Capturing Attention and Definition of Passive Candidates

Companies searching for staff via job ads try to capture candidates’ attention with inducements in the summary teaser or first paragraph, luring position titles or addressing them informally to create familiarity and closeness.

Common wisdom suggests that messages sent to passive candidates in case of direct approach must have even greater power to capture people’s attention.

Then who are passive candidates? Ad definitionem, passive candidates are people, who are not actively looking to move, i.e. are not applying for jobs. If they do not search for a new job, they’re most likely happy in their current one and thus, unlikely to embark on a new one. Hence, a more accurate definition would describe passive candidates as those who do not actively look for jobs, but are keen to move. Consequently, people who do not consider any career move, are not candidates period.

And what about those who indicate that they look for new opportunity irrespectively of their status - employee or jobseeker in their LinkedIn or Xing profile. By being approached by the employer they too qualify as passive candidates.

The full definition of passive candidates could then be: people who are keen to move and are approached by a company instead of applying for jobs by themselves.

From the perspective of this belief, I doubt whether one can motivate a person not intending to leave his current employer to join the recruitment process of a next-employer-wannabe in hopes to land a new job. Neither a particular message will do nor the medium.

Take for example, an electronic greeting card. Cartoony or not, with animation, with music and what not, if the person is not ready for the next career move, s/he passes on the opportunity.

What about a visualization of a prospective title like the example below. A mixture of personalized job ad and a direct approach method.



How LinkedIn and Google figured out that I might be interested in B2C Marketing position, is still a mystery to me.

What will then help one to reach out to people initially uninterested in a job change possible?
I believe repetition makes poaching them possible. Sending multiple messages by various persons from the company instills the idea of moving and makes one more sensible for and critical of the conditions and career prospects at their current employer.

HR routine, German culture and catchy subject lines

Ever since, I also blog on career-related topics, I visit portals and read other blogs related to career, cv and cover letter writing, job hunt, etc as well. Karrierebibel is one of the premium addresses for that matter. Often ahead of the times as the recent blog shows.

The author pledges use of marketing or "catchy" phrases in the subject line of an application email sent by candidates. He suggests that subject lines are the opportunity to make the first impression on HR or hiring manager and hence should be written in a way that it attracts their attention and makes them interested in a candidate. He calls for abandonment of uniform subject lines (e.g. key account manager application) in favor of "catchy" phrases meant to emanate self-confidence and interest (e.g. your next key account manager).

Agreed. But yet disagreed.

Indeed, writing „application” in the subject line is boring. Especially, as application by e-mail are usually sent to an e-mail-address exclusively established for this purpose. On another hand, lucky those HR departments that receive applications with subject lines that include the position name. Those getting a reference to the job ad as well should consider themselves twice as lucky.

Disagreed because the advice misses the reality check with the HR routine. A few beliefs:
* HR folk like any other people like to have it simple, informative and to the point.
* HR appreciates candidates who make their life easy. One of the recruiters job is to keep track of applications received and there is nothing more annoying than not instantly knowing what position a candidate is applying for.
*“Catchy” lines make recruiters job cumbersome and get the job seeker the wrong kind of attention. Super out-of-the-box applications also in terms of subject line are usually a turn-off.
* Efforts put in phrasing subject lines go unnoticed as long as e-mail-applications are printed which I believe is still a common practice in German SMEs.

The advice is also disconnected with the German culture. German job seekers still struggle to make good advertisement for themselves in cover letters or show their motivation to do the job for the employer in question. They are culturally not programmed to show self-confidence. Americans are. Yet, a quick review of career advice sites in English shows that the majority recommends to refrain from marketing-like subject lines. Instead, they promote simplicity: Name, Position, Job Ad ID.
Notably, candidate’s name in the subject line is particularly of benefit, when HR forwards the short-listed applications to the hiring managers electronically.
Next, some folk suggests trying to stand out in the crowd of applicants by adding one of the following besides Name, Position, Job Ad ID:
* Putting the addressee’s name at the beginning of the subject line.
* Adding credentials behind once name
* Adding total number of years of experience
* Adding very unique and specialized skill

Lastly, whether marketing-like phrases can add to the success of a job application probably depends on the industry, which the author did not give any consideration to. For application in ad agencies, some creativity is beneficial for sure. For more conservative industries, keeping it simple should remain the rule.

***
My research shows that out of 2000 recent applications received at my current employer, only one candidate utilized the wording “gesucht? gefunden!!!” in the subject line. Needless to say: She did not get the job.

