Practical Time Management for Recruiters

Turnover in the recruiting profession is higher than it should be.  Part of the problem is who our industry hires, part of challenge is our industry's commitment to training and a part is recruiters holding themselves accountable to the best possible daily practices.  Recruiters are social animals, which can lead to all kinds of daily distractions.  Steve Finkel wrote a great article on Practical Time Management that recruiters - that anyone (not just recruiters) who wants to succeed should read.
Enjoy!
Jeff

Practical Time Management for Recruiters
 by: Steve Finkel

What does it take to do well in a today's market?


Certainly skill improvement and perhaps changes in methodology, the manner in which you work a desk, are primary.


However, all the improved technique and methodology in the world will not be maximized if enhanced focus and time management does not accompany. As Larry Nobles, well-known speaker and author of the best foundational book ever written for our industry (see Amazon), wrote, "Stop trying to get $300K in production from $100K worth of work!"


In a strong market, it is easy to drift, getting good results from less and less time, concentration, and effort. In today's market, however, things are different. Enhanced focus on time management will yield more substantive impactful time on the phone...and that, combined with improved methodology, is the only way to survive and prosper.


Eliminate Time Theft

Wal-Mart, perhaps the most successful retailer in history, warns their employees of "Time Theft"; this refers to time taken during the working day which reduces accomplishment of the results for which they are paid. Wasting time in the office on totally non-productive activities is thus the equivalent of stealing from your own income, your own family, and your own future.

How much time do you actually spend on the phone generating income? The facts are that when this is measured by monitoring equipment, the average recruiter spends less than two hours a day on the phone. And even top producers rarely hit three hours! Where does the rest of the time go? Let's look at some common answers.

Personal Calls

For many, a major impediment to success is personal phone calls.

If not stopped and stopped quickly, these will grow to excess. The difficulty and cost of this problem goes well beyond the quantitative amount of non-work-related time that is taken on the phone, though that could be considerable. It is the great reduction of intensity that happens as a result of these constant interruptions.

Peter Drucker in his exceptional book "The Effective Executive" made reference to this when he mentioned the fact that every human activity has 3 facets; the beginning, the doing, and then the wind down. Regardless of the length of time one invests, the "beginning" and the "wind down" are pretty close to the same. Thus, according to Drucker, a one-hour block of uninterrupted time is worth not 4 but 10 15-minute blocks of time. Why? Because the doing time, the central portion that yields effectiveness, increases by a factor of 10, though the warm up and the wind down stay pretty much the same.

What this means to us is that a constant stream of incoming non-business calls tend to interrupt and cause us to have to warm up all over again! But how do you eliminate these? You can't very well hang up on nice people. Still something must be done or business will suffer...and suffer badly.

It is, of course, simple to say "But I have Caller ID. I'll just let the calls go to my answering machine". However, it may be a genuine emergency. And of course, many of us don't want to be rude and will automatically answer the phone from someone we know...only to be slightly regretful that we did. So what to do?

Try this ...

Step 1

When a call comes in, ask yourself, is this really critical? The reality is if a nurse calls from school indicating that your child's got a broken arm, you must deal with it immediately. But you won't get many such calls. An overwhelming percentage will not be critical, but just people "calling to talk". Once you figure that out, it is fairly easy to take it from there.

Step 2

Indicate that you do want to speak with this person. "Bob, I appreciate the call. I really do want to talk with you." You want to be polite and friendly to these people, quite obviously. They are probably friends or relatives. However, you have a business to run and things to accomplish.

Step 3

Claim an important conference coming up. "But I am right on the verge of a very important conference. I do want to talk with you, but I have got to get to this meeting. May I get back to you this evening?"

Step 4

Do return the phone call ... after working hours. Over a period of time, if you continue with this procedure whenever a non-critical personal call comes in, it will become clear to these "social" callers that you are busy with work, and can only take important calls. This will eventually stop the non-important ones that drain your time, energy, focus...and income.

This is significant! Between hobbies or non-business interests or friends, many recruiters will get a constant stream of these. If you don't stop it, it will affect your business.

