SHRM Survey Findings: Social Recruiting

May 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

On April 11th, SHRM released findings from a recent survey on social recruiting (SHRM Survey Findings: Social Networking Websites and Recruiting/Selection).  Having read through the results, I find there are no surprises. See for yourself below. So what am I least surprised by? Read on friends.

41% of employers target executive/upper management (e.g. CEO, CFO) when searching for candidates on social media.

Makes sense. If I was still running an executive search firm, I would have another data point that would lead to more heartburn and another headache. China Gorman (my inspiration for this post) points out in her post on the survey that the 41% of employers that use social networks to source executives “could spell doom” for executive recruiting firms. I say that the search firms are already feeling it big time. I’m not the only one. Earlier this year, Business Week published an article, “Executive Headhunters Squeezed by In-House Recruiters“, where they claim that the big executive search firms’ revenues are declining by nearly 10% a quarter.

Listen, I’ve been saying this for a long time and I’ll say it again. What were once closed networks monetized by the search firms have now been made open by social networks. I call this the single greatest advancement in recruiting in the last 10 years. The accessibility of data has created massive competition for the search firms. Employers armed with good data can run what were once 6 figure searches for a fraction of the cost.

More than half (57%) of employers do not have a formal or informal policy on screening candidates via social networking sites.

The only thing surprising here is that 43% of respondents claim to have some sort of social media screening policy. I’m not buying it. This is the real elephant in the closet right now for HR departments.  With very little precedent set by the Fed, it’s no wonder that employers provide little policy on screening job applicants with social networking sites. This topic is the one to watch in the coming months for sure. There is going to be a tsunami of claims in the next 12 months.

LinkedIn is the most commonly used social networking site for screening job candidates.

Guess what? This may be the least surprising piece of data in the entire survey. 92% of respondents that use social networks claim to screen job applicants using LinkedIn. For the record, LinkedIn was followed by Facebook (58%), Twitter (31%) and Google + (25%). The biggest surprise here is that 31% percent of the respondents mentioned they screen applicants withTwitter. I just removed the Twitter app from my phone.

Using social networking is less expensive than other methods of recruiting job candidates.

In 2011, 67% of respondents claimed they use social recruiting because it was less expensive than other methods of recruiting. No surprise. However, this year, only 57% percent responded that social recruiting was less expensive. Not a surprise either. If you consider LinkedIn a social network (I don’t but that’s another story), the 10% decrease in the number of people responding that social recruiting is less expensive makes a lot of sense. LinkedIn is expensive. Otherwise, I believe that people have come to realize that a sustained social recruiting strategy is expensive to maintain just like any advertising campaign (there is a story brewing here too).

 

Filed Under: EEO, Industry Trends, Internet Trends, social recruiting, Trends

Do You Follow HR Technology Trends?

April 17, 2013 By 6 Comments

Do you follow the HR Tech industry? If not, it’s time to start. Sure, it’s not as interesting as spending a couple of minutes on Pinterest or TMZ.com. But as HR and recruiting professionals, we have to know what’s influencing change in our industry.

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion in the HR Tech world. Money has poured into the space. HR Technology startups have sprung up around the globe. And, the delivery model of HR technology has vastly improved making solutions much easier to purchase, activate and use.

Today, HR technology plays such a pivotal role in enabling HR organizations to move from personnel management to business execution that it’s impossible to ignore. Let’s face it, executives rarely ask personnel management questions anymore like “are people getting paid on time?” No. They ask questions like “is recruiting aligned with our strategic goals?”

Most HR and recruiting leaders want greater influence with the “business” so we’ve got to constantly be looking for tools to help us achieve our strategic goals. We have to move beyond the spreadsheets to provide greater visibility and those reports our executives are looking for.

So, what’s the easiest way to stay on top of the latest and greatest in the HR Technology world? Read. Find a way to aggregate news from analysts, bloggers and vendors so you can glance at news and pick out trends that interest you.

Here’s are some quick tips.

If you end up building your own Paper.li paper or have an HR Tech blog for us to follow, please share it by commenting on this post.

Filed Under: Industry Trends, Recruiting Industry

On a Mission to Build an Applicant Tracking System that Improves Process

March 25, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Mission: Improve Recruiting Process

Newton is the brainchild of recruiting professionals (that’s us) that launched the product in 2009. Since day, one we’ve been on a mission to build an applicant tracking system that improves process. We wanted to design something that would make rolling out, ramping up, managing, and improving corporate hiring programs easier. We wanted something that offered a more collaborative experience for all users. And, we needed something that was simple and easy-to-use so people would actually use it.

