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“Never judge a book by its cover.” That’s a common saying that’s been around for many generations. In terms of recruitment, it means something very unique. When it comes to selecting the best candidates to work for your business, going deeper than just face value should be a routine practice. Uncover the Truth with Background Checks First and foremost, in a more competitive job market, individuals are more apt to embellish or hide certain aspects of their histories in order to appear more attractive to recruiters. While some of these actions are fairly obvious to the trained recruiter, not all will be easy to spot until the background check takes place. A background check should include all of these elements: Work history and educational verification prior to interviews taking place Drug test conducted by a third-party administrator before a formal job offer made Criminal background check to include the required level of clearance (civilian vs. government) Another element of a recruiting background check that may not have occurred to you is a check of the potential employee’s driving record. This information is extremely important if the position requires regular driving or use of a company vehicle, but even if it doesn’t, it can be to your benefit to investigate. You may be surprised at what you find. Someone who has had frequent instances of driving irresponsibly may not be someone you want to have at your company, especially if there’s occasional driving involved with the job. The clearer a picture you can get of someone you’re considering hiring, the better. Why the Background Check is Important Fortunately, background screening and criminal background checks are available to recruiters and human resources professionals. Employers today have the right to learn more about the candidates they are about to commit to a legal relationship with. They also have the right to ensure that a potential new hire does not have anything lurking in their past that could potentially harm the business or create a safety hazard for clients and other employees. According to the most recent figures from by the Justice Department Bureau of Justice Statistic Workplace Violence, 1993-2009,as many as 572,000 non-fatal crimes occurred in the American workplace in a single year. These figures are staggering considering a majority of the victims who’s assailants were other employees and acquaintances. Yet, in many of these cases, the violence could have been prevented simply by conducting background checks to determine if any potential new hires had criminal records or other factors that would create a dangerous work environment. More Reasons for Using Background Checks in Recruiting There are some additional reasons why background checks should always be a required part of the recruitment process. Background checks can be a valuable tool for selecting the right candidate fit every time. When used consistently, this simple step can eliminate many future problems for the company. As a recruiter, it’s vital to ensuring that a candidate meets the full requirements of each assignment and that the return on investment will be a good one for the client receiving the candidate. Why is this important, from a recruitment standpoint? For one, your candidate will be thoroughly screened to ensure that all the experience and credentials listed are accurate for the needs of each job order. Second, you’ll be able to confidently present your candidate to the HR manager and be able to negotiate more effectively because you will know your candidate is who he or she is representing. Ways Recruiters Can Conduct Background Checks Whatever your policy is for conducting an employment background check, you want to make sure that policy is clear and that you apply it consistently. You don’t want to be in a situation where you’re appearing to show favoritism toward a particular candidate or seeming to reject a candidate for a reason — other than insufficient suitability for the position — that’s not supported by the background check. If you do find something negative on a background check during the recruiting process, you may want to implement a policy of having a conversation with the candidate about what you find. It’s possible that they have a reasonable explanation that mitigates the circumstances of the issue or that the red flag on the employment background check is due to a clerical error somewhere along the line. This situation can happen, and it would be a shame to lose a qualified candidate for a negative background check issue that’s a mistake or has a plausible explanation. Again, you’re not trying to find loopholes to protect desirable candidates, but you generally want to be looking for a pattern of unwanted behavior. A single mistake that has a rational explanation and is not likely to be repeated is usually not a good reason to give up an otherwise qualified candidate. Several possible ways to conduct background checks are to use a third-party service or a background screening software to augment your current recruitment process. This can help make the criminal and drug screen more efficient while you focus on the work history and educational verification. In some cases, your talent management software will include the feature to run a background screen with the proper legalese to get permission from each candidate. Alternatively, you can ask candidates to submit to a criminal background and drug screen at their own cost, to be reimbursed upon successful passing and employment. Using a third-party company for background checks, as opposed to having your full time recruiters or your contract recruiters do them, also has the benefit of ensuring consistency and eliminating bias when it comes to verifying new potential hires. The background check company has nothing invested in whether or not you hire a certain candidate for your company. Their only goal is to make sure you know everything you need to know to determine whether or not an individual is a risk to hire. You can incorporate their results into your decision-making process with confidence. Conducting background checks are not just an option anymore in recruitment – they are a necessary part of being a responsible recruiter who wants to provide the very best candidate to each client every time. #backgroundchecks #hiringpractices #humanresources

Retained search, also called executive search, is an interesting option for companies that need to hire senior-level executives or other key positions with salaries that are well into the six figures. Employers contract with recruiters for retained search who will work exclusively with the company to give full attention to the search. Retained search recruiters handle the entire process of selecting, screening, and evaluating candidates and present suggested candidates for hire. The advantages of retained search are numerous. They include high-quality recruiting and confidentiality. Retained search provides access to talent pools of senior-level candidates. It offers a graduated payment system that spreads the costs over time. There’s a high return on investment when a top-quality executive is hired. However, retained search also comes with its own unique challenges. Read this blog post to discover the 6 disadvantages of retained searches.  #1 Upfront Retainer It’s hard to get around the disadvantages of the hefty retainer required upfront for retained search services. It’s the price of exclusivity, for the recruiter to work on your search only and not poach your employees, as well as the high-quality services provided by experienced search firms.  But paying for services before they are performed can be hard to justify in a challenging or down economy or in an industry with slim profit margins. And paying at milestones such as when qualified candidates are identified and again at interviews, all before a hire is ever made, can seem like a gamble. #2 Higher Fees The higher fees in retained search are definitely a disadvantage, although they may seem like a trade-off for exclusive quality search efforts. Contingency search fees are typically 20 percent of the salary for the position, while retained search fees run 30 to 35 percent. Fees can often top $100,000 for companies recruiting larger teams or senior-level candidates, making them hard to swallow, especially if it’s a time when a company is going through tough times. #3 Risk Retained search can be an expensive risk because there’s no guarantee of a hire. Fees for search services are paid regardless of whether there is a resulting hire or not. Like any risk , there is the possibility of loss, and a loss of $30,000 to $50,000 represents a loss of operating capital that could have been used to maintain or grow the business. #4 Long-Term Contracts The long-term contracts involved in retained search may not be ideal for every business situation. A company may have to make changes to be responsive to the market or industry, but will be tied to a retained search contract requiring payments for services that you might not be needed in a changing business situation. This can be a problem in an evolving economy and a global market with rapid advances in technology and business practices. #5 Accountability While accountability may seem to be part of retained search, without any guarantee of hire and with up-front payments, recruiter accountability becomes very important. The extent of that accountability is usually exclusivity, but is not really measurable.  How can you tell how hard a retained search firm is working to find quality candidates or even if they will find someone to hire? Are these issues your business can afford to deal with while trying to fill an executive position? #6 Work Done by Lower-Level Employees One of the less obvious yet notable disadvantages of retained search firms is the common practice of delegating substantial chunks of the recruitment process to lower-level employees or junior recruiters. While clients may believe they’re securing the expertise of seasoned professionals given the premium price they pay, in reality, much of the groundwork, like sourcing candidates or initial screenings, may be conducted by junior staff with less experience and understanding of the intricacies of senior-level executive searches. Such delegation can potentially lead to overlooked high-caliber candidates or a misalignment between the client’s needs and the candidates presented. Moreover, with senior recruiters only stepping in at the later stages, there might be a loss of valuable insights or nuances that could have been gathered during the earlier stages of the search. The irony is that companies pay top dollar for the expertise of senior search consultants but might not always get their full, undivided attention throughout the process. This disparity between expectation and reality can sometimes result in a less than optimal outcome for the hiring company, both in terms of candidate quality and overall search efficiency. Conclusion  Retained search is a good recruitment option for a few very specific hiring needs, such as a worldwide corporation that needs executive-level candidates for mergers or expansion. But for most other recruiting situations, creative alternatives such as on-demand recruitment process outsourcing often provide the recruitment needed without the bugaboos of the retained search process. Weighing the pros and cons of retained search is crucial for making the best hiring decisions. If you’re reevaluating your recruitment process or searching for flexible, effective alternatives, let’s discuss how on-demand recruitment process outsourcing can fit your needs. Contact us today to explore the best solutions tailored for your company’s hiring challenges .  #recruitmentmethods #RetainedSearch

Sooner or later, every company needs to hire . People leave and need to be replaced, business grows and you need to expand, requirements change and you need new skills and experience. Hiring is a science, but it’s also an art. There’s no one formula you can use to plug in your data and receive viable candidates. You need to craft, to sculpt, to create the perfect job descriptions to attract the candidates you want. To help with this task, we’ve put together this guide. No one gets job descriptions right the first time they try, but you can start at a more advantageous position and work to optimize from there. Start with ideas, tips, and tricks that can help you put together a job description that suits your needs. Move to templates, shells of descriptions you can use as a starting place, to customize to fit your business. Then, examine some of the best job descriptions out there, see why they work, and pull elements you can use in your sourcing. Ideas for Compelling Job Descriptions What are the qualities of a good job description, and how can you include those elements in your job description? The specific elements vary depending on who you ask, but what we’ve observed is that every good description has the following: A summary of what makes the position unique. Why will they enjoy working for you? How does this position help the company, both internally and externally? What makes your company unique? This is a good way to capture the candidate’s attention and make your listing stand out. A compelling job title. This title should convey the role and relative authority level of the position while doing what it can to glamorize the position to make it more attractive to applicants. A summary of responsibilities and expectations. This is a short, high-level overview of the position and its responsibilities. Is it managerial, is it technical, is it manual labor? This answers simple questions and helps applicants self-filter for roles they don’t want. A detailed description of the role and its responsibilities. This is a deeper and more detailed rundown of the open position. It lists the responsibilities and duties of the role in more detail. Tip: one of the biggest mistakes companies make here is trying to cover everything the role could potentially entail. Try to limit this section to the most important duties and avoid over-explaining. Details about the job environment. Is the position considered office work? Outdoor work? Is it located in one place or at several different offices? Is travel required? Should the applicant own a vehicle, or are they required to have any other resources? A granular list of specific responsibilities. This is your traditional list of what the job will entail, usually in a bulleted list format. There will be a lot of overlap with the longer description, but this section is where you get more specific responsibilities. Again, avoid listing everything the role could possibly do; just stick to the most important day to day responsibilities. A list of must-have requirements. Education level, experience in a similar role, familiarity with specific industry tools and programs; any requirement that is 100% mandatory to succeed in the role should be listed here. These are your non-negotiable, non-trainable skills, experiences, and knowledge the applicant