The inevitable evolution of recruiting: First class recruiting tactics during the talent crunch

Jeff: [00:00:54] Wow, what a great introduction. Thanks, Jeff. I'm Jeff Livingston with ADP Canada . And like Jeff mentioned, you might have heard m e on our Insights at Work podcast of which I host every couple of weeks. Now, the podcast, just like today's webinar, really looks at today's most compelling HR topics. It always offers an industry expert, and at the end of the podcast, I always hope that our listeners can walk away with something relevant, something that they can implement in the workplace right away. So I've got high hopes for today's webinar. So let me introduce someone who's co-presenting with me today, Iman Masud. You might have seen her at HR conferences, you might have worked with her. She walks the HR talk every day. Iman, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?

Iman: [00:01:44] Thank you so much, Jeff. And I'm just I'm so pleased to be here. This is one of my favorite topics and one that's super relevant lately. I support clients at ADP in all sorts of different industries, including professional services, manufacturing, technology, consumer products, retail and the public sector. And I've spent the last 15 years in corporate HR and HR consulting, and I know a lot of you are here and a lot of you will be nodding when you hear this. I have never seen the kind of situation that employers are faced with today in this great resignation. There seems to be so much uncertainty. Competition is tougher and candidate expectations have really shifted. As we navigate these times of change and uncertainty, there's a real call for us to re-imagine, really, really rethink what recruitment is and should be as. As we face these times when we really we're not quite sure where we're navigating this global pandemic. We're in the middle of these times that it seems like life has changed and there's a new normal and we're here in it. So let's talk about what we're going to have today as takeaways. We're going to talk about the evolution of recruiting. You'll walk away with some real actionable insights, some new tools and some great information to build a business case to really amplify your recruiting efforts. And you may have come across a white paper by this name, as this webinar is is coming across. It's published by ADP. And if you haven't already done so, feel free to head over to Canadian HR. Reporters website and download the White  Paper right after we're done here. Of course, you can also email me or Jeff Livingston and we'll be happy to share it with you as well. To start, I'd like to hear from you. So what are you seeing in this workplace? I'll invite you to consider a specific question and think about what your biggest HR challenges are at this time. Could I please get us to go ahead and start with a poll? Oh, my goodness. This is this is really interesting. I've been hearing this a lot from our clients, but. I'm surprised at the numbers that are coming across and how profound it really is we're leading. Very heavily. With one. I'll wait for a moment while you all have a chance to put in your answers, and then we'll talk about what's come out right at the top here. So I think this is this is a good time. Is it, Jeff, should we talk about the results?

Jeff: [00:04:44] Let's talk about the results.

Iman: [00:04:48] So I'm glad we asked this question. I'm surprised, but not so much by the answers. We are leading heavily with B option B, attracting great candidates. 60% of you say your biggest HR. Challenge at this time is to attract great candidates that's followed. Engaging and retaining employees is next, but it only takes away 19%. And candidates rejecting job offers is number three at 15%. So we know why you're here. We have work to do today, and we'll definitely focus in on talking about how to attract great candidates at this time.

Jeff: [00:05:32] So what is so interesting, what I love doing these polls is because I think it just really reinforces the type of work that we're doing with our workplace insights surveys. And when we look at a recent work, work in Place Work Insight survey that we did, we just did this in November or October. It showed that 2022 is definitely going to be the year of the employee. I think everybody on today's call is going to agree that the employee, they're in the driver's seat. The pandemic has shifted priorities for a great deal of Canadian workers, while salary and benefits have historically topped the list of incentives for current and prospective employees. Our survey found that the new number one priority it was work life balance. Our survey showed that 15% of Canadian workers, they had already transitioned into a new role or a new industry during the pandemic. And when we asked them, why did you choose this new career path? The top three answers that they gave us were they wanted a change in their personal life. They wanted to limit workload and stress in their life, and they wanted that desire for more flexible hours. Now the priority for work life balance. It also appears to influence how companies recruit new talent. One in five employed Canadians have been approached by a competing employer in the past six months prior, where that employer is offering them better work conditions. And the strategy appears to be working because when asked about what might be next in terms of their career path, those survey respondents, 63% of them said, you know what, they've already started thinking about working, leaving that current work, work role. So it's really interesting how what today that you've showed in the poll, what those results are, how it really also reflects what our survey showed.

