You may think I’m crazy summing up my last decade’s worth of success’s, failures and learnings to one single piece of advice. You may not want to believe that there is such a simple thing that kept me going in the last ten years. Yet during my time of reflection at the end of this year and the many discussions I have had with friends and family I caught up with over the holidays. My thoughts kept on coming back to this one thing that has led to the success and happiness I have today.
Positive Attitude
Those of you that have know me well, will know that a decade ago; I was lost, frustrated and very very poor. It was a turbulent decade of personal and professional hyper growth for me. I think it is typical for anyone going from their mid 20’s to their mid 30’s. Yet, there is no doubt today when I talk to people around me that my super power through this all has been to keep a positive attitude.
At the beginning of the decade I was lost, hunting for a change and desperate to find happiness. I had given up my career as a chef, vowing never to return to the dark life I had sunk into during my years in the kitchen.
I didn’t feel very positive, I was grieving for a lost love for food that had started in my early teens. Burnt out by the chef’s lifestyle, the crazy hours, the low pay and never ending late nights. I vowed never to wear my chef’s whites again. At the beginning of 2010, I had nothing more than a rucksack full of clothes. I was lucky that my family believed in me, they took me in and looked through the rocky months of me changing direction and gaining a new focus and goals.
During this time I met many people who offered advice and council. Many people had ideas of what I should do next and where I should go next. From all the sound bites, books, ted videos and council I received the one resounding piece of advice I took to heart was;
Stay Positive
To grow in your career, you first have to take a step back. By March 2010 I had started to apply for jobs. No one wanted to hire a burnt out ex-chef who had finished school at 18. I managed to persuade the sales director of a Door to Door company to take a risk. I started with no base salary, knocking on doors on the south coast earning 50 pounds every time I made a sale.
There is nothing better than being told to get lost (or worse) 80 times a day to hone a positive attitude. The conversation you have with yourself when its 8 o’clock at night and water is dripping down your neck and you have made no sales may sound crazy to most of you.
Stay positive, keep smiling, the next door could be the one.
I believe, having a positive attitude is all about the conversation you have with yourself. Everyone faces tough situations every day. Telling yourself you can tackle it, with a smile in your mind is all you need to start keeping a positive attitude.
I have been lucky enough to meet and interview thousands of very successful people over the last 10 years. Those that achieve the most unbelievable things are not from the best families or the best educated, they are the ones that can stay positive in any situation.
My single piece of advice to you, however you want to grow and live in the next decade is to stay positive.
Be Positive
Sadly, my wife has been terribly sick at the end of this year and the last few weeks have been really tough. It didn’t stop us traveling around the UK and enjoying our trip as much as possible. People are always surprised at how positively we approach our life. She will get better thanks to the great doctors and support from the people around us. Whatever the worry, we approach everything with a smile and a positive attitude, I’m convinced it’s the secret to our success. You can do it too, stay positive and smile.
Today, I’m looking back at the beginning of the decade with disbelief. I feel so happy. It’s been an amazing year ending an amazing decade of personal and professional transformation. I found a career, a voice, a mission. I fell in love, became a dad and built things that (I think) helped the world get a tiny bit better for some people. I have no regrets, I’ve lived life to the full and am happy with my shortcomings.
I always over estimate what I can achieve in 6 months and under estimated what I managed to achieve in the last ten years. As we approach the next decade, one that promises to be filled with chaos and change. My advice to you is all you need is to keep a positive attitude. It’s your smile that will help you succeed.
Happy New Year!
I hope the next decade will be filled with everything you want.
Cleophee looking out over the sunset on Bournemouth beach on New Years Eve
I used to get really upset that people like you have been stealing my content to make yourself look good.
Then I came to Asia.
In part, it was a piece in Charles Cham’s Orangutan house that inspired this post.
I realised that no one cares about authentic things.
It’s a big world but most people are the same. Success for 99.9% of the world involves flash cars, oversized houses, designer clothes and swanky dinners out. Most people think that faking it till you make it is the way to do it. I know, I made that mistake.
Everyone tells you to be successful you need to hustle. They tell you this is the key to this happiness.
So you don’t have the creativity needed to build and develop your own things so you steal to try to get to the top. Sadly this won’t lead you to happiness or success.
Me getting upset at you won’t allow me to be happy.
So feel free to steal my content.
