Category: Recruitment

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Bend in the Road Could Lead to Top Tech Talent

When Gray Skinner tried to recruit developers for Droplr, his growing software start-up company in Bend, Oregon, he was disappointed by his options.

Bend is known more as an outdoor sports mecca than a tech hub, but even when he expanded his search to Portland and San Francisco he struggled to find qualified candidates. “Good talent is so expensive, and we didn’t have the luxury of spending all our capital on developers,” he says.

Even when he managed to hire a few code school graduates, they were quickly poached by other start-ups offering six figure salaries and equity. “After we lost the third one, we knew we had to do something different.”

Skinner is hardly alone. More than 80 percent of CIOs reported difficulty filling tech roles in the past year in a survey from Tech Republic. And Gartner says the lack of available tech talent is the leading obstacle keeping CIOs from achieving their objectives.

Part of the problem is where they are searching. While major U.S. tech hubs may be in short supply of unemployed developers, there are lots of cities with strong tech talent eager to work for U.S. companies; they just aren’t based in the United States.

“When it comes to recruiting you have to think about where the right talent is located,” said Patric Palm, CEO and co-founder of Favro, a collaboration software developer in Uppsala, Sweden. “And in many cases it’s not where you think.”

Cities in South Africa, Vietnam, Slovenia and Lithuania are known for having excellent tech talent who speak English, have advanced degrees and are looking for work, Palm said. And because they are relatively young as tech centers, these locations provide unique opportunities for even the smallest companies to establish themselves as great places to work.

The trick is knowing where to go and how to find the best people once you get there.

Asking customers for help

When Skinner’s team decided to look abroad for talent, they started with their own customer base. Droplr has a large population of users in Poland, so they sent an email via their customer relationship management system saying they would host a recruiting event there later that month to spread the word.

Skinner and his co-founder, Levi Nunnink, ended up interviewing 35 people in two cities over five days and ultimately found their purple squirrel: Radek Paklikowski is a developer with a master’s degree in his early 30s who had lead two previous start-ups, worked with U.S. and U.K. companies, spoke fluent English, and was passionate about being a leader in a U.S. start-up. “We knew right away that he was our guy.”

Skinner and Nunnink hired Paklikowski as vice president and head of the Poland office, and put him in charge of recruiting the rest of the team — with their final approval. Most of the candidates Paklikowski found had master’s degrees in computer science, and one had deep expertise in Amazon Web Service, which is among the toughest skillsets to find in the United States.

“It’s been a great experience, and we are so impressed with how ambitious people are to work with a U.S. startup,” Skinner said. He is also excited about the salaries. Thanks to the local economy and exchange rate, salaries for tech talent in Poland are less than one-third of U.S. rates, and the quality of talent their is much higher. Droplr now has nine employees in Poland and is recruiting two more.

Skinner admitted the process hasn’t been seamless. He and Nunnink each travel to Poland every couple of months, and they’ve had to hire local lawyers to navigate the tax and corporate laws. They also start their days early to overlap time zones. It’s been worth it. In the 18 months since they started hiring in Poland, Droplr went from two employees and $50,000 in debt to 18 people in two countries generating more than $1 million in revenues annually. “Hiring the team in Poland was central to our success,” he says.

While not every start-up will find their dream team in Poland, looking abroad can give cash-strapped companies an edge. “Many companies today have fully distributed teams,” Palm said. “If you are willing to adapt the way you work, geography won’t get in your way.”

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

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Busy Recruiters Call on Job-Seekers to Follow Up

After a job candidate hits submit, send, upload or done with their résumé the “what do I do next” phase begins.

Days or sometimes weeks go by and the employer still hasn’t reached out. In such instances, according to a survey by Accountemps, 81 percent of senior managers want candidates to follow up within two weeks of applying for a position.

recruiting
Both phone and email are acceptable ways to follow up with an employer after submitting a résumé., hiring managers say.

“Our survey shows that 100 percent of hiring managers think candidates should follow up after submitting application materials,” said Michael Steinitz, executive director of Accountemps. “Hiring managers who do not want candidates following up should note that in the job posting.”

If a job seeker does follow up on their résumé Steinitz believes that it shows “initiative and demonstrates to hiring managers that they are enthusiastic about the opportunity. It’s also a chance for job seekers to initiate a discussion with the hiring manager and highlight how they can contribute to the organization’s success.”

