AT_Straight _Talk _on IT_Project_Recruitment

That period between making a hire and getting Project talent fully up to speed can make all the
difference to your project outcome so it makes sense that you future proof yourself from the very
earliest opportunity.

From an IT recruitment point of view, often this can as simple as ensuring that ‘like attracts like’.

You and/or your specialist IT recruitment partner need to attract talent that is in harmony with your
culture. You need to communicate this culture in your recruitment signals. Sync your message with
whatever will get your ideal candidate's attention - things like meaningful role profiles, written by
subject matter experts and bespoke adverts focused on candidate attraction to match your business
or company culture. The return is measurably better when you attend to these details.

Effectively, you're starting the onboarding process before you even know who you are going to hire.
Just imagine that for a second - how 'day one ready' everyone will be! Makes sense doesn’t it?

So, with your specialist IT recruitment partner you have the ideal new starter ... now what?

Here's a useful onboarding checklist.

1 - Do They Have Everything They Need?

A PC that is ready to switch on and go, access to all project contacts and information that they'll
need logins and passwords ... think of all the tangible physical things that they will need and ensure
that they have them! Be thorough, leave nothing to chance.

2 - Do They Know All They Need To Know?

Have you prepared a clear mission brief that spells out the what, how, when, who and where of the
project and most crucially is your new starter aware of the "why". What, how, when, who and where
are all administrative, knowing the reason behind the project and decisions taken thus far (the
"why") will allow your new team member to bring their experience and fresh perspective to the
project. Remember they have no project history baggage – harness their creativity!

And don’t wait till they start!

Have you prepared initiation documents, have you shared project schedules and any technical
information? Giving your new starter as much information up front can speed up the onboarding
process. Especially useful if they are on gardening leave from a previous job, for example serving a
notice period, make the most of the time someone else may be paying for!

3 - Have You Imagined Onboarding Their "Their Shoes"?

One client did this and together with some really useful project-related ideas also realised that not
knowing who everyone is can also be something of a communication stumbling block. She included
photos and names in the induction pack and then came up with the genius idea of also having the
names at each desk together with a photo.

Ask yourself, “What would have made things easier for me when I started?” Then make it so!

4 - How Good is The Handover Plan?

Any relay runner will tell you, the moment when the baton is passed from one athlete to the next
can be the difference between winning or losing the race. Same with IT Projects.

If the departing PM is still with you, make sure that he or she spends an adequate amount of time
handing over the reins of the project. Alternatively, make sure that you assign a buddy or have clear
lines of communication and responsibility for ensuring a smooth handover.

In conclusion, the truth is that CIOs, Project Leaders and PMOs are masters of change, organisation,
templates, checklists and outcome driven delivery. When you apply all your project skills and
disciplines to the onboarding process, surely, it's impossible for it to be anything other than a raging
success ... but it has to start early.

Challenge your specialist IT recruitment partner to not only know your culture but to be able to
communicate your culture in job ads and induction documents and your new starter will have hit the
ground running before the ink on their contract is even dry.

Source:

https://www.stoneseed.co.uk/stoneseed-blog/5-tips-for-effective-onboarding-of-it-project-talent

Peer Profiling – Integral to the selection and interviewing process

Peer Profiling has become an integral part of the
selection and interviewing process at Access Talent/

The recruitment industry is a busy space, with over
8,000 recruiters in the UK, using the same CV libraries,
job boards and technology tools.

Searching for a Project role will often lead different
recruiters to the same ‘suitable’ candidates. To some
degree, that’s the easy part.

So how do you filter how suitable these candidates are?
Peer Profiling – when it comes to recruiting for
specialist roles like Project Managers or Business
Analysts, we believe one of the key points is, not just
the questions you ask, but who asks them. Our Peer Profilers don’t just have a background in Project
Delivery, they are still actively engaged in the field.

Why is this process particularly effective in choosing the right candidates? Nicol Cutts, Head of
Projects at Stoneseed, (Access Talent’s sister company), is one of our Peer Profilers and wanted to
provide a little insight into why.

“Access Talent have a well-defined evaluation method for ensuring our selected candidates are high
calibre individuals with a ‘can do’ approach to Project Delivery.

For example. Candidates undertake role specific online tests, with a defined pass rate required for
moving to the interview stage.

Peer Profiling ensures candidates gain a more realistic view of working for us and with the
knowledge a Peer Interviewer provides, we dig a little deeper into the candidates’ capability and test
their Project skills.

Peer Profiling is an essential element to our recruitment process and has a number of benefits;

1. Peer Profiling allows the interview questions to be adapted throughout the interview rather than a
set of standard questions.

2. Allows higher calibre individuals in the Project Management and Business Analyst sector to be
identified.

3. A great opportunity to observe candidates personal and softer skills.

4. Candidates can ask questions and express concerns that they may hesitate to voice in a more
formal one-to-one interview.”

As a Peer Profiler myself, I also wanted to express my views on the importance of Peer Profiling and
why I feel it is an important step to finding the right candidate.

We conduct a high volume of interviews, searching for quality Project Mangers, PMO, Business
Analysts and also IT Leadership roles such as Programme Managers, IT Managers and CIO’s.

Interestingly, we see similar patterns across all interviews that mark out a good or exceptional
candidate. As an employer, looking to find the right appointment, there is an ever-increasing list of
attributes to consider.

Will their personality fit? How geographically mobile are they? Do they have the right experience?
And, most importantly, can they deliver?

At Access Talent, we have a consistent approach to the interview process; a telephone interview
usually followed by a video call and then a face to face with a Peer Profiler, and it works.

We are good at selecting candidates who can do the role. We also look at how personalities will fit
into new organisations, getting a good match normally extends tenure in any role for a much longer
period of time.

Is this the success of the process? Well in part yes, but as we know the process is only part of any
solution. Wat makes us different and, in my opinion is a major factor in our success, is that we Peer
Profile.

We ensure that the person interviewing the candidate is undertaking the same role as the
interviewee. So, an Infrastructure Project Manager (PM) will be profile by an Infrastructure Project
Manager, a Business Analyst by a Business Analyst etc.

Why is that important? Many interviewers are swept away by candidates who spend an hour talking
about all the exciting things they did at their last organisation. In our IT space things like, “we moved
our data centre and 3000 employees over a 1-month period” or “we implemented a revolutionary
Wi-Fi solution.”

All very commendable but, what that interviewer is listening to is a shopping list of projects that
their employers undertook. Ask yourself, for any Project that your current organisation has
undertaken, that you had some insight into – could you speak confidently about the project and
what it involved for 3 or 4 minutes in an interview?

But that’s not what we need to know. We need to know what the interviewee did on a day to day
basis. The only way you will really find that out is to ensure that someone on the interview team has,
so to speak ‘seen it, done it and got the t-shirt’, so they can delve and probe to establish how strong
a PM the candidate really is.

That is where Peer Profiling is essential. Peers can analyse answers real time and ask appropriate
supplementary questions that really allow us to get a feel for the candidate, what they have actually
done and how they go about it.

By Peer Profiling and interviewing, we ensure the best quality applicants are put forward for
positions and we ensure the best possible fit.

Straight Talk on IT Project Recruitment

Chapter Four – Interview Techniques

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for the love of it.”– Henry David
Thoreau, Life without Principle

“Hire on Attitude. Not just experience and qualifications.” - Greg Savage

Could off beat questions be beating off potential talent?

“If you woke up and had 2,000 unread emails and could
only answer 300 of them how would you choose which
ones to answer?”

As a candidate how cold does your blood run when
you're asked a question like that in an interview?

The above question reportedly comes from Dropbox
and it may come as no surprise that when
Glassdoor.com ranked the 25 oddest brain-teaser type
questions and 16 of them came from the tech
companies - that's 64%!

So, do they work? Do they predict anything?

I don't think they do.

Of course, for many years, Google was one of the tech companies you would most commonly
associate with such quirky interview questions (you will have seen the film, "The Internship"!)
However, it seems that even Google have abandoned them. Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President for
People Operations at Google told the New York Times, "We found that brainteasers are a complete
waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in
Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make
the interviewer feel smart."

Jenna Wandres, a Google spokeswoman told ABC, "We have shifted away from these types of
questions because candidates hate them, answers leak easily and, most importantly, research on the
connection between being able to correctly 'solve' a brainteaser and future job performance and/or
IQ is questionable and inconsistent."

Indeed, so why are so many recruiters still using them?

One IT Project Manager I know, with many years’ experience, was asked how he'd unload a double
decker-bus loaded with Jaffa Cakes. He said he wouldn't and that furthermore he wouldn't want to
work for a company so lacking in strategic direction that it wasted time loading public transport with
confectionary. He walked out but would have been perfect for the gig. He now works elsewhere for
a company that asked him to boast about his achievements and talk about how his experiences to
date would benefit the role for which he was applying.

Indeed, this line of behavioural questioning is now apparently favoured by Google. Questions that
begin 'Give me an example of when...' offer much more contextual evidence of capability and
provide an insight into how your prospective candidate has operated in situations similar to those
that will actually occur during their employment with you.

Again, speaking to The New York Times, Google's Laszlo Bock said, "When you ask somebody to
speak to their own experience, and you drill into that, you get two kinds of information. One is you
get to see how they actually interacted in a real-world situation, and the valuable “meta”
information you get about the candidate is a sense of what they consider to be difficult."

It isn't just the headline grabbing quirky questions that are turning candidates away. Often really
intelligent technical questions that are just not suited to the position or the level of experience of
the candidate can be just as annoying. In his LinkedIn blog "Rejections of Smart People: Insane Hiring
Practices", Varun Batra talks of an experienced candidate who was asked to write algorithms on a
white board - fine for an applicant fresh out of University but highly patronising to someone with
more than a few years under their belt.

The real danger for organisations is that you could actually be turning away future candidates from
applying (not just turning off the one sat in front of you). Word spreads. Just look at the feedback
Glassdoor.com gets about these types of questions or watch "The Internship" or read a copy of
William Poundstone's book, "Are you Smart Enough to Work at Google?"

Act in a disrespectful or churlish manner in regard to hiring talent and they will tell their peers about
it.

To be honest, the only way that you're going to attract and recruit intelligent, task focussed,
experienced talent to your organisation is by acting that way yourself and unless you're in the
business of extracting Jaffa Cakes from Routemasters, avoid questionable questions.

Treat candidates with respect and they will respect your vacancy.

