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Building a Courageous Work Culture: Why it Matters

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Sometimes, the biggest threat to an organization isn’t the most visible one. Emotions drive behavior, not logic. One of the most potent emotions is fear. As a result, one of the most significant challenges and responsibilities of leaders – at every level – is combatting fear and fostering courage. In themselves, in others, and across their entire organization.

 

 

Our Guest:  Karin Hurt, CEO, Let’s Grow Leaders

On the latest #WorkTrends podcast, I spoke with Karin Hurt, CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders; a training firm focused on human-centered leadership development. They help leaders resolve workplace ambiguity to drive innovation, productivity, and revenue without burning out employees. 

Mental health and wellness in the workplace has been a trending topic for several months. Psychological Safety sits at the core –  defined as “the belief that one can speak up without the risk of punishment or humiliation.” 

After working with both leaders and supervisory level employees at the same companies, it became clear to Karin that there was a lack of Psychological Safety in the workplace. As a result, Let’s Grow Leaders partnered with the University of North Colorado for a research study to understand when employees were holding back ideas, what kind of ideas they were holding back, and what was preventing them from speaking up.

When asked more about what inspired the study on Psychological Safety and innovation, Karin had this to say:

“We were working with leaders across a variety of industries all around the world, and we were having conversations at the senior-most levels of these organizations. And we were hearing things like, Why don’t more people share their ideas? Why don’t people speak up? And then we would be doing training at the supervisor level of these same organizations. And we would hear things like, No one wants my ideas. Nothing ever happens anyway so why bother? And we thought, are you working for the same company?”

Why Employees Don’t Speak Up?

It’s important that leaders are trained to be exceptional listeners. It’s also important for leaders to create an environment of trust. Why do employees hold back? Karin further explains:

“When we dug underneath and found out why they were holding back these ideas, 50% said nothing will ever happen anyway. 49% said they weren’t regularly asked for their ideas. 67% said my manager operates around the notion of this is the way we’ve always done it. 40% said they lacked the confidence to share. And this one was really the most surprising. 56% said they don’t share ideas because they’re afraid they won’t get the credit.”

Steps to Building a Courageous Culture

An employee’s lack of confidence can stem from many experiences and roles. The result – trust and confidence barriers. As a leader, steps can be taken to break through these barriers:

“So it starts with navigating the narrative. And that is really getting very clear about how you feel about speaking up at work. And then, it’s creating clarity that you really do want people’s ideas. Third, cultivate curiosity, which is where you proactively go out and ask people for their ideas.

It’s not enough to ask. Karin further explains:

“So we talk about responding with gratitude, thanking people for their ideas, information, telling them what’s going to happen next or not happen next and why.”

Building an infrastructure of courage starts from the top down. Don’t just change the narrative; live it. 

I hope you enjoy this episode of #WorkTrends. To learn more about building a courageous culture at work, contact Karin Hurt on LinkedIn.

Myth Busting Common Video Interview Concerns

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Video interviewing—whoever has gone on one knows that it is a different beast, both for the candidate and the recruiter. Aptitude Research reported less than 60% of US companies used or planned to use video interviewing in their HR processes. At the height of COVID-19, a Gartner study revealed that 89% of organizations have used video interviews to hire talent. This number is expected to rise even more as video interviews become increasingly popular. For this reason, it’s important for employers to understand the benefits of video interviewing and get more comfortable with it.

 

Our Guest: Sean Fahey, CEO, VidCruiter

Sean Fahey is an award-winning business leader, serial entrepreneur and CEO of VidCruiter. His company is one of the fastest growing in remote recruitment in the market. After years of firsthand recruitment experience, he’s on quest to share everything he knows about the evolution of video interviewing.

Sean started us off by explaining the basics of video interviewing in the recruiting space and its many forms:

“The most popular would be like a Teams, or Zoom, or a Skype type interview. We have that solution here at VidCruiter and we’ve repurposed it to be recruitment specific. The most popular type is called an asynchronous interview or an on-demand or prerecorded interview. This is where a candidate records themselves on their own time at home and recruiters watch this recording on their own time in the future. This allows recruiters and hiring managers save a lot of time.”

The Myths of Video Interviewing

Candidates prefer in-person interviews for a fighting chance at securing job. However, it’s becoming evident that video interviews produce greater results for employers. There is a lot of good happening behind the scenes that candidates don’t realize. Sean explains:

We often hear candidates say, ‘I’d rather meet with you in person or talk to you.’ ” The purpose of this tool is not to eliminate the in-person interview or a video conference, it’s the step before that. The benefit of a prerecorded interview is that you can now open the pool up to whoever is remotely qualified. So, you’re giving a chance to 20, 30, 40, 50 candidates to showcase themselves. This tool enables more people to have real conversations, more people to see your profile, and more people to be interviewed. The goal is not to eliminate the in-person or the video conference that you’re going to have after, it’s to facilitate who will go there first.”