As growth hackers, pinching ideas and optimising them for our own benefit is at the core of our mindset. Looking at what works and replicating the techniques used is killer when you start getting it right.
Just copy and pasting will only get you so far.
Understanding why things work is what differentiates the true creators from the spammers and thieves. Having your own voice and being you is what generates the fans you are looking for.
If stealing someone else’s content is what starts you on the road to understanding this.
To get good at this you should read the book steal like an artist… and observe some art in the wild. Not comparing myself to Picasso here but innovators like Picasso were working and developing themselves and their art over years and years to find their voice.
If you ever learned to draw, like Picasso did, you first start by learning techniques and classics composition before adding your own flair to it. Picasso didn’t steal ideas, he was inspired by classics to develop new techniques and eventually find his own voice.
Artists work around themes and develop them with their own creative flair. That’s how I see myself. I have been studying this stuff for years, avoiding the mega growth hacks to instead going for a creative development based on themes that work. My writing skills is something I have worked in a lot. I spend hours practising and learning how to do it better. You stealing my art, my creativity and my voice, of course, results in nothing because people will see through you.
But if it helps you on this road, then I am happy to have helped. Your thieving has finally helped me find more peace!
This post was originally written as an email to a thief and then posted in my Facebook Group Growth Hacking Recruiters. Join us if this stuff interests you.
This is for anyone wanting to have an amazing 2019. Take your recruiting career to the next level with this simple to follow the guide on how to be an awesome recruiter in 2019. Last year I wrote a list of things that I thought would help recruiters be amazing in 2018, this year I am back with an updated version. Some of the things are the same as last year, same, same but different. A simple to follow a collection of ideas, methods and hacks to help you in 2019.
2019, Recruitment isn’t broken, we all just need to get better at Recruiting!
I have spent a lot of nearly ten years of my career under the black cloud of HR PR claiming Recruitment is broken. I have watched many entrepreneurs crash attempting to fix recruitment with Blockchain, AI or some other tech hodgepodge only to realise that the real problem in Recruiting is how hard it is to actually is to hire someone.
Recruiting isn’t broken. Recruiting is hard. Anyone building a team these days needs a unique set of skills just to hire efficiently.
Recruitment as a skill needs to be recognised and developed. Recruiters that hire should be proud with what they do. Recruiting will get better if we share more with each other. Tech can’t fix our problem, we can. I believe it’s down to every member of the global recruiting community that recruitment is getting better.
If we really want to fix recruiting, its up to all of us.
That’s why I wrote this post, to share what I know with the world. I hope this will help you be awesome at hiring in 2019.
Please share this link with everyone in recruitment you know. Everyone on your company slack, email lists and if you’re feeling rebellious print it out for the people that still don’t have the internet.
It is up to all of us involved in hiring to fix Recruitment. Here is how you can start being a better recruiter.
Get to know who you recruit
The biggest complaint I hear about recruiters is they don’t understand the jobs they recruit for. Every mistake I have made during my recruiting career could have been avoided if I had just spent more time getting to know who I was recruiting. Get to know who you recruit, spend time with them they will help you fill all those jobs you are trying to hire for!
TIP – Find some people who you want to hire and ask them, how would you like to get your new job?
Partner with your hiring manager
Your hiring manager is your end client, it is their team you are hiring for. Get super cosy with them. The best recruiters I know, are never annoyed at their hiring managers but see them as complicit partners that they are trying to help grow. Recruiters success in 2019 will be down to how well they know the team they are hiring for. Get close to them today.
TIP – Set up weekly check ins, show them who you have approached, ask them if they can do your follow ups for the people who didn’t reply!
Tell people you are hiring
Yes, so new for 2019. Tell people you are hiring! Advertise the Jobs you are hiring for. Not crappy job ads with 40 bullet points and a wall of requirements. Get out there and tell people who you are hiring and what they will do. Don’t forget to tell them what they will get out of it. Crazy to think it’s 2019 and the best way to hire people is still to advertise!
Stop hunting for perfection and worrying about getting everything right. Start messing things up. The best manager I ever had taught me that he was happy when I was failing 20% of the time. If you have never failed, you have never done anything. Start Doing, Start Failing.
There is so much power in asking questions. Not questions you could have just googled, but the complicated ones or the ones that need input from elsewhere or from someone with experience. There is a forgotten magic power in asking people questions, it helps you make new friends and helps you leverage the expertise in your own org and your network. Don’t think you know everything, ask more questions!
