<p>Callie and Claire talk live from SHRM's Leadership Development Forum (LDF) about employer branding, the importance of communication, looking for the "purple squirrel" and really investing in the candidate experience.<br /><br />Employer or potential employee--you don't want to miss this episode.</p>
Callie and Claire talk live from SHRM's Leadership Development Forum (LDF) about employer branding, the importance of communication, looking for the "purple squirrel" and really investing in the candidate experience.
Employer or potential employee--you don't want to miss this episode.
Callie Zipple:
Welcome back to Honest HR with Callie Zipple, your host. We are recording in-person again at LDF. For those that listened to our episode last week, I was with Claire and I'm excited that I'm back with Claire for this week's episode. We're talking about a different topic. Last week's topic was building credibility and this week's topic is a little bit more specific to Claire's background. Claire spends a lot of time in talent and recruitment. One of the topics that she suggested, or that we've talked about in previous interactions is this war on talent or this idea about talent and it's getting harder to find people and those sorts of things. That's what our topic is going to be today. I'm going to have Claire introduce herself again in case this is the first time you're joining us on honest HR. Claire, introduce yourself again, tell us a little bit about your background and then we'll jump into our topic.
Claire Petrie:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Callie. I've been in corporate talent acquisition HR for about six years and just moved over to third-party agency recruitment earlier this year. It's been interesting. I hear most people start in agency recruitment and make the jump into corporate, so I guess I went backwards a little bit. I don't know.
Callie Zipple:
Actually, my background as those of you know if you've listened to episodes before is exactly what you just said. I started in agency recruiting and then was looking for a corporate based recruiter or HR generalist role, and so I actually made the shift into that HR generalist role, but had a lot of talent acquisition or recruiting responsibilities with that role. It's funny that you made the opposite shift and you're right, the typical entry point is agency to corporate recruiting. Again, thank you for being here. Our topic today is war on talent and the idea that this is a new concept for companies and for organizations. Frankly, we talked about this, it's not new. It's not something that we should only just be talking about. This war on talent has been real. We've always been searching for the best in the brightest candidate and companies who haven't been doing that, frankly, are probably 10 years behind the companies who do that well. Let's talk about that a little bit. In your opinion, why is the war on talent considered a new topic in the HR space?
Claire Petrie:
I think the war for talent is considered a new topic. I think just it's been a hotter topic recently because of low unemployment rates and skill shortages of skilled trades in certain areas. I think in some geographic areas and industries, there is a skill shortage, but I think that a lot of companies are quick to say there's a war for talent before really evaluating their internal processes. I think it's more of an external issue, but yeah, like you said, there's always been a war for good talent. Companies have to compete to hire the best of the best, so yeah, what are you going to change to compete in the current landscape?
Callie Zipple:
I'm not trying to say necessarily that companies that haven't been approaching this in a very strategic and directive way are not going to be successful. I know that there are companies that are just saying, "You know what? The war on talent is real. We need more recruiters. We need better systems. We need all these things." They're probably going to be successful in recruiting some of those good people to their organizations, but I really feel that the organizations that have paid attention to this idea for decades, or even a few years before the conversation that we're having now are probably going to be more successful. They've already taken strides to build on things that employees want to see in organizations, whether it's their culture or whether it's their values, whether it's something that they are using to go above and beyond their competition. I think the organizations that have paid attention to that for longer are going to be more successful in today's war on talent, if you will.
Claire Petrie:
Yeah, I agree. I think the companies who have paid attention to it longer understand the employer branding piece, which I think plays into it a lot. Attracting those best candidates is definitely going to be about what you have to offer as a company, not so much that it's hard to find the candidates.
Callie Zipple:
I think sometimes too, when I'm thinking about organizations that maybe aren't doing the recruiting thing well have done it well in the past, so maybe they've just become complacent. Maybe five years ago, they implemented a new employee orientation and that at that time, that was cutting edge and they were ahead of this war on talent and they've left it there. They've left that same orientation in place for five years. It's so important to not become complacent in a function like recruiting because people are always going to be looking for that next best thing. When you find it, there's going to be something else that's better. I think that's just so important for our recruiters and our talent acquisition teams to realize that if you're doing it well, there's probably somebody else who's doing it better. You need to emulate that better in order to stay ahead of those who aren't doing it at all, or worse than you are.