Maybe in a strong market, you can afford these time wasters, but the reality is that in a less-than-good market, things change. Put a sign on the phone if you don't remember to do this to serve as an ongoing reminder. Slowly get them away from calling you - just like that.

Intra-Office Chat

In many offices, there is a clear separation in the determination of the recruiters to succeed in a less-than-great market.

Some recruiters will tighten up, become more focused, work both smarter and harder, and will ultimately fight their way to high production. Others will slow down, complain, become unwilling to make calls, and engage in pointless time-wasting conversation to avoid getting on the phone. Look around your office, and see these two camps. Which one are you?

The difficulty is that the latter group will make a definite effort to interfere with their tough-minded co-workers. Conversation about personal matters, complaints about management and the market, irrevelant erroneous "questions","suggestions" and "ideas" will all increase dramatically. While it is indeed the job of the manager to weed out these bad apples, it is your job to ignore them and go to work with a renewed dedication. And that is not always easy.

The best way to avoid these impediments to your success is simply to be busy. When they walk into your office/work area and attempt to engage you in pointless conversation, just say "_____, I'd love to talk with you, but I've got an assignment I've got to find people for. Let's talk after work" . Then pick up the phone and make a call. Repeat a modified version of the same thing when they try to side-track you away from your desk.

These people may be nice, but your primary function other than improving skills is staying on the phone--regardless of well-meaning distractions.

The High-Tech Time Waster

The internet as a means of identifying potential candidates and clients has merit.

However, unrelated to the internet as a business tool, it is also a major handicap in achieving your financial goals. Even if you have avoided getting involved in playing actual computer games, there is a real probability that you have not escaped other addictions relative to the internet. Consider the following:

· A Nielsen Survey found that the majority of on-line shopping, auctions, stock trading, chat room visits, news reading and, yes, porn traffic, take place during working hours.

· A recent Robert Half International survey found that 60% of executives said that time spent accessing the web for non-business purposes was undermining their employees' effectiveness on the job.

· A recent Men's Health magazine survey of 2,000 subscribers asked the question, "What interferes most with your productivity at work?". The #1 answer (74%)? The Internet!

So what's the answer to this modern high-tech time waster? Easy; get the heck off it!

First, change your computer so it does not automatically hook up to the internet. Then... don't access it until after 5 PM. If you feel you need to research to identify candidates or clients, clump that time together and do it all after 4:30 -- while you're planning....including emails! Barring a real anticipated necessity, open your emails twice a day -- morning and right before planning. Here's a test. Keep track of the emails you receive tomorrow and then ask yourself this question. "'If I didn't read these until the end of the day, how much business would I lose?" The answer? Probably none. But the interruptions? Substantial!l

What do you think would happen without non-essential internet time during prime working hours .. including emails, barring a real anticipated necessity?  Chances are, with all that extra time and reduced distraction on your hands, you'd pick up the phone and make phone calls--lots of phone calls... Maybe you should try it and see.

Maximizing Your Commute


If you commute to work, you already know that it is not the most exciting time of the day. Yet there are benefits to doing so.

Rather than listen to talk radio or top-40 music, take this opportunity to start the day with the right attitude or to improve your skills. Good-quality CD's will accomplish both.

Nightingale-Conant out of Chicago or Success Motivation Insititute out of Waco, Texas, have a number of products you may wish to consider. Among the industry-specific CD products, the best in terms of both content and manner of presentation is the Larry Nobles product "Successful Search and Placement!". It consists of twenty-four 30-minute modules, one for every working day for an entire month, addressing every facet of the recruiting business. Visit Amazon.com or access www.larrynobles.com for complete information on his excellent CD series.

A 30-minute morning commute amounts to a solid ten hours a month of time spent driving to work. A 15-minute commute equals 5 hours a month. The drive to work sets up your attitude for the business day. It is critical to "hit the ground running". If you don't commute, listen to a 30-minute module while you shower or eat breakfast. Concentrating on the material in a topflight CD will allow the morning drive to contribute to your maximizing the time spent in the office.

Early Start

"Well begun", as the old saying goes, "is half done". Moreover, multiple sales surveys have shown that the majority of business sales are made before noon. This applies to us as well.

