Category Archives: Employee Referrals

February 23, 2016 · 5:00 am

Do You Know What Your Candidates Are Thinking? (And I don’t mean Bernie and Donald!)

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It’s here! The 2015 Talent Board North American Candidate Experience Research Report was published a couple of weeks ago. And if you have any interest at all in the relationship between the experience your employment candidates in the application process and your ability to actually hire the right talent, this report is a gold mine! Written by Madeline Laureno and Kevin W. Grossman, it’s a great read and full of useful data points.

As far as research reports go, it’s well laid out, the graphics are strong, and the data are Cand Exp 2015 3incredibly useful. The table of contents breaks out the data into 3 overarching categories:

  • Attract
  • Recruit
  • Hire

And then within each of those three categories, each has the following sections:

  • What Candidates Want
  • What Employers Are Doing
  • A Candidate Experience Case Study
  • Key Recommendations: What CandE Awards Winners Do Better

This is a very useful structure that makes the research actionable. Case studies from CandE Awards winners include Capital One, AT&T, Cumming, Hydro Québec, Comcast, and Sonos. Each of them is full of detail about what they actually do. These are among the most useful case studies I’ve seen in a long time.

The top 10 key takeaways from the 2015 North American CandE Research Report are:

  1. Most employers are not making a first impression with candidates.

  2. Candidates are becoming more sophisticated.

  3. Job boards are not dead.

  4. Mobile apply is still lagging.

  5. Communication with candidates is very weak.

  6. Employers do not offer enough opportunities for candidates to showcase skills, knowledge and experience.

  7. Employers are letting more candidates through the funnel.

  8. Employers are making interviewing more efficient.

  9. Employers are automating the onboarding stages.

  10. Onboarding is still a missed opportunity for the candidate experience.

Here’s a great example of the ease of getting to the useful data from the Attract/What Employers Are Doing section. It opens with this observation, “Employers often have little insight into what the candidates want and what they find valuable.” And follow it up with this chart:

Cand Exp 2015 2

This is pretty interesting and helpful information for organizations who are ready to step up to the challenge of being better and more effective talent attractors. There are a number of these kinds of aha! data points in the report that will not only get you thinking. They’ll get you acting.

The Talent Board is the brain child of Elaine Orler, Ed Newman and, of course, Gerry Crispin. With these three big brains behind the action, it’s no wonder this is such valuable information. I encourage you to download the report here. I’m guessing you’ll make more than one change to your talent acquisition processes as a result.

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Filed under Big Data and HR, CandE Awards, Candidate Experience, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Ed Newman, Elaine Orler, Employee Referrals, Gerry Crispin, HR Analytics, HR Data, Human Resources, The Talent Board, Uncategorized

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January 19, 2016 · 6:00 am

Employee Referrals Are Gold

data point tuesday_500

And this is why culture matters…

CareerXroads 2015 SOH

In Gerry Crispin and Chris Hoyt’s final Source of Hire lab report, the big headline is that culture matters. They don’t say it, but what they say leaves no doubt. And it’s really no big surprise, really, but CareerXRoads reports that almost 30% of their Colloquium members hire between 26-50% of their candidates from employee referrals.

It’s not hard, folks. As the talent supply continues to tighten up, your own employees are the go-to (and most cost effective source for candidates. And if your employees are looking for a job somewhere else (anywhere but here!), what is the likelihood they’ll refer the best of their connections to your company? You know the answer.

CareerXRoads has been a lone voice in the wilderness touting the value (and high incidence) of employee referrals. This report lays it out clearly, although I’m not sure the word culture is ever mentioned: employees who feel strongly positive about the culture of their organization will invite their friends, family and acquaintances to join them. It’s about the work, the boss, the innovation and collaboration, the communication, the appreciation, the respect. It’s about the culture.

No way around it:  culture matters.

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Filed under CareerXroads, China Gorman, Chris Hoyt, Culture, Data Point Tuesday, Employee Referrals, Gerry Crispin, Talent Acquisition, Uncategorized

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September 22, 2015 · 10:15 am

It’s All About the Recruiters

data point tuesday_500

Jobvite’s annual Recruiter Nation Survey is out today. In its eighth year, the survey was conducted in July 2015 and completed by 1,404 recruiting and human resources professionals in a wide range of industries.

