Some interesting points regarding machine learning bias in AI recruiting. I'm not sure I agree with all the underlying premise, but there is an old computing adage - garbage in garbage out - so clearly inheriting and addressing bias will clearly need to be managed carefully.
https://hbr.org/2019/10/using-ai-to-eliminate-bias-from-hiring
How many agencies and search firms can a recruiter or business professionally manage? For most, it's probably a tiny percentage of those calling on a daily basis. So how do companies manage the number of calls versus the capacity to manage relationships effectively to deliver hires? The answer for many is the preferred supplier list (PSL).
The agency/search firm PSL has been common practice for decades providing a manageable way for recruiters to get access to agency databases and to cover those candidates who are active in the market, often in combination with e-recruitment and employee referral. The upside is a manageable supplier base, who progressively know your company better and often at a discounted placement fee. For the agency, it works well, as it gives a sense of commitment by the client and usually helps the process to move more quickly than a casual use of agencies.
So far so good, the role gets filled, the agency receives its fee and everybody wins…..or do they? I'm not so sure. At the practical level, the agency PSL, and e-recruitment, only provide access to those candidates who are looking for a job, and in the case of the PSL, only those registered with those agencies with whom the company is working. Typically agencies will work their database and utilise jobboards to generate additional prospects, again, only identifying those who are looking.
The implication of relying on a subset of the talent market, the active subset, is that organisations are ignoring the vast passive candidate pool – those not actively seeking a role but with skills and talent required by organisations. The implications for diversity and inclusion are clear as is the opportunity cost of hiring the best available candidate as opposed to the best candidate possible is a significant one for businesses. In tight talent segments, Finance, Engineering, IT and other specialist areas, there are many more employers seeking those skills than candidates, these roles take longer when relying on active channels or the PSL only, with the associated cost of leaving a role open, again significant.
Using a search firm (headhunter) PSL at least ensures that the passive candidate market is engaged, but typically neglects the active candidate segment and the loss of valuable direct market feedback on the Employee Value Proposition, as well the market connectivity for later use is a missed opportunity.
So, if there is a cost in terms of quality and there is also a cost in terms of time, what are the other costs and issues? There is also the agency/search firm cost running at c. 20-33% of candidate's salary, again not insubstantial when compared to alternatives. I also worry that given the first past the post nature of the PSL approach to recruitment, and agency recruitment in general, that recruiters at agencies are motivated as much by speed in terms of securing the fee, as the quality of the process for all stakeholders and I have seen much feedback from clients, hiring managers and candidates during my time as an in-house recruitment leader.
Whilst I am not advocating that agencies and search firms do not add value, that they are not a valid element of a sourcing strategy, or that a PSL is not the best way to manage those relationships, I would suggest however, a more balanced and progressive recruitment supply chain. I challenge whether, with the availability of internet research, competitor talent mapping services and social media databases and other direct channels, that for many roles, including technical, professional and managerial and leadership, a much more inclusive and cost effective sourcing opportunity is available.
To mitigate the risks and generate the benefits mentioned above, I recommend clients develop passive candidate recruitment channels and combine it with their active candidate process to develop a true multi-channel sourcing approach. Just adding competitor/social media talent research and approach would significantly reduce costs and increase quality, whilst an approach towards relationship recruiting and talent pipelining for key segments would add long term strategic value to an organisations talent supply chain.
The game is up; the future of recruitment is social media. How many blogs and articles have you read espousing one or other varieties of that statement? Lots, I'm guessing and to a degree, it's true.
The competitive advantage of agencies and search firms has been significantly eroded over the last few years, at least as it relates to candidate identification, and progressively more so with scores of new potential candidates pouring onto the main social media sites - linkedin, Xing, and Viadeo - on a daily basis. With the reality of social media recruitment now firmly established, are corporate recruiters maximising social media recruitment potential? Well, not quite and not yet.
Many merely utilise social media sites to post their jobs. Others simply to send messages to prospective candidates identified through the search functionality of the site they are using. Whilst still delivering some benefits, this approach is largely missing the opportunity that social media presents to improve the quality of hire and truly impact the performance of hiring organisations.
For executive search firms, social media candidate generation is merely an extension of their custom and practice in candidate research. Social media makes it easier for them to identify prospects but they rely on their tried and tested practices to deliver talent for their clients and revenue for themselves. In the evolution of the search industry, those with the best practices grew whilst less efficient competitors floundered. So what principles can in-house teams adopt from search firm best practice to improve their social media outcomes?