If you're in the habit of arriving a few minutes late in the morning, reviewing and adding to your Daily Planner ( which wasn't quite completed the night before), organizing your desk, greeting your co-workers one by one with comments to each, having several cups of coffee and then picking up the phone-you're missing out of the best selling time of the day. In our current market, you just can't afford to do so.

Look around your office at the formal starting times, and see who is at their desk and on the phone-and who is still wandering around. Which one are you?

If you're not on the phone--or at least pushing buttons to get through--early, you'd better make some changes. Especially in today's market.

Planning

In a forthcoming issue, we may cover planning in more detail, though it is addressed thoroughly in the previously-mentioned CD series and in my own book Breakthrough!. This newsletter is long enough as it is. But I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention that a specific complete written-out Daily Planner filled out at the end of the day is an absolute key to getting maximum results from the time spent in the office. Don't shortcut this!

More Information

There are several great benefits to reading books on a specific subject. The first, of course, is that you will actually learn hard information and techniques. In our business, these will directly translate into increased production. The second benefit, however, is that simply by reading a serious book, you will concentrate on the subject. To get results, you must reinforce by underlining or highlighting relevant points and then putting signs on the phone to remind yourself to implement. By doing so, you will almost automatically pay more attention to the topics addressed.

There are two books on time management that will expand your knowledge and focus on this subject. They are How to Get Control of Your Time and Life by Alan Lakein and Working Smart by Michael LeBoeuf. See Amazon.

"Reading is to the mind", Joseph Addison wrote, "as exercise is to the body". Nobody ever said it better.

The Two-Front War


It is no exaggeration to view improving production as a (bloodless) war. And if you are to prevail, this war must be fought on two fronts.


First, of course, is changing and improving skills, techniques, methodology.


To do so, however, is only half the job. The other half is to work equally hard at improving your focus, your concentration, your work ethic, maximizing time on the phone. The reality is that to survive today, you must endure some pain by pushing yourself beyond the boundaries of what is comfortable for you. While there will be no injuries in this war, there will very definitely be a fight. And the fight will be with your own motivation and discipline.


By establishing the needed habit patterns and eliminating the bad ones addressed here, you will greatly enhance your results from the other improvements that must be the foundation of your strategy. Combined with this, your increased call volume will allow you to make the most of our current market.


This two-pronged approach of skill improvement plus increased focus on effective time management will guarantee you conspicuous success in the roaring boom market that is sure to follow!

 Check out Steve's website for other solid tidbits of advice: www.stevefinkel.com

MAYBE THE FACEBOOK RECRUITERS DID GET IT RIGHT

 Last week Facebook agreed to purchase WhatsApp for $19B.   The real story from the purchase was that in 2009 Brian Acton, Co-Founder of WhatsApp tried to get a job at Facebook and was turned down.  Many of the headlines are talking about how Facebook’s recruiters “Blew it” or “Cost the company $19B.”

I would argue that there is the very real possibility that the Facebook recruiters didn’t blow it, but may have made the right decision.  Lets look at the critical criteria in hiring a new employee:

·      CULTURE: Every business has its own values and way of operating.  You want to hire people that fit into your culture, or the culture you want to move your business closer to.

·      DRIVE: In all businesses, especially startups, you want employees who believe in working hard to over-achieve a goal, and get upset when it is missed.  They believe that every hour…minute worked is an opportunity to make a goal happen.  Look for people who believe that to make something cool happen - you go home exhausted at night because you did your part for the greater good.  Look for people who are excited about what you are trying to accomplish.

·      CONFIDENCE: Does the potential employee seem to have the right level of confidence to get the job done or excel in your organization?

·      PERSONALITY: This is the first cousin to “Culture.” Does the potential employee have the right personality to fit with the company, or the specific team they will be joining?  If this fit is off, then you may have problems.

·      SKILL SET:  Has this person had the experiences required to have the skills to excel in the role?  Don’t confuse this with looking to see if they have done the job before – as that is rarely a good gauge into future success.  You really want to dig into the experiences they have had to make sure they match with what you know will cause a person to excel in this job.

·      CHARACTER:  Does the person have values that align with yours?  Do they seem honest and above reproach?

·      COMPENSATION: Is the compensation they are looking for in line with your compensation structure?