Odd that I should tell people people this; but please be sociable on social media. Stop hiding behind highly filtered Instagram posts and corporate headshots, start commenting, having discussions and being your weird ass true self. Your lurking is putting your people off. As recruiters we need to be more social, we are after all in the people business. Stop Lurking. Comment on your audiences content. Built your online tribe. Be social.
TIP – Tweet me or comment, its easy!
Know your market
If you are going to be an expert recruiter in Python or the next inhouse recruiter at Yodel. Your market knowledge will help you build better relationships with the people you recruit. Recruiters are uniquely positioned to speak to hundreds of people a week, that gives them market knowledge. Get to know your company, get to know your competitors, get to know your candidates. Recruiters should be able to offer everyone a slice of the information they get to see in the market.
TIP – Use reviews on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor for market knowledge, or try Owler or Blind to find out about companies.
Get REALLY GOOD AT Finding stuff out!
Seriously the number of people that can’t find stuff out on the internet still blows my mind. You are a recruiter, your job is to find people. That means you have to get good at looking for people. Learn how to search for anything quickly. It will make your life so easy..
Measure everything. Use Data Religiously in every part of your life. Its 2019, big data is everywhere. I still find recruiters who’s FitBit’s and supermarket know more about you than you do about your recruiting process. Learning how to measure things from eyeballs to time
Design for Privacy
As a Recruiter you have a lot of private data. CV’s are seriously sensitive information, so is interview feedback and salary info. Get your head around the fact that you are dealing with a lot of private data and start treating it like such. Don’t leave people’s CV’s lying around.
Seriously, no one cares about your brand values. Authentic content is shared by the people that actually work in the place. Everyone knows that your “employer brand” is a lie. Let your people tell their story.
Dear Mr ten-page email writer. If you fall asleep writing the email, I wont reply. Short one/two paragraph emails that are to the point are going to make life so much easier and will get you so many more responses. Also, can you stop DM’ing me with just hey. Tell me what you want in that first message so I can figure out if I can help!
Getting really good at documentation is an important skill for every recruiter! This not only helps us share knowledge and collaborate better, but at the end of the day its core to our function.
From taking interview notes to sharing new techniques. This starts by learning things like how to touch type and finshes with how to write better tutorials.
Documentation is a key skill everyone in recruiting needs.
Read more
Well you got this far so you must be doing something right! What I really mean by read more, is consume more content! Consuming long form content is the differentiator in todays world. Sure, you can learn a lot watching 2 minute videos. To be an expert you need to consume more long form content.
Every recruiter I spoke to in 2018, when I asked them why they are a recruiter told me it was to help people. Nuff said.
Help people.
You will reap the rewards in the long run.
Find a community
A network is Key to everyone’s career success. Communities are key to getting the latest hiring knowledge and learning about the easiest ways to hire people. It’s 2019 people you can explode your network and your career. Spend time asking questions reading, learning and soaking it all in. If you are an InHouse recruiter join DBR, if you like Growth minded recruitment, join the growth hacking recruiters.
I thought it was a bit arrogant of me to just post my own thoughts, so I asked the worlds largest community of recruiters. The Facebook Group “Recruiters Online” to also share their thoughts on what will make recruiters better in 2019 and I was overwhelmed by the responses. Go check out the post here, I have screen grabbed some of the top responses below.
Top tips for being a better recuiter in 2019 – this is how you become an awesome recruiter
To help me Grow, I document things, at the end of every year, I write some notes about my year and some goals for the year to come. My mini personal retrospective has been happening in the dark for several (5+) years with just a spin-off article or two being published. This year its different.
2018 turns out to have been a pretty crucial year, personally and professionally. I had so much stuff I wanted to talk about. Time to write the personal blog I wanted to share. To make easier to understand, I have split it into three major topics.
Let start with what happened professionally, I quit my amazing job at Indeed to focus on looking after my wife and baby in Paris. A lifestyle choice is driven by my frustrations at the constrictions of working within a business operating at such a huge scale. My time at Indeed was a success, it was the longest I was ever an employee in a company and I learned a lot. However, since the beginning of the year, I have had something different planned for 2019. So I spent a lot of 2018 focused on my side hustle with the hope to become more nomadic, authentic and entrepreneurial. That’s why I have been doing a lot of Growth Hacking!
