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In the world of manufacturing, the engineer is often the cornerstone of success.  These professionals blend technical acumen with creative problem-solving to keep production lines running smoothly and efficiently.  But what exactly makes a great manufacturing engineer? This question is crucial for any company looking to not only sustain but excel in the competitive market of manufacturing.  A great manufacturing engineer can mean the difference between a product that meets the mark and one that sets a new standard for excellence. Technical Skills: The Nuts and Bolts To appreciate the value of a great manufacturing engineer, one must first understand the diverse range of skills they bring to the table. At the heart of these skills are technical abilities that are non-negotiable in the industry. A profound proficiency in Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software stands as a fundamental requirement. CAD is an essential tool in the engineer’s arsenal, allowing for the precise design and modification of complex parts and systems. This skill is not merely about using the software; it’s about leveraging this tool to innovate and improve designs. Understanding manufacturing processes is another critical area. A great manufacturing engineer must have a deep comprehension of various techniques like machining, welding, and assembly. This knowledge isn’t just theoretical; it’s practical and rooted in real-world application. It involves knowing what methods are best for each project and how to optimize them for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Quality control and inspection techniques also play a significant role. In manufacturing, quality is not an afterthought—it is integral to the operation. Engineers must be adept at implementing rigorous inspection routines to ensure that every product meets strict standards and regulations. This not only minimizes waste and rework but also safeguards the company’s reputation . Lastly, familiarity with manufacturing equipment and machinery is essential. A great manufacturing engineer knows their tools as well as a chef knows their kitchen. This means understanding not only how machines work but also how to troubleshoot them, enhance their operation, and even innovate to develop better manufacturing solutions. Each of these technical skills forms a vital part of the manufacturing engineer’s repertoire, enabling them to tackle complex challenges with confidence and expertise. However, technical skills alone do not make a great manufacturing engineer. While technical proficiency is crucial, truly great manufacturing engineers are distinguished by additional traits that enable them to excel. Communication skills, for instance, are paramount. Whether it’s explaining complex technical details to non-engineers, collaborating with team members, or documenting processes and results, effective communication ensures that projects run smoothly and goals are met with collective effort. Adaptability in this role cannot be overstated. The manufacturing sector is dynamic, with frequent shifts in technology , consumer demand, and industrial practices. Great engineers must not only keep pace with these changes but often anticipate and lead the adaptation process, ensuring that their company stays ahead of the curve. Leadership is another critical element. Great manufacturing engineers often rise to positions of leadership within their teams and projects. Their ability to inspire and guide others, make strategic decisions, and manage resources effectively underpins successful manufacturing operations. Lastly, a passion for continuous learning and improvement sets apart the exceptional from the competent. The field of manufacturing engineering is ever-evolving, and those who commit to ongoing education and skill refinement are more likely to innovate and improve their operations. This drive for excellence is what fosters groundbreaking advancements and maintains a company’s competitive edge. The role of a manufacturing engineer is multifaceted and vital. The blend of robust technical skills with interpersonal abilities and a forward-thinking mindset creates a professional who is not just competent but truly great. For companies aspiring to lead in the manufacturing arena, investing in such talent is not just beneficial; it is essential. A great manufacturing engineer does more than fill a role—they propel the entire team toward excellence, innovation, and success. By understanding the broad scope of what makes a great manufacturing engineer, companies can better identify and nurture these invaluable assets. Moreover, for aspiring engineers, this insight provides a clear roadmap to personal and professional development that leads to a rewarding career in manufacturing engineering. This is a journey of continual learning and growth, where each step forward significantly impacts the larger goals of efficiency, quality, and innovation in manufacturing. Soft Skills: Building Bridges and Beating Bottlenecks While the technical skills of a manufacturing engineer are easily quantifiable, the soft skills they possess are equally critical, though sometimes harder to measure. These skills enable engineers to navigate interpersonal dynamics effectively, lead teams, and overcome project obstacles with finesse. At the forefront of these essential soft skills are excellent communication abilities, both written and verbal. In the complex environment of manufacturing, the ability to clearly and concisely convey information can prevent costly misunderstandings and errors. It also ensures that everyone from the shop floor to the executive suite is aligned with project goals and processes. Adept problem-solving and critical thinking abilities are what often separates a good engineer from a great one. Manufacturing processes can be fraught with unexpected challenges—equipment failures, material issues, or design flaws—and the ability to swiftly and effectively resolve these issues is paramount. This requires not only an analytical mindset but also an innovative one that can think outside the box and devise effective solutions quickly. Teamwork and collaboration proficiency is another cornerstone of effective manufacturing engineering. No engineer works in isolation; the nature of the industry demands cooperation across various departments and disciplines. A great manufacturing engineer knows how to build team synergy and foster a collaborative spirit that elevates the entire project. Lastly, a strong work ethic and the ability to prioritize tasks are essential in a field as demanding as manufacturing. The best engineers are those who demonstrate dedication and resilience, managing their time and responsibilities with a focus on efficiency and effectiveness. This not only ensures that projects are completed on schedule but also that they meet the high standards required in the industry. Experience that Makes the Difference While skills—both technical and soft—are foundational to a manufacturing engineer’s success , the specific experiences they bring can significantly enhance their effectiveness. Experience in a manufacturing environment, for example, provides practical knowledge that is invaluable. This includes familiarity with the day-to-day operations of a production line, understanding the nuances of different manufacturing processes, and being able to anticipate and mitigate potential issues before they become problematic. Exposure to specific industries such as aerospace or automotive can be particularly advantageous. Each industry has its own set of standards, regulations, and challenges. An engineer with experience in a relevant industry brings a depth of knowledge that can greatly accelerate problem-solving and innovation within those specific contexts. Project management experience in a manufacturing setting is also a critical asset. This experience equips engineers with the skills needed to oversee projects from conception through to execution, ensuring that all aspects of the project are coordinated effectively. It also involves budget management, timeline setting, and resource allocation—all vital for the successful completion of manufacturing projects. The role of a manufacturing engineer is complex and demands a wide array of skills and experiences. Soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and a strong work ethic enable these professionals to lead and innovate within their teams. Meanwhile, specific experiences like industry exposure and project management play a crucial role in enhancing their capability to deliver high-quality results efficiently. Understanding these diverse requirements not only helps companies better evaluate and develop their engineering talent but also assists aspiring engineers in shaping their career paths. It underscores the importance of continuous personal and professional development, aiming not just to meet but exceed the evolving demands of the manufacturing industry. Thus, a great manufacturing engineer is one who not only possesses a comprehensive skill set but also continues to grow and adapt in their journey towards excellence. Beyond the Resume: Qualities We Value While the resume of a manufacturing engineer might list degrees, certifications, and technical skills , there are intrinsic qualities that are equally important, though they may not always be as visible on paper. These qualities can significantly influence the impact an engineer has on their workplace and on the products they help to create. A passion for efficiency and continuous improvement is one of these critical qualities. The best engineers are not satisfied with the status quo; they are always looking for ways to make processes faster, less expensive, and more reliable. This passion drives innovation and can lead to significant advancements in manufacturing practices and outcomes. Adaptability and a willingness to learn new technologies are also highly valued in today’s rapidly changing industrial landscape. The technology that drives manufacturing is constantly evolving, and the ability to adapt and learn is crucial. Engineers who embrace change and are eager to master new tools and technologies bring immense value to their teams and companies. A strong work ethic paired with a can-do attitude rounds out the trio of invaluable traits. These qualities reflect an engineer’s readiness to take on challenges, their resilience in the face of obstacles, and their determination to see projects through to successful completion. Engineers with this mindset are invaluable assets to any team, driving projects forward and inspiring colleagues with their dedication and positive outlook. Conclusion In sum, the qualities that make a great manufacturing engineer are a combination of technical skills, soft skills, and personal attributes that go beyond the resume. Technical expertise in areas like CAD software, manufacturing processes, and quality control is fundamental. However, soft skills such as excellent communication, problem-solving capabilities, and teamwork are just as essential for effectively leading projects and collaborating within teams. Moreover, the intrinsic qualities of passion for efficiency, adaptability, and a strong, positive work ethic are what truly distinguish a great manufacturing engineer. These engineers not only enhance the capabilities of their teams but also drive the continuous improvement that is vital for staying competitive in a fast-paced industry. If you’re looking to hire manufacturing engineer employees, contact our team today and learn how we can help you.  #hiring #Manufacturing #talentacquisition #EmergeTalentCloud #Recruiting

When reading any hiring guide, you’ve probably come across the terms “active” and “passive” regarding your potential candidates. Do you know what they mean? This guide is mainly for HR novices, new hires, and individuals who aren’t immersed in their terminology. The definitions are relatively simple, though the repercussions of them and how you treat them in your hiring process are complex and far-reaching. Let’s dig in. What is an Active Candidate? Consider the traditional model for hiring to fill a vacancy in your company. You have an open position. You know what you need out of a candidate to fill that position. So, you write a job posting. That job posting is uploaded to your website’s careers page, posted to career sites like Indeed, and possibly even advertised on print media, television, or other venues. Then you wait. As you wait, candidates fill in their applications for consideration. They submit resumes and cover letters, send emails, call your hiring team on the phone, and maybe even stop in the office to follow up. These candidates are actively seeking a job at your company. They may or may not fit the profile of the person you want for the position, but they’re the candidate pool you have; they’re the people out there, proactively putting in their applications. They’re the people you have to dig through to find the best one to hire. These are active candidates. They are active in their job search, active in their applications, and active in their follow-ups. Whether or not you hire them comes down to your hiring and vetting process, of course, but these are the people who come to you. What is a Passive Candidate? Various studies put the percentage of the total workforce – all working-age people who are not retired – actively seeking new work somewhere between 20% and 30%. The number changes over time, but it’s always relatively low. After all, there are many reasons why an individual might not be seeking a new job. Maybe they’re satisfied where they are. Maybe they’re paid so well that they’d need an obscenely good offer to leave their current position. Maybe they’re three months away from retirement and have no reason to shake things up. Whatever the case, that leaves 70-80% of the workforce in the category of “not seeking work.” These people are not active; therefore, they are passive. Passive candidates do not see your job posts because they aren’t looking. They don’t send in applications because they don’t want a new job. Unfortunately for you, from a sheer statistical standpoint, the best person to fill your open position in your company is already working for another company. They never apply, so you never see them in your candidate pool. Here’s the trick: many of these people are, in fact, open to being recruited. If you approach them with a compelling enough offer, they may be happy to leave their current company and work for you. “The benefit to a passive candidate is that, since they are not looking for a new opportunity, they probably won’t be interviewing with anyone else. With 60% of the workforce not looking for a new job but willing to discuss a new opportunity, proactive sourcing (Boolean searches, social media, etc.) will be your best bet for finding this group. Since it can be difficult to distinguish a passive candidate interested in speaking to you from one that’s not, you should be careful how you reach out to people you find through proactive sourcing.” – LinkedIn . Passive candidates are challenging to locate and hire. After all, you know very little about them. You don’t have their resumes, and you don’t have their skill testing results; all you know is they work for some other company in the same position you need filled, and seem good at it. Which Kind of Candidate is Better? Are active candidates better? There’s an argument to be made that they could be. After all, active candidates are coming to you with a motivation behind them. If they fit what you need and you treat them well, they can be a loyal asset to your company for decades. On the other hand, many active candidates seek jobs purely because they need a new job. Maybe they want less responsibility than their current role, or they’re 100% just in it for the money and benefits. They may not have any loyalty for you and be more than happy to jump ship if something better comes along. Are passive candidates better, then? Potentially. The best candidates for a role are often already employed in that role and are passive because they’re satisfied where they are, and they have job security. You can attract them to work for your company, and they may do an excellent job, leveraging those same skills in exchange for better pay or benefits than they had at their previous firm. On the other hand, many passive candidates grow lax with their skills, fall into bad habits, or fail to progress their education. They may not necessarily be able to adapt easily to a new environment and may find themselves dissatisfied, even if your offer is better. “While both proactive and reactive search methodologies can unearth top performers, the more thorough nature of proactive search techniques employed in retained search solutions means the likelihood of discovering high-caliber talent is greater. Proactive search techniques, by their very nature, leave no stone unturned and are deployed by the best headhunters and executive search firms.” – Fraser Dove . The truth is, neither kind of candidate is inherently better than another. Passive candidates make up the bulk of the workforce, so it makes sense that they cover all parts of the spectrum of a quality hire. And, of course, it’s always true that an excellent candidate may not work out in your organization for many different reasons. Other Kinds of Candidates Some analyses divide the greater workforce into more than just active and passive candidates. Other definitions may be relevant. Tip-Toe Candidates . These are candidates that are a middle ground between active and passive. A formerly-passive candidate who has grown dissatisfied with their job and is starting to put out feelers for new work but who doesn’t need to jump ship immediately and actively seek a job is a tip-toe candidate. Super-Passive Candidates . Super-passives are passive candidates who are not only not looking for