Let's move on. You mentioned a couple of times in our last episode that you work very closely with hiring managers and you have for years and years. Let's talk about... And as I mentioned, I have experience in talent acquisition, specifically from a agency perspective so I understand this idea of intake calls, but for our listeners that maybe don't understand what an intake call is or what an intake call looks like, invite us into your process. What does an intake call typically look like between you and a hiring manager that you're recruiting for?
Claire Petrie:
Yeah, absolutely. I like to call them kickoff meetings. It sounds a little bit more positive in my opinion. I love kicking off a new process, getting the hiring manager excited about it. The pain then in the agency world sometimes with a client you haven't had a good relationship with yet. You haven't gotten a chance to know them. They just kind of give you the job description and say, "Go." Once I get this time with the hiring team, I know how valuable it is. When I first started off in my career doing kickoff meetings, I would keep it a bit more basic.
Again, this was again just building my credibility. I didn't really know what to ask at first. Asking for must haves, nice to haves degree requirements. Now I ask more questions around how this open position's role ties to the organizational goals. What does career progression look like? What do you love about working here that I can share with the potential new hire during the initial interviews? A lot of my hiring managers haven't thought about that person's influence on the organizational goals, which blows my mind, or has a hard time answering what they love about working there. I usually joke and I'm like, "How am I supposed to convey how awesome this position is when you can't tell me what you love about working there?"
Callie Zipple:
What's so crazy about that is that you don't work for that organization. If you're talking to a hiring manager and that hiring manager can't tell you why you should help them recruit somebody to that organization because that's what was the most difficult part for me working in agency recruiting. I couldn't identify with the mission vision values because I didn't work there. If you don't have that relationship with a hiring manager where they can accurately depict what a day in the life at this company looks like, you're already starting behind the gate, right?
Claire Petrie:
Yeah, absolutely. I loved when they were stumped and frustrated by these questions because I'm like see, "You need to be able to answer this for me to help you and the reason you have me come in to help you is because you're not able to do the recruitment." I just made sure later on in my career to not just accept that laundry list of must-haves depending on what these must-haves are will affect how long it's going to take to recruit. I like to be as consultative as I can, consultative, however you say that, with my clients.
Again, with this war for talent thought, they don't think about it from the perspective of what candidates are going to think when it's been sitting out there for months, or are candidates going to think that the company can't make a good hiring decision? They just don't think about it from how candidates are thinking now when they're looking for jobs. To do this exercise in the intake meeting for them to think from the candidate's perspective is so simple, but it's really effective to get it started off on the right foot when we do have such low employment rate and competition for candidates.
Callie Zipple:
What's so interesting to me is this idea that hiring managers are so stuck in the ways that they think about the approach to recruiting someone for an open role. So long, we haven't really challenged them on this thought. Somebody recently in a session that I was in, and I think it might have been a SHRM seminar earlier this week, they were talking about job descriptions and this idea that a job description is really just the compilation of the past three to five people that have held that role. This manager is sitting there and saying, "Okay, who do I need for this role that I have open in the organization while the last person that was in this role did this? I absolutely need that. It was very beneficial to this role and my success. Two people ago did this thing really well, and so I want this new person to have both my last person's pace and my second to last person's detail."
They're explaining this person or defining this person that frankly doesn't exist. It's three or five best qualities of a bunch of different people. They're finding... And I know that this is a thought in the talent space, this purple squirrel. They're looking for this person that doesn't exist and they've built up this person in their head because of the other people that they've had in this role. Having managers think about the job, rather than the person is a shift that we've had to make in the talent space.
We've done it at SHRM, frankly. We've looked at job descriptions and said, "Do we really need this person to have X amount of experience, or is an education specific... A specific level of education really required for this job, or is it just a nice to have?" when you have that education in the job description, you're automatically eliminating people that have the skill and they've learned the skill in previous roles, but they don't necessarily have that piece of the job description. Again, getting managers to think more about the job rather than the person that they're trying to find that they've built up in their head is, I think, such a valuable shift for us to make as talent in HR professionals.