must have to be considered. A list of nice-to-have attributes. Anything that would help the candidate succeed in the role but is not 100% necessary can go on this list. If an applicant has some of these qualities, it puts them in the running ahead of someone who does not. These can be attributes like extended experience and familiarity with programs and systems, experience with specific kinds of work, or things you normally train employees to do. Salary information (optional). There are pros and cons of including salary information in your job descriptions; see this article for more details . If your job description covers all of these categories – even if you cover some of them in the same section – you’re in a good place. One of the most crucial tips we can give you is to avoid using too much superlative language. We’ve all seen job descriptions looking for that “rock star developer” or the “tech guru”, but that kind of language could potentially turn off some of your best candidates. It could also hurt diversity. NCWIT, the National Center for Women & Information Technology, has found that over-the-top language like “rock star”, “guru”, “ninja”, “world-class”, and “best of the best” tend to turn off some male applicants, and even more women and minorities. Chris Nicholson, CEO of artificial intelligence company Skymind, says: “Obviously what makes someone a stellar employee at one company isn’t necessarily going to translate to every other company… you’re looking for specific skills, traits, expertise that will fill in where you are lacking. The problem is, most companies are using the wrong ones, and that’s not only hurting them generally, but it also contributes to the lack of diversity and inclusion” Above all, however, your job description needs to be unique for the role. As Marissa Peretz says : “Job descriptions tend to be one size fits all, bland overviews written from the company’s point of view. This approach can be satisfactory for entry-level jobs, but it will not hook passive job seekers at a higher level. For that, a hiring manager and HR partner should spend time together to really understand the business needs so they can write a job description that goes beyond lists of characteristics and requirements. ‘Checkbox’ approaches – which are far too common – lack sizzle. More importantly, they don’t work.” With all of that in mind, it’s important to highlight the reasons that the position you’re offering is exciting and can make a difference, as long as you’re not going too far over the top. This will help you attract qualified individuals who are excited to work for you without obsessing too much over culture fit. Let’s take a look at some examples in this next section. Templates for Great Job Descriptions Templates are a tool, but you need to be very careful in using them. They’re good for getting ideas and for taking the format of existing job descriptions, but you should make sure to fully customize them as much as possible. Taking a template and using it wholesale, with just a few key terms changed to suit your company, is a great way to have your job listing ignored by the best candidates. After all, if you’re not putting in much effort to list your role, what else are you skimping on? To that end, rather than provide you with a few hand-picked templates, we’re going to give you a list of lists; dozens of templates you can browse through to get an idea of what a job description should look like. Take elements of different job descriptions you like, make note of specific turns of phrase that caught your attention, but don’t copy and paste the entire template to use. A Simple Job Description Template from Betterteam – This template is barely a template, but it serves one good purpose: it works as a checklist for specific kinds of information you might want to include. For job requirements, for example, if you have particular physical, certification, or licensure requirements, this checklist can help prevent you from forgetting to list them. Monster’s List of Sample Job Descriptions – This is a list of dozens of templates for job descriptions for specific roles. Monster has processed millions of job descriptions per year and has distilled many of them down to the core qualities each possesses, making this a good resource to see how specific roles might be formatted and what information is typically included. 47 Job Description Templates from TemplateLab – This list of templates is a series of document templates for MS Word or PDF displays. They’re useful to show you how you can format and organize information in your job descriptions, though the specifics of them can vary depending on where you’re posting a job listing. 700+ Free Job Description Templates from Workable – Much like the list from Monster above, this list includes a single basic job description template for over 700 different roles. You can find the specific role – or a similar role – to what you’re hiring for, and review their template to get ideas for what you should be including in your description. Samples of Excellent Job Descriptions Now you have a wealth of templates for different roles, and a broad overview of how to compose a job description including specifics. Now let’s take a look at some real-world examples of good, compelling job descriptions, and what they do right. CVS Jobs We chose a simple example of an administrative assistant role from CVS for this link, but most of their job descriptions follow the same pattern. They list crucial role information at the top, like the job title and location. Then they cover the simple job description, before digging into the bulleted lists of requirements, responsibilities, and qualifications. What we like: The description is relatively short and sweet. It gets to the point without the fluff. For this part-time role, they also list the approximate weekly hours an applicant can expect. Their overview area does a good job highlighting who CVS is as a company and their dedication to inclusivity. Splitting qualifications into two categories, “Required” and “Preferred”, was also a nice touch and something that you don’t see very often. What we don’t like: There are not any benefits or perks listed, even for the higher-paying engineering and managerial positions. The requirements were clearly stated, but the only benefit of working at CVS that we can find from these listings are “staying up to date” with product trends and improving consumer loyalty. They could have done a better job of making these listings a bit more enticing. Aptiv Careers Aptiv is a company making primarily automotive parts with a tech focus on adaptive systems ranging from self-driving vehicles and AI control to safety and security systems. Their careers page recruits for roles around the world, but is available to applicants from anywhere, as long as they’re willing to relocate. What we like: They do a great job at a high-level overview of what a role is and what it does, followed by more granular descriptions of what a candidate should know, what their experience level should be, and what requirements they should meet. They also did a good job at making their job listing sound exciting and at the cutting edge of technology. What we don’t like: The listings could have done a little better outlining what each specific position would entail. They listed some job duties, but these were a little vague and not as exciting as their mission statement. Working with a team, collaborating, developing, documenting – we would have liked more detail here on the day to day operations and what to expect. RGP RGP is a consulting firm that hires extremely talented individuals to consult with their clients to achieve a wide range of goals using high-level analysis, overview, and process changes to improve those client companies. Their hiring portal is focused on different categories of consultants they’re trying to attract, with gateway pages to overview each category before digging into specific open roles. What we like: The self-filtering process helps candidates figure out where they would fit within the organization before they get to specific roles, and gives RGP an opportunity to give a high-level overview of entire categories of open role without cluttering up specific openings with redundant information. Their specific requirements and responsibilities lists for individual roles are also well formulated, with a minimum of extraneous bullet points. Their core values also give us a good idea of what they come to expect out of their new hires. What we don’t like: The initial filtering process does mean that some qualified candidates will click through to find open positions, only to find no available roles, even if similar roles are open in different categories. There were also part-time positions mixed in with consultant and full-time positions with no way to filter these. This is more of a concern with their careers portal than the listings themselves, but it’s worth mentioning nevertheless. General Mills General Mills , the cereal company, has a wide range of available positions from production line staff to administrative to retailer outreach and beyond. Their careers page is immediate and allows searching through open roles with several advanced fields. What we like: Their job description pages are up-front about the most important requirements by putting them in bold. The “who we are” section is separated from the role section, so you can tell it’s a general element of all roles for the company rather than specific openings. They also use a tabbed layout to separate the description and responsibilities from the qualifications, making it easy to identify which is which. Also, each role has a dedicated “hero image” to showcase an example of what working in a given role would be like, though as an outsider it’s difficult to say exactly how representative those images are. What we don’t like: Some of their job descriptions vary wildly in quality. An opening for a factory technician has 400 words of description, while one for a full stack developer has a single 70-word paragraph, much of which isn’t relevant. It appears as though each individual factory, office, and location General Mills hires for has their own person in charge of writing job listings. We would have liked to see more detail on these shorter listings, especially for listings that require a deeply technical background. Your Turn Writing a compelling job description is a matter of artistry and experience as much as it is knowledge and resources . Using templates can give you a place to start, but you really need intimate knowledge of the company, the role, the culture, and the kinds of people you want to attract if you want to craft the best possible descriptions. That said, we know different companies have different approaches to job listings. Has your company tried any experiments with job listings, or have you as an applicant seen any yourself? How did they work? Let us know your experiences below.

Sometimes it seems as though there are as many different HR tools and apps as there are businesses out there. There are so many that it’s difficult to contain them all in a single list, but we’ll try. No matter what size business you run, what the needs of your HR team are, or what your budget is, you’ll find something on this list that will help you achieve your goals. We have something for everyone; applicant tracking, payroll management, employee engagement, onboarding, it’s all there. Keep in mind that the world of HR software is constantly changing. Many of these apps and tools have cross-over between different categories. Some may add new features, some remove old features, some may merge, and some of them will close down. We rely, at least in part, on our audience to help notify us when something changes.  We’ve broken up this list into the major categories, so if you have specific needs you can browse to that category to see what’s out there. Remember, though, that this list isn’t entirely comprehensive, and some of the entries could fall under some (or even all) of the categories because of how robust they are as tools. Consider this list as a starting point for your research. Without further ado, let’s get into it! Internal Communications These tools for HR and talent acquisition will help your company communicate and share documents more effectively. These are especially important for a remote workforce, where things like screen sharing are more important than ever. Vispato . A whistleblowing software to help companies comply with proper HR protocol and regulations. Grammarly . A communication software to help with proper tone and grammar when writing documents. Webex . A free screen-sharing program for easy and effective communication in the workplace. Candidate Sourcing These tools are focused on helping your organization find candidates wherever they are, with an emphasis on locating and engaging passive candidates . After all, sometimes the best employees you’ll find aren’t actively looking for a new opportunity. Avature . A broad set of tools focused on contact information and relationship management, application tracking, and recruiting. Entelo . A platform with candidate tracking and management, a search engine for candidates, and analytics for your application process. Hiretual . A robust sourcing platform with AI-driven data systems meant to optimize everything from candidate sourcing to rediscovery of lost leads. Seekout . A candidate sourcing platform with a built-in pool of candidates readily available when you sign up. Sourcing . A candidate pool search engine with a specialization in software engineers, with a variety of filtering and sorting options to hook into your ATS. TopFunnel . A platform for candidate search and relationship management, focused on engaging talent when you find it rather than finding it alone. vsource . Talent sourcing solutions provider for organizations that are facing complex hiring challenges and looking to transform their sourcing function, enabling adaptive and less-biased hiring processes. WayUp . A candidate platform full of recent college graduates and others new to the job market, looking for entry-level positions. Robin . An AI-driven candidate sourcing platform where you post a job description, allow it to source and pre-screen candidates, and walk away with a file of contact information. Email Harvesting When you find a promising candidate and want to reach out to them, it’s important to be able to find a way to contact them. Harvesting email information about a user can be tricky, but there are tools to help you do it. ContactOut . A small tool that harvests publicly available contact information for anyone based on their name. Hunter . A contact information scraper and search engine. Plug in a company name and get a list of the people attached to it. Snovio . An email address verification tool that can check the validity of individual email addresses or bulk lists from a candidate pool . Norbert . A platform that can find email addresses based on a variety of specific pieces of information, for lead generation and talent