Some may argue that education is missing from the list.

Avoid focusing on education from the standpoint of making sure the degree a person has matches what you are hiring for.  Studies have shown that there is not necessarily a correlation to being successful in a field because that is what your degree is in.  That said, there is a great deal of merit to valuing someone with a college degree over someone without.  A great deal is learned during those years of education beyond the education itself – maturity, cooperation, critical thinking, etc.

At the time of Brian Acton’s interview with Facebook, it is entirely possible that one or all of the important criteria did not match with what Facebook needed.  If that were the case, then the Facebook recruiters made the right decision.  Hiring people that are off on any of the above can be disastrous for the organization.  All it takes is a few bad hires to slow, or halt, the growth of a company.  A few bad hires can also cause your best people to leave.  Great people want to be surrounded by equally great people.

Entrepreneurs have to be hired into the right roles, with the right amount of freedoms to be successful.  If Facebook were not in a place to be able to do that when WhatsApp’s future leader was interviewed then that would have been a bad hiring decision.

Recruiting the Hunger Games Way

by

Doug Douglas

inShare17

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Ten million skilled labor jobs went unfilled in the U.S. last year alone. 10,000 Baby Boomers retire each day. Do the math and something needs to happen to put the odds in your favor if you are a recruiter. Here are a few to consider.

Be Memorable

Advantages came to the contestants in The Hunger Games who were the most memorable out of the 24 who were competing. You’re probably not Google, Facebook, or Apple. You don’t have instant name recognition that helps to sell your brand. But you do have a story to tell. Psychologists have been studying the impact of sharing stories and how they directly impact a person’s attitudes, values, hopes, and fears. But somehow, in the recruiting world, we haven’t grasped that power yet.
So much of recruiting today is creating a job description with an unending list of bullet points and communicating what they company demands of the candidate. Very little emphasis is placed on telling the candidate about the company — what it does, why it does it, what impact it makes, and the causes that company supports. Once a company can have interested parties visualize themselves working there, the battle has been won.
In addition, an emphasis on that candidate’s experience is mandatory. It’s a no-win situation to tell a remarkable story and have a candidate envision themselves working there … and then totally disregard the candidate through the rest of the recruitment process. Common human courtesies will help to make your company memorable.

Alliances Get You Further

As with any good movie, you have the good guys and the bad guys. The Hunger Games was no different. As the battles began, individuals quickly aligned with each other to try to defeat the others.
In this battle for talent, new, fresh, innovative thinking is required — a business alliance. For some, it might mean aligning with a firm that can focuses on sourcing and driving candidates to your recruitment team. For others, it might be a marketing ally that help you to tell your story — online, print, video, social, etc. Some will choose an ally that is focused on recruitment optimization — taking your current strategies, processes, technology, and team and fine-tuning it to make it run more effectively and efficiently. Or you might align yourself with a totally outsourced recruitment partner that delivers on your behalf.
I have been warning recruitment leaders for the past few years that a major transition was about to take place in the way that recruiting is executed. This is mostly because of the generational shift of our candidate base. Two main reasons why this change will take place:

1. It is the first generation to grow up with the Internet accessible to them every day of its lives. It has reshaped communication skills. It has reshaped problem solving. It has reshaped how businesses operate. It has reshaped just about every aspect of our lives. But somehow we think we can still recruit with the same tired strategies and processes that we used 5-10-15+ years ago.
2. This is also the generation where everyone got a trophy and we quit keeping score. Candidates have a deep need for communication and reassurance … and having an ATS with knockout questions that eliminate the vast majority of applicants within 30 seconds of their application being submitted doesn’t really feel good to these candidates.

The role of recruiter is changing to more of an influencer … and that means alliances must be in place: Networking alliances. Campus alliances. Referral alliances. Optimization alliances.

Your Mentor Changes Everything

In the movie, each Tribute had a mentor assigned to them. One of the most appealing things that a company can do to draw in new talent is assign that new person to a mentor. Someone to show them the ropes, answer their questions, and give the newly hired person a very personal sense of dedication and appreciation. It will take some screening and training on your part to find those who will truly embrace the role of mentor, but this commitment is well-worth the extra effort when competing for a candidate with a competitor.
You may not be the biggest company. You may not have the most resources. You can, however, put the odds in your favor by developing and executing on a plan based around these ideas.

