by Vishal Amberkar | Aug 21, 2017 | Featured, Guest Post, HR Innovation, Recruitment
Image courtesy of Assess Hub.
In an increasingly mobile world, many businesses are beginning to shift towards more effective execution within their HR departments. Implementing video into the process of recruitment not only provides an integral solution for businesses, it expands their reach when it comes to attracting the best talent.
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In 2016, 63% of organizations were using video in their recruitment processes and the use of such a tool facilitates the process of hiring new talent as well as largely affects the way companies engage with the most talented candidates and potentially even tapping into new global markets and an unlimited talent pool that may have previously been inaccessible.
This effectively means companies achieve global reach while cutting down recruitment costs, particularly beneficial for start-ups and smaller institutions.
- Using video for interviews
Using video as an interview tool allows international businesses and start-ups alike, to connect with candidates conveniently, even regardless of location, assessing their abilities efficiently and cutting down the time required to schedule and conduct interviews in person in half. With video interview technology comes the great freedom of connecting with new candidates and getting them excited about your company through the use of video resources.
- Use Video to Leverage Communication
Numbers show that recruiters who use video as a one-way or two-way interview tool can screen candidates rapidly, thus elevating their rate of success over the span of the recruiting process as opposed to the hours HR departments spend screening candidates’ resumes and conducting initial phone interviews. Specifically, with live video interviews, you can enable the candidates to connect with you in real time and most importantly, at a time that suits your busy schedule while benefiting from the crucial aspect of face-to-face interaction with each participant. Many applicants apply on their mobile devices which shows that more and more job seekers search beyond traditional websites. Thus, video is where your company can gain a mobile edge and proves an innovative add-on in the recruiting process for the best available talent even if you attract them on the go.
- Market Your Business more effectively
Digital advances have made for a generation of young professionals who were bred to respond to visuals. Many companies are already using video to attract the right candidates with the advantage that videos are a shareable tool that can be creatively integrated within various social media platforms. Recruiting-focused videos are increasingly popular and can benefit your business or start-up greatly if you feature existing employees’ testimonials, reflect aspects and put across your unique message about the working culture within your company. You can go as far as enhancing job advertisements on your career website with targeted videos, showcasing the specific job function advertised to add a personalized touch and ultimately enhance the way candidates engage with your organization.
- Showcase Opportunities
Use video to advertise new openings within your company but do not limit the use of this versatile tool to just that; – rather, showcase the human aspect and culture of your organization, even go as far as creating interactive office tour video, to inspire candidates and take the hiring process to the next level.
- Stay Current During and After the Hiring Process
You can use video to replace automated response emails that will reach applicants and make you stand out from the rest or use this tool throughout the hiring process to highlight important aspects of the candidate, such as what to expect in the different stages of recruitment or elaborate on your company’s processes and values. This is a proactive way to continue communication even after you have hired a candidate by creating customized videos and greatly speeding up the process of training for each individual new employee.
Can you think of any other options to use video in your recruitment process? Please share with us in the comments.
Author’s bio:
Vishal Amberkar
Image courtesy of Assess Hub.
Vishal has over 12 years’ experience working across industries, planning and implementing business growth strategies in the digital space. Equipped with a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Department of Management Studies (Pune University), his present association with AssessHub is about contributing to thoughts and sharing key insights on improving the Human Resources function and sharing ideas about the same which he shares through the AssessHub Blog.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Aug 23, 2016 | Communication, Featured, Human Resources, Leadership, Meetings
There are all of these articles about communication and engagement. I have contributed my thoughts in some of them. They are all useful in some regard if you want to get to the bottom of your engagement and communication issues. Except, we would have to include the one nuisance variable that most leaders and companies won’t cop to and that is: The cloak of silence.
We are working and living in the age of knowledge. We have more data points than we can use and have more information at our finger tips than previous generations. If given a chance, most leaders will cite wanting to understand their employees better. They want to understand things like motivations, propensity to leave, career aspirations etc.
What makes this problematic is leaders and companies want to know these things, but are often times not willing to ingest and digest the answers. Often times, when the answer they receive is unfavorable for them or the company – they react. The reaction is negative and usually sets such a tone that any further or future communication like it will be non-existent, censored and/or stifled.
Around the time of the 9/11 attacks here in NY the MTA came out with this whole campaign that said: ” If you see something, say something.” Many businesses latched onto this saying and started using it as a way to appear as though employees should feel free to share the things they are noticing and should feel safe to do so without fearing retaliation. There are some good eggs that truly stand by having an open, honest and communicative culture.