Sources:

www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-
bigdeal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1

www.glassdoor.com/Top-25-Oddball-Interview-Questions-2014-LST_KQ0,39.htm

www.glassdoor.com/Interview/If-you-woke-up-and-had-2-000-unread-emails-and-could-
onlyanswer-300-of-them-how-would-you-choose-which-ones-to-answer-QTN_782802.htm

https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2013/06/google-skips-waste-of-time-brainteaser-interview-
questions/

www.linkedin.com/pulse/rejections-smart-people-insane-hiring-practices-varun-batra?trk=hp-
feedarticle-title-channel-add

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/google-hiring-based-brain-teaser-questions/story?id=17314301

Hiring IT talent. Why cultural fit matters and how to achieve it

Every year, it seems that hiring and retaining the best
talent gets harder. Especially in IT and IT Project
Management where that talent now has infinitely more
opportunities than ever before.

I feel your pain. Say you're an IT firm and you have a
best in class Project Manager, time was that you'd
perhaps look over your shoulder at the IT business
across town in case they tried to poach her. It's
different now. Almost every business is reliant on IT so
your PM could get a tempting approach from any
number of diverse businesses. So how do you recruit
and retain the best?
The best answer to this question over and over is ...
cultural fit.

It must more than a decade ago now since I read a fascinating report called "Consequences of
Individuals' Fit At Work". Iowa University's Department of Management looked into the effects of
cultural fit between people and their job, their organisation, their group and their supervisor, and
the conclusions were emphatic.

An employee who fits culturally well within all these relationships was not only more likely to remain
with their organisation but also performed better in the job.

As I say, this report is over a decade old (2005 from memory, I'll share a link at the end) yet many
businesses still panic hire to fill key roles within their organisations, adopting a hire and hope
approach.

I understand why strategic key roles are called that for a reason ... a business without someone in
these positions for a protracted period of time will suffer commercial consequences. The question
you have to ask is will the consequences be greater than having the wrong person in the position.

Let's say you're an airline. What are the consequences of not having a pilot this weekend? Flight
cancellations, some disgruntled passengers, perhaps a short term reputational hit ... now, what are
the consequences of putting the wrong person in the cockpit? I mean, Steve in sales is pretty good
on the flight simulator on his X-box and he's seen Snakes On A Plane ... twice. What could go wrong?

Point is, you wouldn't be in a hurry to fill a role with a candidate with the wrong skills so why rush to
hire someone who doesn't fit your firm's culture?

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) puts some numbers on this, believing that
failure to retain talent due to poor cultural alignment can cost you between 50-60% of that person’s
annual salary.

It's more than this though. Bad hires impact morale, productivity and your capability to offer
effective client solutions – the reason you’re in business.

Almost half of businesses (41%) report they’ve made at least one bad hire in the past year. Almost
half! It gets worse! 95% of hirers admit they make bad hiring decisions every year and 82% of
managers admit that there were clues during the interview and hiring process that should have
flagged up problems ahead.

When you drill down on these red flags, most of them (if not all) involve a lack of cultural alignment
between the organisation and the candidate.

So, what should you do?
Well, these five ideas are a start.

1 - Know your culture. Sounds obvious but it's surprising how many blank faces meet the question,
"What is your culture?". You should have a visceral understanding of what your organisation's
culture is. If you're struggling to identify yours getting a specialist recruiter or consultant with
experience in this area can be hugely helpful.

2 - When using a recruitment partner, choose one who understands the importance of and
encourages cultural fit. Your partner must take time to understand your culture and what kind of
person will fit and, perhaps more importantly, those that will not.

3 - Ask candidates, "What kind of culture do you best perform in?” It's amazing how revealing this
simple question can be! Does the answer they give fit your organisational culture?

4 - Get candidates to share an experience of when they felt that they weren't a good cultural fit with
the business they worked for. Again, very simple but illuminating inset into the mind of the person
you’re interviewing. If they describe your culture - thank them for coming in!

5 - Ask applicants to describe your culture. I believe that candidates' exposure to your culture begins
before the hire .. it starts at least with your job ad and perhaps even earlier than that with your
employer brand perception. Asking your potential hire to verbalise their understanding of your
culture is powerful because they will most likely pick out the parts with they feel they are a match.
(It also gives you a valuable perspective on your cultural footprint!)

These are just five things that you can do.

Increasingly, it's becoming important that you do something, especially in IT roles. In most firms, IT
roles are among the most strategically important.

Everyone benefits when talent has a connection with your organisation that goes beyond a
transactional exchange of salary and services. They perform better, they stay with you longer and
nothing cements an organisational culture more than when it runs through the DNA of all its
contributors.

Sources

https://www.mightyrecruiter.com/wp-content/mwr-measuring-the-impact-of-a-bad-
hire.pdf?x41199

http://nreilly.asp.radford.edu/kristof-brown%20et%20al.pdfthis

Seven lessons that IT recruitment can, like, learn from love island

So, at the time of writing, I was watching Love Island
and, like, apart from noticing, like, how many times the
contestants, like, say, "like" in every sentence, it
dawned on me how much IT Recruitment can learn
from it. Run with me!

1 - Don't Be Fooled by The Spray Tan!

I wonder how long the contestants spent in the local
tanning booth before jetting off to join Caroline Flack?
Pretty superficial but it's amazing how many Love Island
contestants seem to be seduced by bronzed skin or a
flash of impossibly white teeth. Similarly, I'm often
surprised how, otherwise savvy, hirers can be seduced
by a flashy CV.

Style over substance is regularly the cause of a bad hire. One of my clients tells the story of a
candidate who proudly boasted of leading a set of impressively complex IT projects - the back story
of the perfect hire, except a little fact check revealed that on the five of the six the candidate was
not the leader and the one that he did lead was considered a failure in terms of budget and
delivered business value.

Double checking what they tell you (or having someone peer profile candidates) pays off big time!

2 - You're Not the Only One They're Eyeing Up?

On Love Island, one minute the girl he's talking to is the most beautiful thing he's ever laid eyes on,
the next he's snogging someone else.

In a candidate driven IT talent market, your ideal candidate has more than likely caught the gaze of
other suitors too. You HAVE to sell yourself as a great place to work and target your message in such
a way that it is almost tailored to lure the interest of your perfect next hire.

3 - The Language Barrier

I heard a Love Island contestant say that they'd been pied off by one of the others. Now I'm pretty
'street-wise' but even I, just for a second thought, "Oooh I wonder what flavour, hope it was steak
and ale”. Turns out that it means being blatantly blanked! Similarly, when a contestant is referred to
a being a 'grafter' or 'grafting' - don't imagine them up at 4.30am to run a market stall or do a shift
down the coal mine!

The language barrier can prevent you attracting the right candidate, especially now that almost
every firm is, at its operational core, an IT business. You and your candidate have to talk the same
language - so you have to be fluent in, for example, their project management jargon, they don't
have to be fluent in yours! This can be quite a shift in perception, until recently it was expected that
a candidate would do their homework about your business in order to impress you, increasingly it is

you that has to impress them with an understanding of how their specialism can deliver for your
business.

'Talking the talk' has never been more important so subject matter expertise can give you a real
competitive edge. If you don't have this, get a specialist partner who will deliver it.

4 - It's Everywhere

You couldn't move for publicity about this show. The production company and ITV2's publicity
machine has triumphed here - everywhere a potential viewer might be hanging out they have been
exposed to Love Island hype. This time though the word has spread further before a previous series
started social media would be buzzing and the red top newspapers and youth-targeted radio station
would be full of it. This time, BBC Breakfast news ran a Love Island preview, I even heard Radio 4's
‘World At One’ do a feature on it. This is great P.R. and we can learn from this.

Your talent search has to reach the places where your ideal candidate will see it. Thinking beyond
the traditional job boards or industry situations vacant columns, you have to penetrate the places
your perfect next hire is hanging out. If you don't know where that is then you should seek a
specialist recruitment partner who does.

Tell you what, that Radio 4 feature didn’t half stand out from all the news about Trump and Brexit -
it really grabbed my attention. Make sure your recruitment material is equally noticeable!

5 - Know What You Want - But Don't Be Blinkered or Limited By It.

I recall a few series back this chap had come to Love Island knowing exactly what he wanted and the
perfect girl, based on his criteria, was waiting for him in a bikini. He found love but with another girl
who 'wouldn't normally be his type'.

In IT Project recruitment, clarity on what 'your type' is and who you're looking for is crucial. You're
looking for the right skill-set but also you want a cultural fit with your business for the perfect match.
Having said that, being on the look-out or bonus talents can really give you a head start on your
competitors, a specialist recruitment partner (who first gets to really know YOU) can help spot these
as they are often hidden in the midst of a CV like an 'Easter Egg' hidden in a DVD or computer game.

A pretty good example of this is an IT Project Manager who landed a gig with a rail operator a couple
of years back because, in his hobbies and interests section, he had rather timidly included two words
- 'rail enthusiast'. There were six or seven candidates, who on paper met the criteria of the hirer, but
those two words elevated this CV - after all who will deliver IT infrastructure better for a rail
company than someone who REALLY loves trains?!

6 - Partner for Life Or Some Fun In The Sun?

"I'm looking for love", in one form or another has to be one of the most questionable things that
Love Island contestants say. Most are looking for some fun or a springboard to a media career. Kem
and Amber, Gabby and Marcel, Montana and Alex all hit it off last year but have since gone their
separate ways. Dom and Jess, on the other hand, got engaged and seem the real deal. Some
contestants are looking for love - others a fling - and both are OK. Just be honest!

Honesty around whether you're looking for long-term commitment or short-term deliverables is also
useful in IT recruitment. If you have one really complex and interesting IT Project to deliver and then,
after that, it's all 'keeping the lights on' you should approach IT recruitment differently than if you
have a never-ending portfolio of roller coaster ride IT. Your specialist IT recruitment partner can help
you find the right talent for your needs.

7 - At the End Of The Day - It's Meant To Be Fun!

Some people take Love Island way too seriously. Have you seen the viral video of the Love Island
girls debating Brexit? And some of the online comments? Come on - give them a break! They're
young people living their best lives.

Ultimately, IT recruitment has to lead to talent working in a place where it's a joy getting out of bed
to go each day and where it's a pleasure to stay late! You spend a lot of time at work - it should be
rewarding in more than a financial sense, otherwise what's the point?

So, who knew, Love Island is, like, a lot like IT recruitment. At the beginning, the other person is
almost too good to be true, clever, charming and interested; the trick is making things last beyond
the "honeymoon period". Or, in Love Island terms, avoiding getting mugged off when you're both
back to drizzly reality!

Why you should ask your talent 'where would you want to work after here?'

"If you get the gig, where would you want to work after
here?"

As a recruitment specialist, my ears pricked up.

I heard this conversation in a coffee bar this week.
Actually, I was already pretty fascinated because the
conversation was a job interview between a radio
presenter and a radio station boss and it's not every day
that you get to eavesdrop upon such a chat.

The presenter was coy, saying the kind of things that
she probably thought the boss wanted to hear about
long term commitment, but the boss pressed on and
eventually she revealed a dream to work for Radio 1.

