Choose an Applicant Tracking System That Your Hiring Managers Will Use

May 14, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Choose an Applicant Tracking System That your Hiring Managers Will Use

Choose an applicant tracking system that your hiring managers will use. Pretty obvious advice right? Well, it’s harder than it sounds. These days applicant tracking software comes with all sorts of bells and whistles and it’s easy to lose sight of what matters most. In today’s connected world where recruiting moves faster than ever, it’s critical to choose recruiting software that hiring managers can and will use.

When applicant tracking software lives up to it’s potential and is easily adopted by hiring managers, employers win big with:

  • Overall process improvement
  • Enhanced collaboration
  • streamlined efficiency
  • Accurate recruiting analytics
  • foolproof recruiting compliance

Here are 5 must-haves when choosing applicant tracking software that your entire team will want to use.

1. Usability is #1

Shop for usability above everything else. Don’t be distracted by features that your hiring managers will never use. Remember, you are selecting a system that will touch all of the actors in your hiring process. If it’s easy-to-use they will use it.

2. Accessibility is key

Choose an ATS that works on any browser, any computer and on tablet devices.

3.  The 90/10 Rule

Choose an applicant tracking system that does well what your hiring managers do 90% of the time. Reviewing resumes should be a snap. Making decisions should take one click. Providing feedback shouldn’t even require a login in. Make it simple and they will use it.

4. No Login Required

Choose an applicant tracking system that empowers your team to make decisions, submit approvals, and provide feedback without even logging in. That’s right, let them have email! Some hiring managers will just never login to your ATS. If that’s the case, choose a system that lets them work how they want to work.

5. Low to No Training

Let’s face it, nobody likes training. Choose applicant tracking software that’s easy to roll out and ramp up. If the ATS is easy to learn and easy to remember, everyone wins.

Filed Under: applicant tracking software, Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, applicant tracking system, choosing recruiting software, Corporate Recruiting, Design Philosophy, Infographic, Recruiting Advice, User Adoption

Why Hiring is Hard

March 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment

hard_hiringBlog article about why today’s employers aren’t filling their open positions. To start off, the post highlights that even though there are clear signs that our economy is now in a recovery phase, unemployment rates are still very high in comparison to recoveries over the past century. Cappelli dismisses explanations for these high unemployment rates due to a sudden lack of necessary skills or education, given the relatively short five year recession time span.

Instead, Capelli proposes an interesting explanation as to why positions are simply not getting filled:  hiring is hard for employers right now. After tightening their purse strings over the past five years to make sure they stayed afloat, many employers now have far less resources to devote to the hiring process. Both recruiters and hiring managers now have more pressure on them to keep costs low while still bringing in the same level of high quality talent. This is proving to be a difficult task for most, which has kept a large percentage of job vacancies perpetually open. This is a lose-lose situation for both applicants and employers.

Sure, the recovery has been slow but it has been steady for at least the last two years. But, as Cappelli points out, employers may be making it harder to hire because they haven’t adapted to subtle changes in the economy that have shifted the pendulum back to an applicant’s market. From Cappelli: “part of the explanation may also be that this recession has gone on for so long that it changed what hiring managers think they can find in the labor market. Early on in the recession, when literally millions of people were being laid-off, it was easy to find someone fresh out of a job with the experience and skills needed to step right into your vacancy. Now in the fifth year of the downturn, unemployed candidates have often been out of work for quite a while. The candidates with current work experience that hiring managers want are working for someone else, and they aren’t desperate to take a new job.”

So what’s the bottom line for employers? It’s time to recognize that the market has changed. Demand for talent has increased. To be competitive, employers are going to have to reevaluate both job requirements and compensation rates. Talent acquisition processes and tools will need to be re-optimized to avoid costly fits and starts. And, recruiting budgets need to be revisited with an emphasis on hiring internal recruiters.

Filed Under: Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends, News, Recruiting Advice

How to Hire Average Employees

February 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment

hiring_grindOver the past decade the job market has undoubtedly taken employers and applicants on a rough ride.  When the economy tanked, our country’s unemployment and jobless claims went through the roof. Knowledge workers and less-skilled workers alike went from leisurely job-hopping to knocking on every door.  Now, as the economy is balancing out, talented job seekers are once again in demand.  Employers in a variety of competitive industries are energetically seeking those job applicants that can help give them a competitive edge or just to provide dependable, high-output labor.

One confounding question that has come up during the economic ebbs and flows is:  “Why have employers stuck to the same, old hiring processes throughout it all?”  Bloomberg Businessweek recently published an article titled “Why HR can’t innovate” that examines this phenomenon.

Instead of focusing on proven methodologies for process improvement – flexibility, nimble responses and strong collaboration – most employers have instead resorted to more of the same during thick and thin; slow, mechanical and often stand-offish hiring practices that are great a fostering participation from average performers. From Bloomberg: “The whole encrusted recruiting process (not to mention unfriendly, robotic auto-responders and the unending stream of honesty tests, writing tests, and other recruiting hurdles) makes it easy for organizations to hire drones, and it makes it hard for them to hire the brilliant and complex people they need to solve their problems.”

There are always going to be a few gems in the every industry, stories about employers that have a reputation for innovative and inspiring recruiting processes.  However, for the most part, we hear about employers that simply can’t get out of their own way. If that sounds all too familiar, it’s time to ask yourself if your recruiting program is attracting real talent or just a bunch of average applicants that are willing to tolerate your ineptitude.