Iman: [00:07:33] I love that. And it's a time of uncertainty. It's a time of change. We need to think about how we can really reimagine the way that we do things. It's common for HR teams as well as recruiters to now start to really think about how they can supplement their traditional recruiting strategies with new strategies, new tactics to compete more successfully for the kind of workers that they need. You can't look at just one part of the recruitment process anymore. You need to kind of zoom out and think about what is it as a whole, not just working with recruiters within the organization or the HR team, but also thinking about how you can involve the marketing team into your recruiting efforts as well as existing employees. As employers, employers that adapt to the new normal will really be in a more favorable position to attract excellent candidates and retain them as passionate, motivated, long term employees. And I'd like to think about it in terms of five key pillars in that recruitment process. And these are starting with building that attractive employer brand that's really larger than what your company is internally, but thinks about who you are as an organization and what shows up to candidates as well as potential candidates that may become candidates at some point in the future, establish those internal supports and processes to support that. And so, of course, attract great candidates. And that, we know is top of mind for you today. Need to nurture applicants and engage candidates in a positive manner. And we'll talk a little bit more about what it really means to nurture candidates and to provide an environment or a container in which they can really imagine and experience and feel what it would be like to work for one particular organization. And really, at the end of the day, you want to create those long term employees that are really passionate and motivated. And all of this to me, if I think about it, really zoom out and think about it. Big picture, it culminates in what I like to call the talent equation. And the talent equation to me is your candidate experience, plus your employee experience equals your talent success or lack thereof. And we're going to talk about each of these important stages through a recruiters lens today. We find that the recruitment metrics that you need to keep an eye on have also shifted from those traditional employer driven metrics to more current talent driven metrics, for example. Whereas in the past, we may have thought about time to hire, cost of hire, source of hire, offer, acceptance rates and quality of hire as the metrics to look out for. We now understand that those are employer driven metrics. Those may be important. However, at this point in time, we need to think more about employee driven or talent driven metrics like the candidate experience. What's the employer brand awareness, what's the career site conversion rate or the rate of application drop offs? How many people thought they would like to work for this organization? But at some point in time that candidate experience shifted for them, and then they no longer felt like they wanted to be. Employees of this organization. What happened then? We also want to look at return on investment. So as the focus really shifts to recruitment practices that were employer driven, we want to make sure that we're looking at the employee experience and the talent and future talent to and also measure what that looks like and bring that into numbers so that we can make a case for management and for leadership in order to invest more and think differently about what recruiting means today. So top talent. Your organization needs to now really more than ever, set itself apart from its competitors. And LinkedIn performed this research recently and found that 75% of job seekers, research and employees, employers, brand and reputation before they even apply. So this is not even when they become candidates that this is at the point in time when they're a part of your general audience that is not a candidate yet. However, they may become candidates at some point in time, so we need to start thinking about people as candidates way before we even start the recruiting process. And your company's reputation as an employer is really your company's employer brand. It measures how favorably you're viewed by your current employees, by your past employees, by your candidates, as well as your future employees and your reputation counts. In another survey, we found that 50% of job seekers said that they wouldn't work for a company that they thought had a bad reputation, even for a higher salary. What we see emerging is a strategy to meet recruitment expectations that involve treating candidates as you would treat a customer. So think about this. This is a difference in the way that we view things. There's a lot of work that's been done in the past around C-EX or customer experience, around what the consumer experience, experiences when they're inside a store, when they're on a website, when they're in a particular container that has been created with a marketing lens, now we can start to apply what we know about how each touchpoint with the brand shapes the customer experience to reshape how we as recruiters or HR professionals view the candidate or the potential candidate experience. And this strategy is really based on the strength of your employer brand encouraging current employees through programs like employee referral programs to help in the recruitment effort, leveraging the power of social media, and utilizing recruitment automation to help acquire and hire the talent that you need with increased speed and efficiency. So think about viewing your employer brand as the foundation of a new core business strategy. Now, this is not HR strategy or recruitment strategy. We're now saying that we need to look at this as core business strategy that can connect you with qualified candidates that reflect, that reflect your organization's vision, your organization's goals, your organization's values always work to improve that brand and showcase your organization. Think about how you can better highlight organizational benefits that are attractive to today's employees. And we know that what's attractive has shifted during the pandemic and leverage social media as well as employee testimonials. You want to make sure that you're focusing on establishing high scores on employee review sites. You might want to think about dedicating resources to apply for employer of choice awards in your company, in your community, as well as your industry. And Jeff, here is our resident expert on top employer awards. Jeff, I'm going to put you on the spot here. Help me with defining what you see as the value of employer of choice awards.

Jeff: [00:14:57] So there's a couple of things that we really work hard on and that's building our brand in, in, in, in the HR sector. And people really look to us as a leader. And so this is a great question because we work with we've been recognized by Canadian HR reporter as a top employer, as an innovative leader. We were recently recognized as having one of the most innovative HR teams and that was announced this week. And that's always really great. We participate in the GTA top employer, in Canada's top employer and programs. And and what's so fun about that and what we hear from candidates now is that they look at these awards and they when these lists come out, they look at who those employers are and they reach out to those employers and they apply to those companies. And it's a lot of work participating in those programs because you really want to highlight the innovative things that you're doing, your programs, your your benefits that you give, and and those perks that your employees really appreciate. And also, you want to talk about the culture of your organization. And one thing that we do at at ADP, we have a hashtag called ADP Life. And so that really lets ADP employees talk about what our return to office is going to look like when they do team events, when they're doing corporate team building, they'll post on social media. And all of those things come into play when we're working with these top employer awards. And one thing to remember, we've been away from the workplace for three, for two years. And what's really neat is like at ADP, when we when we work on these awards and we're celebrating these awards, it's important from an HR perspective that you want to have photos of your employees doing things, doing whatever they do. That's why you win these awards. That's why you've built this great culture that's going to attract all of these great candidates. So you need high resolution photos of employees doing things because you don't want to use stock photography from like getting your shutter stock. So always keep asking employees to submit high quality, high resolution photos that you can use. So when you're applying for these awards, you submit really good photos that really reflect what your company does.