Today, the recruiting software market is hot. Just look at the latest numbers. There are over 300 new companies tagged with “recruiting” on CrunchBase alone. Shiny tools are popping up every week that promise to optimize or disrupt some aspect of recruiting or another. What was a space all but ignored by investors is now in the spotlight. Responsive applications that promise to mobilize, socialize and gamify recruiting are all over the web but none ever make mention of actually improving the recruiting process. I guess that kind of talk isn’t that sexy.

Our mission to improve the recruiting process for employers has never really been perceived as cool or sexy. In fact, even the mere mention of the word process often causes eyes to glaze over. But that doesn’t stop us. Having run corporate recruiting programs for over 15 years prior with paper resumes, email, spreadsheets, legacy software, sparse resources, demanding hiring managers and even more demanding executives, we understand that good process is actually as important as it gets. That’s why we obsess over designing Newton to be the best process manager possible instead of constantly chasing the next new potentially disruptive trend.

To be clear, I am not dissing or dismissing mobile, social and gamification. I do know that despite all the shiny new tools on the market, recruiting is still tough for  employers. And,when recruiting technology does well what 80% of users do all the time, it truly lives up to it’s potential. More users means more data. More data yields better analytics. Better analytics help employers find bottlenecks and issues before they become bigger problems. Sounds pretty sexy to me.

Filed Under: applicant tracking software, Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, choosing recruiting software, Corporate Philosophy, Industry Trends, Mad Scientist, 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

Design is THE Killer Feature

February 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment

design_ats

Applicant tracking systems have found their way into the mainstream and this has cast design as THE killer feature. Most employers that hire, even periodically, realize the importance of using applicant tracking software to stay organized and compliant.  While most corporate ATS tools are built with specific sized employers in mind, many offer similar feature sets. As such,design has become the number one differentiator. More than ever, employers demand user-oriented products that are easy-to-use, easy-to-learn and easy-to-remember.

Take a minute to stop and think about design. Great design isn’t just about about good looks. Remember the old saying about beauty being more than just skin deep? It’s true. Considering how employers expect a technology platform to perform, great design must go beyond the interface and be a critical part how the system actually works. Would you buy a car that looked good but had no instrumentation and the steering wheel was on the wrong side? Probably not.

When applicant tracking software is difficult to use, people just revert to email and spreadsheets. When the interface fails to clearly provide insight into the recruiting program, people are confused. When users get lost in the application, they just give up. When the information is poorly organized or doesn’t answer users’ key questions, they get frustrated and complain. See a pattern here? It’s 2013 and people don’t read instructions anymore and they don’t tolerate clunky, unintuitive systems. Traditional features are peripheral. Design is the new killer feature.

Filed Under: applicant tracking software, Design Philosophy, Industry Trends, Trends

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

Joel Passen, Applicant Tracking System Expert, at Lunch with DriveThruHR

November 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

Joel Passen, Newton’s applicant tracking system expert and Co-Founder, visits with Bryan Wempen and William Tincup on their hit show, DriveThruHR, to talk about HR and whatever else keeps him up at night

DriveThruHR talks about Human Resources with HR professionals, HR vendors and thought-leaders who support HR. They’re on every day at lunch time for 30 minutes. Give them a listen at (347) 996-5600 and share your thoughts on twitter using #dthr or @drivethruhr. We talk HR along with lots of clever bantor and thoughts every day at 12 Noon Central time at “DTHR”.

To ask a question on Twitter use the hashtag: #DTHR

Follow Joel on Twitter: @jpassen

Newton Software is a leading developer of applicant tracking systems designed to organize and improve internal recruiting programs for small and medium-sized employers (30-2500 employees). The company was started in 2009 with the goal of consumerizing applicant tracking technology by making powerful products that are easy-to-use, easy-to-purchase and easy-to-activate. Today, Newton is used by over 500 employers that enjoy great service, free support, intuitive design, industry leading user adoption rates and constant upgrades.

Contact:
Newton, Inc.
415-593-1190
http://www.newtonsoftware.com/contact/

Filed Under: Company News, Events, Industry Trends, Recruiting Advice, webcasts

The Secret to Hiring Manager Adoption

September 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

hiringmanagerChoosing the best applicant tracking software for your organization can be a confusing experience. 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 critical part of the hiring 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: unsure of what to think and what really matters.