Even if your company has a fresh face, a ton of funding, a good reputation and decent products and services, until proven otherwise, applicants will continue to be weary of your recruiting process. It’s up to you to break the mold and make it easier to attract the best people. Surprise candidates with a slick online application process, meaningful correspondence, prompt feedback and good service. Ooze a little creativity and be inspirational. After all, as an employer you want to be in the driver’s seat to make the decisions on who you want to hire instead of settling for who you can hire.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Corporate Recruiting, HR and Recruiters the New Marketers, Industry Trends, Recruiting Advice, Recruiting Industry

Infographic: Choosing an Applicant Tracking System to Promote EEO / OFCCP Compliance

February 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Choosing an applicant tracking system to promote EEO / OFCCP compliance can be a daunting experience. OFCCP regulations are confusing enough and most employers realize that manually tracking all of the information needed to run a compliant recruiting program is not an option anymore. We created this infographic as a guide to help you ask the right questions when choosing applicant tracking software for your organization. Knowing what to look for and understanding the right questions to ask is a great first step. We also strongly encourage you to take the time to see compliance functionality in action so you’ll understand how everything works once your ATS is live. This is important stuff; don’t just take a salesperson’s word for it or leave anything to chance.

Choosing an Applicant Tracking System to Promote EEO / OFCCP Compliance

Choosing an Applicant Tracking System to Promote EEO / OFCCP Compliance

Our experience with OFCCP compliance tracking for small and medium-sized employers

Over the years, we’ve worked with labor attorneys, affirmative action experts, HR professionals, customers and even present and former OFCCP compliance officers to ensure that Newton collects, tracks, stores and reports the correct information employers need to stay safe. Nearly 12% of Newton’s customers are GSA or sub-GSA contractors so designing SAFE software is a must. And, we’re proud to know that several of our customers have leaned on Newton to help them successfully complete OFCCP audits. At Newton, we believe that small employers deserve the best business technology available. And, for small and medium-sized businesses that are in growth mode, what could be more important than having a simple, online system that allows people to work smarter not harder while keeping them in safe and in compliance? That’s why we build Newton:  a SIMPLE, SMART, SAFE applicant tracking system that employers love to rely on.

 

Filed Under: applicant tracking software, applicant tracking system, choosing recruiting software, Corporate Recruiting, EEO, Infographic, OFCCP, Recruiting Advice, Safe Hiring Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Get Lean Infographic: Easy Steps to Improve Your Recruiting Process

January 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Improve Your Recruiting Process Through Lean Hiring

 

Our new Get Lean Infographic: Easy Steps to Improve Your Recruiting Process outlines the lastest approach to lean recruiting, the methodology smart employers are deploying to make corporate recruiting more efficient and effective. As former corporate recruiters, we know that a systematic approach to recruiting increases visibility, accountability and overall productivity (all of the “ivities”). And, as designers of applicant tracking systems, we recognize that just adding more applicants to the funnel doesn’t solve recruiting problems. After all, you’re not making sausage here. Here are some simple steps to get lean.

Simplify everything.

Smart employers realize that the easiest way to hire better people faster is to simplify the recruiting process by eliminating wasted steps, paper forms, complicated approval processes and anything else that creates unnecessary friction for applicants, recruiters and hiring managers. We suggest auditing your recruiting process periodically to find unnecessary steps, wasted activities and general bottlenecks Review the entire recruiting process starting from the initial job approval to requesting a background check and making an offer. Now, get out the red pen and remove anything that creates a bottleneck.

Drive decisions.

For nearly every employer, the hiring process is comprised common stages like phone screens and interviews that are driven by a series of yes and no decisions that act as stage-gates. It’s 2013, if you are not promoting collaboration by now, you need to start. Share decision making responsibility amongst recruiters, HR and hiring managers in a streamlined, consistent manner. By sharing responsibility and collaborating, you are creating a natural supply chain of events. Not only will it be easier to recognize bottlenecks but the visibility you’ve created will naturally promote accountability. Remember, hiring is a team sport. Everyone has a role.

Be consistent.

Build your process, encourage decision making and be consistent.Do as much as you can the same way every time. Ultimately, consistency drives more than just efficiency or cost reductions; it’s also critical for promoting compliance and contributing to measurable analytics. You can’t gather data of any sort (performance or compliance) without a consistent process. Only a lean recruiting process with well-defined stages will efficiently capture all the required compliance outputs, bottlenecks and areas for improvement.

Filed Under: applicant tracking software, Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends, Lean Hiring, Recruiting Advice

Indeed.com Recognized as a Best Source for Candidates

January 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

indeed_logoThis past week Kris Dunn, a popular Blogger and recruiting expert, recognized Indeed.com as a best source for candidates citing Gerry Crispin’s annual The Source of Hire Report. In his recent post on The HR Capitalist, Kris provided first hand data from a search that he recently conducted for a Vice President of HR stating that almost every direct reply came from Indeed. I am not surprised.

At Newton, we’ve been running metrics on source of hire since 2009. While our entire customer base is comprised of small and medium-sized employers (30-2500 FTEs on average) and Crispin’s Source of Hire Report surveys 200 much larger employers, the reported data in Newton is nearly identical to the data in Gerry’s report. Indeed.com is responsible for nearly 30% of all of the hires made by employers using Newton’s applicant tracking system. Gerry’s report has the number slightly higher. Having read a couple of posts from other ATS vendors, this seems to be right in line with what the broader market is experiencing. Indeed is the best source for candidates for nearly every size employer currently.

Fortunately for Newton customers, Indeed.com is free and employers can post as many unique jobs as needed to the world’s largest job search engine. Posting jobs through Newton takes one mouse click and jobs are automatically removed from the job board when filled or closed. Sponsored jobs (pay-per-click) are handled directly through Indeed and are quite easy to set up on the Indeed.com site.

You can check out Kris Dunn’s blog here. While you’re at it check out Gerry Crispin’s Source of Hire Report. If you can’t get enough of HR and recruiting blogs, bookmark The Cynical Girl blog. Good stuff.

Filed Under: Corporate Recruiting, HR Metrics, Industry Trends, Internet Trends, Recruiting Advice, Recruiting Industry

How to Hire a Recruiter. Look for Macgyverisms.