Claire Petrie:
Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is we talked about credibility in the last episode and preparation, but bringing that data to the kickoff meetings too with the hiring manager is really helpful. How many job postings there are per one qualified person and things like that. Sometimes they really just don't think of it that way. Like you said, they think that person's going to come in and they're waiting outside the door and they're going to come right in fit what they're looking for. Yeah, it helps to use data and put it in perspective that we need to focus on the actual job and what's out there to fill that job.
Callie Zipple:
I totally agree. The next thing I want to talk about is more in line with what companies can do. We've talked about the hiring manager. We've talked about the candidate and I think we'll visit the candidate in a little while about what they can do to stand out, but how can companies approach this idea of attraction in a different way, especially with the unemployment rate so low like you said? I'm not talking specifically about, "We're offering better benefits or you can bring your pet to work," or that sort of stuff. I'm talking about, the real things that they can do to set themselves apart, whether it's culture or values or those sorts of things. How can companies really set themselves apart from the competition?
Claire Petrie:
I think you're right, companies can do a better job of showing their culture and their values through their interview process. I think it's just because I'm in the agency world now, but I'm working with a lot of smaller manufacturers that are using us because they don't have their own in-house or HR recruiting. They like to interview the same way they've always interviewed, or they're not researching themselves best practices in candidate experience and things like that. That's personally what I see is a lot of work can be done in the candidate experience from the interview perspective. They don't think about who should be on the interview team. How many rounds of interviews there need to be? Have they prepped their interviewers? Because I have candidates tell me that all seven people asked them the same questions. They weren't offered a walking tour after sitting for four hours or no water or bathroom break, so things like that.
The other things that I hear from my candidates a lot about too is that the interview team, certain people were late or they switched slots for different priorities they had to get to that day in the business and the candidate really walked away thinking them being there was not valued. I think it's those simple things like that. Like you said, it doesn't have to be a huge change in your benefits to compete or a cool advertising program for those new benefits. It's just what is the low hanging fruit, in my opinion, is what I really work with them on. You don't want the fact that you were late to the interview to be the reason that candidate doesn't want to work for you. That's easily something we can work on and put tools in place to be more structured and organized.
Callie Zipple:
It's so funny that you went straight to the candidate experience because that's absolutely what I was trying to get at with this question. It's something that I thought about when I was thinking about this question in a different way. We've all, I'm assuming, I'm making an assumption, that our listeners have all been interviewed, or applied for a job, or got a job or did something to have a conversation around a new job or a new opportunity. When you go through a crappy process, you know how difficult that is to actually get excited about joining that company or learning more about that company. When you go through a great process, the experience and the excitement that builds towards your first day at that company is just the coolest experience.
I'm thinking about a lot of companies have communication, or transparency or those sorts of things identified as a value. When that comes through in the interview process or the recruitment process in general, you're able to get feedback or get answers from the recruiter when you send them an email. So many times I've heard, and I've actually experienced it in my own job search, when you send an email to a recruiter that's been super communicative up until that point and then you never hear from them again until they say, "Oh, you didn't get the job," that time period, you're thinking, "Do I really want to work for this company anyways?" I think it's so important for us to hone in on that communication. Like you said, communication to me is a low-hanging fruit. We have the mechanisms, we have the systems to make communication easier through that process. Yeah, it adds a couple extra steps to that process and I know that recruiters are oftentimes recruiting for more than one role, but when you can make somebody feel like they're getting an individualized experience, it just means so much more, I think, to that individual.
Another thing that I'll mention, and it was brought up again in a previous session that I sat in, ask the candidate how they want to be communicated to. That blew my mind because a candidate could say, "I would rather talk on the phone. I answer immediately to text messages or I am mostly reachable through email." If you are calling a candidate who only wants to get texts, they're not going to answer your phone. Frankly, a lot of people have full mailboxes or they don't even have their voicemails set up. If you ask them how you want to be communicated to, you know automatically that picking up that phone and calling that candidate isn't going to resonate with them and you're probably not going to have the ability to connect with that person. That comes back to ghosting. If you try and communicate with a candidate in a way that doesn't reach them, you're going to feel like they've ghosted you and that candidate probably feels the same way because they're not checking the medium that you're using. Does that make sense?