In general, the quality is in the passive candidate market and in this space the thoroughness and diligence of the approach dictate the best outcomes. By learning lessons from those who have streamlined their approaches in this market and by applying those lessons to new channels such as social media, corporate recruiting functions can greatly benefit in quality improvements and cost reductions whilst maximising their employer brand perception.
The growth of social media as a recruitment tool has been rapid over the last few years, with Linkedin leading the way. Organisations now have the opportunity to leverage social media to drive significant quality of hire, recruitment cost reductions and operational efficiencies.
If we look at the benefits from Linkedin, the most lauded is cost avoidance through a reduction in agency fees. Perhaps because it's the easiest to quantify and indeed can be substantial. Not paying C.25% of a $100,000 salary aggregates quickly over 20 hires to $500,000. A great business benefit and very useful when discussing the recruitment function budget with your financial controller.
Another common benefit is time to hire. Clearly with such a broad range of candidates identifiable and contactable, it is possible to drive a hard charging recruitment assignment faster than through traditional methods; the quicker the hire is made the sooner they are helping to increase revenues for their new employers.
Whilst cost reduction and process efficiencies are important and real benefits, the opportunity to increase the quality of hire for organisations is where LinkedIn excels.
By expanding a search beyond candidates who are looking for a new job and hiring the best available from that limited pool, Linkedin affords organisations the opportunity to hire the best in the market that their value proposition and compensation can attract. Simply by mitigating the restriction of range of a search by using the vast network of linkedin members as potential hires can greatly increase the quality of a talent pool for a particular role(s). When used in combination with active channels and competitor mapping, the results can be impressive.
Another under discussed benefit is the market connectivity and stakeholder feedback that leveraging networks on linkedin and elsewhere can bring.
Understanding a talent pools reaction to your organisation attractors, value proposition and compensation is key to understanding and improving the return on investment of your recruitment spend. Also, by directly engaging with your target talent segments, you reduce the risk that they will be hired elsewhere during your recruitment process – a big concern when using no fix no fee recruitment agents, who may market a candidate to 10 competitors at the same time to improve their chance of a fee.
So, with such significant business benefits available and with the main competitive advantage of search firms - databases and networks – largely mitigated by linkedin and other tools, why are so many organisations missing the opportunity to maximise, or even utilise social media channels like linkedin? To get to the answer, we first need to look at the elements that need to be in place to successfully support an effective social media recruitment capability:
Social media recruitment takes time – to research, contact, screen and engage prospects and turn them into candidates for selection takes a lot more time than sending a requisition to a group of agencies or to post a job on a board. Whether your recruitment is done by a HR generalist, a recruiter, or a specialist sourcer, it's critical that they have the time available to add social media recruitment to their existing sourcing channels.
When engaging prospects on linkedin regarding career opportunities, it is important to understand that to convert a prospect to a candidate requires that the organisation, it's value proposition and the role be sold to people who are happy in their current jobs but who may be open to hearing about other opportunities.
It is also important that hiring managers understand the difference between an active and passive candidate and that processes are tailored to consistently reinforce the value proposition during the two way assessment process to maximise the chances of a successful hire and to minimise drop out and offer rejection.
Linkedin is not a database of candidates who have specifically come to the site seeking employment – like the Monster candidate database for example – and adopting the appropriate philosophy to engage prospects and turn them into candidates will have quite an impact on the quality and number of prospects engaged as candidates.How you contact prospects identified from linkedin and other social media sites will have a significant impact on engagement rates. Providing a high quality briefing document - covering the role, organisation, culture and value proposition by inmail (linkedin email) and following up by telephone or inviting a telephone conversation will yield many more referrals and interested prospects than simply inmailing a role profile and inviting applications.
It's often said in sales that people buy people first. In social media recruitment it's also the case when trying to engage people with your career opportunities. Having recruiters that can articulate the company attractors, its value proposition and culture as well as the function and role, in a way that aligns with a prospects motivation and career goals, will have considerable impact both in conversion rates of prospects to candidates and on corporate and employer brand perception.
In order to generate candidates, recruiters/researchers require access to as broad a network of prospects as possible – Linkedin provides a range of subscriptions with varying degrees of access to the complete linkedin network and with varying ranges of support tools and inmail (direct email contact) allowances etc. The cost is marginal to the cost avoidance of agency fees. Without a subscription, recruiters are left to building their own network of contacts which, even with most dedicated of networkers will take considerable time and will be unlikely to provide the quantity and quality of a subscription based network and may disappear with the employee if they leave the employer.
