OFCCP Compliance Rules You Might Not be Aware Of

May 28, 2013 By 2 Comments

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I would bet there are OFCCP compliance rules that you might not be aware of. As human resource professionals, we know all to well how tough it can be to keep up with rule changes issued by the OFCCP. For example, Quest Diagnostics, a medical testing company, found itself in hot water and had adjust its hiring practices after the New York Attorney General’s office determined that the company broke the law when it refused to hire job applicants who had criminal convictions during the previous seven years, according to a report from Lexology.

Listen, it’s simply bad business to not understand the OFCCP regulations and to put your company at risk with discriminatory hiring practices. Moreover,it pays to invest time on a regular basis to keep yourself informed on OFCCP rules and regulations to ensure that your organization remains in compliance and out of the hot seat. One thing that people who have been through an OFCCP audit will tell you is: once you’ve been audited, expect to be audited again and again.

To minimize your organization’s potential liability for engaging in discriminatory hiring practices, follow these easy steps.

1. Take the time to visit the OFCCP website on a regular basis. Repeated visits to the site will help you keep up with the latest news about rules and regulations, and to learn about companies that have violated the rules, so you can learn from their mistakes.  As an HR professional at an employer with a government contract, it’s your responsibility to know the rules.

2. Always consult with an expert. If you don’t have an expert in-house, find a reputable labor attorney or work with a leading affirmative action consulting firm. We recommend Pinnacle HR Consulting. They have an entire practice dedicated to recruitment compliance. Don’t leave compliance to chance. get another set of eyes on your hiring program.

3. Choose an applicant tracking system that makes staying OFCCP compliant easy. Knowing what to look for and understanding the right questions to ask when choosing an ATS 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. Here is an infographic that tells what questions to ask when selecting the right applicant tracking software.

 

Filed Under: applicant tracking software, Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, choosing recruiting software, EEO, EEOC, OFCCP, Recruiting Advice, Safe Hiring

It’s a good thing NFL teams are beholden to OFCCP Compliance

May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

It’s a good thing NFL teams are beholden to OFCCP compliance. ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd suggested that when GMs for NFL teams are interviewing potential players, they should be able to ask any question they feel will help them determine the success potential of that player for their team. Jeff Baker, Vice President and Partner at Pinnacle HR Consulting Services, a Newton partner, agreed but warned how it could be different if interviewing with a federal contractor rather than an NFL team. He also worked in a quick plug for Pinnacle HR Consulting Services.

If you are not already familiar with Pinnacle HR Consulting, the firm is the industry leader of affirmative action planning and recruitment compliance consulting. In short, Jeff and his team create affirmative action plans for employers to ensure OFCCP and EEOC compliance.  Earlier this year Newton and Pinnacle announced a strategic partnership. Read the press release here.

Through our partnership, the experts at Pinnacle will be available to provide strategic recruitment compliance and affirmative action consulting with a keen understanding of the Newton Applicant Tracking System.

If you are interested in speaking with an expert at Pinnacle, just click here.

 

Filed Under: applicant tracking system, EEOC, OFCCP, Partners, Recruiting Advice, Safe Hiring, Videos

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

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

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

The Safe Hiring Dream Team

April 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Sometimes when I have a minute to sit and think about the people that I’ve met since we started Newton, I am humbled, really kind of amazed. If I were still in an HR or recruiting role, I would have any problem or question covered with a quick email or phone call.

So, today, as I was starting to put together some collateral  for our customers on resources for safe hiring, I sat back and looked at the experts that our clients have access to. It’s a safe hiring dream team.

Here is the starting forward line (it’s a hockey reference).

Starting Center

This week, Newton Software partnered with Employment Screening Resources  (ESR) to provide our customers with integrated background checks. ESR’s CEO is Les Rosen, a recognized expert in background screen. He, quite literally wrote the book on safe hiring. Les is also a frequent contributor to the ESRNEWS, the de facto news source for the background check industry

Catch Les on Newton’s upcoming webinar: Getting Started with Integrated Background Checks. Newton customers can register here.

Starting Wing

Another great partner of Newton and a wonderful resource for the HR community at large is Dr. Stephanie Thomas, is the Founder and CEO of Thomas Econometrics Inc., a firm specializing in quantitative solutions to complex, unstructured problems. She has provided economic and statistical consulting services to Fortune 500 companies, privately held businesses, and government agencies such as the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Stephanie is also the host of the popular podcast, The Proactive Employer, a resource for the latest news and commentary on workplace issues, HR best practices, employment litigation risk management and EEO and OFCCP compliance. The Proactive Employer focuses on issues of interest to HR professionals, compliance officers, corporate counsel, employment attorneys, expert consultants and others interested in workplace issues in the United States and around the world.