Iman: [00:17:15] Thank you, Jeff. That sounds like advice one can really hold on to. It's specific, it's practical. You want to make sure that the picture or the image that you're sending out to the larger world about your organization reflects what it is to work at this organization. So thank you for that.

Jeff: [00:17:31] So one thing that Iman and I have. Been talking a lot lately about when we talk. About Recruiting is that there's all of these talent pools that don't immediately come to top of mind. And one of them is a recruiting. Young young workers, early graduates. We did a podcast on it where I interviewed the recruitment team, the campus engagement team from Ryerson University for an Insights Outwork podcast episode. And it was great. It was like a campus recruiting 101 class and they talked about, what do you do when you reach out to people on campus? What don't you do? What type of employee should you send? What type of employees shouldn't? You said, because you really want to show that you've got strong diversity in your organization. You want to show that there's like minded people in your organization that are participating in the programs that maybe you're recruiting from. But one thing that John and I were talking about before we we put this presentation together was other untapped talent pools out there. So of course, there was the youth where and the benefits of the youth is, you know what, they might not have the experience, but they've got a new perspective. They're really eager to learn. They're going to help you reach their peers because they're so active on social media. Other talent pools that are often overlooked are are those older workers? Why is it good to reach out to them? Well, because you know what? You're going to have great retention with them. They've got that strong work ethic. And because they they maybe not have the education that some of the youth do, but they've got that experience. And really nothing matches experience when you want to have a problem solver and you want to have a critical thinker on the team. Of course, if you're looking at people with disabilities, the benefits of reaching out to that talent pool and hiring people with disabilities are that, of course, high productivity, high retention and that new perspective of ideas we have, I mean. It's just we're so lucky at ADP because we really do span the country and we have a workforce of 2600 and and I always love when I get to talk with anybody who's just not like me, because they always have this different perspective of things that I don't think about. And when I'm working with people with disabilities, there's things that I don't think about, like visual disabilities. So those are really important things to look at. And of course, one thing that that are always that we really, really emphasize hiring in the US for our company are veterans and veterans really. They always bring to the table those great organizational skills. They're trained leaders and you know what? They tend to speak their mind, which is something that I really appreciate.