Both phone and email are acceptable ways to follow up with an employer after submitting a résumé. The Accountemps survey also found that 64 percent of hiring managers prefer email over 21 percent preferring a phone call.

Alison Doyle, a job-search expert for financial wellness company The Balance, explained the benefits of both.

“The easiest way to follow up is by email. If there’s an email address listed in the job posting, you can use that. Or, you could try to find the name of the hiring manager if there isn’t one listed and write to him or her inquiring about the status of your application,” Doyle said. “Another option is to call, and if you are able to find a contact person, a phone call may give you the opportunity to talk directly with hiring manager and pitch your credentials.”

Steinitz said the employer could have priorities and hasn’t gotten around to the hiring process. Job-seekers shouldn’t be discouraged.

“HR managers may be juggling several priorities at one time, so job seekers shouldn’t become upset if they don’t hear back from an employer right away,” Steinitz said. “If you don’t get a response after a couple attempts, continue your job search or connect with a specialized recruiter in your market.”

There isn’t an exact time equation of when it is best to follow up with a potential employer. Doyle explained that “if the position has an application deadline listed, wait to contact the company until after the deadline has passed because they may not begin reviewing résumés until they have received them all.”

Once a job seeker follows up, Doyle said that “if you can get in touch with the person at the company who is responsible for scheduling interviews, following up is a way to show the employer that you’re really interested in the job.”

Accountemps made a list of do’s and don’ts while following up with a hiring manager.

According to Accountemps, do communicate through email or phone, express interest and ask about the next steps. But don’t be pushy, discuss salary and get discouraged.

Sometimes there may be an answer to why a job seeker has not heard back from a company.

“You may not hear back from a company unless they are interested in scheduling an interview with you,” Doyle said. “Some companies let candidates know when they are not being considered for a job, but many don’t.”

If a job seeker does not hear back it is suggested that they do not get discouraged but to move on, edit or update their résumé and take the time to find other opportunities.

Alexis Carpello is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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WVU Medicine/University Health Associates: Optimas Gold Winner for Vision

The poor and elderly often find themselves unable to access quality health care, a huge problem considering they’re among America’s most vulnerable people. In West Virginia they lack access to care, transportation and health professionals. WVU Medicine/University Health Associates sought to ease the suffering of those without the proper resources. In August 2015 it began an initiative to recruit a minimum of 70 new physician positions with its Physician Recruitment & Retention Program. To expand recruitment they implemented virtual career fairs, built partnerships with medical schools and developed a system wide marketing effort.

The firm also began monthly and quarterly meetings to partner with 19 specialized departments and improved its onboarding process, among other things. Since the initiative began, the firm has seen its highest number of physicians hired as well as the highest number of physician specialties. Through that, it was able to create the Heart and Vascular service line program and Critical Care signature line, which will become a statewide Comprehensive Stroke Program. In 2015, 70 new physicians were hired. To date, 85 physicians have been hired in 2017.

Annette Belcher, senior physician recruiter and talent adviser at WVU Medicine, said the Optimas Award validates its initiative.

“WVU Medicine/University Health Associates is honored to be recognized by Workforce as the Gold winner for the Vision category of the Optimas Awards,” Belcher said. “It means a great deal to be recognized for our hard work and strategic efforts during an extraordinary time of growth for our organization. We continually strive to anticipate the needs of physician recruitment at WVU Medicine/University Health Associates and to create plans and programs to support this growth and drive business results. We appreciate the content and learning opportunities provided by Workforce.”

For its efforts in improving the health of West Virginians, WVU Medicine/University Health Associates is the Optimas Award Gold winner for Vision.

Read about the rest of our 2017 Optimas Winners Here.

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Why Vetting for Work Martyrs During the Hiring Process Isn’t the Answer

burnout
Logging extra hours or being on call during evenings and weekends does not guarantee results. It can lead to burnout and diminished productivity.

Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini became a victim of public scrutiny in August after telling the New York Times about a test she uses to measure a candidate’s commitment during the hiring process. Her system involves texting at an odd hour of the weekend to see how quickly the candidate will respond.

Not surprisingly, the internet jumped on the soundbite. In vein with the premise of Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” the executive is being tied to a single comment in a rather extreme fashion. Regardless of your take on Nardini’s vetting process, I’d argue that the conversation that has resulted is a net-positive for those of us in the business of building teams and companies.

