Bearing Fruit Consulting

The Usual Suspects...& Prospects & Candidates

In blog post after blog post I have used three terms that, to some, might seem to be interchangeable.  If you read recruiting articles, blogs and tweets you will see each of these three terms thrown around and utilized with little regard for what they actually mean. 

The terms are suspect, prospect and candidate. 

The latter two are the most often used,  most often confused, most often transposed and the most loosely bantered about.  Looking back over my past posts, both here and in other forums, I may even be guilty of using these terms far too loosely.  Honestly, I think it is lazy of us (those in the recruiting space) to continue to use these terms so interchangeably.  That is especially true of prospect and candidate.  Suspects, prospects and candidiates are not the same and therefore should not be treated the same during the recruiting process.  Continuing to use these terms interchangeably is likely a reflection of a common recruiting mistake - applying the same technique and recruiting process to everyone being recruited. 

Fail! 

Let's define what each of these terms mean.  Once we define them maybe we can talk about building relational recruiting strategies for each as they journey through the recruiting process. 

There Is Nothing Automatic About CRM or TRM

Four Tactics To Make Autoresponders (feel) More Human

The other day on Twitter a quick discussion occurred between me and Todd Mintz (@toddmintz) an SEO, Social Media and Marketing guy in Beaverton, Oregon.  Todd tweeted the following:

@toddmintz Job candidate yells at me for spamming him...the spam was the autoresponder message asking him to make sure to send in his resume.

Nothing about this candidates response surprised me given the result of our recently published survey results on What Prospects and Candidates Think About Recruiting Calls and the soon to be published follow up on what they think about the Recruiting Engagement. 

The autoresponder tactic is theoretically a good idea.  The objective is to help save the recruiter and the recruiting team time and effort while making them more efficient.  The autoresponder should allow candidates to get responses more quickly and efficiently as they reach certain milestones in the recruitment process or if information is lacking or incomplete. 

The false hope of autoresponders, and how they are often sold by the ATS community, is that they are providing some level of CRM or TRM.  Now I won't get into why Candidate Relationship Management shouldn't be your goal nor how the ATS products are terriblesince I have thoroughly examined both in the recent past.  There is nothing relational or Talent Relationship Management focused about autoresponders as they are executed and positioned out of the box with ATS products.

Autoresponders are cold, disingenuous, boring and transactional.  Prospects and candidates hate them almost as bad as falling into the long established black hole of no response that has tarnished recruiting teams and ATS products seemingly forever.  These autoresponders are dreaded by candidates because by their nature, wording and delivery autoresponders put into writing what candidates have always felt about their value to recruiters and recruiting teams.  That is, they feel like they are just a number or another resume/application adrift in a sea of others who are also getting either no response or the dreaded autoresponder.  

The warm and fuzzy HR types out there have even gone so far as to name their autoresponders something that makes them seem more relational or more human.  I have heard everything from TARA (Talent Acquisition & Recruiting Autoresponder) to SARA (Strategic Auto Response Application).  Most often female names are used and if anyone has a clue as to why this is true please let me know.  As if giving this autoresponder monstrosity a human name will cause the unsuspecting candidate to suddenly feel L.O.V.E.D. 

Ridiculous!

The Four Tactics We Recommend Are After The Jump

What Prospects & Candidates Say About Recruiting Calls

Some of you know I have a Recruiting Call Hall of Shame.  

Essentially this is a grouping of voice mails I have received from recruiters trying  to recruit me or looking to network for referrals.  Let me tell you they are absolutely terrible. 

Embarrassing really.

I really want to post clips of these calls on the blog so that all can join in my  complete and utter disgust with how bad so many recruiters are at making calls.  My attorney tells me that would be a bad idea because if someone recognizes their voice on the call it could mean legal trouble. 

If these calls weren’t real they would be funny. 

Late last week I talked about all the candidate data BFC has been gathering since our founding in 2006.  From this data I introduced a series of posts on What Prospects & Candidates Say about Recruiters.  If you are interested in all the data and the basics of who exactly we gathered the data from please go back and read that introductory post.

There is really no way to cover this topic and the data in 500 words or less so please forgive the length of this post.  I think this information is really important to our industry and I want to try and present the information in groupings that have synergy and context regardless of the length.  That means there will likely be more posts than just two.    

The total survey sample is 2,000 prospects and candidates (500 annually for the last 3 ½ years) across various geographies and industries with salaries over $50,000 annually.  Additionally, we requested survey data from prospects and candidates that were or are engaged with us over the last 3 ½ years.  This adds an additional 349 professionals (those who responded) to our survey data.  The total sample size (for those of you who can’t do the math) comes to 2,349.  I think that is a lot of professionals and represents a significant enough sample size to draw some reasonable conclusions from their responses.  I am not a statistician so someone may take issue with my assertion here.  Let’s get started by focusing on how recruiters are perceived when they first make contact with and attempt to engage a prospect or candidate. We called this the Recruiting Call.  

Are you ready?  If so, you can get the details after the jump.

Why Talent Acquisition vs. Recruiting - A Definition

I have often been asked what is the difference between Talent Acquisition and Recruiting.  A conversation popped up on Twitter on his topic between me, @Animal, @TalentSynch and @MikeVanDervort which prompted me to dust off this blog draft and publish it. 

Many in the HR and recruiting space will say that this is really just a question of semantics.  It is only semantics if you rename the team (or the leader the Director of Talent Acquisition) without a significant change in strategy, tactics and better results.  In my experience as a Director of Talent Acquisition (DOTA) and in working with clients on moving to a talent acquisition model there is a significant difference between those organizations that practice recruiting and those that have a talent acquisition engine. 