"Great," said the boss, "if you come to work with us, we'll work every day honing your act so that
you're good enough to work for Radio 1."

Coaching talent to be more able to get their next job ... what an interesting approach to recruitment.
As the manager gathered his coat afterwards, I asked him about it.

"It gives me a sense that I'm hiring someone who is on their way up the career ladder," he told me,
adding, "and it gives us a working quality benchmark that is aspirational and not naggy. You get
more out of your talent if they believe that you're on their side beyond this job and not just coaching
them to deliver what the station needs."

It's a thought, isn't it? A talent partnership.

Could you start a recruitment interview in this way? Would it even work for IT Recruitment?

It reminded me of the book 'The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age' by LinkedIn
founder Reid Hoffman in which he explores how the employer/employee relationship has changed.
Managers can’t offer lifetime employment but still need to build something that will last. The
challenge is doing that when you are actively encouraging talent to behave like free agents.

The solution that Hoffman and his co-authors Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh came up with was to
embrace the reality. Stop trying to create a family atmosphere for employees where if your face fits,
you're locked in forever but don't think of them as free agents either. Start thinking of talent as allies
on a 'tour of duty' with your mission.

It's an alliance that is held together by mutual benefits. As an employer you invest in your talent with
a monthly deposit in their bank account, you maybe give them future opportunities with your
organisation (without a promise of a 'job for life') but more than that you mentor them (you make
them 'next job ready') - you invest in their market value!

In return, they invest in your organisation's success by providing their talent, creativity, energy and
experience for the duration of the alliance. Then, at the end of the 'tour of duty,' you meet up to re-
evaluate the relationship and agree upon what happens next.

The radio manager in the coffee shop seemed to feel liberated by embracing the reality that his
talent will eventually leave. Indeed, in the book 'The Alliance' it is encouraged that you actually have
conversations with your employees about what their dream job would be and then explore how to
align day to day activities so that both you and they are sticking to a chosen path.

If you think about it from the talent's point of view it makes sense.

A career is more than a job, especially these days where contracts can last just a day. They want
success and the feeling that they are advancing on a daily basis and if you can't give them a
guarantee of long-term work then you'll have to come up with something else to keep them
engaged and get a maximum return on your investment.

There is a tangible pressure on IT staff to be ready for their next job but the last thing that your IT
Project portfolio needs is talent working for you but with half their attention diverted by this
unknown future. A Gallup poll in the US found that 70% of workers were not engaged in their work,
if this is true of IT teams it is perhaps not a surprise that so many projects struggle.

However, when you have the conversation when you agree to align their time with you with their
career hopes and dreams, you'll find that they relax and engage. They seek out ways to gather
career-advancing skills whilst on the job and that benefits them in the long term and you right now.
It's transformational - your talent grows their portfolio of skills and experience and your business is
transformed by the accomplishment of specific missions.

In many ways, it's like taking the agile project management methodology, where you adapt on a
continual basis to achieve a specific well-defined goal and applying it to IT recruitment. The
important thing from your point of view as the hirer is how ready you are to adapt. You need to have
a continuous rolling recruitment strategy or get a recruitment partner who will get to know your
culture, missions and ambitions and keep a constant eye on the talent market so you're ready should
your best talent find something new.

Embracing the fact that talent moves on doesn't make it happen any quicker, though.

Paradoxically, Reid Hoffman says on his website, "Acknowledging that your employees might leave,
is how you build the relationship that convinces great people to stay." The tour of duty approach or
entering into a partnership with your talent builds trust incrementally as you commit to shorter
steps which are based on deliverable, specific promises.

The radio station manager committed to making his presenter good enough for a major national
station. In return, he gets a major national station mindset working on his brand. By helping your
talent improve to the level of their greatest aspirations you'll end up with world class talent working
on yours.

Sources:

The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age - Reid Hoffman
http://reidhoffman.org/alliance-visual-summary/

Why you should reply to 100% of candidates

According to a CareerBuilder survey of more than 3900
workers, 75% said that they had applied for jobs and
then not heard anything back.

Inconsiderate, unethical, unprofessional, disreputable,
unprincipled - candidates react using different
adjectives but the feeling is the same and no wonder -
more than 8 out of ten candidates EXPECT to hear back
from a company when they apply for a job regardless of
whether the employer is interested in them or not.

I just think it's potentially costly to you in the future.

There are reasons why it happens, let's crunch some
numbers.

According to an article in Wall Street Journal, about 80% of available jobs are said to never even get
advertised - they're either allocated in-house or through trusted recruitment agencies and partners
who recommend and supply talent, often without the need to advertise (by the way using such a
service can make sense both for employers and candidates!)

Of the 1 in 5 vacancies that do make it to the job boards (if you accept the WSJ article’s claim), the
average number of people who apply for any given position is 118 and just twenty-percent of those
applicants get an interview.

The numbers will vary but you can see how small a part of the overall recruitment process an
individual application actually is but come on that's no excuse for not responding.

In fact, things don't get much better for candidates progressing to the interview stage. Having gone
to the time and effort of attending a face to face meeting, 6 out of 10 applicants say that THEY never
heard from the employer again.

Applicants have to shoulder some responsibility, internet job seekers have adopted a 'more scope
more hope' approach to their searches, sending applications for positions to which they are not
suited in the hope that someone may spot their potential and take a chance on them. Of course, the
reality is that increasingly firms are using applicant tracking systems to weed out unsuitable
candidates and ATS systems can't spot hidden potential.

By the way, a word of caution when using such systems. One large firm disguised the CVs of their top
five engineers and fed them through their own ATS screening process - it rejected two of the five.
With that in mind it's easy to imagine how much suitable talent is getting screened out by inefficient
ATS processes and if they're then not even hearing anything from you by way of feedback you can
probably also imagine the damage that could be being done to your reputation within your target
employee market.

In fact, a survey from StartWire spells it out;

More than three quarters (77%) think less of companies that don’t respond to job applications and
58% may actually even be put off buying your products or services if they don’t ever hear from you.
These applicants WILL go on to find work in your industry, perhaps even with a company that
outsources to service providers like yours. How quickly do you think they'll respond to your sales
approach if you couldn't be bothered to respond to theirs?

Of course, candidates should cut companies some slack. HR departments have fewer staff after the
economic downturn and they are processing more candidates. Furthermore, recruitment can be a
long process – companies often set a target to recruit after a process with a set timescale. Let’s say
it’s eight weeks, how soon should an applicant expect a response if they applied on the first day it
was advertised? Realistically, they should not expect to hear anything for at least two months, but
their paradigm is different from yours. Recruitment is fairly low on the list of key priorities for many
busy employers – who are in business to service their clients. The business of actually doing business
often bumps recruitment down the list - but again neither of these are really valid reasons for a total
lack of response.

In this day and age, it's probably as easy to respond to every applicant as it is not to – and it's worth
it to avoid damaging your brand and reputation.

Candidates never seem to take to social media to praise fair treatment received after they apply for
a job but if you treat them badly or ignore them altogether their Twitter followers soon hear about
it. Chances are that your sector has shrunk in recent years and the internet and social media have
made it easier for professionals to connect. Like a village, bad news travels fast in these
communities. If you fail to respond to Doug's application this time, Helena may be put off applying
for your next opening for which she would be perfect.

If you interviewed the perfect talent and they chose your competitor you'd do some serious navel
gazing, so how is putting them off applying in the first place any different? It isn't.

Companies that get a reputation for application feedback vacuums and communication black holes
DO miss out on potential star performers - 96% of job seekers say they are more likely to apply for a
job if they know they will regularly get status and progress updates on their application. 96%! That's
why you should reply to 100%!

Consider this when you advertise your next position - your behaviour today could influence your
hiring power exponentially in the future. Reply to every applicant - or get a talent recruitment
partner who will.

Sources:

www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2014/02/12/10-things-to-do-when-you-dont-hear-backafter-
a-job-interview/

www.startwire.com/blog/15678506805-2

www.quintcareers.com/applicant_tracking_systems_report.html

www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323869604578368733437346820

Straight Talk on IT Project Recruitment

Chapter Five – Technology & Social Media

"People are not your most important asset. The right people are." - Jim Collins
'Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.” - Joyce Brothers

8 out of ten candidates are beating the cv algorithms. Is there a better way to
access IT talent?

Over eight in 10 job seekers (81%) have tailored their
CVs for algorithmic screening - or they plan to.

This data backs up an anecdotal observation from a
prospective client this week who said that two things
were happening when they recruited. Firstly, CVs of
unsuitable candidates were getting through quality
filters that had previously been successful at creating
good shortlists and, secondly, perfect potential hires
were perhaps not getting seen by human eyes because
they hadn't been efficient at peppering their CV with
the right keywords.

The latter was uncovered when a candidate called to
ask for feedback on their application having received a
standard rejection email. They told the HR director that they felt like no-one had bothered reading
their CV - which of course was true! This particular CV had been zapped by what many of my HR
friends call a "Resume Robot". During the conversation it became increasingly clear that the
candidate might be worth getting in to interview and, to cut a long story short, they eventually got
hired. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) sometimes get it wrong, who knew?

The first, the CVs of unsuitable candidates getting through quality filters, is down to unsuccessful
candidates learning to play the game. A Google search of "how to beat resume algorithm" returns
about 847,000 results in half a second. Getting a rejection is pretty dispiriting, getting a rejection
when your CV hasn't even been considered is even more soul destroying. It estimated that around
three-quarters of CVs are binned by the bots, so you can see why candidates are turning to the
internet for help to beat them. This is all well and good but if the practice just means that candidates
get around the robots and then fail at the interview stage then everyone's time is wasted!

One of my friends "snook into" a webinar on the subject last year that taught candidates to write
CVs in an ATS-friendly way. The advice was consistent with what you'll find in those Google searches
… know what keywords to include, be clear what relevant skills and experience you have, get your
CV format right, use industry standard job titles rather than quirky ones that might be specific to
your previous employer. In other words, it's Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but for CVs.

The research highlighted at the start was carried out Hays who surveyed 6,000 people and
discovered that 27% had already adapted their CV or online profiles to get past the algorithms,
meanwhile, 54% said that they plan to do so in the coming months.

So, as a hirer, what are you going to do about it? It's like a game of chess and it's your move.

The first thing you need to do is reframe the problem.

The prospective client came to us looking for ways to bolster their CV tracking processes, but we
challenged them to ask, "what would doing this achieve?" I mean, if we were to create the perfect
version of an ATS and it did its job what would that mean for the company making the hire?

This is the top five from the list …

1 - Better shortlists of A-list candidates.

2 - Faster searches and shorter recruitment processes.

3 - Greater competency matches (i.e. candidates fit for the job advertised)

4 - Better cultural match - the candidate fits in with the firm.