I must admit: The concept of “overwork” is a bit foreign to me. I grew up in Belgium, where society takes a much different approach to work-life balance. Last year, for example, France passed legislation making the case that employers cannot penalize their employees for failing to respond to emails during non-working hours. These types of policies are designed to protect workers against conditions that serve to threaten their well-being.

On this very subject, Vox recently published an opinion piece that makes the case that today’s employers are like “dictators,” creating societies within the workplaces in which regulations (or “laws”) are placed on employee-citizens that are designed to subjugate them to “tyrannical” conditions. Of course, the counter to this argument — and to Nardini’s policy at Barstool — is that employees choose to work at private companies at-will, and if the systems aren’t a fit for their lifestyles, they can always leave.

From a business owner’s perspective, I would argue that policies and “tests” that promote over-work are counterproductive in the long term. Squeezing out productivity from employees during off-hours or cutting into their personal time might serve a short-term purpose, but in the long term these cultures are harder to sustain and make it difficult to attract and maintain top talent. Here’s why.

Work-Life Balance Correlates to Overall Happiness

Earlier this year, my company ran a study based on data compiled from a sample of 5,000 Butterfly users (employees) in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Our aim was to understand the correlation between key drivers of engagement in the workplace — like team dynamics, leadership and work-life balance — and overall happiness. Our results showed that work-life balance had the strongest correlation with employee happiness, ranking above things like office environment (I.e., “work perks”) and even managers.

Companies have been using tactics like free beer and company merchandise to recruit millennials, but our study and other observations (like those made in Dan Lyons’ book, “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble”) suggest that superficial perks aren’t what’s keeping young talent happy and productive at work. Instead, millennials are looking for balanced lifestyles promoted by strong managers who care about their well-being and professional development.

The notion of servant leadership was birthed by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. His philosophy was that the strongest leaders are those that live to support and serve the needs of their teams. Managers with a “servant-first” mindset, therefore, are compelled to make sure that their employee’s highest priority needs are being met first — in other words, it’s about being there for your employee at 9 p.m. on a Sunday and not the other way around.

As a co-founder of a company that has grown from three co-founders to more than 15 employees in less than two years, I can’t help but scratch my head at the idea of expecting my people to be there for me during odd hours. In my mind, it’s about letting my team know that I will be there for them, regardless of the time of day or reason for their outreach.

In fact, this idea that managers should be sourcing feedback from their teams on an ongoing basis is the founding principle of the employee intelligence startup I co-founded with my colleagues David Mendlewicz and Marcus Perezi-Tormos.

Value Achievement Over Activity

Setting aside the cultural implications of expecting employees to sacrifice work/life balance for the “cause,” this philosophy also misses the mark when it comes to what truly makes great businesses survive and thrive. As a basketball player, I’ll reference Hall of Fame coach John Wooden’s quote: “Never mistake activity for achievement.”

In the context of business, the act of logging extra hours or being on call during evenings and weekends does not guarantee results. It can lead to burnout and diminished productivity.

No co-founder, myself included, is naive enough to believe that great businesses are built by clock watchers. Disrupting an industry, launching a new product, or overtaking fierce competition takes hard work, and a lot of it — but this work should be measured by tangible goals and milestones — not hours.

Piling onto the scrutiny of a single soundbite from one CEO is not going to solve the broader issue of work martyrdom, but constructive conversations can help. While leaders will differ in their individual styles, I would offer that managers should explore ways that they can prove to their teams that they are committed to their employees’ personal growth and overall health. And, as always, actions will matter much more than words.

Simon Rakosi is co-founder of Butterfly, an employee intelligence and management coaching platform that uses AI to help develop leadership skills at all levels of an organization. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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Talent10x: What Trump’s Transgender Military Ban Means for the Workforce

[vc_row][vc_column] This week’s episode of Talent10x features Workforce editor Rick Bell as he and Talent Economy Managing Editor Frank Kalman interview employment lawyer and Workforce columnist Jon Hyman about President Donald Trump’s call to ban all transgender people from the military and the potential implications for the private sector workforce.

[vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1472568271724{background-color: #000000 !important;}”][vc_video link=”https://soundcloud.com/user-745793386/talent10x-rick-bell-john-hyman-on-trumps-transgender-military-ban” el_width=”50″ align=”center” class=”soundTitle__title sc-link-dark [vc_row][vc_column]

Talent10x is a podcast originally posted on Workforce’s sister publication Talent Economy. 

