the process to friends and colleagues, said Richard Seldon, president of Sterling Talent Solutions, a global background screening company in New York. “Companies want candidates to say the process was efficient, timely and easy to do.”

That’s driving screening vendors to integrate their technology with applicant tracking systems, onboarding, payroll and other solutions to streamline the process, reduce wasted time, and eliminate demand for redundant information. They are also adding automated alerts and update features, including texts and emails letting candidates know where they are in the process, whether information is missing, and how they can access their background report. “A little extra communication makes the process more transparent,” Standerwick said.

It also shortens the screening process by auto-loading data, and alerting candidates immediately if more information is required. “Speed is always a good idea,” Seldon noted. “Companies and candidates always want this process to go faster.”

Along with improving candidate experience, screening vendors and companies continue to struggle with many of the same issues that have plagued them in the past — varying laws, ban the box movements and the need for global solutions. All of these trends have one important theme in common: lack of consistency.

In the case of screening laws, every county, city and state has its own requirements for what can and cannot be considered in a screening, how many years back screeners can look, and what kinds of notifications companies need to provide candidates about this process. “The patchwork of regulations has heightened the environment of lawsuits and litigations, and employers are looking for more guidance from their providers,” Standerwick said. Some vendors are taking on increasing responsibility for providing disclosures and notifications that are legally the employer’s responsibility, while others are “leaning back,” she said. “It’s getting increasingly complex to manage, and not every vendor wants to take that responsibility on.”

The same is true for ban the box rules, which vary in terms of when it is permissible to ask for a criminal history in the application process, what notifications are required and how to handle actions if information disqualifies a candidate. The rules get even more complex if a candidate lives in one state but will be employed in another, Standerwick noted. “We are reaching the tipping point with ban the box.” It’s not only complicated, it can actually do more harm than good. If the recruiting process drags out for weeks only to have the candidate disqualified, it delays that person from finding a job and the company from filling a position. “It’s creating a lot of frustration.”

Going Global

Managing laws gets exponentially more complex for global companies or those seeking candidates abroad, Seldon said. Often, HR leaders aren’t certain how they handle screening in other countries or they rely on local HR teams to establish their own rules. But as the risk of lawsuits increases, and new data privacy rules emerge — like the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, in the EU — companies are realizing they need a more consistent approach, he said. “The focus on global solutions has gained a lot of momentum this year.”

Not many screening companies have a global presence, though. As companies seek out vendors to manage global talent programs, the larger vendors are likely to expand their footprint through acquisition of local screening firms or through organic growth. “Global companies expect global solutions,” he said.

Going forward, companies should speak to their screening vendors about how they plan to address all of these issues and what is on their technology road maps. “Every company’s needs are different based on their industries and the positions they are screening for,” Seldon said. The more companies can educate themselves about screening laws and opportunities for risk in the screening process, the better able they are to choose vendors who can meet their needs.

June 25, 2018June 29, 2023

2018 Workforce Game Changer: Neil Otto

Neil Otto is administrator of talent acquisition for Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Florida.

“One of the biggest difficulties is filling the pipeline — getting the mass amount of candidates that we need at the beginning of every year,” said Neil Otto, administrator of talent acquisition for Orlando’s Orange County Public Schools.

For school districts across the country, finding qualified and effective educators is an annual challenge, and some schools face teacherless classrooms when classes begin. Thankfully, Otto, 37, has brought OCPS into the present using technology and his perspective from the business world.

“Bringing in that corporate knowledge or the understanding of how things work outside of education is part of what makes what I’m doing a game changer inside of that field,” Otto said.

His commitment to the district began early in his career when he served as an elementary school teacher. As a teacher, Otto realized that his district lacked a LinkedIn page through which the community could connect.

He put the page together himself and later explained the reason to David Azzarito, director of talent acquisition and HR compliance. Azzarito wrote in his Game Changers letter of recommendation, “Neil … wanted to make sure an employee of Orange County Public Schools was the first one to create a page to make sure it was done correctly and that only positive and truthful information was disseminated within.”

He continued to teach, and refined his business skills with an MBA, before a position in human resources opened up. Otto said he’d never considered HR prior to his new role, but now he wouldn’t change a thing. He said, “It has been a perfect fit with my extroverted self — being able to connect with so many people around not only the nation but the world.”