5 - Candidates who match the specific role needs of the hiring company (i.e. a Project Manager can
mean slightly different things from firm to firm)

There were more criteria and after we'd listed them all the prospective client said that they had
been looking for an algorithmic system that would deliver all this for IT and IT Project hires for about
two years and did we, as a specialist IT recruiter, know where they should look?

I told them that they were trying to solve the wrong problem!

They had got themselves so hooked on an ATS style delivery of candidates because it had worked in
the past, that they were almost blind to what they actually needed. We reframed their problem
away from "how do we find an Applicant Tracking System that gives us better shortlists etc" to "how
do we get better shortlists etc". When they stopped looking for a specific solution and started
focussing in their needs - suddenly the solution space opened up.

For instance, we talked about proper role research. We put real effort into finding out exactly what
you need by getting to know the role and your company culture – then we either match your needs
with our existing database of candidates or go out to market on your behalf to source the best
people. We write bespoke adverts focused on candidate attraction to match your business or
company culture, selling your business as a great place to work.

We talked about how to get just top-notch CVs. We meet every single candidate before we agree to
represent them, to make sure we get to know them as people first. Then we do the deep dive into
their experience and formal qualifications. By peer profiling every candidate before we put them in
front of you, we can ensure that we keep things simple for you by being extremely selective.

Competency matching starts with candidates profiled by subject matter experts, people who
performed the IT project role you are looking to fill. It goes beyond this though, with efficient
competency profiling, our assessment process is unusually robust, where carry out a competency
profile on each candidate. This tells you much more than you’d typically know, including how well
they will fit into your company and how you can get the best out of them.

So, while there are 847,000 results from a search how to beat the algorithms, there is one clear next
move for recruiters - reframe your thinking, open up your solution space beyond previously tried
techniques and find a smarter way to Access Talent.

Is 'tinder for recruitment' the best way to access IT talent?

In today's candidate led IT recruitment market, hiring
can be more expensive and time-consuming than ever.
It is, therefore, in your best interests to balance the
recruiting reality in your favour by optimising your
practices so that they deliver not just great talent but a
real chance of retaining that talent once hired.

There is a fairly interesting statistic that has been doing
the rounds over the past year or so. It comes from
Glassdoor, whose US site claims that 89% of its users
are either actively looking for jobs or would consider a
better opportunity. Given what Glassdoor is and does,
that is maybe not a huge surprise. It's like saying the
majority of people on Tinder are looking for a new
partner or the majority of people in Asda are likely to

purchase groceries sometime soon.

What is interesting, when you unpick that statement, is the suggestion that people who are not
actively seeking a new gig are still using a site that is effectively an employer/employee
matchmaking service. A bit like finding your other half is still swiping away on Tinder! Indeed, almost
six out of ten users of the service are ACTUALLY employed, either full-time or part-time already.

Asking around, the average cost of filling a vacancy is between three and three and a half thousand
pounds and takes around 45 to 50 days to do. The reality of the candidate led recruitment landscape
of today is that investing all that time and money in finding someone does not guarantee loyalty
from them. Just look at the recruitment site's stats above - no sooner have you moved them in and
worked out how they take their tea than they start looking for their next move.

My friend's business recently spent just over £3000 on a Kyocera printer and photocopier and
roughly the same recruiting a new IT Project Manager. She jokes that the photocopier will still work
in her office long after the PM has shuffled off elsewhere. Despite the joke, you can tell that it's no
laughing matter.

So, what's the answer?

It's you. You are the difference.

You can complain about spending thousands recruiting, for example, an IT Technical Services
Manager only to have them leave making you start all over again. Many hiring organisations do have
a moan about this when I first talk with them. You should hear the language that they use, I've heard
talk of a "fickle workforce", a "volatile marketplace" or "capricious, ungrateful employees" and yet
one of my friends just clocked up 15 years’ service with the same employer. Hardly fickle, volatile or
capricious. The truth is, he and his employer just hit it off. They are well suited to one another. So
why do so few "new hires" clock up such long service?

To find out why it's useful to return to Tinder, I mean not literally, I don't want to be cited in your
divorce petition.

How does Tinder match make? It's fairly one dimensional. If someone takes your fancy, you swipe
right to 'like' them or if they don't you swipe left to 'pass'. If they've also 'liked' you – you're in and
you can start messaging. Based on what? Your mutual love of classical music or the architecture of
Watson Fothergill? No, of course not. It's based on your reaction to a carefully selected, filtered and
possibly airbrushed photograph. Hardly any wonder that so many users stay on the site after they
find a partner on Tinder - when you meet up and spend some time together the chances of finding
that you have nothing in common are quite high.

Recruiting through an online jobs matchmaker can be like that. Sure, you get paired based on more
than just a photograph but keywords appearing in both a list of employer requirements and an
employee’s CV are no guarantee of a match made in heaven. You spend the biggest part of your
waking hours at work and when employees and employers are not a cultural fit for one another it
soon starts to show. Is it, therefore, any wonder that so many keep their online recruitment profile
active?

Maybe that's the problem. Perhaps Tinder and its recruitment equivalents are not the best place to
find lasting matches. Some get lucky. More often though its back to the drawing board for all
concerned. Another three grand down the drain.

Some recruiters have responded to this new candidate led reality and recruit based on cultural fit. In
other words, they get to know you and how you go about your business. They work out what makes
you unique and what makes your firm a great place to work. Simultaneously, they have a growing
database of active and passive candidates and know which would be a perfect fit for you - speeding
up the process and lowering the risk and overall cost of a hire. The best ones are so confident that
they share the risk of recruitment with you, which can even mean spreading payments over the
initial months of the candidate’s employment and if during that time the candidate leaves, the
payments stop.

Ultimately, in most human interactions, from love to IT recruitment, the matches that last are those
cemented by common values and shared perspectives. Keywords and swiping right, however much
fun they may be, are perhaps not be the best way to ensure this.

Source:

https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/employers/popular-topics/hr-stats.htm

Could LinkedIn's most promising jobs of 2017 be your biggest IT talent
headache?

In a recent blog post for Stoneseed, I brought our
attention to a recent bit of number crunching carried
out by LinkedIn which, at first glance, looks like good
news for IT Project Managers and IT Specialists. BUT is it
good news for those that employ them?

(At the time of writing) LinkedIn recently listed the top
ten Most Promising Jobs of 2017 and it turns out the
Project Manager's and IT Specialist's skill set is a perfect
fit for many of the leading roles. Technical Program
Managers, Data Engineers and Architect, Analytics
Managers, Software Engineers and Scrum Masters all
score high based on the data sets crunched by the
networking platform.

A Scrum Master, for instance, is currently benefitting from a 104% hike in job openings and "Career
Advancement Score" of eight out of ten! So great news if your CV lists skills including Agile, SQL,
Software Project Management, Scrum and Analysis.

Not so great if your business depends upon such a person. If this is the case, then chances are it's
going to cost you. They want greater career potential and there are more opportunities 'out there'
than ever before.

So, I came up with a brilliant retention idea - always having a better offer up your sleeve ready for
when your competition tries to poach your talent. Your best defence is readiness.

In his post on the survey, LinkedIn's Daniel Shapero writes, "Job hopping has nearly doubled in the
last 20 years, and is only accelerating. Based on our research, we know that the top reasons people
change jobs is to pursue a stronger career path, make more money or access more opportunities
within their organization."

There it is in a nutshell. Look after your IT talent or they'll be off, sometimes even in spite of that
improved offer you have up your sleeve. It's at this point that you really have to be ready.

TOP TIP: Either developing a working knowledge of what's available on tap in the "as a Service"
market applicable to your IT needs or getting a partner who can advise on best in class solutions will
help with short term gaps that open up when talent leaves.

Beyond this temporary fix though you need to be ready to replace your departing talent with 'like for
like' or better. That can be trickier than it sounds.

The job market has changed radically during that 20 years that saw a doubling of job hopping. It's
now much more candidate led and if you're not in the right place at the right time you could be
missing out on the best talent.

Much of the best potential talent isn't hitting up traditional job boards like they used to - they just
don't have to. The best jobs either come looking for them or, when they do become active job
seekers, specialist IT talent is looking to specialist IT recruiters to connect them with opportunities
culturally aligned with their character and method of working.

I guess you either have a fully staffed team or you don't and whichever column you fall into will
influence how much this is on your radar. To ensure that you hit the ground running when 'job
hopping' becomes an issue for your business it will pay you back later to develop a relationship with
a specialist IT recruitment partner now - regardless of whether your head count is at.

Specialist recruiters worth their salt get to know you and your business and the best candidates (bot
active and passive) so that they can culture match and lower the risk of a bad hire. A risk that some
of the best will even share with you giving you real peace of mind. All of this can really make a
difference when talent changeover is forced upon you.

IT reliant industries like healthcare, finance, insurance, the utilities, IT services and manufacturing
are already reporting problems finding suitable talent and traditional 'IT workers' are finding their
skills are transferable across industry sectors giving them scope to advance like never before. Which
is great news for them but could be a potential headache for you.

The best way to deal with a headache is to always have the cure, in your first aid box, ready to use.

Sources:

https://blog.linkedin.com/2017/january/20/linkedin-data-reveals-the-most-promising-jobs-of-
2017?trk=li_corpblog_namer_careers_bestjobs_content&utm_campaign=bestjobs&utm_source=em
ail&utm_content=content

https://www.stoneseed.co.uk/stoneseed-blog/344-it-project-manager-is-someone-else-s-perfect-fit-
what-s-your-plan

How Google’s approach to IT talent promotion could be laszlo bock’s greatest
gift to you

Google's senior vice-president of people Laszlo
Bock wrote a LinkedIn post that really got noticed
in the social media world of IT recruitment.

Bock shared his five steps for getting a promotion.
It's aimed at employees but I've been considering
what impact it could have on employers.

Whilst acknowledging that "no algorithm or
checklist for advancing your career" exists, it is an
interesting read for promotion seekers and
ambitious talent but what could it mean for
employers?

Firstly, the five pillars of Laszlo Bock's advice are:-

1 - Get feedback all the time.

Summary: Talent is encouraged to ask the person who awards promotions, what it takes to
get one! Then do exactly that.

2 - Solve your boss’ problems.

Summary: Talent should work out what their bosses' greatest problems are and then solve
them. Bock tells the story of how his influence increased and his more esoteric ideas were
given more attention after he set about first solving the most pressing problems faced by
Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

3 - Think three moves ahead.

Summary: Being more marketable, not just for this promotion but for other opportunities.
"None of us know what jobs we'll have in 5, 10 or 20 years," writes Bock. So talent needs to
learn skills that will make them more marketable not just this promotion, but any future
jobs too. Talent should use their time at your organisation, in their current job, as "training
for the next one".