searching. Applicant Tracking The core of any good hiring system is the applicant tracking system (or ATS). As a platform, a good ATS manages everything from job listings to candidate data aggregation to interview results, following them from application to hiring decision. Bamboo HR . An applicant tracking system with additional features to support hiring, onboarding, compensation management, and culture fit. Zoho Recruit . Part of the overall Zoho ecosystem, Recruit is their applicant tracking system. It links up and plays well with their CRM and other products. Workable . A broad range of applicant tracking tools and access to premium-level job boards largely specialized in working with small and mid-sized businesses. Bullhorn . A broad platform with features ranging from recruitment to automation to pay management. SAP HR . SAP caters to large enterprises, but their HR platform works just as well for SMBs, with a full human capital management suite. JobScore . A full applicant tracking system with different platform levels for different sizes of business and HR teams, as well as hiring needs. WebHR . A broad applicant tracking system with a variety of modules to expand features and complexity to suit your needs as a growing organization. Employee Referral One excellent source of candidates is your existing employees. Who could know your company culture , job requirements, and policies better than the people who work within them already? Getting your employees to refer the talented people they know can help build a workforce at a fraction of the cost of traditional recruitment channels. Teamable . An employee referral system with features to engage and gamify the process for your existing employees. EmployeeReferrals . A robust referral system with great analytics, engagement features, and recommendations. It also links to LinkedIn’s recommendations. RolePoint . An employee referral engine focused on recommending roles to specific applicants regardless of the role they wanted and the person referring them. Referagig . A platform for employee referrals with additional social media features, internal mobility options, and optional employee rewards. Boon . An employee referral platform with a strong emphasis on gamification and employee rewards for referrals. Candidate Assessment How do you know when a candidate has the skills to succeed in the role you have for them? A resume can only tell you so much. Assessment platforms, from theory tests to practical exams, help you filter out your candidates and leave only the best. HireArt . A staffing analysis tool that focuses on predictive analytics and skills assessments to filter and evaluate candidates. eSkill . A platform for cognitive assessments, interviewing, skills tests, and filtering for the most talented candidates. DevSkiller . An assessment platform focused specifically on software developers, with unique tests for different development platforms and languages, from PHP to Android. Psycruit . An assessment platform with tests for cognitive ability, skill assessments, personality tests, and onboarding processes. Kand.io . Another tech and developer-focused skills testing platform with a huge array of different technical tests for front-end, back-end, web, and other development environments. TestDome . Similar to Kand.io, this is a developer-focused testing platform with a huge array of tests accessible to both companies and job seekers. It also has some more general technical tests for things like reasoning, marketing, sales, and service. Video Interviewing Whether you’re adapting to the global pandemic or you’re just recruiting from across the country or around the world, being able to interview candidates via video allows you a lot more flexibility than you would otherwise have in your recruiting process and opens up your candidate pool to skilled candidates who wouldn’t otherwise apply due to the distance. Xobin . A remote hiring platform with skills tests and a video interview platform aimed at speeding talent acquisition . Cammio . A video interviewing platform with a focus on customization, personalized stories, and AI-driven analytics. HelloCecil . A one-way video interview system that asks candidates to submit video answers to your questions as an initial application. SparkHire . A robust video interview platform with a wide array of tools to help analyze and filter the videos you receive as part of applications and interviews. HireVue . A combination of skills assessment platform and video interview system meant to optimize hiring and assessment at the same time. Background Checks A key part of every hiring process is the background check. You might trust your applicants, but you still need to verify that what they say is true and they are who they say they are. Pipl . A cross between a search engine and a background check platform, which allows you to locate individuals, scope out their relationships with others, and verify information about them. BackgroundChecks . A simple background check platform aimed at researching criminal convictions and past aliases. It can show you drug screening, credit reports, and driving records as well. TrustedEmployees . An employee background check platform with credit history, criminal records, education, and employment verification, identity verification, and reference verification. Intelifi . A systemic background check platform that emphasizes same-day results and universal integration with other platforms. GoodHire . A background check platform with a focus on specific industries, including construction, healthcare, retail, technology, and nonprofit. ClearStar . A background check system that also handles pre-employment screening, drug testing, employee monitoring, access control, medical screening, and compliance. Onboarding Once you’ve made the decision to hire a candidate, you need to bring them up to speed within your organization. A good onboarding process can be the difference between an employee bouncing within a year and one settling in as a long-term asset to the company. Talmundo . An onboarding system that focuses on a unique employee journey above all. Kin . An HR platform with an emphasis on onboarding, but additional features for data management, feedback, and time management. HR Onboard . An onboarding system with various job offer features and induction features, internal transition support, and offboarding systems. Sapling . A remote onboarding platform with links to other HR tools and cloud platforms. WorkBright . A 100% remote and online onboarding system with full-featured mobile apps. Performance Tracking Are your employees living up to the standards you set for them? Are they achieving their goals? Are any of them going above and beyond? How do you know? A performance tracking system allows you to monitor employee performance on as granular a scale as you need, so you can make administrative decisions. WorkPuls . Employee monitoring, time tracking, and automatic mapping for employees. Work Examiner . An employee monitoring platform that handles time tracking, activity monitoring, search monitoring, and screenshot captures. GAO RFID . A physical radio frequency ID tracking system for complex workplaces. 15Five . A unique feedback system meant to give employees a route to communicate with their managers in bite-sized pieces. AssessTeam . A platform for monitoring employee performance, cyclical feedback, project profitability, and goal setting. Heartpace . An employee performance monitoring platform with additional engagement features. Trakstar . Employee performance management and monitoring with goal tracking, succession planning, and 360-degree reviews. GroSum . Small-scale performance management and optimization platform with goal tracking and feedback systems. Personnel Management Small companies and startups might be flexible and work on a project-based or goal-based system, but larger enterprises need a more rigid structure to keep track of everyone on the payroll. Personnel management tools help you with everything from attendance tracking to vacation, sick day, holiday, and overtime tracking, to even GPS tracking for remote or mobile workers. Kronos . A robust platform with a range of features for workforce management, attendance, engagement, scheduling, payroll, onboarding, and administration modules. Time Doctor . A system with payroll, time use alerts, time tracking, screenshot systems, and other features for work from home employees. OnTheClock . An automated system for tracking time, time usage accuracy, and business policy compliance. MyHours . A platform for broad overview time tracking or specific time tracking within teams and projects. Humanity . A platform for scheduling and time management to ensure shift coverage and conflict-free scheduling. WhenIWork . A semi-DIY scheduling and time management platform with time tracking and schedule management. Shiftboard . A powerful and customizable shift management platform. Employee Engagement As a business, you have responsibilities to more than just your bottom line. You need to make sure your employees are engaged and valued. Soliciting feedback and analyzing it helps you improve everything from your overall goals to your internal processes, to optimize your workplace for productivity and employee satisfaction simultaneously. Smarp . A platform meant to engage new and existing employees with a variety of benefits. Bonusly . An employee bonus system delivering recognition and rewards to employees who enrich your workplace. Bonfyre . A platform to open communications, recognize employees, support events, and measure engagement. Peakon . A platform for employee engagement, retention, and inclusion with an eye for diversity and leadership development. VantageCircle . A rewards platform with employee perks, discounts, benefits, and feedback systems. Fond . A simple rewards and perks system for small businesses and healthcare systems. 6Q . An employee survey and feedback system. TinyPulse . A simple system for communication and transparency aimed at reducing employee turnover. Ezzely . An employee engagement system they can use to recognize each other, deliver training, offer rewards, send out surveys, enter raffles, and swap shifts. Payroll and Benefits Managing payroll is a task large enough that many enterprises have departments dedicated to it, so it’s no surprise that a wide range of tools exists to help. Whether you’re a small startup or a national enterprise, you’ll want something to keep track of where the money is going. Xero . Accounting software aimed at small businesses, with cloud-based accessibility from anywhere your business needs. Wave . A set of apps for accounting, invoicing, payments, payroll, and receipts management. PrimePay . Payroll management with additional solutions for timeclocks, benefits, compliance, and HR. ADP . One of the largest and most well-recognized payroll management platforms for mid-to-large businesses. Compport . A payroll system that also works as part of the hiring process to use pay and benefits as negotiation and leverage tools. PeopleKeep . A platform for managing healthcare benefits for your employees. BusinessSolver . A benefits management platform with healthcare, retirement plans, and other beneficial features. ThrivePass . A holistic management platform for benefits from retirement, healthcare, education, and other potential benefits. Sage . An overall accounting and management platform with specific sub-platforms for different industries and needs. Robust Platforms To round out the list, these final platforms are the most robust platforms out there, which have enough different features on offer that they would be listed under most of the categories above. To save space, if a platform can do more than four or five of the features above, we’ve listed it here instead. Beamery . A platform with three main segments; one to attract and recruit candidates, one to market and engage with candidates, and one to retain and manage employee engagement. Fetcher . An AI-drive automation platform meant to streamline the initial application process, from candidate sourcing to employee engagement and everything in between. Gem . A broad tool meant to aggregate information from other tools, for relationship management and predictive analytics. Greenhouse . A robust platform that covers the entire hiring process from start to finish; one of the best in class options available. Recruitifi . A platform meant to serve as a centralized aggregator for data from other platforms you use, as a core hub for your recruiting and employee management tools. Jobvite . An overall end to end talent acquisition platform with an emphasis on employee referrals, adaptive onboarding, and relationship management. Harver . A robust platform aimed at high-volume recruitment, with built-in skills tests, culture fit tests, and AI-driven optimizations for the recruitment process. TalentSorter . A hiring platform that covers everything from posting job openings to providing you with pre-assessed and filtered candidates for each open role. Cezanne . A UK-based but globally available platform with a core system and optional modules for everything from onboarding to payroll to recruitment. HubStaff . A set of platforms with time tracking, project management, and talent acquisition features linked together between them. Humi . A powerful overall HR system that manages payroll, benefits, onboarding, recruiting, and training. Gusto . A platform focusing on payroll, benefits, onboarding, and time tracking for SMBs. Knit . A powerful platform for managing payroll, HR and team management, time tracking, and performance monitoring. Dominion . An HR platform for tracking time, payroll, ACA reporting, performance reviews, and self-service options. HR Cloud . An overall HR system in the cloud with onboarding, human resources, and intranet features. KissFlow . An HR management platform with workflow management, collaboration tools, training, and onboarding. Namely . An end-to-end platform for employee management, onboarding, payroll, compliance, analytics, recruiting, and more. Conclusion The landscape of tools for HR and talent acquisition is vast and dynamic, with solutions tailored to meet the diverse needs of businesses of all sizes.  This comprehensive list offers a glimpse into the array of tools available, each designed to streamline various aspects of HR processes, from internal communications and candidate sourcing to onboarding and performance tracking. As the HR technology arena continues to evolve, staying informed and adaptable is key. Embrace these tools not just as software solutions but as strategic partners in your journey to optimize HR functions and enhance employee experiences.  Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, the right HR tool can significantly impact your organization’s efficiency and success. Remember, this list is a starting point – the best tool for your company will depend on your specific needs, goals, and workforce dynamics.  Keep exploring, stay updated on new developments, and reach out to us today if you need help growing your team.