Go here to read about the rest of our 2018 Game Changers

In his new position, Otto worked to increase OCPS’ presence on social media and improve their external branding. This felt like a natural continuation of his previous work and has since led to a decrease in vacancies. Azzarito said, “Our inquiries from interested candidates throughout the U.S. can be traced back to information they have seen through our social media pages.”

In addition to his work on the district’s social media pages, Otto created a database of candidates to ensure the growth of the county’s network of qualified teachers. Otto’s work has allowed schools to reach and keep in touch with a new generation of teachers. His warm and welcoming personality ensures candidates feel appreciated as they go through the recruitment process.

Otto said, “I love being around people, it’s one of those things that gives me energy and fulfillment and purpose.” His passion has allowed the Orange County Public Schools to stand out from others in their field.

That’s a win for employees of the district, teachers and, most importantly, for students.

— Mariel Tishma

May 22, 2018June 29, 2023

The Intelligence Test’s Place in Hiring

Conference season is in full swing, and I’d love to share some takeaways with you! I attended a Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology conference in Chicago on April 19 and 20, and the speakers I saw and topics they discussed were fascinating.

I-O psychology, also known as workplace psychology, is “a branch of psychology that applies psychological theories and principles to organizations,” and a major focus of this field are areas like increasing workplace productivity and improving the mental and physical well-being of employees. It also strives to best match an employee with a job role. That’s what I’d like to explore in this blog: the role of the IQ test in recruitment.

To me there’s something inherently interesting to me about the potential tension between science and practice. That is, a researcher can discover some objective scientific fact (or at least a very well-supported hypothesis that could technically be disproved at some point in the future), and how that discovery is put into practice might be questionable.

I’ve mentioned before a fantastic book called The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee, who explores the history of genetic discoveries, including the inception of the IQ tests and the inquiries from researchers on whether or not intelligence is genetic. According to the book, Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman created this IQ test in 1916 to determine whether someone’s mental age was equivalent to their physical age. It’s important to note that he was a supporter of the American eugenics movement, which posited that certain races were inherently superior and more intelligent than others.

This brings me to two speakers at the SIOP conference. Dr. Thomas J. Bouchard, professor emeritus, University of Minnesota, won the SIOP’s Dunnette prize for his 20-year study MISTRA — the Minnesota Study of Twins Raised Apart. His speech focused on the findings of this research, which found a strong genetic link in IQ test scores. Joel P. Wiesen, meanwhile, gave a lecture on the limitations of using IQ tests only to rank police officer applicants and suggested 15 alternative ways police departments could rank applicants — along with pros and cons of those alternative options.

To me, these two represented the theory and the practice sides of psychology.

Bouchard’s research in the twin studies was extensive and impressive. He launched the study in the 1970s in a very anti-IQ environment. One argument was that IQ tests equal racism, which he wanted to disprove. Another argument stated that a person’s abilities, activities and attitudes cannot be measured; Bouchard disagreed. A notable debate at the time was if intelligence was influenced by genetics or socioeconomic status and the opportunities that came with the status.

What Bouchard ended up finding was a strong link between IQ scores and genetics. Twins growing up apart in very different environments did not change the similarity that had in general intelligence.

I came out of the sessions with several questions: Since the IQ test was man-made by a person who had certain beliefs and who lived in a certain time and place in history, aren’t there inherent biases within it? Isn’t that true with any man-made assessment? How significant should a person’s IQ be in their job prospects?

I learned a lot about the science behind IQ, but what are the limitations of IQ in practice? What if what one person considers a trait of an intelligent person is not what another person considers a trait of an intelligent person? I also thought of kids with whom I attended to high school who were very intelligent but did badly on standardized tests because they were nervous or bad at taking tests. Could the same principal apply to IQ tests?

Bouchard did not address these. The focus of his presentation was his research, so as an attendee I do not know his point of view on how IQ tests should be used in a professional setting or how much weight we should give the IQ score in evaluating the fitness of a person for a job. Wiesen’s lecture on IQ and hiring in police departments did, however, provide many answers for me.

When police departments rely on a narrow IQ test to rank applicants, they often find that white applicants have higher scores, on average, than other applicants, which ends up decreasing the diversity of the police force. He also brought up the fact that, long ago, psychologists were at the forefront of the eugenics movement [See: Lewis Terman], which brings up a moral issue. How could psychologists have been so wrong, he asked, and isn’t it technically possible for them to be making similar mistakes now?