January 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

How to Hire a Recruiter

It came up again last week, one of my favorite things to pontificate about: how to hire a good recruiter. This time, I was sitting in a meeting with a team that is planning to revamp their recruiting program this year. We spent hours brainstorming and talking about recruiting strategies that promote accountability, visibility and all of those other ‘ilities’ that look good on a white board. Then the question came up, who’s going to actually fill these jobs? Smack. Just like that, Groundhog’s day. And so started the same conversation that I have been having for my entire professional career.

When I start meetings, I often introduce myself as a recovering recruiter. To some extent, I’m still a recruiter. Recruiting is a big part of my professional DNA. Over the years, I’ve hired and trained dozens of recruiters (agency and corporate). In 2010, I shared my insights on what attributes you should look for when hiring a recruiter. I’ve even published an interview guide and competency matrix on this blog.

The basis of my formula for hiring successful recruiters was created over 10 years ago when I was running a high-end, technical recruiting agency in Silicon Valley. Back then, I hired an industrial psychologist to develop a selection methodology for choosing recruiters with the greatest likelihood to succeed (after lots of failures of course). The psychologist created benchmarks and a psychometric assessment to distill the quintessential traits that make recruiters top performers. Here are the attributes that we used to test for:

Self-Confidence

Flexibility

Focus

This year, as I once again reflect on how to hire a recruiter, there is an attribute that I’ve added to the list: resourcefulness. I still firmly believe that self-confidence, flexibility, and focus are excellent measurable qualities that best predict the potential success of a professional recruiter. But, given the ways that recruiting has moved to the web in the past decade, in 2013 a recruiter truly has to be like MacGyver, consummately resourceful. As such, a major asset of any recruiter today should be the practical application of some technical knowledge and the inventive use of common items – like job boards, resumes databases, applicant tracking systems, Microsoft Office, Google docs, etc.

With the proliferation of available data on the internet, recruiting is no longer about keeping a private database. Especially as an internal recruiter, you don’t get by anymore with who you know. It’s about staying organized, collaborating with your stakeholders and being able to capture and document all of your work. to collaborate and to show your work. Today, recruiting is about being able to process lots of data efficiently and effectively. This means that modern recruiters have to be at the very least familiar with tools that help manage time and information as effectively as possible.

Resourcefulness naturally requires some intellectual curiosity. Recruiters have to constantly look for ways to automate or streamline iterative but necessary tasks. To be successful at any profession, one needs to stay up on the latest trends and tools. This has never been so true for recruiters. It seems like every week there’s a new recruiting tool or new productivity tool on the market. Having a general awareness of what’s out there and how these new tools work is critical to be successful as a recruiter in any field.

So this year when you’re looking to add to your recruiting team remember to look for the must-have attributes in your candidates: self-confidence, flexibility, focus AND resourcefulness. Ask interview questions that prompt candidates to share their technical aptitude and their clever tricks managing their time and lots of data. Find out their recruiting equivalents of duct tape and a Swiss Army knife. What are their “Macgyverisms”?

What critical attributes do you look for when you interview recruiters?

 

Filed Under: Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends, interviewing, Recruiting Advice

Be a Lean Hiring Machine: 3 Tips to Improve Recruiting

December 2, 2012 By 2 Comments

Describing the 2011-2012 recruiting economy as dynamic is an understatement.  In early 2011, hiring was still all but frozen and the last thing employers were worried about was how to improve recruiting. Pink slips prevailed and HR focused on damage control caused by downsizing. Now, the landscape has shifted and employers find themselves behind the eight ball again, playing in an applicants’ market. These swings in the employment sector have left many hiring programs fragmented, bloated and rife with bad habits. Across the board, inefficiency has crept in, consistency has crept out and compliance has been put at risk. For employers that want to improve recruiting in 2013, it’s time to start a new regimen. It’s time to get lean.

Lean hiring is a process defined by the same core principles as lean manufacturing, the philosophy that revolutionized process management and supply chains decades ago. Yep, the same techniques that made Toyota great in the 80′s can put your recruiting process on the path to world domination. You can read more about lean hiring here or if you’re more of a visual person start by watching the Ron Howard classic Gung Ho. Seriously, by eliminating wasted steps and periods of inactivity, maximizing resources and promoting consistency you’ll hire faster, save time, money and resources and create a stronger “hiring culture”. With lean hiring as a foundation, we’ve put together our top three tips for employers that want to trim the fat and start the new year as a lean hiring machine.

1. Simplify everything.

The easiest way to hire better people faster is to simplify your recruiting process by eliminating wasted steps, paper forms, complicated approval processes and anything else that creates unnecessary friction in your process. Dissect your entire recruiting process starting from the initial job approval to requesting a background check and making an offer. Remove anything that will create inefficiency. Next, standardize the stages of your recruiting process across your company, organize resources that will execute at every stage and make it easy for everyone to access applicant information and recruiting pipeline data online.

Tip: Get rid of all paper forms, excessive consensus building and anything else that creates unnecessary inefficiency. Avoid over customization and the urge to just “lift and shift” your existing processes to a new tool or system.

2. Drive Decisions

For nearly every employer, the hiring process is comprised of discrete, sequential events that are driven by a series of yes and no decisions that act as stage-gates. This makes the hiring process a natural candidate for an efficiency overhaul (a “leaning). By sharing decision making responsibility amongst recruiters, HR and hiring managers in a streamlined, consistent manner you will drive the events that drive hiring and eliminate periods of inactivity (waiting).  Waiting kills a hiring process (time kills deals).

Tip: Make it as easy as possible for decision makers (hiring managers) to access information and to make the yes and no decisions that drive hiring. Choose an applicant tracking system that promotes visibility and accountability without requiring massive customization and training. Complexity kills adoption rates.

