Not too long ago, we published a blog post: How to Hire a Great Recruiter. It’s a topic that we’ve been thinking about on and off for nearly 16 years and it’s recently resurfaced in a big way as the economy continues to show signs of improvement. Currently, as executives at a leading corporate applicant tracking software provider, we come into contact with hundreds of organizations that are looking for internal recruiting support. Literally, a day doesn’t go by that our team doesn’t get asked to refer a good corporate recruiter.

Unfortunately, too many companies make costly mistakes by not vetting their recruiters properly. This leads to inefficiency, wasted time, wasted resources, diminished status within the corporate hierarchy, etc. It’s not surprising. In recent years, recruiting has gotten more sophisticated. Once closed networks are wide open. Today, it’s less about processing people and more about leveraging technology, relationship building and managing information. Now more than ever, it takes talented corporate recruiters to find talented employees.

So, what’s the fundamental formula for hiring a successful corporate recruiter? Here is a guide that will help distill the characteristics so your organization has the best chance at hiring successful corporate recruiters. These must-have attributes have been developed with the help of an industrial psychologist who administered a series of tests benchmarking top performing corporate recruiters over the past 4 years.  We encourage individual organizations to use this guide as a foundation. We’ve intentionally kept the rationale broad so this guide can be used by a wide variety of organizations.

Hiring a successful corporate recruiter is as important as ever. As the economy continues to gain strength, talent will increasingly become harder to attract and hire in nearly every industry.  Hiring a recruiter for their “network,” because they have been a recruiter for a decade or because they have experience at a hot company should take a backseat to looking for the person with the right traits. A successful corporate recruiter will have the focus to be successful in a dynamic environment, the confidence to become productive immediately, and the resourcefulness to get the job done.

As a part of our blog series “HR and Recruiters the New Marketers“, I want to share practical ways HR and recruiting professionals can put real marketing concepts to work to improve corporate recruiting programs right now. Now, I am not advising everyone to run out and spend tens of thousands of dollars on full-blown employment branding initiatives (if you want to, we have a great partner for that). Rather, I am suggesting that while the year is young, HR and recruiting pros should consider creating (or revamping) a marketing framework to optimize recruiting communications. Here is where to start.

Create / refine your corporate recruiting story

Select and educate your ambassadors

Create a customer experience.

Lately,  I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection of human resources and marketing and how critical it is these days for HR and Recruiting professionals to think like marketers.  Admittedly, I didn’t invent this concept.  Rather, I was turned on to the idea by a London-based recruitment firm Dylan. With help from Tom Fishburne, a.k.a the Marketoonist ( by the way, a friend and former co-worker of my wife’s), the notion that HR’s role as marketers is brought alive in a speech that he gave earlier this year in London.

During his talk, Tom points out that one of the ways that we as HR and recruiting practitioners can start embracing our roles as marketers is to avoid silos. That is, we can’t operate under the pretense that marketing is not our responsibility. Marketing is everyone’s responsibility. As employees we all need have the ability to concisely communicate our corporate story. And, as HR and recruiting professionals , we of all people, need to be the ambassadors of our employment brand able to convey our organization’s unique qualities, advantages and mission expertly.  After all, our job is no longer just to ‘process’ people. Our job is to ‘influence’ people.

Read more about HR and Recruitment Marketing on Newton Software’s Applicant Tracking Software blog.

Improve your job advertisements by Newton Software

1.  HR and Recruiting professionals need to be the Chief Marketing Officers for jobs.

Write concise, narrative job descriptions that tell the story about the position. Some employers are still inclined to advertise job requisitions designed to screen candidates by listing every skill, requirement and degree imaginable. It’s time to get more scientific and strategic about job advertisements. Put emphasis on the word “advertisement” and tell your story. Avoid the obligatory laundry list and get higher click through rates. That’s right, make your job ads interesting and more people will read them.

2. Emphasize unique qualities that show you appreciate employees.

Tell applicants what makes your company a great place to work. Free flowing artisan coffee and all you can eat snacks are nice. Gaming areas and nap rooms fine too but in many circles, these “perks” aren’t really that unique and furthermore, they aren’t things professionals look for in a job. It’s time to tell applicants about the meaningful things that you do well. Maybe it’s an education stipend, some sort of special training, great benefits or simply flexible hours. The key is to share the unique and valuable qualities that let applicants know that you care about all of your employees.  Above all, job seekers want to know that they will be treated well, compensated fairly and appreciated.  Tell them.

