Somen Mondal / Apr 2, 2019
Has the idea of a skills gap been brought up in your organization?
Does a skills gap exist? And what should you do about it?
The idea of a “skills gap” has gotten considerable attention in the past year or so. The basic argument is very logical: Technology is evolving rapidly, and that’s created “gaps” where employers need specific skills, but it’s increasingly hard to find them. Considering the Internet itself is only 30 years old and many professions today have Internet skills/capabilities tied to them, it makes perfect sense that the “skills gap” must exist.
Or does it not?
There are arguments to the contrary on the skills gap
Recently there have been a number of discussions on the idea that the skills gap never really existed, notably here and here. Continue reading
Kayla Kozan / Mar 26, 2019
Have you been wondering what stats your recruiters need to know?
Thanks to the record-low unemployment rate, hiring and recruiting are more difficult than ever. Job-seekers have their pick of positions, so keeping your process as streamlined and efficient as possible is key to convincing candidates to choose your company.
The hiring process is often treated as an indicator of how the job itself will be. According to a recent CareerBuilder and SilkRoad survey, 68% of employees believe their experiences as job candidates reflect how the company treats its people.
That same survey found nearly half of employers reported it’s taking longer to fill jobs than ever before. Continue reading
Kayla Kozan / Mar 19, 2019
Candidate Experience at North American Banks
In 2019 we struggled to find current research on the candidate experience at North American banks, so we conducted our own!
We wanted to understand exactly what today’s candidates experience at every step of the job search. To uncover meaningful results, we applied to 140 jobs, at 35 different banks. This article provides a deep dive into the recruiting process of key financial institutions in the North American market. To close, this article also summarizes examples of great candidate experiences and areas for improvement.
You might be surprised by what we found.
The State Of High-Volume Hiring at Financial Institutions
As the finance sector continues to be a strong source of economic growth, recruiting for financial institutions faces a new set of challenges. Continue reading
John Dawson / Mar 13, 2019
Have you ever considered HR tech in financial services?
You probably wouldn’t expect a large bank to dabble in HR technology. HR seems compliance-driven, and what banks do seems very revenue-driven. Those are often very different lines of business/business models. But banks are increasingly entering the HR space. Note this from The Wall Street Journal:
Investment banks better known for big trades and mega-mergers are descending from the C-suite to pitch for business managing companies’ employee-benefit programs. It isn’t a glamorous business but it offers the type of sticky, predictable revenue that bank shareholders want—and executives are willing to embrace—as core Wall Street businesses struggle. Continue reading
Olivia Folick / Mar 5, 2019
Have you ever considered the idea that your employees are also your customers?
Let’s think through a new idea here: What if you started viewing your employees as internal customers? This might be a leap of thinking for a lot of people who run organizations, but it makes sense: employees work on the products and services that you ultimately sell for money. We tend to have developed strategies for our customers — customer service, customer success, customer experience — but our strategies around employees are less developed. Yes, we’ve talked more about employee experience and employee engagement in recent years, but we still spend way more time focused on customers than on employees. Continue reading
Kayla Kozan / Feb 26, 2019
Second interviews are not just a formality, they are an essential way to really understand how your candidate ticks and whether they are the right choice for the job. These 15 second interview questions will help you select the cream of the crop of talent available to you and can make it much easier to choose between equally matched candidates.
What’s the point of a second interview?
Second interviews have a very different dynamic to first interviews. You’ve already established the candidate could be good for the job. You know their background is broadly relevant, they seem to have good interpersonal skills, they come across well in person, etc. Continue reading
Olivia Folick / Feb 20, 2019
Have you been wondering which HR Tech trends to focus your energy on? We’ve rounded out the most important trends for 2019.
What are HR leaders seemingly thinking about?
Per research from Gartner, here’s a slide about the priorities of HR leaders currently:
If you break down this list into broader categories, here’s what you come to:
Skills of your people
Skills of your people
Experience of your people
Overall organization
Digital/tech
Talent
Talent
{Everything}
Talent in the context of diversity
Talent
You could argue (2) — about building a leadership bench — is also a “talent” issue, as is “building critical skills” (although that’s more about learning and development). Continue reading
Olivia Folick / Feb 12, 2019
Are you trying to make a case for diversity and inclusion in your organization?
No organization will actively reject the idea that diversity and inclusion programs are good things for their business.
Once you get past the “OK, no one is outwardly saying no to this idea” phase, you get to more complicated ground, though: what are companies actually doing about diversity?
And then you come to this: can you actually build a business case around diversity and inclusion? What does that look like?
Follow the bouncing ball
The first important situation is simply dealing with standard organizational process. To put anything in play at most companies, you need to present a business case. Continue reading
Olivia Folick / Feb 6, 2019
Have you been wondering how the rise of AI began to trend and spread across the globe?
The rise of artificial intelligence
Consider the Industrial Revolution, which lasted somewhere from 60-80 years. Some are calling the current period “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Largely expected to be driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and data analysis, this Fourth Industrial Revolution will be compressed into the lifespan of a beagle.
This means absolutely massive changes for how we work and design processes within our work. AI, specifically, is already beginning to have a large impact in recruiting and hiring.
It is helpful now to look at where AI has been, where it’s at now, and where it might be going. Continue reading
Kayla Kozan / Jan 30, 2019
Is 2019 the time to improve your high-volume hiring?
Amazon is perhaps the biggest player in the high-volume hiring game among established enterprise companies, to the point that Googling “high-volume hiring” gets you their Force site for that exact function.
They’re not the only player in the high-volume hiring world, though: Lockheed Martin recently met a high-volume commitment, and it’s very common seasonally.
So, if you’re in that world and need hundreds — or thousands — of people within a narrow time window, what do you need to do to be successful?
The obvious buckets
As with any recruiting process, you need to make sure you:
Communicate: This means being clear with candidates about timelines and expectations, but also making sure you are clear about times and locations for any large-scale events.
Continue reading