One of the foremost challenges in recruiting and hiring is the skill gap between the Human Resources personnel involved in making hiring decisions and the employees hired for technical positions. Some roles, like customer service, sales, and manual labor, do not have a high skill ceiling; this is why they are so frequently identified as “unskilled labor,” though there are skills involved. Other roles, such as mid to upper-level Information Technology, developers, accounting, or skilled trades such as machinists or engineers, are more technical positions. Per Codility : “Technical jobs are most often found within the industries such as IT, engineering, and manufacturing, but they’re not necessarily exclusive to these segments. Technical skill sets are required in a wide range of different organizations, especially in digital-first work environments. Examples of technical jobs might include systems engineers, software developers, machinists, or data scientists.” How do you manage to hire for technical positions when you don’t know what to look for? You can’t expect your hiring managers to be experts in software development, building codes, and everything else all at once. Though technical recruiting focuses on digital and technological skillsets, it can be a valuable process to establish for any skilled position. Enter Technical Hiring Technical hiring is the art and science of hiring skilled employees for highly technical positions. It is a challenge because it requires HR managers and recruiters to accurately and appropriately screen, test, and interview technical candidates. Technical hiring requires the services of a technical recruiter. A technical recruiter is a specialized recruiter: They are capable of developing a technical hiring strategy, from advertising technical positions to interviewing candidates. Technical recruiters contact and work with technical candidates in ways that engage them. They manage  job advertisements and postings  with an eye towards what matters. These focus on what the company needs from a technical hire and what the candidates care about. They assess and interview technical candidates in a way that matters, testing skills and asking relevant and up-to-date questions. Effectively, the technical recruiter is a recruiter who “speaks the language” of the type of candidate the company seeks. They do not need to be jack-of-all-trades recruiters, but rather, they are specialists focusing on a given industry or skill set. They are recruiters in every other way and specialize in recruiting within specific sectors and for particular kinds of roles. Technical recruiters come in three forms. A company such as Google may have specialized technical recruiters for specific areas, for example, someone who can appropriately recruit machine learning and artificial intelligence specialists. These recruiters are kept on staff because the need for new employees with those skills is ever-present. A technical recruiter may be an independent contractor with their own business and connections. A company can contract with the recruiter directly to fill specific open roles within the company. External Firms. Specialized recruiting firms may have broad connections and lists of candidates within their area of expertise and can be hired by a company looking to fill open positions quickly. From the Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring : “The relationship between recruiters and hiring managers is akin to a vendor-client relationship. Teams have hiring needs and make requests, and recruiters take the order and deliver the candidates. This works some of the time, but it takes a partnership between recruiters and hiring managers to be truly successful. The goal is for both parties to be aligned around a common goal, to agree on priorities and expectations, and to be comfortable working together and giving each other feedback. This allows a recruiter to truly understand a hiring manager’s needs, and a hiring manager to understand the complexity and commitment required to hire successfully.” Each option has its pros and cons, depending on available budgets, consistency in hiring needs, and desired volume of hires. How Technical Recruiters Succeed While it might seem like technical recruiters are simply recruiters, they are often significantly more skilled themselves and highly specialized within their areas of expertise. This skill means they are typically more effective and much faster than generalized recruiters. They achieve this proficiency through a variety of techniques, along with experience and training. Just as these recruiters utilize their specific skills, academic professionals often seek the support of partners like hausarbeiten schreiben lassen to assist with academic writing, ensuring high standards and maintaining academic integrity. Such collaborations are essential for maximizing efficiency in both recruiting and academic environments.  Technical recruiters have reliable sources of information they check regularly.  They specialize in a single industry, so they follow publications and news sources related to that industry. This specialization allows them to keep abreast of any changes in the industry as a whole, in their specific niche, in emerging technologies, and any other relevant updates they should be aware of when recruiting within that industry.  Technical recruiters have at least a moderate understanding of their chosen specialization. A technical recruiter who deals specifically with candidates and companies looking for roles in machine learning will learn enough about machine learning to determine what specifics a client needs and assess a candidate for their ability to fill that specific role. Many, though not all, technical recruiters once worked in their chosen field and thus have first-hand knowledge of the subject. As  BetterTeam  says: “Being familiar with technical jargon and really understanding the differences between terms is the most effective way to source tech talent, write enticing job descriptions, and properly interview tech candidates.”  Technical recruiters use tools, technologies, and assistants to relieve the burden of mundane tasks from their workflow. These tools can be anything from using Zapier to automate simple tasks to hiring a virtual personal assistant to handle everyday email conversations, meeting scheduling, and other organizational tasks. The best technical recruiters tend to be highly skilled and sought-after individuals, and they achieve this by focusing all of their time and energy on areas where they can excel.  Technical recruiters build networks that feed them connections. These networks come in two forms. The first is the candidate network. A technical recruiter might have agents or advertising on university campuses seeking out fresh candidates with modern skills. They might have specialized recruiting websites designed to attract the specific kind of candidate they need to match with their clients. These networks feed them candidates who they can assess and refer to appropriate roles within the second network. As SocialTalent says : “Recruitment is a competitive industry. Tech recruiting is like recruitment on steroids. Candidates are in high demand and short stock, so being a mediocre recruiter will get you nowhere fast. To hook the cream of the crop, you have to be prepared to go the extra mile. That extra effort means they have to stand out from the crowd. Looking for talent in places that you wouldn’t necessarily think of, reaching out to potential candidates through the channels that they’re most open to hearing from you on, and impressing them with your knowledge of the industry.” The second network is the client network. This network is the group of individuals and connections that leads them to client companies. A client company hires the recruiter to fill roles, and they leverage their candidate network to pull in candidates quickly and successfully. Meanwhile, their satisfied clients, along with advertising, testimonials, and other marketing techniques, allows them to find more clients and grow their services. Both networks feed off one another, and the bigger they each grow, the more successful the recruiter can become at matching the perfect candidate to the ideal role.  Technical recruiters know what candidates in their industry want.  While this might seem like the bare minimum for a recruiter, the truth is, many non-technical recruiters parrot similar job listings, write overly-generalized job posts, or otherwise fail to tailor their recruiting to the needs of the candidates involved. The best technical recruiters understand what their candidates want the most. Is it continuing education? Job stability? A specific salary range? Regardless of what it is, explicitly identifying it and advertising it is crucial for technical recruiters. How to Pick a Great Technical Recruiter Hiring a great technical recruiter to work with, either on a contract basis or as an employee, might seem like it has the same issues as technical recruiting itself. After all, how can you assess a good technical recruiter without knowing the ins and outs of technical recruiting? The truth is, while technical recruiting is indeed a skilled field, it’s much easier for an existing HR manager to understand what they need and how to identify it. Here are some of the keys to picking a great technical recruiter.  Know what you need, in generalities.  You know what role you have open, in what department, with what team. Talk to the team manager and department to pin down what you want from a candidate to fill that role. This conversation should primarily focus on skills that can be precisely assessed and, of course, are relevant to the position. If your company as a whole focuses on one area, such as software development, finding a tech-focused technical recruiter is a simple choice. This information is relevant data to consider if you need specific experts on narrow aspects of technology, such as enterprise networking, machine learning development, or specific programming languages.  Create a “recruiter profile” to identify candidate recruiters.  Much like  creating candidate profiles  when you want to hire a specific person in a particular role, you can create a recruiter profile for the recruiter you want to contract. Do they need to be familiar with certain aspects of your industry or have connections with specific educational resources or recruiting sites? Know what you want before you start looking for it.  Ask about their experience with similar clients or filling similar roles.  A vital aspect of every hiring decision is asking about the recruiter’s background. This situation is valid whether you’re hiring a software developer or a technical recruiter. Particularly for individual recruiters or recruiting firms, it can be worthwhile to ask to talk to past satisfied clients or candidates who successfully obtained jobs through the recruiter. You want proof that they can be effective at what they do. Consider a Emerge Talent Cloud. Sometimes, finding a recruiter is itself enough of a trial that you want someone else to recruit the recruiter. Hiring a Emerge Talent Cloud  can provide your company with access to skilled technical recruiters in various roles and specialties without needing to go through the entire process for each of them. Be willing to invest.  Skilled technical recruiters are among the best individuals around when it comes to helping a company fill open roles. As such, they tend to know their worth and charge rates accordingly. While budget is always a concern when hiring, this is one decision where you cannot afford to scrimp. You may also need to consider investing in skills assessment platforms and other tools to help both you and your chosen recruiter assess candidates appropriately. Can You Afford Not to Hire a Technical Recruiter? In the fast-paced world of technical, skilled jobs, talented employees are in high demand. Competition is fierce. Indeed, some of the most common advice for qualified employees is to spend no more than a couple of years with any one company before moving on to get paid what they are truly worth. In addition to this practical career strategy, seeking assistance from academic partners such as bachelorarbeit schreiben lassen for drafting high-quality academic work can significantly enhance one’s professional portfolio. This support is invaluable for those looking to bolster their credentials and demonstrate comprehensive expertise in their field. Moreover, technical recruiters with a proven track record are also relatively rare. So much so that the general impression of recruiters is that, for technical positions, they do not deliver. Many even believe that AI-enabled applicant tracking systems do a better job! Finding an effective technical recruiter to find the best candidates to fill your open roles is among the best decisions you can make in hiring. The better you can fill positions with appropriate candidates, the less turnover and the more loyalty you will have. When the cost of a bad hire rises, both in money and in time, it’s not a decision you can afford to waste. Power up your recruiting and HR by working with a skilled technical recruiter for each significant industry you need within your organization. It’s well worth the cost. Do you have any questions for a technical recruiter? Please get in touch with me, or leave me a comment in the section below! I’d love to hear from you and get a conversation started.