This blog refers greatly to the comments left by LinkedIn members.

Firing at start-ups

Constantly under pressure to attract and recruit staff, performance oriented organizations such as start-ups fire without hesitation. Moreover, many exhibit „hire and fire” mentality.

Start-ups fire for many reasons:

The management strives for high performing teams and consequently penalizes every under-performance. At some companies, ranking talent in terms of performance becomes a weekly exercise. The tool supporting it is based on the traffic light system. Accordingly, staff receives red, yellow, or green mark based on their performance. Reds are fired at the next round, yellows are being observed closely, greens are on the safe side for the week. No doubt, start-ups are too lean to accommodate staff that does not create value as the business model and strategy evolve.

Hiring mistakes must be corrected. Young management teams are not versatile in assessing candidate’s experience, skills and aptitudes. Too frequently, they reference back to their intuition and sympathy that they develop to the candidatesd during the recruitment process. Leaders later discover that the company and the employee isn’t a good fit at all.

Objective talent needs may change as the understanding of value creation process improves and customers’ expectations mature. This constant refinement of an ideal candidate put employees who do not develop or adjust to the new requirements at risk.

Upgrading talent is a must. Sometimes, having a mediocre talent is better then having a vacant position. As start-ups struggle to attract top-notch talent they need to compromise their position requirements in the meantime. Under time pressure to fill-in the position, they make the selfish decision to hire people who only partially fulfill the job requirements and replacing them with better talent as they come into radar.

Dismissals are a quick fix of wrong management decisions. On one hand, I recognize that start-ups must invest in building internal capabilities and hire ahead of the revenue, profits, and market share. On another hand, I believe it is advisable to follow a conservative approach when it comes to hiring. A helpful metric is a ration of cost center and profit center staff and a rule of thumb that a headcount increase follows a sustainable revenue and profit increase. Unjustified over-investment or investment in wrong departments may only require restraining costs at some point in time. Ironically, such firing waves can be than labeled lay-offs due to bad business conditions.

Marketing instrument by HR service provider, Randstad

As buyers of human resource services, human resource professionals are pampered with diverse give-away articles. Cups, pens, notepads, key rings and chocolates are the most frequent promotional items brought to business meetings by recruitment agencies’, hr software providers’ and other service companies’ representatives.

All those items are meant to deepen customer contact, combined with the aim to generate customer loyalty. They give not only eye contact with the service provider, but present something "tangible" in the hand.

Towards the end of the year, Randstad, the second largest HR services provider in the world, implements personalized calendars as their marketing instrument which reminds that b-2-b is done by individuals and not businesses. Check a few pages below:







This calendar definitely increased my attention far more than any other promotional item. And as a person making buying decisions, I am precisely the target group. Usability of calendar and maximum individuality is given. Furthermore, the calendar does not only become a possession but a memorable "gift" with a high potential to strengthen word of mouth. Randstad successfully conveyed the feeling of being cared for individually by their company as a customer.

Well done!

Hiring Funnel - Candidate Pipeline

Applying the principles of sales funnel to recruitment process can not only bring more accountability to HR, but also help HR to monitor how well they stay on track to deliver results.

With help of historical values and input recruiting metrics, a hiring funnel can be designed in order to understand candidate pipeline anytime.

It all starts with the target hires per month (i.e. hires needed to execute the business plan). Then, a conversion rate hire-to-interview is reviewed to find out, how many interviews must be conducted in order to hire one person. Next, conversion rate interview-to-candidates is examined to learn, how many candidates must apply in order to select one for an interview.

Let’s look at an example. Say, 3 sales persons need to be hired at the beginning of the month. With the hires-to-interview ratio of 1/6, HR must interview 18 candidates in order to hire 3 of them. With the interview-to-candidates ratio of 1/8, HR needs to receive a total of 144 applications, or an average of 4.8 applications per day.

The figure below showcases the number of applications received in a given month against the daily target of 4.8.



As long as HR receives at least the specified number of applications per day, they know they stay on track. If the number is lower then the target, HR should take additional actions to fill the top of the hiring funnel, e.g. arrange new posting and/or refresh of job ads, wider candidates mining, new programs to encourage employee referrals, etc.

English Human Resources terms in Germany

English Human Resources terms in Germany

As many would advocate German job titles only, more and more English terms related to workplace, recruitment and HR are in everyday use in Germany. Here are some examples, with their German counterparts.