In the process of social media recruitment research, a great deal of information will be available on how key talent and talent segment view your organisation and its value proposition, market information and referrals etc. Great information, particularly if you are consistently recruiting within a sector or talent segment. How to manage and leverage this information is a common question. The answer for many organisations is a customised version of a customer relationship management tool (CRM) which enables information on talent segments, competitors, skillsets, prospects, feedback and other information to be easily and cheaply organised, managed and leveraged.
To answer the question as to why many organisations are missing the opportunity to maximise or even utilise social media to generate the significant benefits available, there are typically three broad factors: Lack of subject matter expertise, lack of headcount or lack of financial resources. So what can be done to mitigate these challenges?
Subject Matter Expertise
Developing a social media recruitment strategy cannot be done in isolation of the general sourcing strategy, service delivery approach or other operational aspects of delivering recruitment in-house. However, there are various RPO, HR Consulting and interim experts in the market across all territories that can provide the expertise on a project basis. Indeed, Human Capital talent offer a high level audit of recruiting strategy and operations to produce a practical social media strategy and detailed operational process recommendation that organisations could quickly implement, with or without support.
In the current economic climate, many HR and recruiting functions are progressively challenged to achieve more with less and are seeing an absolute focus on HR headcount management and reduction. In these circumstances adding headcount to leverage social media recruitment and direct sourcing is a significant challenge. To overcome these challenges many organisations are maintaining their e-recruitment process for active candidates and/or adding or continuing to use agencies. However, many are missing an opportunity to utilise co-sourcing to task out those parts of the process that they cannot, or do not wish to, do in house.
The process of name gathering, reviewing, screening, and engagement up to selection and shortlist can be provided by the global network of independent researchers, recruitment process support firms and specialist research organisations, negating or reducing the use of agencies. All work can be specified to mirror your own standards, SLA's and materials and charged at a per day or project rate. There is an existing flexible service tier that can be leveraged to allow access to linkedin and other social media, often at a discount of up more than 50% of agency and search firm rates. The firms are in-country, off-shore and near-shore.
In many organisations, it's easier to get money than headcount. In a growing number of companies it's difficult to get either; more so in centralised HR shared services budgets. This provides a clear issue for recruiting functions. If they can't do social media themselves and they can't pay for process support, then many are resolved to continuing with the status quo and missing a clear opportunity to drive real business benefits. For most organisations in this situation, the recruitment budgets will be held by the business, typically for agency fees. In my experience, a well-developed social media strategy recommendation combined with a sound financial base case can win support from business budget holders to divert budget for agency fees into supporting social media recruitment, even as a pilot initially.
I recently worked on a project for an organisation spending millions in search firm retainers trying unsuccessfully to hire chemical engineers and plant superintendents across Europe. The lack of hires was causing serious issues in plant management, capital investment and maintenance management for their plants in Russia, through Europe across to the UK. I worked with the HR Directors of the engineering function and their supporting business units to define a social media and competitor talent attraction strategy and financial base case.
The recommendation included developing social media channels and competitor mapping process supported by a researcher, recruiter and admin, with an external research support network to provide scale. As there was no headcount or funding within HR, the business funded the costs of the tools and people and within 6 months the organisation was directly hiring their entire professional and above level engineering talent from linkedin, other social media and competitor mapping with significant reduction in costs and time to hire.
With so many benefits to be gained from Linkedin and other social media recruitment channels and so many ways to deliver the services – in-house, outsourced or co-sourced, I am sure that organisations with continue to progressively adopt Linkedin and other social media. However, like most aspects of business, the level of return on investment will depend on the adopted strategy and will vary in-line with the quality, diligence and depth of approach. Happy Hunting!
In the current economic climate many recruiting departments are challenged by the combination of unpredictable demand, fixed recruiter headcount allocations and the ever present requirement for speed and quality of delivery, more cost effectively, by increasingly demanding customers.
The resulting pressure on recruiters workload can significantly impact quality of delivery, time to hire, cost of hire and lead to negative feedback from stakeholders (candidates, clients and vendors) and in some cases, loss of process control as managers link-up with some of the many agencies they get called by directly on a daily basis.
The reality for many organisations is that little additional resources are available in the short/medium term as budgets are cut and complicated and unpredictable headcount sign-off processes are put in place or maintained.
