Talent Advisory Archives - Page 19 of 23

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

Posted on August 16, 2019July 14, 2023 by nfuqua

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.

Manufacturing Recruiters: Retooling Industrial Recruiting for the Modern Age

Posted on August 6, 2019January 3, 2023 by edyson

For many industrial and manufacturing recruiters, navigating the skills gap remains a persistent challenge. A study conducted by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute revealed that the manufacturing skills gap may leave an estimated 2.4 million positions unfilled between 2018 and 2028, the result of which may cause 2.5 trillion dollars in lost revenue.

Those numbers represent missing out on major contracts for manufacturers without the skilled talent to fulfill them. They mean extending or missing deadlines with longtime clients. They are the difference between expanding into new markets or experiencing stagnation.

In the past, as long as a candidate possessed a strong work ethic and commitment to getting the job done, few other skills were required. However, over the years, manufacturing has become more complex and depends on sharp minds and an agile mix of technical skills.

Whether your organisation is planning to grow its operation, preparing for retirements in your workforce or upskilling in response to automation and productivity improvements, closing the skills gap relies on finding the right talent.

In this article, we will cover how manufacturing recruiters can better find the right talent to create a workforce with the right mix of competencies and skills for success in the modern industrial workforce.

Dissecting the Manufacturing Talent Landscape and Recruiting Challenges

Manufacturing has experienced an ebb and flow in job loss and growth over the past few decades. However, industrial activity monitored by the ISM manufacturing index hit a six-year high in August 2017, indicating a growing trend in overall manufacturing output. What’s more, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), manufacturing output in the first quarter of 2017 was 80% higher than its level 30 years ago.

The increases in productivity in manufacturing is in part thanks to technological advances and improvements made in industrial production. To keep pace with technology-driven innovations, manufacturing organisations require a more technically skilled workforce.

Before optimising your manufacturing recruitment strategy, it is crucial to understand the challenges that the manufacturing industry faces with reputation, the generational workforce divide and the changing nature of skilled work.

The Manufacturing Industry Has a Reputation Problem

A Kronos survey found that only 37% of those surveyed would encourage their children to pursue a career in the manufacturing industry. The survey also found that less than a quarter of respondents know that the manufacturing industry offers well-paying jobs.

To attract the next generation of manufacturing talent, you must address this perception and the bias many younger skilled workers may have regarding the industry. While campaigns to such as “Manufacturing Day” are helping improve the industry’s image, manufacturing recruiters must also be proactive in their efforts to communicate the new and exciting opportunities their organisations can provide to candidates.

The Retiring Manufacturing Workforce

The mass departure of the Baby Boomer generation continues to impact organisations across all industries. The Pew Research Centre estimated that 10,000 baby boomers will retire every day for the next 19 years.

The results of this are being felt throughout the manufacturing industry – and is only predicted to get worse. When Deloitte calculated the impact of retiring Baby Boomers on the manufacturing industry, they estimated that approximately 2.7 million workers would retire from manufacturing between 2015 and 2025 – a figure that represents 22% of the manufacturing workforce.

Changing Nature of Work Requires New Skill Sets

Automated processes like computer-aided design, 3D printing, robotics and computer numerical control (CNC) machining have replaced much of the manual workforce in manufacturing. Consequently, today’s manufacturers need talent with technical skills who are confident decision-makers, critical thinkers and quick learners.

Given today’s tight candidate market and widening skills gaps, finding candidates with the right mix of experience and technical skills within the manufacturing industry proves to be a consistent challenge. Organisations now have to carefully prioritise the “must-have” skills while hiring talent to fill these roles and consider which additional skills can be taught on the job.

Lack of Traditional Manufacturing Talent

While there are many new skills sets needed in manufacturing, there is still a need for traditional skills. However, just like technical roles, finding candidates to fill traditional manufacturing occupations is challenging.

According to the BLS, an additional 44,000 machine operator roles will be needed by 2026. Current trends indicate this number will be a hard order to fill for manufacturers. If left unchecked, manufacturers are facing a talent crisis that could leave up to 2 million roles vacant.

Retooling Your Manufacturing Recruitment Strategy

The time and resource investment needed for manufacturing recruiters to source, interview and hire the right talent is considerable. On average, it takes 94 days to recruit employees in the engineering and research fields and 70 days to recruit skilled production workers for manufacturing positions.

To improve manufacturing recruiting outcomes, organisations should stop reacting to talent shortages with a single-minded focus on specific skill sets or certifications, and take a big-picture, strategic approach to recruitment.