4 - Ask for the promotion.

Summary: Google asks its people to nominate themselves for promotion and noticed that
women were slower at doing so than men but when they did they had a greater success
rate. "Be sure to raise your hand," says Bock.

5 - Have a firm grasp on reality.

Summary: If there isn't room in your organisation for promotion or your talent is repeatedly
overlooked – they should "Move on".

All of the above is interesting for the individual looking to progress up the career ladder with
your organisation but as an employer, what impact could Laszlo Bock's advice have on your
team?

Well, if they take his wisdom on board, I think it could be quite profound.

Of course, it would be wonderful to have a team of feedback junkies who are working daily
on your most pressing concerns and those of your organisation and it is great to have a
team made up of ambitious, upwardly looking talent, eager to learn extra skills ... but ...

What if they outgrow your offer? What if the only room in your organisation for promotion
is your job - and you're not moving? What if having ‘upskilled’ to impress you they also
impress your biggest competitor and get headhunted away? I think that Laszlo Bock's advice
to employees raises lots of "What ifs" for employers, especially point number five.

"If the only way to get promoted is to take your boss’s job, and she’s not going anywhere,
you need to move on. If you’re consistently being sabotaged and you can’t fix it or fight it,
move on. And if you’re told no three times, even if you know in your heart you deserve a
promotion, cut your losses and move on," writes Bock.

The way that IT talent views itself has shifted and will continue to do so. As it evolves, your
team is probably going to be more and more fluid. It will move away from the same faces
looking at the same screens, day after day, to a less permanent set up where teams of talent
come together to solve a problem or work on a project and then dissolve.

For talent, writes Bock, "Part of success is picking which game you’re playing. In the tech
industry we call this pivoting: if your current plan or company isn’t winning, pivot to a new
one where you can win. Choose to be somewhere where you’ll be valued."

Is your organisation ready to access talent and similarly pivot in this way?

If your talent decides that their career path is limited within your business and they move
on could that leave you with a capability gap that will affect your service offer? Can you
afford a dip in productivity while you recruit?

The benefits of assessing this now and acting upon your conclusions are many fold. By
working with a recruitment partner that pools interviewed candidates and maintains
ongoing contact with them you can benefit from fast response times in the event of one of
these "what ifs". You can mitigate potential capability gaps.

When Google's senior vice-president of people wrote his blog it was aimed at talent.
I think that it throws up some great opportunities to review things from the other side of
the recruitment desk too. The requesting and giving of feedback is always a win/win and
having all your problems solved by keen, super skilled staff can never be a bad thing.
Most important of all, though, future proofing your business against ambitious key staff
moving on could be the greatest unintended gift to you from Laszlo Bock.

Sources:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-surefire-tips-get-promotion-laszlo-bock

How IT is revolutionising IT recruitment. Seven HR analytics that will sharpen
your hiring process!

HR analytics are presenting IT HR managers with
key data not that can REALLY sharpen hiring
effectiveness.

Just anecdotally, IT recruiters in my circle are
benefitting from data that demonstrates where top
performers come from leading to more targeted
future recruitment in those areas, they are
identifying and addressing skills gaps, ensuring that
key talent is in place to deliver forecast growth
ambitions and enjoying better employee
satisfaction and retention levels.

AND it's not just data from in-house HR systems
but also external sources like industry surveys that mean that IT talent hiring can now be
closer aligned to business strategy than ever.

BUT a Google search for "HR analytics" returns over 2.5 million results so which data should
you be mining to gain maximum insight and impact?

Here are SEVEN HR Analytics That Will Sharpen Your Hiring Process!

1 - Capability Analytics

The best companies are built on the best people. Capability Analytics drill down to assess
what skills you need and measure what expertise you already have within your existing
team.

Capability analytics provide a GAP analysis so that when you enter the hiring process you
are laser focussed on finding an exact match for your needs.

2 - Capacity Analytics

Capacity analytics help establish how efficient your people are. For example, are they
working on the right things that will give your business an ROI to shout about, or are they
spending too much time on admin and other necessary but not profitable endeavours?

When you consider that capacity is linked directly to revenue potential, it is surprising that
many firms do not measure it any tangible way.

Capacity Analytics tell you a lot about the people in your business, their potential for growth
and how over stretched key areas are.

3 - Corporate Culture Analytics

Sometimes, the image you have of your corporate culture can vary greatly from the image
that is actually being put 'out there'. The result is that you may not be attracting the talent
to fit what your culture should be and you end up in something of a closed loop.

Each industry, and organisation within it, has a different culture but if your people are living
a different culture or toxic cultures are being developed you need an early warning system

Corporate Culture Analytics ensures that you are recruiting talent that doesn’t clash with
what your corporate culture should be.

For your business or IT Project team to effectively project a particular image, recruitment
must be culturally aligned.

4 - Employee Turnover Analytics

All businesses have staff churn. If you hire and train the best talent, chances are your
competitor will try to poach them.

Employee Turnover Analytics give you an insight into why they leave you and how quickly.
Furthermore, getting a picture of the speed of turnover can help you to slow the rate down.

Talent churn can be measured through KPIs like an employee satisfaction index but regular
staff surveys and employee exit interviews can also provide powerful data.

5 - Competency Acquisition Analytics

Competency acquisition analytics measures how well your business attracts key
competencies. You start by identifying what those key competencies are - what does your
business need now and in the future? You then assess the current existence of the
competencies within your business and identify the gaps.

How good is your company at finding and hiring skilled experts? Competency Acquisition
Analytics opens a window on where you seek out talent and allows you to sharpen your
techniques.

Some organisations find that they have been looking in the wrong place for the staff they
need, and Competency Acquisition Analytics have made them refocus, perhaps with a more
specialist recruiter or with less reliance upon job boards, for example.

6 - Recruitment Analytics

Some companies will bundle this with their competency acquisition analytics, but I think
that separation is useful. Remember your competency acquisition analytics were about
where you search, Recruitment Analytics are more specifically about how and why.

If you rely on copy/pasted job board ads, for example, your pool of talent may be smaller
than using a specialist recruiter who might give you more talent to shortlist from.

Why do you recruit the way you do? Recruitment Analytics can really drill down on the how
and why and also establish whether you actually get the necessary ROI from your
recruitment choices.

7 - Employee Performance Analytics

I think that this may be my favourite because it allows you to design and implement
programmes that nurture talent growth.

Used in tandem with other analytics you can build a picture of who performs well against
your benchmarked expectations and those who don't. Performance Analytics can help
identify what training those 'underperforming' staff need.

Modern employee performance analytics give a clearer view than traditional performance
reviews with data capture methods allowing HR managers to measure performance
holistically and focus less on specific parts of an individual's job. If you've ever had an
employee over concentrate on a key area that came up in a review to the detriment of their
overall performance, you'll see the value in this approach.

HR analytics can bring a multitude of benefits, from better employee engagement and
satisfaction to higher staff retention. With the right data at your fingertips, you can learn
more about the reasons why employees leave and why they stay. You can identify and plug
skills gaps, measure the effectiveness of training initiatives and understand where the best
applicants are coming from and concentrate your efforts in those areas.

The universe of HR analytics is ever expanding. It's encouraging that IT recruitment is
increasingly using them and it's only right - that IT should be deployed to improve IT
recruitment! Whether you choose to create your own or work with a trusted partner on
tried and tested analytics the gains will be worth it.

This list of seven essentials will get you started and the results that you get back will spur
you to explore others.

Happy measuring!

Is Facebook’s new recruitment feature any good for IT?

Is Facebook’s New Recruitment Feature Any Good for
IT?

So Facebook appears to have taken on LinkedIn with its
new job ads feature - but is it any good?

As I write, “Facebook Jobs” has launched in the USA and
Canada but anticipate a global roll out before too long.
As you would expect, Facebook has made it as easy as
possible for both hirers and job seekers to use.

Via your business Facebook page, you will be able to
post and host job ads in much the same that you
currently create status updates. Furthermore,
candidates will then be able to see all vacancies that
your company has (providing you've posted them on Facebook). Thinking about the way Facebook
users like and share content and tag friends that they think may be interested, it's amazing that it
has taken Facebook this long to dip its toes into recruitment. However, given that delay, I’m
surprised it’s not a little more ground-breaking.

What is interesting is the “Apply Now” button. When candidates click it a partly pre-filled form
opens with all the information that you shared with Facebook when you opened your account. So
things like your name, email address, mobile number and any education and employer history from
your profile are already filled out leaving you time to concentrate on the 1,000-character summary
of why you are the best candidate for the gig.

Nice. I guess.

Thing is, though, you want to make it easier for the perfect candidate to apply for your position, not
hundreds of unsuitable ones.

The truth is that both LinkedIn and Facebook will allow you to focus your recruitment to specific job
roles so adverts will be more targeted than some other recruitment tools but when you are hiring
specialist IT talent, like Project managers, you need more. For instance, profiling of applicants by
people with specific Project and Programme expertise will yield better matches. Also, neither
Facebook nor LinkedIn professes to be great at matching candidates and business cultures which
also matters when you are hiring for a role that is key to your business strategy.

I did also have a concern about the size of the Facebook audience. Facebook has 1.86 billion monthly
active users (Q4 2016). Now, if your job ad gets shared in the way that Facebook posts often are
your vacancy may end up in a lot of news feeds. This is great if they're all accounts belonging to
specialists in the field you're recruiting - but what are the chances? More likely you could end up
with a lot of unsuitable applicants hitting that ever so easy to use “Apply Now” button.

This fear has been slightly allayed by early response to the feature.

While the application process is easy, finding a suitable job on the platform may not be because of
the search parameters which are a bit spongy. Beth Lawton, owner of Canoe Media Services told
Forbes she found this frustrating. “It seems like eventually, I’d have to do a lot of scrolling through
irrelevant listings before finding something I'd apply for,” she said adding, “It's certainly not the first
place I'd think to go. I'd start with more traditional job boards, company websites, LinkedIn and, of
course, networking before searching Facebook for a job.”

To be fair, Facebook makes no secret of the fact that, at the moment, it's not seeking to break the
specialist recruitment markets with its new job ads feature but this hasn't stopped recruiters in the
US and Canada having to field questions from clients. One told me that he'd had a client ask him to
justify his firm's charges given that Facebook job ads would cost a fraction - I forwarded him this
quote.

Jonathan Duarte, CEO of GoHire, Inc. told Forbes.com he knows of three companies that recently
posted jobs, spending $100 to increase visibility but only received messages from, at best, three
applicants. “An equivalent spend on another pay-for-click job board, would have resulted in over 100
responses,” he says.

So $100 down the drain in these cases. Whereas the better specialist recruiters offer no-risk cost
models - many not charging if a search yields no suitable candidates and some even extending their
attitude to risk sharing beyond you hiring someone they recommend well into the first year of
employment.

