Tag: talent acquisition

06 Jun 2018

4 Tips That Attracts Good Talent

1. Teach Your HR Team to Be Active on LinkedIn

Most of the time, talented candidates are already employed and aren’t actively looking for new opportunities. But you can find them on social networking platforms like LinkedIn where they show off their skills and share their expertise. That’s why your recruiters should create a LinkedIn profile for your organization and share news about vacancies. A well-written job description will attract talent hanging out on the network.

All members of your HR team also need to optimize their personal LinkedIn profiles so passive candidates can find them. Make sure your recruiters know how to effectively search for LinkedIn profiles of professionals who have the right skills and qualifications. Once they identify these candidates, recruiters should have engaging recruitment messages on hand so they can approach and target these professionals.

“If you’re after candidates with niche skill sets, consider building a candidate database. Your recruiters will be able to keep track of professionals and respond quickly to candidates who apply for a position.”

2. Keep Your Recruitment Process Short

Glassdoor recently revealed that the typical hiring process lasts around 22 days.  If you ask any candidate, they’ll tell you that three weeks is way too long. A recruitment process that drags along will never attract and engage talent. A slow response from your team won’t keep talented candidates interested in your offer. And other employers might snatch these candidates out of your hands.

How can you shorten your recruitment process? Here are some key strategies you should start implementing in your team right now:

  • Make your careers website mobile-friendly – candidates like to check new job offers on mobile devices, so reach them by optimizing your content for mobile.
  • Ensure that your team reviews applications daily – you can’t afford to lose talented leads who come knocking at your door. Recruiters need to pay close attention to incoming applications and address them promptly.
  • Schedule interviews as soon as you accept a resume – your HR team should quickly respond to applications from talent and be flexible in adjusting to their schedules.
  • Follow up with candidates on a regular basis – talented candidates need to be informed about their current stage in the recruitment process.
  • Don’t hesitate to present the offer when the hiring manager agrees to hire a candidate – recruiters should be quick in following up with an offer. It can be the same day or a day after. Otherwise, they risk losing the candidate to another company.

3. Personalize Your Hiring Process

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that recruiters should personalize their communication when hundreds of candidates apply for vacant positions. Personalization is a challenge, but your team should never forget that resumes represent real human beings who deserve respect. Talented candidates spend a lot of time crafting their resumes and tailoring their applications to match the job description. From their perspective, it’s fair to expect a personalized approach in return.

A cold and impersonal recruitment process will inevitably damage your employer brand. You’ll never attract the type of candidates that you’re trying to source. Help your HR team realize that every time they get in touch with a candidate, they’re representing your company. The hiring process should be efficient and transparent. That’s how you build a positive employer brand that catches the eye of top talent.

4. Emphasize Return on Investment (ROI)

A recent report showed that companies that actively source talented candidates can boost their revenue by over 200% compared to organizations that don’t engage in such activities. That’s why your HR team should stop focusing exclusively on candidate skills and qualifications, and look instead into their quantifiable achievements. If a candidate writes on their resume that they’ve increased sales by 12%, your team can bet that they will achieve similar results in the position they’re trying to fill.

Your HR team needs to have a good understanding of how significant ROI and revenue are for your company. They’ll look for candidates who can streamline processes and optimize them to impact your bottom line.

Key Takeaway

Attracting, sourcing and engaging talent is a top priority for every organization these days. You need a smooth and personalized recruitment process to engage these passive candidates efficiently, especially if you’re searching for unique skill sets. Use these four strategies to teach your HR team how to hire the most impressive talent in your niche.

 

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02 May 2018

Training and Development of my Staff – Are my Programs effective?

Training and development of staff is arguably an important part of the development of your company and ensuring that your company grows. Onboarding a new employee is costly and similarly, every company wants to ensure that their employees are not only effective but also efficient. Training and development programs provide employees with that necessary skills and knowledge to grow and also implement in their current work to be more efficient and effective. As an organization, it is therefore critical to examine training and development programs and ensure that they are effective.