In this section, we will outline how to analyse weak points in your manufacturing recruitment processes, help you refine your approach to fill your most urgent talent needs with top talent and how to get this talent interested in your organisation.

Rethink Job Descriptions

It can be easy to provide a laundry list of skills, experience and “musts haves” when writing a job description. However, this practice can scare top talent away from applying to positions within your organisation, even if they are qualified.

Candidates who might be a perfect fit for a role may self-select out of the application process because they do not meet every single qualification. Worse, candidates who are not qualified end up applying because they recognise one or two items on the list and think, “Sure, I can do that.”

Instead of making a long list of qualifications, describe what the candidate’s onsite responsibilities will be like should they be hired for the role. Not only will you attract better candidates from the start, but you will also stand a higher chance of retaining employees because they understand what they signed on for.

Along with describing responsibilities, also be honest about working conditions in job descriptions. You will need to describe those conditions accurately to clarify any misconceptions and adequately prepare your candidates for their potential work environment.

Master Employer Branding

Top candidates want to work for dynamic, growing organisations. If you are trying to recruit talent from outside the manufacturing industry, these candidates need to believe that they will have autonomy and opportunities to ascend the ranks of your organisation. Your team of manufacturing recruiters and your HR department should work together to create a plan to communicate your organisation’s employer value proposition to candidates.

When engaging candidates, your recruiters should act as “culture carriers” and highlight what makes your organisation an employer of choice. When pitching top talent, your manufacturing recruiters should research what will get candidates excited about your organisation, whether it is your unique company culture, the opportunity for driving change or the potential to build a lasting and rewarding career.

Also, make sure to highlight the benefits of working at your organisation. Do you currently offer insurance, profit sharing or a retirement plan? Are there discounts on the goods you produce for employees and their families? The extras you provide will help differentiate your organisation and make it more appealing to candidates.

Work with Local Academic Institutions

Most universities, community colleges and technical schools have a wide range of programmes and courses in manufacturing processes, fabrication, welding, automation and machining. So it makes sense to target students at these institutions as part of your manufacturing recruiting programme.

Create a list of local schools your manufacturing recruiters should reach out to and have them contact campus career centres at each school. Once they have established contact, ask them to inquire about chances to share internships and employment opportunities with students. It is important to establish a relationship with the career centres at your target schools, as each school has specific guidelines, events and timelines associated with its recruiting process.

Once on campus, it is important to establish a strong employer brand presence. Partnering with marketing can be invaluable in this instance, as a company’s marketing team can create materials that specifically appeal to the campus audience.

Invest in Building a Superior Candidate Experience

Identifying roadblocks and issues that can make it difficult for candidates to move through in your current hiring process is important in creating a better candidate experience. A lengthy hiring process or unrealistic job offers could be causing your organisation to miss out on top prospects.

Your recruiting teams should ask for feedback about your hiring process from current employees and even candidates who turned down your offer. This can bring you insights from candidates who pass on your job offers and determine whether these roadblocks are culturally entrenched or can be changed.

For example, do candidates frequently complain about a lengthy interview process? If so, there may be a way to streamline the interviews to accelerate the decision-making timetable, such as video interviews.

Building a better candidate experience begins and ends with your manufacturing recruiters communicating expectations upfront with candidates, so they know exactly how long the process will take, how they should prepare and what each step of the process entails.

Conclusion

Organisations willing to rethink their manufacturing recruitment strategy now will gain a critical first-mover advantage. Rather than fighting for talent with antiquated tools and tactics, they will be leading the charge forward. If you establish a reputation for being an employer of choice in the manufacturing industry, top talent will seek you out, and be excited to be part of your dynamic, innovative organisation.

Assessing for Passion, Purpose and a Growth Mindset: The Whole Person Model in Practice

Posted on July 25, 2019January 3, 2023 by nfuqua

The whole person model is a highly bespoke assessment process. We have found that the model functions best in two contexts: high-volume hiring and highly specialised leadership hiring.

If an organisation needs to hire a large number of candidates for a specific role or type of role, the whole person model can produce stronger, more diverse candidates and can result in longer-tenured employees. The process of building out the tailored assessments is time- and cost-effective for high-volume hiring.

The whole person model can also be valuable when searching for the right candidate for a leadership role. For organisations in times of transition, it can be especially difficult to identify candidates with the ability to lead through change.

In this article, we will explain how we at PeopleScout apply the model practically to both hiring examples.