According to Manpower Group’s Talent Shortage Survey, engineers are one of the top ten careers facing talent shortages. For example, there are seventeen job openings for every electrical engineering candidate looking for a job. Engineering is a broad industry that can be broken down into many more specific fields, such as mechanical, electrical, civil, chemical, nuclear, and aerospace. Finding the right candidate in the appropriate field can be challenging, but you must compete with other organizations to attract top talent. Within each field of engineering, there is a hierarchy of positions based on the responsibilities, skills, and experience of people in this profession. One of the highest-level positions in engineering is that of a principal engineer. What exactly is a principal engineer, and why do you need one? Let’s take a look at everything you need to know. What Is a Principal Engineer? Highly experienced engineers overseeing the entirety of various projects are known as principal engineers. These individuals have quite a bit of experience in their field and are ready to take on a leadership role for other team members. There are many duties that principal engineers are typically responsible for, including: Creating and implementing goals through the use of strategic planning Overseeing and managing every phase of projects Acting as an expert in their particular field of engineering and helping team members with less experience during every stage of a project Hiring team members, training new hires, delegating tasks, and overall acting as a team supervisor Meeting with stakeholders to develop a timeline, negotiate prices, and discuss budgets Engineers almost always specialize in one area of the industry, which means that there are principal engineers in every field of engineering. Depending on your organization’s project, you might need a chemical engineer, a civil engineer, an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, or one of the many other types of engineers to fill this high-level position. What Qualifications Does a Person Need to Be a Principal Engineer? Considering that principal engineers oversee entire projects and act as leaders to their team, it makes sense that you don’t see many recent grads filling these roles. Let’s look at the education requirements for principal engineers and the skills necessary for an individual to succeed in the role. Education For someone to be qualified as a principal engineer, they will need a bachelor’s degree in their specific engineering field. Depending on the undergraduate program an engineer attended, they may have received hands-on experience, or their learning might have been primarily classroom based. In some instances, a principal engineer will also have a Master’s degree in addition to a bachelor’s degree. A principal engineer will also be a registered professional engineer (PE) by earning state licensure. While a bachelor’s degree is standard for principal engineers, many more years of experience must be gained before an individual is qualified to perform this role. It’s common for these engineers to have more than a decade of experience in their engineering field. Skills There are several skills that a principal engineer must have to be successful in the role. Some primary skills you’ll want to look for when hiring a principal engineer are: Communication skills : Principal engineers must be highly skilled in verbal and written communication. Every day, they talk to team members and clients. For projects to go smoothly, principal engineers must be able to clearly and concisely communicate their ideas and thoughts, and any tasks they’re delegating. Analytics : Principal engineers are constantly working to improve the systems used to achieve goals and solve problems that pop up. To look at a technical situation and find the most appropriate solution, a principal engineer must be analytical. Subject expertise : It should be no surprise that a principal engineer should be a legitimate expert in their engineering field. After all, they oversee a project’s entirety, including research, development, and design. Anytime anyone has a question about the project, the principal engineer is the person to ask. Project management : There are always a lot of balls in the air when overseeing an entire project, so a principal engineer must be able to juggle all the moving parts at play. For example, they’ll need to stay on top of whether their team is staying under budget, reaching goals, and meeting deadlines. People management : Being a principal engineer also requires that a candidate has the people skills to manage a team. They will need to be able to give guidance, answer questions, delegate work, and work to set and achieve team goals. Principal engineers are truly experts in their field and have developed a well-rounded skill set thanks to their years of experience. While technical skills are essential, a principal engineer won’t be able to fulfill the entirety of their duties without a wide variety of soft skills. If you hire a principal engineer that doesn’t communicate well with others, for example, it could seriously impact the efficiency and productivity of the entire team. If the people working under your engineer don’t feel comfortable asking questions to the principal engineer, you’ll find that the whole project suffers. Finding the right engineer for your organization can be difficult, particularly because of a talent shortage in the industry . While engineers are the people that help to improve the quality of life and transform society through the implementation of ideas into reality, there aren’t enough people entering the field to satisfy the heavy demand. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. will need about one million more STEM professionals than it is projected to produce by 2025. This can be particularly challenging when you’re looking to hire high-level engineers that have been in the industry for some time, as you’ll find that you’re competing with other top-tier companies for their talent. What’s the Difference Between a Principal Engineer and a Senior Engineer? Principal and senior engineers are both roles requiring an engineer to have many years of experience and extensive knowledge in their field. However, while they are both high-level engineering positions, these titles aren’t synonymous. In general, principal engineers are higher on the hierarchy than senior engineers. Even though they both have plenty of experience and are roles at the top of the field, principal engineers act as leaders in their field and tend to take on more complex and advanced projects. In general, the hierarchy of engineers goes, from lowest to highest, as follows: Staff engineer Senior Staff engineer Principal engineer Distinguished engineer Staff engineers are one level above senior engineers. They possess core leadership skills, including critical thinking and communication skills, in addition to well-honed technical skills. A senior staff engineer is the next step up the hierarchy but is still below principal engineers. A distinguished engineer is a position only given to individuals who have achieved outstanding technical achievement. This position is typically held at large organizations; not all companies will have a distinguished engineer. In this role, engineers can strengthen the company by building out their own areas of expertise. If your organization is large, there might be a hierarchy among the principal engineers working for the company. From lowest to highest, the hierarchy typically goes like this: Principal engineer Senior principal engineer Distinguished principal engineer Fellow While senior engineers usually report to their department or division leaders, principal engineers often report their project details and findings directly to senior management. When it comes to impact on the operation of a company, principal engineers have more influence than senior engineers. While senior engineers are highly-skilled and have many years of experience, principal engineers are the next tier of expertise and are often considered one of their industry’s thought leaders. Sometimes, a company might require that any principal engineer they hire has spent several years working as a senior engineer. Why You Need a Principal Engineer When your organization is implementing a project (or many projects) that requires an engineer to oversee the process from start to finish, you’re looking for a principal engineer. These individuals have the technical skills necessary to manage every stage of the project and the essential soft skills for overseeing a team and interacting with clients. Without a principal engineer keeping an eye on the big picture, your projects can run into many expensive problems. Not only will the process be less efficient because there isn’t someone highly qualified to keep a bird’s eye perspective on the project, but you will also be lacking the vital problem-solving skills that a principal engineer will bring to the table. As you might imagine, finding the right person for the job when searching for a principal engineer is essential. However, there are several reasons why hiring an engineer might be more difficult than you would expect. The reality is that there are more job listings for engineers than people to fill them, so organizations need to offer compelling reasons why engineers should choose their company over the competition. Check out our recent post to learn more about recruiting engineers of all kinds . What Is the Salary For a Principal Engineer? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for engineers annually was $91,010 in 2016. However, median salaries can vary greatly depending on the specific field of engineering. For example, petroleum engineering is reported to be one of the top-paying occupations in the industry, with workers receiving a median wage in 2020 of $137,330. According to the United States BLS, computer hardware engineering, aerospace, and nuclear engineers are also among the highest-paid engineering industries. When you’re talking about principal engineer salaries, though, you’re discussing high-level employees in a specific engineering field. It’s therefore important to understand the typical salary for principal engineers, not just in engineering as a whole, but within the more precise industry and field. Salary.com says the average salary for a principal engineer in the U.S. is $144,663, with a typical range of $130,288 to $164,892. Estimates for the average starting salary of principal engineers hover around $97,000. However, the range of salaries can vary immensely depending on several factors, including: Education Additional skills Specific field Years of experience Certifications Location According to results from a Zippia.com survey that involved nearly 7,000 resumes, the most popular locations for principal engineers to reside are San Jose, California, and Houston, Texas. Generally, you can expect a higher density of principal engineers in larger urban areas and on the east and west coast. Principal engineers are also in the highest demand in locations like California, Boston, New York City, and Midwestern cities like Chicago. Location is one factor that significantly impacts how much money a principal engineer earns. California has the highest salaries for these high-level engineers, followed by New Mexico, Massachusetts, Texas, and Nevada. In states like Montana, Missouri, and Nebraska, principal engineers tend to have salaries on the lower end of the spectrum. Finding top engineering candidates is difficult, but it’s not impossible. Some useful avenues for recruiting the best of the best include engineering industry trade shows and on-campus recruiting events. Partnering with organizations such as akademische ghostwriter can also enhance your recruitment efforts. These experts assist in academic writing and often collaborate with young engineers to hone their technical writing skills, which are crucial for their professional development. While you likely won’t find your next principal engineer at an on-campus recruiting event, this is a great place to find new engineers as they begin their careers and work towards higher-level engineering positions over time. Do you have any questions about hiring a principal engineer for your organization? Or, perhaps, did you have any questions about recruitment, in general? If so, please feel free to leave a comment down below, and we’ll be sure to get a conversation started about either of the topics! We’re always happy to assist in any way we can when it comes to all things related to recruitment and hiring. Additionally, be sure to check out our blog for further information on all things related to recruiting and hiring for specific industries, and in general! We have a vast catalog of information for you to peruse, and if you have any questions we haven’t answered in this article specifically, we very well may have already answered it in one of our previous posts! If we’ve missed the topic you’d like to know more about, let us know! We’d love to make our catalog as comprehensive as possible!