My advice is to forget about the feature checklists and focus on the big picture, end user adoption. For employers, there are very few other fundamental concepts that matter more. If your line managers consistently use your applicant tracking platform to request and initiate approvals, you’ve addressed the paper processes at the very beginning of the talent chain and created a layer of exception management that can only exist in a digital environment. Even more critical, if hiring managers consistently help drive the decisions that drive today’s hiring programs and do so on any platform effortlessly, you’ve got a solution that will make everyone happy.

Here’s another reason to focus on manager adoption as key concept driving your ATS selection. If you’re like most HR and recruiting leaders, metrics have become the front and center topic especially when you’ve recently invested in technology. I am not talking about “big data”. I am talking about measuring what matters most like are you getting candidates the managers want to speak with? How are you processing those applicants? How long does it take your line managers to make decisions?

Remember, hiring manager input is necessary to gather the most important metrics. If the recruiting and HR users are the only ones using your 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 and will be the easiest to roll out to new managers and interviewers joining the organization every week? What system will make the most sense from day one and require the least training? Whether or not your hiring managers will adopt an ATS shouldn’t even be a question.

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

1. Choose an ATS that works on every platform that your managers work on and remember that many people want to work on the iPads these days.

2. Shop for usability. You won’t make ATS software easier to use by buying the product with the most bells and whistles.

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

4. Remember, only features that provide the best user experience will be used. Expecting managers to do too much is a recipe for failure.

5. The 90/10 rule applies to user adoption. Choose an ATS that does well what your hiring managers do 90% of the time. Hint: think about how easy it is to review resumes and make decisions.

Here’s how we do it at Newton Software

 

Filed Under: choosing recruiting software, Design Philosophy, Industry Trends, Recruiting Advice, User Adoption, Videos

The Consumerization of Applicant Tracking Software

September 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There is a lot of talk today about the “consumerization of HR software”.  Sometimes Newton’s applicant tracking software gets mentioned in such discussions.  When we started building recruiting technology, our goal was not to consumerize applicant tracking software. (As a matter of fact, I don’t think the term “consumerization” even existed when we started building Newton). But, the principles were all there and we became (and still are) obsessed with making Newton as different from run-of-the-mill enterprise software as possible. We knew that if we made the experience of choosing and using Newton more like using your favorite websites, and less like applying for a loan, we’d be creating change in the industry and more importantly, we’d be creating value.

People were ready for straightforward HR technology that does the things they need it to do without the typical rigmarole. Check-the-box feature matrixes don’t matter if the features aren’t thoughtful. The buying experience has to be informative and the activation process should follow suit and be straightforward and efficient. Once the platform is up and running, support should be fast and free.

It’s not enough just to write about what ought to happen; you must structure your entire company to design and deliver a consumer-centric HR technology experience.

From day one, Newton’s core values have always been same: build a product that we’d want to use and sell it how we’d want to buy it. Three years after starting Newton Software, our formula is the same and has proven to be a huge competitive advantage. While larger companies with more money and revenue pretend to offer simplicity, it’s evident they not structurally positioned to do so. Most small companies in the Applicant Tracking space aspire to be the big companies and follow the same path. Not us. We march to our own drummer and it’s working. We’ve managed to grow by at least 600% in the past two years and are on pace to do so again this year. Our customers like using our product and enjoy working with our teams. Best of all, the formula we use is simple. Here’s how it works.

Usability is king

Usability is, and always will be, the killer feature. The era of IT or even HR buying technology and mandating its use is over. Today, users expect easy-to-use websites that require little to no training to serve as productivity tools. If this comes at the expense of limiting customization or “me too” features and functionality, so be it. Usability is king. If people don’t use the software, nothing else matters.

Little barrier to acquisition

Hiring great people is hard but a good recruiting process is not rocket science.. That said, applicant tracking software, as with most HR tech products, is too important to merely buy over the internet with a credit card without speaking with someone that knows recruiting.  On the other side of the coin, an ATS doesn’t need to be so complicated that it takes a sales person, a sales engineer and 18 hours of discovery calls to evaluate a platform. Valuable HR products are still sold by humans. The process can take a little as an hour with an honest sales person and an at least somewhat informed buyer. We’ve always looked at it this way: if recruiting software requires a sales engineer to present the platform – it’s too complicated.