Whole Person Model Use Case: High-Volume Hiring

This infographic is one example of the whole person model in practice for high-volume hiring. It includes three stages and each stage measures different aspects of a candidate’s background, or gears of the whole person model:

A realistic job and culture preview
The One Experience online assessment
The final stage of online assessments, which we call the Assessment Center

During the realistic job and culture preview, a candidate gets a practical look at what it would be like to work for your organisation and in this particular role. This section will include media like a video job description, shaped by your EVP and employer brand and customised to a job’s responsibilities.

Showcasing the job and the employer brand of the organisation is critical during the realistic job and culture preview because it assesses the passion and purpose of the candidate. If the candidate identifies with and is enthusiastic about your organisation, they will continue through the process. If a candidate does not feel as though their passion and purpose align, they will not continue in the process.

The One Experience assessment is an online holistic tool that assesses each part of the whole person model. Candidates answer questions in a variety of formats that allow them to demonstrate their different strengths Each of the six factors is weighted differently based upon their ability to predict candidate success and the requirements and expectations in a role.

In the One Experience tool, the scores for each type of assessment will be combined and weighted, and candidates who meet a certain threshold will be moved along to the next step. Because there are a variety of ways to earn a passing score on these assessments, there will be a more cognitively diverse group of candidates that make it through this part of the process.

At this stage, the assessments include automated feedback reports so that candidates have a better understanding of why they do or do not move forward. This improves the candidate experience because candidates who do not get the position are not left in the dark. It gives them an opportunity to see why they may not have been the best fit.

The final step is the last set of online assessments, which we call the assessment center, to further narrow the candidate pool. In this example, it measures mindset, passion, capability and behavior. However, it can be adapted to focus on the categories that show the strongest predictive ability for a specific position. This stage also includes automated feedback reports.

Using this model, we see fewer candidates making it past the realistic job and culture preview to complete the One Experience tool, but 50 percent of those who do complete that step go on to pass and move to the assessment center. Those who make it to the assessment center have a pass rate of 75 percent, which is higher than the traditional process. In the old process, clients viewed a pass rate of 50 percent at this stage as high.

Assessments in High Volume Hiring: Healthcare Case Study The Problem: A PeopleScout healthcare client wanted to improve quality-of-hire and decrease turnover for their nearly 2,000 annual call center hires. The Solution: PeopleScout partnered with the organization to deploy an online assessment that identified the key behaviors and personality traits that correlated with success at their organization. The assessments also identified candidates who are aligned to the organization’s mission and who have a growth mindset, and those who could be successful in leadership roles. The Results: After two-and-a-half years, the client has seen an increase in the quality of candidates and is expanding the use of the assessment to all external positions. They may also deploy the assessments for internal positions as well.

Whole Person Model Use Case: Leadership Hiring

In the case of leadership hiring, rather than using the One Experience tool, the whole person model uses a deep-dive interview in which the questions are designed to assess the candidate’s passion, purpose and mindset, as well as their capability, behavior, and results – the six factors included in the model. By assessing top candidates for these factors, organisations can better identify leaders who fit well with their organisation and goals.

To understand how this works, let’s look at how we applied the whole person model to help the Scottish Police Authority appoint the next Chief Constable for Police Scotland.

How did this impact the onboarding process?

The new Chief Constable continued the developmental work they invested in during the assessments process and received a series of coaching sessions throughout the transition.

All candidates reported a positive experience that provided ample opportunity to demonstrate their capability and suitability for the role.

Applying the Whole Person Model to Your Hiring

In the current economic climate, employers who hire and retain candidates with a growth mindset and who align with the passion and purpose of the organisation will be at an advantage. By assessing these factors and looking at the whole person, employers can better identify those candidates and set themselves up for success.

When employers face the challenge of hiring a large volume of employees, the model can be customised to efficiently identify the best candidates with a passion for the work and the organisation. When an organisation is looking to make a leadership hire but is struggling to find candidates with relevant experience, the model can be customised to identify those who can learn, lead and grow with the organisation.

Key Takeaways:

The whole person model is a bespoke process and works best for high-volume and leadership hiring.
When used for high-volume hiring, the whole person model can produce stronger, more diverse candidates and can result in longer-tenured employees.
When used for leadership hiring, the model can identify leaders who fit well with an organisation and its culture and goals.

This article is the third in a series, you can read the first article, Assessing for Passion, Purpose and a Growth Mindset: Drivers for Change, hereand the second, Assessing for Passion, Purpose and a Growth Mindset: The Current State of Assessments and a Better Way Forward, here.

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

Posted on July 22, 2019January 23, 2024 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.

Assessing for Passion, Purpose and a Growth Mindset: The Current State of Assessments and a Better Way Forward

Posted on July 17, 2019January 3, 2023 by nfuqua

The interview and assessment process is challenging for both candidates and employers. Traditional skills assessments focus on evaluating the capability, behaviour and results of candidates.