He made alternative suggestions for how departments could rank applicants instead. One of my favorite suggestions was the “Greatest Strength Method.” That is, when applicants take a variety of tests of different competencies, they’re considered for what they performed best on. That way, you get a workforce that is not cookie cutter and has a variety of strengths.

I found this to be especially relevant considering the current political climates surrounding police officers and civilians, and the discussions around #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter.

So, what do you think? How large should the role of intelligence testing (or really any formalized testing) be in recruitment?

Other Observations: One speaker brought up a term that’s new to me: psychological capital, described as a combination of hope, resiliency, self-efficacy and optimism that leads to positive workplace outcomes like higher performance and better job satisfaction. This speaker connected psychological capital with practicing mindfulness, but I’m curious: What do you do to develop psychological capital in your organization?

In a panel discussion about the positive and negative impacts of technology, the panelists brought up an interesting point of view. They believed people aren’t addicted to their phones (they’re just dependent) and seemed pretty annoyed that the media likes to ask questions about phone addiction. (I was entertained by that comment.) One panelist mentioned how people aren’t addicted to their phone because this dependency is more of a sign that people inherently need to connect with other people.

My reaction: Sure, the word addiction is probably overused but I can think about a lot of people who could be much less dependent on their phones. Also, I wonder if there’s room in this workplace discussion about social connection, teamwork and collaboration to also acknowledge the value of knowing how to be alone, work alone and disconnect from technology once in a while.

What do you think? Do you think this talk about phone addiction hype is all hype? Do you see technology as more of a tool or a crutch at your organization?

Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

May 4, 2018June 29, 2023

Get Ambitious in Your Hiring

Dissatisfaction is a symptom of ambition. It’s the coal that fuels the fire.”

— Trudy Campbell, “Mad Men”

Ambition. As much as many of us are uncomfortable saying publicly that it’s a value/feeling/potential factor we want in our organization, ambition is needed in your company to get great results.

You know your high-ambition employees. They are the ones that often do great things and occasionally put tire tracks across the back of some teammates in the process. Are you better with or without these people? And if everyone is happy with their current status, who moves the company forward?

A few years back, I was doing a classic “section 2” in performance management at a previous company. As part of that exercise, we were trying to change the traditional company values to rate people to “potential factors,” which are more actionable “DNA” strands your high achievers have regardless of position.

As part of that exercise, we established 51 potential factors to whittle down to the five or six we would eventually live with. The ones you would expect most — innovative, communicator, etc. — were there.

Two members of the leadership team were adamant about including ambition in that list. But as it turns out, the rest of the team couldn’t get past the fact that ambition comes with negative perceptions. No matter how the two leadership team members came back to the positives associated with ambition, the others couldn’t get over the negative attributes.

Fact is, you need ambitious people. You probably don’t have enough of them.

To truly maximize the positive effects of ambition at your company, you’ve got to do two things: hire for the trait and ensure the negative effects of the ambitious FTEs don’t kill your culture.

Here are four ways you can determine candidates with ambition in their DNA:

Find young candidates who spend two years in a job, then jump to another company to get the equivalent of a promotion. If you see this in a 30-year-old, it’s likely they have some form of ambition. Note: I’m not talking about someone who simply switches companies without a promotion. I’m talking about the clear path of changing companies to progress in their career via title, responsibilities and money.
Behavioral characteristics. If you’re into assessments, a good way to see ambition is to look for the combination of high assertiveness and low team. High assertiveness means they’ll take action when needed, including to better themselves in a variety of circumstances. Low team doesn’t mean bad teammate. It means that a candidate is motivated for scoreboards, rewards and recognition that reward individuals, not teams.
They are building a portfolio of work. As they have worked for you or others, high-ambition individuals are creating a book of citable work and they’re pulling it together in a way that’s going to get them the next job or better circumstances in their current job.
High-ambition candidates are always networking. Look at a candidate’s LinkedIn profile and you’ll see the marks of ambition. High-ambition individuals have more connections than others, are sharing content and have fully fleshed-out profiles.

