Recruiting Takes a Lesson from Wartime Logistics

Recruiting Takes a Lesson from Wartime Logistics

One of the most often misunderstood aspects of fighting wars is the importance of logistics. You can’t fight for long without food, fuel, ammunition, and replacement troops. 

In warfighting, logistics are pretty much everything. General Dwight D. Eisenhower put it best, “You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.”

We save the accolades for brilliant tactics and strategy. Tactics and strategies, however, were assured success by boring, old logistics. In WW2, for example, only 3 in 10 US soldiers actually served in a combat role. The rest were truck drivers, deckhands, mechanics, radio operators, and a myriad of other support roles which might have never seen the front line. And yet their contribution decisively won the war.

Ok, so why does this matter in the talent acquisition world?

No CEO ever got accolades for incredible recruiting. Their bonuses are based on their profits which they can quickly pad to look better by cutting costs and laying people off. They have little incentive to improve recruiting processes or repurpose existing personnel rather than lay them off. Such measures might stave off shareholder pressure, but it won’t build a long-term successful business.

In business, we hand out accolades for brilliant marketing, winning sales, and shiny products. We don’t hand out the accolades for hiring the people that make all of the success happen. And yet every winning company recruits well. They know when to recruit and when not to, how to recruit, and how to keep and train up the people they have.

Now that we are in the talent shortage that all the academics predicted would happen (even without COVID), maybe it’s time to re-evaluate how to succeed. Maybe it’s time for CEOs and COOs to start looking at Talent Acquisition, Recruiting, or whatever you call hiring people as the best way to create winning business strategies. Success comes with consistency, and you won’t achieve that without a strong backbone to support the people in your company.

 

Pivot2First: Indeed Advertising with Dominic Antonio

Pivot2First: Indeed Advertising with Dominic Antonio

 

There is much low-hanging fruit in the world of recruitment advertising that every recruiter can adopt to improve their hiring practices. 

Is there a difference between a job description and a job ad?

Job descriptions are not job ads and job ads are not job descriptions. Descriptions are straightforward. They show the functions of the job, requirements and what the “perfect” candidate looks like. However, it doesn’t do anything to attract candidates. On the other hand, a job ad sells candidates. In a way, you have to have a marketing mentality in recruiting. In this hyper-competitive, candidate-market, job ads are more important than ever. If your ad fails to sell the candidate on the opportunity, get them to click it and apply, it doesn’t matter where you place the ad or how much money you spend, you’ll lose the vast majority of great candidates

Job ads have 2 audiences: The job seeker (we’re trying to get them to click on the job post and apply) and the job board search engine (we want the search engine to index the ad and show it to as many job applicants as possible).

 Indeed Spend 

How do I know how much I should spend on Indeed?

Start from the end; keep the goal in mind. Too many recruiters think they have a gut feeling about what a budget should be. Take a look at your recruiting funnel and analyze it, from hire to applies.

Hires needed → Qualified Candidates to Interview → Applies → Cost per Apply

How many hires do you want to make? Think about how many people you need to interview to make those hires. How many people should apply to get the number of qualified candidates you need to interview? Finally, Indeed doesn’t sell you applies, they sell you clicks. How many clicks do you need to get a certain number of people to apply?

How do you find out what you are spending on indeed today?

Get in touch with Indeed, whoever is your account manager, and see who is spending what across all your accounts. Go over the past 3-6 months: see how much you’ve spent and how many candidates you’ve received.

How do I get control of managers posting jobs without going through the company account?

The problem with posting jobs on your own, is the lack of accountability for budgets and candidates. We’ve seen clients where different locations use separate credit cards and accounts. It’s easy to lose track of how many candidates they’re receiving and the amount of money they’re spending.

Having a recruiting agency working with Indeed on behalf of clients allows the client to gain an inside scoop on what the going bid price is, what the competitive bids are, make accurate spending budget calculations instead of going by what is comfortable, which is usually either way too low or too high. This insight allows clients to be realistic about the real cost of advertising on a job board.