Iman: [00:20:07] For sure. You want to make sure that you're thinking about what's immediately apparent as your talent pool, what your organization looks like, and what some of the personas are. If you picked up any position that you may recruit for in the future and your thought about what are some of the qualities of the people that have been successful in this position brings you to a certain persona. However you want to make sure that you're not missing out on the hidden talent pool that you may not have immediately thought about. And so we need to we need to relook at the process and see, do we have biases in the process? Do we need to remove these biases in the process? Are they structural? Are they systemic? How can we start to attract that hidden talent pool that may not be immediately apparent to you? Thank you, Jeff. That's that's a great point. I love this. We all know how nice it is and how much richness and how much wealth of knowledge we get when we hire diverse employees as well. But what I talk a little bit now about we've we've zoomed out, we've thought about how we can start to look at our candidate as a consumer or as a customer or as a client and think about client experience. We've thought about how we could maybe attract clients that are not immediately apparent. But for all of this, we need to make sure that we have the internal support and the processes to support these efforts. So you want to make sure that you are improving the quality of your job postings. To start with, think about candidate personas. These could really start to improve the quality of what you're posting by having more information, more knowledge, more that people can think about, and more for them to really visualize what it would be like to work in that particular position in your organization. So you may want to think about the background and the skills and the career path of some of your best employees that are currently in that job or a similar job. But also think about just steering clear of creating candidate personas that might overlook non traditional career trajectories and lived experiences. So you want to make sure that you're reviewing your job postings, thinking about systemic bias, and also thinking about how you can remove systemic bias that may result in discrimination and recruiting. That is, of course, unlawful. You want to know your audience, so you want to make sure you know where your candidates are. So what are those personas of people you're looking for? Where do you find them and go there? Really think about marketing your you yourself as a company, as an and as an employer with your employer brands in places where your target audience goes like social media or networking platforms. Make sure your profiles are active on those social media and networking platforms. Make sure they're up to date and think about working with industry associations, using employee referral programs, job boards, online forums. Cast your net wide to really strengthen your social recruiting capabilities because social media is now no longer you know, it's not no longer at the back of our minds anymore. It's now front of mind. It is now mainstream as a recruiting tool. You also want to build your candidate pool before you need it. So these are candidates that are not candidates yet, but they might become in the future because your candidate pipeline is really, truly now your organization's lifeline. In today's competitive environment, a business must happen to every potential resource to recruit effectively, and the best approach is to maintain internal talent pools and external talent pools that include both active as well as passive candidates. Also, think of employers involving your employees, your current employees in your recruitment efforts. They know your company like nobody else does. There are several ways that you could do this. You could ask them to recommend candidates and perhaps even incentivize that. You may ask them to write articles and entries in your company's blog to promote your organization or even sit in on interviews with the most promising candidates. Think of what it might look like to provide incentives for employees who regularly participate in the recruitment process or who really become brand ambassadors for your organization. As an employer, we're seeing that we're really shifting the way that we have now started to view recruiting from being just traditional a recruiter function to an essential business function that requires a real thought process to link it with business strategy. We talked a little bit about I touched a little bit on diversity and inclusion. We don't have a great deal of time today to talk about this. It's again, one of the places that I could I could spend hours and hours speaking about this. It is very dear to my heart, but it's also now become very dear to the heart of your candidates. So we know that 70% of job seekers has have said that they want to work for a company that demonstrates a real commitment to diversity and inclusion. These are no longer feel good initiatives. These are necessary initiatives. A strong and effective diversity, equity and inclusion strategy is business critical. Not only are your current employees paying attention, so are job applicants who prefer. And we have found in studies that they definitely prefer to work for organizations that strongly support principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. Now, this needs to be visible. We need to be displaying our commitment to DENI in our employer brand and in all of the ways that our company shows up to candidates that are external. That may be future candidates as well. And there's measurable benefits to having a diverse workforce as well. For one thing, organizations with diverse management have 19%, 19% higher revenues than the average company. Building that diverse workforce might include real, practical steps. Like we said, you want to review your postings to make sure that they're not inadvertently expressing bias for a certain type of candidate that's unrelated to the jobs requirements. You want to look at recruiting for diverse talent pools. We spoke about going to where your candidates are. Think about advertising jobs through diverse magazines, websites or forums, or looking to external partnerships to really improve your access to those diverse talent pools. Think about offering targeted internships and scholarships, highlighting diversity on your career site. So making it visible and really displaying what your organization is like internally to your external audience is key here. You want to make sure that you are highlighting through pictures, through your career site, through how you show up in social media and through your brand, wherever it is. Ask for diverse referrals as well and introduce a diverse interview panel. So teaching recruiters and hiring managers how to avoid making decisions based on unintended or unconscious biases, as well as engaging in philanthropic activities and also making it visible that you're engaging in these activities, support and efforts, and also make it clear to your external candidate pool, which is active or passive, that this is of value to this organization. And most importantly, make sure that your recruitment strategies that are complemented by a sound program are there for existing employees as well. It can really damage an employer brand to make representations during recruitment that don't reflect workplace reality. So we want to keep it real here. We want to make sure that the image that we are displaying or projecting outside the organization is based in. Reality. So we've touched upon how all the different touchpoints with the organization or with your employer brand really shape the candidate's view of you. Just like all of the touchpoints with your marketing brand have have an effect on how your consumer interacts with you. We know that candidates are forming opinions about you, about your organizations throughout the recruiting process, even before the recruiting process. Nurturing applicants involves examining what those touchpoints are, what containers you're building for your employees to see, what it's like to be at this organization, and how we might shape these containers in which we operate to really accurately demonstrate company culture or what it feels like to work for this organization. You might want to think about location, for example, each there are several venues and each one of them have pros and cons. When we're recruiting virtually, we're even more restricted in what we offer. So really think about what is it that the candidate is seeing? Is it accurately representing what it's like to work for your organization, and is it displaying the employer brand that you want to espouse? This might be as simple as if you're recruiting virtually. You want to see who's in the interview. You want to know whether video cameras are going to be on or off. You might want to communicate that in advance to the candidates so they know what to expect, but also think about what's the dress code? What do people what does the interview panel look like? Is it a diverse interview panel? What are some of the backgrounds? Does your company have Zoom or WebEx backgrounds that you would like your team members or your interview panel to use? Think about the different touch points and how they shape the candidate's experience. And and then also you want to make sure that you're creating an image that really accurately reflects the culture, whether it's virtually or it's in person, and put yourself in the candidate's shoes. I think that that's that's for friends here. But yourself in the candidate's shoes and feel what they feel when they come in to view your organization through this interview process.

Jeff: [00:31:07] So, Iman, before we set up the presentation, we love I mean, we have so much relevant information and stuff that people are going to walk away with. And that's what we really like talking about. And we put together this great white paper and it's really the super recruiting guide. And we talked about what are those questions that a recruiter, a manager can ask in the interview they should be asking? And so I didn't want to list all of them for today's presentation, but I thought, which are some of the favorites that that really come to mind that help uncover what a manager might be looking for?

Iman: [00:31:40] There are so many of these. It's hard. Like you said, I love a lot of the questions that that we've spoken about that we traditionally use in recruiting. The one that you've highlighted here is how did you hear about this role? This is my favorite because it really helps us to create a situation where you're making your candidate feel comfortable. You're allowing them an opportunity to say a little bit about where they got information from about this role. But then it creates a feedback loop, which is what I really like about this as a recruiter or as an HR person. At the back of my mind, I always have what's the ROI on the different methods I'm using? Where are my candidates coming from? And now that you've actually found a candidate that you've filtered out of that pool and you're at the interview process with, I want to know where they found us, because that tells me where I might want to pay more attention to in terms of recruiting in the future.