work; they are not interested in work. They’re happy where they are, and nothing you can offer them could sway them away for one reason or another. You may also encounter candidates who seem to meet one definition but instead meet another. That usually happens when unscrupulous recruiters get involved. Some recruiters will attempt to portray a passive candidate as an active candidate, for example, to trick both sides into thinking the other approached them and wants them more than they genuinely do. Luckily, this is relatively rare. Is It Worth Pursuing Passive Candidates? The workforce in America is over 150 million people. For many companies, hiring outside of America is entirely on the table, so the broader available workforce is much larger. Even only 30% of that many people is still a lot of people. With so many potential active candidates out there, your job postings are probably getting hundreds, if not thousands, of applications. Depending on the role and your business’s reputation, you may be getting that many per day. You already have a great number of potential candidates to sort through. Is it worth pursuing a passive candidate when so many active candidates have already come to you? And, isn’t it even a little offensive to ignore everyone at your doorstep to go down the street and approach someone else? The truth is, it depends. Sometimes, you will be able to find excellent candidates in your active candidate pool. Good candidates need to apply for jobs, too, though better, more established employees may not need to very frequently. “Stack Overflow founder Joel Spolsky claims that many developers only apply for four jobs over their entire career. Unless you’re lucky enough to be hiring at one of those four moments, you’ll probably miss out.” – Beamery . Sometimes, your active candidates will be more than good enough to fill your available open roles. Other times, none of them quite meet the mark. For most businesses, it’s a matter of expertise. Active candidates tend to be most focused on entry-level jobs or jobs where advanced technical skills or years of experience are not as necessary. Those candidates still exist but are a minority of the active candidate pool. When you need to fill a higher-level role, including more technical and experienced roles in engineering, development, management, and more, you need people who are less likely to be actively seeking work. Passive candidates offer a better return on investment for your time and money spent recruiting. The decision whether or not to pursue passive candidates for a given role often comes down to your experiences in hiring active candidates. If your candidate pool is thin and of poor quality, and you can’t seem to find someone who fills the qualities and requirements you need, you’re faced with a decision. Do you settle for the best of the available candidates? Do you promote someone internally and hire to replace them in a less stringent role? Do you hold off as long as possible, hoping a better candidate comes along? None of these are great options, though they have their benefits. Often, the best choice is to look for a passive candidate that fits the job description and approach them. Tips for Attracting Passive Candidates One key thing to remember about passive candidates is that, by their very nature, they have leverage in the hiring process. You are coming to them, and they don’t need you or your offer. That means they can negotiate for what they want out of a role. This can include: Increase in job title/promotion in the field. Better pay than they currently get, and potentially better than you would typically offer. Better or more flexible benefits to improve their living situation and work/life balance. Continued training and education to further advance their career. Guarantees of ongoing raises, bonuses, or consideration for promotion. After all, you need to make your offer worth more to them, and it’s very rare that your name recognition and the prestige of working for you are inherently valuable. That can be true of some companies, but not very many. You will also need to offer a more streamlined consideration process. If you reach out to a passive candidate offering to poach them from their current role and, when they express interest, link them to your normal application process, most will stop responding. One of the benefits of being in-demand is being able to skip the tedious parts of the process. After all, why should they need to put in a formal application when you’re already approaching them? Why should they need to take a skills assessment when they’re already performing in the role, as evidenced by them currently working in the role? You need some process, but it should be more streamlined and faster than a traditional process for active candidates. Another critical element of recruiting passive candidates is treating them in a personalized way. Template emails and form letters don’t cut it. You’re approaching this person for a reason; treating them as though they’re just another candidate is a sure-fire way to make them lose interest. Recruiting passive candidates is difficult, especially for companies that may have never tried to do so before. It can be highly beneficial when done correctly, but it can be a massive waste of time if done poorly. Do you or your company have any questions about the differences between active and passive candidates? Was there anything we mentioned today that you would like a little more clarification on? If so, please feel free to leave a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started! We’d be more than happy to answer any of your potential questions on the topic or clear up any concerns you may be having!

Many different laws cover the employment process. Navigating the laws and compliance problems that can arise is a critical part of a successful hiring team. When developing a hiring process, you may encounter a variety of tests and assessments, or mention thereof, that can be used to refine your candidate pool and help pick the most appropriate people for a job. The question is, are those tests legal? If so, which ones? Are there legal issues you need to watch for? Let’s discuss. The Value of Legal Restrictions Many hiring managers and business owners may view legal regulations as an unnecessary burden. Perhaps they don’t see the value of the laws, or they feel that those laws don’t apply to them because they aren’t going to misuse the tool or system the law specifies should not be used. Many people fail to realize that these laws are written in the blood, sweat, and tears of the individuals harmed by them. An assessment that is deemed illegal is often considered as such because it has been willfully used as a tool for discrimination. That’s why pre-employment tests are regulated but legal. Some tests check for valuable, non-demographic information, like skills and ability to do a job. Others are based on faulty or fraudulent science, which may or may not be intentionally discriminatory. A related issue comes up with tech and automated systems quite frequently. Machine learning algorithms look for patterns and associated outcomes, but they do not have logic or sanity checks. An algorithm will also spot patterns that you, as a rational human, can understand aren’t relevant. For example, a machine learning algorithm might determine that people with too many vowels in their names don’t perform as well in their jobs. You and I know that’s irrelevant, but the machine doesn’t. If the machine is operating without oversight, your candidate pool can be skewed by this data for no real benefit. Legal restrictions on specific tests exist for a reason, no matter how well you think you can circumvent that reason. In these cases, it’s better to comply than to try and beg for forgiveness later. Types of Pre-Employment Testing The title mentions two kinds of assessments: IQ tests and Aptitude tests. These aren’t the only tests out there, however. So, before we get into the specific legality, let’s talk about the different kinds of tests you might be tempted to apply. Aptitude Tests Aptitude tests are often called job knowledge tests or skills tests. They are assessments used to judge the candidate’s ability to perform their duties. You might test a potential IT hire on their firewalls and network architecture knowledge. You might test a sales candidate on their ability to be persuasive when talking about a product. These tests are often professionally-developed and available for purchase to use within your organization. They are also often centralized, and a given candidate may have taken the same test multiple times if they’ve made it to the interview stage with various companies. IQ Tests Many people believe that IQ tests are a test of intelligence, but that’s not strictly accurate. IQ stands for “intelligence quotient” and is poorly defined. In fact, IQ tests are often heavily based on cultural understanding. Two examples might be: Knowing who a particular historical figure is. In America, it makes sense to know who George Washington is. In Japan, not knowing who he is doesn’t say anything about your intelligence. Conversely, someone in Japan is more likely to know Emperor Jimmu than someone in America. Assuming an agnostic and fundamental “logic” to the way people think is a basis of intelligence tests. Yet, study has shown that the fundamental way you think is influenced by your culture and cannot be generally assumed. While some variations on IQ tests still exist and are in use today, most of the time, they aren’t based on anything truly relevant and end up causing more harm than good. Personality Tests Personality tests are assessments used to judge the overall character traits of the people you’re examining to hire. These can test relevant (or irrelevant) qualities to your open role. For example, you might want to assess an individual’s disarming personality if they’re going to be a front-line support agent who benefits from being able to defuse a situation. However, a disarming personality likely isn’t relevant for an IT developer role. This dichotomy is where personality tests can get into hot water. Your assessments need to be relevant to the role. Testing someone on – and making decisions based on – characteristics that aren’t relevant to the role can be considered discriminatory. Since we’re not discussing personality tests in detail today, suffice it to say that much of what we discuss will also apply to them. In particular, all assessments need to be relevant above all else. If they can be misused, even if you aren’t misusing them, it opens you to risk and liability. Integrity Tests Integrity tests assess a candidate’s honesty, integrity, and ability to be truthful in situations that involve risk. They test responsibility, sense of duty, ability to follow rules, morality, etc. Legal challenges over the years have questioned whether or not integrity tests are discriminatory. For the moment, they are: “The EEOC and the parallel state human rights agencies have determined that integrity tests do not have a discriminatory impact on applicants. However, it’s important that employers equally test each applicant who could have unsupervised access to cash, inventory or trade secrets once hired.” – HireSuccess . While an integrity test may not be illegal, it may not be helpful. Most integrity tests have an obvious “right” answer or behavior they’re looking for. That means that your integrity assessment isn’t genuinely assessing your candidate’s integrity, so much as it is their ability to navigate the test itself. Emotional Intelligence Tests Emotional Intelligence is a relatively new wave of concern amongst businesses. A growing understanding of emotional intelligence, emotional awareness, and how these emotions affect one another has driven a greater awareness of how to use these emotions in the workplace. Emotional intelligence assessments can be quite beneficial if the results are put into context. Emotional intelligence can also be trained. They primarily predict outcomes in teamwork and the ability to collaborate, resolve conflicts, and self-assess. However, much like integrity tests, they may not be accurate; people don’t necessarily have the self-awareness to answer currently or honestly. Physical Ability Tests Physical ability tests are one of the most clearly-defined assessments to demonstrate the core point: assessments must be relevant. Suppose you’re hiring for a job on a construction site where your new employee will need to haul sacks of concrete and heavy boards, operate jackhammers, and perform physically. In that case, a physical assessment may be relevant. On the other hand, an office job with physical lifting requirements is more likely to be deemed discriminatory against physically disabled individuals. Physical performance, when relevant, is extremely important. After all, you don’t want to hire someone who is physically incapable of performing their duties. However, physical limitations do not mean all jobs are off-limits. Many accommodations can be made for particular roles, and in many cases, judging an individual by appearance or by “on paper” performance may be inaccurate. The Legality of Aptitude Tests As mentioned above, aptitude tests can be highly relevant for estimating the candidate’s ability to perform in their role. There are two legally-enforced regulations governing these tests. The first is that every question on the test – at least those used in your determination – must be relevant to the role. If you give a general assessment to every candidate that includes questions about sales and customer service, this is great and relevant for sales and service roles but less so for management, developer, IT, or other roles. Using the results to decide for one group will be relevant; using them for the other will be inappropriate. The second is that the assessment should be given uniformly to all candidates in a given phase of the hiring process. You must provide every candidate who reaches that stage of the hiring process an equal opportunity to demonstrate their skills and abilities. If you only assess certain people – even if the group you choose to assess is chosen randomly – the difference in data used to make a judgment and hiring decision is discriminatory. The primary basis for the legality of aptitude tests, and the rules mentioned above, comes from a Supreme Court case from 1970. The case, Griggs v. Duke Power Co. , made an example out of discriminatory practices that used aptitude tests as a racial gatekeeper, preventing black employees from rising in the company ranks. Additionally, aptitude tests must be professionally developed to avoid discriminatory questions or bias in the way questions are asked. In general, paying for a framework that provides assessments that you give to every candidate will be fine; creating a test of your own will not. The Legality of IQ Tests IQ tests fall under the same ruling and same jurisdiction as aptitude tests. The same court case ruled that any assessment given to candidates must be: Provided to all candidates equally, at the same point in the hiring process. Developed professionally to minimize bias in the questions asked and their format. Relevant to the role you’re filling with the hiring process. With these rules in mind, the reason IQ tests are often considered less legal is two-fold. First, IQ is commonly defined as an outdated and often irrelevant judge of “intelligence” through the lens of trivia knowledge and cultural absorption. Intelligence as a general concept is tricky to define and is highly dependent on lived experience, cultural origin, and societal pressures. Moreover, many factors of IQ can be traced back to protected categories, such as racial treatment or socio-economic status. Second, IQ tests are often difficult or impossible to relate to job performance. It’s one thing to ask candidates how they would de-escalate a situation as a relevant question for a customer service position. It’s quite another to ask candidates what number in a series of numbers is the next logical number in the sequence. While “logic” might seem unbiased, it’s heavily cultural. IQ tests can still be found in use, from tech companies like Google to the U.S. military assessments, but these are very carefully designed to be job-related and are more defensible. Whether or not they’re genuinely effective is another story, however. The Guiding Rules of Pre-Employment Assessments In the end, it all comes down to those three rules set forth by the Supreme Court. Any assessment, no matter what qualities you’re intended to assess, needs to be given equally across all candidates, it must be professionally developed, and it must be relevant to the role you’re looking to fill. It’s your responsibility to ensure that the hiring process is not discriminatory. Any time your assessment can be questioned on one or more of those points, you may be looking at an illegal assessment. While it may not be challenged in practice, it opens up your company to liability, and you are likely to lose any sufficiently well-prepared court case. In the end, legality is only one of several factors you should consider whenever you’re issuing assessments to your candidates. It’s also critical to monitor assessment results and the overall ability of those assessments to predict job success. If you find that an assessment doesn’t correlate to success in the role, the next question is whether or not it’s even worth issuing the test in the first place. After all, it’s an expense and a time-consuming part of the hiring process, and if it’s not improving your results, it isn’t worth keeping around. Do you or your company have any questions about any of the listed pre-employment assessments or if you should implement them into your hiring process? If so, please feel free to leave a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started! We’d be more than happy to assist you however we possibly can!