3.  Make the transaction easier.

Creating a cumbersome application process is restrictive and ineffective. For example, requiring applicants to create a user name and password to apply for a job not only presents a barrier but it also predicates that the applicant will come back and apply for other jobs, check on the status of their application or update their profile with new skills, degrees or certifications. They won’t. Very few companies have the brand equity to command this type of interaction with top applicants. People have too many other places to update their professional profiles these days to expect them to come back to visit your careers “portal”.  And, while this may make me wildly unpopular with some of the HR crowd, when was the last time you hired someone that applied to 6 jobs at your company or came back to update their original profile, resume or application? Top applicants aren’t going to come back and “login” and they don’t knock twice.

4.   Less is better.

Tailor your application process to capture the information that will allow you to assess applicants. In short, an online application behind a job ad is NOT a true application for employment. Employers shouldn’t ask for date of birth, social security number and other sensitive personally identifiable information (PII).  Most applicants won’t provide that type of information. And,  more importantly, why collect risky information from every applicant you receive knowing that you won’t even speak with 90% job posting respondents?

Ask for information that will allow you to better access applicants’ skills and experience to determine if they meet the minimum qualifications necessary to be successful for the job.  And, remember, there’s still no better initial assessment tool than a resume.

Streamline you application process this year. The shorter your application process the better. Our  research shows that every step added to the online application process diminishes completion rates. Use applicant tracking software to make your online application process leaner, smarter and faster.

5. Communicate with every applicant.

Whether an applicant is a go or a no, employers are obligated to communicate with every applicant. This is especially true for consumer brands, nonprofits and any other employer whose applicants can be  their customers. The application process doesn’t end when the applicant clicks the submit button anymore. This isn’t 1990. We don’t have to send applicants a rejection letter via the USPS. A simple email goes a long way and there are applicant tracking tools available that make the entire communication process nearly effortless.

Aside from doing the right thing, employers that notify applicants about the status of their candidacy mitigate risks and protracted inefficiencies by reducing duplicate applications and follow up calls to HR and  hiring managers. And, in our age of social media and the overall democratization of public sentiment, it doesn’t hurt to treat others like you’d want to be treated.

You’ve probably never seen a corporate advertisement that reads “We don’t do anything better than before – we simply stick to the status quo.”   Innovative companies, especially in the multibillion dollar Human Resources software sector, often strive to set themselves apart from their competitors through new features, faster services, and lower prices.

However, this was not always the case for the giants in the HR Technology space.  Over the course of the past two decades,these “old-world” companies have actually embraced the software status quo. For years, ‘sticking with what works’ made sense, as these companies pulled in billions of dollars in profit every year from selling the same old ‘boxed’ software packages while charging for periodic upgrades, maintenance and deriving the bulk of their revenue and profit from services.

Today, these big software companies are really starting to  pay the price for sticking with the status quo for too long.  They are scrambling to catch up with both nimble startups and open minded corporations that have embraced new technologies and ways of doing business; most notably they’ve welcomed cloud computing from the very beginning.

Wharton recently published an article that provided some interesting cases of cloud computing chipping away at traditional software business models.  From knowledge@wharton:  “For example, Forrester calculated that Microsoft’s Exchange e-mail program will cost a company with 5,000 employees $28.22 a month for each user. By comparison, Google’s fully loaded corporate suite — including Gmail, calendar and productivity applications, along with technical support — for a company with 5,000 users will cost $8.59 a month for each user.”

The article also highlights the disruptive changes that cloud computing has brought to the various other corners of the software industry; including consumer productivity software, business services software, and video gaming software.  In each of these sectors, the traditional models of selling ‘boxed’ software and charging for upgrades has slowly been eroded by ‘Software as a Service’ models that instead focus on monthly fees void of any long term contracts.   Companies like Sonar 6  and Bamboo HR are offering customers #HRtech  products that exist entirely in the cloud – making access as simple as signing up online.