Others still, prefer a cloak of silence. They prefer for employees to be seen and not heard. These are companies that like when people speak up to praise the organization and its leaders. Companies that prefer a cloak of silence literally squash and black list anyone who dreams of raising a concern or anything deemed unfavorable for the company.
Let us examine through this example:
I worked for a company in a previous life that loved to hold town halls. If you know anything about town halls you know that they are meant to be open forums where people can come to have their ideas and concerns heard by those in power. The goal is that healthy debate and conversation is brought to the table by the constituents and those in power so that amicable solutions can be implemented.
When we had town halls, they spent weeks communicating the importance of our participation. It was even shared that no question was “dumb” or “irrelevant”. Yet, the first town hall I attended at this company was quieter than a church during Sermon. The CHRO spent an hour speaking about projects, opportunities, our organizational scorecard and then asked for questions. One of my co-workers raised her hand and if looks could kill she would have been dead. She continued to ask her question about adding additional members to our team, because of the excessive workload. Her question was answered abruptly and dismissed.
After the town hall, some of my more tenured co-workers spoke among themselves about how this employee who spoke up never learns her lesson. As in, she should have remained quiet instead, because clearly her question was not welcomed.
Every subsequent meeting and town hall was marred by a cloak of silence. We all knew that it wasn’t worth our time to ask questions or raise issues in these meetings despite what leadership was saying. They didn’t really want to know. It was all about faking their way to engagement and open communication – except they were doing a really poor job at it.
If you have noticed the same in your company here are some tips for building trust and getting your employees to communicate with you again:
1) Don’t ask questions, if you don’t want the answers. What people experience in their jobs day-to-day is very real. Don’t ask them to lie to you so your feelings aren’t hurt. Your employees have a right to not work in fear and you deserve to hear the truth so you can improve.
2) If delivery of certain messages are your concern, set a few ground rules for your town halls and meetings. Let’s be honest, sometimes intention doesn’t meet delivery at the finish line when it comes to communication. Having a few ground rules for meetings and town halls will help to set the tone. Be sure that your employees know you will abide by them as well.
3) When they speak, you listen and then take action. What is the point of having all of these data points, if you are going to simply hoard them – only to do nothing with it. When your employees speak up it’s an act of bravery on their part. The way they know that you have heard them is by acknowledging what was said and taking action.
Communicating doesn’t have to be difficult. Once you get over your own fears and needs to control what and how your employees say something – it will be a smoother ride for both parties.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Mar 2, 2016 | Diversity & Inclusion, Featured, Society and HR
Image courtesy of Unsplash.
Diversity is on the tip of everyone’s tongues right now. The interesting thing about diversity is people generally give it attention at the 11th hour when missteps and poor practices have already done damage. If some new regulation calls for diversity and inclusion training , diversity mascots experts are dusted off and asked to provide just-in-time training to show compliance.
As HR practitioners and more importantly business owners, we must all agree that a just-in-time or post-incident training is not a solution to ensuring that we foster inclusive workplaces. Whereas we have been trying to mitigate the instances of intolerance, harassment and exclusion in the workplace – we now have events and circumstances outside of the organization forcing us to have more timely discussions with staff.
The volume is turned up on racial and bigoted rhetoric. Politics are all the buzz as we move towards nominating candidates for the presidential race in the U.S. Through it all, tensions are high online and off. Do you think for a second none of this has the potential of spilling into your workplace?
If you think not, you’re not watching closely enough. More than ever, your employees need to know where you stand and how you expect them to conduct themselves. Times of controversy call for compassion, understanding and real-time diversity conversations.
Here are some tips for implementing these conversations:
1) Be timely and consistent in communicating. It doesn’t matter whether you are addressing concerns internally or externally- you will need to be timely and consistent. Waiting too long to address diversity issues of the moment- can elicit trust issues and undermine your ability to authentically connect with your staff.
2) Make it clear where you stand and what you expect of your employees. I once worked for an organization that allowed the confederate flag to be hung in the offices of leaders. Just a short twenty years ago, this same organization had employees hanging nooses in the offices of African-American employees. To date, it isn’t abundantly clear that they support a diverse workforce and it isn’t implied because it says so on their webpage. I share this to drive home the fact that you have to walk the talk. Diversity and Inclusion is not just a policy or beautifully-written EEO statement. Diversity should be a part of your organization’s moral fiber. Your employees deserve to know where you stand and what will and will not be tolerated.