3. Be Consistent

Build your process, engage decision makers and be consistent. Ultimately, consistency drives more than just efficiency or cost reductions; it’s also critical for promoting compliance and producing measurable analytics (often the number one gripe we hear from HR leaders). Only a lean recruiting process with well-defined stages will efficiently capture all the required compliance outputs, bottlenecks and areas for improvement.

Tip: Standardize recruiting processes across your company and avoid dramatic customizations for specific departments and locations. Once you thoughtfully set your course, stay on it and make minor adjustments along the way. Remember, you’ll only capture data and stay compliant if everyone participates in the process consistently.

This is a public service announcement from Newton Software, the creators of the world’s only applicant tracking system that is designed to create a lean hiring environment for employers serious about improving their recruiting programs.

Additional Resources

Contact an applicant tracking system specialist at Newton Software


 

Filed Under: applicant tracking system, Blog, Corporate Recruiting, Lean Hiring, Recruiting Advice

Choose Applicant Tracking Software that Promotes Hiring Manager Adoption

May 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Choosing the right applicant tracking software can be a daunting experience. With so much to choose from, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. Most vendors have a sweet spot, a set of features that address at least one part of the talent acquisition process. Sit through a couple of PowerPoint presentations with sales engineers clicking through their demo scripts and lots of us are back to where we started: the realization that this decision requires careful thought and a look at the bigger picture.

Here’s a tip. Forget about the feature checklists. Focus on the biggest concept, hiring manager adoption. For buyers of corporate applicant tracking software, there are very few other fundamental concepts that matter more. If your managers willingly use the platform to request and initiate approvals, you’ve zapped antiquated paper processes and created a layer of exception management that can only exist in a digital environment. Even more importantly, if hiring managers consistently help drive the yes and no decisions that drive today’s hiring programs and do so quickly and easily, it’s a huge win for you and your organization.

Here’s another reason to focuson hiring manager adoption as key concept driving your ATS shoice. If you’re like most HR and recruiting leaders, metrics have become the front and center topic. If you are going to get budget approval for a new ATS, trust me, the executives are going to want reports. In the end, if the recruiting and HR users are the only ones using the system, it’s only logical that the system will capture metrics exclusively from administrative users. This won’t yield helpful insights without significant data manipulation (you know, building spreadsheets by hand on Fridays). Only when hiring managers are consistently using an ATS will you be able to get holistic recruiting performance metrics that will help you automatically generate reports and have the knowledge to pinpoint bottlenecks and areas for improvement.

As you create your ATS shortlist, ask yourself: what system will garner the most adoption amongst all of my users? What system is the easiest to use, easiest to activate and will be the easiest to roll out to new managers and interviewers joining the organization every week? Most importantly, whether or not your hiring managers will adopt an ATS isn’t even a question anymore. Hiring manager adoption is no longer a nice benefit. It’s not a feature. Hiring manager adoption is a must.

Here are 5 tips to help you choose applicant tracking software that will promote user adoption.

1. Hiring managers don’t care about the technology. What counts is what it does for them.

2. Shop for usability. You won’t make ATS software easier to adopt by shopping for the most features.

3. Hiring managers loathe software training. Any ATS that requires extensive training will only be adopted by a small number of users.

4. Remember, only features that provide a good user experience will be used. Expecting managers to login proactively and complete a task is unrealistic.

5. The 80/20 rule applies to user adoption. Choose an ATS that does well what 80 percent of your hiring managers do all the time. Hint: think making reviewing resumes as simple as possible.

View and share the digital booklet with a friend.




Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, Blog, choosing recruiting software, Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends, Recruiting Advice, User Adoption

Video: Newton Applicant Tracking Software – See it in Action

February 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

See Newton’s applicant tracking software in action in this new short video featuring people that use it every day.

How does a busy recruiter in San Francisco, a remote Hiring Manager in Austin and a performance- minded HR Director at Corporate all do their part to support the company’s recruiting program? They use Newton, easy-to-use, recruiting software designed to organize and manage internal recruiting programs at small and medium sized organizations.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, choosing recruiting software, Corporate Recruiting, Videos

Interview Guide: How to Hire a Successful Corporate Recruiter

January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Not too long ago, we published a blog post: How to Hire a Great Recruiter. It’s a topic that we’ve been thinking about on and off for nearly 16 years and it’s recently resurfaced in a big way as the economy continues to show signs of improvement. Currently, as executives at a leading corporate applicant tracking software provider, we come into contact with hundreds of organizations that are looking for internal recruiting support. Literally, a day doesn’t go by that our team doesn’t get asked to refer a good corporate recruiter.

Unfortunately, too many companies make costly mistakes by not vetting their recruiters properly. This leads to inefficiency, wasted time, wasted resources, diminished status within the corporate hierarchy, etc. It’s not surprising. In recent years, recruiting has gotten more sophisticated. Once closed networks are wide open. Today, it’s less about processing people and more about leveraging technology, relationship building and managing information. Now more than ever, it takes talented corporate recruiters to find talented employees.

So, what’s the fundamental formula for hiring a successful corporate recruiter? Here is a guide that will help distill the characteristics so your organization has the best chance at hiring successful corporate recruiters. These must-have attributes have been developed with the help of an industrial psychologist who administered a series of tests benchmarking top performing corporate recruiters over the past 4 years.  We encourage individual organizations to use this guide as a foundation. We’ve intentionally kept the rationale broad so this guide can be used by a wide variety of organizations.

About this guide

The following is an interview guide for hiring a successful corporate recruiter. The key traits are listed in bold. A list of behavioral interview questions is provided to help screen for each trait. Take a few minutes and reflect on your conversation with the candidate and compare your observations against the high/low probabilities listed after the questions.

You can also download the guide here.

Focus

Every corporate recruiting process is full of iterative tasks that require consistency and focus to complete. With the amount of information created in a corporate recruiting processes, it’s not good enough to just be ‘good with people’ anymore. Successful corporate recruiters must be disciplined, organized and efficient.