Another software sector that has been drastically shaped by cloud computing and SaaS pricing structures is recruiting software.   The days of a company needing to ‘unbox’ a recruiting software suite and install the program on every computer and server in the company are  long gone.  The days of having a company ‘tech guy’ walk downstairs and troubleshoot local server-side glitches are over.  There are very few companies, if any, that continue to push the innovation envelope in the world on on-premise software.

Businesses now are able to utilize applicant tracking software that exists entirely in the cloud – including communication tools, customer service, data analytics and instant updates.  Newton Software is proud to be the company that pioneered cloud-based applicant tracking software, having fully embraced a new age of delivering hiring technology from the very beginning.

Only recently have the corporations of old realized the importance of cloud computing – they’ve started rapidly buying up smaller companies and establishing their own cloud based applications.  However, they may be too slow to catch up.  Today’s world of software, one where online applications are easily accessed by anyone, is no longer about over-inundating a market and establishing a customer ‘choke hold.’ It’s about adapting to customer and providing the best possible solution for a specific niche.

The annual HR Technology Conference and Expo is a lot what the “Speech From the Throne” must have been like during the middle ages when the reigning monarch would lay out the condition of the nation and decree the agenda going forward. Read into this opening however you choose. All politics aside, this is an important event and really does serve to illuminate the trends and trendsetters in the HR Technology industry.

This year I attended the event specifically to connect with partners, to strengthen alliances, and to meet new people.  And, while I didn’t have a lot of free time, I did get a chance to wander the expo floor, mingle in the press room for a bit, and towards the end of the show, just sit in the hall, observe and listen.

What happens in Vegas never really stays in Vegas.  Here are some of my takeaways from this year’s conference.

On the lighter side

1. Viva Las Vegas. Ok, I personally both fear and loath “The Vegas”. It’s not a place for those of us with little self control. But, it is the perfect venue for an industry conference. It’s designed to get in and out of easily. It’s relatively inexpensive and there are plenty of places to meet, greet, eat and be entertained.  The accessibility of the venue allowed me to cram in more meetings than I thought possible. Step into a lounge or a semi-quiet corner (there is no silence in Vegas) and you could get a private 30 minutes with that important someone.

2. Free Wi-Fi or rather Wi-Fi free. This is one of my only logistical gripes about the event. The availability of public Wi-Fi was a joke. I couldn’t get an email in or out over the free Wi-Fi brought to us by ADP (clearly not ADP’s fault) let alone try to demo Newton ( our applicant tracking software).  If I were ADP I would have been steaming mad that I sponsored free internet access and it ended up being a huge failure.  Given that just about every product at this year’s show is delivered over the internet, the organizers should have ensured that there was a big honkin’ pipe running to the conference.

3. You are What You Schwag.  I am still sort of amazed by conference schwag. I guess I don’t really believe that vendors are going to lure, or even start a conversation with their next customer by offering free Smarties and flashing key chains. If you do feel schwag is still necessary, why not raffle off an iPad or Kindle Fire? Give away something that won’t end up as a chew toy or as instant landfill. For more on the state of schwag, read William Tincup’s most recent contribution to Fist Full of Talent.

The meat.

4.Get Ready for the Suite wars. I read one analyst’s review of the conference this week in which he predicts that suite adoption is in the “very early innings”. I agree. However, this space is definitely going to get more interesting over the coming months and years.

I detected a sense of urgency amongst the traditional suite vendors as many are gearing up for a multi-front war.  The talent management vendors have gone on the offensive and are quickly encroaching on the more traditional HRIS vendors’ turf. Where they were once  partners, now many camps are leery and concerned that they may be sleeping with their enemies.  I predict competition for the same seats is going to get really heated as more vendors start extending their functionality in order to address the middle of the talent chain.

5. On Consolidation: the Writing is in the Cloud. There was quite a bit of talk and speculation last week about M&A activities in the HR Tech industry.  I believe this will continue to be driven by the aforementioned suite vendors and their fight to compete across the talent chain. It’s clear that several vendors have realized that they only have a few core modules that are in their suites that are complete features. And, they’ve realized that in their race to claim “we have that too” (I saw one group wearing shirts that said this) they’ve shipped some pretty “thin” modules.

