KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Hiring for Growth

The most important thing that any manager of any business can ever do is hire the right people to work for their company. The hiring and selection experts at KeenHire can help you with hiring for growth in many ways. We can help you choose a team of employees that will take your company to the next level of expansion today.

Keep reading for our very best in hiring for growth tips below...

1. Make use of the tips posted on the KeenHire Blog on a regular basis
If you want your company to grow, you need to employ the right people. The right person for one role in one company is not the right person for the same role in another company within the same industry. The people you choose to hire need to be handpicked carefully to ensure that you are hiring for growth at all times.

The hiring specialists and human resources experts at KeenHire maintain an active and useful blog on hiring tips and employee selection advice so that your knowledge about hiring for growth can develop sufficiently enough to take your company to the next level.

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of regularly tuning in to the KeenHire Blog to find out what is hot and new in the world of human resources and employee selection. Hiring for growth is not something that comes naturally to every employer and therefore any help or advice you can get from employment experts, like those at KeenHire, should always be welcomed with open arms.

What Can Happen When You Hire The Wrong People

Have you ever heard the saying that, “a play is only ever as good as the worst actor in it”? Well... the same applies to business. Your company is only as good as the worst employee that you have working for you. Therefore, hiring the wrong people for your firm can be disastrous.

When we say disastrous, we do not mean that this person might work a little slower than the rest and things might be delayed.

No.

We are talking about your company losing business, losing clients, dropping sales and eventually going bankrupt. All because you have been hiring the wrong people. All because you haven´t learned how to choose the right person for each position you have available to fill.

If a plant in your garden becomes infected with green flies, it can infect the other plants next to it and eventually all plants will die. If you make just one poor decision in terms of recruitment and you choose the wrong person for any role, your whole company could gradually start to go downhill like a train of dominoes.

Tips for Better Hiring: Resume Red Flags

Cher once sang a song about knowing how much a man loves you by measuring the quality of his kiss. Don’t underestimate the powerful messages of a resume and how much they can reveal about a potential employee from the very beginning. What do resumes really say about candidates applying for a job in our companies?

The following information highlights some of the most important resume red flags that all employers should be aware of so that they can learn how to hire better and recruit the perfect candidate for each and every position within their company. KeenHire knows what the resume red flags are and we know what kinds of candidates you should avoid at all costs....

Typos
If a potential employee cannot even manage to send you a CV that is free from typing errors when applying for a job in your company, why would you even consider interviewing them, let alone hiring them?

If there are typos in a candidate’s CV, the advice that the recruitment experts at KeenHire would give you would be to ignore their application completely.

Recruiting Problems: How Unemployment has Clouded the Candidate Pool

How has the recent period of unemployment made it difficult to hire the right person? Why do you need to advice and expertise of the hiring and selection specialists at KeenHire now more than ever?

The issue is that the increased levels of unemployment have generated a large number of people looking for work, but a large number of people of poor caliber.

In general, the employees who are worth anything in any way have already been snapped up by other companies and this has left a large volume of “employee dregs” at the bottom of the recruitment pool. The human resources training team at KeenHire is ready and waiting to lead you through the process of effective recruitment in these times at any time.

We have a number of different processes, programs, strategies and ideas that we want to share with you as soon as possible, and in particular our Conscious Hiring Process, which will help you to filter out the garbage and employ only the very best.

Use the Best Interviewing Tools to Make Better Hiring Decisions

 

The interviewing process is one of the most important for any business. All managers and recruiters need to be armed with a range of the best interviewing tools on the market to ensure that the hire the right person for the job.

This is where the interviewing, hiring and management specialists at KeenHire come into play. We find and develop the best interviewing tools possible to make sure that the people you hire are the people who are really going to be able to take your company to the next stage.

Over the past 5 years, the interviewing and hiring specialists at KeenHire have spent their time evaluating over 100 assessments, analyzing the good and bad points of each kind of interviewing assessment technique before deciding on the best interviewing tools and interviewing books to then represent and feature in “Margo’s Picks.”

We have a number of interviewing tools on sale and we would be happy to go through the details of any of them at any time, so please contact us about the interviewing tools that you are interested in using within your human resources system today.

3rd Party Recruiting- You Don’t Want to Do The Heavy Lifting, Let Us Do it For You!

Some say the great thing about being a third-party recruiter is that there are no firm rules on how to recruit. Well, this is just not true. If there wasn’t a right and wrong way to recruit it would simply fall apart. Every client differs, every position differs, and every candidate differs: this is a fact, however, the way that you recruit your candidates and make your clients happy is all the same.

Third party recruiters provide a service to their customers, not a function to their employers. If a recruiter can ensure successful hiring process that results in less waste and an increased return on investment, they must have a system set in place. A proven process that allows any company to close-the-door on expensive mis-hires and unwanted employee turnover is the engine that drives 3^rd party recruiting.

A process must ensure one thing; the right person in the right role, for them and for the company. This is the only way to ensure employee retention. While sales professionals only have to deal with customers’ emotions, recruiters have to deal with both customer and candidate emotions. The candidate’s motivational drivers, methods of interacting, ways of acting and reacting, thinking strategies, and leadership behaviors are all brought into context by the recruiter. It’s not just the traits of someone that predict their performance; it’s how traits interact with each other that calculates success.