Much of the survey data is not surprising: use of social media tools by recruiters is strong and growing; referrals are still the most effective source of quality hires; hiring activity is up; the hunt for talent will remain or get more competitive in the next 12 months. No surprises here.

Here’s a surprise, though: only 4% of recruiters DON’T use social media tools in the recruiting process. But the tools used go way beyond Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.

Jobvite 1 Sept 2015

While referrals continue to be the most effective source of good hires, the frequency that other sources provide similar results is interesting. It looks like job boards are the Scott Walker of candidate sources – they started out strong (57% of recruiters reported using them in the 2009 report) but are fading as time passes.

Jobvite 2 Sept 2015Buried on the last page of the survey analysis is some data that I found interesting having to do with what recruiters are putting in their budgets. With the rise of the RPO sector, and a seemingly robust executive search/staffing sector, only 13% of recruiters are increasing their spend in the use of outside agencies. That seems counterintuitive to me. Employment branding is the other category surprise with fully 46% of internal recruiters increasing their spend. That verifies that employment branding is a thing.

Jobvite 3 Sept 2015There are lots of vendor whitepapers out there. Many do a good job of sharing useful data and analysis that prove to be useful at the practitioner level while burnishing their corporate brand. This one does both. It also has some pretty terrific graphics and the visual style is engaging. It’s 16 pages long and is a quick read. Download it here.

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Filed under China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Employee Referrals, JobVite, Recruiting, Recruiting Technology, Social Media, Social Recruiting

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May 19, 2015 · 4:00 am

Where Do Candidates Come From?

data point tuesday_500 There is a robust conversation in the talent arena about “candidate experience” led largely by Gerry Crispin and Elaine Orler, founders of the Talent Board and the Candidate Experience Awards (#CandE). There are lots of opinions about whether ensuring that candidates for hire have a high quality experience is meaningful. Some think the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. But I think most believe treating candidates like consumers is smart business. Two new vendor publications discuss aspects of candidate experience:

  1. Creating a 21st Century Application Process from RolePoint, and
  2. Beyond Employees: Employee Referral Programs Redefined from Smashfly

Both reports were published within the last month and contain analysis of current data. The Rolepoint whitepaper was written by global recruiting legend Bill Boorman. It highlights Intuit’s approach to embracing a social approach to the apply process, with a particular focus on making the application process streamlined and device agnostic “with equal attention paid to user experience and interface on both desktop and mobile.” Bill is a legend for a reason and his approach to this topic in the whitepaper is compelling. The Smashfly presentation provides insight into the employee/candidate referral landscape with some interesting data:

  • 77% of organizations currently have a formal referral program

  • 32% of new hires come from referrals on average, and rate highest in quality among sources of hire

  • 57% of organizations limit their referral program to employees only

  • 43% extend their program beyond employees to include alumni, contractors, customers, vendors and/or partners

  • Analysis shows those that reach beyond employees get 28% more hires from referrals and 8% better quality candidates

This survey data is interesting, and I key in on the 4th bullet. Extending referrals into other stakeholder groups makes a great deal of sense – and correlates to higher quality candidates. Take a look below: Smashfly May 19 2015 If you’re in the 23% of employers without a candidate referral program, this might be a wake up and smell the coffee moment. If you’re in the 57% of organizations limiting referrals to employees only, this might be a pedal to the metal moment. Either way, whether you’re recruiting programmers, developers, customer service agents, nurses, marketers, HR professionals or executives, approaching your trusted partners – including employees – for referrals makes good, logical sense. And treating potential candidates like consumers, that is, making it as easy for them to press the “apply” button as it is to press the “buy” button seems like a tenant from Econ 101. Check out these reports from Rolepoint and Smashfly.

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Filed under Bill Boorman, Candidate Experience, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Elaine Orler, Employee Referrals, Gerry Crispin, Rolepoint, Smashfly, Talent Acquisition

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