Category: Candidate Attraction

Hiring for Highly Skilled Workers and Hard to Fill Jobs

Posted on by edyson

When facing a tight and highly competitive talent market, employers find it even more difficult to hire for hard to fill jobs. What’s more, the dearth of highly skilled talent in critical industries can lower an organisation’s productivity, which, if left unabated, could have a major effect on the global economy.

According to a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) report, vacancies for jobs requiring highly skilled workers or in-demand skills are among the most difficult to fill. The talent acquisition professionals surveyed in the report said the following job categories are most difficult to recruit:

In this article, we’ll cover how organisations can identify, source and hire highly skilled talent more effectively.

Creating Candidate Personas for Hard to Fill Jobs

Before you source, recruit and hire highly skilled talent, you must first outline the skills, attributes, experience, and tendencies of your ideal candidate by creating a candidate persona. A candidate persona is a semi-fictional illustration of a candidate who exemplifies what you are looking for in a specific role. An accurate candidate persona will help your talent team tailor its strategies and approach to best suit the talent you are looking to hire. This is especially important when recruiting highly skilled candidates who have diverse and unique requirements, drivers and employment expectations.

Your candidate persona needs to answer key questions. Begin by answering these questions using existing data from your applicant tracking system (ATS) and customer relationship management (CRM) databases on candidates and employees. You can also interview current employees – especially those who align with your ideal candidate – for their feedback. Below is an example of a candidate persona template:

Hard to fill jobs

Make sure your personas are representative of actual human beings – rather than a portrait of an overly idealised, fictional candidate. Also, be cautious when creating candidate personas; giving your personas names and pictures to make them seem more realistic and multi-dimensional is great, but it may also lead to bias. Instead, keep personal identifiers to a minimum to avoid discrimination and maximise diversity. 

Sourcing Highly Skilled Candidates

Leveraging Social Media

LinkedIn is a favorite social media recruiting tool for talented professionals. However, oversaturation is the predominant reason that many hiring managers claim that recruiting on LinkedIn has become less effective. Despite being inundated with competitors, LinkedIn is still one of the most important tools in a recruiter’s toolbox. However, sourcing talent on other social media is also a vital part of a modern recruiting strategy.

  • Twitter: Use Twitter’s advanced search function to hunt for user profiles that use industry-related keywords and hashtags. Then, refine your search based on location and other important criteria. For example, if you’re looking to fill a developer position, search Twitter for specific software and developer-related keywords within your organisation’s target market. This search can uncover developers in your area with the experience you’re looking for.
  • Facebook: Facebook’s targeted search capabilities enable you to find high-quality, skilled workers who align with specific criteria. For example, if you search “copywriters with packaging marketing experience,” Facebook will return a result with matching profiles. Reach out to these candidates to see if they would be interested in interviewing with your organisation.

The power in using your social media accounts goes beyond sourcing candidates for hard to fill jobs; you can also showcase your organisation’s employer brand and culture to entice and engage talent.

Employee Referrals

To gain a competitive edge, look to your employees. An employee referral programme can help your organisation expand its network with a ready-made talent pool. Employees have contacts with former classmates and co-workers, and their referrals are more likely to be qualified and a good fit with the company culture.

Additionally, consider posting open positions in office areas, announcing openings at company meetings and sharing them in company-wide communications to help employees keep referrals top of mind. Also, regularly remind employees about the rewards for referrals, such as financial compensation or other perks. Even if a referred candidate is not a good fit for a particular position, you can still consider them for different roles, which can help supplement a robust talent pipeline.

Leverage Recruiting Automation & AI Tools to Source Candidates

Innovations in talent technology have transformed every phase of the recruiting process. One phase that has seen enormous change due to technology is candidate sourcing. Candidate sourcing is the most important phase in recruiting highly skilled talent because the talent pool is more constricted.

Today, talent tools powered by artificial intelligence can locate passive candidates for hard to fill jobs much faster and more efficiently than ever before. AI technology crawls the internet to collect and analyse a wide variety of candidate data – from résumés to social media activity. Based on this data, AI-based tools can help make predictions about which candidates will be open to switching jobs, making it easier for recruiters to prioritise those candidates.

Selling Your Hard to Fill Jobs

When it comes time for the interview, you’re not just interviewing highly skilled candidates; they’re interviewing you, as well. To effectively “sell” your opportunities, outline and communicate the benefits of working for your organisation. Effective communication on the front end can save your company significant time and effort.

Understand What It’s Like to Work for Your Organisation

To properly sell the role, make sure that you have an accurate view of your organisation from the perspective of your employees – both current and former. Consider deploying surveys to obtain feedback from current employees and make sure to conduct exit interviews with departing talent. Take the feedback you receive and craft an objective report of your employee experience. When you understand the day-to-day experiences of your current and former employees, you can better sell an accurate and positive depiction of what it’s like to work for your organisation. 

Understand Your Employer Value Proposition

Your employer value proposition (EVP) is what you are selling to the candidate. Recruiters and hiring managers need to know – and be comfortable articulating – the value proposition of your organisation. In other words, you need to answer the question, “Why would someone want to work for you in this position?” Your employer value proposition includes a range of tangible and intangible benefits of working at your organisation, such as work/life balance, flexibility, culture, values, compensation, and benefits. Know the benefits of working for your company, and make sure that you effectively “sell” it to highly skilled candidates.