Listen here or subscribe to Talent10x on iTunes or Stitcher. Also, to get more Talent Economy coverage, visit talenteconomy.io. 

 

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OMG! Ur Hired!

texting
Besides convenience, texting is a great way to get a sense of a candidate’s personality.

Millennials and their Gen Z successors have little time for thoughtfully crafted emails or telephone pleasantries.

These digital natives grew up texting and often consider other formats to be cumbersome and outdated. So it should come as no surprise that they think text messages are a completely appropriate way to communicate with recruiters and their future workplace peers.

A recent survey from Yello, the talent acquisition software company, shows 86 percent of millennials “feel positively about text messages being used during the interview period,” and a similar HeyWire Inc. survey shows 67 percent of employees are using text messaging for business-related communications.

While it may seem like an overly casual environment to connect with potential hires, texts offer a lot of benefits — especially in a recruiting setting, said Jason Weingarten, co-founder of the Chicago-based Yello. “Text is faster, it’s easier and it’s more personal,” he said. It can also solve many of problems that create a negative candidate experience, including delays in communication, lack of follow-up and overly generic form letters.

“There are many points in the recruiting process that are very stressful for candidates,” he said. “Getting a quick response or update can ease some of that anxiety.”

It can also be handy for recruits who have another job and don’t want to communicate via their company email or phone, said JoAnne Kruse, chief human resources officer at American Express Global Business Travel. “They are lot more responsive via text, and it’s an easy way to move the process forward.”

A Strange Bunch

Besides convenience, texting is a great way to get a sense of a candidate’s personality, said Jack Barmby, CEO of Gnatta, a customer service software company based in the U.K. His developers and support staff use text messaging to talk to each other and to potential new hires. “It is the underpinning of how we communicate,” he said.

The company uses Slack, a cloud-based team collaboration tool for its text platform, creating different conversations for different projects, teams and topics. Participants post project updates, questions and comments that others in the group can see and respond to.

“It’s more efficient than email because users can quickly scroll through posts, find those that are relevant, without getting bogged down in a bunch of ‘reply-all’ email chains,” he said. There are no formal rules for use, beyond the basics — don’t be a jerk, and don’t post comments that are not relevant to the topic. “Otherwise it’s very organic, and we encourage people to let their personalities flourish.”

Gnatta also uses it as a vetting tool for new hires. When a candidate makes the hiring short list, they are invited to join one of the casual Slack channels, where Gnatta employees talk about what’s going on in their lives. The recruits get a chance to see how the team communicates, and the team gets a sense of their personality, Barmby said. “The ‘shine’ of the interview comes off, and they have a chance to be themselves.”

Inviting candidates to engage via text helps his team determine who will be the best cultural fit for the organization, and it ultimately becomes an extension of the onboarding process. He admitted that some candidates are turned off by the process because it adds a week to the decision, but others love the opportunities to connect with potential peers. “Developers can be a strange bunch, and not everyone is a good fit,” he said. Spending a week chatting with the team is a great way to decide who will fit in.

For all its conveniences there also are risks to using texts in recruiting. Companies need to be thoughtful about the information they share via text and how those communications can be tracked, Weingarten said. “If you get audited, you need to be able to show the source of the texts, how they were sent, and what messaging you used.”

Recruiters shouldn’t put too many rules around how texting is used. Where recruiters are looking for better, faster and more personal ways to engage with talent, texting is a cheap and familiar solution that can add real value to the process.

“Text is the next iteration of how we communicate,” Kruse said. “It can be a hugely helpful way to quickly connect with people, is a style that they prefer, so why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?”

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

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Candidates Hate Your Lame Careers Site

Remember when all you needed to recruit effectively was a basic careers site that had a link to your applicant tracking system and a PDF of the overly aspirational company values designed by your founder that everyone you worked with loved to snicker at?

Bonus points if you had stock photos on that career site of a group of seven people (it’s a stock photo), all with perfect teeth and representing just the right amount of diversity as a group.

Remember those days? Me too.

The proliferation of transparency brought on by social media and workplace-centric solutions like Glassdoor means that candidates can smell a phony company story a mile away.

That means if you’ve still got the stock photos and old company values up, as well as offering visitors to your careers site nothing but a listing of jobs, you’re in trouble.