What Does The Future of Hiring & Recruiting Look Like?

The Future of Hiring and Recruiting, Circa 2020-2025

by Lou Adler

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"Maximizing personal growth and job satisfaction in the short-term will maximize compensation in the long-term."

In 1998 I took a snapshot of the hiring process used at most companies. (It was a special camera.) The picture that emerged looked similar to the image shown. With this past in mind, I’ve decided to take a picture of the hiring landscape 10 years into the future. I’m pretty sure I’ll be retired by then, so I’ll use this post to reminisce about the future that could be.

1. Talent becomes a business strategy, not just a mission statement. Company leaders will finally realize that if hiring great people is the most important thing hiring managers need to do, they’ll actually be measured on how well they do it.
2. The elimination of skills-infested job descriptions. Skills, academics and experiences don’t predict on-the-job performance. By proving that candidates are competent and motivated to do the actual work required under the actual circumstance, you’ll discover they have the exact level of skills, experiences and academics required. This shift will also open the pool of prospects to diverse candidates of all types regardless of age, race, gender or physical challenges. (Here's a legal brief you can download describing this process as not only superior, but more legally defensible.)
3. Performance-based matching becomes fully effective. Rather than matching people on key words, the ability to use artificial intelligence to match a person based on their past performance becomes available. This allows anyone who has a track record of comparable accomplishments to be considered. This will instantly open the door to more top candidates in different industries, including and especially, returning military veterans. Comparability will be based on job complexity, types of decisions made, underlying business conditions and job pressures, organizational structure and sophistication, and breadth of team responsibility.
4. Companies finally realize that the best people are not interested in lateral transfers. It’s pretty obvious that if a company wants to hire a great person, they need to offer a great career opportunity. The posting of traditional job descriptions will be banned as archaic, and recruitment advertising will be story-based, emphasizing what the person can do, learn and become, not the skills they must have. Here’s a sample of this type of futuristic ad.
5. Auto-engage high probability prospects with career opportunities. People give lots of clues whenever they’re thinking of switching jobs. For example, they buy this book on job-hunting secrets or watch this video, they update their LinkedIn profile, they expand their professional network, they attend more industry events, they Google for jobs to see what’s available, and they check out salary.com. Since their LinkedIn profile is public, it’s pretty easy to push jobs directly to these people when these job-hunting activities reach a certain level. They’ll actually respond if these jobs represent career moves, not lateral transfers.
6. Assessment accuracy emerges from the dark ages. Competency models and behavioral interviewing will be tossed out as far better tools emerge. These outdated tools are as bad as relying on the continued use of skills-infested job descriptions to attract people. I’m going with Performance-based Interviewing, objective evidence-based assessments using talent scorecards, Career Zone analysis, and AI-based fit assessments.
7. People will become an investment to be nurtured, not a cost to be controlled. Robust public and private knowledge databases will be available (think LinkedIn on steroids), that fully describe a person’s performance and potential. As new jobs open up, companies will be able to instantly target their current and former employees who are best suited for these roles. This will enable a company to finally leverage it’s human capital.
8. Hiring becomes a legitimate business process. If the demand for top talent is greater than the supply, you can’t use a process designed to weed out the weak, you need one designed to attract the best. Real time feedback metrics will ensure the process is in control and functioning properly. This shift is now underway at companies in highly competitive talent markets, like Silicon Valley. Some are using Performance-based Hiring as the foundation.
9. The emergence of the hiring manager self-service model driven by the ERP and VTC. With all of the above taking place, it will become increasingly easier for a hiring manager to tap into his or her company Employee Referral Program (ERP) and instantly obtain a list of pre-qualified, warm referrals. Candidate pipelines will become a thing of the past as Virtual Talent Communities (VTC) became the primary means to connect people with opportunities. VTCs are the sum total of a company's employee's first degree connections.
10. Candidates make rigorous and balanced career decisions. The Career Zone model presented in an earlier post offers job-seekers a sophisticated means to evaluate any career opportunity by considering all of the long- and short-term factors in balance. It starts by figuring out where the person is positioned on the career curve and selecting new opportunities that maximize job stretch and job growth, not compensation. Maximizing personal growth and job satisfaction in the short-term will maximize compensation in the long-term.