On a side note, The Proactive Employer will be hosting the Director of the OFCCP, Patricia Shiu on May 17th, 2012 to discuss the Department of Labor’s goal of “Good Jobs For Everyone” and how her Agency—OFCCP—is working to achieve that goal.  More to come on this.

Starting Wing

This week we’re also adding Carla Irwin to our cadre of partner experts. Carla is the founder and managing partner of Carla Irwin and Associates,  a firm that specializes in developing and implementing Affirmative Action Programs (AAP) for Federal Contractors. With clients ranging from small business to Fortune 100 corporations, Carla and her team supplement their  clients’ human resources functions with in-depth AAP knowledge and expert systems.

The team at Newton Software is obsessed with improving the areas of hiring that have been the hardest for employers to optimize. And, like fixing the problems that always seem to be overlooked or just accepted, we’re also always promoting the concepts of safe hiring. That is, we’re always looking for ways that our popular applicant tracking software can create and reinforce processes to help reduce the risks faced by our HR constituents.




Filed Under: Blog, EEOC, Recruiting Advice, Safer Hiring

Green is Go. Red is No.®

April 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Hiring is, at its simplest, a linear process, characterized by discrete stages that are driven by yes and no decisions.  The easiest way to hire people faster is to eliminate wasted steps in your recruiting process and reduce periods of inactivity i.e. waiting. We design Newton to standardize the process of hiring by removing inefficient activities (i.e., friction) from the hiring process, reducing periods of inactivity (wasted time) and promoting decision making. Green is Go. Red is No.®

Here’s how it works:


Organizations that choose Newton get more than an easy-to-use applicant tracking system. They get a platform that’s designed around a proven, fully optimized workflow that promotes collaboration, captures critical data for compliance, and provides game-changing analytics. It’s not just a tool … it’s an infrastructure for recruiting.

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, Blog, choosing recruiting software, interviewing, Lean Hiring, Recruiting Advice, Videos

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

Get Lean: A Guide to Lean Hiring

March 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

It’s undeniable, over the years; hiring processes have become more complex. In many ways, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, the work that most of us do has become more sophisticated.  But, does complexity really lead to better, faster hires? Of course not. In fact, many smart organizations have started a trend, a return to simplicity, that allows them to compete for talent more efficiently. This trend is called lean hiring.

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. We defined lean hiring a couple of year ago as the systematic approach to recruiting that increases overall productivity by eliminating wasted steps and periods of inactivity, maximizing resources and promoting consistency by optimizing processes and tools. The hiring process is a natural candidate for lean because, at its purest form, hiring is simply a series of sequential events that are driven by yes and no decisions.

Organizations that adopt lean hiring not only hire faster, safe time, money and resources and create a stronger “hiring culture”, they also enjoy a variety of benefits such as:

• Consistent collection of EEO and OFCCP compliance information

• The ability to collect and better analyze recruiting performance metrics

• Increased collaboration and user adoption rates amongst hiring managers

• Higher offer to hire close ratios

So how can you get lean? Well, keep reading. We’ve put together a short guide to get you thinking “lean”.


You are not making sausage, you are hiring people.

Are you just putting more candidates into the meat grinder or are you trying to hire better people faster? Smart organizations place more emphasis on simplifying their process, driving decisions, being consistent and treating applicants like people, not parts.



Quick Tip: Don’t confuse getting more applicants with process improvement. Many organizations focus exclusively on attracting more applicants rather than thoughtfully “processing” the people that appear interesting.


Simplify

The easiest way to hire better people faster is to simplify your recruiting process by eliminating wasted steps, paper forms, burning hoops and anything else that creates unnecessary friction in your process. Dissect your entire recruiting process from job approval to requesting a background check and making an offers. Remove anything that can create inefficiency. Next, standardize the stages of your recruiting process across your company while maintaining enough flexibility to address dynamic events.

Quick Tip: Avoid over customization, extra steps, paper forms, excessive consensus building and anything else that creates unnecessary complexity.


Drive Decisions

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 “lean”. 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.


Quick Tip: Choose applicant tracking software that is designed to drive the decisions that drive hiring and one that’s easy enough for everyone on your team to use with little or no training.


Be Consistent

As with any process, consistency is only achieved through discipline and a whole lot of practice. Ultimately, consistency drives more than just efficiency or cost reductions, it’s also critical for promoting compliance and producing measurable analytics. Only with a lean recruiting process with well defined stages, will you capture all the required compliance output, pinpoint bottlenecks and continuously find areas for improvement.


Quick Tip: Standardize recruiting processes across your company. Once you thoughtfully set your course, stay on it and make minor adjustments along the way.  Among other things, this will make measuring results and reporting key data manageable.







Filed Under: Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, Blog, Industry Trends, Lean Hiring, Recruiting Advice

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
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