Key questions:


  • What is your style of work – do you prefer a sustained pace or working in bursts while taking breaks?
  • Where do you waste most of your time (when you do)? Do you get distracted easily?
  • How do you organize your typical day? Describe a typical day. What tools do you use to organize your time?
  • What is the most irritating part of your current / last job- the part you wished you could have delegated? Why? How did you end up handling these tasks?
  • Give me a recent example of a situation you faced that needed your immediate attention. What happened? How did you handle it?
  • How do you prioritize tasks? When do you find time to do those iterative tasks that we all do as  recruiters like search for candidates and post jobs?
High Probability of Success Low Probability of Success
Task Oriented Social Orientation
Purposefulness Flighty
Need to Complete Tasks Need to Relate
Intense Easily Distracted
Serious Frivolous
Prepared Winging it
Need for Achievement Disorganized

Confidence

Recruiting can be a pretty thankless job. Often times, recruiters take the heat when jobs go unfilled whether it’s their fault or not. When jobs do get filled quickly, a recruiter’s job or contract can be in jeopardy. And, in many industries, recruiters face steady diet of rejection that is often due to factors like intense competition, lack of hiring manager respect, etc. As such, successful recruiters must be self-reliant, assertive and highly confident.

Key questions:

  • Please give me an example of a time when you’ve faced a contentious situation at work with a peer or hiring manager and describe how you solved it.
  • How soon could you learn this job, our space, our company well enough to be productive?
  • What kind of criticism have you been given by your managers and peers in previous positions? How appropriate is that feedback?
  • We all have our ups and downs. What typically can pull you out of a “funk”? How to you manage your “attitude adjustments”?
  • What is one of the biggest disappointments you have experienced professional or personally? How did you weather it?
  • Tell me about the most challenging internal customer you’ve ever had and how you were successful in building a working relationship with that person.
  • Rating yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being low and 10 being high, how would the people you work with rate you as a recruiter”?  How would you rate yourself?  Why?
  • How do you prefer to receive critical feedback?
  • Tell me how you deal with a candidate when they reject a job offer? What do you do after a candidate has rejected your offer?
High Probability of Success Low Probability of Success
Emotionally Secure Insecure
Self-Assured Needs Praise
Even-Tempered Emotional
Believes in his / her abilities Self-doubting
Self-Accepting Self-depreciative
Weathers Disappointment Pensive
Optimistic / Positive Negative / Pessimistic

Resourcefulness

Heavy req-loads, low budgets, lack of modern tools, highly nuanced jobs and unresponsive managers are just a few of the challenges that corporate recruiters face every day. A successful corporate recruiter must be the MacGyver of the company, an independent, uber-resourceful soul able to make use of the most limited resources to solve any problem with little or no support. Additionally, given that recruiting has almost entirely shifted online, recruiters must now be “digitally resourceful”. A notebook and spreadsheet doesn’t cut it anymore. Recruiters have to be technically competent. willing to adopt new technologies and ready to jump into the deep end – head first.

Key questions:

  • Provide an example of a time when management would not allow you to take necessary action, even though you felt it was necessary to do so. (For example, a chance in process.)
  • Have you worked in an organization that did not provide all of the tools to do your job successfully? How did that impact yon and what did you do to overcome it?
  • Give me an example of a time when you were given tasks to accomplish without advance warning or proper tools. What was your approach?
  • Give me an example of a time when you had to learn a new system, process or tool on the “fly”. What was your approach?
  • How would you rate your ability to learn new technical / internet tools. Give me an example of a time you were asked to use a new tool. How fast were you able to come up to speed?
  • What are your three favorite recruiting tools? Describe how you use these tools every day? What do you think are emerging recruiting technologies and why?
  • How do you stay on top of trends and innovations in the recruiting industry? What recruiting centric news do you read? What are you favorite recruiting content websites?
High Probability of Success Low Probability of Success
Adaptable Staid
Thinks Well “On the Fly” Inflexible
Need for Autonomy Formulaic
Unconventional Dependent
Entrepreneurial Conforming
Tech-Savvy Not Tech Savvy
Intellectually Curious Uninspired

Hiring a successful corporate recruiter is as important as ever. As the economy continues to gain strength, talent will increasingly become harder to attract and hire in nearly every industry.  Hiring a recruiter for their “network,” because they have been a recruiter for a decade or because they have experience at a hot company should take a backseat to looking for the person with the right traits. A successful corporate recruiter will have the focus to be successful in a dynamic environment, the confidence to become productive immediately, and the resourcefulness to get the job done.

Filed Under: Blog, Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends, interviewing, Recruiting Advice, Trends Tagged With: , , , ,

3 things you must do to improve your recruiting program this year

January 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As a part of our blog series “HR and Recruiters the New Marketers“, I want to share practical ways HR and recruiting professionals can put real marketing concepts to work to improve corporate recruiting programs right now. Now, I am not advising everyone to run out and spend tens of thousands of dollars on full-blown employment branding initiatives (if you want to, we have a great partner for that). Rather, I am suggesting that while the year is young, HR and recruiting pros should consider creating (or revamping) a marketing framework to optimize recruiting communications. Here is where to start.


Create / refine your corporate recruiting story

The company that provides candidates with the most information almost always ‘wins’. Remember, when people look for jobs, they are simply assessing risks. Relevant, well organized information mitigates risks and assuages fears.  Your organization may not pay the most. You may not build the sexiest product. You may not provide free organic juices or host foosball tournaments. But, if you provide opportunities that truly leverage people’s strengths, reward hard work, have flexible working hours, provide good benefits, allow people to work from home, you absolutely need to communicate this and highlight your unique attributes as part of your corporate story.


