SAP Recruiter Podcast | ASAP Talent Services

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Today I’d like to highlight a crucial but often overlooked step in the interview process. In a candidate-driven market like the one we’re in right now, omitting this step will come back to haunt you when it comes time to make an offer.  

What is this critical step? Interview preparation.

Any good candidate knows that preparing for an interview is essential, so why aren’t more interviewers following their example? Of course, pre-interview due diligence is different for interviewers than it is for interviewees.

While candidates will spend their time preparing for the interview by learning about the position and the company, interviewers should do similar research on the candidate, themselves.

Before entering an interview, hiring managers should ask themselves whether they understand who the candidate is, what their hot buttons are, and what is motivating them to make a change.

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Following this step as a hiring authority could be mean the difference between hiring an average worker and hiring an “A” player.

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1. What is it that they feel they’re lacking in their current position?

2. What primary factor (money, quality of life, location, etc.) is motivating their decision to change positions?

3. Does the candidate have any other opportunities lined up?

Knowing the answers to these questions before the candidate comes in for an interview is a must. Everyone on the interview panel should have a sufficient understanding of the candidate’s background before the interview process.

Following this step as a hiring authority could be mean the difference between hiring an average worker and hiring an “A” player.

If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

How do you properly discuss salary requirements and expectations? Today we will take a look.

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Today I want to talk about compensation and how to properly discuss your expectations or requirements when you're the job seeker in an interview. Let's jump right in.

First, realize that it's illegal in some states for potential employers to ask how much you currently make. Instead, they may begin the conversation by asking “What would you like to make?” As the interviewee, you really need to know how to answer this before the interview even begins. If you need to prepare a script for what you'll say and then practice it with a friend. Having your answer prepared and memorized can be greatly helpful when the question does come up.

If you feel comfortable, you can let the company know what you currently make, including your base salary and bonus payout. I like to coach my people to go into interviews and say that they would like the compensation for the role to be reflective of the amount of impact they will have on the organization.

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The problem with giving an exact, quantitative number is that you could tell them a number that is higher than what they had in mind.

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Although this doesn't give the employer a direct answer, it does give you the chance to let them know that you're more about the opportunity. It also shows that you expect the compensation package to reflect your impact on the organization. If it is an important, high-impact role, it will say a lot to the company. You could also say that you want it to be in line with what you pay other people at similar levels.

The problem with giving an exact number is that you could tell them a number that is higher than what they had in mind. This could shoot yourself in the foot and the conversation could go in the wrong direction quickly for a position you really wanted. You want to put yourself in a position to get a great offer for both you and the company.

If you have any additional questions about this or if you're interested in speaking about buying or selling, please feel free to reach out to me. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

 

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Today I want to discuss alumni programs and how they can impact your talent acquisition and recruiting. The type of alumni program that I am talking about isn't a university program, but rather one that mature organizations are setting up to help keep track of great employees who have left their company.

Decades ago, employees who left a given company would tend to feel as if they had burned a bridge. Many of these people felt that, as former employees, they had abandoned their chance of being rehired by that company. 

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By staying in touch with former employees who go out and get experience with other companies, employers are able to potentially bring them back to their organization in the future.

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With today’s exit interviews, companies let employees leave in a professional manner and keep the relationship intact, creating an alumni network of sorts. With the help of group pages on LinkedIn, for example, employers are able to stay in touch with talented employees who are difficult to replace.

By staying in touch with former employees who go out and get experience with other companies, employers are able to potentially bring them back to their organization in the future.

If you're an HR talent acquisition or hiring authority, you can create a loose affiliation to help make the difference in the war on talent we seem to be finding ourselves in. Keeping in touch with your former employees as they evolve in their careers may help bring them back to you with new skills that are worthy of a different role entirely within your organization.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

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Do you know what is hurting your recruiting process? If you are a hiring authority in HR, part of talent acquisition, or in the recruiting business yourself, the five things that I have for you today can help you determine the best methods for hiring the best candidate for your open position.

1. Spend 30 minutes on the front end to save hours on the back end. You need to get with all of the parties in the recruiting process on an intake call so you can describe each person's role and let the recruiting team ask questions. Doing this will save time for the whole team by avoiding recruiting and interviewing the wrong people.