Simple to get started

The length of an activation cycle directly correlates to the complexity of the product. If a product is easy-to-use and easy to acquire, it will naturally be easy to activate and onboard.  Configuring a recruiting product should take days not weeks and should require little if any support from IT. Training users should take minutes not days. With today’s software delivery models, there is no excuse for a protracted or failed activation.

Provide free support

We asked ourselves, “If we bought a product, would paying for support make us happy?”

Everyone hates paying for support, but most companies still sell it, and some people still pay for it.  Now this doesn’t make any sense to the old guard enterprise software people but we believe that support should always be free. We’re not talking about 8 or 10 hours per year of free support, we’re talking about providing customers with free support for as long as they use our product. If you build intuitive, easy-to-use recruiting software providing free support is only logical.

Constantly enhance the product

Like your favorite consumer tech products, we’re constantly releasing new versions of Newton. Our customers receive these upgrades for free. On average, we’re releasing new functionality and enhancements every 8 weeks. This year alone, we’ve already made 6 major enhancements to Newton (approval processes, document viewer, enhanced reporting, integrated background checks, a Facebook application, Newton Touch). Customers expect enhancements. We give them more product, more innovation, more advancement and we do so by listening to them and accepting feedback and suggestions. Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Innovation is not a one-off fix, a custom report or a tweak. It’s a constant force that plays into the success of a product.

We’re not members of the “in” crowd.

Today, Newton has over 15,000 users. This year the business will grow another 600+%. We didn’t listen to the venture capitalists that told us to give our product away for free and we don’t follow the enterprise software model that predicates that you charge your customers at every turn.  We listen to our users, the consumers, the people that need to use our technology to do their jobs with as little friction as possible. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re just building simple, smart, safe applicant tracking software. Along the way, we’re using common sense and some of the same ideas that made the most admired consumer technology companies successful.

 

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Corporate Philosophy, Customer Service, Design Philosophy, Industry Trends, Trends

Feature Spotlight: NOW HIRING, a Facebook App for Newton

August 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment


For employers, generating new ways to get jobs in front of relevant talent is tough. While we don’t necessarily believe Job Boards are dead, we do believe that social networking sites like Facebook offer a great new opportunity to reach job seekers.


Here are a few stats that offer perspective:
  • Nearly 80% of all internet users are members of at least one social network (Neilsen: Sept, 2011 http://cn.nielsen. com/documents/Nielsen-Social-Media- Report_FINAL_090911.pdf)
  • 25% of all American internet traffic is comprised of activity on Facebook  (TechCrunch: Nov 19, 2010 http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/19/hitwise-facebook-accounts-for-1-in-4-page-views-in-the-u-s/)
  • Facebook is the largest social network with nearly 1 billion registered users (Facebook: May 2012 http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default. aspx?NewsAreaId=22)

With Newton’s now hiring, you don’t need to be General Motors or Proctor and Gamble to take advantage of Facebook. Now Hiring by Newton is a “corporate” Facebook application that’s designed to get an employer’s Facebook efforts off the ground quickly. It’s free for all Newton customers and it completely integrates with Newton’s applicant tracking software

Here’s how Now Hiring works:

1. Your Facebook administrator will go to Facebook and download the Now Hiring Application.

2. Next, they will  follow a couple of simple instructions that will let them fully customize the Now Hiring tab to fit your employers brand and identity.  Now,  just add a feed from Newton to pull of your open jobs and you’ve got a fully customizable job board on Facebook, the world’s largest social network.

3. Once the app is published, your recruiters can easily publish jobs to Facebook right from Newton with one click. It’s free.


4. Now that your jobs are on Facebook, applicants can easily apply to, share and like jobs on Facebook.

Listen, there’s no silver bullet when it comes to recruiting. But, creating awareness by allowing people to easily find your jobs where relevant job seekers spend time online will be a great part of your overall online recruiting strategy and with Newton it’s simple, smart  and safe.

Filed Under: Blog, Feature Spotlight, Industry Trends, Newton Now Hiring

Ripe Market for Facebook Recruiting

July 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

LinkedIn better get ready for their first real post-IPO test. Social giant, Facebook, is rumored to be close to releasing a job advertising service later this summer. According to a report by the WSJ, “Facebook Jobs” will aggregate job postings from a variety of sources and make them available in one place creating a searchable repository of jobs for users to browse. If the rumors are true, this likely will be a wildly popular service for many of Facebook’s 900,000,000 registered users.