When building or refining your corporate story you need to really think about your audience. Who are you trying to appeal to?  Next, think like a marketer and build a framework to organize your message. The story needs to be personal, genuine, compelling, and delivered with commitment and consistency (we’ll get into the delivery in a bit).  Below is a framework that I’ve used to build and organize Newton Software’s corporate recruiting story. When you create this think Twitter not War and Peace.


  • Mission statement: short company history, clarify our purpose, who we serve, how we provide value
  • Key differentiators:  what makes our product exceptional in a market of mediocrity
  • The culture:  how we treat our employees, why people choose to work here, what to expect

Select and educate your ambassadors

Anyone who has the opportunity to interact with a potential employee has the privilege to tell the corporate recruiting story.  Keep in mind, interview processes should be bi-directional exchanges. It’s critical to choose interviewers that will not only effectively assess skills,talent and character but are willing and able to convey the right message.  Additionally, it’s imperative that anyone that will be exposed to candidates is a trained ambassador for your recruiting brand. Everyone’s behavior has a direct impact on each candidates’ perceptions about the organization. This is easily and often forgotten.


To take this further,think about this concept in practice. You’re  a job seeker. You’ve spent a couple of hours preparing for an interview. You arrive at the interview and are greeted at the door (yes, this should be part of HR’s plan) by someone that is expecting you. Throughout the interview process, all the actors know who you are, everyone has a consistent message and  they are clearly prepared to spend time with you. Whether you loved the content of the job or not,  your impression would be that this company has its act together and they took the process seriously. More importantly, they took you seriously. That goes a long way. The bottom line is that HR and recruiting teams must build the message and everyone that touches the recruiting process  from beginning to end. Error to the side of being a control freak.


Personal Note: While I haven’t been a job seeker in a long time, I do visit lots of businesses that are interested in our applicant tracking software. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into a company and stood around looking for someone to help me find the person that I am supposed to meet.  My first thought: is this what happens when people come in for interviews? Probably.


Create a customer experience.

As our service economy has evolved, recruiting isn’t just about processing people anymore. To attract the quality of hire necessary for modern businesses to grow, we must build relationships with candidates just as we would with potential customers. As HR professionals and recruiters, our marketing responsibilities now include creating an experience for our candidates that mimics how we treat our customers.


Professional candidates spend countless unpaid hours preparing for interviews. They research our companies on LinkedIn and Glassdoor.  They build up expectations. Unfortunately, all too often, they are met with an experience that is disappointing at best. Many candidates are still subjected to disorganized, disjointed, uncommunicative and even adversarial recruiting experiences.


By creating a recruiting process that provides candidates with a great experience – a customer experience,  you put your company in a position to make the decision as to whether you want to hire the candidate or not. Some would refer to this as being in the driver’s seat. Think of it this way,  it’s a lot easier to hire applicants when they want to come work for your organization.  Furthermore, if your recruiting process is disjointed, inconsistent, unfriendly or all of the above, you’ll not only lose the opportunity to hire top talent,  you’ll lose other hugely important hiring by-products  like employee referrals,  repeat candidates, word-of-mouth candidates, etc.


Some closing thoughts.
There is no better time for HR and recruiting professionals to build and refine marketing communication programs to support the initiatives that we own – like hiring the best people. Find time, no matter how painful that sounds, to take a step back and reflect on how your organization communicates with candidates. Examine your interview processes and find out what’s being said and how candidates are being treated. Ask yourself if you’d be excited about the opportunities being presented by your firm. I’ll bet you’ll find some things that surprise you and that you’ll want to adjust. And, I guarantee that even small changes will make a difference and allow you to be in the driver’s seat more often.



Filed Under: Blog, Corporate Recruiting, Customer Service, HR and Recruiters the New Marketers, Industry Trends, interviewing, Recruiting Advice

5 Easy Ways to Make Your Job Advertisements Work Better and Improve the Experience for Job Seekers

November 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Improve your job advertisements by Newton Software

1.  HR and Recruiting professionals need to be the Chief Marketing Officers for jobs.

Write concise, narrative job descriptions that tell the story about the position. Some employers are still inclined to advertise job requisitions designed to screen candidates by listing every skill, requirement and degree imaginable. It’s time to get more scientific and strategic about job advertisements. Put emphasis on the word “advertisement” and tell your story. Avoid the obligatory laundry list and get higher click through rates. That’s right, make your job ads interesting and more people will read them.

2. Emphasize unique qualities that show you appreciate employees.

Tell applicants what makes your company a great place to work. Free flowing artisan coffee and all you can eat snacks are nice. Gaming areas and nap rooms fine too but in many circles, these “perks” aren’t really that unique and furthermore, they aren’t things professionals look for in a job. It’s time to tell applicants about the meaningful things that you do well. Maybe it’s an education stipend, some sort of special training, great benefits or simply flexible hours. The key is to share the unique and valuable qualities that let applicants know that you care about all of your employees.  Above all, job seekers want to know that they will be treated well, compensated fairly and appreciated.  Tell them.

3.  Make the transaction easier.

Creating a cumbersome application process is restrictive and ineffective. For example, requiring applicants to create a user name and password to apply for a job not only presents a barrier but it also predicates that the applicant will come back and apply for other jobs, check on the status of their application or update their profile with new skills, degrees or certifications. They won’t. Very few companies have the brand equity to command this type of interaction with top applicants. People have too many other places to update their professional profiles these days to expect them to come back to visit your careers “portal”.  And, while this may make me wildly unpopular with some of the HR crowd, when was the last time you hired someone that applied to 6 jobs at your company or came back to update their original profile, resume or application? Top applicants aren’t going to come back and “login” and they don’t knock twice.

4.   Less is better.

Tailor your application process to capture the information that will allow you to assess applicants. In short, an online application behind a job ad is NOT a true application for employment. Employers shouldn’t ask for date of birth, social security number and other sensitive personally identifiable information (PII).  Most applicants won’t provide that type of information. And,  more importantly, why collect risky information from every applicant you receive knowing that you won’t even speak with 90% job posting respondents?

