Over the past couple of weeks there has been a plethora of articles commenting on interview questions, with comments ranging from “What’s the point of these wacky questions” to observers who say that if corporate giants such as Google, who are notorious for asking questions such as “you are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown in a blender. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?” frequently base their interviews and hiring on the answers to such riddles, then there must be something in it?

So is there something in it?
Can any of you out there shed any light on the value of questions such as:

1. “What colour best represents your personality”
2. “If you were an animal, what type of animal would you be and why?”

Does this type of questioning identify potential talent?

What type of response would classify as genius, and what type of response would classify as ridiculous?

Can these questions really provide any insight into an individual’s creativity, can they help interviewers identify how the interviewee potentially responds to unexpected scenarios, are candidates likely to panic, express confusion or go with the flow?

Your views and experiences would be greatly appreciated and if you could share with us the most unusual interview question that you have either been asked or that you have asked, that would be great.

Look forward to hearing from you

There is no doubt that job seekers are more prepared to be creative in order to gain a competitive edge in the job market. Part of that creativity is being focused on social media which is increasingly the place for people to network, get new job leads or to promote and showcase their experience.

LinkedIn is the new hangout for corporate as well as agency headhunters, and many corporations have Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. The info graphic below, based on a recent post EconMatters as well as various survey originating out of the U.SA finds some interesting statistics regarding using social media for job search. For example,

• 1 in 6 workers use social media to get hired
• Almost 90% of job seekers have a profile on a social media site
• 54% of all job hunters use Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin to find jobs
• 50% of job seekers used Facebook, 25% used Twitter, and 36% used Linkedin to look for a job in the last 12 months
• 18.4 million Americans say Facebook got them their current jobs. The numbers for Twitter and Linked in are 10.2 million and 8 million respectively

Of course, this is U.S specific but we can take some pointers as to how it may affect matters in the UK. It does not mean social media will completely replace traditional advertising or traditional recruitemnt, but rather as something to add to the job searching tool bag. Even for the gainfully employed, social media provides an open and easy way to network, being sociably cool and keep you updated on the new technology and social trend.

So it is beneficial for anybody, regardless if you are looking for a job, to be on at least one of the major social media site (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin)?

Created by: MBA Online

Do:

• Keep your portal up to date – if filled jobs remain on your system or new ones do not appear then you will lose visitors and you will miss out on direct candidates as well as lose credibility with recruiters. If your recruiters get off side they may bypass you and go directly to the hiring manager, which only creates more work and less clarity.
• Keep your portal simple – let candidates register in a couple of clicks and allow recruiters to send a CV in seconds.
• Make navigation easy and obvious – particularly if you have multiple sites; make sure that all your roles across all your sites are easy to find and clearly distinguished.
• Use the analytics use the management information to work out who/what is working effectively for you.
• Get your career site updated – attract talent directly by providing additional information on your company’s culture and use it to keep people up to date of their progress through the recruitment cycle.

Don’t:

• Don’t think it’s the solution to everything and you can now put your feet up – recruitment portals are a means and not an end.
• Don’t give in – when the  “dead against” brigade come along and try to persuade you to ditch your new portal and just use them and in fact why not pay them more money than you would otherwise pay them through your portal – stay resolute – don’t do it.
• Don’t give in when agents tell you they can’t give you that information, of course they can! You should expect to receive applicant information and not just the most basic data that is what your analytics are there for!

Katrina has been a recruiter for many years and has experienced many different recruitment portals, from both sides, and she has even used our portal. She is adamant that they key message when it comes to getting a recruitment portals right is ease of use. It should provide everyone with smoother processes, more pertinent information and less hassle. She says that a great back end in terms of coding should provide a really simple to use front end, basically get it right and “less is more”

Contact MyPeopleBiz

Contact Winning Impression

At a time when recruitment and economic recovery both seem to be intrinsically linked and both appear to struggle to show any positives, it is interesting to note that 75% of organisations are experiencing recruitment difficulties, and 58% are facing issues with staff retention.

If ever there was a time when you would have thought staff movement would decrease then surely this is it, but we will leave retention issues for another time and focus on the question of what’s preventing improvement in recruitment.

What’s going on?

Although there is some uncertainty, depending on which figures you read, as to whether unemployment has increased or decreased, one thing is for sure; recruitment is getting more stressful! And is it any wonder.