3) Keep it simple. Keep it real. Have you ever taken stock of the gestures and faces your employees make before you or any other leader starts speaking in a training or meeting? Employees are like your customers in many ways. They hate contrived messages. It pains them to watch you squirm through a conversation on race knowing that you don’t even believe the words coming out of your own mouth. Keep your message simple and be real. You have to trust that you have fully-grown adults working for you- that are capable of engaging in open dialogue on diversity, inclusion and other difficult topics.
It is our legacy in HR to create policy, procedure and programs. With pressures for businesses to show and prove their dedication to social causes – it is very clear that HR and the business have stock in managing the moral reputation of the company. Using these tips are just the beginning to the effort you need to put into a sound diversity and inclusion strategy.
In my latest “Ask Czarina Live”, I talked about what happened to MAC Cosmetics when they let a diversity debacle go too far. Check it out below.
Have questions about how to take this one step further? Contact me. I’ll answer you in a future “Ask Czarina” video.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Sep 28, 2015 | Featured, HR Technology, HR Technology Trends and Tips
Image courtesy of Canva.com
A common concern in the workplace is communication and how we utilize technology to facilitate it in a way that is useful to everyone. When I started in HR 10 years ago, it was fairly common to see drafted memorandums being sent within organizations to inform department and even specific people about important matters. We moved from memos to email for important and immediate messages and that has now taken precedence. Fast forward to 2015 and we have not only email, but we have instant messaging, social media, texts, communication apps and workforce platforms like, Podio, Yammer and even Evernote.
So much technology… very little commonsense.
With all of the various modes of communication that we have available, I find there is still confusion around when we should be using technology to enable efficient communication and when we simply need face-to-face contact. For instance, something like sending your team’s schedules would probably be best sent via email or communicated in person. Of late, I have heard multiple complaints by employees in a variety of industries that state they are texted their schedules and sometimes miss it depending on their WIFI signal. I get most of my texts, but I have also missed plenty of texts as well due to kinks in service and the airwaves. It isn’t a perfect technology yet, so I remain perplexed as to why something as important as someone’s schedule would be sent this way.
Another scenario that keeps cropping up is the text to let your manager know you will be absent. A phone call or even an email would suffice in a case like this. Texting that you will be absent is hardly a reliable or reasonable way of communicating that message.
Let’s talk about email…
Email is both a business necessity and bane of evil. We all receive way too many emails. Worse yet, we barely read the contents of the emails we receive because of competing demands and time constraints. If your email is longer than 2-3 small paragraphs, you may want to get up and have a conversation. Additionally, if your question or commentary contains confidential or sensitive material, you may also want to think about having a face-to-face conversation. Some of this is commonsense, yet the endless availability of technology for the purpose of communication colors our ability to make sensible judgments in how we use these resources.
The Social Smackdown
Social Media is a groundbreaking technology in the context of communication. Nevertheless, there isn’t a week that goes by where someone hasn’t abused the immediacy and permanence of Twitter’s 140 characters or Facebook’s never-ending text box with everything from random thoughts to bigoted rants. There have been several articles written and many PSA’s on how you use these platforms to communicate. Many people listen, but still others opt to communicate the wrong messages without regard for it’s immediate impact.
Thank you for applying…
In this discussion of ways that communication and technology are at odds, we can not forget the automated templates delivered to candidates during the recruitment and selection process. I will be transparent in saying I appreciate the templates that live in the average ATS. Before you throw tomatoes- here is why:
1) It allows a recruiter dealing with high volumes of candidates to get a tailored message out in a timely fashion.
2) It is great for record-keeping since each is time-stamped and attached to candidate’s profiles.
3) It gives the recruiter back their time and eliminates a ton of phone time traditionally allotted for corresponding with candidates.
That said, you actually have to take the time to ensure the message is tailored. Some of you out there are just rolling this feature out with no effort and it is destroying your brand each time a candidate receives a template that hasn’t been configured- but I digress. This automation doesn’t absolve recruiters from having any interaction with candidates- it just automates a portion of your process. To that point, there are many other instances in the hiring process and beyond where an automated message will not suffice and may even be seen as discourteous.
When we talk about technology and how it helps us to communicate; we have to remember that in all things that help us there is a limit. I firmly believe that teams need to establish communication guidance, so that everyone is aware of how they will be expected to communicate in a variety of situations. This is not a policy, but rather a standard operating procedure or living agreement for communication. In establishing this sort of guidance, I believe we can eliminate unnecessary email, texting for inappropriate reasons and overall misuse of technology when communicating.
Want more? Click here to watch the latest “Ask Czarina” episode on this post on “The Aristocracy of HR” You Tube Channel.