How Video Interviewing Mitigates Hiring Bias

People assume that video interviewing increases hiring bias, but in actuality, it’s quite the opposite. The pre-recorded method, for example, allows candidates access to an identical question and answer experience. Sean further explains how video interviews mitigate small talk, a common contributor to hiring bias.

“It’s hard to avoid small talk, but small talk has the potential to create bias. Video interviewing reduces hiring bias by treating everyone identically. Another component of the bias reduction is the ability to share video interviews with multiple stakeholders. More than one decision maker can watch an interview and determine who they want to meet with next. The third component is how the evaluation process is done. More than one person can be part of the evaluating criteria. VidCruiter’s tools and other vendors within the space have what’s called ‘structured interview evaluation guides’ built into on-demand or video interview solutions. This way, when recruiters vet through candidates, they have the proper evaluation metrics and guides to make the right decisions.”

Artificial Intelligence and Video Interviewing

Sean expects that artificial intelligence will make a significant impact in future digital recruiting:

 “If you talk to Siri, Google Voice, or Alexa, what percentage of the sentence would you say did it captured properly? Sometimes it’s 100%, other times it’s 80% or 90%, but the point is, they’re the leading provider of that kind of technology in the world. AI is performing in terms of predicting where candidates should apply in a chatbot or predicting the best recruiters. However, in terms of analyzing a candidate, it gets kind of risky.”

How to Prepare for a Video Interview

The interviewing process has changed drastically over the past two years. Candidates are less likely to meet potential employers in-person, and more likely to suit up for their webcams. This could be a new and daunting experience for most, which is why Sean left us with tips to best prepare for video interviews.

“The best thing that you could do is practice. You can get an interview coach or you can get someone to sit with you and ask you some questions to prepare. I’ve found that the most successful candidates are detailed and they have more examples to support their responses to questions.”

How Companies Can Improve Their Video Interviewing Experience

There are ways for recruiters to improve the recruiting experience for candidates so that they feel like they’re being interviewed by real people and not lifeless computers. Sean fills us in on a few tips that will have candidates happily complete the vetting process, rather than give up midway.

“If you’re a recruiter, record a video in your home, on your phone, in your car, or in your office asking the interview questions. Have different managers from your team record themselves and have staff members of the same role give testimonials on their experience working at your company. This is even a better experience than a traditional interview because the candidate is able to meet more people in your team.”

I hope you enjoyed this episode of #WorkTrends, sponsored by VidCruiter. To learn more about video interviewing and recruiting in today’s climate, contact Sean on LinkedIn.

 

 

 

 

Video Is Taking Over Hiring

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The hiring process is a fluid entity, or at least it should be. It flows with the ebb and tide of recruitment. The current changes are rapidly evolving with advancements in technology. Technology simplifies the hiring process. Not to say that you can remove the human element from recruiting and hiring, but the use of technology undoubtedly aids the process. Economic benefits, convenience, and the ability to enhance employer branding foster the growth of video and its overwhelming presence in the hiring community.

Economically Sensible

Using video in the hiring process is gaining popularity, and not just during the interview process. More companies are using one-way video interviews as a way to communicate with candidates; not to mention some organizations look favorably upon video resumes. With the global economy, there is a very likely chance some of your candidates are not local. It stands to reason then, video resumes, video interviewing, and video communication would save time, energy, and ultimately money. Video interviewing can save as much as 67% in travel costs, so it is an economic alternative to traditional recruitment.

Organizational Convenience

Using video is also convenient. Not only can you interview candidates without the need to leave the office, but video resumes allow staffing firms and company HR departments to sift through the talent pool faster and more efficiently. Even better, mobility caters to the HR market. Because there will be an estimated 6.1 billion smartphone users in the world by 2020, the need for mobility will only increase. Video technology is already mobile. The question is how your organization will choose to utilize the capability.
While it is convenient for employers, the primary benefit is that it’s easy for your candidate pool as well. Candidates can not only interview from their phone, but they can video screen as well. With prerecorded questions, doing so has never been more convenient. The talent pool can record their video screening after they get off of work, in the comfort of their own home from their tablet, phone, or other mobile devices.