Along with each client, each job must be addressed differently while apply a solid hiring process. Great companies spend time isolating what great performance is in the role they are searching to fill. Invest more time in defining what the candidate needs to do to achieve great performance, and even more time proactively assessing and defining the right behaviors, values, and motivators of that the right candidate should have.

No matter what the job is, if a recruiter has a process that involves assessing who the employee needs to be to do the job, they will come out successful. A strong hiring process includes selecting behaviors, talents, traits, willingness, “want,” power, skills, experience, and even education- the whole nine yards!

Check out KeenHire’s conscious hiring process for an example of great third party recruiting with a process in place for success!

By: Emily Eastman

Creating A Multi-Generational Workforce That Thrives!

Age discrimination claims have hit record levels in the United States! According to msnnbc.com the figures have risen from 16,000 in 2006 to 23,000 in 2010. That staggering number has skyrocketed, one due to unemployment and two due to the generational gap in the work force today. Those 55 and over are unemployed for an average length of 52.4 weeks. The average is just 37.4 weeks for younger workers, according to AARP employment data. The harsh reality is their age is part of the reason

“There is no question that age bias is rampant throughout American society and in the workplace in particular,” said Howard Eglit, a professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law who focuses on law and aging.

The HR profession has identified the number 2 trend most likely to have a major strategic impact on the workplace as large numbers of baby boomers leaving the workplace around the same time.

There are different values that come with having a muti-generational workforce. Each generation brings valued qualities and their own shortcomings.

Lets meet the generations!

World War II: 1925-1945

Values Qualities:

Stable, detail-oriented, thorough, hard-working.

Liabilities:

Don’t like change, reluctant to buck system, uncomfortable with conflict

Messages that motivate:

“We respect your experience and wisdom.”

“Your perseverance is valued and will be rewarded.”

 

Baby Boomers: 1946- 1964

Valued Qualities: Service-oriented, driven, willing to go the extra mile, good at relationship-building, want to please, good team players

Liabilities: Not naturally budget minded, uncomfortable with conflict, reluctant to go against peers, overly sensitive to feedback, self-centered

Messages that motivate:

“You’re important to our success.”

“Your contribution is unique and important.”

 

Generation X: Latter 1960’s to early ‘80s

Valued Qualities: Adaptability, techno-Literacy, independence, not intimidated by authority, creativity

Liabilities: Impatient, poor people skills, inexperienced, cynical

Messages that motivate:

“It’s OK, do it your way.”

“We’ve got the newest hardware and software.”

Millennial: Late 1980’s to the 2000’s

Valued Qualities: Tech-Savvy, collective action (Team), heroic spirit, tenacity, multi-tasking

Liabilities: Need for supervision & structure, inexperienced, very short attention span, lack of patience for menial tasks

Messages that motivate:

“You’ll be working with bright, creative people.”

“You and your co-workers can help turn this company around.”

With the largest gap being WWII generation to the Millennial it can be difficult to create a workplace that sufficiently equips everyone. The WWII’s attitude about the Millennials could be, “Those young kids really know their technology stuff, but I sure wish they could concentrate better.” But if you turned the table the view could be, “Old fogies who should retire and leave the work to us!”

No matter how the cards are drawn, unemployment rates cannot be denied, BUT that doesn’t mean the weeding out is going to last. The rate of unemployment went from a high of 9.8 in 2010 down to 9.0 here in 2011.

Multi-generational workforces can work. Yes, we need to be developing management and using our youth to create new leadership development, but who is going to do the teaching? We all can learn different things from each other.  It is also important to remember outliers. People sometimes cross the borders and fit into different categories based on how they were raised, their personality or their work culture. No matter who the person, or their age they will fit into one category and optimize the workforce!

The key to having generational retention is to create an environment that constructively produces relationships with support and the ability to grow.

 

By: Emily Eastman

Behavioral Interviewing is Changing the Game- Are You Ready To Make The Switch?

We’ve all been there, sitting in the waiting room, palms sweating trying to memorize the “right answers” while we are desperately scanning our resume, looking for the right thing to say (like we don’t know where we have worked and what we have done). Interviews can be just as terrifying as public speaking, except you don’t know what’s coming!  You want to be prepared, but so does the interviewer. They want to get to know you and figure out if you’re the right person for this role and their company. This is why most companies have added a step and shifted from relying primarily on traditional style interviewing to utilizing behavioral to validate that the person actually operates in a manner congruent with their corporate values and mission.  Companies are learning the hard way that a resume only states what the person has done, and that 75% of those resumes are inflated. As the competition for business and talent continues to grow sharp business leaders are upgrading their hiring process and positioning themselves to hire the best and say, thank you for sharing to the rest.

What is behavioral interviewing anyway?