What do people not understand about Indeed?

CPA vs CPC. PCA or cost per apply, and CPC, cost per click. Indeed only lets you bid on clicks but the actual apply number shows how effective your job ads are. Ads are bid on a CPC basis, but the CPA is what you, as a recruiter, should worry about because it will tell you how effective your budget is.

Sponsored ads – show higher on the feed. More budget allows for higher bids. If you’re bidding above $200-$300 then you simply don’t have a job market.

 

Indeed Myths

 

Organic ads… where do they work?

Organic is free traffic, so always make sure you have organic going.

Don’t duplicate jobs or you will lose organic traffic; there can only be one source of truth on Indeed, but they will always take your money for sponsored ads.

Refreshing jobs… myth or not?

Don’t do that if you’re sponsoring positions. It takes time for jobs to find their CPC bid and budgets to work themselves out. If you refresh jobs, you’re losing data that the job has been working to build up. Leave sponsored jobs alone but refresh organic jobs about once a month. If you refresh too often, Indeed’s quality team will flag those jobs and they might not get as much traffic.

Job Salaries

“If I don’t put a salary on a job, the candidate won’t have expectations and it’ll be easier on recruiting.”

The truth is that Indeed has an incentive to put a salary because it increases the click-through rate. If you don’t provide a salary, they’ll provide an estimate since job posts with salaries get 22-28% more clicks.

There’ll always be employers that pay more and those that pay less than the competition, you can always use a pay range even though it might be skewed to one end or the other.

 

Reverse-Searching Jobs

Every instance you look at your own positions, Indeed believes you’re job seekers thinking about applying for the job. Since you’re constantly visiting the job post but not applying to it, Indeed may assume it’s a bad job and work to not show it as often in the future.

Pro-Tip: If you want to look at the jobs for a company, instead of using the normal search bar, go to Company Reviews at the top, look for your company, and go to your company page. There you can take a look at a full list of your job openings and see which ones are getting organic visibility.

You can also look for jobs in an incognito tab and type what the candidate traffic is like in a certain city or what job titles competitors are using.

Indeed (Native) Apply vs ATS Career Apply

Native apply will get a candidate into your funnel fastest. Job seekers don’t have to create separate accounts for each company they want to apply to, as they would if they applied from a company’s career website.

You, as the employer, have every incentive to use Indeed Native Apply because you’ll get more people. You can expect to get about 23% more candidates if you use native apply.

Another consideration is that 70-72% of applications are completed on mobile phones. Most ATS career sites are not known for being mobile-friendly and that can discourage a lot of people from completing an application. A better tactic is to use Native Apply to get them in the door, screen them and then invite them to complete the ATS application.

Job Post Content, What really matters in my job posts?

  • Keywords always help. If you’re with an agency, ask for a market report for your jobs and that will include a keyword report with the most search terms.
  • One trick is to add job titles from jobs that people could transition from easily into the job body.
  • Change up your job titles to use what other competitors are using. For example, we changed one job from “Electrical Instrument Assembler” to “Electrical Manufacturing Technician.”
  • Keep descriptions short and make sure the first paragraph is clear. A Job Description is NOT a job ad.
  • Salaries in the ad… do it or not? YES

Time to Hire

The company’s timing to make a hire is not the same as a candidate’s timing.

Whereas a candidate might be looking to get a job within a week or a month, according to a new Talroo report, the average time to fill an entry level position is around 44 days. Candidates, however, are not waiting 44 days to get hired.

The job market will continue to be hyper-competitive and 44 days to hire is not sustainable. While the average cost per hire is $670, that doesn’t seem to account for the opportunity cost of being short-staffed and missing orders, job advertising, or staff-hours spent interviewing. On the other hand, 90% of candidates take the first job they are offered. How do you win in recruiting? You learn to go fast, reduce friction and streamline the hiring funnel so you can pick first.