Here are 5 tips to ensure that you have a successful training program

  1. Identify Clear Goals and Outcomes

Any good program starts with clear and definable goals. Training merely for the purpose of having it is futile. You need concrete outcomes in order to stand any chance of deploying materials and a curriculum that add value to your firm.

  1. Develop Engaging Training Resources

In addition to having the correct goals and the best intentions, you also need materials and a curriculum that is sufficiently interesting to engage your employees and keep them focused. It comes down to three choices:

  1. Establish a Consistent Schedule

Effective training is all about consistency. Instead of trying to cram all of your company’s required training into a three-day period at the end of the calendar year, try spreading things out and commit to a couple hours of training every week or month.

This kind of consistency not only lessens the burden on your company, but it also raises the probability that your employees will become committed to ongoing learning. (They’ll also retain more information this way.)

  1. Give Employees a Say in the Curriculum

Though you’ll have the final say over which curriculum your organization uses for its training programs, don’t deny your employees the opportunity to get involved. Ask them about concepts and topics they feel would help them grow as employees, leaders, etc. There’s a lot of potential value in getting their input, and you may stumble across some ideas you hadn’t previously considered.

  1. Bridge the Gap Between Knowledge and Action

One of the biggest mistakes organizations too often make is failing to bridge the gap between knowledge and action. In other words, they expend generous amounts of time and money on training but don’t give employees a timely opportunity to transfer the knowledge they’ve acquired into action.

Employee training expert Julie Winkle Giulioni believes in developing an action plan: “Organizations, leaders, and individuals invest heavily in training and development through traditional classroom-based workshops, e-learning, webinars, apps, mentoring, experiences, and more,” Giulioni explains.

“But formal and informal learning efforts fall short of the full range of possible outcomes if we don’t metaphorically cross the finish line by bringing the learning to life. Action planning is what does this, bridging insights and intentions to results.”

You can increase the odds that your employees will convert knowledge into action by setting them up for success. Always enable employees to debrief before they leave any training session.

Ask questions like “What will you do differently now that you know X?” Host follow-up meetings with your team to see what progress they’re making. Simple things like these can have a significant impact.

 

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18 Apr 2018

Working Your Way Through Talent Management Crisis in Jamaica by Talent Management Expert Debra Fraser CEO Caribbean HR Solution

Jamaica BPO Stakeholders Communicate Honest, Actionable Awareness of Talent Crisis

Jamaica BPO has been reaping the benefits of a desirable workforce, low wages, and cultural alignment with US customers, but talent is still a challenge, and the industry is vocal about it.

Whatever caused it, BPO buyers are now paying very close attention to Jamaica, with companies such as Amazon, Lyft, Hilton, and AT&T betting big on the sector. As a result, the country is under close external scrutiny, leading local stakeholders to identify what is holding Jamaica back from the next level.

As the third largest English speaking nation in the Americas, Jamaica and its BPO sector have been capitalizing on the benefits of a desirable workforce, low wages, and cultural alignment with US customers, but greater demand for talent is where the difficulties lie. As client demands also become more technical, Jamaica’s meager IT talent pool has become another top concern.

Offering another potential solution to the training deficit, Debra Fraser, CEO of Caribbean HR Solutions presented some examples of where technology is successfully being used to create a better fit between agents, employers, and roles.

“We need leaders that will bring the entire labor force up, and there are lots of tests that can help with that by identifying the right people to invest in,” she said. “We don’t just want the masses, we want quality masses, and we can do that with technology and objective standards. Pre-screening tests can weed out non-fit and high performers, along with tools that measure personality fit, basic skills in grammar, logical reasoning, math skills, and whether a person suits sales/outbound or service/inbound. I haven’t yet seen many companies use any of these in Jamaica.”

What is clear from the O2J conference is that Jamaica has a remarkable willingness to adapt, a willingness to find business, the country is open to change, and people are empathetic to the customer. These are all traits that clients want in their providers and agents, so, if the puzzle of healthy talent development is solved, particularly on the IT side, these core values will ensure the country retains its upward trajectory.

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