That’s why an emerging talent trend in 2017 is recruitment marketing, loosely defined as a collection of services and products designed to help you put your company’s best foot forward to candidates who might want to work for you.

Revamp your image using some of the tools in the emerging recruitment marketing suite and candidates will consider your company’s story as more real/authentic/desirable, which translates to increased candidate engagement as well as better conversion in the classic apply/interview/hire recruiting funnel.

If you’re new to the recruitment marketing game, here are the things you need to think about to upgrade your careers brand and keep up with the times.

Employer value proposition: You’ve probably got company values, right? Not enough these days. Candidates increasingly want to know “what’s in it for me” (the WIIFM) to work at your company. If you do EVP right, you’ll end up with three to five themes that answer the WIIFM question for your company, which provides structure and direction for where you go with your careers site. You get extra credit if at least one of the themes is borderline negative, because candidates love it when you can be self-reflective.

Career site upgrade: Your careers site probably sucks. To remodel, think about wrapping your open jobs with stories and real images from inside your company with laser focus. That focus should be on the aforementioned EVP themes as well as content focused on delivering candidates to your most difficult-to-fill jobs. HR and talent acquisition pros routinely struggle with this advice, but it’s critical that you become selfish related to the space on your careers site — it’s not HR, it’s marketing. The space and focus is reserved for your recruiting goals, which starts with the hard, not easy-to-fill positions.

business diversity
Your careers site probably sucks. Wrap your open jobs with stories and real images… not stock photos.

Content is king: The best careers-site strategies deploy a frequently recurring content strategy, meaning you must post a new piece of content at least once a week. That means you should have someone on your team that can interview and write quick-hitting features or find a partner who can. This seems like overkill to some, but stay with me because the careers site is simply where the focused content is stored.

Careers social strategy: Once you’ve got a refreshed careers site, it’s time to start thinking social. Many employers make the mistake of simply posting open jobs to social accounts, but that’s not enough. A real careers social strategy emphasizes audience building (gaining followers) and uses the growing social presence to share the fresh content with the world. An important consideration is whether to use the existing corporate social accounts or build stand-alone, careers-focused accounts.

Talent tools, email campaigns and marketing chops: Any deep recruitment marketing project undertaken by HR or recruiting is going to morph into things that look like pure marketing. Talent pools, regardless of how they’re captured, are nothing but focused “opt-ins” to give you the ability to communicate with potential future hires moving forward. Remember that focused content I talked about earlier? We’re doing that content not only to beef up the careers site and have something to share via social, but also to run email marketing campaigns with relevant content. A good email marketing campaign to a talent pool can have an open rate above 50 percent — something your marketing director would trip her grandmother for.

The simple plan of building a better careers site with content that cuts through the clutter, then sharing that content in a systematic way via social and traditional marketing techniques is at the core of any successful recruitment marketing strategy.

Do these things well and the candidates will reward you. Ignore the advice and they’ll laugh at your online recruiting brand as they close the window in their browser, never to return.

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.

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Are You Using the Diversity Leaders in Your Organization?

I’m a sucker for packaging. It’s probably because I’m in the media and headlines are my business. I live for messaging that hooks and reels you in like a caught fish. The right word combo — you’ve got all my attention.

diversity
An expert contends there are 150 unconscious biases in play at our brain at any given time. Technology can nudge hiring managers to align with the company’s diversity and inclusion goals.

For instance, I ran across The Only Way to Beat Unconscious Biases in the Workplace a few days ago. I mean, come on. That headline is perfect, right?

The article was good too — though the headline was better — it discussed methods talent leaders can use to tackle unconscious bias, specifically HR technology systems. Hint: It has nothing to do with the user experience and everything to do with what the author called, the nudge.

Apparently when the idea of relieving HR processes of bias comes up, technology system decision-makers in the market at-large are often peppered with questions about whether they plan to replace HR with artificial intelligence. I’d wager, aside from companies firmly entrenched in the tech industry, few organizations have any such plan, but I agree with one idea presented in the piece: It pays to take a holistic look at HR, with innovations like machine learning as one facet to consider. You don’t want to lose the human touch, nor do you want to cut HR leaders off from the rich data streams technology provides. Data they can use to make better, more sustainable recruitment and talent-related decisions.