2. Write your job descriptions from the perspective of the job seeker. Most companies write entire job descriptions from the perspective of what they want. Instead, you should include what a great candidate would gain in terms of their career experience by working with your company.

3. Get creative with sign-on bonuses. If you can't quite get the base salary that your candidate wants, consider a sign-on bonus. Just make sure you include a retention clause that states they must pay it back if they don't stay for one to two years. A great example of creativity is one of our clients who structured their sign-on bonus to create retention by offering $10,000 upfront and then another $10,000 for their one and two year anniversaries.

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Include in your job description what a great candidate would love to gain in terms of their career experience by working with your company.

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4. Have them pay back work visas. Sometimes hiring people on a visa is a great option for a hard-to-fill role. You can add a repayment clause on the offer that states if the person accepts the job and leaves within two years, they will pay back the incurred visa fees, which are usually more than $10,000.

5. Spend more time and energy on your onboarding program. Create an extended onboarding plan and execute it over 90 days, six months, or 12 months. This will not only lead to more successful employees, but increase your retention as well.

If you have any questions about this, please don't hesitate to call us. We would love to speak with you.

 

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Today I want to talk about the economy and the unemployment rate and how that will impact companies hiring in the back half of 2018.

To start with, our gross domestic product (GDP) is over 4% for the first time in several years. The economy is booming. This translates to hiring and what unemployment currently looks like.

Unemployment is currently below 4%, which means that we are at full employment. But what does this mean to a company or hiring authority?

In the STEM areas (science, technology, engineering, and math) as well as healthcare, it has become increasingly difficult to find talent because of this full employment. Anybody that is talented is already employed and no longer looking for a job.

This changes how we have to streamline our processes and pursue strong candidates in the marketplace. We have to have a faster response time, as well as set up interviews more quickly. After two or three interviews, we have to try to get to the offer stage within two weeks.  

In a slow economy, hiring authorities and companies move slower and have a lot of time to make their decision. 

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When you find someone who is a nine on a scale of one to 10 and they are a good fit with your company’s culture, you need to jump on them.

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Today, however, when you find someone who is a nine on a scale of one to 10 and they are a good fit with your company’s culture, you need to jump on them. You have to put your sales hat on and sell why this is a great opportunity for them.

Then, you have to put your best foot forward and make a great offer. Of course, you should still expect to negotiate.

You will lose great people if you’re too slow or don’t sell your opportunity well. Great candidates are getting multiple offers, so you need to be prepared for this for the second half of 2018.

If you have any more questions about hiring in our economy or there’s anything else I can assist you with, feel free to call or email me anytime. I’d be happy to help you.

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All of us, even if we’re usually in the role of hiring manager, will sometimes find ourselves on the other side of the table as a potential candidate for a job. So with that being the case, what tips should job seekers follow when interviewing for their next opportunity?

There are five tips we’ll go over today:

1. Research the company in advance. Before entering an interview, it’s important to do your homework. Any opportunity you’re taking seriously enough to spend time and energy on in the form of an interview is worth the time and energy it’ll take to adequately prepare. You should be aware of their annual revenues, any recent or significant news from their press releases, and anything else of note that’s going on within that company. It should be apparent to the person interviewing you that you’ve truly done your homework.

2. Rehearse at least three stories of accomplishments you’ve made in the workplace within the last three to five years. You will always be able to find a time to work these things into the interview process. And to relay these stories, I encourage that you follow the STAR (situation, task, action, result) model. Following this model means first explaining the situation, then clarifying the task that was at hand, outlining the actions you took, and wrapping up the story by sharing its results. This model will help you present your accomplishments in a clear and effective manner.

It should be apparent to the person interviewing you that you’ve truly done your homework.

3. Ask great open-ended questions. Interviewers will expect you to have questions prepared. It’s never a good sign if an applicant has nothing to ask, or only asks the most basic questions they can think of. Asking the right questions, the kind that lead to a dialogue, will demonstrate that you’re an expert in your field.

4. Let the hiring authority know that you’re interested in the role. If you’re confident and excited about potentially joining a company, let the hiring authority know. This will do a great deal to help their impression of you as a candidate.

5. Close the interview by asking the hiring authority if they have any questions. It’s critical for you to not only express that you’re excited and feel qualified for the role, but for you to ask questions to determine if they feel the same way. Finding out whether they have any concerns or questions for you and actively listening to their response will improve your chance of securing the job.