Enhancing Employer Branding

Visual communication is indispensable when employers convey company culture. New York University psychologist Jerome Bruner described studies revealing people remember 80% of what they see and do, but only 20% of what they read and 10% of what they hear. So, your candidates will remember visual communication easily in comparison to what they will recollect with just phone or email correspondence. Much of the employer brand is controlled by the HR department, 36% to be exact. Using video correspondence — some of your candidates’ first experiences with the company — can only benefit the employer brand.

Even small businesses can use big tools like video. Video interviewing isn’t just a tool companies use in the hiring process. Video is a tool that can be used to differentiate your brand from other employers, which is advantageous when attempting to attract tech talent. Video allows organizations to accelerate attracting, sourcing, and hiring the right talent all with the simplicity of visual communication.

Video has penetrated the hiring process and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. Video is a technological response to the changes in the recruiting and hiring communities. It is cost-effective, which is profitable because the global community has lent itself to an international talent pool. Moreover, it’s not only convenient for the companies who use it, it’s convenient for candidates. Especially during the screening process, candidates and employers alike have the freedom to record or screen when and where it is most convenient.

The ease of use of video interviewing platforms can only perpetuate an employer brand. Because candidates are more likely to remember what they see versus what they read, it is crucial to have a system that is simple to use and exemplifies the employer brand. Video in the hiring process maintains the quality of an employer brand conveniently and effectively. Use technology to your advantage. Video in the hiring process can make hiring quicker and less expensive for your recruiting team.  

About the Author: A 20-year veteran of the recruiting industry, Greg Rokos provides strategic direction for GreenJobInterview® and is responsible for marketing its virtual interviewing solutions through client meetings, conferences, speaking engagements, key channel partnerships and other activities. Alongside fellow co-founder, Theo Rokos, Greg is one of the pioneers of cloud-based virtual interviewing.

HR Tech Solution Sans Bells & Whistles

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Video interviewing shouldn’t be an enigma. As a recruiter, you don’t need complex accouterments to acquire candidates. You simply need a solution that fits your needs. Video interviewing uses webcams to conference with distance candidates without paying for the cost of flights to and from the candidate’s location. All you truly need is a robust platform and an inexpensive webcam. The only thing that requires the occasional assistance: troubleshooting the technology. Anything tacked onto what your company needs is just extraneous.

You Don’t Need The Knick Knacks

Over half of candidates prefer the convenience of video interviewing to the traditional face-to-face interview. Why? The real question is, why wouldn’t they? Travel isn’t required, they can use the technology they’ve become accustomed to, and video interviews help to ease the trepidation 92% of candidates have at some point during the interview process. Candidates can interview from the comfort of their own home with technology they already know.

The workforce has to be knowledgeable of current technologies, so using video to interview purveys the image of a tech-savvy organization. That in turn will attract more candidates to your company. With video interviews growing in popularity, you don’t need the useless additives some HR tech companies throw on to a subpar technology to make it more “marketable.”

Latest and Greatest Aren’t Always The Best

We are constantly barraged with advertisements for the latest and greatest gadgets and gizmos through our phones, billboards, commercials, and even junk mail. However, just because every Tom, Dick, and Harry down the hall has the most hyped devices around, that doesn’t mean it will work for you. You need a solution that is going to solve your recruiting problems, not add to them. The video interviewing platform you choose needs to be successful in attracting, gaining, and retaining key talent. The best way to ensure that, is to cover all of the bases that guarantee a good candidate experience. Once considered a luxury, mobile apps are now a necessity for many people; 86% of candidates use their mobile devices to search for jobs. Moreover, the average American spends 11 hours a day using digital media. So how could you get by without it in your recruiting efforts? Mobile adaptability and responsiveness are paramount to recruitment success in today’s digital age.

With the conveniences of the digital age, you can take a step back. Think about what you really need in a recruiting solution: tech support, mobile responsiveness, and an easy-to-use platform. More importantly, you need a team that will help you implement and understand your new recruiting technology.

Bells and whistles make video interviewing solutions more complicated than they need to be. Recruiters value efficiency and experience… and so do candidates. The difference between bells and whistles and a real solution is the candidate experience and ease of the hiring process.

Evaluate the quality of service from the platform you’re currently using… do they provide the solution you need or are they giving you a package of bells and whistles?

About the Author: A 20-year veteran of the recruiting industry, Greg Rokos provides strategic direction for GreenJobInterview® and is responsible for marketing its virtual interviewing solutions through client meetings, conferences, speaking engagements, key channel partnerships and other activities. Alongside fellow co-founder, Theo Rokos, Greg is one of the pioneers of cloud-based virtual interviewing.