Any time you have a job opening that you need to be filled, you need to find the most qualified people to fill it. Sometimes this will be internal promotions, but most of the time, you’ll be looking at a much larger audience to find the perfect fit. Attracting that audience is difficult, given the constant demands on everyone’s attention and the difficulty of promoting an opening in a field full of similar openings. We’ve written before about creating compelling, creative job advertisements . If you have trouble putting those tips into practice, it can be worthwhile to get some creative inspiration. Thus, we’ve gathered twenty of the most compelling, creative, and interesting recruitment campaigns that we’ve seen. Learn How We Can Help You With Recruiting 1. Great “Grafic Deigner” Horizon FCB, a health agency based in Saudi Arabia, ran a job posting with text that was intentionally riddled with issues: “There are 10 mistakes in this ad. If you beleive you’re a great grafic deigner with an eye for details, Spot these mistakes, than sent us your feedback on the pelow address including your  CV & portfolio” Among the many mistakes in the ad were typos, spacing issues, kerning issues, and centering issues. This encouraged people to showcase their attention to detail, reach out to the email address attached to the ad, and put themselves into contention for the job listing. This ad is a great way to include a basic skills test before an application even arrives. 2. Berrge Tattoo This tattoo artist shop was recruiting a new artist to work with them and decided to use a rather creative way to test them as part of the application process. They printed out their job ads on a paper that had the texture and pattern of skin with slightly lighter spots that faintly indicate a QR code . Phones can’t read the QR code as it is, but if the aspiring artist fills in the blanks with a pen, it becomes functional. This is a self-filtering test for one of the most important requirements for a tattoo artist: a steady hand with ink. 3. Microsoft Math One of many job advertising campaigns over the last decades, Microsoft decided to add a challenge. They printed a one-page job posting with the salary, job duties, and requirements. However, they obfuscated their contact information for the position. Rather than a simple web URL or phone number, they published an equation. The equation, when solved correctly, would produce a phone number that the applicant could call to put their hat in the ring.  Again, this is a great way to add interactivity and a self-filtering process to the first phase of job applications. 4. The Bletchley Park Crossword Some job advertising goes back decades. In this case, Bletchley Park was recruiting codebreakers during World War II, to work alongside greats like Alan Turing in attempting to crack German codes. In another brilliant act of filtering and skills testing, they published a crossword puzzle with a few unique rules: the clues might require anagrams with no indication of whether this was true, the clues were obtuse and difficult even by the standards of the day, and most importantly, you had 12 minutes to do it. You can see the crossword here . Those who did it successfully were invited to work with the secret organization. Could you join them? 5. The World’s Greatest Salesman In 2010, the sales company Ogilvy & Mather was looking for high-talent salespeople to join their company. Knowing that the world of sales is full of people who would jump at the chance, they put a high barrier to entry for an application. Aspiring candidates had to produce a video of themselves selling a brick to the company. To advertise this campaign, among other things, Ogilvy produced this YouTube video . It’s dramatic, it’s high-impact, and it’s extremely memorable even by today’s standards. It also worked well for them. 6. LEGO Brick Factor LEGO is a worldwide sensation, a timeless toy that brings joy to millions. It also requires constant innovation and design to keep its kits unique from year to year. To accomplish this, LEGO requires Master Builders, people with creativity to design new models within specific constraints. To find the right people for the job, LEGOLAND Discovery Centers host a competition called Brick Factor , in which competitors would build unique models throughout these three events, and are judged by a panel that includes the two most important groups: other Master Builders, and children who just love LEGO. The winner of the competition is hired on the spot. 7. The Cisco Tribe Cisco is a global tech company, and its workforce is as varied and diverse as the planet we live on. They showcase this through their recruitment campaigns, particularly with hashtags like #WeAreCisco and #BeYouWithUs. Real employees discuss company culture and their lives outside of the company, portraying many of the benefits of working with Cisco. You don’t have to conform to the company to thrive; you can simply be who you are, and still be valuable to the company. Though this campaign was started years ago, Cisco keeps it going to this day . 8. Eurowings Matching Eurowings is an airline based in Germany with an award-winning recruitment campaign using the novel platform of Tinder. Tinder, a dating app, presents the user with profiles for people of their preferred orientation and allows them to swipe left to ignore or right to connect. The trick is, the profiles were for jobs, not for people, and swiping right “matched” the user to the job, giving them more information about the opportunity available to them. It was an intensely creative use of a new platform most wouldn’t think to use for recruiting. 9. Quixey’s $100 Quixey, a Silicon Valley startup, needed to compete with tech giants to attract clever software developers. To do it, they issued a month of challenges lasting one day each. They produced a piece of code with a bug in it and challenged people to find and fix the bug. Winners got $100, a t-shirt, and an opportunity to apply for the job. The campaign was creative and the incentive was great, though their method of advertising for the campaign  fell a little flat, and the company eventually folded for unrelated reasons. 10. Google’s Challenges Google is well-known throughout the tech industry for picking up the ideas of the people who came before and running with them. They weren’t the first company to use challenges to attract applicants, but they’re well-known for their cleverness and consistency in their ads. Everything from a billboard with a cryptic message leading to a numerical URL with a job application, to their interactive coding challenges , remain written in history as some of the best job advertisements ever devised. 11. Volkswagen’s Sneaky Advertising VW needed to hire mechanics, and they knew one thing: to hire skilled trades, it’s best to reach them where they spend their time. Their campaign was extremely clever and used resources only they would have. They intentionally broke a group of vehicles and took them to mechanics and shops across the country. The trick? Each vehicle had a job advertisement hidden in the undercarriage , where only the mechanic working on it would see it. The campaign was clever and it worked, attracting a variety of skilled mechanics for their open positions. 12. Red 5 Studio’s Direct Targeting Sometimes you don’t know who you need to hire, just what they bring to the table. Other times, you have specific candidates in mind. Red 5 Studios, a gaming company, identified 100 top candidates for their studio, the “dream team” they would love to hire. They specifically researched these 100 people, created customized messaging for them, and reached out directly. The result? Nearly a 100% response rate from each of the people they messaged. 13. Ikea’s Career Instructions Another example of reaching people where they spend their time. Ikea expanded rapidly in the Australian market in the early 2010s, and they needed to hire to staff those new stores. To do so, they targeted Ikea shoppers. They created a set of “ career instructions ” in the style of their assembly instructions, and inserted them into the flat packs for their furniture. Anyone who purchased such furniture during that time was bringing that job opportunity into their own home themselves. All told, they received 4,200 applications and hired 280 candidates from the campaign. 14. The Swedish Army Cares The Swedish army wanted to recruit people with a selfless instinct to help others. To accomplish this task, they crafted a clever social experiment. They put a large black box in a public square, and let someone enter it once an hour. Left alone inside and trapped in this box, they were stuck… unless someone else stepped up to take their place. To add to the experiment, the inside of the box was streamed online, to build publicity and get people invested in the people inside. They aimed to get 4,300 applications from the experiment , but ended up with nearly 10,000, not to mention all of the free media coverage. 15. The British Army Flipping Tropes The British Army’s roster has been falling, and they decided to target Millennials to sign up. To do so, they crafted a series of vintage-looking recruitment posters as part of a campaign. These posters target millennial stereotypes (“Me Me Me”, “Snowflake”, “Class Clown”) and flipped them on their head, pointing out the good attributes of being self-confident, focused, and compassionate. The campaign received a lot of backlash in the media , but it worked, spreading a lot of awareness and getting a much-needed recruitment push. 16. BJL Providing what People Need Everyone has needs. Sometimes those needs are transient, which is what BJL – a marketing firm – took advantage of. During a popular awards show, attendees needed access to the internet, and they checked out the publicly available Wi-Fi in the area. BJL provided the strongest local Wi-Fi signal, with a landing page that redirected users to a careers page before allowing them to go further. It was a tremendous success, with some CVs coming in before the night was over, and more in the following days. 17. Matsushita Electric’s Careful Positioning Japanese electric company Matsushita Electric took a page out of VW’s book: reaching potential candidates where they spend their time. In this case, they carefully positioned their job advertising at the top of electrical poles that needed work, so that when workers arrived, they would see the opportunity for a better position. At five meters off the ground, they were guaranteed to be qualified applicants that are sending in their resumes. 18. Shield Security Hijacking Technology Shield Security is a private security company that needed to hire new people. To target existing security personnel, they simply sent their employees on flights. As those employee’s luggage was scanned, the security tech monitoring the feed would see, in metal reflective letters visible only on the x-ray machine, information on how to get a job with their company. Poaching competitors is a time-honored tradition, and this is an innovative way to go about it. 19. Toggl Leveraging Social Success For a time, Facebook quizzes were all the rage. Toggl made use of one, developing a personality quiz that gave the people taking it a variety of different results. The low barrier to entry encouraged applicants, while the self-filtering of the quiz helped people engage with the opportunity and the work they would do for the company. It was an overall successful strategy  and resulted in talented new employees. 20. Join the Band Another example of using an unorthodox channel to reach people: Spotify. The streaming music service was looking for a new developer, but rather than promote a typical job listing, they created a customized playlist and circulated it . The playlist is an eclectic set of music, but what’s important here is the song titles. When put together, they spell out a call to action for developers to reach out. It got someone the job, that much is certain. Your Turn These are just 20 of the countless creative recruitment campaigns throughout history. Learn How We Can Help You With Recruiting

Employee attendance isn’t just a box to be ticked on administrative checklists; it’s a critical heartbeat of any thriving business. Regular presence of staff is as fundamental to a company’s success as the gears are to a well-oiled machine. However, just like those gears, attendance can grind to a halt if not properly maintained.  From delayed projects to strained coworker relations and impacted service quality, the ripple effect of absenteeism can be profound and costly. Hence, it’s not an issue that can be swept under the rug. As we dig into the realm of improving your employee attendance, we’ll explore not just the impacts but also the steps necessary to bolster attendance records and, by extension, the business’s health. 1. Establish Clear Attendance Policies  Clarity breeds confidence and compliance. A clearly articulated attendance policy serves as a roadmap for employees, outlining expectations and consequences without ambiguity. It eliminates guesswork and ensures that every member of the team is on the same page, which is critical for fairness and transparency. Crafting an attendance policy that is both fair and flexible requires a careful balancing act. Here’s how to navigate this process: Define Expectations Clearly: Be explicit about what is considered tardiness, early departure, and absenteeism. Specify the number of occurrences that trigger a formal response. Incorporate Flexibility: Recognize the value of work-life balance by incorporating options like remote work or flexible hours where feasible. Provide Incentives: Rather than only having punitive measures, consider rewards for excellent attendance, such as an extra day off or recognition in the workplace. Engage Employees in Policy Formation: Input from staff can not only provide valuable insights but also increase buy-in and compliance. Communicate Regularly: Policies should be communicated during onboarding, with regular refreshers. Ensure that everyone knows where to find the attendance policy documentation. The creation of an attendance policy should not happen in a vacuum. It must reflect the broader culture of the organization. For instance, if a company values autonomy and trust, the policy may lean towards flexibility, emphasizing results over strict schedules. Alternatively, in industries where punctuality is non-negotiable, such as healthcare or customer service, policies might be more rigid but still should accommodate the occasional unpredictability of life. The policy should also mirror the company’s commitment to diversity and inclusiveness , considering cultural holidays, mental health days, and parental leave. This approach not only adheres to legal standards but also fosters a culture of understanding and respect. 2. Engage in Open Communication  When the time comes to address attendance issues with an employee, the approach can make all the difference. It is vital to ensure that the conversation is conducted privately and with a sense of understanding. It should not feel confrontational but rather like a collaborative effort to find solutions. The tone of the conversation should be professional, calm, and empathetic. Start by stating your observations factually and express your concern for the employee’s well-being. This approach helps in keeping the discussion focused on finding solutions rather than placing blame. A constructive conversation aims to uncover any underlying issues contributing to the attendance problem. Ask open-ended questions to allow the employee to share their perspective. Be prepared to listen to issues like personal challenges, workplace conflicts, or health concerns. Understanding these factors is essential for addressing the root causes of absenteeism. 3. Consider Reasonable Accommodations  Sometimes, consistent absenteeism is a signal that an employee might need accommodations at work. Whether it’s due to a disability, chronic health issues, or other life circumstances, reasonable accommodations can be a legal requirement and also an ethical approach to support your staff and reduce absenteeism. Accommodations will vary based on individual needs but can include: Adjusting Work Schedules: Allow flexible hours or the option to work from home on certain days. Ergonomic Workstations: Provide standing desks or ergonomic chairs to employees with physical discomfort. Mental Health Support: Offer additional breaks, a quiet room for stress relief, or access to counseling services. Transportation Assistance: For those with commuting issues, consider offering support for transport or a company shuttle service. Regular review of your accommodation policies is essential to ensure they align with employee needs and legal requirements. Solicit feedback from employees about what is working or where gaps may exist. Be open to making changes that can positively impact attendance and overall employee satisfaction. 4. Educate on Available Options  Education is empowerment. Ensure that all employees are fully informed of their rights and the benefits available to them. This could be through orientation sessions, employee handbooks, or regular updates in meetings. Knowledge of what is available to them can help employees manage their attendance more effectively. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) allows eligible employees to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons. Explain the provisions of FMLA to your employees so they understand how it can be applied in situations that may affect their attendance. This knowledge can prevent misunderstandings and misuse of the leave system. Remind employees that the company offers resources to support them in managing their work-life balance. This can include employee assistance programs, health care benefits, or even financial planning services. Encouraging the use of these resources can prevent future attendance issues and show that the company cares for their overall well-being. 5. Use Disciplinary Actions as a Last Resort  Positive reinforcement can be more effective than punitive measures in shaping behavior. Recognize and reward good attendance, and create an environment where positive behavior is noticed and appreciated. This encourages others to follow suit and can create a more positive workplace culture . Discipline should be considered when there is a clear pattern of attendance issues that have not been resolved through other means. Ensure that the need for disciplinary action is based on documented evidence and is free from any bias or discrimination. If disciplinary action is necessary, it should be progressive, starting with a verbal warning and escalating to more serious consequences if the behavior does not change. Each step should be documented, and the employee should have the opportunity to respond and make improvements at each stage. 6. Maintain Consistent Enforcement  For attendance policies to be effective, they must be consistently enforced. Consistency sends a clear message about the organization’s expectations and reduces confusion among employees. It also upholds the integrity of the attendance system and ensures that all employees are treated equally. To maintain fairness, it is crucial to avoid any bias or discrimination in enforcing attendance policies. This means making decisions based on documented behaviors and facts rather than assumptions or stereotypes. Regular training can help managers recognize and overcome any unconscious biases. Documentation is key to consistency. Keep detailed records of all attendance issues, including dates, times, and any actions taken. This creates a clear history that can be referred to if needed and supports the business in case of disputes or legal challenges. 7. Ensure Legal Compliance in Terminations  Most employment in the United States is “at-will,” meaning that either the employer or the employee can terminate the employment relationship at any time. However, there are limitations to this, such as contractual obligations or illegal discrimination. Be clear about these limitations and how they apply to attendance-related terminations. Before terminating an employee for attendance reasons, ensure that you have thorough documentation of all incidents, the steps taken to resolve the issue, and the communication with the employee. This documentation is vital to demonstrate that the termination is justified and not arbitrary. Terminations can be legally complex, and it’s often wise to consult with legal experts, especially in cases that may not be straightforward. This can help ensure that the company is in compliance with labor laws and can prevent legal repercussions. 8. Recognize When to Part Ways Sometimes, despite best efforts, an employee’s attendance issues cannot be resolved. Recognizing when an employee has reached the point of no return is important for the health of the team and the company. This often involves repeated policy violations or an inability to improve after exhaustive support and accommodations. Preparation is key before parting ways. This may involve cross-training other employees, redistributing the workload, or beginning the search for a replacement. Preparing for the transition can minimize the impact on the company’s operations. When the time comes to part ways, it’s important to balance compassion with the practical needs of the business. Being empathetic towards the employee’s situation while also being clear about the business’s needs can help make the termination process as positive as possible. Conclusion  The importance of proactive attendance management cannot be overstated. By addressing issues early, companies can often find solutions that prevent the need for more drastic measures. Focusing on solutions and support for employees with attendance issues is generally preferable to seeking replacements. Retaining experienced staff is often more cost-effective than recruiting and training new hires. Whether it’s revisiting your attendance policy, implementing a new communication strategy, or seeking legal advice, you should reach out to us now to learn how we can help grow your team.

One key element of hiring that is occasionally overlooked in discussions is the need for background and reference checks. A candidate can look very capable on paper and can pass an interview with flying colors, but if they’ve stretched the truth on their resume or if they left out any critical pieces of information, you don’t want to let them on your payroll. Checking with references ranges from a formality to an essential part of hiring, and a background check can reveal aspects of a candidate that can make or break their employment. The question is, should you handle these checks in-house, or should you outsource them? The simple answer is outsourcing, and here’s why. Faster Results Outsourcing your background checks and pre-employment screening is almost always going to be a faster process than doing it in-house. To use an analogy, think of vehicle maintenance. Sure, you might be able to change your oil, but a trained mechanic has the tools and experience to do the same job faster, more reliably, and without taking up your own time. When you outsource a process like background checks, you’re hiring a trained professional to handle what is typically both detail-oriented and complex work for you. You can spend your own time and resources pursuing other business objectives while getting background check results faster than if you had to put them together on your own. Increased Accuracy Performing a manual background check is surprisingly dangerous. There are hundreds of websites and small companies that promise to give you background check results for a fee – when the fees they charge are exorbitant and the information they give you is minimal. You end up needing to correlate information from multiple sources, many of which have their esoteric means of access. A professional background check company can provide accuracy and attention to detail that you can’t on your own without specializing in the process yourself. You may not even know where to look for certain kinds of information, and if you do, you may not be able to access it. Katie Kulp from Chane Solutions writes: “Without adequate infrastructure and expertise, many databases and records are unreachable, meaning that in-house screening efforts will often miss vital information.” Objectivity One of the biggest risks with modern hiring is the inherent bias in the hiring managers affecting the decision. Great pains are taken every day to minimize this bias, through anonymization in resumes to a machine-based analysis of skills and education through modern applicant tracking systems and more. Companies often need to push for diversity in hires, and as such, they need to minimize the potential for discrimination in hiring. Background checks are an important part of hiring, but they can reveal sensitive information about a candidate that may lead to discriminatory decision-making. Whether it’s a detail about their past, about past conduct, or a protected feature of their lifestyle, that information can be revealed whether you’re looking for it or not, and could potentially become the basis of a discrimination suit should the decision be made to reject a candidate based on that information. Outsourcing a background screening helps remove this risk by processing and presenting data in a safe and non-discriminatory manner. You can’t make a decision based on the information you don’t have, and a background screening company knows what they should and shouldn’t put in their report. This also minimizes the risk that a new hire is treated differently by someone who knows information about them that they shouldn’t. Compliance Local, state, and federal regulations all apply to govern what a company can and can’t look for in background checks. Even something as simple as past salary history can be protected information in some locations. Knowing and navigating these legalities is difficult even for small businesses; large companies that operate in multiple states or multiple countries have it even harder. Outsourcing your background checks to a dedicated screening company has the added benefit of offloading compliance to that company. You trust them to know what they’re doing and insulate your business from backlash if regulation is violated. Company Protection An extension of the two previous points, outsourcing something as sensitive as a background check helps protect your company from any issues that arise as part of the hiring process. This is not to say that you can’t make bad decisions or violate regulations when you outsource background checks, of course. It simply makes it more difficult to violate regulations on your own. According to PeopleKeep: “Some studies predict that every time a business replaces a salaried employee, it costs 6 to 9 months’ salary on average.” With the steep cost of a failed hire at stake, outsourcing a background check is likely to be much more valuable than the alternative. Additionally, by discovering hidden facts about a candidate that invalidate their candidacy, you can protect your company from the fallout of a bad hire. This could be anything from working with someone who has a known bad reputation, to hiring someone who has been convicted of intellectual property theft, to hiring someone who is simply lying about their skills. Lower Cost Usually, one of the biggest benefits of performing a task in-house over outsourcing is the chance to save money by investing time and personal skills. With background checks, unless your in-house team has access to high-level resources and experience, this won’t be the case. The fact is, all too many resources, from federal court records databases to county-level criminal databases to personal information databases, are restricted in access. Authorized representatives of screening agencies or private investigators need to prove their identities and credentials, as well as pay a fee to access these databases. Agencies can handle this with no problem because of the volume they use those databases, but smaller companies that only hire a few employees at a time may find it dramatically more expensive on a per-employee basis. Hiring Peace of Mind Unless your in-house team is very experienced with background checks, chances are pretty good that you might miss something. There are too many details spread throughout too many resources to be able to casually step in and find them all for a thorough background check. This leaves you with niggling doubt and lingering potential for regret, in case you missed something important by not doing your due diligence. Contracting with a background screening company eliminates this problem. The screening company will have a thorough process and a checklist they can go through to ensure that they check every box and dot every I in their screening. You can rest assured that they are far less likely to make a mistake and miss a critical piece of information than you would be trying to DIY the screening process. Information Access and Continuity Many background screening companies offer data APIs or formatted reports designed in such a way that they can plug directly into your applicant tracking system. This allows you to keep all of the relevant information about a candidate in one place. In addition to ensuring ease of access, this also ensures data security; the background check report cannot be accessed by anyone who does not have access to the ATS itself, limiting liability. The ability to use a simple API rather than paperwork and disjointed systems also can smooth out and speed up the process. A background screening company can simply submit its report to your company system rather than having to process it through your HR team. As Sterling Check says: “Background screening providers can offer an automated turnkey solution, where human resources professionals can access the information they need quickly and easily. Results can be returned much quicker than some in-house checks.” Employee Comfort Another benefit of using a third-party background screening company is the comfort and peace of mind of the employee you hire. A point we mentioned above was that, if you learn something that changes your personal views of a candidate, even if you still hire them, it can affect how you treat them. It’s possible that the information was hidden for a reason, and the employee doesn’t feel comfortable revealing it, specifically to avoid that kind of treatment. Employees are legally allowed to request the results of the background check performed on them and can determine for themselves whether or not sensitive information has been revealed. This gives them peace of mind to know that the background check results are correct and accurate and that they don’t reveal information that they shouldn’t. Reasons Not to Outsource The fact is, trying to complete a background check using an in-house team is very rarely a good idea. For some of the largest companies in the world, it might be a duty relegated to the legal team, in conjunction with the HR team. For most small and mid-sized businesses, as well as most large businesses, it simply doesn’t make sense. There are (despite all of the above) a couple of small reasons why you might consider in-house background checks instead of an outsourced company. You’re more familiar with what matters to your company. In particular, when speaking with references, it can be worthwhile to discuss a candidate with them personally than it is to outsource it. You may be more familiar with the specific concerns that you have about the candidate, and what questions you need answered when you talk to a reference. The downside to this is the ever-present risk of asking questions as part of a conversation that reveals protected information. While a reference might accidentally volunteer information they shouldn’t, you can’t use that information in a decision, and you especially can’t ask for it. A screening company can simply exclude that information from the report they give you; you can’t un-learn the information itself. You may be able to perform the background check at a lower cost. The cost was listed above as one of the benefits of outsourcing, and that fact remains true. However, it’s possible that you may be able to complete a background check for a lower cost than outsourcing the screening to a company. The situation needs to be just right for it to happen, however. You need to have access to databases you can use to complete the check, and you need to have a process established for what to check and where. It’s also likely that you need to otherwise be contracting a higher end company; finding a different company might be cheaper in the long run, as long as you aren’t sacrificing the quality of your results. Wrapping Up There are too many benefits to outsourcing a background screening to ignore. Peace of mind for both you and your employee, access to only the data that is allowable and legal to request, and the ability to make an unbiased decision are all crucial benefits of outsourcing. Even the few possible benefits of doing your screening in-house are generally not that beneficial. Keeping your company insulated from liability and the threat of discrimination suits and other issues alone is often enough to convince business owners to outsource. Even if you’re relatively confident in your ability to only look up relevant information, be certain that the information is correct and accurate, and make an unbiased decision based on that information, it’s still better to not have to worry about all of that yourself. Rather than asking whether or not it makes sense to hire a company to handle screening for you, you should ask yourself what you should look for in a screening company. Specifically, you should look for details such as: Background check companies need to be FCRA compliant for their information to be legally allowable in hiring decisions. A background check should run between $30 for a basic screener and $100 for a comprehensive and detailed check. Some screening companies specialize in specific industries that may have unique concerns; find one that fits your industry. Regardless of your concerns, you can certainly find a company that meets them. Do you have any questions for us about screening candidates with reference checks and background checks? Please let us know in the comments section below!