The recent CIPD annual report said that the current influx of applicants per job was significantly on the increase with 66% of Employers saying they cannot find enough quality candidates even though they are getting more response.

The issue of volume is further compounded by another recent finding by the Association of Graduate Recruiters who reported that there is an average of 83 graduate applicants for each vacancy! So, frustrations with administrative hassle are not just understandable, but are reaching extreme stress levels. Is there anything that Employers can do combat this overflow problem?

We think so, but worryingly, the CIPD report indicates a “Rabbit in the headlights approach”.

Many organisations acknowledge the problems, but when it comes to solving them, they either continue to repeat and implement strategies that have not worked in the hope that somehow it may this time around; or they just change the strategy but lose any impact on implementation.

Approximately 50% of survey participants have yet to implement formal resourcing strategies and another 31% of participant’s claimed to actually lose suitable candidates due to their unsuitable and lengthy recruitment process. WOW!

It’s like having a big headache and waking up every morning knowing that you’re going to have that same headache again but you just don’t ever have time to stop and take a “Nurofen”. After a while the pain becomes numbing: you just can’t be bothered to deal with it, so it must be with the 50% of employers who have an issue but can’t alleviate the stress. A quick look at reports over a 5 year period shows that the recruitment stress points are almost exactly the same year on year. So there’s some inertia for sure, but we have decided that something has to be done. We are on a mission to make it easy and inexpensive to reach for that Nurofen and get organised in order to not just alleviate the headache; but to prevent it happening again!

We have been busy successfully building great recruitment portals since 2009 for Employers and we’re determined to get that “50%” of stressed out organisations to formalise and improve their recruitment by making it an easy decision – a no brainer!

We have recently introduced RecruitLite an applicant tracking, interview scheduling, communications and agency management system that is easy to use and FREE. Why? Because once you have “cured the headache” your life improves and you will want to keep it improving, so you will want to upgrade to RecruitPro a recruitment portal that is highly sophisticated and will help to reduce your recruitment budget by 30%. That’s where we start making some money but continue to save you money!

We have been talking to some of our clients about what they like in their portals and what improvements will make their life easier. This is an important part of what differentiates us from the rest of the crowd, its old fashioned and called SERVICE. The results have been very encouraging:

Julie Nesbit, at the Private Equity Foundation recently created a recruitment Portal for the Charity and she said

The platform has provided great ease of functionality so that I am able to respond and recruit efficiently with minimal fuss.

We’ve also been helping improve recruitment response from career sites, as well as helping to deal with the volume of administration generated by a multitude of mediums used to advertise vacancies. With social networks acting as “new age” job boards, as well as traditional job boards AND agencies, CV’s are flowing from all directions, and getting lost along the way! Bearing these factors in mind, it makes implementing appropriate time and effort strategies for candidates difficult. The feedback we have had is that you cannot achieve better results, without continuous improvement.

Stress free recruitment does exist, but you have to be prepared to invest some time into setting up the procedures and also creating the right platform.

It’s all about communication

HR and internal recruiters remain under a phenomenal amount of stress when it comes to tackling the load of CV’s and covering letters they receive, but, organising recruitment and instituting better communication will relieve those pressures. What they need is advanced, user friendly technology to ensure improved admin. At MyPeopleBiz our clients are our priority so we ensure they receive such a service; catered to their needs. To fulfil their specific recruitment necessities we’ve set up a team to listen to and capture feedback, then implement those requests for customisation. As Ollia Alexis at Teenage Cancer Trust said “MyPeopleBiz not only listen but they make relevant changes.”

We not only listen, but more importantly we have a team of experienced recruiters who can often point out the failures in the recruitment processes, after all, it’s not just the way you attract applicants, but WHAT you do with them once you have their attention. For both employer and candidate alike, it’s vital that organisations maintain contact with as many, if not all of their applicants; updating them on progress of applications and offering quick personalised responses. Employers too will benefit from this system as they will find it easier to track their own applicants and lighten any added admin burdens: as well as simultaneously promote employer brand.

Why taking that next step will guarantee success!

Understanding how frustrating and demoralising admin can be, is the first step in helping you to solve this issue. As noted by Ollia Alexis in her review:

I have found the amount of paper work I had to deal with before has decreased significantly now that all the information is in one place.