#HRTechConf Building A Culture Of Good Data

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Building a culture of excellence depends on recruiting and retaining the right people. How do companies attract, hire, and retain the best employees? HR departments and recruiters use a variety of tools, techniques, and systems to engage with the brightest prospects. Of course, the methods companies use to select employees are evolving rapidly given the extraordinary advances in today’s HR technology.  What are some of the most interesting trends unfolding?

Video:  Video is emerging as a powerful instrument in the HR arsenal. Video interviews are an ideal tool in today’s globally interconnected world. But video interviews are just one way companies can harness the power of this revolutionary medium. Videos that give prospective employees a sense of the company’s culture can help attract promising candidates before the application process begins.  For Millennials and other tech-savvy generations, video is the primary channel for learning and sharing information. As a result, video is increasingly important to any company’s employee engagement efforts.

Better Metrics: There is an old business adage: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” No doubt, gathering and quantifying information can help companies gauge if their efforts are yielding results. However, most companies and businesses are drowning in information. If you spend all your time gathering and analyzing information, but not acting on it, then you are essentially “boiling the ocean,” to borrow an industry parlance phrase. So, it is imperative to settle for a limited number of metrics that you can actually analyze and then act on.

Workplace Engagement:  It is time to think of the HR function as a workplace engagement system.  Fostering an esprit de corps is an essential task for any HR department. Accomplishing this goal entails tapping the wisdom of HR professionals and making this wisdom available to prospects, employees, and other stakeholders by weaving multiple points of contact and engagement into the organization. Video and collaborative platforms can be an integral part of the workplace engagement process.

75% of HR leaders recognize that talent analytics are vital to the success of their organizations.  However, less than half of those respondents had a talent analytics plan up and working. Another statistic is telling: According to Josh Bersin in a recent HR Forecast 2014 article, “only 14% of the companies we studied are even starting to analyze people-related data in a statistical way and correlate it to business outcomes.”

Talent Analytics depends on good data.  But even more than this, TA depends on knowing what to measure. Many companies track dozens of meaningless metrics. The most important metrics are those tied to specific organizational goals and those that help a company and its employees improve their performance. HR departments and organizations need to think carefully about the metrics that matter to their companies. What metrics can help HR departments evaluate their talent acquisition and retention goals? What methods, tools, and technologies are improving the workplace engagement process? What metrics lead to the highest quality recruits? Building and sustaining a culture of excellence depends on many factors. The organizations that can identify those factors, and act on them, will be the ones that thrive.

photo credit: William Brawley via photopin cc

The Intersection Of Video Technology And Talent Acquisition

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An Interview with David Wieland, CEO, RIVS

By Cyndy Trivella, Account & Event Director – TalentCulture

I sat down recently with David Wieland, CEO of RIVS, a web-based software for digital voice and video interviews.

David was bitten by the entrepreneur bug, when interning with Dan Hesse (current CEO of Sprint) at a start-up organization in Seattle. Working in a creative, engaging and fast-paced environment helped spark David’s interest in considering an entrepreneurial opportunity for himself.

David is passionate about his interest with today’s talent acquisition tactics and takes great pride in helping his clients to better understand where opportunities can be created to improve and streamline processes which were once costly and complex.

In my interview with David, we discussed talent acquisition, the candidate experience and how technology plays a role in this.

Cyndy: David, why is the topic of talent acquisition so popular today with loads of information on best practices, yet there are still so many companies struggling to get it right?

David: I think the biggest challenge with talent acquisition is defining what success actually means.  Talent Acquisition is arguably the most important function of any organization, yet probably the most difficult to measure in terms of success.  In my experience, there are few commonly adopted metrics that most companies can benchmark against.  I also think technology helps tremendously, but there is a LOT of HR Tech available today and separating the noise from the signal can be a challenge.

Cyndy: Agreed. HR technology is something that is not lacking in the world-of-work and with that the confusion around which is the correct solution for someone’s organization has only increased with the multitude of options.

Cyndy: What are some disconnects between companies and job seekers that technology can resolve to make a better experience for both parties?

David: Accomplishing a positive candidate experience is neither difficult in concept nor execution: be responsive, courteous, and respectful.  The biggest disconnect I see is that many companies don’t value their non-hired candidates.  Speaking to employers, I say that every candidate who has taken the time to show interest in your company is a potential advocate for you; don’t miss out on an opportunity to create a legion of fans.  It sounds cliché, but think about how you’d want to be treated, and then treat your candidates even better.  Look to technology to provide tools for easy communication and better ways for candidates to tell their story beyond the resume and cover letter.