Image, the impact of improved workforce mobility as described. There'd be better jobs for everyone, more satisfied people, a more productive economy and a big drop in unemployment as jobs are filled more quickly and more accurately. But hold on. About 10 years ago, I put together another list of hiring predications for circa 2010-2015. Funny, they looked a lot like the above. I guess I’m not very good at predicting.

7 Stats about Candidate Sourcing in 2013

7 Incredible Stats about Candidate Sourcing in 2013

 by Allison Reilly 

  

inShare  

Recruiting has changed a lot over the past few years, and it's still changing. If you're not changing with it, particularly your candidate sourcing, then you're going to miss out on great talent by selecting your candidates from such a small pool of the population. In fact, there is probably a thing or two that you can do differently, as the following seven incredible stats will illustrate. Candidate sourcing may not be what you think it is.

Over 2.8 Million Jobs are Advertised on Craigslist

Recruiters like to scoff at Craigslist, citing it as a place that can't possibly find white-collar jobs or serious professionals. Craigslist can be hit or miss, but that doesn't mean you can count it out, especially since it is the predominant player when it comes to publicly available job ads. It's certainly not social media, where LinkedIn only has 256,000 job ads. This chart is a snapshot of a four-year period, with the final numbers representing April 2013.

Dice is the Best Source for Technology Hires, while Monsters is Great for Manufacturing

"What we would recommend to any provider, or to any company looking at [their] job marketing strategy, is that it's really more important to look what are the type of positions you're hiring for and what is your industry," said Ray Rike, chief operating officer at Accolo. "Then, you get a little more granularity into what is the best place that candidates are likely to see your job."
LinkedIn doesn't even have half the tech industry jobs that Dice has, while LinkedIn only has about two-thirds as much as Monster in manufacturing. In the retail, financial services, and insurance industry, Careerbuilder leads in all three. This is because the types of jobs in these industries don't necessarily attract the people who are going to be promoting their skills and resumes on LinkedIn.

Social Network Statistics are Compelling

The previous two statistics said that LinkedIn wasn't worth the time. It doesn't have the market share and it's really not the place for positions in certain industries. However, don't count out social media recruiting quite yet. Below are a few compelling statistics that show it is the recruiting strategy of the future.

• LinkedIn has 202 million members
• 36% of its members are in the US
• It accounted for 40% of mobile job views
• The site as 90% revenue growth in its talent solutions last year

Even so, LinkedIn isn't the only social network out there. The big takeaway in social media recruiting is that Twitter, yes Twitter, is the fastest-growing network for certain demographics (40,000 new members per day) while being the most underused social network for recruiting. In fact, this leads us to our next incredible statistic:

LinkedIn is the Slowest Growing Social Network for Those 25 to 44

"For those of you... who say that LinkedIn is dominating social network growth, especially for hiring, I would ask you to challenge that bias," Rike said. "We were on the LinkedIn wagon five years ago, and although we're seeing more jobs there, we're also seeing more candidate fatigue."
Rike hypothesizes that if recruiters only focus on LinkedIn, they risk continued and increased candidate fatigue, leading to increased possibility of missing out on passive candidates who may be on the site.

If these incredible stats have changed how you think about your current sources of hire, then you need to view this webinar:
"Amazing Charts & Stats About Candidate Sources for 2013."
The 60-minute webinar features interesting hiring stats about job board performance including CareerBuilder, Craig's List, DICE, Indeed, Job Central, (The) Ladders, Monster, Simply Hired as well as compelling hiring stats about social networks including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Access the webinar now.

Could A RECRUITMENT PROCESS SUPPLEMENT (RPS) Solution Be The Answer To Your Recruiting Challenges?

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21  2PM EST            

Are you having a challenge keeping up with your hiring needs, finding the right talent or spending too much on recruiting fees?  This webinar will walk you through how a Recruitment Process Supplement solution may be the right answer.