The WSJ reports that Facebook plans to use the job postings service to initially boost engagement metrics. This also indicates that they will look to monetize “recruiting” as a revenue stream, immediately creating a giant, cash-rich competitor for sites like Indeed.com and SimplyHired, LinkedIn and other more traditional recruitment advertising vendors. This will create another valuable revenue source for Facebook, which is presently dependent primarily on social ads and virtual payments. And, with corporate job data and detailed information about job seekers, Facebook could use the “social fabric” to  provide a powerful global recruiting solution that will almost instantly rival, if not instantly surpass, LinkedIn.

The market is ripe for another big player.

Last week, I participated on a talent acquisition panel sponsored by BAHREC and covered by the editor-in-chief of ERE.net, Todd Raphael.  When LinkedIn came up as part of the conversation, it was evident that they’ve created some negative equity with the experts and attendees. The general sentiment was that LinkedIn products have become increasingly expensive while the effectiveness of once popular tools, like InMail, has fizzled. Also, LinkedIn has built walls around their garden of talent by blocking access to valuable pieces of their development API.

While some naysayers have poo-pooed Facebook’s rumored entry into the recruiting world, I believe there’s a real opportunity here. Sure, Facebook may just be firing salvos at LinkedIn to make them nervous, but there are 3 reasons that Facebook will matter in the talent acquisition sooner, rather than later:

1.  Facebook has an open platform strategy that makes developing recruiting and job advertising  tools relatively easy for developers.  Their API is open, flexible and well-documented, making it easy for companies to develop Facebook apps like Newton’s NOW HIRING that provide value to job seekers and employers. This will encourage app developers to create an ecosystem of recruiting related tools with little risk. More developers equals more apps. More apps equals more users.

2.  Facebook has other well established revenue streams that have so far proven sustainable, like advertising and micro-payments.  This allows Facebook to test the waters with little pressure while building and analyzing engagement metrics. And, they can afford to offer quite a bit of access to their massive social fabric for free. Employers like free.

3. The numbers don’t lie. Facebook is “the” social network with over 900 million registered users and growing. Recruiting has always been a numbers game and always will. No network has ever had the potential or the sheer mass that Facebook can offer employers. And, another user statistic that I find particularly compelling is that 93% of Millennials maintain a Facebook page. That’s a lot of dry powder (and goofy pictures).

So what should LinkedIn do?

In my mind the best strategy would be to engage those entities that they have walled off before. Instead of forcing users of job posting boards, ATS systems and CRM vendors to access LinkedIN content only in LinkedIN, they should be allowing for deep integrations that offer a “greater than the sum of its parts” solution. Why? Because then all those vendors could and would be selling LinkedIn accounts for LinkedIn. LinkedIn could effectively develop a channel strategy to increase growth and investors.  Alas, the chance of this happening is about as likely as my hometown of Cleveland (aka the Mistake by the Lake) winning a sports championship.

Who is going to win?

Who’s going to win when Facebook storms into recruiting? Well, just about everyone. LinkedIn may disagree. Undoubtedly, the added competition is welcomed by many LinkedIn customers who depend on LinkedIn’s tools but are becoming increasingly tired of the high-costs and eroding results. Regardless, competition will only benefit us, the employers and job seekers. I say bring it on. Let the games begin.

Filed Under: Blog, Industry Trends, Newton Now Hiring

Coming August 10th: Newton Gets Social

July 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment


On August 10th, Newton will empower customers to create fully-branded careers pages on the world’s largest social network (800 million active users).

Fresh from Newton Labs, our enhanced social features are fully integrated  with Newton’s Applicant Tracking Software, empowering employers to:
  • Create a fully-branded careers page on the world’s largest social network
  • Advertise jobs to the most relevant applicants
  • Control and schedule advertising campaigns on social networks

This is just the first release of several and represents the first offering in Newton’s Social Suite.

For updates follow Newton on Facebook.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, Industry Trends, New Releases, Trends Tagged With:

Fistful of Thank You Letters

June 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This week on the influential recruiting and HR industry blog Fistful of Talent, blogger and HR Director, Steve Gifford tackled the sensitive issue of rejection letters, those notifications that some organizations send to provide closure to candidates.

In the article, Steve writes:

“Now, you may notice that I’ve got a good handle on the amount of traffic coming onto my careers site.  We use Newton Software for applicant tracking software, which was profiled in FOT a few years back.  I can’t say enough good things about these guys; hiring managers thank me for this system almost weekly, and the credit is due to Joel’s team.  All this storytelling is to tell you this: Every single rejected candidate in Newton gets an email when they’re rejected.  No black hole, no wondering – there is a follow-through, at very least.

