Evaluating Internal Talent Acquisition Departments Vol 2

What I want to do here is two things.  The first thing, I want to explain to you that talent acquisition  is not recruiting. In 90% of the talent acquisition departments in the world today, in corporate America, is basically managing ad responses. The way that you can tell that, and the way you can tell that about your department is if you walk by your department and there aren’t a lot of people on the phone, it’s ad response management.

A recruiting firm, an executive search firm, is actively talking to people. Actively talking to people about jobs and opportunities, it’s a verbal conversation. Sure, there is email, there is other stuff going on, but a key KPI in any recruiting company is how much time recruiters talk on the phone.

Talent acquisition is much more managing ad response. We have a video that will explain to you why ad response is bad, doesn’t work. It is also on our website, it’s also on our LinkedIn page. You can certainly access that.

But here are some concrete things you can do as a beleaguered Department Manager, Director, Vice President, to help you get better service from your talent acquisition team. The first thing you want to do is if they are running ads for you, and I guarantee they are, is you want to look at the ads. Not look at the ads on a piece of paper that they’ve printed out for you. Look at the ads on the website and try and find the ad on the website.

Pretend you are looking for a job…. you are one of the few people in the United States that are actually looking for a job. Pretend you are one of them. Type in engineering manager jobs in Philadelphia, PA. Here is the first thing you are going to find. That ad that your talent acquisition people – let’s call them TA people – are running for you now is one of 50.

Great… here is my ad and there’s 49 others. Wow, I didn’t know that many people are looking for the same person I am. Then, what I want you to do is open that ad. Ok, you’re a candidate, you’re opening that ad. Here’s the first thing you probably see. Hey, thanks for opening this ad. Here are 6 other companies and ads that you may be interested in. So, your ad has led the candidate to 6 other jobs.

Why is it designed that way? Because a lot of these websites are pay per click. You’ve got your click, so you owe them money. They want the clicks from those 5 other people. That’s how they get paid, that’s how that world works.

So great, understand that is where you are right now. You are one of 6 jobs, you are one of 6 companies that this candidate is being urged to apply to. Now look at the ad itself, read it. Are there any misspellings?  Because there often are. I saw an ad last week…confidential company, confidential opening. Then  when you read the ad, the ad says, ” we at Acme Company are looking for the following type of people.” So, it’s not really confidential. Proofread the ad, make sure it’s effective, make sure it’s accurate.

To give you another example, I saw an ad a couple weeks ago for a company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There is also a Lancaster in New York. There must be a dropdown box on this website where you have to choose the Lancaster. Well that TA person had chosen the wrong thing, so the Lancaster Pennsylvania is listed in Lancaster New York. You have to look at these things.

The other thing you need to know about these ads. Most of them, as you look at them, will tell you how many people applied. After your first 2 or 3 days, that’s what you are going to get. You’ll be surprised how few people apply to these ads. It’s not unusual for an ad in 24 hours to get 2 or 3 responses. Then after that to get maybe another 1 or 2 in a week. Occasionally you’ll hit the jackpot and get 100 responses, but understand 100 responses are national and international responses. Of them you might get one person that is worth contacting.

If you have gone a few days and your TA person has not gotten any responses, and you can see on the ad that here have only been 2 responses, I think it’s appropriate for you to go to them and say “well how are we doing?”  Brother, sister, if they tell  you they got 10 people in the pipeline and you’ve only got 2 responses, then you’ve got to really push back on that a little.

Where are these people coming from? Can I see their resumes? Challenge them.  So, let’s pretend you are 2 weeks into this. You are looking at the website and you haven’t that much gotten much response. You are going to your talent acquisition person to say, “what can you do to get more people for me?” If their response is “I’m going to rerun the ad,” you’ve got to say, “whoa Nelly.”

What is that going to do for you? Or, “I’m going to re-run the ad on  a different website.”
Once again, what is that going to do for you? There is no magic website, they are all the same. They all aggregate at Google anyway. That is not going to get you more people. There has to be a different strategy.

Ask them, “if you’re not going to run ads, what are you going to do?”  Well here’s one, here’s a new one. There are now people, websites, companies, that will basically take your ad and blast it out via email to people that are qualified but passive. It’s quasi-recruiting, but it’s really not. What it is, is spamming people.

How do I know that? Because I get them. I own Right Recruiting. I have never done anything in my life but recruiting, 40 years in recruiting.  I get 2 of these emails a day. Here’s todays. Here are the perfectly selected jobs that are good for me, and me alone based upon my profile. I have no profile by the way, yet these are based upon my profile.

Director of Product Management for a software company in Philadelphia. I couldn’t write a line of code if my life depended upon it. A Distribution Manager for a distribution center in New Jersey. I don’t know anything about that, I couldn’t do that. A Director of Product Development for a furniture company in Warminster, Pennsylvania. I can’t draw a straight  line. A Director of  Program Management for Comcast requiring telecommunications experience. Is there one person in the universe that is appropriate for all 4 jobs? Is this anything but spam? Your company and your job is listed in that spam. Does that make you proud? How do you feel about that?

Now let’s go one step further. open one of these. Once again, the first thing it says is “thank you for opening this. Here are six other jobs that are appropriate for your background.” Why on God’s green earth would your TA people think that this is going to fill jobs when 3 months prior of doing nothing but running ads doesn’t fill jobs?

You need to push back, you need to do some internal homework as to what it is that they are doing. Because, traditionally here is what we see, ABC company runs an ad on LinkedIn. Don’t get angry at me LinkedIn, but a lot of these ads don’t draw. Let’s say 3 to 4 weeks later, we will see that same ad run on Monster – doesn’t draw. Three to 4 weeks later they will run that same ad on Career Builder.

Alright now you are the manager, you are 3 months into this opening. You don’t have many candidates, if any at all. What are you waiting for? There is no magic bullet to this. Talent acquisition in  most corporations is not recruiting. It’s managing ad response and ad response is weak and poor in an employment market where there is nobody is out of work and there is nobody looking for a job.

Don’t be fooled with all this gibberish or rhetoric about algorithms, special profiles, and prescreen questionnaires. What does a prescreening question do for you if nobody answers your ad? Recruiting is talking to people, it’s getting on the phone , it’s communicating with them at night on the weekends when they can communicate. Ask your talent acquisition person if they have ever talked to a candidate at 8:00 on a Wednesday night. If they have, I would be very impressed with them. I’ll bet you 99% of them log off at 5 and come back at 9.

Recruiting is hard work, it’s personal work, it’s persistence and that is what we do . If you are having a problem with getting your jobs filled, our average time to completion is 2 months. That’s average, we have jobs where we have got resume to clients in a week. That is without advertising, that is hard work and that is attention to detail. So, push back. If you need help, you know where to reach us
Right Recruiting in Blue Bell, PA.