Will Facebook job ads be a threat to LinkedIn or other recruitment channels? Maybe. Will it be a
threat to recruitment businesses? Perhaps, but the more niche or specialist a role is - the less
effective tools like this are.

Businesses will try it. That's what Facebook will be hoping. Most of Facebook’s 1.86 billion users get
it for free and as with if anything that's free - someone is paying somewhere. In Facebook's case, it's
businesses, of the 60 million business pages, something like 4 million actively advertise. Facebook
jobs is a neat piece of low-hanging fruit to be harvested.

The question you have to ask ... as you should with any recruitment partner ... will you get the bang
for your buck?

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaroepe/2017/02/21/facebook-jobs-is-easy-to-use-but-will-it-
replace-linkedin/#180ae13b24fa

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289667

Perfect match. What IT recruitment and online dating can learn from each
other

Perfect Match. What IT Recruitment and Online Dating
Can Learn From Each Other

Two colleagues are using online dating right now and
listening to accounts of their successful and not so
successful adventures I'm coming to the conclusion that
finding a partner this way has a lot in common with IT
recruitment.

Of the two, one is getting inboxes full of responses and
the other ... not so many. In fact, the latter tells me that
they have initiated all communication and even then,
the reply rate is slow. In contrast, the former's message
notification pinged within minutes of completing their
profile - and they NEVER initiate contact.

One of my friends is a woman, the other is a man. Can you guess which is which?

Being a man on a dating website must feel like being a hirer in a candidate driven market. My female
friend, let's call her 'Bridget', gets lots of approaches so can be really picky. She never needs to go
hunting because her prey is right there in her inbox. For IT talent, there is a similar embarrassment
of riches when it comes to opportunities - you don't have to go job hunting - the jobs hunt you.

For male suitors and IT hirers, this presents a challenge ... your message really has to stand out!

Contrarily, my male friend, let's call him 'Darcy', is really having to work for his few dates. He has to
always make the first move - literally, no-one has ever messaged him to say "hi - saw your profile -
let's do dinner". Thinking this through, of course, it stands to reason. All the women are far too busy
sifting through their overloaded inboxes to initiate contact!

And so, it is with our candidate driven IT talent market.

Many old school recruiting techniques are not working. Posting your job ad on a traditional job
board may be as effective as my friend 'Darcy' uploading his photo and profile and then sitting back
and waiting. If all your perfect match candidates have an inbox full of IT opportunities to plough
through, they are less likely to be hitting the job boards or circling ads in the situations vacant
section. It's simple supply and demand.

Just this week, 'Bridget' received two messages like this within minutes of one another. One came
through her dating website and one was alerting her to a job opportunity through LinkedIn. The guy
making contact through the dating app clearly sends the same email content to lots of women and
hopes that something sticks, there was no reference to shared interests or anything in her profile
just a few sentences ‘bigging up’ the suitor. Similarly, the recruitment approach was cold and
uninviting. It said lots about the company and the job but nothing about why they'd contacted
'Bridget' specifically or how she individually and uniquely would be perfect for it. She deleted both.

Generic, copy and pasted, wide-sweeping, blanket approaches don't cut it.

And that's lesson one!

Incidentally, the job message also committed another cardinal sin that's worth a mention. Consider
the following sentence ... "If you or someone you know would be interested let me know when
would be a convenient time to call." Suddenly, this email is even less about you, it's now a kind of
passive aggressive round robin.

I often get these too and I'm left feeling as if the recruiter has thought, "OK, we have this great
opportunity, we need the cream of the crop, we must recruit the best of the best available talent,
we have to find an 'A list' superstar. I know, let's ask Lauren... Lauren ... do you know anyone we
could ask?"

I suppose I'm meant to respond, "Me, me, me! Don't talk to 'someone I know', talk to me!" Instead, I
feel as special as when the boy you fancied at school asks you ... to ask your mate if she would go
out with him.

That's why this approach is never favoured by the dating site suitors. Imagine getting a message that
said, "Hi saw your profile and your picture and wondered if you or someone you know would be up
for a date." It wouldn't work. So, don't do it in recruitment communications!

Be direct, be specific, be respectful of the time being given up by the recipient reading your
message.

The next lesson is worth a whole blog of its own (watch this space for that!)

Sync your message with whatever will best get your recipients' attention.

In dating, Darcy had found that he gets a better reaction when he completely personalises his
approach. He might notice something in the profile picture and mention that ("The Cavalier King
Charles Spaniel you're holding is adorable") or react to something in her bio that demonstrates that
they would be a good match ("I see that you're into water sports - me too!").

It's the same with IT recruitment. When you post meaningful role profiles written by subject matter
experts and write bespoke adverts focussed on candidate attraction to match your business or
company culture, what comes back is measurably better. When you post a generic, copy/paste job
ad or fire off an impersonal, unfocused, untargeted emails ... you get the response you deserve. Talk
the same language as your perfect candidate and you have more chance of attracting them!

The final lesson is ... don't be a pest!

I got this today through LinkedIn, "Hi Lauren. We think you may have missed the great opportunity
we emailed you as we haven't heard back from you ..." OK. I'm flattered that you noticed I hadn't
replied (unless this was an e-mail you sent to everyone on your original list) but ... Oh My Gosh!
How needy are you? How low was the response to the original unsolicited e-mail that you felt the
need to send another?! Actually, the reason I didn't get back was that I'm not interested and I'm
busy!

Similarly, 'Bridget' showed me a mail from a man who was asking if she'd got his original message …
and then she showed me the one where he effectively asks if she got his second message asking if
she'd got his original message.

AND THEN SHE SHOWED ME THE ONE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. And then she showed me the one that
said, and I'm paraphrasing, “Fine. Suit Yourself."

All sent within a fortnight.

'Bridget' had been on holiday and hadn't seen any of them until her return. What a catch!

In IT recruitment, as in dating, pestering potential talent is never the way to make yourself seem
more attractive. TIP ... Having a recruitment partner that maintains contact with a pool of previously
interviewed talent means that you won't have to be a pest!

So, IT Recruitment and online dating have a lot in common, it's probably why Sky News' tech show is
called Swipe! There are lessons that each can learn from the other. Good luck swiping right for your
perfect match, either in matters of the heart or for your IT team.

And look out for my next blog about syncing recruitment messages to ensure that you and your ideal
candidate are on the same wavelength.

If you like David's blogs - he is now a published author - Straight Talk on Project Management - Free
eBook. Why not download your copy today?

The surprise IT talent challenge?

(At the time of writing) Back at the end of 2016, it felt
like I was being bombarded with articles telling me that
the biggest talent challenge of the new year would be
retention.

I read bestmoneymoves.com's "The Top HR Challenge
of 2017? Employee Retention" and Lars Schmidt
Forbes' post 'Why Retention Will Be the Biggest Talent
Challenge Of 2017'.

I digested The American Society of Employers’
'Retention will be Key Challenge in 2017' and
Fortune.com's 'Employee Retention: Employers' Biggest
Concern in 2017'.

I glanced at People Facts' 'Employee Retention: A Leading Challenge For 2017' and devoured CBI
Group's 'Why Retention is Crucial to Your Recruiting Strategy in 2017'.

I remember thinking, "Blimey, we're all gonna have to fit revolving doors."

We're now over half way through 2017 (how did that even happen?!). I wondered whether this has
been the case in IT and IT Project Management - has retention been the biggest challenge?

I contacted a handful of friends and acquaintances in HR - only one told me that retention was even
an issue.

Glad I didn't invest in those revolving doors.

What was really interesting though was the theme that did emerge through most of the
conversations. Most HRs were finding it hard, not to retain specialist people, but to find them in the
first place.

I asked if this was because talent was leaving. Recruitment issues could be a natural consequence of
a retention crisis, maybe all those blogs in December had nailed it after all!

However, each said it wasn't and some even cheerfully added that investment in their "employer
brand" was delivering a measurable ROI ... the feeling from their talent, one told me, was a
resounding "who'd want to leave here!"

While these firms were holding onto existing talent, they were also all enjoying healthy growth. Each
had expanding Project Management teams AND they were handling increasingly complex IT
Projects. In each case, IT was playing an ever more strategically important role within the business.

Herein lay the problem, they just could not find or attract the extra, increasingly specialist,
headcount that they needed.

Each of my HR friends had a flawless track record in recruiting talent for other areas of the business
so why were they struggling with specialist IT roles? If these were such great, "who'd want to leave
here" places to work - why wasn't IT talent beating at their door? Where were they looking?

Each of the HR managers I spoke with listed the usual places, industry publications, job boards, the
generalist recruiter they'd always used ... all the common sense first bases that you'd cover during a
recruitment drive.

I think that this is the key issue.

The specialist IT talent you're hoping to target probably doesn't read your industry magazine - they
might not even be working in your sector. It's their transferable IT skills that you're after more than
years of experience in your industry. For the same reason, they may not be reading the job boards
you usually use and they are less likely to be on the radar of your regular general recruiter.

When you need to access talent with the IT skills that will help grow your business you need a
partner with huge experience within IT Project and Programme Management sector recruitment,
but also one who will get to know you, your sector, your business culture and how you operate.

Entering the market this way you get the search capability of a recruiter and the selection skills of a
programme management subject matter expert and as a consequence, you get only the very best
candidates. For maximum potency insist on these three three simple things from your recruitment
partner:

1 - Reach and speed – You want a partner with excellent reach to find the right candidates quickly.

2 - Peer Profiling – You want candidates profiled by Subject Matter Experts, someone who
performed the project or programme role you are looking for.

3 - Commercial Simplicity - You want a simple and fair commercial model.

Insist on a partner who won’t simply “copy and paste” your job description onto a job board, choose
one who will write bespoke adverts focussed on targeted candidate attraction to match your
business or company culture, selling your business as the great place to work that it is! Through
meaningful role profiles, which are written by subject matter experts and include all the trigger
words your ideal candidate will be looking for it's amazing how you quickly you start to attract the
ideal candidates.

At the start of the year, you would have been forgiven for worrying about a potential retention crisis
and what you were going to do about it. As it turned out, you'd created a great place to work so
retention wasn't quite the challenge we feared!

Recruiting new specialist talent to come and experience all this, on the other hand, was the greatest
challenge but that's the really good news to take away. The specialist IT recruitment sector has
already figured out what to do and is ready and waiting to help ...

... and if retention did turn out to be your biggest challenge - we can help with that too!

