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Hiring Great Talent: How Do You Decide? #TChat Preview

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(Editor’s Note: Want details from this week’s #TChat Events? See the Storify slideshow and resource links and more in the #TChat Recap: “Hiring: A Winner Every Time.”)

Think back for a moment.

What factors tend to drive your organization’s hiring decisions? Impressive candidate credentials? Hiring manager preference? Behavioral interviews? Gut instinct?

Now tell me — how successful has that method been?

Studies indicate that hiring by intuition fails as much as 75% of the time — so clearly there’s no easy answer. However, a more deliberate, structured approach can significantly improve the odds of finding a long-term fit.

What approach works best? That’s the focus of our conversation this week at #TChat Events. Leading the way are two HR professionals who understand the value of a solid hiring methodology: Chris Mursau, Vice President at Topgrading, and Jean Lynn, VP of HR at Home Instead Senior Care.

Sneak Peek: Smart Ways to Hire Better Talent

To frame this week’s discussion, I briefly spoke with Chris in a G+ hangout — where we talked about why it’s so tough for companies to find and keep the talent they need…

This topic touches all of us in the world of work, so we hope you’ll join the #TChat crowd this week and add your perspective to the conversation!

#TChat Events: Smart Ways to Hire Better Talent

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Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show

#TChat Radio — Wed, Feb 19 — 6:30pmET / 3:30pmPT Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman talk with Chris Mursau and Jean Lynn about how companies can be more effective at hiring top performers. Tune-in LIVE online this Wednesday!

#TChat Twitter — Wed, Feb 19 — 7pmET / 4pmPT Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and our guests will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where we’ll continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community.

Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as Dr. Nancy Rubin moderates a dynamic live chat focused on these related questions:

Q1:  How do we identify and attract high-performing employees?
Q2:  What processes and technologies impact quality of hire?
Q3:  Hiring via “gut” feel alone usually fails, so why do we keep doing it?
Q4:  Do reference checks really influence a candidate’s viability?
Q5:  How should employers communicate their culture to candidates?

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, and in our new TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions.

We’ll see you on the stream!

The Psychology & Influence of Interviews: #TChat Preview

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Originally posted by Matt Charney, one of #TChat’s moderators, on MonsterThinking Blog

The more the candidate sourcing and selection process changes, with the vast evolutions in the tools and technologies employers use to find and engage talent, the more the interview process, the most integral and involved component of the hiring process, stays the same.

This is too bad, really, considering the crucial role interviews play in talent selection. No hiring manager’s ever made a decision based on a cleverly sourced candidate. They care about whether or not this potential new coworker is going to get along, help the team, and be the kind of person they want to spend the majority of their waking life with.

By the time you get to an interview, generally, you’ve ostensibly got the skills on paper to play the part. But obviously, a resume doesn’t tell the entire story, and if it did, this whole recruiting thing would be a whole lot easier. After all, the best candidate isn’t always the most qualified. An interview’s not about asking questions; it’s about finding fit.

And while recruitment has progressed from the transactional back offices of “Personnel” to the strategic front lines of talent acquisition, while social media proliferates and job seekers become increasingly savvy, interviewing looks a lot like it always has: questions, answers, and a lot of reading between the lines.

This week’s #TChat, “The Psychology and Influence of Interviews,” will explore the implications of technology, the economy and the constantly changing tides of talent supply and demand on interviewing best practices on both sides of the table.

The Psychology and Influence of Interviews: #TChat Questions and Recommended Reading (04.19.11)

Join us on Twitter for #TChat tonight at 8:00 ET/5:00 PT as employers, recruiters, job seekers and thought leaders weigh in on what it takes to stand out from the competition and transform an interview into an offer in today’s job market.

Here are the questions we’ll be covering, along with some recommended reading to help inform, and inspire, your participation in the #TChat conversation.  But don’t worry.  We’re not judging you on your answers.  We’ll leave that to the professionals.

Q1: What are some of the ways in which interviews have changed the most for job seekers?  For employers?

Read: Job Interview: Tips for the Virtual Interview by Charles Purdy

Q2: What strategies can candidates use to influence the outcome of an interview before or after the interview itself?

Read: Closing the Deal: Interviews as Infiuential Sales Presentations by Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter

Q3: What’s more important to assess in an interview: skills, grit or culture fit? Why? What about Emotional Intelligence?

Read: The Job Interview Culture Checklist: 7 Steps to Evaluate In Your Next Job Interview by Hank Stringer

Q4: How do interviewing best practices change for an interview with HR/recruiting vs. hiring manager?

Read: Advice for Tackling The Different Types of Interviews – by Monster.com Career Experts

Q5: What can candidates do in an interview to better assess the company/opportunity as well?

Read: Own The Interview: 10 Questions To Ask by Larry Buhl

Q6: What’s the most valuable piece of interview advice you’ve ever been given?

Read: The Best Piece of Interview Advice You’ll Ever Read by Lance Haun

Q7: How can technology help companies and candidates improve their interview and selection process?

Read: Benefits of Video Interviews and How To Make Your Video Better by Rusty Reuff

Visit www.talentculture.com for more great information on #TChat and resources on culture fatigue and how to overcome it!

Our Monster social media team supports the effort behind #TChat and its mission of sharing “ideas to help your business and your career accelerate – the right people, the right ideas, at the right time.”

We’ll be joining the conversation live every Tuesday night as co-hosts with Kevin Grossman and Meghan M. Biro from 8-9 PM E.T. via @monster_works and @MonsterWW. Hope to see you tonight at 8 PM ET for #TChat!

Employer Black Holes & the Candidate Experience: #TChat Preview

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Originally posted by Matt Charney, one of #TChat’s moderators, on MonsterThinking Blog

With the way employers and job seekers alike refer to the “black hole” of online job search, you’d think it’s some sort of industry wide conspiracy, given its endemic proportions.