Yes, you read that right, Talent Acquisition Engine.  Engines make things go.  Real talent acquisition makes a business go.  Think of it this way.  If your company or client is a car it's the engine that makes it go.  The engine is talent acquisition and the fuel for that engine is the talent they provide to the engine.  Simple but true.

If you rename your recruiting function Talent Acquisition but those on that team still perform HR functions or if your HR team is doing your recruiting under this new name but also doing talent management, engagement, benes, payroll, compensation and whatever else your HR team is doing these days then calling yourself Talent Acquisition is the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig.  Renaming yourself really does just become semantics and an effort to remake yourself without actually changing what you do. 

More after the jump - Read on at your own risk! 

Hanging Out With The Cool Kids at Fistful Of Talent

Just wanted to point you all in the direction of my latest post over on Fistful Of Talent.  The title of the post is Hanging With The Cool Kids In The Talent Pool and it appears today. 

I consider the whole posse over at FOT to be "cool kids" so I feel as though I am blessed to be in their company.  Seriously, there are some really smart, witty and innovative HR and recruiting practitioners in that group. 

I still can't figure out how I got into that group!

D is for DELIVER - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

So we have come to the end of our series on Creating the Ultimate Candidate Experience.  All good things must come to an end but I am fairly confident we are going to end on a bang. 

Or at least a loud noise.

A quick recap on making your candidates feel L.O.V.E.D.  So far we have covered:

• L is for Listen
• O is for Own
• V is for Validate
• E is for Educate

And now it is time for D which stands for Deliver (on your promises).  This one may seem incredibly obvious but it is often the most difficult to execute.  With competing demands on recruiters time (especially if you are in a corporate gig where you get pulled into HR meeting after HR meeting...after HR meeting after HR meeting) delivering on what you promise can be a huge drain on your existence amidst the sea of everything else you have to do.   

In our annual passive candidate surveys and our post recruiting call and recruiting engagement surveys with those we interact with we hear, quite frequently, that many recruiters promise too much and deliver very little.  In a world in which the hiring manager or client controls the purse strings it is easy to neglect the candidate when it comes to honoring commitments and promises.  Candidates don't pay fee's, complete evaluations of your performance or run to your boss the minute you don't present 10 perfect candidates for an open requisition.

After the jump, here are three tips for Delivering:

E Is For EDUCATE - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

All You Need Is L.O.V.E.D. and the BFC "love in" on how to create the ultimate candidate experience continues.  It's probably a good idea to recap where we are and what we have covered.

First, we introduced the basics of creating the ultimate candidate experience in the form of an acronym - L.O.V.E.D.  The goal is to make every candidate feel L.O.V.E.D. 

We then began breaking down our acronym and started, logically, with L is for  LISTEN, moved on to O is for OWN and then V is for VALIDATE.  The emails on this topic have been very interesting and there has even been some discussion of these posts around the blogosphere.  Many have requested that I share a template for a Candidate Bill of Rights which I will be sure to do in a later post.

Let's move on to our next letter in the acronym - E is for EDUCATE.  More after the jump.

V Is For VALIDATE - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

The BFC version of a "love in" continues today.  As we have been discussing, creating the ultimate candidate experience requires that you make every candidate feel L.O.V.E.D.  We started the series with an overview and then moved on to cover both L (for Listen) and O (for Own).  Today we move into a discussion on V and, continuing with our Sesame Street style for this topic, V is for VALIDATE. 

No, I am not talking about Stuart Smalley type validation (you probably have to be over a certain age to get that reference) and this isn't about self help affirmation therapy or anything remotely close to that.  Once a candidate is in process with you or your organization, providing validation at different steps is critical to creating the ultimate candidate experience.  That said, if this tactic is overplayed it could lead to serious problems for you when it comes time to make the offer and close the deal.  Validate as a tactic has to be used very carefully but, when executed well at the appropriate times, it becomes a powerful weapon in creating the ultimate candidate experience. 

Let's take a look at what validating a candidate means and what it looks like.  More after the jump. 

Moving from ATS to TRMS Over at FOT

Is that enough of an acronym tease for ya?

Just a quick note to alert you all to one of my latest posts over at Fistful of Talent on converting your ATS to a TRMS.  I provide some guidance on how to take your ordinary, process swamped, compliance focused, administrivia driven Animal Tracking System and tweak it to start getting more TRM from it. 

Have a read...if you aren't sick of reading my stuff  yet. 

O Is For OWN - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

The All You Need Is L.O.V.E.D series on creating the ultimate candidate experience and a candidate bill of rights is continuing today.  Last week we looked at the first letter in our acronym L.O.V.E.D when we focused on L is for LISTEN.

Logically, today we move on to O.  O is for Own.  I am confident that nothing will get you more bang for your buck, so to speak, than executing well with OWN. 

Time and time again we hear from candidates in survey after survey about how they fall into some mysterious black hole or abyss when they apply for a position or talk to a recruiter.  I think it is the same black hole where socks seem to disappear to in the dryer.  If you want to get significantly better results as a recruiter or a recruiting organization you can do yourself a favor and get vastly better at owning your candidates.  Just raising the bar a fraction in this area will set you apart from virtually every other recruiting organization. 

That last statement is a sad indictment of our industry I suppose but it is true.  Recruiters and recruiting organizations are so bad at this aspect of creating the ultimate candidate experience that just being decent at it will put you head and shoulders above the rest.

So what does OWN actually mean you ask?   Great question, let's take a look.