Sources:

https://bestmoneymoves.com/blog/2016/12/21/the-top-hr-challenge-of-2017-employee-retention/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsschmidt/2016/12/16/why-retention-will-be-the-biggest-talent-
challenge-of-2017/#67fc14406ae4

https://www.aseonline.org/News/Articles/ArtMID/628/ArticleID/1038/Retention-will-be-Key-
Challenge-in-2017

http://fortune.com/2016/12/28/employers-2017-employee-retention-unemployment/

http://www.peoplefacts.com/employment-screening-news/employee-retention-leading-challenge-
2017

Why and how IT hirers should embrace social

I was amazed to learn this week that a UK firm, one that
is a major user of technology to deliver its services and
a large employer of millennials ... bans its staff from
using social media during office hours.

It got me thinking. Given that increasingly this age
group (and younger) are accessing so much, from sales
leads to networking opportunities ... if firms are
imposing such bans - are many leveraging the potential
hiring power that social platforms can deliver?

I selected ten firms who I follow on Twitter - firms who
use social media to try to sell me their product and
investigated how well they are using social platforms to
attract talent. Only one of the ten seemed to have an
effective social media recruitment strategy.

Let's be clear, I'm not talking about just tweeting that you have an opening. That's potentially going
to be as effective as an old-fashioned job ad. Clearly, you will still get better results with a
recruitment partner who will write bespoke adverts focussed on candidate attraction to match your
business or company culture and sell your business as a great place to work. Your social platforms
can help as part of the mix but it’s more than posting #jobad and hoping for the best.

What I'm talking about here is creating a presence on social media that singles you out as the best
place for IT Talent to work. It's about projecting a culture, under the radar, that will attract talent
with digital skills. Talent who, nowadays, can pick and choose where they work.

Here are five thoughts on how you could use social platforms to complement the work of your IT
Recruitment partner.

Blog Thoughtfully

Only one of the firms I chose in my survey did this. I read a blog from an IT Project manager about
how he and his team had collaborated to solve a significant challenge.

As I read the post, I got a sense of the kind of meaty challenges that they faced, the creative way
that they approached them, the true sense of teamwork and togetherness, the difference that they
had made to their customer and the recognition that they got from their company bosses.

It sounded like a fabulous place to work and it would have made me likely to keep an eye out for any
opportunities that come up there.

How powerful is that?

They weren't advertising a job but they made me want one.

Using social media to report industry trends, for example, helps you stay in touch with candidates on
a more regular basis.

Engage.

How many firms do you follow on social media who are a bit anti-social? They seem to use their
Twitter account like a loudspeaker to shout corporate messages at you. My timeline is full of them
and I wouldn’t want to work for a single one!

BUT ...

When you truly engage with current and potential customers you create a perception that yours is
the kind of company that would probably engage with its current and potential staff. Certainly, a
firm that worth applying to work for, should an opportunity arise. For example, one company that I
follow has its Twitter feed regularly manned by managers answering questions. Now, none of it is
employment related but it leaves you with a definite sense that here is a culture of integrity and
openness that you imagine would be a really cool place to work.

Use Social Media To Colour In Your Firm's Offer

Nine out of the ten companies I looked had a very safe social media offer. They were beige!

I know for a fact that one of the companies had just completed a charity abseil ... but there was no
mention of it on the firm's social media channels. This kind of extracurricular 'make a difference'
type of activity can be really appealing to certain talent who have a Steve Jobs 'make a dent in the
Universe' attitude.

Be Active, Authentic and Consistent

Like with most things, you will reap what you sow. The more active you are on social media
(LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, etc) the more awareness you will gather and the more effective your
recruitment efforts will be.

It is essential that you talk in your ‘company voice’ – your online personality should be a mirror of
the feeling that your business gives to its clients and visitors. Measuring activity, authenticity and
consistency will help create a brand image that will attract culturally aligned talent.

Encourage Employees to Engage

Your employees are going to use social media.

So are your potential employees.

You should get to know the content that they habitually engage with and share as a professional
community and identify and encourage the sharing of company related areas of content - like
success stories, great change projects that they were involved with, or big contract wins.

This, in turn, creates an awareness of your business that makes you more attractive to potential
talent who may otherwise never have heard of you. Then, when you advertise your position
potential candidates already have an idea of why they'd want to work with you from the
'testimonials' of their fellow professionals - your existing employees.

You should acknowledge best practice in this area!

Conversely ...

Always Challenge Worst Practice

The company that I mentioned at the start, the one that banned social media during office hours, did
so because they are afraid that any posts by staff may reflect negatively on their brand. If someone
says in their profile that they work for you and during the hours of nine to five they post something
controversial it could be attributed to you.

Really?! OK, occasionally someone may post something negative about your company. We all have
bad days. We all have days where the job stinks! Some people take to social media to vent and that
could put off potential candidates.

The best way to deal with this kind of thing is quickly and decisively. Be proactive! You should run
regular training on the consequences of social media bad practice ... but don't ban it altogether.

Recruitment can be an incredibly frustrating process but you can make life easier with the right
recruitment partner and an effective narrative on social media. You can ensure a cultural ‘best fit’
and sell your business as a great place to work but social media is not a replacement for other
recruiting processes. It is a useful addition and an enhancement, another tool in the toolkit and like
most tools, knowing how to use it will get better results.

Straight Talk on IT Project Recruitment

Chapter Six – How to pick your Recruitment partner

"You need to have a collaborative hiring process."- Steve Jobs
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur."

- Red Adaire

“Kissing lots of frogs is no way to find your prince2” – why specialist it
recruitment has the edge

In many respects, the way a specialist IT recruitment
firm will go about the business of securing the right
talent will not differ greatly from mainstream
recruitment agencies. They will use job boards and
social media and a range of industry standard tools.

It is what happens beyond that 'industry standard' that
gives most specialist IT recruiters the edge.

Rightly so.

IT and IT Project Management are niche endeavours. If
you were the CIO of a bus company would you expect
the same recruiter, you use to find bus drivers, to
search and recruit drivers of transformational change
through IT? Probably not. And yet many companies are using the same methods, the same agencies,
the same tools ...

Here are 7 Reasons Why Specialist IT Recruitment Has The Edge.

1 - Stronger More Focussed Talent Pool

Specialist recruiters keep in touch with top talent. If the best person for your role is in work
elsewhere and not actively seeking a new opportunity, they may miss your job ad. The best specialist
IT recruitment firms keep a database of interviewed talent and maintain regular contact with them.
They get to know how top talent works and where and how they fill fit into hiring organisations.

This gives you a more focussed search.

When you hire a 'one size fits all' agency or use job boards or social media, you are invariably
recruiting from a larger pool of potential interest than with a specialist recruitment partner. This
may seem like a good thing; many IT professionals have brought transferrable skills from other
sectors having seen a 'scattered seed' job post. However, when business strategy success is riding on
effective project delivery, for example, you really have to be more targeted. As one CIO puts it,
"Kissing lots of frogs is no way to find your Prince2."

2 - Better Advertising

When a specialist IT or Project Management recruitment firm advertises for candidates its
industryspecific knowledge comes to the fore. Whereas a more general recruiter may rely upon
matches of general keywords leaving you with scores of CVs to review, your specialist partner should
create bespoke ads that are specific to the role you are advertising. What’s more, they probably
already have the right person for you on that extensive database.

3 - Fewer Candidates For You To Review But Candidates of A Higher Quality

Using a general recruiter for specialist IT roles can yield hundreds of candidates. Which sounds like
great value until you have to review all the CVs and you find that the majority are not suitably
matched to your role. Or worse, you hire the wrong person and then have to start the whole process
from scratch six months down the line.

With a specialist recruiter, you will get fewer candidates' CVs, but they will all be perfect matches
leaving to choose from the best of the best.

4 – Culture

The IT industry has its own culture. The IT Project Management sector has evolved its own culture
within that and, if you drill deeper, your organisation has a different culture to that of your
competitors. Understanding the nuances of these different cultures is key to finding the right
candidate. General recruiters are less effective at achieving cultural matches. To be fair, a specialist
IT Project Management recruiter would potentially be less effective at filling other general roles.
Cultural alignment could be your best hope of retaining talent, more so for specialist roles like IT
Project Management.

5 - Knowing Me, Knowing You

As well as better knowledge of what makes you tick, with industry specific knowledge comes a much
better understanding of the needs of candidates. Think about this. Recruitment is a partnership -
two parties both with needs that are met by the opportunity. Knowing the needs of the candidate is
AS IMPORTANT as knowing the needs of your business. As a result of industry knowledge specialist
recruiters achieve a consistently better match of candidate to specific jobs.

6 - More Personal

One inevitable side benefit of a recruitment partner getting to know you well is that, usually, you will
have one constant contact with whom you can build a tangible, honest relationship.

When you call up and talk to the same person you hit the ground running each time. When a call
centre handler has to read through your account notes or you have to explain a situation over and
over again it is not only frustrating but costly too in terms of your time and your organisation's
effectiveness.

7 - Shared Risk

The best specialist recruiters are so confident that they will find you the right person that they will
share the risk of hiring them!

Sometimes hiring doesn't work out and you have to start the whole process again. That can be costly
but when your recruitment partner shares the risk or has a process in place to minimise the impact
of a failed hire those costs are mitigated and manageable.

That's just seven. When I sat down to compile this post, many more sprang to mind, each as
compelling as the one before.

I suppose the best way to experience why specialist IT recruiters have the edge is to experience one
at work for yourself. When you call, ask them great challenging questions. Ask them to demonstrate
how they will share your risk and ask how they will set about finding the right talent for you.

Perhaps, most crucially, ask about WHY they set up their business in the first place.

If you find that your prospective recruitment partner identified similar recruitment frustrations to
your own, if they too were an IT employer struggling to access talent appropriate to their specific
needs... if they've 'been there too' then you already have some crucial common ground.

A partner who was looking for the solution, couldn't find it and so decided to BE the solution, may
give you the significant edge you need for your next IT or IT Project Management hire.

Eight advantages a specialist IT recruiter gives your business.

"Talent supply remains the number one challenge
facing digital tech businesses in the UK", this according
to Tech Nation’s 2017 survey. It found that over half
(55%) of employers said THIS was their main business
challenge.

According to Robert Half, the tech talent shortage is “no
longer just an inconvenience for employers — it’s
quickly becoming a significant business problem”.

You seek to give your business a competitive edge when
attracting customers now, more than ever, your
business talent acquisition strategies need the same
focus. Business growth is being driven by IT, to leverage
that you need the best specialist IT talent and the best
way to reach them, in a competitive talent market, is with an IT recruitment specialist.

Eight Advantages a Specialist IT Recruiter Gives Your Business.

1 - Speed Up The Hiring Process

To attract and hire the best talent. especially during a shortage, you need to speed up your hiring
process. According to Robert Half’s 2018 Salary Guide, many companies are dragging their heels
somewhat. About two-thirds of the technology professionals surveyed said they would “lose interest
in a job if there was no follow-up within two weeks of an interview.”