Tris ❤️ Growth Hacking
2018 I focused on honing my Growth Hacking Skills and applying them to Recruitment. Considering blogging and spending too much time on the internet is what got me started off on the journey to becoming a recruiter in the first place. In the last ten years and with no degree just energy, passion and a lot of hard work I come full circle back to my growth hacking roots. My personal and professional Growth can be tied closely to my passion for all things hacking. Life Hacking my way out of the kitchen, I have gone from dreaming of working in cool tech companies to being recognized as one of the top influencers in HR tech. There was no wonder I threw so much time and effort building the Growth Hacking Recruiters community.
WHY?
I wanted to get better at Recruiting. I believe that innovation in recruiting comes from outside it, not within. On my constant quest to improve, Growth Hacking became my buzzword crutch to help me make more hires.
Growth Hacking was a Hot Topic; Personally, I had been following Growth Hacking industry for some time and stealing things I could apply to recruitment. When Jan Tegze wrote at the beginning of 2018 “Sorry, 2018 Won’t Be the Year of A.I., But Growth Hacking” I knew it was the time to jump and build the community. Talent Hackers had long stood still, build by vendors to capitalise on a trend. The recruitment hacking community had suffered by not having a place to call its own. The techniques had advanced, much as Growth Hacking since Sean Ellis used it as a buzzword to try and hire people.
There was an opportunity for a community that focused on consistently improving recruiting tactics and sharing cool tips and hacks. The timing felt perfect so I dropped Jan a note to see if he wanted to be involved and we got started on building what has already been called one of the hottest groups for Recruiters in 2019!
FINDING PEOPLE IS EASY – ENGAGING WITH THEM IS HARD
“Cutting through the noise and being there… ideally at the right time (even though there are many external factors to this that a sourcer/recruiter can not control). Being on the right screen with the right message is a real job” – Guillaume Alexandre
The truth is, Recruiter response rates are dropping and people are finding it hard to break through the noise we are all subjected to.
Gone are the days that people are flattered about being headhunted. Outbound recruiting has become normal, especially in the tech spheres.
Growth Hackers are experts at engaging with people at scale and (most of the time) selling them stuff. You can pretty much bet that that is exactly what most modern recruitment jobs are about too.
All Growth comes from desperately trying to succeed
The inefficiencies of most things in Recruiting show us how Recruitment mechanics still need to be optimised. Applying more growth hacking methods to the problem allows us to improve all elements of the hiring journey for both sides of the table.
To start the year, I read up huge amounts on the principles of growth hacking and marketing. I didn’t want the group to just be about sharing tools and tricks but about sharing methods too. During the journey, I realised that these techniques apply not just in Recruiting, but in sales, marketing and every part of your life where you want to improve. A lot of people are already sharing this stuff and learning from each other. That’s why it was so easy to build the community to where it is now.
I’m grateful for all the people that have gotten involved to create a community. We step into 2019 with a manifesto, a mission and a plan. Hopefully, we have helped others out there as this has become a huge catalyst for my personal growth.
Confused as to what I’m talking about? I wrote a true definition of what a growth hacking recruiter does. Confused about what a Growth Hack is, think free lightweight hacks that you can implement that will 100% improve your hiring process.
On top of growing a group where I could learn from my fellow growth hacking recruiters and share tips with new ones! Here is what I learned;
The first three points need far more time to explain than I have here, so expect separate blog posts on that soon, but Considering I have written posts about the three last points already in the group. I thought it would be fun to buld on the content and put them here.
START NOW – IT’S EASY!
The highest earning YouTuber is a seven-year-old. Every one of us has a chance to make our mark in whatever we do. The UK in-house recruitment award for employer branding video this year was won by one person using their phone to shoot the video.
Creating content has got easier. Personal branding is everywhere.
9 years ago, I went to IBC and heard from thought leaders in the broadcast industry that brands were going to become the broadcasters, they were wrong. Anyone can be a broadcaster and everyone is giving it a go. We really do live in a time when anyone can broadcast for millions, pretty much for free.
In recruitment, one of the biggest complaints I hear is they don’t have the support, the tools or the time to create the content they need to support their recruiting efforts. I think there is too much overthinking here and these people need a reality check.
The Barrier to entry is so low that all you need is an idea and a phone and you can create something amazing.
People don’t want polished content anymore, they don’t trust “on brand” corporate videos. They want an authentic view of where they can work and they want to hear the real story.