Assessment Center - betriebliches Auswahlverfahren, Personalauswahlverfahren

Burnout - Erschöpfung, Ausgebranntsein, ausbrennen

Casting - Darstellerauswahl, or generally Mitarbeiterauswahl

Director (English phonetics) - Leiter (director human resources - Personalchef, Leiter (des) Personalwesen(s))

Employer Brand - Arbeitgebermarke

Feedback-Gespräch - Mitarbeitergespräch

Generation @ - (Internet-)Generation

Hiring Freeze - Einstellungsstopp, Einstellen aller Einstellungen
Home-Office - Büro zuhause (BZH), Heimbüro

Incentive Bonus - Leistungszulage

Job - Arbeit, Arbeitsplatz, Beruf, Posten, Stelle
Job-Hopper - Springer, Wechselarbeiter (jemand, der durch häufigen Arbeitsplatzwechsel Karriere machen will)
Job-Hopping – häufige Abreitgeberwechsel
Job-sharing - Arbeitsplatzteilung

Keypeople - Personen in Schlüsselpositionen, Schlüsselfiguren
Know-how - Fachwissen, Sachverstand

learning-by-doing - Einarbeitung, Lernen in der Praxis

Mystery Jobber - Testkandidat

Newbie - Anfänger, Grünschnabel, Neuling

Onboarding - Mitarbeiterintegration, das Einstellen und Integrieren von neuen Mitarbeitern

Powerfrau - Kraftfrau, starke Frau
Patchwork-Lebenslauf - Lebenslauf mit vielen Berufswechseln und Unterbrechungen

Recruiting - Anwerbung, Personalbeschaffung, -einstellung, -suche

Shared-Service Center - unternehmensinterner Dienstleistungsbereich
Start-up - (Firmen-)Neugründung

Team - Mannschaft, Arbeitsgruppe, Gruppe
Team Player - Mannschaftsspieler
Top Management - Führungsspitze, oberste Führungsebene eines Unternehmens

Work-Life Balance - Arbeit und Freizeit im Einklang

Source for German counterparts is the website: http://www.vds-ev.de/aindex-thema

English Job Titles

Job ads are the most classical example for the intersection of human resources and marketing disciplines. Every day, human resource professionals are challenged with the task to phrase job titles in such a way that they catch job seekers attention and push the job ad to the top of search results in the job boards.

In non-English speaking countries like e.g. China, Germany and Poland, using English job titles is a common strategy to overcome this challenge. This recent practice goes however beyond the linguistic borrowings known in the past due to industrial developments. Consider for example the job title stewardess. As the passenger air traffic emerged, human resource professionals in different countries opted for the loanword to lessen pressure to come up with a suitable name in their local language quickly. In Polish, we adapted the word to Polish rules of job titles and still call a woman working in this profession a "stewardessa". In German, after years of using the English title, the new German title of "Flugbegleiterin" is now widely used, especially to underline the safety aspect of the role. Interestingly, the original English word has been replaced by newer job titles such as “flight attendant” or “cabin crew”.

But, how is then the today’s use of English job titles different?
Well, first, English job titles are being used for established professions for which local language equivalents exist. This has been often done by multinational companies implementing global HR agendas with standardized positions and hence position names. Secondly, by using English job titles companies hope to increase the value of jobs and thereby attract talent more effectively. This is especially true for less attractive positions accordingly to the job board Talent Frogs. Their research found out that 34 per cent of 865 job ads analyzed referred to jobs in lower salary range or primarily on a commission basis. Third, on the opposite, English job titles and for that matter the entire job ads phrased in English aim for discouraging applicants unable to understand them, provided high command of English is essential to the job duties. In similar fashion, German companies occasionally post job ads in German in China or Poland.

In order not to intimidate the job seekers, human resource professionals may be using following advice to guide their approach to using English in the job ads in non-English countries:
* Find a real good reason why to use a foreign language in your job ad,
* Prioritize understandability over commercialization,
* Do not assign job titles based on the fact that they sound nice,
* Phrase the job title in the way that it reflects key duties,
* Do not confuse the applicants, if the role does not foresee any direct contact with the customers do not call the position customer representative,
* Accurately describe the job itself,
* Avoid unnecessary sales talk,
* Invite job seekers to contact human resource department to inquire about the specifics of the position to alleviate their lack of understanding,
* Measure the performance of your job ad.

Last but not least, keep in mind that the most applicants do not appreciate English job titles accordingly to recent research by monster.de. Some 42 per cent of 2394 candidates interviewed in Germany consider using Anglicism as annoying and unnecessary. Only 10 per cent believe that they ease the communication.