For instance, PeopleScout helps a client to maximise its employer brand to attract a healthy pipeline of top talent. The client, which has a global presence in the construction industry, works with PeopleScout to highlight its unique culture to potential employees. During the hiring process, hiring managers communicate the client’s mission of minimising environmental impact and maximising sustainability; creating innovative approaches to complex industry problems; and promoting the well-being of its employees.

As an example, the client offers three days of “well-being” PTO that can be taken in addition to the traditional leave offered by the client. These days are seen as necessary for employees working in a physically and mentally taxing industry, and illustrate the client’s commitment to the well-being of its staff. What’s more, the client also offers multiple flexible work arrangements to increase work-life balance – a prudent, yet uncommon, benefit in the industry. By helping our client weave in its mission, culture, and brand into the recruiting process, the team has been able to establish the company as an employer of choice for highly skilled talent. 

Be Careful Not to Oversell

In addition to the perks, it’s also important for candidates to have an objective understanding of the challenges that may come with working at your organisation. You don’t have to paint an unflattering picture of your hard to fill jobs, but it is important to provide accurate information upfront. Overselling or omitting information will start the employment relationship off on the wrong foot should they accept your offer, and could lead to higher turnover. It won’t take a new hire long to figure out that what they were told before they were hired is not the reality of the role. For example, if your role requires irregular or long hours, communicate that to the candidate. This allows the candidate to make a fully informed decision and mitigate the risk of immediate disengagement.

What Candidates Want to Know

Just like you want to know about a candidate’s background and experience, highly skilled candidates also want to know what they can expect from employment at your organisation. In particular, during the recruiting process, they may be interested in: 

  • The candidate’s potential for growth: Highly skilled candidates want to know how leaping to a new organisation is going to benefit them – especially in relation to the growth and overall well-being of their careers.
  • The role’s potential for growth: Candidates may want to go beyond the position in its current form and discuss what the position could be and how the role ties into the organisation’s plans for the future. 
  • Your organisation’s potential for growth: Highly skilled candidates want to be part of a winning team, so show them how your organisation is driving success.
  • Your organisation’s culture: Candidates want to know that the position is going to be a good fit, and that includes how they fit into your organisation’s culture. 

The evolving landscape of talent acquisition requires a more proactive, multi-touch approach to attracting highly skilled talent and converting them into applicants and, ultimately, hires. As the global economy continues to grow and the demand and competition for highly skilled talent rises as a result, organisations need to stay abreast of the scope of talent available in the market.

Retail Recruiters: Creating a Winning Retail Recruiting Strategy

Posted on by edyson

There is no doubt that the internet has forever changed the way customers shop. Despite this, in-store sales continue to trend upward. In fact, in-store sales revenue growth has outpaced e-commerce sales steadily over the last decade. To support in-store demand and continue growth, retail employers need top-performing talent in the right positions.

Unfortunately, with a tight labour market and various retail recruiting challenges, it is now harder than ever for retail recruiters to find the right candidates. In this article, we cover the best hiring practices for retail recruiters to help you source, attract and hire the best retail talent.

Defining Your Hiring Goals as Retail Recruiters

Regardless of industry, the first step in the recruiting journey begins with outlining how many hires you need to make, what positions you are looking to fill and the timeline you need to hire by. By outlining these goals early on in the recruitment process, you develop a clear strategy that helps you meet your organisation’s talent needs.

As a retail recruiter, your organisation’s hiring goals may fluctuate or change depending on seasonality and store openings, so in addition to your current hiring needs, also anticipate future needs when creating your hiring goals.

Do not be afraid to change your goals as you go. Outside factors, such as new competitors, a change in demand or opening of a new store, might influence the goals you established. If you need to make a shift to your strategy, remain agile enough to do so.

Sourcing Retail Candidates

For a retail organisation to thrive, it takes a diverse range of individuals working together towards a common goal. So, it should come as no surprise that when searching for top retail talent, retail recruiters need to cast a wide net.

While some companies may focus on hiring high school or college students looking for part-time or seasonal jobs, others may want to experienced full-time candidates in search of careers. If you’re hiring low wage, low skill labour, community sites like Craigslist or standard job boards can help you attract students or young individuals looking to gain some experience. If you’re looking for more experienced retail workers, try more targeted job boards like iHireRetail or LinkedIn.

It is essential to know where your potential candidates are active and advertise your open jobs strategically. Use location-specific job boards, local papers or blogs, or other targeted strategies to help pinpoint your area for the best candidates.

When sourcing for seasonal positions, using digital and social media ads along with email as a way to find and attract talent can pay huge dividends. Just make sure you create a specific careers site to send seasonal candidates too. This way it will be easier for them to find information on the opportunity without having to navigate your full careers website.  

Finally, you can also look at your customers as potential candidates when recruiting new employees. When your employees are passionate about your brand and products, like loyal customers often are, they can help increase sales and educate new shoppers about what you offer.

Retail Recruiters Need to Go Online

Retailers of today are operating in a competitive space that requires forward-thinking as well as online and social savviness. If you want to attract applicants who have those traits, you should take your recruitment efforts beyond traditional channels such as job boards. Social media is known to be an effective recruitment tool. LinkedIn, for instance, has a number of talent solutions that enable you to find, vet and contact candidates.

Social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, while not specifically made for recruiting, can also help you find new hires. Use Twitter to spread the word about your openings and put a special careers tab on your Facebook page where your fans can browse and apply for jobs.