Reach and speed is vital. The best specialist recruiters give you both with, for instance, a database of
interviewed talent.

2 - They Talk The Talk

Candidates often tell me that most general and even a lot of "technology" recruiters have very little
knowledge of the actual tech that the perfect candidate will eventually work on. In an interview,
while the candidate may want to talk about that technology, they are left cold by recruiters wanting
to talk about the position on offer and the business generally. in a candidate-driven market, subject
matter expertise goes a long way from crafting the perfect ad and role profile to ‘talking the talk’ in
an interview.

3 - Sell You As A Great Place To Work

The days of a candidate having to stand out to get noticed by you are over. Now, it's the other way
around - it's you that has to stand out in a crowd and it's getting more and more crowded.

Time was, as a tech employer, you'd be competing with other tech firms for the best talent but now,
thanks to digitalisation, everyone is a tech employer. In just about every sector and industry,
companies are dependent upon IT for delivering business objectives and to achieve that they want
the same talent that you are looking for.

A specialist IT recruiter knows how to sell you, your business and your industry sector to specialist IT
talent.

4 - Better Talent Screening

Recruitment agencies will often throw a bunch of CVs at you in the hope that something sticks.
Ultimately, as a hirer you only need the one perfect candidate, so sometimes a shortlist can be
unhelpful. A specialist IT recruitment partner will use knowledge of the key skills needed for a role
and awareness of your business culture to filter out even close matches, leaving you with best-fit
talent.

At Access Talent, for instance, our assessment process is unusually robust. We carry out a
competency profile on each candidate which tells you much more than you’d typically know,
including how well they will fit into your company and how you can get the best out of them. It’s a
rare level of insight in today’s fast-paced environment.

5 - Engage With Candidates (Beyond The Confines Of A Recruitment Drive)

Your best candidate may be passive right now. Let's face it, the best IT talent is probably in a role
already because, well, because they are the best IT talent! They may not be actively looking and if
they are - they have a lot of options. We maintain contact with a database of specialist IT talent all
the time and not just when a client is looking. This way we know, for instance, which talent's
contract is about to expire and who may be open to an approach if the right gig comes up.

6 - They Know Where Talent Go Online

Back in the day, it was enough to place your vacancy on the usual job boards or maybe in the
situations vacant pages of your local paper or industry journal but it's a candidate driven market
now, so you have to take your vacancy to the talent. And I mean REALLY take it to them. As
discussed above, your ideal candidate may not even know they're looking for a new position, so you
have to convince them but first - you have to find them.

Is your recruitment collateral reaching the networking sites, the right social media channels, the
online discussion forums? If the answer is no, then you are missing out on a huge number of
potential ideal candidates. A specialist IT recruitment partner knows where the specialist IT talent is
hanging out because they are hanging out there too, it's another of the main advantages of subject
matter expertise!

7 - IT Talent Looks After Its Own

Like most professionals, IT types look out for one another. We've got each other's backs! This means
that a specialist IT recruiter using subject matter experts is less likely to place a candidate in the
wrong role just to make their commission. I personally only place talent with an organisation where I
know that they'll fit culturally. Placing a round peg in a square hole is not a successful placement so
first it's really important to get to know your business, how you work and the culture that you are
building.

'Best fit' is a consideration for your prospective talent too! The last thing I want to do is place a
Project Manager who lives for his family with a business with a project portfolio that demands late
nights and weekends.

A useful measure of a recruiter’s commitment to this is their attitude to shared risk ...

8 - The Best IT Recruitment Partners Share The Risk.

Your recruitment partner's attitude to shared risk can tell you a lot about their attitude to finding the
right candidate. They will want to be paid for placing the right talent with you, that's their business
and like you, they have overheads and bills to pay.

So, at what point should you be expected to hand over the fee? Upfront?

How do you know that the hire will stick before your recruiter has even cast the net? I'm amazed
how many recruiters still operate in this way, OK, most will offer some kind of rebate scheme if
things don't work out - but what a hassle!

What if your IT recruitment partner's commercial model demonstrated more confidence in their
ability to match candidates with your business need? What if getting paid by you actually depended
upon it? 'Shared risk' sharpens the recruiter's mind. For instance, at Access Talent you pay no
retainers or upfront costs and fees are spread over equal monthly instalments during the first nine
months of a candidate’s employment with you and if the candidate leaves, your payments stop. No
questions asked.

A bad hire makes no business sense for you and it should be the same for your recruiter. Hiring new
people is a risk and the level to which a recruiter is committed to placing the right talent can be
gauged, I think, in how much they'll share that risk with you.

In conclusion, technology is moving so fast. Businesses are using IT to scale operations faster than
ever and thanks to advances in technology they are more streamlined and more efficient than ever
too. IT drives growth in your business but it is your people that drive your IT.

To gain a considerable advantage in the war for customers, first, you must win the war for the best
IT talent and at a time when "Talent supply remains the number one challenge" it makes sense to
have the best specialist recruitment partner on your side.

Sources:

https://technation.techcityuk.com/digital-skills-jobs/digital-skills-shortage/
https://www.roberthalf.com/salary-guide/technology

For IT recruitment success, a good recruiter may not be good enough

In IT recruitment, there's good and there's bad
recruitment partners. The problem is that choosing the
right recruiter for you may not be quite so simple as
knowing the difference between the two. You can, for
example, find a recruiter who genuinely seems way
more motivated to find you the right candidate than
they are to earn their commission and still end up with
a bad hire - so there has to be more to it.

First, what are the key ingredients you should look for
in a recruiter? What makes a recruiter 'good'? I emailed
some clients and colleagues, and this is what they said
...

Ten Traits of a Good Recruiter (in no particular order)

1 - Trustworthy. Honest about the reality of completing a good hire based on your expectations, ie if
the market is currently demanding a higher salary than the one that you are offering you may not
get the best candidates applying - a good recruiter will tell you this.

2 - Maintains great communications, all round, throughout the whole process. This means updates
to you of any developments, they call when they say they're going to call. They know what questions
to ask to deliver only the best candidates and even if a candidate doesn’t progress beyond first
interview stage, they still get a call to explain why.

3 - Gets to know your business and its culture - they're in it for the long term, not just a quick hire.

4 - Has a network of candidates with whom they have maintained contact, maybe for years, they are
well-connected within your industry.

5 - Knows how to sell your business as a great place to work.

6 - Comes recommended by word of mouth.

7 - Respectful of candidates - a recruiter is representing your business and they should act in such a
way that reflects well on you at all times.

8 - Great Negotiator. The offer has to be right for both candidate and the hiring business, the best
recruiters have their finger on the pulse of the industry to achieve this.

9 - Discretion in spades! You will need to be able to talk with your recruitment partner about some
commercially sensitive issues and challenges that you are facing. (If a recruitment partner ever
shares information or gossip about another business what's going to stop them sharing yours in their
next meeting.

10 - Is never pushy! There is a difference between following up after a meeting to see where you're
at and constantly ringing to chase a decision. "Overly enthusiastic" recruiters are usually looking to
make a quick hire, earn their commission and move on.

Nice checklist! So, all you need to do is find a recruiter who ticks each of these boxes and you'll get a
great hire? Well, possibly, but it's not always the case. A client of mine always tells me that his
former recruiter had most of that 'Ten Traits of a Good Recruiter' list nailed and was brilliant at filling
general roles but when it came to more specialist IT jobs they kept delivering the wrong candidates
for the business.

While each of the criteria above was mentioned by the majority of those that I emailed, there was
one further trait that EVERYONE highlighted and it's one that I thought of recently (run with me)
whilst baking a Mary Berry Chocolate Roulade.

You see, I followed Mary Berry's recipe for chocolate roulade to the letter but ended up with
something that looked nothing like the picture online. My roulade, well, it didn't roll, so ... strictly
speaking, I don't think you could even call it a roulade. If anything, I ended up making cracked cake
squares. The ingredients, the oven temperature, the method, everything was the same as Mary's
instructions but there was one key ingredient that I didn't have - Mary's specific experience and
expertise.

IT and IT Project Management are increasingly specialist areas of recruitment. Subject matter
expertise has never been so important and as projects become more and more complex, I think that
it is going to become even more essential that, when you have a role to fill, you seek out someone
who has performed it themselves to help recruit for it. Experiential knowledge is spun gold in
recruitment terms and if your partner has truly got to know your business and its culture, the chance
of a hire that sticks increases.

In the same way that you'd reject a potential recruitment partner if they demonstrated little or no
awareness of the job description and your business culture, if they were pushy or commission
driven, I think we need an extra filter to separate the good from the great.

In conclusion, it seems that there are three types of recruitment partner, not two. There's bad,
there’s good and there's RIGHT FOR YOU! The more specialist the role you are filling, the more that
subject matter expertise will play a part in determining what "RIGHT FOR YOU" means.

Sources:

For fun ... https://www.bbc.com/food/swiss_roll

In 2017, choosing the right IT recruitment partner just got even more important.

(At the time of writing) What have a renewable energy
firm, a high street grocery chain and a lingerie retailer
got in common?

Any ideas?

It's something that they share with a processed meat
supplier, a public transport operator and a pet supplies
store. Also a broadcaster, a financial services broker and
a hotel.

Worked it out?

The thing that connects these very diverse businesses is
that they are all now direct employers of IT talent.
Specifically, businesses from these sectors have recently

all advertised for IT Project Managers.

Look at any list of IT vacancies now and you'll see recruitment ads for tech talent placed by
'mainstream' industries alongside the 'old guard' of software developers and IT advisory firms. This is
great for talent as it has exponentially opened up available opportunities but for hirers, it means that
the tech talent market is more crowded than ever and your approach has to be better than ever if
you are going to attract the finest talent. This presents new challenges whether you’re a traditional
IT firm or a 'mainstream' business.

The 'mainstream' are finding that they need to reposition their offer and approach. Traditionally,
many would have recruited from within their own industry sector - a buying manager for menswear
would move from one fashion store chain to another, for instance. The recruitment process would
perhaps involve a general or industry specialist recruiter or they'd do it themselves, perhaps
advertising in the back of their trade journal. However, they are finding IT talent recruitment more
difficult.

In most of these organisations, IT has increased in significance from a back office support function to
a facilitator of business strategy and change. The talent best placed to fit this new reality probably
isn't reading your industry magazine or accessible through your traditional recruitment agency.

IT talent has such transferable skills that the perfect Project Manager for your menswear chain's IT
Project might currently be delivering a project for a bus company or a government department.
Neither are likely to be scanning the jobs in 'Tailoring Today'. You need to find a partner who will
access talent that your traditional methods cannot.

For the tech firms, there's a growing realisation that you're no longer competing just with Alphabet
or Apple or Facebook for tech talent. You're now competing against just about every other company
in the Yellow Pages.