But it was the suggestion that CDOs are poorly positioned in the HR decision-making hierarchy that really caught my eye. Patti Fletcher, leadership futurist and solution management at SAP SuccessFactors, “said that while chief diversity officers are on the rise, that hasn’t necessarily translated into measurable results … designated diversity leaders rarely have a seat at the table when it comes to human capital management technology purchasing decisions.”

Technology is ubiquitous in the modern workplace. Successful organizations have made gadgetry another kind of employee in areas throughout the employee lifecycle. Talent leaders of all kinds rely on systems to do their jobs: hiring, recruitment, retention, engagement, promotion, succession planning, etc. If diversity leaders can’t influence technology purchasing decisions in the context of talent or people strategy, that’s a huge disconnect.

It also brings up a few questions:

  • How dialed in is the CDO with the company’s overall talent/HR strategy?
  • Is the CDO an active partner working closely with talent leaders to ensure that systems and processes promote a diverse and inclusive workforce that is as free from bias as possible?
  • If not, why not?
  • What is their sphere of influence? Who do they report to? Who holds their ear?

But back to the nudge. “We know the blame and shame game doesn’t work when it comes to addressing bias,” said Fletcher. “We’re finding out what does work is the nudge factor. There are 150 unconscious biases in play at our brain at any given time, and technology can literally interrupt decisions, nudging hiring managers to align with the company’s diversity and inclusion goals.”

Good grief. How can there be 150 unconscious biases in our brains at any given time? That’s just, wow. They can’t mean all at once. I couldn’t name that many biases if you paid me. But if you ever had a doubt that you have been or will at some point fall prey to bias, that number should give you significant pause.

“This is not about replaying the old human vs. machine tapes,” Fletcher explained. “When technology can take everything about someone — credentials, experience, cultural fit — and find the ideal match based on what the machine has learned about what it takes to be successful at your business, this fundamentally changes the role of HR.”

And it goes without saying, it makes things more complicated. That’s why it’s so important that diversity and talent leaders work together to untangle the best ways to find, assess, keep and promote talent. Diversity, inclusion and talent are not ideas that can be kept separate. If these silos exist, I bet that organization’s diversity plan is more of an idea than it is a strategy. Unless diversity is a sop, which is infinitely worse.

Whether it’s using technology to promote the nudge, being more thoughtful about the wording in job postings, or any of the other hundred HR-diversity related tasks leaders face each day — lean on the people who have made diversity and inclusion their business. Pick their brains. Ask their opinion. Loop them in. If you have a diversity leader, that’s what they’re there for. If you don’t use them as a resource, what’s the point?

Kellye Whitney is associate editorial director for Workforce. Comment below or email editor@workforce.com.

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Why Your Startup Turnover Is So High and What to Do About It

Startups are notorious for having a high attrition rate, and HR is tasked with difficult job of retaining and engaging existing employees.

attrition
At an early stage, a startup will typically attract highly creative, strategic, future-oriented thinkers who defy boundaries.

Despite their best efforts, attrition continues.

The repetitive cycle reminds me of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

What if we thought about retention differently? What if we said, “Let’s accept and work with attrition rather than against it?” To do that, we must first understand what causes turnover in startups.

In my experience, the cause is due to two key factors: the profile of people who are attracted to work at startups, and evolution of that profile as the company grows.

The profile of candidates who flock to startups tend to be more risk-tolerant professionals interested in making a big impact, and they’re focused on growing quickly. Because successful startups go through various phases of growth, the type of person interested in contributing at one stage is different from the one attracted to the next stage.

For example, at an earlier stage, a startup will typically attract highly creative, strategic, future-oriented thinkers who defy boundaries. As it grows in number of employees, processes are needed to help create structure, which changes the kind of work needed, hence changing the candidates the company attracts.