The only thing holding you back is yourself.
I find this true for myself as for those people I observe in the world.
Your not going to get it perfect the first time.
Just do it.
The worse that will happen is you will Fail and learn. More likely than not, you will get free exposure in any domain you want. I have helped and watched friends do this for their own careers in every domain and it works. Don’t wait for approval of your idea. Don’t expect people to get it.
Make it, post it and beg for forgiveness if someone complains.
I have done this in corporate employers and small ones and for myself. No one ever complained, they were grateful I made them look good and they were happy with the candidates I got them.
Be brave, your growth starts now!
Content is key, but first, you need rhythm.
Content is king but Rhythm is a Recruiters form of nurture marketing. Posting constantly and consistently reminds people who you are, what you stand for and what you do. It gets you more eyeballs and if what you post is good, it gets you fans and followers.
As a recruiter, it will increase your response rates, drive more relevant inbound candidates to you personally and make your bosses happy (because being engaged online makes them look good.)
Hung Lee and I talked about how hard this is. He reminded me that it takes a huge amount of confidence to post and share your authentic views on the world with the internet. ITs about building the muscle memory that helps you become a better contributor to the internet. “You need to get in the Rhythm,” he told me.
Jan Tegze reminded me as well when I asked him how he creates so much awesome content. Its all about having a rhythm.
To build the rhythm myself, I have taken to creating more and posting more. You can do that too. Here are some of the top tips I share with the Growth Hacking Recruiters that will help build the muscle memory to easily keep consistently contributing to the internet and building your personal brand.
Pick a topic and try and write one micro post about it a day, HIT SHARE even if it is not perfect! (Platforms like Twitter, Instagram or snapchat are great for this)
Write three comments when you Log In on every Platform
Regularly write a post in a format you enjoy and works for your brand.
Hung is the Perfect example of Rhythmic posting. Not only is he curating an amazing newsletter every week but he is posting format posts on LinkedIn to compliment them. If you want to start getting your brand out there then just sharing a link to his amazing newsletter gets your name in front of thousands of other peeps interested in the same stuff as us!
I have a loooong way to go
So while building this MINDSET has been a personal journey to get to what I really want in life, Freedom to do what I want every day. Make awesome moments!
My personal journey, becoming confident enough to consistently create and post content has been tough. I have always wanted to do more, this is the umpteenth year that I had started out saying. “I’m going to post more blogs and share more stuff” but I am definitely starting to get my head around it. Not a 100k a year from posting on LinkedIn and in Facebook groups yet, but we can all be dreamers 😉
I have often been blessed with a “Just do It” mindset, that reached a whole new level this year as I have focused on building a new growth focused mindset. More to come on that in my next post.
Growing myself is a long-term project!
WE HAVE GOT A LOOONG WAY TO GO
Growth Hacking Principles in Recruiting are still Nascent, you may remember that I wrote a long time ago that fixing recruitment is more about levelling up the recruiters. Empowering people to get better at what they do in every part of their life is something I can only dream of. If you want to join us and help us grow, don’t forget to say hi and share this post with a friend.
Hires = Growth. A Growth Hacking Recruiter has a growth mindset and curiously and confidently leverages media, technology, data to hit hiring targets with minimal financial investment. Simply put, they help companies hire more effectively with fewer resources than their competition.
A fine-tuned hiring machine, growth hacking recruiters have mastered the art of targeting and engaging with job seekers at scale. Leveraging advances in technology, communication and information availability. Growth Hacking, when applied to recruitment, allows recruiters to become more agile, rapidly evolving and fixing hiring processes to increase satisfaction for everyone involved.
A Growth Hacking Recruiter has the data skills to analyse what is happening with a role (funnel hacking), the marketing skills to optimise and attract the right candidates (SEO, PPC, UX, Content marketing etc), the technical chops to automate the process (scraping, data enrichment, bots, AI etc) and the mindset that constantly drives growth!
Having a Growth Hacking Recruiter on your team will make you more hires, grow your brand and optimise every element of your hiring process.
Growth hacking is a mindset, so are the Growth Hacking Recruiters; A new breed of recruiters who can find the information they need to help companies scale teams successfully. Constantly adapting and adopting, the growth hacking recruiter is taking advantage of the newest technologies, data sources, marketing tactics and shared consciousness to rapidly test things, finding what works and exploiting them to make more hires.