Even Instagram has proven to be a good platform, particularly for companies looking for young and fresh talent. As Software Advice cited in this piece on Instagram recruiting, a study by the Pew Research Center found that the largest group using Instagram is adults between 18-29 years of age with some college education. This makes it an ideal platform to attract a new generation of applicants.

So, make it a point to spruce up your employer profile on social media. A good way to do this is to share fun team photos on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. And if you are actively recruiting, spread the word by posting “we’re hiring” images on your accounts and running targeted social media campaigns to attract the right candidates. You can also show your company culture and promote things such as flexibility in the workplace you provide, your commitment to diversity and inclusion and more.

For Retail Recruiters, Attitude is the New Experience  

When hiring in retail, which is a bigger predictor of a candidate’s success: attitude or experience? In the case of industries like retail, an employee’s attitude is often more important than their experience. What’s more, The Future of Work: The Augmented Workforce study conducted by Deloitte found that “skills such as empathy, communication, persuasion, personal service, problem-solving, and strategic decision-making are more valuable than ever.”

Retail Recruiters

Whether it’s assisting customers at a department store or managing an automotive supply store, each role within the retail industry requires the right attitude. So, how can retail recruiters ensure they hire candidates who have the right attitude? You can start by assessing candidates’ soft skills in the workplace.

Key soft skills to look for in retail candidates

  • Willing and eager to learn
  • Patient
  • Inquisitive
  • Competitive
  • Problem-solving skills
  • Responsible
  • Good communicator
  • Strong listener
  • Team-oriented
  • Emphatic
  • Can-do attitudes
  • High emotional intelligence

The good news is that many of these soft skills go hand-in-hand, so finding retail candidates who exhibit these qualities and attitudes will not be as difficult as it may seem.

Group Interviews and Assessing Soft Skills

A great way to find candidates with the right soft skills is to conduct group interviews. Candidates at Disney’s retail Store go through a group interview process where they are quizzed on Disney trivia and are asked to sell a product to the rest of the team.

Conducting group interviews provides you an opportunity to glean insights into someone’s soft skills by observing how they conduct themselves around other people, how they handle a stressful situation and you get to an understanding of how they will fit with your team.

The Gist

Retail recruiters and the industry as a whole face a unique set of challenges when attracting top talent with the right skills. With the majority of the retail workforce comprised of hourly, part-time and seasonal employees, recruiting quality workers quickly is a tall order.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy or tactic to retail recruiters. However, armed with the tips we have shared you can develop a retail recruiting strategy that fits your organisation’s unique issues, needs and culture. Remember, get to know your candidate pool, create a robust employer brand, utilise the internet and talent technology tools. If you cover all of these bases, you can improve your recruitment process and make smarter hiring decisions.

Openreach: Helping Thousands of Engineers Fall in Love with Video Interviews

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Openreach’s engineers build the communications network that connects millions of homes and businesses across the UK. They needed nothing short of 1200 Trainee Engineers
in a number of major cities to join their development scheme, all while overhauling their video interview process at the same time.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

  • New visual guide for interview process
  • Integrated multi-platform content
  • New feedback form based on key insights

SCOPE & SCALE

Openreach’s expanding network and customer base of 32 million people made for significant recruitment numbers. Their ambitious target of 1200 new Trainee Engineers was split across the country and concentrated around key metropolitan areas like London.

SITUATION

The challenge we faced was in the recruitment process itself. Every candidate needed to complete a video interview as part of their application – with an average completion rate of 55%, it was clear the existing content wasn’t engaging the candidate pool effectively.

SOLUTION

Improving the candidate experience was therefore essential. Our aim was to break down preconceptions of video interviews, better informing candidates and giving them confidence in the process. Working closely with the Recruitment Delivery team, a visual guide was produced. The cross-team collaboration was vital to the project’s success, combining a wide range of knowledge and expertise. On top of this, the content was rooted in candidate feedback received by our recruitment coordinators.

RESULTS

The improvements were immediate. In the month that followed the guide’s publication, interview completion rose to 71%, up 16% overall. The pass rate significantly increased
as well, rising from 39% to 47%, along with improvements in approximate page views over the same period. All of this represented a breakthrough and victory for Openreach, and the quantitative data was complimented by candidate feedback: 100% of survey responses were positive, with 95% of responders rating the guide ‘very helpful’, the highest score available.

Talking Talent:The Future of Resourcing with Dr Rand Hindi

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The Future of Resourcing – Dr Rand Hindi

In this special episode of Talking Talent, we discuss artificial intelligence and the impact it will have on recruiting.

Instead of an interview, this episode is a recording of a presentation by Dr. Rand Hindi from our London “Resourcing 2025” event. At that event, PeopleScout launched the next generation of RPO featuring a future-focused approach to service RPO customers across Europe. There, Dr. Hindi described recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and implications those will have on the talent landscape of the future.

Dr. Hindi is an entrepreneur and data scientist. He is the founder and CEO of Snips, building the first AI assistant that protects privacy. Rand started coding at the age of 10, founded a Social Network at 14 and a web agency at 15 before getting into Machine Learning at 18 and doing a PhD in Bioinformatics at 21. He has been elected as a TR35 by the MIT Technology Review, as a “30 under 30” by Forbes, as a Rising Star by Founders Forum, and is a member of the French Digital Council. He holds a BSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Bioinformatics from University College London (UCL), as well as two graduate degrees from Singularity University in Silicon Valley and THNK in Amsterdam.