Jeff: [00:32:42] So. There's different layers of of questions. And and that's why I love this recruiting and engagement process and nurturing the candidate along. And we've got a new workplace. We're returning to a new world of work. And one thing that is going to be really neat and and is new to everybody else is that we've got a lot of remote workers, a lot of hybrid workers coming to the workplace. So to reflect that, I think our questions they've needed to change. And on this slide, we've got a few sample questions and those focus on the candidates need to be able to work effectively in that hybrid or that remote environment. So of these questions on this slide, Iman, what are your favorite?

Iman: [00:33:22] I just I just want to say that I think that working in a fully in-person environment or working in a fully virtual environment is a whole different experience from working in a hybrid environment where you have some people that are getting face to face time and some people that aren't. You might be geographically diverse. You might have several different factors that you need to navigate through that you've never did before or never thought about before. We're hearing about proximity bias, where there is more information, access for people that are there in person than there is for people that are there online. And we want to make sure that as we go through this candidate experience and recruiting process, what we're thinking about these things, right? Because a lot of these things are new to us. One of the questions that I really like is, what's your approach with collaborating with a distributed team you want to think about? Does the applicant really understand the scheduling and planning aspects of working remotely? You might have teams that are working remotely in different locations. They might be in different time zones. They might be collaborating across cultures with different expectations, across cultures. You want to make sure that you're asking questions that help you as an HR person or as a recruiter to understand your candidate thought process about this. Have they thought about it? Have they thought through it? Have they experienced it? Have they do they have a plan or a preference around how they want to navigate these experiences if you are moving to a hybrid workplace and I also like this last question here that asks What's the key to making your remote project successful? We understand proximity bias may be at play at times. We understand that information availability is really, really important to examine and to rethink about how that information is available and what tools we use in our organizations in order to create a more enabling environment for both workers that are in person as well as online. This question to me reveals how your new hire thinks about projects where in-person collaboration is not an option at all as well. And if they have, again, a preference in how they would approach remote projects and and make sure that you are balancing both the relationship side of the equation with the task side of the equation and reaching to a point where you have your you're hitting your goals, you're meeting your timelines, but you're also maintaining those relationships that will help to make your organization a nice place to work, a great culture to work in, but also have more long term collaboration opportunities.

Jeff: [00:36:23] Now, Iman, let's go one level deeper. And so let's not forget about the need to include the topic of COVID and returning to the workplace and our interview questions. So we've put together a few questions and these are all available in our in the white paper that you can link to in the chat. But of these questions on this slide, which one really speaks to you?

Iman: [00:36:46] Hands down, what have you learned during the pandemic? I love this question. I love asking it. I love answering it because it gives me such great insight into what lens a person views the world through. You'll get all sorts of answers. Everyone's learned something or several things during the pandemic. Things have changed for a lot of people. We know that organizations are starting to think about different benefits. They're starting to think about mental health a little bit differently. But this gives you an opportunity to then see. How positively an individual views the environment, but also what's of value to them, what drives them. So you may have people say, I discovered indoor gardening during the pandemic. You may have people say, I never realized how purpose driven I really am and how much of an extrovert I really am and how much energy I get from people until I stopped meeting people. That tells you what drives them. You might have somebody that says, I took this opportunity to take all sorts of online courses with the extra time that I had, and that tells you a little bit more about what they value and what they want to spend more time doing. Given more time, it gives you so much richer information on who your candidate is, what they're like, what their personality is, and what drives them. Love this one.

Jeff: [00:38:18] You know what Iman? This is my favorite question, too. Whenever we have HR leaders, whenever we have CEOs on the podcast, I always ask them, what is the one piece of advice that you give to young professionals starting out? And my favorite response, and one that I always really strongly believe in is be curious. And so this question about like, what have you done that's new? How have you pivoted? What, what what new skills have you taken on during the pandemic? Really, I think, gives a lot of insight into that candidate.

Iman: [00:38:54] Right. And and we're starting to think about interviews a little bit differently as well. Right. So we're thinking about how do we really capture the essence of what this candidate is really about. And not every candidate and not every job is equal. Different jobs and different candidates have different kinds of skills and skill requirements. You want to think about how you may want to ask questions that are different from some of your traditional recruiting questions that are also separate from the hybrid workplace or your work model or even COVID 19. Think about how some jobs. Or some some interviews. Ask questions. In fact, most interviews ask questions that measure how good your candidate or an individual is at telling a story or at communicating or at bringing across what they accomplished. But not every job requires these skills. Not every job requires that an individual is a great storyteller and a fantastic communicator. However, when we ask interview questions, that's. Often what we're measuring because we're measuring how well they can encapsulate package. Tie a bow. Make a package out of what they have learned. Think about what else you could do to measure some of the skills that that particular job requires. So because we know that not everyone is great at storytelling, not everyone is a solid communicator, and not all jobs require this equally. Don't place too much weight on this aspect of the interview. Traditionally, we've used behavioral questions, situational questions, and they're useful for testing someone's ability to relay their biographical information or what's on their resume. But you might want to think about one how would this work if you shared questions in advance? You may give your candidate an opportunity to prepare to answer those questions, to prepare to answer questions around specific topics that they know will be a focus on in this interview.