 

Learn More

Dominic Antonio

Dominic is PivotCX’s Recruiting Marketing Manager. He has been a core part of the team for 6 years.
He’s skilled in digital ad buys, technical recruiting, content marketing, email marketing, website management, CRM management, social media, ad copy writing.

Favorite Books:

  • Business book: Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  • Fiction book: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

Favorite Movie: Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Anything else you’d like to share with the audience?  Good recruiting is relational, not transactional; it’s a conversation.

 

Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

Values Alignment

Values Alignment

 

Today we are joined by Lindsay Harle-Kadatz, the host of “Businesses are people too! A Podcast.” In this episode, we’ll reflect on Values Alignment. We’ll discuss Neuro-change, the challenges people are facing during the pandemic, and why you need to see a business as an actual person.

What is Neurochange?

Why do things change in our brains? Mindsets, beliefs, subconscious, and more are all woven into the framework of neuroplasticity. It helps us understand how our brain changes. Neurochange is the science behind what you need to do and how to get your brain to work with itself. 

What are the challenges people are facing during Covid?

 People reflected on what values they believed in and if they still rang true for themselves. People know relatively quickly what matters and what doesn’t and can cut through the “crap” much more rapidly. Businesses realize they are not who they used to be.

Working from Home vs. Office?

People want to work from home more. It’s a hard change to navigate to come back to the office. Businesses are wondering how to create a connection between remote workers. One thing to remember about remote workers is people will get their jobs done when you trust them to do it.

See the Business as a person?

Lindsay believes in seeing the business as a person too. It comes from the definition of a corporation as an individual entity. In marketing and branding, mental wellness is also off if a company’s brand is off. Seeing it as a person helps with brand management because you realize there is a reputation and relationship it has with other companies and other people. What many people say about companies isn’t always grounded in reality. Outcoming generations can feel that their identity is tied to the business. In contrast, incoming generations believe that they are the ones who determine the business identity separately from their personal identity. 

What parts of the business to see as a person?

First and foremost, ask the people. Ask them how they feel and what they think. Sit down with each team member and ask them what they think: those conversations will tell you where to improve. Remember that you hire people to be better than you at a job. Trust your people.

How do we get trust back?

Fall on your sword. Own up. Hold yourself accountable. Leaders own up to their mistakes. Ask yourself if your ego getting in the way of you and your team achieving something? 

How to bring about change when people aren’t in alignment?

This is very situational-based. Always bring in an HR professional or a lawyer. First, ask yourself if you, the leader, are doing the same things you want your employees to do. Also, ask them how they understand the values they need to follow. 

Parting thoughts: 

Take some time to stop and reflect on whether our daily actions reflect and align with our values. If they do, “cheers!” But if we notice our activities are not aligned with our values, let’s get curious and dig in on how we get there and what our values actually are. 

Learn More

Lindsay Harle-Kadatz

Lindsay is passionate about supporting leaders to empower, promote, and champion their people and seeing each team member for the value they bring to their role, well beyond their skillset.

Values Vixen 💛 | Neuro Change Method™, Certified Master Practitioner 🧠 | “Businesses Are People too! A Podcast” Host 🎙

Lindsay’s favorite business books are Necessary Endings (Dr. Henry Cloud) and  Traction (Gino Wickman). 

Favorite movie: the first Jurassic Park

Lindsay’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsayharle/ 

 

Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

Hiring for Attitude

Hiring for Attitude

 

Mike and Athin Cassiotis delve into the importance of setting a growth mindset in business and life, business coaching and mentoring, developing your company and personal brands, and hiring for attitude in this job market.

Athin’s Process with service-based businesses

Ramping up service-based businesses is relatively quick, but you must ensure you provide an excellent service. Athin helps business entrepreneurs manage whether they need to adapt their model to be more sustainable (e.g., recurrent revenue vs. one-off jobs or changing their marketing and sales strategies). 