Because of this, I have a dummy “careers” account that originates these emails.  I check it every few weeks, just to make sure nothing critical went into the account.  And, I get responses.  Here are four of them, across the spectrum.

Thanks for considering me for the warehouse position. If you find that I may of value to your company please contact me.

See, that’s actually very nice!  He didn’t have to do that, but these things get saved forever, so it can’t hurt.  The bulk of the emails I get are along these lines.

Thank you for the short time you spent on my resume’.

OK, that’s fair.  Steve Boese’s statistic about six seconds per resume is about right for how I go through them.  What’s more, I have Newton open on my desktop pretty much all the time.  If I don’t quite want to start something new, I’ll browse through resumes for a few minutes.  The newest applicants go to the top, so I occasionally reject someone who only applied a few minutes ago.  This particular emailer applied at 8:30 AM, and got my email at 3:30 PM, but can be forgiven for thinking that no one had actually looked at their resume.  In fact, I did look at it, and looked at it again for this piece.  I was right the first time, they didn’t have the credentials I needed for that job; but I get where they’re coming from.”

Rejection letters aren’t new. Newton just deals with them more thoughtfully.

Listen, automated rejection letters (we call them Thank You Letters) aren’t a new thing. But, having tried use these features ourselves over the years as corporate recruiters, we felt it was time to reinvent them.

Newton users like Steve Gifford, quickly and easily send automatic, stage specific thank you letters to any candidate that applies to or interviews for any job without additional administrative work. And, best of all, the feature is smart so you’ll know if applicants are assigned to other jobs or have received previous thank you messages. Our product team spent a lot of time working on the experience (both employer and applicant), the interface, the workflow, and the efficiency of this feature. Many variations and hundreds of little tweaks later, we get a ton of positive feedback regarding this feature in Newton.


Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, Blog, Corporate Philosophy, Customer Service, EEOC, Industry Trends, Optimism, Trends

Newton Touch Sighting – Applicant Tracking Software for Tablets Coming Soon

May 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is an actual screenshot I took yesterday while testing Newton’s new mobile platform, Newton Touch, on my iPad. That’s right, we’re creating an entirely new platform to address our community’s desire to work with Newton on the go. And, we’re not just creating a mobile version of our existing platform. This new development will serve as a springboard to launch an entirely new version of Newton that will continue to provide industry leading usability and user adoption with industry availability!

We’re counting down the weeks to launching the first applicant tracking software platform specifically designed for tablets and mobile corporate recruiting. Stay tuned.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, Industry Trends, Mobile Recruiting, New Releases, Newton Touch

Media: Safe Hiring Discussion on The Proactive Employer

May 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Above is a re-broadcast of  a recent episode of The Proactive Employer dedicated to the topic of safe hiring. This is an hour long show hosted by risk management expert Dr. Stephanie Thomas with guests Les Rosen, the CEO of Employment Screening Resources and our own Head of Marketing, Joel Passen. The conversation explores various topics like pre-employment screening, OFCCP compliance and applicant tracking software designed to facilitate compliance.

Topics include:

  • “Warm Body Philosophy” and why it’s dangerous
  • SAFE System policies and procedures overview
  • Legal Compliance practices – applicant screening “hotspots”
  • New EEOC guidance on use of criminal histories
  • The importance of reference checks
  • Applicant Tracking Software and OFCCP reporting
  • The integration of background checks and recruiting software
  • Interview process suggestions
  • Criminal background checks
Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Blog, EEOC, Industry Trends, Recruiting Advice, Safer Hiring, Trends

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

Download Our Guide to Lean Hiring

March 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Lean hiring is about simplicity and removing the wasted steps in your recruiting process.  It’s  about focusing on optimizing your processes first and foremost. Too many of today’s recruiting “innovations” focus on cramming more people into your recruiting supply chain. This is great but, if you don’t have the tools and systems in place to effectively process people, good applicants slip through the cracks.

We’ve received lots of requests for more information about the concept of lean hiring.  Here is a quick guide that you can use to start thinking about leaning your recruiting process.

If you are investigating applicant tracking software and are looking for a platform that will help you optimize your recruiting process, we suggest you investigate Newton, the only ATS designed to improve the corporate recruiting process.


Filed Under: Blog, choosing recruiting software, Industry Trends, Lean Hiring, Recruiting Advice
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