One problem that is universally related to direct reports with high ambition levels is that they can become hated by their peers. It’s simple to see why. The folks with ambition treat life like a scoreboard. Their peers want to do good work but don’t have designs to rule the world. Friction ensues.

The key to control this in my experience is to confront that reality with the high-ambition employee. “You’re looking to do great things. You’re driven. You want to go places and you’re willing to compete with anyone to get there.” Start with that level set.

Then tell them they must get purposeful with recognition of their peers.

If a high-ambition direct report starts a weekly, informal pattern of recognition of their peers, a funny thing happens. They start to look human to those around them. The gift of recognition makes them look less zero sum, less cutthroat and more like one of the team.

If you find all four ambition marks when recruiting, it’s likely you have a high-ambition candidate on your hands. Soften their edges via some direct and prescriptive coaching.

And if you find high-ambition candidates but don’t want to hire them, send them my way.

Kris Dunn, the chief human resources officer at Kinetix, is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

April 25, 2018June 29, 2023

The Ugly Truth About Online Assessment Testing

Most people have had the experience of taking an online assessment or test as part of a job application. No matter the industry and position, the format is often familiar. The applicant is asked questions covering everything under the sun about how they would rate their work performance and ability to work well with others, and then they are asked those same questions again in different ways. The answers are usually multiple choice and the assessments can take as long as 20 minutes to complete or sometimes, take several hours and days to finish for the most intensive online screening tests.

A great majority of companies use assessments as key parts of their application. They’re designed to be an unbiased way to narrow down the applicant pool to a more manageable number.

But hiring managers who work for companies that utilize these assessments need to ask themselves a few questions: Do you know what questions are asked on that test? Have you taken it? Can you pass it?

Many hiring managers and talent acquisition staff have never seen some of the questions they ask job candidates, and in many cases, they would be the first to fail these tests. The reality is that online tests and assessments have become an out of sight, out of mind tool for HR teams. Hiring managers know these tests exist as part of their company’s application process but that might be the extent of their knowledge.

In the job market of years past, companies could get by with this type of practice. Unemployment was high post-recession, and there were plenty of applicants to every position. Companies had the upper hand and could be choosy and select the best person available.

With unemployment standing at a 17-year low in 2018, jobseekers and employees are beginning to wield the power. They can be selective where they choose to apply and whom they want to work with. Meanwhile employers are struggling to find talent.

Employers and hiring managers need to scrutinize things they didn’t have to scrutinize before. They may need to take a hard look at the online pre-screening assessment tests, which may be inadvertently costing the company highly skilled and talented future employees.

How to Stay on Top

Companies lose otherwise qualified candidates for a variety of reasons in the application process, but they frequently lose them at the assessment stage. Jobseekers exit out of the process if they view the test as too lengthy or time consuming. They also bail on a company if the assessment content is not perceived as relevant or if that content startles them.

Think of a forklift operator applying for that job who takes an assessment with nothing but sales related questions, even if the job description did not mention sales at all. Believe it or not, this type of thing happens all the time. This jobseeker thinks they may be applying to the wrong position and leaves the application. Or even worse, they think the company may not have their act together thus damaging the company’s brand in the process.

So how can hiring managers and companies capture the talent they may be losing because of candidate drop-off in the online assessment process? A good start is by following these three best practices:

Know what is on the test. Many talent acquisition personnel have no idea what content or questions are on their current online assessment. The best companies have assessments that their personnel are familiar with and that relate to key characteristics that successful workers should have at that company.

Do not have a test just to have a test. Involve hiring managers and talent acquisition personnel in the design of this tool to make it more effective. Every individual responsible for hiring at a company should know what is being asked of applicants.

Keep the length of your test under control. Are you getting enough qualified candidates? If a company’s online assessment takes too long to complete, they could lose many great people.

A hiring manager may say, “Well for our company, if that jobseeker doesn’t want to invest the time to complete this, then we don’t want them.” But the job market is changing. Employers have had the upper hand for quite some time, but the unemployment rate is low and forecasted to get even lower

There is going to come a time where companies are going to need those qualified jobseekers who do not want to spend half a day completing an online quiz. There is a happy medium, but employers need to be vigilant so that top talent doesn’t take flight over something this trivial.

Do you really care? Are you sure?. What do I mean by that? As an example, I work with jobseekers with disabilities with applications, interview preparation, and everything in between. When applying online, nearly all the online tests list either a 1-800 number or an email address that people with disabilities can reach out to if they need assistance or help with the application/assessment.