If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Do you know what you should ask a search firm or recruiting partner you are considering working with? Today I have the top 10 questions you should ask.

3. Which recruiter in the firm will be working on your searches if you decide to partner with them? This is a great question, because it is not always who you are talking to at the moment.

4. Can they share an example of what a recruiting script might sound like for your opportunity? If they cannot do one specifically for your company, can they share an example script of another search that they may be going right now? The purpose of this question is to understand if they sound good when they go to market with your opportunity. Do they put a compelling story together, or do they sound mediocre?

5. What kind of different pricing options does your firm offer? Ask open-ended questions about multiple firm contingency, exclusivity, price breaks for increasing the partnership, etc. to help you understand what the different ways you might align with the company.

6. Can you share in detail what your recruiting process looks like? You want to know how the weeks will progress and get a detailed step-by-step of their process. This can help you find out when you can expect to meet candidates, do an in-person interview, offer the position, and have a potential start date.

If you do all of these things, you are going to line up with better partners who are able to better represent you in the market.

7.  What does their recruiting campaign look like to ensure that every qualified candidate in the market is hearing about the opportunity? You are testing the search firm for perseverance and making sure that no stone is left unturned.

8. Is the firm insured? Do they have general liability insurance, professional liability, errors in omission, etc.? This helps weed out an independent recruiter from an established firm because an established firm knows that they need insurance in case something unforeseen happens.

9. How many similar searches has the firm successfully completed in the same city as your position? While this may be similar to the first question, this delves further into if the firm knows your geographic market. Do they know the local candidates?

10.  How many companies has the firm successfully placed people within the same industry vertical as you? You need to know if they understand your industry and if they have client references available.

I have two parting thoughts for you to consider as well. First, it is important that you review the search firm's website, marketing materials, open jobs, and client testimonials to see if they are on brand. Is what the company told you about themselves the same as what you found? And, when you are looking at the recruiting firm and the people, look at their LinkedIn and social media profiles for client testimonials before you decide.

If you do all of these things, you are going to line up with better partners who are able to better represent you in the market. Quality firms that help you can make the best hire you can possibly make.

If you have any additional questions about this or are interested in using my firm, please feel free to reach out to me. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

There are many mistakes that hiring managers and companies make when it comes to their recruiting process. Today, I want to break a few of them down. Subscribe to my Video Updates Request a Free Consultation Today, I’d like to talk about come of the most common mistakes that we see hiring managers and companies make when it comes to recruiting new talent. By discussing these, we can hopefully help improve our internal recruiting processes. First, you need to consider how critical the role is, how time-sensitive filling the role is, and what the margin for error is. These factors should be addressed when it comes to making the decision to use a search firm. If it’s a confidential search, we could obviously benefit from using a firm. However, if it’s a high-level role, a company can oftentimes get a lot of applicants by simply posting an ad. They might get more applicants than they ever thought they could otherwise, so you need to be aware of whether or not you have the internal bandwidth to do that kind of recruiting. Can you handle 500 applicants in a week? A great search firm can vet the entire marketplace. They can narrow in on a very targeted list of people that have the skills and experience needed and can save you time and energy in the process of finding the best of the best. What is the right amount of people for a shortlist? In my view, five to seven people is just right. Companies that only have two or three people in play will put the whole search on hold. It’s putting all your eggs into too few baskets. If something goes wrong and one or two fall apart, you’re back at square zero. Having five to seven strong candidates helps you to avoid that happening; you can still bring in the top two or three candidates, but be sure to have some backups.   A great search firm can vet the entire marketplace. Finally, I really hope that companies and hiring managers understand the most excited an A-player will be is during the final interview. The more days that go by after that interview where the candidate doesn’t hear from you, the more negative thoughts they will have. Maybe the company isn’t interested in them, or perhaps they’re pursuing someone else. The quicker and sooner you can get back with an A-player after that final interview—within two or three business days is best—the more acceptances you’ll get right. Bring your best offer right off the bat. Don’t lowball candidates in the marketplace, because that will really impact your brand—and people talk. Hopefully this has given you some ideas on how to improve your own internal recruiting process. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. I hope to hear from you soon!