Claire Petrie:
Yeah, absolutely. To add on that from communication from the company's perspective, that was probably the biggest thing I learned and really honed once coming to the agency world is it's the same thing with my companies. They all have different preferences on how to communicate and that's something we go over in that initial process, for sure, because we need to move through this swiftly. It's got to be organized in order to secure those best candidates, so how are we going to interact with each other?
The only other thing I just thought of is that I think it's a tough pill for a lot of companies to swallow that there are the candidates that are interviewing with them are almost always interviewing with other companies too. That's what I stress for them, we need to get this process nailed down in the beginning because we have to be organized. We have to move through it quickly and we have to really make it an excellent process in order to have that good experience for the candidates.
Callie Zipple:
I completely agree. I mentioned ghosting just now and I think I'm going to use that to shift into my next question or the next topic I want to touch on is treating the process with respect. I'm talking about it specifically from the candidate and the company. If a candidate isn't treating this relationship or this process with respect, what could happen is they encounter that person at a later date, maybe in a different HR department at a different job that they apply for in five years and that name has stuck with them so they're automatically eliminated from the process. Let's talk about that a little bit. Why is it important for, first, the candidate to treat this process and this open line of communication with respect?
Claire Petrie:
I have a funny story to share on those lines because the community that I live and work in in Western New York is very small. I recently heard of a story where a candidate ghosted one company in order to take a position with a different one. That new company that he did accept the position with is now acquiring that other company and those people remember that they didn't show up to the interview or the first day and things like that.
Callie Zipple:
Credibility. Comes back to credibility. That guy lost credibility because he didn't treat that process with respect.
Claire Petrie:
Yeah. We're learning a lot here at LDF about first impressions and how long it takes to make up for a bad first impression. There'll be a lot of work to be done on that person's behalf to overcome that behavior that he decided to do at that time. I just tell my candidates even if the specific company or position isn't a good fit for them, again since I'm from the agency perspective, but even in-house too, that they just be honest with me and let me know. I'm not going to be offended. Obviously, we're trying to fit the best folks into the organizations that we're recruiting for. I also ask my candidates to be really open with their feedback. Even if we've planned on the company side how the experience is going to go, I want them to tell me what their feedback is. Again, just establishing those relationships from the beginning, helps the candidates be more comfortable, telling you how they felt either way, the good or the bad. I just stress with them how important that is to have those connections in the future.
Callie Zipple:
It's so funny, we've said this a couple times now, so I apologize for reiterating it, but we're physically recording in-person at our Leadership Development Forum and talking about this question, I actually... There's somebody here at this conference that I have sat in an interview with years ago and it was one of my first interviews right out of college. I still think about the interview because I walked into it very naive and I bombed it. She saw me and she was like, "Oh, remember me? You interviewed with me at Acuity." Either she remembers me because we went to the same college or she remembers me because I bombed the interview so bad that it stuck with her this long. I'm going to live with the idea that she remembers me because we both went to St. Norbert, but I'll have to catch her a little bit later and ask her why that truly is.
It's so funny that it all comes back around. If I hadn't treated that process with "respect", she probably would've saw me and said SHRM hired her? It's just so important for us to realize that these people that we interact with... HR is a small world, so we're probably going to run into these people again and ghosting just isn't a good idea all around, but specifically in a recruiting or hiring process, I think.
Claire Petrie:
Yeah, exactly. That's why I just try to establish with them to give me that honest feedback because at least if they give me some feedback, I can consider them for another position if I know why they're not interested or what might be a better fit for them. By just ghosting me, they've cut that off from me being able to help them. I think that's important.
Callie Zipple:
We talked about how we both entered the HR space from a talent perspective. Do you have any suggestions or ideas for individuals who are considering entering HR from a recruitment or talent aspect?
Claire Petrie:
Absolutely. I think starting off in recruitment is a great place to start your HR career because you have to know those mission and values, like you mentioned. Be able to really portray what the company is all about. I think it's also a great responsibility to be bringing in the people that help shape the company culture. It's interesting that recruitment's usually where people start their careers because I think it's one of the areas of HR with the most responsibility. It really is a cool place to be. You have a lot on your shoulders as you're helping to select the people that you're bringing into your business. My biggest advice would be to be open-minded and positive all the time, so that's worked for me. My tagline on LinkedIn is positive and optimistic always. That's what people like know me by, which is fine.