Shockingly, though, a large percentage of these 1-800 numbers are either non-functional or they lead to an impersonal, confusing answering machine. After all of these missteps, the final insult is that oftentimes those messages left by jobseekers with disabilities are either not monitored by anybody or they are never returned.

I challenge you to test your company’s 1-800 numbers and email addresses. Individuals with disabilities are the largest untapped labor pool in the United States. If they were to apply to your company, have an issue that required assistance and get an impersonal response, they might exit out of the application and choose a company that really cares.

Online application assessments are here to stay. They can be valuable and helpful tool for all parties if given the attention that they deserve. As a hiring manager though, it’s your job to make sure they act as an effective resource to finding qualified candidates as opposed to a barrier that eliminates potential talent.

Keith Meadows is a hiring and engagement consultant at Disability Solutions. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com

March 1, 2018June 29, 2023

It’s Tourney Time — for Hiring

Hackathons and boot camps are great ways to find software engineers. But what about the rest of the workforce?

In the current war for talent, companies are struggling to fill all kinds of roles, and a coding challenge won’t help them narrow their candidate pool for all vacancies. But with a little creativity, the hackathon model could be applied to virtually any hiring scenario, giving recruiters a better sense of what a candidate can do, not just what they’ve done.

“The résumé is such a weird tool,” said Jason Shen, founder of Headlight, a performance hiring platform developer based in New York. “It’s a biographical sketch, and the information is hard to verify.”

Interviews can be similarly haphazard, particularly when hiring managers aren’t trained to ask questions that reveal a candidate’s actual skills. Shen likens the process to asking a quarterback how he throws a football. “He can talk until he is blue in the face, but until you see him throw, you won’t know what he can do.”

Headlight has traded in the résumé for a more interactive recruiting process, in which companies give candidates role-specific assignments to validate their technical ability and assess them against the competition. Along with a library of take-home assignments, Headlight also hosts hiring tournaments, where candidates sign up for a multihour hackathon style event, but instead of writing code they design a new product plan or create a marketing campaign. Participants get the assignment the day of the competition and a panel of industry experts assesses their submissions. The top performers win prizes and job interviews.

Battle of the Product Managers

Their first tournament, held at the end of January, focused on product managers.

“There is no academic program or degree for product management,” said Will Canine, co-founder of the New York-based Opentrons Labworks Inc., which makes robots for biologistics applications. Canine is one of 17 employers who participated in the tournament to find potential new hires, which has been a big challenge as his company grows.

Because product managers often come to the role via a number of different paths, résumés haven’t been a great screening tool, he said. As a result, his team often hires people with no specific product management experience and trains them on the job. “You’d never do that with an engineer,” he said. Canine saw the tournament as a better way to vet potential candidates.

In the tournament, more than 100 participants were given three hours to respond to a hypothetical scenario in which a large company had launched a product that wasn’t selling as expected. The participants had to decide whether to reposition the product for the current market or take it to a different market, then build a launch plan around that decision, Shen explained.

Sumita Banerjee, head of talent acquisition for L’Oréal Americas in New York

“There is no right answer,” he said. “Making the decision is the easy part, it’s what they do next that’s hard.”

Submissions were scored based on the business opportunity, customer insight, product development and project management. Following the event, Canine along with recruiters from IBM, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other companies were reviewing the submissions with the intent to hire some of the top performers.

It’s a novel approach, though Headlight is not alone in using competition to vet nontech candidates. It is an emerging trend that has evolved as companies look for better ways to judge candidates based on more than what college they attended.

Salon of the Future

It can be particularly useful for hiring recent college grads, who may have great potential but little proven work experience, says Sumita Banerjee, head of talent acquisition for L’Oréal Americas in New York. For more than two decades, L’Oréal has hosted Brandstorm, a business competition where teams of students compete to tackle an industry-relevant challenge. “It is a great feeder for junior talent,” Banerjee said.

To participate, students submit a video pitch of their solution for an annual challenge. This year’s topic: invent the professional salon experience of the future. The winning teams are invited to create a full project with support from a library of e-learning courses, an academic mentor and a L’Oréal employee who coaches them during their presentation at the national judging. The national winners are flown to the worldwide finals in Paris where three teams win 10,000 euro for the best brand, the best use of technology and the best sustainable solution. Along with prizes, many participants secure internships and jobs. “Throughout the competition we are actively looking for potential employees.”