Meanwhile, some categories of talent remain a significant challenge to attract. So what are the options open to busy recruitment/HR functions? Well, they can continue to do it for themselves, they can outsource the process to an RPO organisation or they can build a more balanced recruitment supply chain, finding a supplier support architecture beyond the agency client relationship but without outsourcing the recruitment function:
RPO, while a valid option, depends to a large extent on business drivers, scale and distribution of recruitment demand, organisational readiness to work with outsourced solutions, current state of capability, current attitudes to talent acquisition by line managers and the urgency of the specific issues being faced by the recruiting/HR function. There is in any case a big investment in time, cost and discipline to define, implement and run successfully.
Agencies, an expensive option at the best of times, still leads to significant process management work for internal recruiters, as well as reducing the opportunity to identify the highest quality of candidates by omitting passive candidate and competitor talent who may be approachable but not in the market. There is also the lack of direct market connectivity and feedback on an organisations employee value proposition to consider.
In-house delivery is a great and progressive option where resources match demand. However, an under capacity to manage volumes within the function, will store up problems across all stakeholders – recruiters, line managers, vendors and candidates.
Even with the support of agencies, ultimately the pressure on recruiters will drive attrition, lack of engagement, and reduced quality of outcomes. Adding flexible resources, such as contract resources is an attractive option, however, many organisations treat contract resource as headcount or non-budgeted cost leading to restrictions mentioned above. Likewise the demand volume and peaks may not be ideally suited to delivery by a contract resource.
Partnership Recruiting, tasking out segments of demand to recruitment partners outside the typical agency fee model, is in my view the most flexible option.
Having determined that it's not possible to do everything to the required quality in-house, partnership recruiting provides an opportunity to define which segments of demand companies can and want to manage in-house and those requiring support.
Typical candidates for support are those aspects of the recruitment process which can reduce cost, increase speed, add technical capability, improve candidate quality or increase functional capacity.
The attractiveness of partnership based recruiting of defined segmnets of demand is that any demand, large or small can be supported on a project, short or long term basis, leaving control of delivery internally, whilst flexibly mitigating resource challenges with high quality delivery at a reduced cost to typical third party support.
One organisation I worked with struggled with overall volumes and was experiencing significant capacity challenges in the recruiting team, whilst also incurring significant agency/search firm cost. A delivery architecture was developed putting in place process support for blue collar and junior roles, leaving in-house recruiters free to deliver against technical, managerial, professional and executive roles.
The in-house team were then focused on direct sourcing, with the support of passive candidate and competitor research support, delivery enhanced candidates at dramatically reduced costs.
Organisations will in any case ultimately and progressively move towards a more balanced recruitment supply chain, utilising a combination of co-sourcing support, agencies, in-house delivery, and/or RPO.
The key drivers of the need for flexible cost effective support will be the variability of demand within a fixed headcount.
Key to making a successful transition will be to understand how organisations want to connect with the talent market, expected outputs and the resource, cost and delivery implications of the different options and combinations.
Most organisations recognize by now that a diverse and talented workforce is good for business. Indeed most leadership teams articulate a strong and clear positive message regarding their support for Diversity.
There are many studies to show the competitive advantage and superior business results from Diversity in the workplace and most scale organisations have made significant investment in building global diversity functions and programs to improve Diversity.
So with all of the support, investment and initiatives, why do many organisations struggle to make meaningful progress in their Diversity objectives and what can be done to improve results?
Whilst there are many drivers of success, including the employers value proposition/attractiveness to their diverse employee populations, they fall into two broad categories, demand and delivery:
Demand: The formulation of demand, the development of the job profile/requisition, is where the rubber meets the road in the diversity recruitment process and is where it often breaks down and negatively impacts every step that follows. Hiring managers ask HR/recruiting to find a profile and that profile is typically the same profile – education, skills, experience, attitude and industry sector – that has been used in the past and which is likely to deliver a similar spread of candidates as in the past.
Few hiring managers have had training and experience in interviewing, let alone diversity interview training; many will approach the selection process in the same way as they have always done, typically delivering a hire similar to other hires made in the past. The result? Another chance to increase diversity is lost. As one of my former colleagues, and Global Diversity Leader put it, uncharitably but not inaccurately, often "stale, male and pale".
In my experience, it's not that managers have a general bias against Diversity. Rather, they have a fixed view based on culture and experience that leads them to formulate their demand, and select against delivered shortlists, in a very narrow range that leads to poorer diversity outcomes,
Delivery: Like the rest of HR, recruiting functions, and generalists tasked with recruiting, are being asked to do more with less. They are measured with cost and time to hire metrics and are challenged by business stakeholders to deliver candidates ever more quickly. Under resource, cost and time pressures, many HR organisations miss the opportunity to truly engage the candidate market fully, relying instead on e-recruitment or agencies to deliver candidates.