In the presentation, Dr. Hindi shares his conclusion that for the best results, AI and humans will need to work together to make recruitment decisions. AI provides speed, accuracy and algorithms while humans contribute empathy, emotional intelligence and the ability to solve logical paradoxes. Dr. Hindi explains the differences between the types of intelligence that can be programmed into computers, and the more complex emotional intelligence that cannot be replicated by machines. He also shares the history of artificial intelligence, and what he expects the technology to be capable of in the future.

What’s Next in Talent Acquisition

Posted on by skatz

Let’s face it – we live in an ever-changing world, where one of the biggest challenges is keeping up with the latest trend.

For an update on talent acquisition trends, PeopleScout hosted Madeline Laurano, talent analyst and founder of Aptitude Research, at our North American Talent Summit. Laurano spoke on the top trends she is seeing through her qualitative and quantitative research, and provided clarity on the crowded market.

Laurano shared that the current state of talent acquisition has fundamentally shifted due to the record increase in job openings and decrease in the available talent pool. This contributes to the rise of competition for talent across industries and the tremendous pressure organisations face to find the right talent.

Laurano presented a few key solutions to aid in managing this overarching challenge, including strengthening employer branding, simplifying your talent strategy with technology, improving candidate communication, using data to drive decisions and exploring total workforce solutions.

In this article, we’ll walk through Laurano’s report on the current state of talent acquisition, and dive into how a focus on employer branding can help you stay on top of the trends in talent acquisition.

Current State & Challenges

Laurano’s research shows a fundamental shift in talent acquisition over the past few years, which she attributes to changing market conditions. The numbers prove it – there’s a high demand for skills and a low supply of candidates, which increases both competition for talent and the cost of a quality hire.

High Demand for Skills

Nearly half of U.S. employers attribute unfilled job openings to a lack of qualified candidates. Additionally, 75% of human resource professionals who have recruiting difficulty say there is a shortage of skills in candidates for job openings. However, 74% of organisations are investing just $500 per employee on training and development between upskilling and reskilling.

The skills gap is widening particularly for IT, healthcare, manufacturing and really any industry that has specialised or technical roles. Based on her research, Laurano recommends that organisations invest in technology and digital roles to foster ideas and monitor industry trends. More than 5 million jobs in information technology are expected to be added globally by 2027.

Low Supply of Candidates

“Statistics show employers are having a difficult time filling job openings and are competing across industries for talent, which is a major challenge in the industry and one we haven’t seen before,” Laurano said.

A 2017 PWC survey of CEOs found that 77% said the greatest threat to organisations was the availability of talent. The unemployment rate is at a record-low 3.7% in the U.S., with 106 months of continuous job growth – the longest stretch in the nation’s history. Canada ended the first half of the year with an unemployment rate of 5.5%, and many leading European and Asia Pacific economies posted strong job gains and continued low unemployment.

Quality of Hires

Laurano’s 2019 Quality of Hire Trends Report states that only 26% of organisations in her study have a formal methodology for defining quality of hire; one in three of those organisations said that they’re interested in tracking quality of hire, but they don’t know how to start. Therefore, there’s a lot of opportunity to improve how we calculate quality of hire.

Ultimately, organisations have to rethink their strategies and technology to attract the right candidates for them. So, how do organisations stay on top of these trends? Laurano says strengthening employer branding is one important way.

Strengthening Employer Branding

As a reminder, your employer brand is the perception and lived experiences of what it’s like to work for your organisation. It also incorporates your employee value proposition (EVP), which captures the essence of your uniqueness as an employer and the give and get between you and your employees.

In her presentation, Laurano discussed the importance of strengthening employer branding as one way to stand out in the crowded market. As research shows, many organisations are investing plenty of resources into employer branding, but there is still room for improvement. As Laurano’s research shows, 62% of organisations invest in employer branding, however:

  • One out of four organisations is unsure about its employer branding.
  • 50% of organisations are unhappy with their employer branding tools.
  • 37% of talent acquisition and recruitment specialists consider their knowledge of their employer brand as “weak” or “getting by” – despite it being identified as an area of critical importance.

Industry research agrees with Laurano, as one study shows that companies with stronger employer brands see a 43% decrease on average in the cost per candidate they hire, compared to their competitors. Additionally, when organisations specifically in the U.S. live up to their marketed EVP, new employees arrive with a higher level of commitment at 38%, compared to organisations that do not live up to their marketed EVP, which is at just 9%.

Digital Transformation

As Laurano noted, the digital space is a major aspect to consider in talent acquisition and employer branding. Whether it’s introducing digital or data specialist roles, the skills associated with those jobs assist organisations in recognising their weaker areas and providing innovative ideas to capture their intended audiences. Laurano recommends incorporating the digital role heavily in your talent solution and to improve messaging.  “Go where your candidates are,” she says. And, for the most part, that is the digital space. Research confirms this concept:

Reactive vs. Proactive Recruiting Strategy

In Laurano’s presentation, she emphasised the value of organisations nurturing talent before they apply, or a proactive versus reactive approach:

Reactive

“If we were to take the reactive recruiting approach and turn it into a funnel, it might look something like the diagram above. Sourcers fill up the talent pipeline while recruiters manage the selection process on behalf of the organisation. However, there is no one working on behalf of the candidate and no real engagement process at the top of the funnel. As a result, the recruiter spends more time on screening résumés, phone screens, etc.”