The ability to think strategically is one of the most sought-after skills for high-level employees.  Surveys of executives show  that 97% of those surveyed cite strategic thinking as one of the top skills they look for when hiring. This fact leaves us with two questions: what is strategic thinking, and how can you look for it when hiring? Defining Strategic Thinking To put it simply, “strategic thinking” is the ability to think on a strategic level. A recursive definition isn’t helpful, though, so let’s dig in further. To quote the Center for Management & Organization Excellence ( CMOE ): “Strategic thinking is simply an intentional and rational thought process that focuses on the analysis of critical factors and variables that will influence the long-term success of a business, a team, or an individual. Strategic thinking includes careful and deliberate anticipation of threats and vulnerabilities to guard against and opportunities to pursue. Ultimately strategic thinking and analysis lead to a clear set of goals, plans, and new ideas required to survive and thrive in a competitive, changing environment. This sort of thinking must account for economic realities, market forces, and available resources. Strategic thinking requires research, analytical thinking, innovation, problem-solving skills, communication and leadership skills, and decisiveness.” This definition drills down to the heart of the matter. Strategic thinking is a focused and intentional process wherein an individual can see a problem not just in the immediate terms but in overall, long-term, top-down perspectives. You can learn strategic thinking, but it may also be inherent. Some people are born or raised in such a way as to develop inherently strategic thought processes. They can look at problems from the top-down, see not just the initial problem but the consequences of actions taken, picture a goal they want to achieve and create solutions that lead them towards that goal, and more importantly, do all of that reflexively. Critically, strategic thinking can be a conscious process, and indeed, those who have learned the art of strategic thinking are often better at it than those who do it intuitively. When you’ve learned to think strategically about a problem, you’re more likely to rationally cover all the bases, thinking on a deeper and more comprehensive level. To be clear, both forms of strategic thinking are acceptable, and both are better as leadership qualities than candidates who don’t think strategically at all or whose “strategic” thought applies only to the surface level of a problem. The Value of Strategic Thinking The ability to view a problem from many angles, propose solutions, and extrapolate the fallout of those solutions is inherently valuable. However, strategic thinkers also bring several specific benefits to their companies and organizations. Overall Perspective. Strategic thinkers can see the “big picture” and foresee problems that might crop up outside their sphere of influence. They can see interrelations and connections between business processes that might not otherwise seem related. Moreover, they can foresee these problems and navigate past them before they become problems. Future Sight. With their perspective and logical point of view, strategic thinkers can predict the future with an often startling degree of accuracy given the information they have available. They make decisions that benefit their organizations (not just immediately but in the future) when short-term thinkers might decide that trade future success for immediate benefits. Current Value. Strategic thinkers aren’t fixated on the future; they recognize that sometimes, an organization must make potentially harmful decisions to profit in the immediate future, to keep itself going. They can remember when this needs to happen and how to do it in a minimally destructive way. Global Views. Strategic thinkers maintain a level of awareness of their industry, situation, and position that encompasses factors as far-ranging as the other side of the globe. With global communications and supply lines, taking advantage of resources, potential customers, and other attributes worldwide allows anyone to compete on the international stage. Strategic thinkers power this level of competition. Upwards Mobility. Strategic thinkers often stick with an organization and, even if they’re hired at a lower level, tend to make their way into the upper ranks of management and executive leadership positions in relatively short order. Given the opportunity, they can become valuable assets to a firm for years to come. This benefit is also a drawback; however, if a strategic thinker is passed over too often, they are dramatically more likely to jump ship and move to an organization (usually a competitor) that values their abilities. Innovation. Strategic thinkers can synthesize multifaceted perspectives from various situations and identify opportunities for innovation that may be missed otherwise. Strategic thinkers tend to find themselves at the upper levels of management, in executive teams, and as part of the C-suite for their organizations. However, modern companies tend to be “flat” compared to historical organizations, and as such, critical business decisions are often made at the middle levels as much as at the upper levels. Thus, strategic thinkers must be positioned throughout the organization, with open lines of communication to work together for the greater good of the company. One question that frequently comes up is whether you should hire your strategic thinkers or develop them internally. The truth is, developing strategic thinkers from within your organization is difficult, expensive, and prone to failure. Unless existing employees already have some level of skill with strategic thinking, developing the talent is not realistic. Almost every organization looks for strategic thinkers as part of their hiring process, particularly for management and higher-level roles. Methods for Hiring Strategic Thinkers When your goal is to screen your candidates to identify strategic thinkers, you need to adapt your hiring process to fit that goal. Here are eight methods you can implement to help screen candidates, identify strategic thinkers, and evaluate their fit for your organization.  Present Candidates with a Real Problem.  The number one way to identify whether a candidate is a strategic thinker or not is to present them with a real strategic problem and evaluate how they think about it and what solutions they propose. As HBR says : “You can use a real unsolved problem, which has the advantage of providing you with several potential solutions. Or you can use a problem that you’ve already solved, which means you’ll already know the critical steps that they should include in an answer. With either option, you should verbally describe the problem or provide a written description, give the candidate a few minutes to think, and then ask them to walk you through the steps they would take to investigate and resolve the problem.” In some cases, this may even present you with a better solution than the one you have developed already. There’s no better way to find a valuable strategic thinker than to have one benefit your organization before they’re even hired.  Ask Candidates to Review a Known Flawed Plan. Another excellent way to identify a strategic thinker is to present them with an existing strategic plan and ask them to review it and identify potential flaws in the project. Again, you can go about this in two ways. You can begin with a fake plan that you have inserted errors into, or you can use a real-life program that your business implemented and record any issues you encounter. The first can be difficult because developing a fake strategic plan that doesn’t ring hollow can be tricky, and the flaws end up looking obvious. Meanwhile, using an actual program requires having retained knowledge of older strategic plans and their points of failure, which not every organization does. A combination of the two may often be necessary until you have more real-world data to use as a basis for your interview question.  Ask Questions Looking for Strategic Answers.  While evaluating “in practice” data and solutions is a valuable technique, often you can identify a strategic thinker – or weed out those who lack the capacity for strategic thought – simply by asking strategic-level questions. Questions  such as : When working on a strategic problem within your current firm, how do you identify the relevant stakeholders? Do you have any stakeholders outside of your organization? How do you go about mapping the interdependencies and relationships between different aspects of a strategic problem when developing a solution? What steps have you taken throughout your career (or the past year) to make yourself more of a strategic thinker? These questions help you evaluate the strategic thought a candidate puts into their work and give you insight into their self-awareness. Be aware that some strategic thinkers don’t necessarily put intentional thought into developing their technique. These can still be valuable employees, but they may also have significant blind spots and operate via intuition, which may not be ideal.  Evaluate Questions Candidates Ask for Strategic Reasoning. When interviewing a candidate, the interview process goes both ways. Traditionally, while you ask most of the questions, candidates will also be allowed to ask their own. They may also ask questions throughout the interview process, for example, asking for clarification or further details when evaluating a strategic plan. To quote  Vocal. Media’s Salvador Lorenz , “The right candidates will ask such questions as about business strategy, or their individual use of strategy in your business. They may even ask you how your company utilizes strategic thinking in its own way, which is an instant portrayal of how close they are to this form of thinking.”  Ask Candidates to Explain Their Thought Processes. One of the difficulties inherent in assessing candidates for strategic thinking is that there’s no right way to think strategically. Different candidates can assess a situation differently and come to the same solution through various means or even an equally good alternative solution. Often, diversity in background and life leads to different modalities of thinking. Thus, one of the best ways to screen for strategic thinking – particularly intentional, strategic thinking – is to ask the candidate to explain how they come to a given strategic solution after asking them to create or evaluate one, as in the methods above. The key is not to look for the “correct” solution or look for the “right” path to a resolution. Instead, the key is to evaluate whether a process is strategic. This method can be challenging and requires that the interviewer be a strategic thinker.  Examine Resumes for Indications of Past Strategic Success. It’s impossible to scan candidate applications, resumes, and cover letters for the phrase “strategic thinking” and call it a day. However, it may be possible to filter initial resumes based on specific keywords that indicate strategic thinking in past roles. ERE Media lists many options: “Strategic goals, multiyear, cross-functional, providing a competitive advantage and increasing profitability and margins. Additional phrases to look for include: more than 1 percent impact on corporate revenue, interdependencies, a global approach, shareholder’s perspective, an industry inflection point, connecting the dots, VUCA, prioritization, predictive analytics, and data-driven decisions. Individuals that use words/phrases like integrated, strategic partner, think like an owner, failure/root cause analysis, or those who routinely quantify their results in dollars or revenue impacts are also highly likely to be strategic.” Be aware, however, that the use of these phrases does not necessarily indicate a strategic thinker. It may suggest that someone has read a primer on what keywords to use to get hired as a strategic thinker.  Watch for Signs of Strategic Thinking Throughout an Interview. Often, when conducting an interview, you may be able to observe strategic thinking in action. The specific signs of this can vary, which is why the interviewer must be a strategic thinker. Like recognizes like.  Don’t Mistake Tactical Thinking for Strategic Thinking. Where strategic thinking is long-term, tactical thinking is narrower and more short-term. Tactical thinking can be valuable to an organization, but it can be a distraction when you’re specifically seeking out strategic thinking. Six Sigma thinking focuses on cost savings, and those who express their “alignment with strategic goals” are all typically tactical thinkers. Identifying strategic thinkers for your management and executive teams is of critical importance for long-term business success, so it’s well worth the effort to implement an interview process that looks for them . Do you have any questions for me on strategic thinking? Please share with us in the comment section below! I’d love to hear from you, and I take the time to reply to every comment I receive personally.

It’s often said that sales is the most important department in any organization. After all, your sales team is the linchpin between your company and its customers. When your salespeople succeed, your business succeeds. Motivating your sales team through a competitive compensation package becomes essential when you want to attract the best talent and close the most sales each quarter. If you’re beginning to structure a sales compensation plan for your sales representatives, you might not quite know where to begin. What are the common sales compensation packages, and which are the most appealing to sales reps and companies? What Is a Sales Compensation Package? Sales compensation is how much money per year a salesperson receives. It’s common for salespeople to be compensated with a base salary, commissions, and extra incentives to motivate them to reach their quota (or go beyond it.) A sales compensation package is a structured plan that contains the base salary, commission, and additional incentives that make up the earnings of a sales representative. The ideal package will encourage your sales team to meet a high performance standard. It will also outline salary increases for managers and higher-level salespeople. When a sales compensation plan is designed to set expectations and standards for sales compensation, encourage positive behavior, and produce results to meet the goals of teams and the entire organization, the company benefits. Sales Compensation Glossary Before we look at the common types of sales compensation packages, let’s go over the meaning of some essential terms. Sales Accelerators A sales accelerator kicks in when one of your salespeople hits a certain amount over their predetermined sales quota. With this form of compensation, sales reps can earn substantially larger commissions than typical during months or quarters where they achieve great success. For instance, let’s say that you have a sales rep that hits 115% of their quota by the end of the quarter. A compensation package might outline that they will receive 1.2x their performance over the met quota of 100%. Sales Decelerators While sales accelerators reward high-performing salespeople, sales decelerators penalize reps that aren’t meeting performance standards. For example, let’s say you have a decelerator scheduled to kick in if a sales rep doesn’t meet 50% of their quota. At this point, their compensation would be calculated by multiplying their performance by a decimal. Sales Quota The sales manager will set sales quotas for individuals or the team as a whole. This is a time-bound revenue target. Different sales teams might find it suitable to measure sales in various ways, including deals closed, profit, or overall activity. On-Target Earnings On-target earnings, or OTE for short, are a way for sales representatives to gain perspective on how much compensation they can expect if they meet the quotas. OTEs will commonly include both the base salary as well as commission that would realistically result from deals that have been closed. This can give people a realistic view of how much money in total they can expect to receive for a position. Clawbacks A clawback is a condition that can be built into your sales compensation package. It’s common in companies that offer subscription services. A clawback will kick in when a customer stops being a customer before hitting a previously specified benchmark. For example, a company might set it up so that reps have to give back their commission if a customer cancels their subscription service one to six months after signing up. The reason for including this in a compensation package is to encourage salespeople to focus their energy on customers who will benefit from the product or service and use it long-term, rather than those who will buy in for a short time and cancel. SPIFs Sales performance incentive funds (SPIFs) are contests that can create a high-performance culture on your sales team. It’s common for these contests to include either monetary or non-monetary incentives. For example, the first rep that increases their retention rate by a certain percentage might receive a $1000 cash bonus, or the first team to close a certain amount of sales could receive gift certificates to a fancy restaurant in town. Usually, SPIFs run for somewhere between one to four weeks. When they’re shorter than this, they don’t offer an opportunity for your reps to take it seriously. When they’re longer, it might not feel nearly as urgent, and you likely won’t see the results you desire. If you’re beginning to build your sales team, you’ll need to fill these seven key roles for maximum efficacy. Compensation Package Factors Depending on the nature of the industry you’re in and factors specific to your organization, you might find it makes sense to weight these different elements in a way that favors a heavy base salary or a hefty commission rate. Base Salary The base salary you offer is the amount of money your sales reps receive regardless of their performance. It doesn’t matter if they hit 200% of their sales quota or 10% of it– this is the foundational salary you offer for the position. Commission Rate Commission rates are expressed as a percentage of how much revenue a sales rep brought in. There are different standards in different industries for commission rates, and it’s a good idea to look at what your competition offers when you’re putting together a compensation package for your sales team. For example, it’s common for car salespeople to make 25% of the gross profit on a car that they sell. On the other hand, real estate agents typically receive a 5 or 6% commission rate through the transfer of a property, which is split between the agents involved and then further with their respective brokers. In general, sales commission rates often range from 5% to 50%. However, the most common range for commission rates in sales is between 20% and 30%. Projected Sales The projected sales of a sales rep is how many deals they are expected to close during a specific period. Commission