There are seven steps you can take to improve your daily work efficiency. Subscribe to my Video Updates Request a Free Consultation How can we improve efficiency in our daily, modern lives? This is an issue that’s near and dear to all of our hearts. Between email notifications, dings from LinkedIn, and texts and calls from friends, family, co-workers, bosses, distant relatives, etc., certain things can really knock you off your game.  However, there are seven steps you can take to improve your work efficiency.  1. Admit and realize that no one is good at multitasking. It’s a fallacy to even think that we can multitask and do it effectively, because we really don’t, and studies bear this out. We’re much better at focusing on one task and doing it really well until you’re finished, then moving onto the next task, and so on. This way, you’ll do a wonderful job for the task you’re focusing on instead of just an “okay” job.  2. Close your emails. This way, you can focus on other critical activity. There are times to focus on emails and times to close those emails so you can focus on what you’re doing.  3. Silence your phone. If you’re in an important meeting or working within a time frame where it’s crucial that you do a good job with the task at hand, silence your phone.  These tips will help improve your daily efficiency. 4. Create and prioritize a to-do list. During the night before or early in the morning when you’re having your coffee, write down your top 10 things that you know you really have to do today and prioritize them in order of importance from one to 10. It’s okay to not get all 10 of those items accomplished. If you only get seven of them done, you can always get to the other three tomorrow when you start the list-making process all over again. Whichever task was No. 8 yesterday may be lower or higher on the list today. 5. Delegate work to other team members. Look at the things on your plate and ask what you can delegate to someone else. Who knows—that someone might be better at doing certain work than you are. 6. Think about what activities aren’t worth your time. If you can calculate what your time is worth per hour, ask what kind of work you can outsource to other people so that your time becomes more valuable and you can focus more on doing what you’re good at. 7. Block your time. Use time blocking to schedule your time—not only for the important things but also for coffee breaks and personal time you might want to spend with your family. Tools like Calendly can be very helpful in this regard. If you have any other questions about how to improve efficiency in your daily life or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you.

Here is part two of my series about the value of recruiting firms. There are six more important reasons to mention that make recruiters worth it to you. Subscribe to my Video Updates Request a Free Consultation Welcome to the second installment of my two-part series discussing the value of recruiting services. As you may recall, in part one we mentioned expertise, being able to cast a wider net, cost, and confidentiality as the first four reasons that make recruiters valuable. Today, I have six more reasons to share to fully illustrate why recruiters are worth it: 1. Speed. Using an external search firm makes sense when speed is of the essence because they can reach out to the “A” players quickly and will have already built up a rapport with those candidates. They’ll be able to get them on the phone and get them qualified, interested, and vetted, and also get them in touch with you right away. They will also eliminate subpar candidates not worth your consideration. 2. Post-hire downtime, or how quickly they can get someone amped up for the job you’re offering. When working with a search firm, you should be even pickier than when you’re hiring within your own walls. You’re paying a fee, so you want someone from the industry who can knock that particular job out of the park and make you feel after the interview’s over that they can hit the ground running, deliver value, and give you a high probability of success. 3. Unbiased, third-party input. When working with a search firm, you’ll know it’s a great partnership when they pull people from process willingly and give you feedback that you’re a little surprised by. You want a company that’s really, truly working for you. When they debrief candidates, for example, they should let you know which ones are super-pumped about the opportunity and which ones you have a good chance to land. They should also bring you feedback on negotiating data points as well, which brings me to my next point… Roles that are high-impact and hard to fill are perfect examples of when it makes sense to use an external search firm. 4. Negotiation. A great search firm will negotiate on your behalf to get the right people onboarded and feed you the right information so you can make the first offer work and avoid back-and-forth negotiating and multiple counteroffers. If those kinds of frustrations are impacting you, you might want to evaluate who you’re working with as a partner. 5. Prioritizing company resources. Roles that are high-impact and hard to fill are perfect examples of when it makes sense to use an external search firm. You’re improving your odds that you’ll see the strongest and best candidates and you’ll receive more benchmarking to make the best hire. 6. Post-hire partnership. Great search firms are helping companies nowadays with employee engagement and retention and also giving them advice, counsel, and training in the best practice areas. If you have any questions about the value recruiters can bring to you or there’s anything else I can help you with, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you.