It is up to HR to understand this evolution and work with the reality rather than against it. Working to “prevent” turnover is virtually impossible, and leads only to great frustration and wasted resources. Instead, here are three strategies to work with the reality we live in:

  • Get ahead and keep communication open. Providing multiple modes of communication among managers, employees and leaders is essential to understanding when and where the turnover will happen. These might include polling, surveys, All Hands, 1:1s, team meetings, stand ups and informal “drive bys.” Equip managers with tools to have open dialog with employees to learn what their motivators are, and how their work and environment currently or could fulfill that. Encourage the question “When you leave here, what do you want to have learned?” Managers may shy away from this kind of conversation, yet when they open up the dialog and build the right level of trust, employees welcome the ability to speak openly. By learning where attrition will happen through these modes of communication, organizations can much better plan for the attrition they will inevitably face.
  • Link your ideal candidate profile to your company growth phase. Let’s face it: when we need to hire quickly, hiring managers create a description quickly and after a brief review by a recruiter, it is posted. Aside from the skills and experience needed, not much time is spent thinking about the kind of candidate profile that’s needed for that particular stage of the company. Candidates with only very large company experience struggle with the often very little structure that exists in a startup. They also tend to be less risk-tolerant and therefore can sometimes stand in the way of innovation. Candidates who have jumped around to different startups will likely be frustrated with the structure in place for companies with 500 employees or more. The moral: be mindful of where you are in your growth, define the profile of a successful candidate for each stage and make sure your recruiting strategy evolves with your growth.
  • Maximize on your employees’ talents. How much happier would your employees be — and how much more could they contribute — if everyone agreed? Using Gallup’s simple Strengthsfinder assessment can help your employees learn about their best talents, and their managers can use this information to align those talents with work. Each time I’ve run Strengthsfinder sessions with employees, their eyes light up as they discover what truly drives them. Managers can then take this information and allocate work according to each team members’ strengths, thus maximizing the output of each individual.

The purpose here is not to say that engaging employees and ensuring overall employee health and happiness isn’t important. In fact, it is extremely important. However, at the pace that startups grow, the reality is that different people are attracted to, and do their best in, different stages. So, instead of wringing our hands over attrition and trying to coerce everyone to stay, let’s capitalize on the fact that each individual performs differently depending on the situation by changing how we attract and develop talent each step of the way.

Rachel Ernst is the head of employee success at Reflektive. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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Job Boards Aren’t Dead; They’ve Just Matured

It’s not often that I get geeked up about the launch of a new product. Well, there was that New Coke thing. And Betamax. But that was DECADES ago. Since then I’ve grown; wised up; matured, you might say.

And maybe that’s why this new product appealed to me. AARP rolled out its new job board for, well, older people. Seniors. Users and members of AARP. Mature people … like me.

Michelle Hoffman, the products and platforms director, work and jobs, at AARP, gave me a brief online tour on Day 2 of SHRM’s Talent Management Conference & Exposition. Understandably since the site launched just six weeks ago, it’s relatively thin. Employers have yet to discover it. But there is content, and enough to see that this could be a really valuable tool for older job seekers and those looking to add workers with years, if not decades of experience.

In fact, the topic of workers over 50 randomly popped up during Tim Sackett’s excellent presentation on diversity and inclusion earlier in the day.

“If you’re over 50 you’re crap,” Sackett sarcastically said of clueless employers. “They want 27-year-olds with 20 years of experience.”

As empty nesters, 50-plus workers have more capacity and bandwidth to do a good job, Sackett said. “Instead they want to hire that 30-year-old who has sick kids.”

A D&I issue? Absolutely.

But back to AARP’s job board. The last of the old-school job boards was also at the conference. Rumors continue to swirl regarding CareerBuilder’s sale. Yes, it took years for Monster to finally sell off, leaving CareerBuilder as the last of the HotJobs-Monster triumvirate that dominated the space for years.

AARP’s site is simply named the AARP Job Board. But as with the trend, it’s niche-y. It’s simple and clean, informational and appears easy to use. It also fits to tablet size. And don’t underestimate AARP’s ample muscle behind it.

In other words, at a bouncing six weeks old, AARP’s new-era narrow focus job board presents a clear sense of maturity and longevity.

Unlike Betamax or New Coke.

The Buzz … I hadn’t heard about it – no surprise there – but several presenters talked about GE Millie program. Huh? The venerable company committed earlier this year to employ 20,000 women in STEM positions by 2020. And 86-year-old National Medal of Science winner Millie Desselhaus is the unlikely spokesmodel. It apparently was the centerpiece of GE’s Shaunda Zilich’s Tuesday morning presentation on the changing nature of recruiting. Tim Sackett mentioned GE Millie during his D&I presentation.

Phrase of the Day … Frans Johanssen’s lively final-day keynote’s talk on recruiting innovation provided the new phrase: smallest executable step. In other words, narrow your focus to help innovate.

Rick Bell is Workforce’s editorial director. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.