We offer something different as noted by Jason Jolly, HR adviser for Mercedes Benz:

I have been in recruitment for 8 years; and have been approached by a number of companies saying that what they have is new and innovative. MyPeopleBiz is the first time I’ve actually seen it and it’s proving very successful for the company.

Help us to take the stress out of recruitment for those “50%”.

We would be really interested to hear of your recruitment stress points, so keep updated on our posts and keep in touch!

The single most powerful candidate resourcing tool available to an Employer is an Referral Programme – which can generate 60%/70% of the candidate flow. According to the CIPD Employers recognise the impact, but struggle to get it right.MyPeopleBiz has been at the forefront of creating Referral Programmes – it pays to know people!

The 3 most common issues Employers have with their Referral Programmes are;

1. Not branding the Programme creatively enough

2. Not promoting it aggressively enough

3. Not rewarding the staff and external referrers adequately enough.

Far too many Referral Programmes are positioned as ‘recommend a friend’ Programmes, when what they really should be doing is encouraging their staff to recommend talent. There is a significant difference. MyPeopleBiz is an innovative Online Recruitment Platform that connects employers of all shapes and sizes with Referrers.

We can create a fully branded referral program, creatively market it internally and externally through your own careers site, the MyPeopleBiz job board and social media channels ensuring that the rewards are exciting enough to achieve the results that you want. AND we can give you the facility to manage, track response, communicate and schedule interviews – the best referral system in the market!

]]> http://blog.mypeoplebiz.com/2011/03/does-your-referral-programme-produce-60-70-of-your-candidate-flow/feed/ 0 http://blog.mypeoplebiz.com/2011/03/last-chance-competition-closes-12-am-tonight-win-a-free-recruitment-portal-worth-30k/ http://blog.mypeoplebiz.com/2011/03/last-chance-competition-closes-12-am-tonight-win-a-free-recruitment-portal-worth-30k/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 09:46:42 +0000 admin http://blog.mypeoplebiz.com/?p=548 To celebrate the release of our new Recruitment functionality we are giving your company the chance to win prizes.

Enter our competition by simply filling this short form online now.

We have a number of prizes on offer:

Competition winners will be chosen at random.

If you would like more information on our
Recruitment Portals please email us or call us directly on 020 3176 3726. Alternatively, request an online demo.

However it is not easy to roll out direct hiring. Firstly you the need the HR resource and then there is the sheer volume of response generated from job boards and social networking. That is why we have decided to roll out our new filtering service which offers CV filtering and response management services on a per vacancy basis for Employers.

We have trialed the service successfully for the past 6 months and this will now be a permanent option to our clients on MyPeopleBiz.com

The world of work develops at pace and we are here to help you be at the forefront of new developments. Our Recruitment Portals are ‘Vendor Neutral” and facilitate a holistic recruitment strategy that enables you, the Employer to connect directly to talent through multi channels including:
 
Job Boards, Social Networks, Recruitment Agencies, Head-Hunters, Careers Site and including Internal and External Referrals schemes.

Contact us for more information, a demo on the best applicant tracking and interview management system available or to talk through your recruitment strategy and needs.

1. 88% of employers rated referrals above all other sources for generated quality of new hires

2. 78% of companies are now using social networking and social media to find and attract candidates.

3. 50% of companies were spending more on business networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and employee-referral programs and less on print and traditional job boards.

4. 50% plus of companies surveyed by the CIPD admitted that so far they had not utilised an employee referral scheme at all.

Clearly the figures suggest that whilst employers who are utilising referral schemes are seeing an increasing percentage of hires initiated through their employees’ social networks, there is still a long way to go if more than 50% of employers surveyed have not utilised a referral scheme at all.

If your company already has an employee referral program, or is at the initial stages of putting this in place its worth looking at how and why they can work so well and also, how expanding them into open referral networks through sites like mypeoplebiz.com can take your recruitment to the next level with significant savings and a great calibre candidate otherwise difficult to find.

Traditionally employee referral programs act as internal recruitment method, encouraging staff to source new hires for your organisation from their social and professional networks through a monetary incentive. This allows for an efficient recruitment process reducing cost and time to hire thanks to improved relevance of referred candidates and the trustworthy relationship between the referrer, candidate and the organisation itself.