Proactive

“If we flip the time allocation where recruiters spend less time on screening and focus on ensuring they have targeted, qualified candidates to begin with, the results would differ. There would be a higher rate of effectiveness by investing in relationship-building with targeted pools of talent, as opposed to a reactive, start-stop recruiting approach.”

Additional research only reinforces the proactive method, as 67% of employed American adults agree that the application, interview or offer process would make or break their decision on whether to take a job.

Global Aspect

Employer branding is difficult for global organisations, as it’s not always about the organisation, but also the specific location, as well, which can get complicated. The core of your employer brand should start with a universal truth, but effective employers will also create messaging that speaks directly to different audiences and geographies. Laurano suggests a need for transparency for global organisations, as well as local flexibility and solutions to strengthen your employer branding.

What’s Next for Your Talent Solution?

Keeping up with the latest trends can be challenging to say the least, especially in the talent industry. Laurano’s research into the fundamental shift in talent acquisition provided some key insights and solutions that are beneficial when combating such rapid changes.

About the Expert

Madeline Laurano’s primary focus during the last 12+ years has been on the talent management market, specialising in talent acquisition. Her insights are based on her work as an analyst and advisor in the human capital space and her latest research with HR and talent acquisition practitioners. Laurano’s work helps companies both validate and reevaluate their strategies and understand the role technology can play in driving business outcomes. Before Aptitude Research, Laurano held research roles at Aberdeen, Bersin by Deloitte, ERE Media and Brandon Hall Group. She is co-author of “Best Practices in Leading a Global Workforce,” and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Yahoo News, and The Financial Times. She is a frequent presenter at industry conferences, including the HR Technology Conference and Exposition, SHRM, IHRIM, HCI’s Strategic Talent Acquisition conference, GDS International’s HCM Summit, and HRO Today. Visit her website at https://www.aptituderesearch.com.

Talking Talent: Field Test – How to Attract Top-Performing Field Talent

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Attracting candidates with the right cultural fit is difficult at any organisation. The issue is compounded when employees are not working in an office environment but instead out in the field, working face-to-face with your customers. For organisations with field service employees, the workers that spend the least amount of time in your office are often the face of the organisation.

So how do you attract and hire field the best service workers? 

Joining us to talk about this is Chris Gera, the Managing Director, Executive Vice President for Service Council™. In his role, Chris is defining and executing the Service Council’s Research & Insights™ product portfolio.

As the Senior Analyst on Service, Chris is directly connected to Senior Service Leaders and Solution Providers to drive the Service Council’s Smarter Services™ agenda. This provides service executives and organisations the ability to benchmark their operations and also provide guided insight to target how to improve their service organisation performance and deliver the full potential of their change management initiatives.

Chris also leads new member acquisition, member engagement, community expansion and the development of their annual Symposium. Chris plays a key role in building out Service Council’s community platform which is focused on becoming the single source of information and networking for service and customer support executives globally.

Prior to his role at Service Council, Chris held service leadership positions at Vivint SmartHome, where he managed 1,200+ field professionals supporting more than one million customers across North America. While at Nielsen, he led global strategic field initiatives, specifically digitization and technology and process improvement implementations of a $1B profit and loss service business supporting greater than 15,000 field professionals in over 100 countries around the globe.

Also joining for this episode are Mike Yinger and Janice Weiner. Mike is our global leader of growth and strategy here at PeopleScout, and he is responsible for global sales results and organisational strategy. Janice leads cross-selling and total talent initiatives for PeopleScout. Total talent includes all the ways a company can “get its work done.” Getting the work done from a company’s field service perspective is what we focus on in this episode.

Transport for Wales: Achieving 90% Candidate Satisfaction with Scalable Project RPO

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Transport for Wales was created in 2018 to drive forward the Welsh Government’s vision for a high quality, safe, integrated, affordable and accessible transport network that the people of Wales would be proud of. As a new rail franchise operator, their initial focus was to grow at speed, recruiting 50 key staff within challenging timescales, in preparation for a rail franchise switch over.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

  • Flexible and scalable recruitment support
  • Experience senior recruiter on-site
  • Seamless and branded communcation between hiring managers and candidates
  • Expertise in strategic sourcing for all levels of industry roles

SCOPE & SCALE

The organisational structure for Transport for Wales was still being defined by the senior leadership team, whilst the requirement to recruit functional leaders, transport and engineering professionals was building expansion and delivery timescales for a fully integrated travel system. As a newly created organisation, without an existing brand presence and with limited recruitment expertise and technology, Transport for Wales required an experienced recruiter to work at speed with their hiring managers, someone who could quickly understand the diverse hiring needs of the organisation and communities.

SITUATION

The recruitment expert would help shape the Transport for Wales solution whilst engaging with hiring managers. The immediate challenge was to support the in-house team
as well as providing an end to end briefing to offer service.

SOLUTION

PeopleScout consulted with Transport for Wales and agreed that flexible, on-demand support was needed, to act as an extension of the in-house HR team. We created a strategy and process to swiftly start recruiting key hires. A unique service model was created providing an on-site recruiter with industry experience who could consult and provide solutions to market challenges.The focus for this recruiter was to support recruitment priorities and make key hires within restrictive timelines. They also needed to consult with the hiring community and promote engagement and understanding of recruitment best practice. Alongside this, regular updates and insights were provided.