Cyndy: Spot on! Those silver and bronze medalist candidates can become ambassadors, but so many companies miss the mark on this point, in addition to the potential of maintaining engagement with these individuals to build out a talent pipeline.

Cyndy: Tell us about the state of video interviewing and how you envision it for the future.

David: While video interviewing adoption has sky-rocketed due to much improved reliability of technology and the emergence of the front facing phone camera, we’re really just scratching the surface.  As an industry, we have work to do educating people about the sometimes astonishing benefits of adopting video interviews.  Most professionals we speak with still think of video interviewing as one-on-one Skype interviews, when really the universe of recruiting-specific video interviewing tools extends well past that, ranging in complexity from one-way interviews to multi-way live interviews with unlimited observers across all web and mobile platforms.  Unlike Skype, most professional video interviews can be easily recorded by the provider for easy sharing and later review by the team.  (We’re rolling out a really interesting bookmarking feature this fall which will make reviewing even more streamlined, FYI).  But the video interviewing industry gets significantly better every day.

Because we are able to witness first-hand the dramatic measurable effects video interviewing can produce for organizations, there’s no question that video interviewing will be a staple in every modern recruiting process within a few years.

As we look to predict the future, I draw inspiration from some of our very creative clients who took one look at our platform and decided that while it was interesting for recruiting, they had other plans for it.  One of our esteemed clients assesses their salespeople before and after training.  Another uses the RIVS platform to create more interactive folios for their students, which can be shared with employers.  Another uses our platform to audit the working environment of their remote workers.

Cyndy: Very interesting how your clients have found various applications for your platform. I think that speaks well to the ingenuity and pliability of how a video solution can be tailored to fit specific needs.

Cyndy: As an entrepreneur, you’ve had to build a company from the ground up. How has this influenced you when hiring for and growing talent within your organization?

David: I’ve launched both bootstrapped and investor-funded startups and while the profile of candidates attracted to each type is different, the critical need for amazing people is persistent in both.   In my opinion, smaller companies are impacted by unsuccessful hires more than larger companies who often have the internal resources to at least cover responsibilities, etc.  For startups, every day is a life and death battle; one wrong move can sink the ship.

There are a few startup hiring schools of thought revolving around some variation of Hire fast, Fire fast or hire slow, fire fast.  I don’t subscribe to either exclusively.  I’d say we hire deliberately.  We primarily hire for fit over experience because at the end of the day, a) life’s too short not to be around people you love and, b) the long-term culture of our company is forged in its early days by its early people…RIVS is comprised of a wonderful group of people doing amazing things, so we want to hire those who both support our existing culture and also add to it in a meaningful way.

Cyndy: You’re so right about how small or start-up companies don’t have the bandwidth to sustain a culture of not having everyone on the same page, whereas large companies have more of a built-in buffer to sustain the disengaged employee.

Cyndy: This has been great conversation, David. Thank you for your perspective on the intersection of technology, candidates, employers, culture and the state of video interviewing. I look forward to our next conversation.

(About David Wieland: David is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He has exited two companies (Innflux and Powersurge) and currently serves as CEO of RIVS and owner of iEstates.

As an active angel investor, David co-founded the Notre Dame-affiliated, Irish Angels, and has personal investments in 40+ startups including Change.org, NoRedInk, Archive.ly, Ginkgotree, and Chime. He also serves as Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the University of Notre Dame, consulting ND entrepreneurs.

Through the Amelia Claire Foundation, in memory of their daughter, David and his wife, along with their two sons, assist families who have lost children. David enjoys fishing, skiing, traveling, and philanthropy. David received his BA from Notre Dame and MBA from Kellogg.)

(About Cynthia Trivella: Cyndy began her career in advertising and Human Resource Marketing Communications on Madison Avenue in New York City over 15 years ago. Prior to that, she worked in corporate human resources as a recruiter and as a training and development coordinator. In addition, Cyndy has multiple years of media planning, employment branding and human resource communications strategy experience at a management level from both the media and agency sides.

Cyndy maintains a strong presence in the digital space and has been awarded the distinction of being named to the lists: “Top 25 Online Influencers in Recruiting” and “HR Marketer Top 25 Digital Media Influencers.” In addition, she volunteers as co-host and moderator of the Twitter chat #OMCchat for assisting job hunters, and serves as #TChat events director for TalentCulture World of Work. Cyndy holds a BA in psychology and mass communications from Westfield State College in Massachusetts and currently resides in the Greater Cincinnati Area.)