Part of the cost of doing business is the unfortunate reality that employees will come and go. This reality is more true today than in most other times in history, as career mobility is limited and many employees realize that their only way to advance is to jump ship and move from company to company. The pendulum may be swinging in the other direction, as companies realize loyalty may be better than the cost savings of underpaying or refusing to promote employees, but, it will be a long time before it swings fully in the other direction. Employees quit all the time. Most of them follow the historical etiquette of giving notice two weeks ahead of their date of departure, though there’s technically no legal requirement if a contract doesn’t specify it. Part of living in a culture where most employment is “at-will” means that employees are free to sever their contract at any time, for any reason, and move on. Incidentally, this may be in peril, as healthcare workers in Wisconsin are currently embroiled in a lawsuit. Several workers quit to take better offers at a different facility. The original facility (which refused to pay them competitive rates) sued to prevent them from taking on their new jobs. They cite difficulties in replacing the departing employees, but they also refused to look, and refuse to pay competitive rates, so we’ll see how it shakes out . All of this leads to a tricky situation. Employees submit their two weeks’ notice all the time, so it’s inevitable that sooner or later, one of them will change their mind. It can happen for all sorts of reasons: Maybe their job offer fell through. Maybe they initially thought they would have the money to support themselves while seeking a new job but realized they won’t. Maybe, someone they talked to – a coworker, a manager – convinced them to change their mind. Whatever the case, now you have an employee who has expressed their desire to quit but has come back saying, “actually, can we forget about that?” They’ve changed their mind. What do you do? In the Event of an Emotional Decision The first potential scenario is when an employee, faced with a problematic report, a denied vacation request, a sub-par raise, a lack of promotion, or another negative event, decides to quit. “I’ve had it up to here with this place,” they say as they storm out. “I quit!” In these cases, a company must tread carefully. If you decide to accept this resignation and take action to implement it (like canceling their account access, revoking their keycards, and beginning the process of terminating employment), this is viewed as accepting the spur-of-the-moment resignation. The problem is a decision made in the heat of the moment is not necessarily considered a real decision. In these cases, if the employee changes their mind right away and wants their job back once they’ve cooled off, only to find that their accounts are terminated, and their employment contract severed, they could potentially pursue an unfair dismissal claim. “If the employer does not allow an employee to retract a heat-of-the-moment resignation or seek confirmation following a resignation where the intent is ambiguous, they may be at risk of an unfair dismissal claim as a tribunal could conclude that the employee has not resigned, but rather has been dismissed by their employer.” – Rradar . By giving the employee a chance to cool down and retract their decision, you protect yourself and confirm whether or not the employee is genuinely resigning. “In Ali v Birmingham City Council [2008] EAT 0313/08, Mr. Ali resigned suddenly and under pressure. The employer gave him half an hour to reconsider, and once that time was up, he confirmed that he still wanted to resign. Four days later, having changed his mind, he attempted to withdraw his resignation, but the employer refused to accept the withdrawal. When the case went to law, the Employment Appeal Tribunal said that four days’ delay indicated that it was not a ‘heat-of-the-moment’ decision and that the employer had given him a reasonable opportunity to reflect on his decision.” – Rradar. In the case of an emotional resignation, you will want to assess three things before accepting the resignation. First, determine what led up to the resignation and whether or not it’s a situation that will reoccur. An employee who threatens to quit over everything whenever they don’t get their way is a disruption. A sustained pattern of, essentially, holding their employment at ransom is not healthy for the business, and the business may be well within its rights to terminate the employee because of it. On the other hand, if it was something that can be handled, such as internal discrimination where the responsible party can be terminated, a paperwork issue that can get resolved, or a promotion that can be held for reconsideration, keeping the employee on might be the better option. Second, you want to examine the repercussions of keeping the employee employed or not. For example, if the employee has significant institutional knowledge, keeping them employed at least long enough to document that knowledge or train a replacement can be a good idea. On the other hand, if they have a history of poor conduct, this outburst can be the final straw that ends their contract. Third, you should assess the likelihood of the employee filing a wrongful termination claim if you accept their resignation. The longer you give them to rescind, the less likely they will win it, but a case can still be time and resource-intensive. In the Event of Changing Circumstances In some cases, an employee is parting ways, not out of emotional turmoil, but amicably. They got a better offer, or they’re applying to better jobs and have a promising lead. Alternatively, maybe they have family circumstances that necessitate them resigning. Then, those circumstances change between putting in their notice and the termination date. Their alternative offer fell through, and now they’re facing unemployment instead. The alternative offer proved to be worse than expected, and now the employee is reconsidering. The family they needed to move to care for no longer needs their assistance, for good or ill. Upon review, the accommodations they requested can be granted, making them change their mind. That fourth option, for example, might include remote work. A good employee might consider resigning because they want to move, and they know company policy prohibits remote work, but upon review, your company decides to change the policy. Are you bound to accept their resignation regardless? As you might expect, the answer is no. If your employee chooses to rescind their notice, and you want to keep that employee around, you can do so without issue. You are not legally bound to fire them, and, if you do, the employee may be able to sue for wrongful termination. If the employee chooses to quit and later asks to retract their resignation, but you prefer to let them go, you can still do so. As mentioned above, if it wasn’t a moment of passion, you have a solid defense should the employee want their job back, especially if you’ve taken significant actions like canceling health coverage, paying out vacation time, and so on. That holds especially true if the employee wants to come back after their termination date. In the past, there have been people who “quit” for a few days or weeks at a time, usually so they can work around having vacation time denied and take a vacation anyway. You are not obligated to take them back after an event like this happens. “If a long-term employee gets dismissed without notice, the employer will likely owe a substantial payment upon termination. But if that employee quits, the employer will owe nothing. That’s what was at stake in one recent Ontario case where the court considered whether an employee could rescind her resignation. English v. Manulife Financial Corporation , 2018 ONSC 5135 (CanLII). The employee had given her employer written notice of her intention to retire at the end of the year. But, a few weeks later, she changed her mind. Unfortunately, the employer told her they would “honor her notice of resignation.” She sued for wrongful dismissal. The employer argued that she quit. The employer won. The court held that the employee wasn’t allowed to rescind her resignation in the circumstances.” –  Ben Hahn . While the above example is from Canadian law, American law is often very similar, but favors the company even more. The Company’s Risk In general, determining whether or not you can – or should – accept a revoked resignation comes down to weighing the risks and rewards for the company. There are several risks you should consider.  The risk of wrongful termination suits. The first risk is the risk of the employee whose resignation you accepted turning around and suing for their job back. A case like this comes up every few years, and different regions have different precedents. It’s difficult to say with certainty which way a court will rule, and a lot of it depends on factors such as how much time passed between notice and acceptance, what emotions were involved, and what the context may be. Many courts favor the business, and “at-will” employment is often used to protect the company from being required to re-hire the departed employee. However, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, and even if your company wins, lawsuits can be expensive.  The risk of losing valuable resources and knowledge. In some cases, with an amicable resignation, your departing employee takes a lot of valuable knowledge with them. You might want to draw upon that knowledge to train a replacement, build a knowledge base, or otherwise use it to replace them, and a meager two weeks of notice isn’t enough to do that. Thus, it’s a boon to the company when those employees ask for their job back instead. There’s no risk to accepting them back, other than the disruption that it causes. In fact, it can often be a good “kick in the pants” to hire and train redundant workers to share such institutional knowledge. The only caution is that you should not rush to transfer institutional knowledge, train a replacement, and then fire the employee who tried to quit. This process can trigger wrongful termination. Plus, it’s just plain rude.  The risk of retaining a disruptive employee. In cases where the employee who quit and wants their job back is disruptive or has conduct issues, accepting their resignation can be a dangerous play. A suitably disruptive employee may be willing to sue for their job back, and it makes it more difficult to terminate them for conduct later, though not impossible. However, if their conduct is sufficiently documented, it can be used as a defense against bringing them back. This also brings with it the risk of “employment blackmail,” where employees threaten to quit if they don’t get their way. This “blackmail” can exploit the company in a way that can be disastrous. If it works, and the employee is granted their demands, others may follow suit. Of course, calling their bluff can also be dangerous if they quit and you did, in fact, need them around. The risks a company takes when accepting a resignation are not small, but in some cases, they can be outweighed by the risks the company assumes in accepting the revocation of resignation. Unfortunately, there’s no one correct answer; you must examine the circumstances and make the best decision you can at the time. To circumvent the issue entirely, use employment contracts instead of relying on at-will employment. There’s more overhead and more risk to making a poor hiring decision, but more protection against severed contracts. Is that decision right for you? Every company is different, so only you can say. Have any questions or concerns regarding what to do if your employee changed their mind about quitting? If so, be sure to leave a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started! As outlined in this post, it can be a tricky situation to navigate properly, so we’d be more than happy to assist you in figuring out what would be best for your company. 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It’s not enough just to hire a talented candidate for an open role within your company. You need to onboard them in a progressive, tailored way to bring them up to speed and make them part of the team as soon as possible, but without undue stress that can increase turnover. What should an onboarding process look like? It can vary from company to company, but the basic core of the process remains the same. Simply adjust and customize this process to suit your business needs. Understand the Timing The first part of onboarding starts not with the candidate, but with you. You need to understand the time frames you’re working with. According to Christine Marino: “It takes 8-12 months for a new hire to be as competent and proficient as a more senior co-worker.” During this time – essentially the first year of employment – you need to be willing and able to handle all aspects of onboarding, including addressing employee pain points to help bolster both productivity and retention. After all, as many as 15% of employees say a bad onboarding process contributed to their leaving a company. Decide Between Formal and Informal An informal onboarding process is a free-for-all. A new employee shows up and they are largely ignored by all but the most directly related employees. They don’t have any designated workspace or tasks to complete, nor do they have paperwork on hand to file. They haven’t been issued any company hardware and are forced to find a space to operate within a hot-seat open office. An informal onboarding process is when a new hire needs to learn the ropes of their job, including both rules and unspoken social norms in the office, mostly on their own. In a cordial and friendly environment, this can work. In a tense and hostile environment, it can be stressful and painful. A company culture of trial by fire, new employee hazing, and repeated tests can make some who pass through it come out with more loyalty to their company and their coworkers. On the other hand, it dramatically increases turnover. Some employees and some companies can thrive in this kind of atmosphere. Most do not. Contrast with a formal onboarding process. SHRM says: “Organizations that engage in formal onboarding by implementing step-by-step programs for new employees to teach them what their roles are, what the norms of the company are, and how they are to behave are more effective than those that do not.” Prepare the Four Cs Tayla Bauer, professor of management for Portland State University, has codified employee needs into four Cs. Compliance. This is everything an employee needs to prevent failure in their job. It includes HR policies, company rules, codes of conduct, dress codes, attendance and tardiness policies, any applicable government policies, and other tangible, codified rules. These should be provided to the employee, discussed as necessary, and explained when possible. Clarification. The clarification section encompasses discussions between the new employee and their coworkers, team leads, and managers. While the employee may know in broad strokes what their job will entail, the clarification process involves talking to those to whom they report, their team leads, and others who can nail down and specify precise job requirements, KPIs, task lists, and duties. Clarification means discussing this with the employee, as well as providing avenues whereby the employee can pursue further elucidation. Culture. Culture is the “real talk” aspect of onboarding. Once an employee is hired, the façade can drop; the company doesn’t have to exaggerate or represent itself a certain way, because the employee will be able to see and experience the truth for themselves. Discussing this openly with the employee – including company norms and cultural perspective – provides a lot of benefits. How is worth ethic perceived? How does the leadership function? Getting a direct supervisor or coworker to discuss this with the new hire is the general best choice. Connection. For an employee to succeed, they need connections. Connections with their coworkers, connections with their superiors, connections with the executives; they’re all important. To a certain extent, this is an extrapolation of company culture, but it can be codified in onboarding by giving a new employee a company mentor, an opportunity to chat with an executive, and channels they can use to communicate with anyone they need to reach. As you develop your onboarding process, remember to cover all of the Cs. Provide a Mentor One of the best things a company can do for both company culture and connections is assigning each new employee a mentor from within their department. This may be a more senior employee in the same role, the person who just vacated the role to internal promotion or a direct supervisor. It should not be someone outside of the department or someone who will treat mentorship as a vacation from their actual work. The mentor is the first point of contact for the employee. They are the person the employee gets to know first, a potential friend in the office, and someone who knows what to do, how to solve problems, and who to talk to when those problems can’t be solved right away. They help guide and teach the new hire exactly what they should be doing, how to act, who to talk to, and what not to do. Their assistance will be invaluable. Ensure the Employee Has Goals Nothing kills the drive to work for a company faster than being hired, showing up, and having nothing to do. The first day, first week, and first month of employment should feel productive and accomplished, even if the employee isn’t working up to full speed. To this end, give the employee tasks to complete with distinct processes in place to assist them. This shouldn’t just mean HR paperwork; it