The candidate experience, writes #TChat co-host Kevin Grossman, is almost always negative or non-existent, regardless of the job title, function or level:

“There’s only one job per multiple candidates, so what has their experience been with American corporations and SMB and startups alike?

Overall, pretty crappy. I mean, it’s not news to know how poor the applicant experience is and has been for a long, long time.

Case in point — I recently went through a fairly high-level job search with a well-known firm in the HR marketplace. Considering that they should know better the best practices of recruiting and hiring, I was left with inconsistent acknowledgement and no closure. Still. Even thought I didn’t get the job, of which the other primary candidate definitely had the edge on me, I was led to believe that there were other opportunities.

And then nothing. Crickets chirping in the night.”

Grossman’s experience, and frustration, echoes the experience of countless others, but he points to two of the almost universal expectations candidates have when applying for a position: acknowledgment and closure.

These are pretty reasonable demands, and the fact that most employers aren’t meeting even this basic baseline defies reasonable explanation.  The truth is, employers have gotten pretty good about the acknowledgment part; most applicant tracking systems have been programmed to automatically e-mail a confirmation directly to the job seeker for their records, and it’s sent out the moment they apply to an open requisition.

It’s the closure part organizations seem to be having problems with, to the frustration of candidates and to the detriment of their employment and consumer brands alike.  But the thing is, it’s just as easy to notify applicants that they haven’t been selected via e-mail, instantaneously, as it is to notify them when their application is received.

But no one likes to be the bearer of bad news, least of all recruiters.  Most seem to feel that letting people know they’re no longer under consideration opens a door that they’re trying to close, and that, in effect, no news is good news.  But it’s not.

In fact, for employers and job seekers alike, it’s very bad news indeed.  At Monster, we’re committed to advancing the conversation, and searching for the solution, for an improved candidate experience and to help employers transform the “black hole” into a brand-building talent pipeline.

That’s why we’re excited to be participating in tonight’s #TChat, Workplace Culture Branding – Employer Black Holes and the Candidate Experience. Join @kevinwgrossman @meghanmbiro and @talentculture at 8 PM ET tonight as we tackle this very important issue.

We might not come up with all the answers, but we hope these questions, and these related articles, help inform, inspire and impact your perspective on improving the candidate experience:

#TChat Questions and Recommended Reading: 2.15.11

Q1. Is the applicant ‘black hole’ experience real when applying for a job?  If so, why does it exist?

Read: Candidate Experience Isn’t About Pleasing Everyone by Claudia Faust

Q2. How does candidate/applicant experience impact employment brand or company culture?

Read: When Potential New Hires Are Searching for YOU by Emily Bennington

Q3: At a minimum, what should job seekers expect from employers to which they apply?

Read: Candidate Experience and Common Sense by Tim Sackett

Q4: What do employers owe to applicants?

Read: Candidate Experience: A Question of Values by Howard Adamsky

Q5: Should the candidate experience apply to applicants?  When does an applicant become a ‘candidate?’

Read: Candidate vs. Customer Experience by Gerry Crispin

Q6: What are some creative ways job seekers can get through the black hole or recruiters can handle the applicant tsunami?

Read: How to Get An Employer’s Attention in 20 Seconds by Jessica Holbrook Hernandez

Q7: Job seekers: What has your candidate experience been like during your most recent job hunt?

The Employment/Applicant Transaction: Acknowledgment and Closure by Kevin W. Grossman

Q8: Employers: what are you doing to improve candidate experience?

Read: Eliminate the Black Hole by Colin Kingsbury

Visit www.talentculture.com for more great information on #TChat and resources on culture fatigue and how to overcome it!

Our Monster social media team supports the effort behind #TChat and its mission of sharing “ideas to help your business and your career accelerate – the right people, the right ideas, at the right time.”

We’ll be joining the conversation live every Tuesday night as co-hosts with Kevin Grossman, Meghan M. Biro and Steve Levy from 8-9 PM E.T. via @monster_works and @MonsterWW.  Hope to see you tonight at 8 PM ET for #TChat!

Interviewing: #TChat Preview

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Our last #TChat before Thanksgiving was all about assessments.

What was resoundingly clear was the fact that face-to-face interviews were preferred when making hiring decisions, as opposed to using assessments from last week’s chatters. We are still weighing the verdict and will simply keep exploring this.

So Meghan and I decided that the in’s and out’s of interviewing would be the topic for the next #TChat tomorrow, 11/30/10, from 8-9 p.m. ET & 7-8 p.m. CT & 6-7 p.m MT & 5-6 p.m. PT. Remember we welcome global input! Join in from wherever you might be

We’ve got a great group of savvy recruiters, careerists, human resource folk, fascinating leaders, media mavens and hiring managers in our greater TalentCulture community, so we look forward to a festively raucous Twitter discussion on the subject.

Because most “hiring” professionals don’t know know how to objectively interview very well at all.  I would argue that some of the worst hiring decisions are made via interviews.  Yep, I said it.  So bring it.  Plus, most job applicants don’t prepare, at all, for their interviews.

Just ask a few of our resident career experts, Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter and Chris Perry and others….We love this stuff.

We’ll also throw in a shout or two for emotional intelligence (our first #TChat topic) and how that plays a role in interviewing today.

Wherever you stand on interviews and interviewing, there are best practices to follow and we hope to unravel those mysteries in our next #TChat.

Use your favorite Twitter client of choice to follow the lively #TChat hashtag or use to TweetChat and log in with your Twitter handle.

We’ll see you there!  Come subjectively unprepared.  You know, like for an interview.