Research shows that these traditional measures can predict the future success of certain candidates in specific roles; however, now that change is constant, we believe that traditional assessments work best under two conditions:

When the candidate has had the opportunity to develop specific knowledge, skills and abilities through their past work experience.
When the organisation is very clear about the requirements of the role.

While traditional assessments can predict the success of an individual candidate under those circumstances, they may not accurately predict failure. We also know that they can actually lead to less diversity because certain groups perform worse on narrow skills assessments. According to the Harvard Business Review, U.S. companies that have instituted written skills tests for managers see decreases of 4 percent to 10 percent in the share of managerial jobs held by white women, African-American men and women, Hispanic men and women, and Asian-American women during the proceeding five years.

Current economic conditions and the growing competition for talent call for a better process. Traditional assessments can be effective; we shouldn’t ignore them. However, they are only a portion of what research shows can predict success in a role. By combining traditional capability, behaviour and results assessments with new measurements that focus on passion, purpose and mindset, we can better predict the success of candidates.

Challenges of the Current Process for Candidates:

The process is often long with multiple stages of video, phone and in-person interviews as well as potential skills assessments.
Candidates don’t feel they can show the full spectrum of who they are, and they may miss out on an opportunity because of one weakness even though they have several strengths.
The process doesn’t give candidates enough of an opportunity to understand the culture and values of the organisation or show hiring managers why they would want to work there.
The process provides minimal opportunity to demonstrate their passion.
Candidates don’t get a lot of feedback as they move through the process, especially at the earlier stages.

Challenges of the Current Process for Employers:

Strong candidates can become disengaged and remove themselves from the process if there are too many stages.
Strong candidates are often screened out when they have unmeasured strengths that would lead them to succeed in the role.
There is no objective way to measure if a candidate will be engaged and happy in the role.
Certain assessments can be more difficult for certain groups of people, resulting in less cognitive diversity among the candidates who make it through the process.

Defining the Terms

When thinking about the factors that we evaluate to determine if a candidate is a good fit, it’s best to think of them like individual gears that work together to drive how a candidate works. What each candidate brings to a role is a combination of their capabilities, behaviour, results, passion, purpose and mindset. When those gears work together in the right environment, the candidate will be a successful employee.

Capability: Capability is a candidate’s core intellectual ability and capacity. Cognitive ability tests that measure a person’s verbal or numerical capabilities can have a moderate to strong correlation with performance. Traditional assessments and interviews measure capability.

Behaviour: A candidate’s past behaviour and personality-based behavioural preferences work relatively well to predict performance. These can be measured through structured interviews where a candidate explains what they did in the past or during an assessment where an employer can observe a candidate take an action. Behaviour is measured during traditional interviews and assessments.

Results: Results are what a candidate has already achieved in terms of the knowledge, skills and experience that are required to deliver in a role. Results can be evaluated through skills-based work examples. This is something traditionally reviewed during the interview and assessment process.

Passion: Passion is a candidate’s enthusiasm, enjoyment and commitment to mastering the requirements of a role. When an employee is passionate about a role, they are engaged. According to Gallup, 85 percent of workers are not engaged in their current roles. Dale Carnegie Training reports that organisations with engaged workers outperform their peers by 202 percent. However, most employers don’t currently have a method to effectively understand what a candidate is passionate about.

Purpose: Purpose is a candidate’s alignment with and willingness to contribute to the vision and values of an organisation. One study reported by McKinsey found that, out of 100 variables, employees reported that seeing purpose and value in their work was their most motivating factor – even more so than compensation.

Purpose-driven work is especially important for younger workers. According to Cone, 75 percent of millennials and 55 percent of all age groups in the U.S. would take a pay cut to work at a socially and environmentally responsible company. Despite this, the traditional interview and assessment process doesn’t include a deep dive into whether the candidate aligns well with the purpose of an organisation.

Mindset: Mindset is a candidate’s belief about themselves and their basic qualities. These beliefs are rarely measured by employers. There are two types of mindset: fixed and growth.

Fixed mindset is the belief that one’s talents are innate gifts and not malleable.
Growth mindset is the belief that one’s talents can be developed through education and effort.

People with a growth mindset achieve more throughout their lives because they’re focused on learning. In children, growth mindset is correlated with increased test scores, achievement and enjoyment in school.

According to Deloitte, companies that practice a growth mindset create “designed growth” and stretch assignments and openly discuss mistakes to promote learning. Those companies are three times more profitable and have four times better retention than those that do not.