 

Differentiating your business and your personal brand

“People buy from People”  and how you position yourself and your brand affects prospective clients’ decision to do business with you. Someone will buy based on trust and connection if there are a few options with similar offerings. It’s very compelling to understand and utilize these methods when running your business. 

Touchpoints: 

We get distracted very easily. Gone are the days when you could cold-mail people or just ask them to buy from you. It takes more for people to trust a business and several touchpoints before they’ll buy from you.

The importance of Mindset

It’s what’s between your ears that will determine your success. People sometimes have beliefs that are holding them back. Understanding yet questioning those beliefs can unlock your ability to succeed. 

A great explanation of this is by Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” In it, Kiyosaki speaks of how many of our parents taught us that money is the root of all evil; however, the flip side argues that not having money creates a lack of freedom. Putting a proverbial mirror on yourself to uncover limiting beliefs and updating your actions takes effort and happens over time. It’s easier for someone from the outside (a mentor or coach) to help uncover and help change business direction. This shift in beliefs changed Athin’s life exponentially. 

A new type of hiring challenge

In the US, people are slowing growth. It’s just hard to hire right now. What are the biggest challenges in Australia?

  • Australia is a country of mostly immigrants, and many people come from overseas, especially for tech.
  • Skills shortage, tech or otherwise, makes it hard to find good people.
  • Great Resignation: employees are rethinking what is essential for them. Remote work vs. office vs. hybrid is an example. Clear work options will make it easier for employers to retain and attract new employees. 
  • Culture: Being clear on business purpose, mission, and values.

Hiring For Attitude

To fill openings, you might have to rethink what makes someone qualified. You can’t wait 60 days to make a hire. Employers must quickly decide if someone is a good fit for the role and the team culture. 

What do people need to change the most about hiring?

  • Do you have to have that person as an employee? Some roles might be well suited for people who are contractors if it’s challenging to find people? Being flexible in this regard can go a long way. 
  • What are you actually offering to people? There are a lot of opportunities out there. How do I make it more enticing for them? Work arrangements and benefits, why would I join my business versus another company.

The Biggest Takeaway in Recruiting

Hiring should be based on values, attitudes, and behaviors

  • It’s unlikely that you’ll get someone with all the skills you’re looking for, especially with the skills shortage we have right now. You can train someone on the skills they are missing, but the values, mindset, attitudes, and behaviors are usually deeply imprinted into somebody. While it’s possible, using coaching and other methods to change attitudes and mindsets can take a long time.
  • Know the things that should be required and, know the things that can be taught, be realistic about it. 

What are the most important questions to ask?

  • With language awareness, prospective employees are likely to touch on their values and attitudes, allowing employers to learn about their motivations.
  • Learning what people have gone through in their lives. Learning about their grit, discipline, and the challenges they’ve overcome. What did they do growing up? Playing an instrument, a sport, or doing martial arts shows that someone has discipline and commitment. 

Final thoughts

The big lesson in business and life: be yourself; it doesn’t work if you try to be someone else. Whatever you’re doing (business or otherwise, always have a growth mindset. If we’re not growing, we’re dying. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and learn new things. Think whether getting a coach and mentor to know how to do things better would be beneficial. Time is the only resource we have; learning from someone can cut down on time needed to succeed.

Learn More

Athin Cassiotis

Athin hails from Adelaide, South Australia but has lived in Sydney, Australia, for over ten years. He started his first business about 5yrs ago: Waste Management Consulting, and it’s been about 2 ½ yrs since he began consulting and mentoring service-based companies.

Podcast: Business Growth Show → Insider Secrets and great feedback on Business with entrepreneurs and celebrities. If you can ask great questions of the people around you, you can get great answers. 

Favorite business book: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (Fundamentals of business mindset, being curious and delving deeper to set yourself up for success).

Favorite movies: Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura and Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop series. (having a good laugh and being different, be you; it’s a key lesson)

 Athin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/athincassiotis/?originalSubdomain=au 

 

Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io