RESULTS

• 95% offer fulfilment across all levels of roles
• 90% satisfaction from candidate surveys
• Rapid identification and hiring of specialist hires
• Retention of control over fees and budgets
• Reduction in time on recruitment by hiring managers
• Talent pools created for future hiring
• Developed and refined recruitment strategy

PeopleScout have been excellent in the delivery of the recruitment services into Transport For Wales. They are transparent, hard-working and qualitatively focused. All of the team in Bristol have been dedicated to our growth ambition and have represented our brand well to external candidates. I am delighted to work with the whole team as we share our continued success with our partners.

Soft Skills in the Workplace: Why They Matter and How to Hire for Them

Posted on by edyson

In the era of skills gaps, soft skills matter. For hiring managers, an age-old dilemma persists. Two ostensibly qualified candidates interview for the same position, but only one can be hired. This may seem like an ideal situation a hiring manager. However, it’s still a dilemma, and dilemmas demand solutions.

When choosing between two seemingly equal candidates, organisations are now prioritising “soft skills” as the key differentiator. In fact, in LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report, 92% of talent acquisition professionals reported that soft skills are equally or more important to hire for than hard skills. And, 89% said that when a new hire doesn’t work out, it’s because they lack critical soft skills.

In this article, we define and explain the importance of soft skills in the workplace and how organisations can best assess candidates for them during the hiring process.

What Are Soft Skills?

Soft skills are a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence, and emotional intelligence quotients that enable employees to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills.

Key soft skills include:

  • Attitude
  • Communication (both listening and speaking skills)
  • Work ethic
  • Teamwork
  • Leadership qualities
  • Time management
  • Decision making
  • Conflict resolution
  • Critical thinking
  • Networking
  • Empathy
  • Problem-solving

Because soft skills are unquantifiable professional attributes, it can be difficult for hiring managers and others involved in the hiring process to assess them in potential hires, making them an important but elusive set of skills to look for.

Soft Skills Are in Demand

Soft skills are becoming increasingly important as organisations look to add additional value to their business. A study conducted by Wonderlic found that 93% of hiring leaders stated that soft skills are an “essential” or “very important” element when making hiring decisions. What’s more, many employers reported that soft skills are more important than tech skills.

The Wall Street Journal reports, “Competition has heated up for workers with the right mix of soft skills, which vary by industry and across the pay spectrum—from making small talk with a customer at the checkout counter to coordinating a project across several departments on a tight deadline.”

According to a National Association of Colleges and Employers survey, employers emphasised leadership and the ability to work in a team as the most desirable attributes when recruiting recent college graduates, ahead of analytical and quantitative skills.

Burning Glass analysed millions of U.S. job postings and found that one in three skills requested in job postings is a “baseline” or soft skill. “Even in the most technical career areas (such as information technology, and healthcare, more than a quarter of all skill requirements are for baseline skills,”

Talent with the right soft skills is scarce whether you’re focused on hiring or internal mobility. In fact, LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report cited soft skills training as a top priority and 59% of U.S. hiring managers believe it’s difficult to find candidates with the right soft skills.

Soft Skills And Organisational Outcomes

Creative and Critical Thinking

Employing a workforce of creative and critical thinkers is essential for introducing fresh ideas, services and products. In fact, creative and critical thinking skills were ranked second and third on the World Economic Forum’s top skills employees will need to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution.

As artificial intelligence and automation in business evolve, creative and critical thinking skills will be increasingly needed to complement the capabilities of machines.

However, creative and critical thinking skills are in short supply. According to a report from the Society for Human Resource Management, 84% of HR professionals stated they found a deficit of key soft skills including creative and critical thinking among job candidates.

Teamwork and Communication  

Teamwork and communication are weak points for many organisations, and it’s causing performance and productivity challenges. Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report found that the majority of employees “believe that their organisation’s project performance would improve if their teams worked more collaboratively.”

What’s more, another Gallup report discovered that teamwork and good communication is a key soft skill for helping B2B organisations solve their top challenge of creating organic growth.

Successful collaboration is strongly related to good communication skills. Communication skills include actively listening to colleagues and willing engagement in conflict resolution to mitigate the effects of miscommunications as well as keeping projects and organisational initiatives on track.

Compassion in Leadership

Compassion is an important aspect of good leadership. Teams thrive when the members trust that their leader cares about them. Research shows that organisations with more compassionate leaders excel at collaboration – already identified as a key soft skill in the modern workplace.

According to an article in the Harvard Business Review authored by Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter and Louise Chester, “Of the over 1,000 leaders we surveyed, 91% said compassion is very important for leadership, and 80% would like to enhance their compassion but do not know how.”

Compassion is a pre-requisite for effective communication and other soft skills that enhance interpersonal relationships in the workplace, which are essential to maintaining workplace cohesion.  

Assessing Candidates

Ask Behaviour-Based Interview Questions

Interview questions that are behaviour-based can help organisations more easily identify the soft skills possessed by the candidate, especially for technical roles where questions are more hard skill-based. They can provide a look into how they respond in certain situations or to various challenges.

Instead of questions starting out with, “do you” interviewers should try starting out with, “what are your thoughts on” or, “how would you?”

Examples of behaviour-based questions to ask candidates applying for more technical positions:

  • Ask how they usually develop relationships with coworkers and supervisors
  • A problem they solved in a creative way or unique way
  • A time they had to deal with someone who was difficult
  • Ask them to describe their ideal work environment and method(s) of communication
  • Ask them to share a time they needed help or guidance on a project and how they went about asking for it
  • Ask them to share a time they had communication problems with their manager or coworkers. How did they handle the situation and their colleague’s responses?