Iman: [00:41:10] This might give you an understanding of how well they prepare for things, how well they might prepare for projects, how well they might prepare for presentations or different ways that they can showcase their abilities when they start at your company as well. You might want to test for critical thinking and tech savviness, and we know that that often doesn't come across the best when we ask somebody to tell us a story about how tech savvy they are. So we want to make sure that we're asking open ended questions designed to start a conversation and to really spark creativity, to make your candidate comfortable and allow them to exhibit behavior that they would in a work environment. So, for example, we could ask engineering candidates how they would design an application to accomplish a certain task. So view pictures of animals, for example, to spark their creative creativity, to examine how their thought process works. We ask customer service people or salesperson candidates to choose a piece of software that they're familiar with, ask them to demo it to you, ask them to show you how it works, to really experience what it might be like to be a customer that is in front of this client face in person during an interview that's in office or in person, you might ask your candidate to control the mouse and keyboard and start to demo that experience to you. And you can even do this in virtual environments and ask them to demo a product via Zoom.

Jeff: [00:42:43] You know what I think is so interesting Iman is that when we're working with candidates, it's really about nurturing them along and giving this them this engaging opportunity. So they're going to fall in love with the company. They're going to fall in love with us. And I think when you ask them to do a lot of work well, it's cumbersome and it's not enjoyable. And so one thing that I know that I was asked when I was applying for several marketing positions was that they'd ask for writing samples or they'd want me to create something on the spot. And you know what, to start from scratch, it's quite a bit of work and sometimes people aren't really great under pressure. Another way that you can monitor and determine your writing skills could be to give them a writing sample and ask them to provide what are their thoughts about that? And that's going to show you what their critical thinking is, that's going to show you kind of what their values are, and ask them to edit that media release, let's say, and see if those values align with your company values. And it just shows you, again, you know, what they can think on their on their feet. They're not given some super long assignment. And it's just really all about creating that engaging candidate process.

Iman: [00:43:53] Great. And I like that. I like asking them for a writing sample, but then also asking them to edit something as they would if they were part of the organization. And they already had your industry guidelines or your marketing guidelines or your brand guidelines to work with. I also really like having candidates complete a case study or a company challenge because that really gives you real time knowledge about how they would be a real life situation or a real life case study. And it gives you information that doesn't often come across if you just ask questions that are behavioral or ask them to tell a story about how they did it in the past. You can assess candidate skills in all sorts of ways that are not just soft skills, right? You can also test candidates technical skills. Think about how what what's required in the position that they're asking for. Use your company's skill based, purpose driven culture as a foundational framework. Consider evaluating them not just based on interviews, on experiences, but how they demonstrate the skills that are related for that particular job that they're seeking. You might test technical skills that apply to their specific expertise, like software programming, or if you want to test soft skills, you want to identify which ones you're testing. Do you want to test ability to collaborate? Is it is it is it a job that really requires a lot of cross-functional collaboration, focus on those job specific skills so you can examine some of those skills by written examinations, or you could see how the candidate responds to on ground scenarios. But be mindful that you should never ask candidates to perform unpaid work and that you should always protect your company's confidential information during that interview process. So you also don't want to divulge too much and personalize the skills assessment. So we do skills assessments all the time and they're tied to a candidate's work performance. Don't waste time on irrelevant skills. Think about what that job requires and then assess the skills accordingly. For example, a person that sells a service does not need to know how to repair a company hardware. So you want to make sure that you're personalizing the soft skills as well as the technical skills that you're testing and then assess attributes. So an aptitude is the natural ability to do something, right. You can evaluate this through standardized testing, task based testing, but just be mindful that these tests can result in biased outcomes depending on how they're designed. So just don't forget that you're hiring for current jobs, but you also want to think about what skills or what attributes are required in your organization's culture, and also what skills or what attributes might enable your candidates to actually become good candidates for future positions. So think about hiring for potential, not just performance. Think about the future roles and possibilities that these individuals might be good candidates for to really build that talent pipeline through and through.

Jeff: [00:47:07] You know, what I always love doing is I always love putting together a weighted skills matrix of what our team has, what the skills are on the team, and it identifies where those gaps are. And so one thing where this is really proven successful for me is when I'm volunteering and I'm I'm on a board or we're we're fulfilling roles for that board because it shows where those gaps are. And when we interview candidates, we have a weighted skills matrix. So it identifies what skills we're really looking for. And each person who's conducting those interviews will go back and we'll like and we'll rate. We'll rank those. Candidates on those skills. So everybody, all the candidates, it's an even playing field. And then we look at what are kind of the scores after after we've interviewed everybody just to identify what the skills are that we have. Are they meeting those skills that we need on the board or in the role that we might be hiring for? So I always find using that weighted skill matrix, I always find that's a really great, very, very handy tool.