· A recent study showed that 88% of employers rated referrals above all other sources for generated quality of new hires

Referrals generate a higher quality candidate as they are likely know the job and candidate far better and are not prepared to waste their or their contacts time on something they don’t think is right. This cuts down recruitment time for you as candidates have essentially already been well sourced and screened for you. Furthermore, referrals build on themselves, not only are you likely to be building a better talent pool, hired referrals are likely to encourage further referrals and are more likely to refer new talent themselves, expanding your ‘talent network’.

By setting worthy rewards for successful hires you’re also creating ‘brand campaigners’ for your company as they promote your organisation to the friends and contacts in their networks. What’s more, 78% of your staff are spending up to half an hour of the working day on social networking sites, creating a even larger range of connections to source candidates from, capitalise on this rather than thinking of it as wasted time.

The impact Personal recommendations via current employees’ social networks can be very valuable in other ways too, as they can efficiently lead to candidates with the right cultural ‘fit’ for a company in addition to saving employers considerable amounts of money, reducing the amount spent on agencies and external advertising.

Why create an open your referral system? Internal referral schemes can work fantastically, but why stop there; all your competitor’s employees also know great people in the industry, and are just as willing to participate in the action. People are more connected than ever before with new technologies, and since 78% of staff are spending up to half an hour of the working day on social networking sites too, recommending a contact for a job is easy – just a simple message is required, and then they can chose to take it forward. Put simply, If your company rewards and encourages this behavior, your company is going to be rewarded with better talent from the people who know what is needed.

CIPD surveys indicate that 64% of respondents agreed that referral reward incentives for staff have a positive impact – not just on the caliber of job applicants, but on the budget too. A large insurance company which participated in the study’s focus group reported a huge saving of £250,000 in recruitment costs as a result of their ‘refer a friend’ scheme.

Clearly, such schemes can be highly successful.

(See how Jessops are building their direct hire brand)

Now you can maximise your employer brand by adding a fully customised career site to your corporate website to help you simplify your recruitment processes and reduce your cost to hire by 30-50%.

You can manage your entire recruitment process from your online recruitment portal:

1. List all your jobs and capture all responses in one place
2. Benefit from applicant tracking on all your roles and communications.
3. Provide background information on your company, culture and values
4. Have your jobs benefit from a presence on all relevant social networking sites
5. Connect with candidates through multiple channels
6. Create referral schemes
7. Manage your recruitment agency suppliers including negotiating fees
8. Get access to over 500 recruitment agents
9. Stop duplicate applications
10. Advertise all your jobs on the Mypeoplebiz job board and a range of other job boards for free to generate more candidates.

It’s simple and affordable

We build your career portal for you at a one off cost of £3,990 and host it, providing you with a link to attach to your corporate website. You can then use your new career site to manage all recruitment.

It’s a smarter way to recruit

It’s a smarter way to recruit because it gives you access to a multichannel recruitment platform that brings together employers, candidates, referrers and recruitment agencies all in one place. Its smarter because you can leverage the power of networking and social media to attract candidates using our innovative reward structure. Its smarter because we have over 500 registered recruitment agencies who will supply you with candidates for a fixed fee – you simply decide if you want to use a recruiter and how much you want to pay on a job by job basis.

Take a look at what our clients say: KPSS, Online auction site flutteroo, specialist Media Research organisation Kantar Media, specialist injury claims mediator InterResolve and law firm Kingsley Napley.

Manage and control your entire recruitment process online, including a range of ways to filter your applications saving time and money. Contact us to find out more at info@mypeoplebiz.com or visit us at http://www.mypeoplebiz.com/ just sign up here.

The use of social networks continues to drive recruitment

Research conducted through various recruitment surveys over the past year indicates that up to 78% of companies are now using social networking and social media to find and attract candidates. Recent surveys of recruiters & HR executives found that over 50% of companies were spending more on business networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and employee-referral programs and less on print and traditional job boards.

And this is not a new phenomenon. T-Mobile piloted a social networking dimension for their graduate recruitment round, as far back 2007, via Facebook. The experiment was a success, with the company’s Recruitment Manager acknowledging that they ‘didn’t think it would take off in the way it did’, and that ‘[social networking] has an important and growing role to play’.

However, it still appears that whilst employers are seeing an increasing percentage of hires initiated through their employees’ social networks, over 50% of companies surveyed by the CIPD admitted that so far they had not utilised an employee referral scheme at all.