should include training and actual job tasks, the work they will be doing when they’ve found their feet and can catch up to speed with everyone else. Their mentor should be familiar with the tasks as well, to help with business-specific processes, challenges, and systems should the need arise. Arrange Frequent Communication Employees aren’t always the best at communicating when they need assistance. You can claim to foster company culture and environment that enables new employees to ask for assistance as necessary, but it can still be a personal burden to determine when they’ve reached that point. There are also a lot of people for whom the act of struggling and succeeding without help is a sign of personal worth, and they may handicap themselves when left to their own devices. In the employee’s first month, there is no such thing as too much communication. Ideally, several people should be checking in with the new hire in several different communications channels. This provides many benefits: It opens up lines of communications and connections the new employee can use to reach individuals in different areas and departments. It demonstrates the utility of communicating via intra-office channels such as phone, Slack, and in-person meetings. It allows different people of differing levels of authority to check with the team and ask if the employees need help. It also lets them ask for help from someone they feel most comfortable approaching. Some employers recommend checking in with the new employee every 30-60 minutes for their first week of employment, ensuring that they have everything they need. After the end of the first week, sit them down to recap what happened, what the expectations for the next week will be, how they’re stacking up, and what resources they may need moving forward. Repeat this for the first month, then dial it back as they get their stride. This is also a good way to establish a company culture of communication. As Engagedly says : “Introduce the concept of employee check-ins to your employees and create a framework that works with your organization. Train people how to be a part of employee check-ins and how it could help them. Remember that while your employees may be open to check-ins during the training, they will need a little push from management to regularize the practice.” Sample Process Framework This section is an example of what an onboarding process can look like. The timeline, the exact things that happen each day and each week, and what you cover all vary depending on your company. Fill in the blanks as necessary to suit your business. Day 0: Handle all of the basic “onboarding” tasks. Give the employee their handbook, code of conduct, business policies, compliance rules, and paperwork they need to fill out. Make yourself available to answer any questions about it all. Much of this should be done prior to the start date, but after an offer is accepted. Make sure anything the employee needs day 1 is prepared, including an office/cubicle space, a computer and any tools they need, their uniform if one exists, and so on. Day 1: Introduce the employee to their cube/office, their department, and the office as a whole. Give them the tour. Discuss the new hire’s responsibilities, both for the first week/month and in general in their role. Introduce them to their objectives and the company’s overall direction. Assign a mentor and take both of them out to lunch, so you, the mentor, and the new hire can bond and discuss the company in a casual situation. Week 1: Provide training for the employee on what they’ll be doing for the bulk of their job. Verify paperwork has been signed and address any issues that come up (such as with names/pronoun preferences, username issues, technological glitches, paperwork errors, and so on. Trust us; they always happen, so plan for them.) Set aside specific times for the employee’s team or sections of their team to go to a (company-sponsored) lunch meeting for socialization purposes. You don’t need to enforce pithy ice-breakers or team-building exercises, but giving them all a casual space to introduce themselves and join a social circle can be very important. Check with the employee at the end of the week and see how they’re doing. Address any specific concerns as necessary. Month 1: Slowly ramp up responsibilities according to what the employee can handle. Increase opportunities for inter-office and intra-office socialization. Include the employee in meetings, as relevant. Establish a training plan addressing specific skill gaps or needs the employee may have. At the end of the month, check in with an overall perspective, measuring productivity according to your usual office KPIs and benchmarks. Month 3: Continue ramping up responsibilities and reducing hand-holding, while making it clear that the channels are always open if the employee needs assistance. Set up a 1:1 meeting with the manager responsible for the employee, to discuss how they’ve been settling in, how they’ve been making progress, and if they’re ahead or behind the curve. Consider giving the employee the chance to set their own goals for the next three months, with guidance to ensure that they’re reasonable and achievable. Talk to the new hire specifically about their onboarding experience. Solicit Feedback Finally, recognize that no onboarding process is ever perfect. As your company evolves, your workforce grows and changes, your business processes adapt and evolve, your onboarding process will need to change as well. After a new employee has settled in, discuss with them their experience with the onboarding process itself. Spend time discussing how it was handled, whether it felt too rushed or too drawn out, whether there were any pain points or issues overlooked, and how the process can be adapted for your current business situation. Treat it as a living document, changes to the pressures of new employees and a changing company. Remember, turnover is highest within the first 18 months of employment. These are the most important times to make a good impression and showcase a solid management process and structure to your new hires. Turnover is costly ; learning how to minimize it through a good onboarding process is critical.

Hiring a new employee will always be a risk; it’s a cluster of risks. Some of them are calculated risks with a high reward. Some of them are standard risks inherent in doing business. Others are risks that can be mitigated, so long as you know what they are. What risks are the biggest, though? Risk: Hiring the Wrong Person This first set of risks is one of the biggest and most apparent risks a company faces when hiring a new employee. What happens if you hire the wrong person for the job? There are many reasons why this might occur, which is why probationary periods, contingent offers, training programs, and other aspects of onboarding exist. Hiring the wrong person can be bad, or it can be devastating. A poor choice in an employee can still work out with proper investment, though it will be more expensive and time-consuming than it would have been had you hired the right person in the first place. On the other hand, sometimes the people you hire are entirely incompatible with your company. In these cases, it’s money and time lost, and you need to recognize when to cut your losses and start over. Risking a poor culture fit. Have you ever hired someone, only to find they just don’t fit in? We don’t mean hiring an introvert in a company full of extroverts; we mean hiring someone whose ideas, perspectives, and goals are fundamentally incompatible with those of your company. Think “hiring a militant vegan to work at a dairy farm” levels of incompatibility here. Drama builds, tensions rise, morale falls, productivity suffers, and sooner or later, something will break. “When employees are misaligned with corporate culture, they lack a feeling of belonging that can severely impact their performance and lead to disengagement or employee turnover. When good employees leave, it can be as simple as not feeling in tune with company values, feeling unaligned with the company’s meaning and purpose, or lack of trust in company leadership. But it can also be a profound disconnect and feeling of isolation and loneliness. Widespread issues with alignment can cripple your top performers and even help create a toxic environment across the organization.” – Predictive Index . Risking an under-skilled or under-trained employee. It’s no secret that people exaggerate their resumes to look more attractive to applicant tracking systems and to hiring managers. Sometimes it’s as minor as exaggerating expertise in a skill, and sometimes it means fabricating a skill out of whole cloth. Sometimes, this can get solved by training your employee to fit the role you’ve hired them to handle. A good employee with the right attitude can get trained in the skills you need; an employee with the skills may not be trainable to gain the right attitude. In other cases, the exaggeration is more egregious and shows a compulsive lying or misrepresentation pattern. These people can be highly toxic in the workplace, and it’s best to rid yourself of them before they cause worse problems for the rest of your staff. Risking falling for fake credentials. Most people who lie or exaggerate on their resumes and applications do so in minor ways. Perhaps they claim they held a slightly higher position than they did. Maybe they say they have four years of experience in a skill when they only have three. While unfortunate, these aren’t liable to cause a significant problem. Other times, lies can approach fraud territory. Lying about achieving a higher education degree, lying about certification; these are the sorts of verifiable facts that some people lie about despite how easy it may be to be caught, simply because many companies don’t bother to check. Double-check and verify your applicants’ claims to avoid hiring someone wildly inappropriate for the job. Risk: Improper Hiring Practices Hiring the wrong person is the biggest risk because it’s the most common, but it’s relatively minimal on the scale of business risks. Sure, turnover is expensive, but it’s not business-crushingly devastating. On the other hand, improper hiring practices can be highly detrimental to a business, especially if an overlooked applicant, rejected candidate, or ex-employee files a lawsuit over discriminatory hiring practices. These kinds of cases can consume vast amounts of time and money, and in the worst cases, can lead to court sanctions, huge fines and penalties, and payments to those aggrieved. For obvious reasons, these become huge risks.  Risking asking illegal interview questions. As a general rule, interviews should stick to facts relevant to skills, work experience, past positions, and aspects of an individual relevant to the job itself. Anything that is related to or could be considered related to a protected class is something that can get your business in a lot of hot water. “At first glance, this seems easy enough. But even some questions we treat as small talk can be viewed as discriminatory and can end up serving as evidence against you in an employment practices suit. All it takes is one disgruntled applicant to turn a seemingly innocent question into something you didn’t intend for it to be.” – HNI . Questions about where a candidate grew up, their family, and holidays they celebrate; can seem like small talk but can get construed as asking about nationality, family status, or religious affiliation in a way that can be considered discriminatory.  Risking inconsistency across interviews. One of the keys to avoiding discriminatory hiring practices is to ensure that every interview follows the same template from start to finish. The entire hiring process, from processing resumes to final interviews, should be consistent from candidate to candidate. No matter how minor, any difference can be considered favoritism or discrimination if it can be tied back to a protected category. Even something like whether or not you perform a background check is essential.  Risking adverse impact or discrimination in hiring. Adverse impact is tricky. It’s discrimination that happens despite practices that appear equitable. Two significant examples of adverse impact practices include: Physical lifting or performance requirements for a job that doesn’t otherwise need them . A data entry clerk doesn’t need to have the ability to lift 50 pounds daily the way a construction worker might, so listing that requirement has a disproportionate adverse impact against the physically disabled. Asking for a “general intelligence test” as part of the hiring process . These tests are frequently couched in the local culture and rely on cultural trivia, which can be a form of cultural, national, or ethnic discrimination. In our post about the subject,  you can read more about adverse impact, including methods you can use to avoid it in your hiring practices. Risk: New Employees Leave Closely related to the first set of risks is the one risk every employer must take on every employee: the risk that they will potentially leave shortly after being hired. The hiring process is costly, in both time and money. You have to pay for an ATS, pay for the time of the people managing hiring, and potentially even pay for a candidate’s travel, lodging, and transportation during the interview process. All of this is money and time lost if the employee changes their mind about working for you late in the process or within the first year after being hired. Some turnover is inevitable. However, a big part of successful hiring is finding the people who will best fit in and minimizing the risk of an employee leaving shortly after they arrive.  Risking the financial investment of hiring. Again, some turnover is inevitable. Every candidate you interview is a financial risk. As compiled by Toggl : “As stated in a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, hiring an employee in a company with 0-500 people costs an average of $7,645. Another study by the Society for Human Resource Management states that the average cost to hire an employee is $4,129, with around 42 days to fill a position. According to Glassdoor , the average company in the United States spends about $4,000 to hire a new employee, taking up to 52 days to fill a position.” These costs don’t include the expense of initial training and salary that a failed hire still deserves, even if they choose to leave. Some costs can be minimized. Some reasons for an employee leaving can be minimized as well, such as by paying attention to culture fit. Others, like family emergencies, medical issues, and other problems outside of the control of you or the employee, are just the cost of doing business. Risking the ongoing training and investment in an employee. Every dollar you invest in your new hires is a dollar you risk losing if they leave. However, this doesn’t mean you should avoid investing in your employees. Quite the contrary; if you don’t invest in your employees, they are more likely to leave. This mindset is where many companies get it wrong; they feel like training an employee makes that employee more attractive to poaching from other companies. While this is true, to an extent, it can be fought by providing established routes to career advancement within the organization. If they feel secure and have a future with your company, your employees will be less likely to leave for uncertain pastures. It’s only if they stagnate despite their training that they start looking elsewhere. Risking over-hiring for a job or role. Another significant risk a company takes when hiring for a role is hiring someone who is over-qualified. To a certain extent, hiring a professional for a mid-level role (or a mid-level employee for an entry-level position) seems like a good idea. They know what they’re doing and can hit the ground running. The trouble comes when they soon reach the limit of their position. Someone used to tier-2 IT work might chafe at working a help desk, for example. This situation becomes a risk in two ways. First, the employee is more likely to be more expensive to hire, as their skill level commands a higher salary. Second, when they reach the limits of the role and discover how little they can spread their wings, they’re more likely to leave, forcing you to start over once again. Other Assorted Risks These remaining risks are more difficult to categorize but no less important for a business to consider. Risking hiring people to hire people, diluting goals and culture. This risk tends to come in companies expanding rapidly and hiring in volume . When the people doing your hiring are people you hired recently, they lack a distinct connection and deep awareness of your company cultures, values, and outlook. They hire according to what they think those are, but after a couple of iterations, the reality can be quite different from your original goals and perspectives. Risking a critical lack of diversity in the workforce. Diversity of individuals and mindsets is critical for a modern business to succeed. You can read more about this in these articles: 25 Diversity and Inclusion Statistics You Should Know Thought Diversity: What Is It and Why Is It Important for Recruiting? What are the Characteristics of an Effective and Successful Team? Risking hiring someone who ends up unable to work in your location. This last risk for this post is relevant primarily for companies that hire remote or foreign workers. For an individual of foreign origin to work in the country, they, typically, must obtain permission via a Work Visa and related paperwork. That brings additional risk to companies looking to hire these individuals; if their paperwork is not correctly handled, they fail a background check, or otherwise are not cleared to work in the country, hiring them can become an issue.