Per Sale The commission per sale is the monetary compensation a salesperson receives for each unit of the product they sell. Bonus Amount While a commission refers to the salesperson receiving a certain percentage from the sales they close, a bonus amount is a compensation that a rep receives above their base salary for deals they’ve closed during a specified period. Are you wondering how to improve your quality of hire when filling your sales team? You can learn more about how data can benefit your hiring process using recruitment analytics here . Examples of Sales Compensation Packages There are four primary types of compensation in the world of sales. These are: Salary Hourly wages Bonuses Commission You will want to tailor your sales compensation package to your organization’s size, resources, and interests. Let’s outline some of the most common compensation packages to help you get a sense of the possibilities when you’re designing your compensation plan. Commission-Only Compensation Package One relatively simple type of compensation package is a commission-only compensation plan. In this scenario, sales reps don’t receive any base salary and instead receive all their compensation through commission. Some companies might choose this model because it helps avoid the risks associated with other types of plans. When your salespeople make a lot of money, your revenue increases for the sales period. When they hardly close any sales, you’re not left in a position where you have to pay out more than the company made that month or quarter. Sales reps sometimes enjoy the freedom and ability to earn as much money as possible. It also reduces your risk because you aren’t paying a salary to a low-performing sales rep. On the other hand, this type of package can make it challenging to stick to a pre-structured budget and forecast your future expenses. If you’re thinking about instituting a commission-only compensation package, you’ll want to think about how involved the sales are and how much customer support you expect your reps to offer. You might decide that anywhere between 5% and 45% is a reasonable commission percentage for your salespeople. Base Salary Plus Bonus Compensation Plan If your sales reps usually meet their targets, a base salary plus bonus compensation package could be the right fit. The benefits of this package include motivating your salespeople to close sales and a high level of predictability. With this type of structure, you might offer a specific amount of money as a bonus for sales reps that sell a certain number of units per year or quarter. You can then use this information to guesstimate how many salespeople will meet this quota, so you can plan ahead for how much money you’ll pay out in bonuses. Base Salary Plus Commission Plan The base salary plus commission package is the most common pay structure for people in sales positions. Salespeople can know for sure that they will at least receive a certain amount of money per year in the form of their base salary. On top of that, they can earn more by closing sales and meeting other performance goals. Most businesses will benefit from this type of structure. You can hire competitive and motivated salespeople while having a clear sense of your expenses ahead of time. Another benefit of this kind of package is that your reps will also be obligated to perform additional tasks that don’t directly involve selling because you’re paying them a base salary. If you’re offering a commission-only package, on the other hand, your reps likely won’t fulfill any duties other than trying to close sales. This type of package involves offering a lower commission percentage because reps are already receiving a base salary. The more involved and complicated a sale is and the more impact a sales rep has on the customer’s behavior, the higher the commission rate should be. Absolute Commission Package Also known as a set rate commission plan, an absolute commission plan involves compensating your reps when they meet certain milestones or targets. This is an easy type of plan for salespeople to understand, and it often leads to having a highly motivated sales team. Gross Margin Commission Plan Another option for commission packages is paying your salespeople based on profit instead of sales. For example, a sales rep would receive more compensation for closing a sale on a product with a gross margin of $3,000 versus one with a gross margin of $500. Straight-Line Commission Plan In this structure, a salesperson receives a commission based on the percentage of the quota they meet. If they reach 92% of their quota during a given period, they will receive 92% of the total commission. If they hit 120% of their predetermined quota, they will receive 120% of the commission. Which Compensation Package Is Most Appealing? Depending on the specific details of your organization, the ideal compensation package for salespeople will vary. For example, you might find that offering a higher base salary works well for your team, while another business might focus on rewarding sales representatives through commission. A person’s role, sales cycle length, experience, and type of deals will inform how compensation packages are structured. When you’re designing a compensation package, you’ll also want to consider the following: What type of compensation package is your competitor offering? What’s your budget? What are the goals of the sales team and the organization? What is the cost of living in your area? What is the standard in your industry? How easy is our proposed package for a sales rep to understand? What type of package will attract top talent? Can the organization remain profitable if you enact a specific commission structure? The best sales compensation package for your organization is the one that will drive your reps to perform their best. For many companies, this will likely mean offering their sales reps a base salary plus a commission package. However, just because this is the most common type of commission plan doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the ideal choice for your organization. Do you have any questions about how to put together the best sales compensation package for your business? If so, please leave a comment below, and we’ll get a conversation started. We love discussing all things recruiting and compensation, and we’d be happy to assist you in any way we can!

When hiring to fill corporate-level positions, you need to find people with the right personality for the role. Most candidates at that level have the skills, or they wouldn’t be applying (or in your sights as passive candidates) in the first place. Culture fit and a personality that works with your company are much more critical – and impossible to train. Thus, while a traditional interview process that includes skills assessments may be part of your corporate interview strategy, personality tests are a potent tool in your arsenal. When you know what you’re looking for and how to test for it, you can find candidates who best align with your company culture and will hit the ground running, exactly as you need them to. Are Personality Tests Legal? If you’re familiar with laws relating to hiring, you may wonder if a personality assessment is legal. After all, many laws prevent you from using information not directly related to job performance in your hiring decisions. Truthfully, personality assessments are related to the ability to perform in a job. If your candidate has all the skills but lacks the personal capability to work as a team, they won’t fit in and won’t be able to collaborate with your staff properly. Thus, personality is a crucial component of suitability for hiring. There are, however, different kinds of personality tests, some of which are more valid than others. For example, IQ tests are widely discredited and often considered ineffective for making decisions and judging individuals. For a more nuanced discussion of the different kinds of personality assessments (including IQ tests, emotional intelligence tests, aptitude tests, and more), check out this post on the subject . Are Personality Tests Common? Different studies indicate different levels of adoption of personality tests as part of hiring. Skills assessments are commonplace, but personality assessments are less common. According to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology , only 13% of employers use personality tests as part of their hiring process. Though the same data says that 29% of employers use some form of psychological assessment in hiring; their definition of a personality test may differ from those used in other studies. Conversely, Psychology Today indicates that, at least as far back as 2008, around 80% of Fortune 500 companies use personality tests as part of their hiring process. This may indicate that the larger and more prominent a company is, the more they are concerned with personality assessments. Meanwhile, companies that don’t have the budget to administer those tests, or aren’t as concerned with personality over skills, aren’t using such assessments. Either way, trends show an increase in the adoption of personality tests across the board. Awareness of personality, emotional intelligence, and leadership style has been growing and is more commonly used as part of a hiring process than ever before. Are Personality Tests Valuable? Just because everyone uses a process doesn’t mean it’s necessarily impactful. In fact, in many cases, processes are impactful when only a small handful of thought leaders use them, and when adoption grows wider, the value plummets. Is that the case with personality assessments? Truthfully, personality tests are valuable in nearly every case. However, they’re better for candidates in collaborative and leadership roles than those who work on their own or in lower-level “grunt work” roles. Critically, there is no one “right answer” for personality assessments; many different people with many different personal qualities can work fine in the same role, just in different ways and with different sources of stress. A disconnect between personalities is one of the largest signs of dissatisfaction in the workplace. “Research from leading institutes shows that an employee placed in a role that does not fit his/her character traits could lead to lower engagement. Consequently, a low employee engagement results in over 20% lower productivity and roughly 40% higher turnover.” – Manatal . We all know how expensive hiring and turnover can be, so anything that has the chance to reduce the need to replace employees is a benefit to a business. What Are the Best Personality Assessments to Use? There are quite a few personality tests available, and they all have pros and cons. Here’s a rundown of the most popular and effective assessments available for hiring corporate candidates. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator One of the most common personality tests, the MBTI, is well-known. The test is a 93-question assessment that takes around half an hour to complete. Through the assessment, individuals are sorted along four different axes: Introversion vs. Extroversion Sensing vs. Intuiting Thinking vs. Feeling Judging vs. Perceiving Then, each individual is assigned a four-letter “type” that indicates their personality spectrum. Types are abbreviated by the letters in each spectrum, so individuals will have personality types such as INTJ and ESFP. The MBTI is perhaps the most common and widely-known personality test used in hiring, but is it truly meant for hiring? Perhaps not. Sherrie Haynie, director of US Professional Services for the Myers-Briggs Company, wrote this for Forbes : “My firm, The Myers-Briggs Company, has long held the position that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instrument shouldn’t be used in hiring, but rather for team-building, conflict management, leadership development, and other non-selective purposes.” However, she goes on to say: “Does this mean we should stop using all personality assessments in hiring? In short, no. Personality assessments can play a helpful, objective role in the hiring process, provided that 1) the proper assessment is used, 2) insights are applied correctly, and 3) it’s not the only way you’re determining who to hire.” She, and her company, do not recommend using the MBTI for hiring. However, personality assessments, in general, are still acceptable when used appropriately. If you implement the MBTI as part of your hiring process, and you’re sure to remove unethical elements of judgment from it, it can be an effective way to indicate a candidate’s potential for success within your organization. However, it cannot be a primary deciding factor; it must be one element among many. “The MBTI instrument, for instance, has been psychometrically validated for its intended use — but not for hiring and selection. The assessment tells you many things and can help you identify existing employees’ strengths and blind spots, but it wasn’t designed to predict job performance.” The DiSC Second only to the MBTI in terms of popularity, the DiSC is a popular tool in business and team-building environments. It is a 24-question assessment that takes around 20 minutes to complete. The assessment asks a series of questions aimed at judging different aspects of a candidate’s personality and assigns them one of the four letters of D, i, S, or C. These correspond to the four personality types of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. The assessment is more precise and nuanced than it sounds. Rather than providing candidates with a single-letter assessment, it maps out how they fit on a spectrum amongst all four with an iconic circular chart. Should the DiSC be used for hiring? Again, perhaps not. According to the official DiSC site : “Although DiSC profiles are often used as part of the hiring and onboarding process, they’re not recommended for pre-employment screening. DiSC does not measure specific skills, aptitudes, or other factors critical for a position; it describes one’s natural work behavior patterns or styles to help improve productivity, teamwork, and communication.” Instead, the company that provides the DiSC assessment recommends using a DiSC-derived series of assessments called the PXT Select instead. The two are relatively similar, coming from the same theoretical basis, but the PXT is aimed specifically at hiring. The CliftonStrengths A lesser-known but still commonly used assessment, the CliftonStrenghts (formerly known as the Clifton StrengthsFinder), is an assessment developed by Gallup. As a leading agency responsible for global data analysis, Gallup is in a unique position to develop a comprehensive and valuable assessment, so they did. The CliftonStrengths is a longer and more detailed assessment, with 177 questions and a 45-minute expected time. Like other assessments, it groups candidates into four archetypes: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. It may come as no surprise, but Gallup also cautions against using their personality assessment to make hiring decisions. They have this to say : “Tempting as it is, we must remember that CliftonStrengths is a developmental tool; it gives a broad picture of someone’s talents, and only they can develop them into real strengths. This happens through dialogue with others and over time. We can never pick up someone’s CliftonStrengths profile and claim that we know that they have a talent for X and, therefore, it means Y. Now, clearly, common sense tells us that certain themes do make people more likely to be good in certain areas, but each person must have the right to describe what their own talents look like — uniquely — and how they would react in a certain role. Never assume, never presume.” Again, this is not to say that you can’t use information obtained through a personality assessment as part of your hiring decision. It simply means that personality, skills, potential success, and the ability to work as a team are all parts of a much larger set of data that forms the likelihood of corporate success. These assessments are always more valuable as tools for collaboration and team-building than as part of hiring. The OCEAN The OCEAN, also known as the Big Five Factors model, uses five personality traits as goalposts to measure. They are Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism. It’s a 60-question assessment that takes around 10 minutes to complete. The OCEAN is commonly used in hiring, both because it’s fast and easy to take and because there are a variety of free, open-source versions of the assessment. That is both good and bad, as the frequency with which people may take it when applying to jobs means they may cease responding in appropriate ways out of repetition or boredom. Unlike others on this list, the OCEAN is relatively accurate at predicting how individuals handle stress and thus can help predict job satisfaction in stressful positions, making it an easy tool to use for high-pressure corporate hiring. Why Does Every Assessment Caution Against Using it in Hiring? As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, official sources related to every popular assessment caution against using them as part of the hiring process. Why is that? While personality plays a significant role in determining how individuals can accomplish tasks, it does not indicate if they can perform. Different people can succeed in different ways, but they nonetheless will succeed. By selecting for certain personality types, you may be inhibiting your company’s growth. Moreover, if you limit the acceptable personality types your organization hires, you are likely limiting your thought diversity  and all of the benefits that come with it. As with any source of data you use in your hiring decision, it needs to be one part among many. You cannot truly judge a person by the results of one assessment; indeed, with training, exposure to others, and even time, the way they answer the questions on any of the above assessments will change. Should You Use a Personality Test in Corporate Hiring? There’s no one answer to this. Corporate hiring is often an individualized process, both for the company doing the hiring and for the roles they need to fill. The tests that give you the information you can use will vary, and how you use that information can vary. If you choose to use a personality test as part of your hiring process, make sure to balance it for any possible adverse impact . In particular, some forms of personality assessment can identify individuals with anxiety or depression, but weeding out those individuals can be considered illegal under the Americans with Disabilities act. Personality tests can be an effective way to get a glimpse into the type of person you’re dealing with, but that glimpse should be more for informational purposes and not as a deciding factor in hiring. Do you or your company have any questions about personality tests, or if you should use them in your hiring process? If so, please do not hesitate to leave a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started on the topic! We’d love to answer any of your potential questions and assist you however possible!