Behavioral Interviewing is a way to find out how and why people do things rather than what happened. What’s the point of knowing where someone worked if you can’t know what he or she did and the step they took to get there? Often times when we tell stories there is a lot of “we”, in behavioral interviewing the interviewer wants to know what YOU did, how you contributed and the behavior traits you posses that made you act a certain way. It is all about open-ended questions that force you to draw on events and stories that have happened in your life. The difference between "What is one of your weakness"? and "tell me about a time you failed at something and what did you learn?" might not seem like much, but it forces you to give a different kind of answer. These types of questions give employers a better sense of the kind of person you are and what type of role you might fit into in their company. Behavioral Interviewing is how companies attracted and select A players, and leverage their companies hiring power!

Don’t know how? KeenHire can teach you with our Behavioral Interviewing Training!

In our program you get a fundamental understanding and appreciation for why most bad hiring decisions are made in the first ten minutes of the interview.
Learn to understand the importance of identifying key performance indicators for each role; delve into all facets of the hiring and selection process, narrowing in on understanding and being able to identify motivations, ways of being, ways of thinking, and modes of interacting.

You walk away with a prowess for knowing what to ask and how to interpret the answer. Catch and redirect yourself in the midst of being "sold" in the interview and focus on the content of the validated answer.

"To fly as fast as thought, to be anywhere there is, you must first begin by knowing that you have already arrived."
                                                                    - Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull

By: Emily Eastman

Rising Unemployment Tax Calls For A Drop In Hiring

The rise in unemployment tax is giving companies around the country a reason not to boost hiring.  Having a significant rise on taxes such as this forces companies to dish out to their laid off works instead of focusing on their currently employed or creating jobs and hiring more people. “More than 30 states have had to borrow billions from a federal fund to cover unemployment benefits for their jobless residents in recent years.”

 Those billions of dollars are doing nothing for our economy, employer are getting slammed with taxes and employees are fighting for their jobs everyday, if they have one at all. Plus, this is only the first of two tax spikes employers are being challenged with, on both the state and federal level.

The president of Strategic Services on Unemployment & Workers' Compensation tells the nation that, "unemployment taxes, which were a relatively low bottom-line cost in 2008, are now becoming a significant cost," Holmes said. "It discourages companies from electing to hire new employees."

So what does this mean? Well for a lot of people it means the continuation of losing jobs, and for recruiters its just tough to watch. Knowing and having a hiring process that works and could decrease unemployment by giving people the right jobs and having them stick.  A conscious hiring process is so key to retaining top talent. Not just creating jobs but putting the right people in the right roles ensuring long term career paths is what puts companies in a better position to have less laid off workers.

By engaging in a Conscious Hiring process you hone in on the key elements it takes to produce consistent results in your sales organization and you learn to identify the core behaviors, values and competencies needed to achieve those results reliably over time.

Some states however are trying to spare their employers; California for example borrowed its $303.3 million interest payment from a disability insurance fund. "We did not want to increase the tax burden on job creators," said Ben Johnson, spokesman for Ohio's Department of Job and Family Services. With the state, employers and recruiters all working together it can maximize the workforce, and ensure lower unemployment and higher employee retention.

By: Emily Eastman

The Retention Issue: How To Assess Candidates, Perfect Selection and Retain Top Talent

According To Noah Webster, retention is the act or power of keeping or retaining, but Corporately, retention is the power to keep employees actively engaged and committed to being an integral part of the organization. So what is retention like in this day in age? Are employers on the same page as their employees when it comes to effective performance and talent management?

According to the SHRM Workplace Forecast of 2011, our workplace trends are directly related to talent acquisition, selection & retention. All of these being consecutive to one another and going hand in hand with creating a successful business.

A recent survey on employee performance and retention conducted by Express Employment Professionals, one of the nation's largest privately held staffing companies, found that employers are more disconnected than ever from their workforce. Express' survey revealed that 77 percent of leaders say retention was not a problem or only a slight problem in 2011, while 91 percent of employees said they are willing to switch jobs. These extreme figures should be waking up the employers of our nation, and creating a call to action that something’s not right.

With Employee turn over in the US at 16.4 percent what is there to do? How do you shift your talent management, selection and retention in a way that that increases your profit, your employee satisfaction and turnover?

First of all strong leadership is imperative right now in order to enhance your management operating style, implementing accountability systems, while building and developing high-performance teams.

Talent acquisition can only be beat one way: putting the right people in the right roles. How do we do that? By perfecting selection. Selection can be managed with internally, with a 3^rd party recruiter or using both. Whichever your company decides to go with you must ensure that their skills, personality, and values align with the job and the company. Developing Interview strategies that include pre-established critical screening questions, an in-depth career history review and custom built behavioral interview models prevent the unhealthy corporate impact as well as the high cost of a mis-hire.

Over all the corporate response must be to link employee performance and its impact on the organization’s business goals. Doing this will keep employees goals align with the company’s, creating increasing accomplishment and happier on track employees.

So try something different, create a new hiring process, change the way you interview and beef up your leadership training and finally retain the talent you need. 

To learn more about retention, talent management and see how to create a conscious hiring process, visit us at keenhire.com. We equip companies with systems, processes and people to hire & retain with clarity and insight.

By: Emily Eastman