The stakes are high when hiring for many high-level executive positions. These are people who lead your company and guide its development and growth. They are also usually some of the most highly-paid individuals in your organization, and a failure to hire appropriately means a higher cost for turnover . Thus, when hiring for upper management or an executive role, you need to look for individuals with specific qualities. Here are (what we consider to be) some of the most important leadership traits to look for when searching for a new executive: 1. Passion A great leader can’t just show up to the job for a paycheck. They have to know how to guide the organization towards its goals, which means sharing those goals. Understanding the company mission and having a passion for the same concerns is crucial. Everyone beneath the executive level understands when their leaders don’t share the passion for the direction of the company they do, and the entire organization suffers for it. 2. Entrepreneurial Acumen Jennifer Beezer , from FOREO, Inc, says this: “Entrepreneurial acumen is key. While all necessary leadership traits are important, having an individual that operates as if he/she were the owner is crucial. C-level [executives] are there to run the business, make tough operating decisions and stay profitable. Entrepreneurial acumen encourages sound leadership, strategic foresight, financial awareness, and all operating aspects that keep the business running.” 3. Vision More than anyone else in the company aside from the CEO, the executive team needs to have a vision not just for the company as it is now, but for where it is headed. Where is the company going, in a quarterly, yearly, or five-year plan ? What steps are necessary to perform, what milestones should be reached along the way? Your executives need to demonstrate an ability to see that vision and convey it to the rest of the team. 4. Action Jared Narlock , from Regional Health, has this to say: “Leaders lead! This may sound simple, but I’ve encountered so many leaders who wait for a vision to be set for them instead of taking action by setting a path, communicating it, and executing to make it happen. Executives, and all leaders, must be able to own their circumstances and take action to achieve needed results and outcomes, not wait for the right parameters only and then execute.” 5. Curiosity A good executive should have a high level of natural curiosity. They want to understand how things work, and they’ll ask questions to grow that understanding. When confronted with a problem, they’ll be more likely to approach it from multiple sides, to get a full reckoning of what the problem means and how it can be addressed. Curious leaders also tend to build rapport with their staff much more easily than their incurious counterparts. 6. Empowerment Simply by being an executive, your new hire will wield tremendous power within your organization. A good leader must know how to use that power for the betterment of others; not just handing down their mandates from on high, but empowering their teams to make appropriate decisions and progress towards solutions that benefit all involved. Great leaders empower and delegate responsibilities to build a robust organization, rather than bearing it all on their shoulders. 7. Integrity Kelly Lum , from Highgate Hotels, prioritizes integrity. “One trait I always look out for is integrity. At the executive level, leaders must tell me how they have created and will aim to create a safe and trusting environment for their teams while acting in the best interest of the organization and its people from a moral and ethical perspective.” 8. Authenticity A good executive builds trust within their organization, proving themselves as someone who isn’t just there to solve problems, but someone who advances the organization as a whole. They need to be aware that they are human beings who may have flaws, lack of understanding, or other issues they need to work on. A good executive needs to be an authentic person with the self-awareness to recognize when they need to address themselves, rather than force the organization around them to conform. 9. Persuasion Your executives wield power and have a vision, but they can’t just drive the bus without letting the passengers know where they’re going. Thus, a good executive hire needs to be able to sell their vision for the company to all who listen. This is crucial for many aspects of executive leadership, from recruiting and hiring to engaging their teams, and even when attracting investors to the company. 10. Problem-Solving Ability James Banares, from ValiMail, recognizes that an executive needs to be able to solve high-level problems. It’s important for someone in a leading role to address these issues head on rather than wait for someone else to handle them. “In executive hiring, I always look for people with a passion and yearning to sink their teeth into complex problems. I probe into their most complex missions at companies and assess their reactions to how they’ve tackled it. If they have this trait, their willingness, tenacity and creative problem-solving abilities will lead to impactful outcomes and new ideas.” 11. Flexibility Executives cannot become set in their ways. The world around them changes, the company beneath them changes, and the pressures of the market change. All of these pressures mean an executive that cannot change is an executive who will be left to stagnate. Moreover, a good executive needs to be able to flex between the detail-oriented realm of tactical decision-making and the broad overview level of strategic decision-making. 12. Cultural Fit Company culture is largely determined by the people at the top, but that doesn’t mean any cultural perspective is fine from an executive. Hiring a new executive to join an existing team guiding an existing company means there’s an even greater need to ensure that they fit in with the company culture. A poor cultural fit can demolish a company from the inside out, as competing pressures disrupt morale and fail to guide the company along the path it was already taking. 13. Open-Mindedness Going along with flexibility and authenticity, open-mindedness is required in a good executive. The best executives need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, adjust their viewpoints according to new data, and remain receptive to new methods and ways of doing things. An executive should be willing to challenge company norms (especially if they go against the best practices that the said executive has learned) but must be equally willing to acknowledge an alternate way of doing things when they work. 14. Honesty TinyPulse writes : “In one of our past studies, we found out that as many as 61% of workers believe that trusting their managers is of top importance to job satisfaction. Unfortunately, only 33% of these people are happy with the level of trust within their company.” Honesty from executives and upper management is critical in allowing employees to trust the vision and direction of a new hire that guides them. In a world full of vultures looking to pick apart companies for their benefit, this is even more important. 15. Transparency The best leaders are those who play their cards in the open as much as possible. Employees don’t like being guided into the unknown or being simply told to do something without knowing why. An executive should adopt the perspective of asking “is there a good reason to keep this hidden” rather than “is there a good reason to share this” . 16. Inspiration Inc performed a study looking for the top leadership traits, and #1 was being inspiring. They say “Great leaders create a vision of the future that is vivid and compelling, and that motivates employees to want to achieve it. Everyone wants to work for a company that makes a difference in the world.” The executive you hire should be someone who is capable of inspiring the people they work with to share their vision. 17. Drive The best executives are driven to get things done. They want to see results, but they aren’t going to sit there and wait until they happen. They’re willing to do what it takes to secure those results, putting their own efforts to work, whether that’s in motivating the people who need motivating or rolling up their sleeves to get to work themselves. 18. Expertise What kind of training does your prospective executive candidate have? “Executive experience” isn’t as valuable as you might think. Your executives should have experience not just at the upper leadership level, but down in the trenches. They should know what it’s like to work in their industry, so they better know how to guide those who still do. 19. Comprehensive Thinking Dale Albrecht of Alonos, Inc , offers his wisdom. “Executive leaders must be oriented toward “working on the business” versus “working in the business.” It is a must-have mindset to view the entire business as an ecosystem that delivers value to the marketplace and customers. To have executive leaders who are oriented to optimize their own function without consideration for the ecosystem will misdirect capital, people, and execution.” 20. Willingness to Take Risks Executives are some of the safest people in the world, with salaries and benefits that insulate them from much of the risk their employees take every day. Thus, they must be willing to take comparative risks for the good of their company and own their failures when they happen. Organizations don’t succeed without taking risks, and a huge part of a successful executive is the ability to take those risks while helping to insulate the company from potential failure. 21. Tenacity The worst executives are the ones who have their jobs because of family connections or were otherwise handed them on a silver platter. The best, on the other hand, are those who have had to work their way up the ladder step by step. Tenacity and the ability to keep fighting past failure is the key to this kind of success, and it’s the kind of tenacity necessary for the executive to lead your team into the future. 22. Empathy Sherrie Suski , from Tricon American Homes, places empathy as a highly important innate trait. “While most skills can be taught, the ability to truly care and, by extrapolation, show compassion, is a trait that is innate. If you have made it to the executive ranks and have managed through any other means, your ability to truly engage others in your vision is limited. If employees are not engaged, you will not receive their best effort.” 23. Humility One of the biggest dangers of taking on an executive role is an inflated sense of self-importance. The executives leading your company are some of the most powerful people in the room when they’re within your offices, but when they deal with others – investors, business partners, and the like – they need humility. That level of self-importance can scuttle business deals before they start and leave a company floundering. 24. Agility Several other qualities have hinted at this one, but it, too, should be sought. The world moves fast these days, and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances is of critical importance. Changing the direction of the company as necessary, but with the right level of both foresight and forward-thinking to plan the transition, is a critical component of executive-level success. 25. Leading Through Stress Bryan Passman of Hunter + Esquire recognizes that the executive level can be very stressful, especially when times are tough for a business. Thus, the ability to lead through stressful situations is a must. “A successful track record of leading through stress is essential, because of great collaboration and communication characteristics. We measure for confidence and courage along with humility and hunger. Ideally, a new executive will contribute to the organization from day one, while also being a great student of the unique industry challenges.“ Finding a talented executive candidate who meets all of these qualities can be exceptionally difficult. Many of them can be trained or can be picked up as part of the overall company culture, but some of them are innate. You can’t teach empathy, for example, or the resilience necessary to make it through tough times. Hiring an executive who meets as many of these qualities as possible, however, gives you a good place to start.