By working with job boards, and/or agencies, the restriction of range of candidates engaged misses the opportunity to really interact with quality and diversity in a meaningful way and in a way that drives competitive advantage.
Agencies on no-fix-no-fee will work their databases and perhaps some job posting and networking, knowing that speed is key, otherwise they lose the fee to a competitor so they deliver the best candidate they have, rather than the best and most diverse candidates available. Likewise, when corporate recruiters use job boards as the primary source, they are only engaging candidates that are seeking employment and not the best and most diverse candidates available to them.
By only working within the active candidate market (those people actively seeking employment), employers are missing out on the quality and diversity within the passive candidate market (talent employed by other organisations but who are not currently seeking a new job). The quality and diversity outcomes are therefore undermined by the restriction of range of candidates engaged.
So, what can organisations facing the challenges above do to improve diversity outcomes? Here are 5 practices that have proven benefits in driving better Diversity results:
Demand
The role profile for a requisition sets the parameters for the recruiting process to follow. The broader the profile, the wider the range of quality and diverse candidates that can be engaged in the attraction and selection processes.
To ensure the broadest possible role profile, build a qualitative intake meeting into the recruitment process involving the HR Business Partner, Recruiter and Hiring Manager to define the required profile. In the meeting explore the diversity impact of choices on industry experience, specific skills, attitudes and education and seek to broaden where possible e.g. is an advanced degree really required, do they have to really have retail expertise, what are transferable skills from other industries that could be included etc.
Challenging hiring managers on choices and engaging as a true business partner rather than providing transactional delivery of requested hires can lead to significantly enhanced outcomes. However, it is key to ensure that HR partners and recruiters are capable of articulating the commercial benefits of diversity and have the courage, capability and credibility to consult with, and challenge, their stakeholders on diversity outcomes.
Sourcing
Driving quality and diversity requires the broadest and most qualitative sourcing process possible. A solution approach that ensures both passive and active candidate populations are engaged is a key driver of success. By building sourcing solutions that combine e-recruitment posting/advertising along with social media and competitor talent research and approach, quality and diversity are significantly enhanced, whilst also delivering qualitative data from target talent regarding its perception of your employee value proposition.
The reality is that the vast majority of recruiting functions lack the resources to leverage the passive market and necessarily rely on the e-recruitment/advertised market at great opportunity cost to their businesses. However, there are providers in the market who deliver services related to research and approach within the passive market and others that provide combined passive and active candidate identification, approach and shortlisting, often on highly favourable charging models.
Indeed Human Capital talent provides its MyHeadhunter services on a time based charging model which significantly discounts agency and search firm costs whilst improving quality and diversity.
They challenge for HR/recruiting functions is to adopt a solution approach and to resource internally, or source and select a new type of partner that bring scale and capability in both the passive candidate market and multi-channel sourcing.
Measurement
Measure the results from your diversity recruiting investment. Measurement allows businesses to understand its diversity outcomes and provides qualitative data from which to build a platform for improvement. Truly understanding outcomes is difficult in isolation of knowing what is happening at each stage of the recruitment process.
It's important to have insights on which stages of the recruitment process are enhancing/reducing diversity outcomes and within which talent segments, businesses and hiring managers. Having this information will enable the identification of behavioural and systemic barriers to diversity success and provide a baseline for a virtuous circle of measurement, action and improvement.
Whilst data collection can be daunting, most applicant tracking systems provide the ability to capture and report diversity data. Creating cross functional teams to analyse data and recommend initiatives provides a great opportunity for business HR partnership and professional development.
Accountability
For any diversity program to be successful, it's essential that accountabilities are defined and allocated correctly. Make sure that hiring managers understand that they are accountable for diversity hiring outcomes. Make HR Partners accountable for manager training, education advice and consultancy on the diversity agenda and hold recruiters accountable for driving diversity friendly sourcing programs and solutions.
By combining clarity on accountabilities with measurement, activity, advice and consultancy, the elements are in place to drive enhanced diversity results.
Partnership
Build a sense of partnership and shared objectives across stakeholder groups to achieving sustainable benefits.
Given the fragmentation and geographical remoteness of diversity program teams, recruiters, hiring managers and HR partners, it can be easy to slip in to silo approaches and unaligned activities.
To avoid this and to create a sense of partnership, whilst generating stakeholder engagement and professional development opportunities, build cross functional diversity teams. Include all stakeholder groups in diversity action teams and task them to review diversity outputs and to develop and champion initiatives and to manage diversity related change.