Ask for information that will allow you to better access applicants’ skills and experience to determine if they meet the minimum qualifications necessary to be successful for the job.  And, remember, there’s still no better initial assessment tool than a resume.

Streamline you application process this year. The shorter your application process the better. Our  research shows that every step added to the online application process diminishes completion rates. Use applicant tracking software to make your online application process leaner, smarter and faster.

5. Communicate with every applicant.

Whether an applicant is a go or a no, employers are obligated to communicate with every applicant. This is especially true for consumer brands, nonprofits and any other employer whose applicants can be  their customers. The application process doesn’t end when the applicant clicks the submit button anymore. This isn’t 1990. We don’t have to send applicants a rejection letter via the USPS. A simple email goes a long way and there are applicant tracking tools available that make the entire communication process nearly effortless.

Aside from doing the right thing, employers that notify applicants about the status of their candidacy mitigate risks and protracted inefficiencies by reducing duplicate applications and follow up calls to HR and  hiring managers. And, in our age of social media and the overall democratization of public sentiment, it doesn’t hurt to treat others like you’d want to be treated.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends, Recruiting Advice, Trends

Old vs Newton [Infographic]

October 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Click the infographic to enlarge.

Newton is modern, easy-to-use  applicant tracking software designed to organize and improve internal recruiting programs for small and medium sized businesses (30-3000 employees).  Newton features best-of-breed dashboards that create unparalleled visibility and transparency. And, Newton is the only ATS designed to drive the decisions that drive hiring taking into account all users in the corporate recruiting workflow. Industry leading adoption rates (+90%) ensure easy collaboration and powerful performance driven metrics allow HR and Recruiting users are always in control.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, Blog, choosing recruiting software, Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends, Infographic, User Adoption

Customization: You Shouldn’t Have to Teach Your Applicant Tracking Software How to Work

September 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here’s an interesting fact about Newton. All of our 300+ customers use the exact same core workflow. Yeah, that’s right, Newton customers don’t customize the core recruiting process.  Why? Because they don’t have to and no one ever really complains. The reason that customization doesn’t come up is because  Newton works. We designed the platform to work the way recruiting works. Our customers don’t have to tell Newton how to do recruiting. In other words, there is more than just a little recruiting DNA in the product.  A native understanding of corporate recruiting is a huge advantage of Newton’s and our customer’s.

A recent blog post by Steve Boese, a popular HR technology  product strategist, instructor, blogger  and HR community leader got us thinking about the topic of customization.  In his post, Steve writes,

“While choice, options, and freedom to adapt technology are all necessary components in the modern enterprise and consumer software age, let’s not forget there is quite a lot to commend software and hardware solutions that simply work. Turn them on, activate them, answer a few questions in configuration sure – but the sooner solutions can start solving business problems and delivering positive impact to users, without asking users to morph into armchair software developers is really the hallmark of a great solution.”

We couldn’t agree more.  When applicant tracking software integrates into your day to day without massive customization only then does it really live up to its potential.  And, when you deliver customers a product that’s designed to address a specific set of business functions, (in our case corporate recruiting at small and medium-sized organizations) there is immediate impact, little support required and it’s easy to teach others how to use it.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, Business Model, Corporate Recruiting, Design Philosophy, Industry Trends, Recruiting Advice, User Adoption

Fistful of Talent interview reveals the “HR Mafia”, a recovering addict and “the truth teller”

August 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Kris Dunn, Founder of Fistful of Talent, the popular and influential blog devoted to human capital, recently sat down with Newton Software Co-Founder, Joel Passen.   The interview uncovers the “HR Mafia”, Joel’s recovery and a recruiting methodology that Kris and Joel agree to agree on, “the funnel”.

I caught up with Joel this afternoon and asked him about the interview. “Kris Dunn is one of these guys in the industry that flat out knows his stuff. He’s been in the trenches.   To have him say that ‘he respects our game’ is flattering and encouraging to say the least.”


Read more about the origins of “the funnel”, “the truth teller” and how Newton’s applicant tracking software is built to work the way the best internal recruiting work.  Oh yeah… and about the rumor of this HR Mafia…..

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, Blog, Corporate Philosophy, Corporate Recruiting, Design Philosophy, Industry Trends, Mad Scientist, Recruiting Advice, Recruitment Outsourcing, Trends

Newton Proud to be a Cloud Computing Pioneer for Human Resources

June 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We’ve all heard the recent hype about cloud computing. From competing Microsoft and Google commercials to Apple’s recent iCloud deployment, there certainly is a lot of buzz about ‘the cloud.’ What exactly IS the cloud though, and more specifically, what impact does cloud computing have on human resources and corporate recruiting?

The cloud essentially means taking all the IT and software infrastructure off a company’s hands and placing it in the capable hands of a cloud computing provider. Most often, a provider is a large company, like Amazon, that has the server infrastructure and technical expertise to handle the needs of millions of business customers. A company like Amazon can agilely deploy servers in order to maximize efficiency and provide customers the throughput they need for their product or service at any given time.

So why is the cloud good, specifically for human resources departments? The cloud means cost efficiency, security, and dependability. Think about utilizing cloud computing like you would think about hiring any other specialist. Let’s say you needed some carpentry done – you’d obviously hire a carpenter. If you hired a plumber to do the job, he’d likely take longer, cost more and provide an inferior service.

Using Amazon or another cloud computing provider, essentially means hiring a specialist for your company or product’s software and IT infrastructure. They can get the job done as efficiently as possible because they have the resources to do so. They’re also often a massive company (like Amazon) that places the utmost responsibility in providing their cloud customers with maximum security and dependable server uptime. After-all, it’s the cloud provider’s business to make sure your business is up and running at all hours.