Iman: [00:48:06] Yeah, for sure. And it helps you to really customize what you're looking for. Now, Jeff, tell me how what's the percentage of employees that lie? On resumes. I know. Yeah.

Jeff: [00:48:23] It's 83%.

Iman: [00:48:25] 83%. We know that 83% of candidates actually lie in some way, shape or form on their resumes. So what about background checks? You want to make sure that you have consistent and compliant background screening in order to really, really determine who those candidates are, what they're saying on their resumes, whether it's true you want to protect your organization's property, your assets, your reputation, your brand and your people. Because we know that there are so many cases of information that's not quite not quite honest on resumes. You want to make sure that you are conducting your background checks. Think about think about a third party provider. It does help to keep things confidential. You might want to do criminal records and checks, employment, credit checks, reference checks, résumé verification, social media checks, depending on what the requirement of the job is. And just a couple of tips. When you when you proceed with this just before you candidate, before you contact a candidate's references, you do want to find out from your team what questions to ask, what's relevant for this role. And the biggest overall question is usually does a reference have any concerns about the applicant? You want to contact each reference by phone or email and tell them why you're contacting them. Ask them how they know the candidate. Verify the information the candidate gave you and just use the 20 conversation rule. Like with most cases, use the 8020 conversation rule when you're speaking by phone or with email and let the referrals speak 80% of the time as you assume the role of just being a listener and active listener. And then you also want to make sure that you're communicating and you're continually communicating with the final candidate. You should have a hiring schedule in place. If references confirm your hunch that the candidate is the right person for the job, be ready to swoop right in and make an offer promptly conditional on completion of any more extensive job related checks if they're reasonably necessary. Because it is it is an employees market at this point in time and it is a place of uncertainty. You want to try and make sure that you are taking the least amount of time while not compromising the quality of your background checks and be ready with your offer as fast as you can.

Jeff: [00:50:58] Yeah, those are all great advice. And one, Elena is asking a question. She's saying, do you regularly ask for proof of educational qualifications? And what's really interesting is that a few episodes ago on the Insights Network podcast, we I interviewed the CEO of a of a background check company. And that is one of the things that they said. Yes, they always look for proof of proof of educational qualifications. And that is one of the things that usually come up where there's a red flag. And so it's interesting that she asked that question. And when we did the podcast, one thing that I found so interesting was, is that it's a relatively inexpensive process to run your candidate through this background, like using a third party verification provider. So it's something that I think really is there's a lot of value to it. So if people want more information on those background checks and what's involved, we don't talk about what it costs because it's not a product that ADP really provides, but it's a really interesting, interesting podcast. So it's definitely worth taking a listen to for sure.

Iman: [00:52:05] And yes, I definitely agree with you. You do want to make sure that you are verifying candidates educational qualifications. That is one of the places where some of that 83% of the not quite honest answers to questions may be coming from dates, qualifications, universities, colleges, what they achieved, what degrees they got. These are all things that are fair game. And you want to make sure that you're asking in your background checks. Oh, sorry.

Jeff: [00:52:41] This is where we're wrapping it up.

Iman: [00:52:43] Yeah. I got really excited, and I was thinking about, oh, what other questions could you have? I want to bring it back to the talent equation. So we talked about the candidate experience as the customer experience. We know that our organizations, my organization, perhaps your organization, all organizations that have customers have thought about the customer experience before, have thought about the brand. But now we need to start to bring that knowledge in, not just for marketing purposes, for selling our products and for getting great clients in, but also thinking about what does this mean? What are the different touch points for potential candidates? Perhaps. So think about the candidate experience. What do they see when they look at the different kinds of touchpoints around your organization? Social media, media, social websites, networking websites, what your current employees are saying on review websites about you as an employer. So think about the candidate experience and then add that in with the employee experience. What happens when they come in to the organization? How do you structure the touchpoints then? And that really is what leads to your talent success. I, I have seen this in such a profound way. We are, as organizations, hurting because of the great resignation. We are in a place where there's uncertainty, where we're not quite sure where we're going from here. But knowing internally within our organization what we'd like that candidate and that employee experience to be tells us how well we're going to do with having long term motivated employees that are really contributing to our organization success. Thank you. Thank you for being here with us for this. I know that we're going to go into some questions. Jeff, do you want to wrap up?

Jeff: [00:54:38] Yeah, Iman, it has been just such a pleasure presenting alongside you. You are such an expert in this. I know that Jeff Smith has some questions that have been asked during and were posted before the before the webinar. So Jeff, if you want to go ahead and ask, we'd love to answer some of those questions.

Jeffrey: [00:54:55] Great. Well, thank you, Jeff, and thank you mine for that presentation. Yeah. Let's get into some questions that have come in. So first of all, how do you feel the recruitment process was changing before the pandemic arrived? And then how did the pandemic accelerate these changes?