As the recruitment sector evolves in tandem with technology, gamification is known for being a game-changing tool.  The traditional processes of seeking talent, laden with stacks of CVs and prolonged interviews, now find competition from engaging, innovative, and interactive game-based methods.  Gamification, in its essence, integrates game-design elements into non-game contexts, transforming the otherwise mundane hiring process into an exciting venture. Understanding the Power of Gamification Gamification isn’t about frivolous games but capitalizes on the core tenets of human behavior. It leverages intrinsic motivation, where the joy of completing a task fuels participation, and extrinsic motivation, driven by tangible rewards. Every game, whether it’s chess or soccer, involves strategies, challenges, and rewards. Similarly, gamified recruiting presents challenges to candidates, inciting curiosity and problem-solving instincts.  Accomplishing tasks or reaching milestones gives a sense of achievement, further pushing candidates to participate with enthusiasm. Gamified assessments often bring out the authentic skills and personalities of the candidates, offering recruiters a transparent view beyond rehearsed interview responses. Key Benefits Beyond making the recruitment process lively, gamification is a strategic tool. The digital age has ushered in an era where user experience is paramount. A candidate’s journey , from finding a job listing to accepting an offer, needs to be seamless and engaging. Gamified processes make tedious tasks enjoyable. Instead of filling lengthy forms, imagine solving a puzzle that gauges one’s analytical skills! Traditional assessments often capture just the tip of the iceberg. Gamified assessments, on the other hand, probe deeper, examining not only the technical skills but also soft skills, adaptability, and cultural fit. For instance, a group game can reveal leadership qualities, teamwork, and interpersonal skills of potential hires. An employer’s brand isn’t just about the company’s success but also about its approach towards employees, innovation, and adaptability. Gamified recruiting portrays a brand as modern, dynamic, and candidate-friendly, making it an attractive proposition for top talents . Gamification Tools As gamified recruiting continues to surge in popularity, several platforms have risen to the forefront, offering avant-garde solutions that redefine the traditional recruitment experience. Here’s a deeper dive into some of these trailblazing tools: Pymetrics Pymetrics stands out not just for its integration of gamification but for how it employs neuroscience to craft its challenges. Here’s how it differentiates: Neuroscience Games: By leveraging games based on neuroscience research, Pymetrics assesses candidates’ cognitive, emotional, and social capabilities. Bias-free Hiring: The platform prides itself on removing biases, ensuring that matches are based on genuine cognitive compatibility and not merely on resumes. Customized Job Profiles: Employers can define the cognitive and emotional traits important for a role, ensuring candidates who match are not just skilled but also fit the role’s unique demands. CodinGame For the tech sector, CodinGame has emerged as a go-to platform. Here’s why: Real-world Coding Challenges: Instead of traditional question-answer coding tests, candidates immerse themselves in real-world-like coding games that test not just their knowledge but also their problem-solving skills. Community-driven Content: CodinGame boasts a vibrant community that contributes to the platform, ensuring that the challenges remain current and relevant. Multi-language Support: Whether you’re looking to hire a Java expert or a Python prodigy, the platform supports numerous programming languages, ensuring a wide net for potential recruits. HireVue HireVue brings together the power of AI and gamification, offering a glimpse into the future of recruitment. Video Interviews with a Twist: While video interviews aren’t new, HireVue enhances the experience by integrating AI-driven insights. As candidates respond, the platform’s AI evaluates not just the content but also non-verbal cues, providing a holistic assessment. Game-based Assessments: Beyond video, HireVue offers a suite of game-based challenges that gauge a range of skills, from cognitive abilities to specific job-role proficiencies. AI-driven Insights: Post-assessment, recruiters aren’t just handed scores. The platform’s AI analyses the results, highlighting strengths, potential areas of concern, and overall fit, ensuring informed decisions. The gamification tools showcased here represent just a fraction of what’s out there, but they’re among the best in the business. Each offers a unique approach, ensuring that regardless of the recruitment need, there’s a solution out there. As technology continues to evolve, these tools will likely become even more refined, offering deeper insights and a more engaging candidate experience . Implementing Gamification Step-by-Step  Embarking on the journey of integrating gamification into the recruiting process requires careful planning and strategy. The first step is to identify your objectives.  While the primary goal might be hiring, you should also ponder if you aim for branding, enhancing candidate engagement, or honing in on skill-specific assessments. Once the objectives are clear, the next step is to design or choose the game. The chosen game should be a reflection of the skills and competencies essential for the job. Whether you opt for quizzes, simulations, or task-based challenges, it’s imperative that they resonate with both the job role and the overarching company culture.  For some organizations, a tailor-made, customized game might be the best fit. However, existing games, with slight modifications, could suffice for other organizations. Selecting the right platform is pivotal. This choice isn’t just about the game; it encompasses a plethora of factors. The platform should be technically robust, offering candidates a glitch-free and intuitive experience. Established platforms, backed by positive reviews and a proven track record, might offer a more cost-effective solution without compromising on quality. Additionally, with the ever-evolving landscape of recruitment, it’s beneficial to choose a platform that boasts scalability, ready to adapt as your recruitment needs grow and change. Feedback is the lifeblood of continuous improvement. In the realm of gamified recruiting, it’s essential to have a feedback mechanism in place. By allowing candidates to share their experiences, insights, and suggestions, you can continually refine the gamification elements, ensuring they remain effective, engaging, and relevant. Lastly, the world of gamification is akin to shifting sands, always changing and evolving. It’s paramount to stay updated with the latest trends , technologies, and best practices. By keeping a finger on the pulse of the industry, you can ensure that your gamified recruiting strategy remains at the forefront, attracting top talent in innovative and engaging ways. Ethical Concerns One of the most immediate concerns is the risk of oversimplifying a job role. While games are designed to test specific skills or traits, they can sometimes miss the nuance and depth of a role. For instance, a game might successfully gauge a candidate’s analytical skills, but might not capture their ability to work in a team or under pressure. Thus, an over-reliance on gamified assessments could lead to hires who excel in the game but may not necessarily thrive in the actual work environment. Bias in game design is another looming concern. Games, by their nature, are a product of human design and can inadvertently perpetuate biases. A game that doesn’t account for cultural, age, or gender differences can lead to skewed results, potentially favoring one group over another. In an era where diversity and inclusivity are paramount, such biases can be detrimental to an organization’s reputation and its broader hiring goals. Furthermore, the very essence of gamification can be a double-edged sword. While many candidates may find gamified assessments engaging, there’s a portion of the talent pool that might not resonate with a gaming approach. Non-gamers or individuals who might feel overwhelmed by the competitive aspect of a game could feel alienated. This could lead to missing out on top talent simply because they aren’t comfortable with or don’t relate to the gaming format. Data privacy is another critical area that requires attention. Organizations need to establish robust data handling and protection protocols, ensuring transparency about how data is used and providing candidates the agency to control their information. Conclusion Gamification in recruiting, although relatively young, is poised to redefine the landscape of talent acquisition. As the digital age continues, the lines between work and play are becoming thin. In such a paradigm, gamified recruiting holds the potential to resonate deeply with modern candidates, merging the allure of gameplay with the gravitas of professional pursuits.  The beauty of this approach is its adaptability and relevance to a vast demographic, from Gen Z digital natives to more seasoned professionals looking for innovative workplaces. By integrating elements of play into the serious business of hiring, organizations can foster an environment of creativity, innovation, and heightened engagement. Candidates get a taste of the company’s ethos and innovation, while recruiters gain insights into skills and personalities, all packaged in an enjoyable experience. For those who see the potential and want to be at the forefront of this recruitment revolution, the journey has just begun. And if you’re eager to learn even more, contact our team today to find out how we can help you achieve your hiring goals.  Embrace the game, and let’s redefine hiring together! #gamification #recruitmentprocessoutsourcing