Some people say that's a little too naive, but I'm always positive until there's a reason not to be. Then when there is a reason not to be, I just reframe my thinking. Okay, so that didn't work so what are we going to do next? Things change in recruitment all the time and it's definitely a roller coaster because all you're doing is dealing with people and people are so unpredictable. Even if you did a great job in your process, your person may just not show up on the first day. There's nothing you can do about it.
Callie Zipple:
It's fast paced, right?
Claire Petrie:
Very fast paced.
Callie Zipple:
You have to be detailed. You have to have the process mapped out and you have to be able to move at a pace that your clients or managers need you to move at.
Claire Petrie:
Yeah, absolutely. To piggyback off that, the reason I say be open-minded and positive is because the people in your business that you're working with might welcome you with open arms. Some had a bad experience with a recruiter in the past, so you already have a target on your back. Our communication styles are just so different, ours and our hiring managers. You have to be open to what other people's preferences are, how they like to communicate, how much information they're going to be willing to give you. You have to flex and ask the right questions. Yeah, just be open-minded, be patient. It can definitely take a couple months to build rapport, understand your business and your hiring manager's needs.
Callie Zipple:
The only thing I'll add to that, and I'm coming at this from a #honest perspective speaking as somebody who went from recruiting to an HR generalist role, for those who are looking to make that move, and this may be difficult for talent acquisition individuals to hear or HR managers or generalists to hear, if you start in talent or recruiting and want to make a shift to a generalist or an assistant in HR, be conscious of how much time you're spending in recruiting because sometimes when you spend enough time in recruiting, you've pigeonholed yourself as a recruiter.
Experience sometimes to hiring managers in the HR space in talent acquisition doesn't necessarily translate to the number of years that you need for an HR generalist role. If you're looking to go, again and I'm just saying in the transparency and honesty of this podcast, make sure that if you do want to make that move, you're being conscious of how much time you're spending in the talent space so that, again, you're not pigeonholing yourself into being a talent individual for your career. With that, any other final comments that you want to share around this idea of talent and doing it in a different way with our listeners?
Claire Petrie:
Yeah. I think it's just getting your hiring teams to think about back when they were that time when they were a job seeker. That's really what works best for me is having them visualize that process. But yeah, what is the low hanging fruit? What is the process, the communication that you can improve? Then, yeah, I think you're right in terms of what you mentioned about perhaps pigeonholing yourself. I know in corporate recruitment, I definitely did start to feel that way and I made a move out. What I realized in the agency world is that it's a little bit different because when you're recruiting an agency, you also have the Workers Comp, the unemployment, the safety. It is nice to have a little bit of that variety in my role now, but it is hard when you're in a big corporation where there's all these different departments to not get much exposure other than that. Yeah, I would definitely recommend branching out if you can.
Callie Zipple:
The only other thing I will add to this topic is directed more towards companies, so any high level executive listening to this podcast, please invest in your talent acquisition systems. The better the system, the easier the process is for our recruiters and for our talent professionals and frankly, the easier the process, the better candidate. Again, just putting a plug to anybody who owns budget, put it towards an ATS or an applicant tracking system to help our TA and recruiters do a better job. With that, I want to invite our listeners to reach out to you and connect with you if they want to continue this conversation around war on talent, so how can they do that?
Claire Petrie:
Yeah, absolutely. I love talking with passionate HR pros and recruiters on this war on talent and how can we get past it and improve the processes with our businesses? All my contact information is on my website, which is clairepetriehr.com. That's C-L-A-I-R-E P-E-T-R-I-E hr.com. That has my Twitter, my LinkedIn on all my blog posts. Can't wait to connect with folks over there.
Callie Zipple:
Awesome. And if you want to connect with me, remember that I'm on LinkedIn. I'm also on Twitter and Instagram at SHRM Callie Z. We do have a website where we post updates to episodes and we actually also request feedback and/or topics and guest suggestions on there as well. So I encourage you to visit that. It's shrm.org/honesthr, and we will be back with you in a few weeks for another episode of Honest HR. Thanks for coming out.