We believe that passion, purpose and mindset can have as much impact on performance as core intellect, what you’ve achieved and how you’ve behaved. Most employers are not assessing for all of these factors, so they are missing out on a comprehensive look at candidates. As part of PeopleScout’s talent advisory practice, we have developed a model that evaluates all six performance indicators.

The Whole Person Model

We developed the whole person model to evaluate capability, behaviour, results, passion, purpose and mindset and how they interact. In this graphic, the gears operate together to contribute to the success of the candidate.

At the centre is context. The way we measure all six factors depends on the role and the broader context of the organisation. In the whole person model, assessments are built with a deep understanding of the organisation and the factors that contribute to success in a particular role. For example, the way we measure results and passion will be different for an engineer at a large tech company than a retail sales representative.

In this graphic, you will also notice that each gear is a different size. The relative size of the gear demonstrates the weight of each factor in predicting success. We believe that mindset, passion and purpose should be key factors in assessing candidates for a particular role; however, the relative weighting of each factor will be determined by the context of the role and the organisation.

The whole person model measures each candidate in a way that gives all candidates the opportunity to show their best selves. For example, if a candidate has not shown significant results thus far in their career, but they demonstrate a large amount of passion for the industry and the role, that passion could make up for the other weakness.

By looking at candidates through the lens of the whole person model from the start, we provide a more intellectually diverse slate of candidates. This is because the model identifies candidates who excel in different ways. The model more effectively identifies candidates who have the passion and purpose that align with an organisation and the mindset to experience continued success in the future.

Benefits of the whole person model:

Increase ability to source candidates with skills of the future
More engaging candidate experience
Shorter hiring process
Enhance the ability to measure the strengths of a person earlier in the process
Expand the ability to measure future readiness
Improve cognitive diversity
Lengthen employee tenure
Boost perceived fairness from candidates

Key Takeaways:

Traditional assessments that focus on a candidate’s capability, behaviour and results are not enough to predict success in the current candidate market.
We believe that passion, purpose and mindset should be key factors in assessing candidates for any role.
The whole person model is built to look at each candidate holistically, so employers get a slate of stronger, more diverse candidates.

Fife Council: Bringing Deeper Understanding to Fill Pivotal Role

Posted on July 15, 2019January 3, 2023 by rharris

Head of Children, Families and Criminal Justice

Filling this socially and strategically important leadership role challenged our research capabilities. The role is pivotal in shaping the future of children and families· services in Fife – an area where 1 in 4 children are living in poverty. Understanding and communicating the role’s interesting remit, combined with the criminal justice element, proved essential to successfully filling the role.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

An ‘ideal’ person brief
Extensive deep search tactics
Non-traditional sources

SCOPE & SCALE

Fife Council brought this role to us a few months before the current incumbent was due to retire. We were tasked with identifying individuals with a strong background in leading services within children and families social care and already on the social work register in England or Scotland, or able to register. The role covered a wide remit, including Criminal Justice, and had also been merged with the Chief Social Work Officer role. We felt that this was a good selling point as it added interest to those who were looking to increase their responsibilities.

SITUATION

The role could not be filled internally, and it was a challenging location to recruit for, making search a much more viable option than pure media. Even with sourcing, 35% of individuals who engaged with us were not interested because of the location and a further 30% were not interested due to timings.

SOLUTION

RESEARCH

Following preliminary research, a briefing with the Executive Director of Education and Children’s Services provided further context and insight into children and family services in Fife. A version of the Directorate Improvement Plan was also shared with us to bring the role and its challenges to life. It was agreed that the ideal candidate would be working at
Head of Service level in a smaller Scottish Local Authority.

STRATEGY

We agreed on a project plan during the briefing. Timebound goals including benchmarking and work in progress updates were to be sent. Our search encompassed telephone, Linked In, referrals, CV databases and deep web searching.

OUTCOME

By using an intensive search for council documentation, and examining historical freedom of information requests, we were able to identify names of individuals who were otherwise absent from traditional sources – including their own council website.

RESULTS

Fife Council appointed an Acting Head of Service from a smaller Scottish local authority- as per their “ideal person” brief. In the candidate’s own words, she was delighted
to be offered the role and excited to be joining Fife Council. She also thanked us for contacting her as she was not looking for a new role and would have over looked this opportunity.

I was impressed with the extent of the knowledge of what Fife was looking for and the ability from our conversations to absolutely understand what type of person we wished to recruit. The process most definitely found us candidates who would not have otherwise applied and although there was still a small number of applicants we were able to appoint a suitable candidate to the post. This was my first time in using this service and would consider it for future senior appointments.