Hreonline recently published an article that highlights the proliferation of cloud computing as well as Software as a Service (SaaS) in the HR industry. John Malikowski of Deloitte Consulting provided an insightful quote within the piece: “We have seen a lot of business cases and implementations where CIOs, CFOs and top HR executives all are getting involved,” he says. “The cost savings are there, and total cost of ownership is now more than ever a big part of the business case for HR. Also, usability and intuitiveness are high. SaaS and cloud computing just work.”

Essentially, companies that take advantage of cloud computing can pass that advantage onto their customers. This means passing on cost-efficiency, scalability, access and dependability. Newton Software does just that by leveraging Amazon’s AWS cloud computing environment for our SaaS application.

Newton’s customer can easily deploy the best applicant tracking solution on the market in a matter of days and hours, never weeks or months. Not only is the software deployment refreshingly uncomplicated, but the software can be accessed on-demand from any computer, anywhere, anytime and from any browser or platform. Newton provides an affordable, subscription-based pricing structure that can be scaled up and down based on customer’s size and demand, just like cloud servers can be deployed based on that same demand. Newton’s application security is backed by a multi-billion dollar corporation whose public stock depends on this very reliability.

We’ve worked hard to establish Newton as an innovator in a space that has for nearly two decades has been purely focused on what we refer to as the feature arms race. Today, we stand, for the most part alone, as the only modern, pure-play ATS on the market. As our peers continue to drift (rather aimlessly) into talent management and human capital management, they now purely just maintain their applicant tracking modules, all but abandoning new development. Not us. We just invested in the infrastructure necessary to help us more effectively solve the problems that still linger in corporate human resources departments, hiring managers’ cubes and executives’ minds.

This is why Newton Software is proud to be a cloud computing pioneer for applicant tracking software. We provide businesses and human resources departments the efficiency, dependability and security that cloud computing is all about.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What Type of Applicant Tracking Software is Right for Your Organization: The Movie

April 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the most prevalent issues that ATS buyers face even before choosing a recruiting software vendor is deciphering what type of applicant tracking software is the best fit for their business. There are two main categories of recruitment technology, each with a distinct feature set designed to manage a specific type of recruiting.  Here’s a short video that breaks down the key differences between corporate applicant tracking software and applicant tracking software that’s designed for recruiting agencies and staffing firms.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, choosing recruiting software, Corporate Recruiting, Videos

Corporate Recruiters can be Office Heroes too. Here’s How:

March 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I used to dread Fridays.
While the rest of the company was hoisting their coffee cups on Friday morning in reverence to the coming weekend, I had dread. Friday was the day that I had to turn in my recruiting status report. The report would be reviewed the following Monday at 9:00am by the executive staff at their weekly meeting. Depending on how busy I was during the week, the report would take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours to complete. Instead of hitting up happy hour with the sales team on Friday afternoon, I was knee deep in a spreadsheet. And, I know that I wasn’t the only one frustrated on status report day. There are thousands of recruiters that bristle at the thought of compiling status reports and wasting time exacting data instead of actually recruiting talent.

So, why has compiling status reports been such a burden for corporate recruiters? Well, to date, the challenge with providing reports has been exacerbated by existing applicant tracking tools that fail to reflect the realities of the recruiting process. If you look at what vendors in the ATS marketplace are producing currently, it’s clear that they are still focused on what they’ve always been pushing: developing highly cumbersome data repositories with a bunch of check-box features, none of which are designed to make reporting performance metrics any easier. Let’s be real: the harden an ATS is to use, the harder it is to get any information out of it. And, if you do manage to get some workable data after hours of effort, you’ll end up with spreadsheets that look like Da Vinci’s code.

As many of you know, Newton’s core team is made up of former corporate and RPO recruiters. We understand as well as anyone that corporate recruiters are certainly not the only ones responsible for the success of recruiting programs, but they are typically left holding the bag. We also know that a lack of systemic accountability costs corporate recruiting departments money, time and resources and often leads to animosity and plenty of petty misunderstandings. Only the consistent capture and reporting of real data can back up a responsible recruiter and ultimately allow them to be more than just purely tactical or only as good as their last placement.

Good news for corporate recruiters.
There’s no need to be a victim of reporting madness on Fridays any longer. In fact, we may give you reason to throw on a cape and wow people with your reporting superpowers. Check out Newton’s custom reporting engine, a powerful tool that makes generating reports refreshingly easy. It’s not just easy to use: similar to Newton’s real-time analytics dashboard, this new tool spits out reports that are digestible, even a bit flashy. If you’re a data junky (or your manager is) the Newton custom reporting engine is like kryptonite.

Our new reporting engine empowers users to build, save and share customized reports comprised of every piece of data collected during the recruiting process. Users can generate reports on talent pipelines, user activity, requisitions, advertising performance, interview statistics, hires and more. Reports are easily built with Newton’s drag and drop interface and exported to auto-formatted spreadsheets that are production quality and ready to share with anyone. And, processing large amounts of data will not cause latency for users because the reports are generated from a reports-specific database in the Cloud. The new reporting feature even enables users to save the report structure created by an individual user so that the report can be run anytime with the click of a button. Think weekly staffing report with one click!

There’s more to come.
2011 will continue to be busy year for Newton’s product team and another great year for customers. Our custom reporting engine is just one of several important features that we’ll release this year. Our idea has always been to build the most innovative corporate applicant tracking software and we’re constantly studying the evolving recruiting marketplace so we can meet and even exceed the needs of modern recruiting programs. At the end of the day, the most rewarding part of our business is providing the tools corporate recruiters need to rise above the challenges that can plague their roles (and performance). Can we really give you superpowers? Maybe not. But we know Newton can make recruiters more effective, save them time, and elevate them into the strategic roles that can, on some days, make them heroic.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, Corporate Recruiting, Industry Trends Tagged With: , , , , , ,