More specifically, I predict that there will be strategic acquisitions made in the talent management space as most of the major suite vendors are pretty lean on both the very front (talent acquisition/recruiting) and late stages of the talent chains (secession planning).  Given the target customer size of many of the suites( mid to upper-mid market), I am guessing that the most demand will be for talent management (performance, review, retention) applications that come later in the talent chain. Plus, as companies like Successfactors close in on the middle of the talent chain and gear up for a full confrontation with the HRIS establishment, the suites will continue to look for opportunities at the beginning and end of the talent chain (ATS and Performance respectively).

Finally, I want to give a special shout out to our partner OneSource VHR, the exclusive reseller of Workday for the mid-market.  Thanks for letting me hang around your booth.  You make the Newton team feel like part of your team. We are grateful.

PS: OneSource VHR is hiring. Click here for a list of their openings.

Click the infographic to enlarge.

Newton is modern, easy-to-use  applicant tracking software designed to organize and improve internal recruiting programs for small and medium sized businesses (30-3000 employees).  Newton features best-of-breed dashboards that create unparalleled visibility and transparency. And, Newton is the only ATS designed to drive the decisions that drive hiring taking into account all users in the corporate recruiting workflow. Industry leading adoption rates (+90%) ensure easy collaboration and powerful performance driven metrics allow HR and Recruiting users are always in control.

Here’s an interesting fact about Newton. All of our 300+ customers use the exact same core workflow. Yeah, that’s right, Newton customers don’t customize the core recruiting process.  Why? Because they don’t have to and no one ever really complains. The reason that customization doesn’t come up is because  Newton works. We designed the platform to work the way recruiting works. Our customers don’t have to tell Newton how to do recruiting. In other words, there is more than just a little recruiting DNA in the product.  A native understanding of corporate recruiting is a huge advantage of Newton’s and our customer’s.

A recent blog post by Steve Boese, a popular HR technology  product strategist, instructor, blogger  and HR community leader got us thinking about the topic of customization.  In his post, Steve writes,

“While choice, options, and freedom to adapt technology are all necessary components in the modern enterprise and consumer software age, let’s not forget there is quite a lot to commend software and hardware solutions that simply work. Turn them on, activate them, answer a few questions in configuration sure – but the sooner solutions can start solving business problems and delivering positive impact to users, without asking users to morph into armchair software developers is really the hallmark of a great solution.”

We couldn’t agree more.  When applicant tracking software integrates into your day to day without massive customization only then does it really live up to its potential.  And, when you deliver customers a product that’s designed to address a specific set of business functions, (in our case corporate recruiting at small and medium-sized organizations) there is immediate impact, little support required and it’s easy to teach others how to use it.

Kris Dunn, Founder of Fistful of Talent, the popular and influential blog devoted to human capital, recently sat down with Newton Software Co-Founder, Joel Passen.   The interview uncovers the “HR Mafia”, Joel’s recovery and a recruiting methodology that Kris and Joel agree to agree on, “the funnel”.

I caught up with Joel this afternoon and asked him about the interview. “Kris Dunn is one of these guys in the industry that flat out knows his stuff. He’s been in the trenches.   To have him say that ‘he respects our game’ is flattering and encouraging to say the least.”


Read more about the origins of “the funnel”, “the truth teller” and how Newton’s applicant tracking software is built to work the way the best internal recruiting work.  Oh yeah… and about the rumor of this HR Mafia…..

UK-based Dylan, a marketing recruiting agency, collaborated with Tom Fishburne (a.k.a The Marketoonist) from San Francisco to create this comic.  When we saw it, we couldn’t help but think about all the dollars that organizations poor into corporate recruiting and how few resources are actually spent cultivating a culture around retaining talent.

Apparently, Fishburne, who frequently speaks about marketing, is preparing for an event with Dylan where he’ll focus on how the best brands and businesses “market from the inside out”. His premise is that the HR Director is the new Marketing Director. Fishburne goes on to say, “recruitment is as important to how a brand is marketed as creating a marketing plan”.

Unfortunately, I don’t think our team will make it to London for the talk in September. Something tells me we’ll be in San Francisco hammering our new mobile functionality for Newton, our award winning applicant tracking software. Hopefully, the nice folks at Dylan will record the presentation.