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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.

 

 

 

 

The Future of Recruiting

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Remember the olden days when potential candidates applied to a handful of jobs online and waited for a response? Remember in the stone ages when prospective hires mailed out paper copies of resumes and awaited a phone call or a letter? Well, according to an SHRM survey of over 1,500 talent acquisition professionals from 28 countries, COVID-19 accelerated a shift toward digital-first recruiting.

EBI has reported that the average corporate listing receives 100 to 250 resumes. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job seekers who received an interview only have a 36.89% chance of receiving an offer. They apply to jobs widely in a ‘spray and pray’ mentality. For recruiters, the challenge is no longer finding applicants but rather finding the right people in this barrage of resumes. And with virtual hiring likely being here to stay, perhaps it’s time recruiting adapted for today’s hiring culture.

Our Guest: Ben Green, Hirect

On the latest #WorkTrends podcast, I spoke with Ben Green, PR Manager for Hirect. With over a decade of experience in journalism, Ben now plays a key role for Hirect. A free, mobile chat-based hiring platform that instantly connects startups, founders, CEOs, and hiring managers with candidates interested in the growing startup sector.

When asked about virtual recruiting in the COVID era and the future of recruiting, Ben suggests that the virtual trend might be here to stay.

“With more remote work and work from home flexibility, they (recruiters) can attract talent from pretty much anywhere and connect with them instantly,” Ben says. “Everything can really be done online, uninterrupted, and I believe it’s the future of work and recruiting moving forward.”

For those with less time and resources to meet every candidate in person, virtual recruiting also makes the job much easier. But with so many different recruiting technologies out there, how can organizations choose the right one for them?

“There’s definitely several factors to consider,” Ben explains. “Tech versus non-tech, seniority, the position, scale, size of your team. All these things will determine what your budget is and what the tool ROI can be as well.”

The Big Benefits of Virtual Recruiting  

There’s a lot of talk about bias right now. How does virtual recruiting help recruiters and hiring managers eliminate this from the hiring process?

“Ideally, the focus should always be primarily on candidates’ skills and experience, but really the true way to eliminate bias is through blind resume screens,” Ben says. “AI can certainly help with reading or grading applicants without taking into consideration a lot of the personal details and information.”

Beyond helping to eliminate bias, Ben feels that integrating technology and AI in recruiting has vast potential. It benefits both recruiters and job seekers, particularly from a filtering, searching, and matching standpoint.

“With the AI matching algorithms that we have at Hirect, the candidate pool can be narrowed down almost instantaneously based on any number of factors,” Ben explains. “For candidates, AI can help them wade through a lot of the irrelevant posts… and find ones that match their specific or unique criteria.”

But Ben is quick to point out that you can’t rely on AI alone to find the right applicants. Making sure you have a really granular job description and an interview process that encompasses certain skills is also key. And these often require a human touch – something Ben believes there will always be a need for.

“There’s really an art to the close,” Ben says. “Trying to relay a founder or a CEO’s passion or vision to really inspire a candidate to join a young business or a startup… That just can’t be replicated through technology.”

I hope you enjoy this #WorkTrends podcast, sponsored by Hirect. In case you missed it, you can listen to the podcast here. You can learn more about the future of recruiting by reaching out to Ben Green on LinkedIn.

Photo: Vlada Parkovich

4 Proven Ways to Improve Recruiting and Remote Hiring

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To say COVID-19 has changed the recruiting and remote hiring would be an understatement. For a start, it’s likely you’re relying more heavily on the expertise of the rest of your HR team, your recruiter, or business leaders while navigating the interview and remote onboarding process. To help you improve the remote hiring process, we’ve put together our top four tips for interviewing virtually, including how to answer some tough questions from candidates.

1. Decide on the Remote Hiring Process 

Before you do anything else, decide on the steps involved in the remote hiring process. Make sure everyone understands the types of interviews and stages the candidates will have to go through. This also allows an opportunity to offer candidates an outline of what to expect. This will be an unfamiliar situation for most, so planning and preparation are key. For example: The free version of Zoom limits meetings to 40 minutes. So, ensure everyone understands the rigid time frame.

If you’re using an agency to help you? Be sure to allow for scheduled follow-up calls with the agency. This will help to keep the process you’ve decided on to move more efficiently.

2. Produce an Information Pack for Candidates 

A great employer branding tool, an information pack can be prepared by and sent to the candidates before the interview/s. The pack can include: 

  • Background information about the company
  • What they should expect from each stage of the interview process 
  • What you’re looking for in an ideal candidate 
  • The technology and login details required (for example: Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, etc.)
  • Point of contact details throughout the interview process 

Sending this information to the candidate will help them have a great candidate experience. It will also allay some of their anxiety while enabling them to prepare to the best of their ability.

3. Encourage Managers to Use a Scorecard

A job interview in person is hard enough. Throw in video technology, and the degree of difficulty increases. When it comes to video interviews, keep your job as simple as possible. That way, you can focus more on making a fair assessment of each candidate. One way to do this: Produce a scorecard unique to the position the candidates are interviewing for. By isolating the top skills or qualities and giving them each a score out of 5, 10 or 20 (depending on the weighting of each), it allows you to quantify where a candidate sits. The scorecard can also help eliminate unconscious biases. After all, managers will only score in relation to the candidates’ demonstrated skills.

4. Prepare for Tough Questions from Candidates 

During the remote hiring process, chances are there will be questions you and the hiring manager may not know how to answer. So prepare ahead of time for some of the most common candidate questions. Below are a few of these questions with tips on how to prepare for them. 

What’s the workplace culture like? 

As the majority of candidates going through the remote interview process won’t have been to your offices, you should explain what it’s like for a newcomer. Things to mention include virtual social activities, daily/weekly catch-ups and the technology you use to keep your staff connected. 

Once hired, what should I expect from the onboarding process? 

The minute details are not helpful here. Instead, provide a high-level overview of the virtual onboarding process. Mention any hardware that would be sent to the new starter’s home and give an outline of the first week of induction/training sessions. It may also be worth mentioning if your workplace organizes a work buddy for new starters and who would be responsible for leading the onboarding process, whether it’s someone from the HR team or the new starter’s line manager. 

How well is the company working remotely?

This question is a good opportunity to mention any wins or challenges the company has faced. Assure the interviewee a remote onboarding process exists. You can also mention how regularly the company meets online and the other ways everyone keeps in touch – whether by Slack, Zoom, emails or phone calls. 

What has your company learned from the transition to working from home? 

Similar to the above, think about any learning curves the company has faced while working from home, whether they have had to do with systems, communication or staff surveys. A candidate may also want to know if the company now recognizes the value in working from home if this wasn’t already in place.  

What types of measures are you looking at to return to the office safely?

While you’re probably still figuring out the details of the policy that will allow a safe return to the office, you should be able to mention the aspects you’re considering. These could include staggered start times, transport options, an increase in remote working or providing PPE. 

Tell me about your flexible working policies?

The answer to this question is likely something all candidates will want to know. If you aren’t already aware, talk to management to find out the company’s thoughts. In some cases, work practices aren’t affected or will not be reduced. In that case, then simply explain why the company has taken this stance. 

The remote hiring process is new for many of us. Which makes this is a great time to learn new hiring methods. Put these tips to work, and hire the best candidates!