Recruitment Process Supplement is a fairly new but growing solution where a RPS firm will partner with your organization to have one of, or team of, their recruiters help you with whatever recruiting function you need assistance.  These firms not only provide you with experienced recruiting support, but often these recruiters come with large databases, strong data mining techniques, behind the scenes recruiting support and leadership.  Solutions can range from handling difficult searches, or simply supporting your team with sourced and screened candidates to complete recruiting outsourcing.  Typically, the only fee you pay is an hourly fee.

This webinar will talk about what kinds of companies and situations benefit from this type of solution, how to choose the right firm, how to determine the right support level, tips to maximize integration into your process and ideas on how to structure the right deal for your organization.  No sales will be done in this webinar, only information for you to decide if this solution can increase your organizations effectiveness in hiring, reduce time to fill and recruiting costs.

To sign up, please email Jeff Taylor at jtaylor@skywalkgroup.com

Exit Interviews - A Missed Opportunity

A colleague of of mine wrote this about Exit Interviews.  ...a very good reminder for us all.

Exit Interviews- A Missed Opportunity

By: Sarah Hall

My first exposure to the idea of an exit interview was in a college lecture about underutilized evaluation tools. My grad school professor painted the picture of a generic survey completed and stashed away into a termination file, never to be looked at again. The protocol of a human resources generalist awkwardly asking an often disgruntled employee a series of questions about how they feel about the organization, and if they would recommend a friend to work there has caused us to undervalue the concept of the exit interview for too long. In truth, the exit interview is a gem of a tool that, if utilized correctly can serve as a powerful engagement resource.

It’s the question that counts

If your exit interview form is an outdated photocopy of generic questions with an accompanying 5-point Likert scale, throw it out. Exit interview questions should provide insight into the true reasons employees want to leave your organization. Starting a new job is often a painful process.  New employees must adjust to a new routine, team members and processes. Additionally, leaving a job to start a new one is a gamble. There is no way to guarantee that what someone is walking into is better than what they left…yet people choose the difficult unknown path over their current jobs every day. There is a reason for this, and there is incredible value in finding out why. When you have the opportunity to ask someone why he or she chose the unknown over your organization, take it! Is it about leadership, money, benefits or culture? You won’t know until you ask. A few of my favorite go-to exit interview questions are:

·      Do you feel as though you were able to build strong relationships with co-workers? 

·      Did your manager set you up to succeed?

·      Were you given an accurate preview of what the job would look like during the interview process?

·      Was your decision to leave caused by a single event?

·      Did you receive timely and appropriate feedback about your performance?

Rather than ask a ton of questions, try to cover the basics and dig in as deep as you can. For example, the information you gather by asking: Did you receive timely and appropriate feedback about your performance? May provide insight into the performance review process, organizational leadership or any one specific manager. The interview process should resemble a conversation, and the more relaxed and engaging you are, the more valuable information you will be able to collect from fewer questions.  

Good information gone to waste

It’s unfortunate that often times the completed exit interview is reviewed by one person and stashed away into an employee termination file. All of that glorious insight into your organization is sitting untouched in a dark cabinet. Take every opportunity to share the findings from an exit interview with your leadership team. If you have significant turnover, look for patterns. You can only drive meaningful and effective change if you have a grasp on what needs to be changed, and why.

Sharing exit feedback is not enough to reap the full benefit of their value. Save interview findings for a specified time period and use that feedback as you formulate your strategic plan for the next year. Or better yet, commit to a regular exit analysis with your senior leadership team on a regular basis. What finer guidance than the honest, candid feedback from people who chose leave your organization? Exit feedback is critical as you think about leadership development, engagement and determining a compensation strategy.

Turn the tables

I never understood why we often wait until employees are fed up enough to leave the organization to ask about how things are going. Consider talking to employees from a different perspective and facilitate a STAY interview. Why do you choose to stay with our organization? What are we doing well? What can we improve? The same caliber of valuable information is collected in a stay interview- and we don’t have to backfill a position!

Exit interviews provide a wealth of insight into what is going on in your organization. Consider implementing a robust strategy for collecting information related to why people leave (or stay with) your organization, and watch how quickly you will be able to align your exit process with the strategic goals of your organization!