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

Posted on July 15, 2019January 3, 2023 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.

Assessing for Passion, Purpose and a Growth Mindset: Drivers for Change

Posted on July 10, 2019January 3, 2023 by nfuqua

The world is changing faster than ever before – as employers grapple with the digital transformation, skills shortages and competitive economic conditions. In response to these drivers, job responsibilities change rapidly and organisations need to hire creative employees to innovate and implement new ideas.

According to McKinsey, the pace of change in the workplace is so rapid that, by 2030, as much as 14 percent of the global workforce could need to change occupational categories.

To remain competitive, employers cannot simply hire a candidate who can meet the requirements of a job as they are written on day one. The candidate needs to have the skills and drive to grow, learn and adapt as the organisation moves into the future.

Despite this need to attract candidates with growth mindsets, the interview and assessment processes used by most employers are stuck in the past. For the purposes of this section, we refer to assessments as any stage in the interview process where a selection decision is made. So, an assessment can be a traditional skills test, a requirement that must be met on an application or type of interview, like behavioral or video interview. For most employers, these assessment processes have too many steps and are narrowly focused on hard skills – allowing too many candidates to become disqualified early, before they are able to demonstrate who they really are.

Employers need to broaden their use of candidate assessments to allow for measuring factors that impact a candidate’s ability and willingness to learn and grow, as well as their passion for the role and alignment with the broader purpose of the organisation. Organisations need to assess a candidate as a whole person as early in the process as possible to really understand what they may be able to offer.

In this series of articles, we explore the current state of assessments, the ways we at PeopleScout have worked to expand assessments to evaluate a candidate as a whole person, how these new assessments work in practice and the benefits and results of the whole person assessment method.

The Experts: Fiadhna McEvoy and Veronica Officer

Fiadhna McEvoy and Victoria Officer are two of the minds behind PeopleScout’s approach to assessments and the whole person model. They strive to create a talented team that can push boundaries and continuously grow and develop its assessment offering.

Fiadhna and Victoria are occupational psychologists – which means they have completed an accredited undergraduate degree or conversion course and an accredited master’s degree in occupational psychology. Fiadhna has also completed two years of practice supervised by the British Psychological Society to become a chartered occupational psychologist.

Their work is research-driven. The whole person model they outline in this section is based on decades on academic research into what makes an organisation effective and how to improve the job satisfaction of employees. Their work is based on the proven forces that drive people at work.

Fiadhna and Victoria are fascinated by why people come to work and perform, how they can be happy and why they stick around. They blend the science of occupational psychology with the art of thinking differently to solve problems.

Employer Value Proposition and Employer Branding: Launching and Managing a Dynamic Employer Value Proposition and Employer Brand

Posted on July 4, 2019January 3, 2023 by nfuqua

After building a strong EVP and employer brand, employers face the challenge of effectively promoting and marketing that brand to candidates and employees. The roll-out and management of an employer brand platform is just as important as the care taken to research and craft that positioning.

For many organisations, it’s easy to show enthusiasm while developing a new EVP, but that same enthusiasm needs to continue through the internal and external launches.

A Cornell University report* identifies several tangible benefits of a strong employment brand:

Organisations with an employer brand platform experience an average turnover rate of 10%; the overall turnover average is as high as 16%.
When organisations live up to their marketed EVP, new employees arrive with a higher level of commitment at 38%, compared to organisations that don’t live up to their marketed EVP, which are at just 9%.
As an employer brand progresses, employees buy in to the new corporate culture, which increases their motivation.
A strong employer brand can increase employee engagement, even through periods where employee headcount is reduced and salary raises are controlled.
In organisations with a developed employer brand, employees are more engaged in the decision-making and management process.

*“Is There a Correlation for Companies with a Strong Employment Brand Between Employee Engagement Levels and Bottom Line Results?”

As a refresher:

Employer brand: Your employer brand is the perception and lived experiences of what it’s like to work for your organisation.

Employer value proposition: Your employer value proposition, or EVP, captures the essence of your uniqueness as an employer and the give and get between you and your employees.

Employer brand platform: The creative communications you create and distribute based on your employer value proposition that guides the perception of your employer brand in the marketplace.

Starting from the Inside Out

The internal launch of an EVP and employer branding platform lays the groundwork for the success of the external launch. To make the internal launch successful, you need to bring the EVP to life so employees understand and embrace it. When employees are engaged with your employer brand, they will become brand ambassadors.

The careful process of gathering insights within your organization, which occurs during the discovery phase is key to a successful internal launch because employees need to recognize their own reality in a new EVP. If an EVP and employer brand platform doesn’t resonate with current employees, you will struggle to develop advocates and champions of the brand.