The challenge gives L’Oréal executives a sense of their innovation, leadership skills and ability to collaborate while providing students with a real-life experience working at L’Oréal.

“It’s a great way to find talent, and it could work in any organization,” Banjeree said. Though companies interested in launching their own competition should be certain the challenges give something back to participants in terms of experience and access to companies’ leaders. “There has to be a value exchange if you want candidates to invest this much time and effort to your firm.”

Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

February 26, 2018June 29, 2023

Time of Possession and the Interview

Based on what I do for a living in the world of HR, a portion of my network is always approaching me for advice when it comes to job search and career issues. I’m sure many of you have the same experience.

When it comes to interviewing strategies, my advice to amaze hiring managers is simple to understand by my friends looking for their next gig:

“If the hiring manager wants to talk the whole time during your interview, let him. After the interview is done, he’ll think it went great.”

The advice for your hiring managers/executives, of course, is the direct opposite. The best interviewers across your management teams understand that effective selection on the recruiting trail is more about listening than speaking.

But the ol’ “listen more than you talk” platitude oversimplifies the game of interviewing. Simply letting the candidate talk more doesn’t make you an effective interviewer. The real value is found in the following concept:

Time of Possession

In football, “time of possession” tracks the amount of time one team has the ball. The thought process behind it is that if one team can keep the ball longer than the other team, they’re apt to score more points and have a fresher defense, which contributes to winning.

The inverse is true in interviewing. Success doesn’t happen by dominating the conversation, it comes by finding the sweet spot that allows you to facilitate as an interviewer in a way that provides you with maximum information.

I’ve seen great interviewers and I’ve seen the huddled masses who repeatedly fail to get the information they need. Here’s how they break down related to time of possession (how much they talk versus allowing the candidate to talk) and the nicknames I’ve tagged them with:

The Friendster (hiring manager who talks 40 to 50 percent of the time): A lot of your managers would be satisfied with this time of possession. “It was a peer-based conversation,” he said. “I felt like we had some great dialogue,” she said. They’re wrong. They didn’t make the candidate talk long enough to gain meaningful information, and as a result, their miss rate on hires is going to be too high.
The Cyborg (hiring manager who talks 5 to 10 percent of the time): If talking too much is wrong, then a manager who only controls less than 10 percent of the interview airtime must be good, right? Nope. The Cyborg represents the manager who gets the official question in, then displays a general tone-deafness to interrupt rambling candidates or ask smart follow-up questions. In other words, you can count on the Cyborg to ask the question you put in front of them, but don’t expect anything else. They’re out of their element, and they won’t get any more information than interviewers who talk all the time.
The Narcissist (hiring manager who talks 65 percent or more of the time): Speaking of talking all the time, meet the Narcissist. The Narcissist loves himself. He loves his ideas. He’s got a worldview that is not only unique, it’s profound. He’ll talk all interview long and as I mentioned previously, he likes people who let him talk. If you’re interviewing with him, don’t fight it. Let him talk and you’ll be in good shape to get the job. Of course, you might think carefully about whether you want to work for him.
The Investigative Reporter (hiring manager who talks 20 percent of the time): The sweet spot of interviewing, the Reporter understands the balance that is required between talking and listening. She’s prepped with interview questions, but understands that’s simply a starting point and quickly spends most her time of possession saying things like, “tell me more about that” and “why did you decide to do that?” She’s an evolved interviewer, understanding the need to be agile, probing and interrupting as necessary to get maximum information.

Do you see your managers of people in these profiles? Sure you do. Interviewing skills tend to follow behavioral trends that impact managers in other areas as well.

Your most effective managers are generally your best interviewers. Coaching skills and interviewing skills are highly related, placing a premium on relationship building, making others comfortable to get the best possible outcome and demanding more without coming across as a jerk.

Divide the managers you support into these interviewing profiles, then look at turnover trends across multiple years. You’ll find the managers with the most effective time of possession strategies don’t miss in hiring nearly as much as their peers.

To be a great interviewer, talk less. But ask for more.

Kris Dunn, the chief human resources officer at Kinetix, is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.