Also, ask candidates how they think their soft skills will help them in the role they are interviewing for. Their answers can reveal how well they understand the nature of the position and its requirements.

Communication Skills

Good communication skills are a prime indicator of whether or not a candidate will make a good fit within an organisation. A huge part of communication involves listening. During an interview, observe whether or not the candidate is listening and paying attention to the interviewer. Are they interrupting the interviewer? Are their eyes glazing over?

Verbal cues are also an important part of good communication. For example, when asking a candidate about a previous career challenge, did they use “I” or “we” more often? This will give you a chance to see if the candidate is a team player and whether or not they take or gives credit where it is deserved.

Also, be sure to observe whether or not the candidate asks you any questions about the company.

Check With References

Reference checks are essential in corroborating and verifying information about a candidate’s work history and experience. A candidate’s job references can also provide a candid window into the kind of person they are at work.

A SkillSurvey study found that, when asked, job candidates’ coworkers give feedback on soft skills for reference checks, while managers focus on tasks related hard skills. So, when checking references, it may be beneficial to assess a candidate’s soft and hard skills based on their relationship to the reference.

During the reference checking process, it may be helpful to ask a candidate’s coworkers questions about the soft skills of the potential hire including:

  • Did the candidate get along with their coworkers and management?
  • Tell me what it’s like to work with the job candidate.
  • What advice can you give me to successfully manage the job candidate?
  • What else do I need to know about the job candidate that I didn’t already ask?

Employees are unlikely to vouch for someone who would make an unpleasant coworker, so ask them for a thoughtful assessment.

Conclusion

Today’s business landscape is about communication, relationships and presenting your organisation in a positive way to the public and potential employees. Soft skills allow organisations to effectively and efficiently use their hard skills, like tech and digital skills, and knowledge without being hampered by interpersonal issues, infighting and poor public and market perceptions.

Recruiting for the right blend of soft skills takes a measured and strategic approach. It also requires an investment of time, patients and gut instinct. Make sure to think carefully about how you can learn more about your candidates as humans interacting with other people.

Department For International Trade: Securing the UK’s Future Trade Deals

Posted on by rharris

The Department for International Trade (DIT) commissioned PeopleScout to help them with a key resourcing challenge. In preparation for the UK’s departure from the European Union, DIT needed to find a large volume of high-quality candidates to staff a new trade authority. Their dilemma lay in the fact that these roles hadn’t been seen in the UK for over 45 years, so candidates might struggle to understand whether they were qualified to do the jobs. Through the creation of an ‘match me’ innovative tool and targeted approach to supporting candidates, PeopleScout supported DIT in recruiting 75 exceptional individuals.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

  • Dedicated account team
  • Creative candidate engagement
  • Bespoke tools
  • Exceptional candidates and enhanced diversity

SCOPE & SCALE

In preparation for Brexit, The Department for International Trade (DIT) needed to create a Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) that would govern and monitor the UK’s future trade deals with the rest of the world. This newly created function needed around 75 exceptional Lawyers, Investigators and Economists to join them in their new Reading office.

SITUATION

We faced a complex challenge. Firstly, many candidates might not know which role they were best suited to, as these opportunities would be new concepts to them. Secondly, we had to populate a department that could operate post-Brexit.Thirdly, we faced an extremely tight deadline. PeopleScout and DIT agreed that a bespoke solution was needed.

SOLUTION

DEDICATED ACCOUNT TEAM

We provided a dedicated account team that was responsible for every element of the process including: an attraction campaign, application management, assessment and selection material, a microsite, candidate management, interviewing making the offer and onboarding process including BPSS security checks. Crucially, we trained the team in how to deliver the right message, explaining what they could and could not say in case journalists tried to ‘apply’ for the roles to find out more about
this high-profile organisation

CREATIVE CANDIDATE ENGAGEMENT

Our approach was two-fold. We combined free and paid-for advertising with a strong social media campaign. At the same time, we undertook a market mapping and candidate
identification activity whereby we engaged with key candidates directly. All activities ultimately directed candidates to our carefully crafted microsite which detailed the uniqueness of the roles.

BESPOKE TOOLS

As these roles were brand new in the UK, we developed a ‘Match Me’ tool that helped candidates understand the role that would best suit their ability, skillset and experience. We also devised a tailormade application process that included killer questions, an online SHL ability test (Numerical, Verbal and Inductive reasoning), a telephone or video interview, and a face-to-face assessment. Throughout the campaign, we provided DIT with weekly updates, reviewing the success of the campaign on a monthly basis.

RESULTS

OVERWHELMING INTEREST

From the start of the campaign in May 2018 to its completion in January 2019, we witnessed a staggering 47,522 visitors to the microsite, with 1,597 applications being made. Candidates remained engaged throughout the process, with an impressive 92% assessment centre attendance.

EXCEPTIONAL CANDIDATES

43% of candidates passed the assessment centre process, meaning that DIT were spoilt for choice. They eventually made 93 offers, with 75 of those being accepted. As a result, they now have 75 high-calibre members of staff who are committed to governing and monitoring the UK’s future trade deals.

ENHANCED DIVERSITY

Diversity was very high on the priority list for both DIT and PeopleScout, and while we didn’t have specific targets, we did track applications. To everyone’s delight our diversity statistics were extremely positive, with 38% of applicants being female, and 48% being BAME.