An effective internal rollout needs to accomplish these four steps to create advocates and amplify the brand:

The leadership team and hiring managers should know and understand the elevator pitch of your organisation.

The people who are on the frontlines interacting with candidates represent your brand and should be able to articulate your EVP consistently. If you don’t have an effective internal rollout, your external message will not be consistent. These brand ambassadors should be trained on the talking points and should practice sharing the pitch with candidates.

Recruiters know where they can find materials to share your message and how they can reach out to their networks.

Your current employees can also function as brand ambassadors and can create valuable marketing opportunities. They should clearly understand and identify with your new EVP, and they should have the tools they need to share that messaging with their networks. A successful internal launch should ensure they have access to a library or media toolkit of employer branding material, and they should be encouraged to use it. This should include videos, images and even messaging for social media that employees can copy and paste to enable employees – ranging from recruiters to outgoing workers with large networks – to share online.

Your employees should feel empowered to share your message and refer strong candidates.

During your internal launch, encourage employees to share your brand culture and their experiences with their networks. In large organisations, this can be a challenge, but it is a culture you can build through team conversations and highlighting examples of your EVP in action. With this, you can encourage employees to share their own experiences.

Identify talent scouts, a type of employee brand ambassador who can identify people in their networks and encourage them to join your organisation.

Some of your current employees will have strong networks and will excel at finding people in those networks with “the right stuff” to succeed at your organisation. Some employees will also have the opportunity to share your employer brand at speaking engagements, conferences and other industry events – even if those events aren’t directly related to employer branding.

Launching a new employer brand platform is an opportunity for a renewed focus on employee referrals. Current employees who can understand and articulate your EVP can point you to people in their networks who may also be a good fit.

To drive increased referrals for our client, Virgin Media, we revamped its referrals site to make the employer brand the heart of the site. Additionally, we helped the organisation communicate the EVP to current employees so they could identify the organisation’s “kind of people.” Less than one year later, referrals increased from 10% to 25% of external hiring; staff participation increase by 40%; the organisation saved an average of £7,500 per hire; and the quality of hires increased.

Bringing your EVP to Life Through the Candidate Experience

After a successful internal launch, in which your employees understand your EVP and brand ambassadors have the tools they need to share your message, you will be ready to launch your employer brand platform externally through your candidate experience. This launch should be a multifaceted approach driven by the audience insights you gleaned during the earlier stages of EVP development. Before you launch externally, you should understand the types of candidates you want to attract, what type of media they consume, where they are and how you can speak to them. As you build out your employer branding platform, vary your media and messaging to speak directly to those audiences.

Below are several external employer branding platforms and examples from Virgin Media. Virgin has a large workforce and needs employees who can support its organisation today and adapt for the future. The company struggled to fill senior corporate roles, field sales advisors and part-time retail positions. We helped build an EVP that emphasised the open-minded, less corporate, fast and flexible culture of Virgin Media.

Brand Ambassadors

Your candidate experience starts with the first time a candidate experiences your brand. In many cases, this could be by interacting with a brand ambassador, like an employee who shares job openings and encourages people in their network to apply.

According to Marketing Week, nearly 70 percent of consumers don’t trust advertising and 42 percent don’t trust brands. Additionally, nearly six in 10 consumers don’t trust brand communication unless they see “real-world proof” of the message.

In an employer branding campaign, your employees functioning as brand ambassadors can provide that real-world proof. Changing algorithms on social media sites also make the voice of the employee louder than the voice of the brand. Facebook changed its algorithm in early 2018 to favor content from friends and family as part of the company’s response to the platform being used to spread disinformation, according to Wired. This means that messaging from employees will reach more people than messaging from your brand, and you should match your strategy to this reality.

Recruitment Toolkits

To make sure your brand ambassadors can share your message effectively, build a media toolkit that recruiters can use to find images, videos or even text they can copy and paste to share your message. This also ensures you have some control over what employees post and share so that it ties to a consistent message. This toolkit should include things like video, shareable social media images, guidelines, ideas, templates and even pieces of prewritten copy and design elements that employees can piece together. These pieces of media should be stored where employees can easily access them, but the storage method will depend on what technology your organisation already has in place, such as an intranet or a platform like SharePoint.

The assets should be varied, using different messages to target the variety of audiences you’ve identified during the research and development stage. Using this library, recruiters and hiring managers can easily share high-quality, specific images, video or text with their networks, which improves efficiency and extends the reach of your brand.