Iman: [00:55:12] That's a fantastic question because it's not just now that we're seeing the recruitment process of evolution happening. It's been happening for some time. And even prior to COVID 19, prior to the pandemic, we saw the introduction of automation and artificial intelligence and processes that really allowed for a better candidate experience in terms of targeting and screening candidates. But I think that a lot of this was still more employer centric and not as employee centric as it is now coming to be, because the pandemic really highlighted this need to find a balance, right? You need to have technology, but then it's also important to have a human centric approach. So think about what that experience is, what that human emotion is, what that feeling is that that candidate is feeling. When you are often not in person but virtual or in a hybrid environment, prioritize that candidate engagement, right? So we need to treat candidates the same way we treat customers. So we need to first attract them with a strong employer brand and then guide them gently, nurture them through a process that reflects an alignment of their values with company values. I think that we are we have moved from being having automation and employer centric metrics as front and center to being employee centric in this pandemic. Does that help? Do you want to have like do you have a follow up question? I feel like that's an excellent question. There's so much to say.

Jeffrey: [00:56:50] Yeah, we do have some more coming, I guess. Really. What about sort of small organizations who may have limited resources as far as tactics go? What would allow them to have the biggest impact if they can't focus on all of the things that you've discussed today?

Iman: [00:57:07] Right. And that makes me think about smaller organizations, perhaps smaller budgets, perhaps not as many resources in terms of HR And in terms of recruiters to to dedicate to these tasks. Perhaps we're also thinking about fewer resources when it comes to tools and automation. So if I think about all of the all of the activities that we've spoken about today, I'd say building that strong employer brand is where smaller organizations should focus, definitely, because that will help to create a pull factor. So you may find that instead of having to really go out and push to get candidates into the door, you are attracting candidates to begin with. That may not be candidates from from before they even work for the organization. They might see what's happening in social media, how your employer brand is looking. And before they've even thought about switching jobs, they might think, hey, this is the kind of company that I want to work for. So they might actually be searching for you instead of you searching for them.

Jeffrey: [00:58:18] Okay. And how would you define the term talent crunch?

Iman: [00:58:24] That's a good one. It could mean several different things. So the talent crunch could mean that there just isn't enough talent to fill the available positions in the industry. Or it could mean that there is lots of organizations competing for the same talent. It could also mean that the positions that you have available and that you have job postings for are just not attractive enough for your candidates. This is and we we've said in the White Paper this year, 2022 is the year of the employee. So the power has shifted. The power has shifted to employees, and they have space now to share what their priorities are, what's important to them in the workplace, outside of the workplace, what kind of benefits are important to them? What kind of compensation is important to them? But then what kind of well-being is important to them? What kind of culture they'd like to work for? And the power is with the job market. The power is with employees now to choose which organizations they think can best support these priorities. So the talent crunch could mean lots of different things. But but this shift that we've seen with so many new so many Canadians transitioning to new roles or new industries, we've seen data around it. We've seen that so many employees at this point in time are open to other job opportunities. What was it? Was it 15% of Canadians that are transitioning or have transitioned to a new role in the pandemic?

Jeff: [01:00:08] Yeah, about 15%. Yeah.

Iman: [01:00:11] So we see we see that there's not just changes in jobs, but changes in entire careers, changes in your path, changes in your industry. So there's so much that's changing that we need to also, as employers think about this from the employee perspective, because that's where the lens has shifted to.

Jeffrey: [01:00:32] Right. And what about retail stores? Are the recruitment and retention strategies for them a little different?

Iman: [01:00:41] They are for sure. I have several clients that I support within ADP that are in retail, and I felt this sort of as an extension of my clients there. Retail is a different world, right? You have seasonal employees. You have different kinds of the turnover rate is different. It's like it's like a whole different world from just offering jobs to office employees. You need to think about what your talent pool is. And when we think about the hidden talent pool, I think that there's lots more questions that come up in retail because it's not just are you hiring younger workers, older workers, workers that are more diverse or have disabilities or veterans. But I think here it's also who can you have as repeat workers? What I mean by that is that we see that there's a lot of seasonal hiring that often happens in retail. And and you want to make sure that you're maintaining that network or if that network of alumni that you might have coming in every year as seasonal workers or you want to keep in touch with your employees and your previous employees, your alumni, because you might find that they change in where they are in their geography. You may find that you're hiring students that are in one province during the school year and they go home to another province during the summer. So if you are keeping in touch with them and you have your community of collaborators or your network of alumni, you may be able to tap talent in different places than where you might have initially thought you would be able to find them. So so definitely recruiting recruiting for retail is is this world where I think that you need to bring in all of the different factors of what makes a great customer experience? Think about your employees as directly providing that customer experience so that employee experience becomes front and center. Your candidate experience becomes front and center. Your your customers are often your candidates as well. So that becomes front and center. But then how do you have that social web or that social network with your current candidates, future candidates, current employees, past employees, future employees and your customers that could become candidates is all, I think, part of that web that you want to make sure that you have your finger on the pulse for.

Jeffrey: [01:03:16] All right. Great. Well, thank you, Iman. And also thank you very much to both of you and Jeff Livingston. We have reached the end of our time today, so we will wrap things up. Thanks to both of you for sharing your time and knowledge for today's presentation. I hope everyone tuning in today found it really interesting and informative and really thanks to everyone who joined us today. Have a great day, everyone.

Jeff: [01:03:38] Thank you, everybody. Bye.