Candidates are open to the idea of social networking as a recruitment tool

Importantly, it’s not just employers who are keen to jump on the ‘networking bandwagon’ to revolutionise recruitment. Increasingly, both active job seekers and passive candidates are willing to publish career-based information about themselves on social networking sites, with a view to potential employment opportunities, either from friends or from head-hunters. A recent survey of computer users indicated that 87% of respondents think social networking sites are useful for business purposes including networking, exchanging ideas, getting advice, recruitment, research and selling.

Is the war for talent still relevant in today’s market?

Although the economy has recently presented challenges for most employers, the “jobseekers’ market” is thriving and the war for talent continues to challenge recruitment initiatives. Employers are still struggling to attract candidates with the necessary industry experience and expertise, and the CIPD survey suggests that the problem had, if anything, worsened, with 86% of companies across a number of industries admitting to experiencing recruitment difficulties.

Whilst formal recruitment costs are, in some cases, falling due to the current economic downturn, this tends to be offset by the increase in recruitment spending on temporary and contract workers, filling gaps for which permanent staff are no longer being hired or are deemed inappropriate because of headcount restrictions. If anything, then, the current economic climate indicates that there is an even more urgent need to identify economical ways to win the talent war, whilst simultaneously keeping recruitment costs down to a minimum.

It pays to know people

Incentives such as employee referral schemes can make a huge impact Personal recommendations via current employees’ social networks can be very valuable, as they can efficiently lead to candidates with the right cultural ‘fit’ for a company. In addition, such schemes can save employers considerable amounts of money, reducing the amount spent on agencies and external advertising.

CIPD surveys indicate that 64% of respondents agreed that referral reward incentives for staff have a positive impact – not just on the calibre of job applicants, but on the budget too. A large insurance company which participated in the study’s focus group reported a huge saving of £250,000 in recruitment costs as a result of their ‘refer a friend’ scheme.

Clearly, such schemes can be highly successful.

Golden Hellos can provide the ideal incentive in today’s talent war

As far back as 2008, the CIPD survey, confirmed that 52% of companies thought that candidate incentives have a positive impact.

Attracting the best candidates is always a struggle, so incentives such as sign-on bonuses can ensure that a company stands out amongst the crowd, encouraging potential applicants.

However, these incentives do not appear to be widely offered

Whilst ‘golden hellos’ are becoming more frequent, just 14% of companies currently claim to offer such incentives. Similarly, as discussed previously, despite the evidence that employee referral schemes are beneficial for all concerned many employers are not taking advantage of these either; over 50% of companies surveyed by the CIPD say that they don’t utilise an employee referral scheme at all, and only 37% offer ‘bounty payments’ for these referrals.

Failure to utilise such schemes means missing out on numerous opportunities to attract top talent on a tight budget.

Successful talent acquisition relies on speeding up the recruitment process

A survey of 300 companies in the mobile wireless industry revealed that over 75% had missed out on recruiting high calibre candidates due to delays in the recruitment process. This resulted in an estimated revenue loss of £millions, due to projects that were delayed as a result of a lack of quality employees. The CIPD agrees that this is a common problem: “Good candidates have multiple offers and therefore have higher expectations. As a result organisations have to speed up the recruitment process so as not to lose these candidates.”

Recruitment and Diversity

With regard to diversity, whilst this is a very topical issue, as the CIPD report puts it “nothing much has changed” in recent times and only 55% of respondents to their recent survey even possessed a diversity strategy at all. One of the issues with diversity is opening up the recruitment process to a wider market, and the recent trend to create PSLs and reduce the number of suppliers can have the effect of closing rather than increasing applications from “diverse” candidates. Social networking and referral schemes may help to increase applications from well qualified and suitable candidates from more diverse backgrounds, and as such could prove to be valuable tools for equal opportunities in the future.

In summary, the competitive market for talent shows no sign of abating. Keeping up with the current trends, understanding the needs and motivations of job seekers and ensuring ample incentives can lead to greater recruitment success.

Our experience with mypeoplebiz so far is that approximately 50% of the candidates are coming through recruitment agents, 30% are coming through referrals and networking and the remaining 20% are coming through job boards and direct.

As the CIPD succinctly concludes: “Organisations have to review their reward offering, to ensure they secure the best candidate for the job”.  To do that, as we have written before, it is advisable to have a multichannel recruitment strategy and to ensure that referrals and networking feature strongly in that strategy.