For Virgin Media, we created a toolkit with more than 100 different pieces of media to make it fast and easy for recruiters to disseminate brand communications. To help tackle their challenge of attracting candidates for senior corporate roles, we produced online video content in an informal and unpolished style. It showcased a day in the life of an employee at different office locations, and we made it available through the toolkit. After these videos were shared on social media by recruiters and other employees and on specialist job boards the number of the number of days-to-offer decreased by 44% for management accountant roles and by 26% for analyst roles.

Personalised Career Sites

A career site with personalised content will help reach the different types of candidates you want to attract to your organisation. It is no longer enough to brand your career site with a one-sise-fits-all approach. Certain candidates may be drawn in by the social purpose of your organisation. Others may be looking for career advice. Your site should speak to all of them.

For Virgin Media, we created a clean, compelling recruitment brand destination that is easy to use. The careers site laid out the EVP through web copy, and the site also included personalised information for candidates for the wide variety of roles.

To support the hiring of part-time retail employees, the career site heavily featured these roles – listing them as hot jobs on the home page. This strategy, combined with new imagery from the employer branding platform and promotion on social media and relevant job boards, increased applications for these roles by 107 percent.

Onboarding

Your employer branding platform cannot simply end with the offer letter. Between being offered a job and joining the organisation, you want these future employees to feel like they are part of something. An onboarding process that reflects your EVP will validate a new hire’s choice and underscore the EVP communicated during the hiring process. Your onboarding process should bring the culture of your organisation to life in a way that’s tailored to each role.

We updated the internal onboarding site for Virgin Media with information about locations, benefits, the company’s vision and values, frequently asked questions and information about the people they need to know and who they can go to for help. The new site saw double the average number of pages viewed per visit and people spent 2.5 times longer on the website.

Keeping it Dynamic

After undertaking an internal and external launch, it can be daunting to keep an EVP dynamic so it changes as your organisation evolves. However, if you create, launch and measure the success of your EVP with that in mind, the process will be much easier.

The majority of the data collected during the initial research stage is likely data you continuously monitor on your career site through job applications, from new hires and through employee pulse surveys. With these sources of data, you can optimise hiring metrics through AB testing and tracking and refine your message as your organisation evolves in the future. By testing this way, you can see what works. For example, you could experiment with different images or a message that emphasises a certain aspect of your EVP and see if the right candidates respond.

If you created an EVP that is truly unique and authentic yet aspirational, the DNA at the core of your employer brand will remain true as you move forward. However, as you monitor success, data will show which messages are effective with each audience. Armed with that information, your employer brand should grow and flex as you face new challenges.

Finding an EVP Partner

If your organisation is looking to develop and launch a new EVP and employer brand platform, an outside partner is valuable because you are often too close to see your organisation from a candidate’s perspective. You may also lack the internal expertise and bandwidth. Here are three things to consider when looking for an EVP and employer brand partner:

Look for a partner that goes beyond an academic exercise of presenting data about “what people want” and instead takes a more bespoke approach to develop an EVP and platform that is fully tailored to you. Ask what that partner will do to get under the skin of your organisation to define what is authentic for you.
Your talent advisory partner should be future-focused and understand the cultural, economic and geographic differences of the employees who work at your organisation and the candidates you want to attract. Ask how they will be able to shift your communications and messaging to speak to different audiences.
Ask a potential partner how they translate the quantitative and qualitative data they collect into stories that will resonate with your audiences and stand out from the crowd.

Key Takeaways

The launch and management of an EVP and employer branding platform are just as important as the research and development stages.
A successful internal launch needs to be the first step so you can develop brand ambassadors.
Your external launch should be a multifaceted, research-driven approach that speaks to your audiences through every step of their candidate journey.

This is the third article in a series. Read the first article, Employer Value Proposition and Employer Branding: Time for Change is Here and the second article, Employer Value Proposition and Employer Branding: Building an Employer Value Proposition and Employer Brand for the Future.

On-Demand Webinar: What is Your Employer Brand Really Saying?

Posted on July 3, 2019January 3, 2023 by rharris

The job market is changing fast. Now, it’s all about the candidate. With increasing expectations, having stand-out candidate experience is business critical. Nine out of ten talent leaders within the ‘World’s Most Attractive Employers’ put employer branding as one of their top priorities in 2019. Do you know what your brand experience is really like?

Register for our on-demand webinar where Simon Wright, Managing Partner and Heather DeLand, Executive Creative Director, will introduce;

How to elevate your employer brand to attract the best candidates.
How to create distinction in a crowded market.
The impact that a poor experience has on your recruitment objectives.
How to produce a memorable brand experience that is personal, sociable and dramatic.