Integrating AI into Your Passive Sourcing Strategy

Posted on by skatz

With unemployment at historic lows, and only 30% of candidates actively applying to jobs, looks like it’s time to get passive! Passive? This might seem like an odd word choice, but passive candidates are simply highly qualified candidates not currently job hunting, while active candidates are applying to your open roles right now.

Research indicates that passive candidates may be more successful in organisations. According to Glassdoor, passive candidates are more efficient workers. Furthermore, passive candidates are twice as likely to join an organisation. However, some do not think passive candidates make better employees, partly because tracking passive candidates’ success at organisations has been poorly measured.

Regardless, data shows that it takes an average of 42 days to fill a role for a qualified external candidate. Some roles take longer, such as 67 days in the UK to fill a product management role. Engineering roles are also consistently harder to fill, taking 58 days in the U.S. and UK and 56 days on average in the rest of the world. When these types of hard-to-fill roles are needed, passive sourcing can be the best option to pursue.  

What is Passive Sourcing?

Finding a qualified hire usually consists of a mix of active and passive applicants. Today, recruiting teams find passive candidates through various means, such as referral programmes, online forums, and job boards. More recently, recruiters have also started posting to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to find their next hire.

Passive sourcing searches were historically done through tedious Boolean search strings using dozens of search terms, like location, phone number, and email address, to find candidates. These searches are manual and time-consuming.

How Does AI Improve Passive Sourcing?

Recruiters spend approximately £159,000 per hire and 23 hours to screen for each open position. Meanwhile, recruiters carry a workload of 30-40 positions at a time. Add these numbers up and it might take several months for a recruiter to fill their open roles. Meanwhile, organisations also lose months of productivity and revenue from unfilled roles. Compound these losses with the rush to hire someone that might not be right for a role, and there is a possibility the recruiter may have to start the cycle all over again.

How can AI help? As AI’s influence throughout talent acquisition grows, sourcing qualified passive candidates in record time is now possible with AI.

Massive Data 

AI excels at scale. Finding candidates instantly, AI algorithms can improve with each search, creating increasingly more intelligent sourcing. This is done by compiling and analysing a massive data set of millions of pieces of information including potential candidates’ social media profiles and past online activities, among other data. 

AI’s passive sourcing function can also find triggers that indicate a candidate’s interest. Using an engineering requisition as an example, AI tools can scrape the Internet for candidates with specific job skills. For example, a search can be set up to find candidates with electrical engineering backgrounds with five to ten years of experience that are active on LinkedIn. AI will identify these parameters, search all additional available channels for intel including email, text, chatbot and phone records then aggregate the data and deliver a pool of qualified candidates to the recruiter.

Improved Personalisation

AI applications can also send targeted information to candidates using marketing-like campaigns, bringing in “leads” to help grow talent pipelines. This activity targets the right persona or type of candidate needed for a role and keeps passive candidates better engaged or “nurtured.” It also creates a unique candidate journey.

A recent report cites that organisations with an employer brand platform experience an average turnover rate of 10% compared to the overall turnover average of 16%.

At PeopleScout, we know a positive employer brand plays a significant role in their ability to hire talent. We implement AI sourcing and digital brand recruitment marketing campaigns through our Affinix™ platform that streamlines the sourcing process. Using these digital campaigns reinforces a company’s employer brand and consequently increases the nurture and conversion rates of future potential passive candidates. 

Considerations for AI Passive Sourcing

While using AI to help source passive candidates is beginning to help organisations, there are a few considerations to keep in mind.

Mind Your Algorithms

Countless articles lament how well-meaning coders accidentally create biased AI tools. Most recently, Amason released a recruiting tool that put female applicants at a disadvantage by highlighting more masculine language such as “executed” and “captured.” Therefore, AI algorithms should be used in concert with other recruiting tools and constantly monitored pre and post-build. Organisations such as OpenAI, the AI Institute, and Explainable AI, among others, are reviewing AI’s impacts to make sure issues like unconscious bias are appropriately addressed.

Fit AI into Your Strategy

AI has the potential to improve aspects of the full recruitment cycle from sourcing, screening, selecting, hiring and onboarding. However, AI is only part of your toolkit and should be thought of as an efficiency tool to find better candidates faster. Monitor and adjust your strategy by testing AI’s sourcing skills. Because of the rapid data feedback loop you receive from AI, you’ll be able to quickly tweak social media and email campaigns as well as content you use to interact with candidates.

Getting Started with AI Passive Sourcing 

According to a Deloitte Human Capital Trends report, 38% of companies are already using AI, and 62% expect to implement AI in some way by the end of 2019. In order to prepare for AI passive sourcing, keep the following in mind.

  • Assess your current state. Are your operations streamlined today? Do you have existing issues with your methodology that need to be resolved before AI is added to your recruitment platform?
  • Centralise your efforts so your AI tools tie together and create information in one place. Also, make sure all data streams, such as information from candidates and job boards, are collected in one place.
  • Choose your vendors wisely to bring your AI ambitions to life. If the vendors you use are not able to articulate their business plans and longer-term technology capabilities, you should walk away.

Conclusion

Recruiters need to monitor AI passive sourcing capabilities as one of many AI efficiency tools to execute in the recruiting process. While ongoing debates swirl about the bias of the effect from AI efforts can create, if implemented and monitored properly, AI can also yield huge returns for your passive sourcing efforts. Organisations should consider PeopleScout to help source passive roles through PeopleScout’s proprietary, simple-to-use talent technology platform, Affinix.