Behavioral interview questions are some of the most important questions you can ask in an interview. They allow you to get a feel for how a candidate is going to respond in certain kinds of situations. Some of them are more useful than others, of course, and you should always be aware that people will fudge the truth to secure a job, but that’s true of all interview questions. What even is a behavioral interview question? They’re similar to normal, traditional interview questions, but they tend to be more pointed . They aren’t asking about superficial details like “how did you hear about this position?” Instead, they’re focused on how the candidate reacted to certain kinds of situations in their previous employment, or in general life situations. The idea being, of course, that the way an employee has reacted to situations in the past is an indicator of how they will react to similar situations in the future, should they encounter them on the job. The key to using behavioral interview questions is to watch more than just their answer. Look for their body language when they answer, think about details they may be leaving out of their answer – though never assume something unsupported – and keep an eye out for contradictions between answers. Whether you’re the one holding the interviews, or you’re preparing to take one yourself, it pays to know the most common behavioral interview questions that may be worth asking and answering. How to Pick the Right Behavioral Interview Questions to Ask If you’re the one giving a behavioral interview, you have a decision to make: what do you ask? There are a ton of questions you can ask – as evidenced by our list below – and you only have so much time in your interview. You need to pick a selection of questions that give you a feel for your candidate without turning interviews into a slog. Think about the open position. What kinds of situations occur in that position, both frequently and semi-frequently? This should guide the majority of the questions you want to ask. For example, if you’re hiring for a position that involves handling valuable items, you may want to ask questions about how an employee has handled a situation where they became aware of a coworker’s theft. If the position involves dealing with private personal information, you can ask how they would handle a potential breach they noticed. You can also ask more generalized questions about behavior, such as “if you encounter a problem with your assigned tasks and you haven’t been trained to solve it, how would you handle it?” Is this part of the first interview, or a later stage? Some companies only have one interview for many positions, while others progress to two or even three interviews, depending on the level of the open position and the qualifications necessary to fill it. These interviews are typically used to progress from traditional questions and filtering, to behavioral questions and filtering, to personalized questions to choose the best candidate. Your process may be different, and that’s fine; just as long as you have one that works. How much time do you have to ask and discuss? Behavioral questions tend to take up more time to ask, answer, and discuss than more traditional interview questions . You have to engage with a candidate and judge their awareness of a hypothetical situation, or the veracity of an anecdote that may take some time to tell. The longer a question takes to answer, the fewer questions you can ask in the course of a normal interview. You can think up your own questions, but to get you started, here are 100 of the more common examples. Questions about Leadership Leadership is a trait that not only applies to those in management positions but can also be crucial for individual contributors.  When we pose questions related to leadership, we’re trying to gauge a candidate’s ability to guide, influence, and inspire others. Leadership questions help employers decipher how a potential hire might handle responsibility, tackle challenging situations, and motivate a team. Finding out how a candidate has demonstrated leadership in the past can provide a glimpse into their potential future actions, ensuring you’re bringing onboard someone who can drive both themselves and their team toward success. A strong candidate will provide clear examples of times they’ve taken initiative, made tough decisions, or inspired others. Pay attention to their problem-solving approach and their ability to navigate complex team dynamics. Answers that display a balance of assertiveness, empathy, and reflective thinking often point to a mature leadership style. Tell me about a time where you used logic to solve a problem. Tell me about a decision you made that proved unpopular, and how you handled it. How do you handle your schedule being interrupted? Have you ever had to convince a team to work on a project they didn’t like? How did you do it? Have you had to solve a squabble between two team members? How did you do it? Have you ever gone to bat for your team in opposition to a higher-up in your company? How did you do it, and how did it work out? How would you go about motivating a team member who is struggling? Have you ever had to make a risky decision? How did it turn out? How would you handle a team member who failed to reach their goals? How do you prioritize your projects? Tell me about a time you solved a problem in a creative or unorthodox way. How do you prioritize service to a large number of clients at the same time? Tell me about a time where you were the resident expert. Did people trust you? Do you consider yourself to be better with written or verbal communication? What makes an ideal team member in your eyes? Tell me about a time you’ve had to put together a team; how did you choose your candidates? Questions about Teamwork In almost every professional setting, collaboration is key. Teamwork questions are posed to understand how a candidate interacts with peers, handles conflicts, and contributes to a group effort. These questions help uncover a candidate’s interpersonal skills and their adaptability in team settings. By exploring their past team experiences, employers can gauge how seamlessly a candidate might integrate into existing teams. Ideal responses will highlight a candidate’s ability to listen, communicate, and compromise. Look for examples where they’ve effectively managed conflicts or contributed uniquely to team success. Candidates who show an understanding of both their strengths and weaknesses in team settings demonstrate self-awareness. Have you been in a situation where you disagree with a company policy? How do you handle it? What do you do if a team member on your project isn’t pulling their weight? How do you find motivation for a project you’re not enthused to work on? Give an example of a successful moment as part of a team. Give an example of an unsuccessful moment as part of a team. How do you handle your team being reprimanded for something you didn’t do? Give an example of a difficult situation with a team member you’ve had to solve. What do you do if your team disagrees with your manager’s decisions? What would you do if your team was waiting on another department dragging their heels? What would you do if your team is stuck waiting for a vendor response? Tell me about a time you’ve had to work with a teammate with a very different personality from your own. Tell me about a time you’ve wished you handled a situation differently. Questions about Goals and Ambition Ambition can be a driving force behind job performance, professional growth, and company advancement. By inquiring about a candidate’s goals and aspirations, employers can assess alignment between individual ambitions and company objectives. Such alignment can lead to increased job satisfaction and retention. Candidates with clear, well-thought-out professional goals often demonstrate forward-thinking and dedication. However, it’s also essential to see if they can balance ambition with realism and teamwork. Responses that show a history of setting, pursuing, and achieving goals suggest determination and drive. What is one example of a goal you achieved, and how did you work to achieve it? Tell me about a time you went above and beyond your job duties. Have you been passed over for a promotion? How did you react? Have you struggled to reach a goal and failed? How did you handle it? How do you set goals in a way that facilitates achieving them? What do you do when you finish your work and the day isn’t over yet? How would you go about seeking out an additional certification for your career? Have you ever had the opportunity to talk to your CEO? What did you talk about? What would you discuss if you could talk to our upper management today? What do you do when you need to make a good impression with a new customer? What do you do when you need to make a good impression with management? What would you do if you were chosen to represent the company at a trade show? What do you do if your job training is going poorly? What do you do if you want more training than what your job is providing you? Have you ever had to take over for your boss? Is it something you would prefer to do? Questions about Stress and Adaptability The modern workplace can often be fast-paced and unpredictable. Understanding how a candidate handles stress or adapts to change can be indicative of their resilience and problem-solving skills. These questions aim to discover how candidates cope under pressure and how they navigate unforeseen challenges. Look for candidates who approach stress with a problem-solving attitude and those who display coping mechanisms that align with the company’s values. Adaptability is showcased when a candidate can describe situations where they’ve learned or evolved due to unexpected circumstances. Tell me about a time you were stressed at work and how you handled it. Describe a time where you worked under pressure for a short time. Describe a time where you worked under pressure for an extended period. Tell me what you do when presented with a deadline that seems too short. How do you handle interruptions when you’re under a time constraint? Have you ever had to hand off a stressful situation to a coworker or supervisor? Have you ever been faced with an important decision and not had enough information to make it? What did you do? You have to make an important decision in a short time constraint; how do you make it? Tell me about a time you’ve experienced a major setback, and how you handled it. Tell me about a time you’ve had to get information or resources from someone who isn’t very responsive, and how you handled it. Tell me about a time where you had to extricate yourself from a tricky situation. When time is running out, how do you decide what to cut from your to-do list? Have you ever had to give a presentation, and how did it go? Tell us about a time you felt defeated in your job. How did you handle it? What is the costliest mistake you’ve made at your job, and what happened because of it? Questions about Morality and Ethics A company’s reputation and success often hinge on the moral and ethical decisions of its employees. By asking questions about morality and ethics, employers can gauge a candidate’s character and their alignment with the company’s values. This can be crucial in ensuring trust and integrity in the workplace. Responses should display a clear moral compass. Ideal candidates will stand firm on ethical issues, even when faced with challenging situations. Demonstrations of integrity, honesty, and principled decision-making are key indicators of a candidate’s ethical stance. Have you ever noticed a coworker violating company policy? If so, how did you handle it? Have you ever noticed a manager or boss violating company policy? If so, how did you handle it? Have you ever encountered a coworker or boss violating the law, and if so, what did you do? Have you ever had a fellow employee throw you under the bus? How did you handle it? What would you do if you found a manager showing clear favoritism for one employee, or the opposite? Have you ever had the opportunity to duck the blame for something you did? Did you take it? Do you own up to your mistakes when you make them? What is the biggest mistake you’ve made as part of your job? How did you correct it? Have you ever been part of an ethically questionable business? How did you handle it? Have you ever violated company policy to solve a problem or do your job? Have you ever been told to violate safety regulations to do your job? Did you? Have you ever intentionally violated safety policies to do your job? Have you ever been asked to perform a task that goes against your personal values, but not company or legal regulations? Did you do it? Questions about Resume Items Delving deeper into a candidate’s resume allows employers to understand the experiences and achievements listed more comprehensively. It offers a chance to discuss specifics, verify claims, and get insights into a candidate’s professional journey. Look for clarity, consistency, and depth in the answers. Candidates who can discuss their resume items with passion, detail, and reflection often genuinely value those experiences and can bring those lessons into their new role. Tell us about earning this certification you’ve listed. Tell us what you did to earn this employee commendation. Tell us what led to you earning this award. You’ve listed “team management” as a skill; tell us about a time you’ve led your team. What is your most important personal achievement you didn’t list on your resume? What is your proudest moment in your professional career to date? What did you enjoy the most about your last job? What did you enjoy the least about your last job? Questions about Interactions Whether it’s with clients, customers, or colleagues, interpersonal interactions play a vital role in many job functions. Questions about interactions can unveil a candidate’s people skills, empathy, and conflict-resolution abilities. Positive interactions highlight a candidate’s social skills and customer service acumen, while conflict scenarios can shed light on their problem-solving and diplomacy abilities. Effective communicators will often present a balanced view of interactions, understanding both their role and the perspectives of others. Have you ever calmed down an angry customer? How? Have you ever been unable to calm down a customer? Why not? Have you ever had to deal with an irate manager? What did you do? Have you ever bent company policy to satisfy a customer? Have you ever been unable to bend company policy and irritated a customer? How do you handle bring a problem to the attention of a vendor? What would you do if you discovered a gross mistake with a customer’s order after they’ve paid? Have you ever had to defend a customer to your superiors? How did you do it? Tell me about the best review you’ve ever gotten from a customer. Tell me about the worst review you’ve ever gotten from a customer. Tell me about a time you’ve had to deal with a client used to exploiting loopholes. Miscellaneous Questions While certain questions might not fit neatly into categories, they still provide valuable insights into a candidate’s mindset, problem-solving skills, and overall professional approach. These questions offer a broader view of a candidate’s experiences and thinking processes. Due to the varied nature of these questions, ideal responses can differ. However, look for consistency in problem-solving approaches, self-awareness, and a genuine reflection on past experiences. What do you do to verify that the work you produce is accurate and valuable? How do you review your work to identify errors before finalizing a project? What do you do when you discover a mistake made by a coworker? Which would you lean on to make a decision; logic or a gut feeling? Tell me about a time where your gut feelings have been wrong. Tell me about the most difficult decision you’ve had to make on the job. What do you regret most about your previous job? What would you say is your greatest challenge as a team leader? Have you ever had a time where you’ve proposed a solution to a problem only to have it rejected? What did you do? What would you choose if you had to pick between a professional goal and a personal goal? Get Help Interviewing Candidates Today So there you have it; 100 behavioral interview questions you can use wholesale, or use as a basis for developing your own interview questions. If you need help sourcing candidates or interviewing them, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team . We’re dedicated to helping organizations like yours attract and retain top talent.

What happens during a new employee’s first day with your company? Is there a video involved? Lots of paperwork? Would employees describe it as a “bore-ientation?” Or is your new employee onboarding program designed to help new hires adjust to your company culture, work environment, and performance expectations from day one? That’s what Talya Bauer, Ph.D., writing for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) says is necessary to prevent losing new hires during their first few months with your company. Dr. Bauer knows about onboarding. She studies, it along with candidate recruitment , selection, over-qualification, mentoring, and leadership in her research about relationships at work. As the Cameron Professor of Management at Portland State University in Oregon, Dr. Bauer is a teacher and researcher, publishes results of her research in professional journals, and consults for government and Fortune 1000 organizations. Why Care About Onboarding? Dr. Bauer recommends employers pay attention to a good onboarding process and make it a priority because more than half of new hires fail within the first 18 months. Mark Murphy, founder and CEO of Leadership IQ and author of “Hiring for Attitude,” knows this is true from his company’s study of 20,000 new hires. The immediate benefits of good onboarding are well-adjusted new employees, but long-term benefits to the company hit the bottom line, including improved retention, reduced time to productivity, and better overall customer satisfaction. And long-term benefits to employees are job satisfaction, higher performance, lower stress, and organizational commitment. Consider these statistics: “22 percent of staff turnover occurs in the first 45 days of employment.” (The Wynhurst Group) “Many companies leave executive onboarding to chance, and as a result experience failure rates in excess of 50 percent when it comes to retaining new executive talent.” (Egon Zehnder International) “New employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58 percent more likely to be with the organization after three years.” (The Wynhurst Group) Turnover costs money from lost productivity, for recruiting activities, and lost work because of vacancies. Suzanne Lucas, reporting for CBS MoneyWatch, says the average cost of replacing an employee is between 16 and 20 percent of that employee’s salary. High turnover represents a major expense for employers and is well worth every effort to reduce and control it. One way to do that is by making new employees feel welcome and prepared for their jobs with a solid onboarding program. What Formal Onboarding Means Does your onboarding process end after the first day or first week? Or does it last for two years like global beauty company L’Oreal? L’Oreal’s program, “L’Oreal Fit,” includes training, meetings with key insiders, mentoring and HR support, site visits, shadowing programs, and various other valuable experiences for employees. Dr. Bauer explains that formal onboarding programs are more effective than informal or non-existent programs. She describes three levels of onboarding as passive, high potential, and proactive onboarding, with compliance, clarification, culture, and connection the four building blocks of orienting new employees. Passive onboarding involves compliance , or teaching new employees about the company’s policies, rules, and regulations High potential onboarding involves compliance and clarification of the new job and performance expectations, plus some culture and connection to help the employee understand the organization and introduce co-workers, management, and information sources. Proactive onboarding involves all four building blocks in a comprehensive program that systematically syncs onboarding with strategic human resource management . Onboarding at Top Companies How does your company’s onboarding compare to these top companies? Zappos – When new employees start at Zappos, they get an intensive five-week training course to learn about the company’s values and procedures, as well as an offer of $2,000 to quit if they don’t feel they are a good fit. IBM – IBM’s “Assimilation Process” came out of an accounting of how much time and resources are spent on recruiting and hiring and how important (and economical) it is to successfully integrate and retain new employees. IBM’s year-long onboarding process has three steps to welcome new hires, prepare a functional workspace, introduce new people to the existing workforce, clarify roles and responsibilities, complete paperwork, and ongoing coaching and connecting so employees are fully invested in the company culture, position, and workplace. Microsoft – Onboarding at Microsoft is a mission to enhance the new employee experience for the thousands of employees hired each year. Although HR professionals at Microsoft work as a team to create and sustain a high quality framework that supports business goals, onboarding is considered everyone’s job and team members welcome, support, and mentor new employees. Dr. Bauer has filtered her extensive research into onboarding and defines the following best practices: Start to prepare for new employees before the first day on the job. Plan to make the first day special. Use formal orientation with a written onboarding plan that is consistently implemented. Make onboarding participatory, not boring lecture-style and use technology and engage stakeholders in the program. Monitor the program over time and use milestones such as 30, 60, 90, and 120 days on the job, up to a year after the first day. Make sure objectives, timelines, roles, and responsibilities are clearly defined for new employees. If your company experiences high turnover, take a look at your onboarding process and improve it. It affects new hire satisfaction and retention, as well as the bottom line. Can you afford not to develop better onboarding now? For more information, check out our free eBooks or contact Emerge Talent Cloud today. #newemployees