I adopted the growth hacking mindset and applied it to hiring and it worked. By adopting the guidelines below, you can do it too!
Hires = Growth
This stuff is not new, it’s old.
It’s 2018 people, if you can’t use the internet to make hires, you need to learn NOW. Growth Hacking applied to recruitment was first written about by Nick Marsh in 2014 in an attempt to coin the term Talent Hacker. At the beginning of 2018 Jan Tegze, predicted growth hacking would be more important in recruiting than AI in 2018.
This is because it’s EASY and FREE to implement.
Having now been working on this in companies since 2014. Soaking in knowledge and building a network of recruiting experts around the world in my search for Talent Hacks. Jan and my vision was that to accelerate the adoption by building a group focused on this we would have a way to share growth hacking tips and tricks that actually work for recruiters.
The community has grown to more than 1500+ members, all recruiters actively engaging in growth hacking the hiring process and there way
They share articles focused around;
Information retrieval & Scraping
Automation and Bots
Digital & Content Marketing (SEO, PPC, Virals, Blogging etc)
The dark arts of Engagement & Hacking
As well as questions, real-world hacks, personal growth stories, life hacks, productivity tricks, collaborative projects and challenges.
As a growth hacking Recruiter, I have chased growth in all elements of my life. If you would like to receive all of the information I have learned. Everything I think you need to succeed as a recruiter, growth hacking your way to success, sign up on our landing page.
Still not convinced? Here is one of the first ever video’s we made to explain how Growth Hacking Recruitment works and how to start adopting the mindset.
Sourcers VS Recruiters is an old argument, we all know the difference at the end of the day. Below, you can see a data-driven approach to understanding the differences between recruiters and sourcers and the challenges they all face!
In the next few weeks, everyone is going to be talking about sourcing in Europe ahead of SourceCon’s first visit. So to kick this little project off, I decided to do some research.
It’s anonymous and the results of the research are just below!
Thanks!
At the end of the Day, Sourcer vs Recruiter, I don’t really care! I am more interested in what are the challenges people face when sourcing! I’m imagining there will be plenty of both Recruiters and Sourcers attending SourceCon this time around. At the end of the day, we all do sourcing from time to time right?
To make sure we were “On Trend” for DBR live we decided to choose, Sourcing vs Recruiters as a Topic.
I want to find what is the difference between Sourcing and Recruiting.
I am keen to Understand what challenges people are facing when sourcing. I also asked is there really a difference in the roles, as far as I’m concerned we all hire people, so we all Source.
The results are all below, first, let’s see who actually responded.
With more respondents, we will be able to share a more defined segment of the audience. Please share and respond and I will update soon!
I looked at what all the respondents largest challenges are in their day to day roles.
The real question here is “What is the difference between Sourcers and Recruiters?”
If you want to hear Glen Cathy’s answer, check it out here!
The real difference is where they spend their time, right?
I wanted to find out the difference in how Recruiters and Sourcer spend their time. So I asked all the respondents how much time they spend sourcing every week roughly.
The graph below shows pecentage of time people spend roughly per week, broken down by role segment, Recruiter vs Sourcer (as more people respond, we will be able to add more segments, considering the survey is capturing info as to what style of Recruiter is responding).
Maybe we will finally have proof of the above?
In terms of responses, there are some excellent ones to the final question.
What do you think is the real difference between Sourcers and Recruiters?
“patience”
“Sourcers have a passion for finding people, recruiters have a passion for finding fees.”
“A sourcer is a native hunter… a recruiter could be only a fisher… and sometimes an hunter….”
and of course
“Loaded question! A great recruiter has elements of a great sourcer, and vice versa.”
As far as I’m concerned, teams of experts working together in an agile manner is going to lead to solving some of the worlds hardest hiring problems faster!
These AWESOME Tricks will get you MORE views on your posts ANYWHERE
A recruiter needs to be able to connect hiring teams with relevant candidates as fast as possible. Viral content helps you do that!
Creating viral content can help you drive qualified applicants to apply to a role for free!
ONCE an effective profile is established of the people you are looking to hire. There is no reason why you can’t use techniques developed by the growth hacking communities to drive qualified applicants to roles for free.
Virality is the key to many successful hiring projects. You are making your life easier if you can use viral content to drive applicants via referral and from online sources.
Start with talking to the people you have already hired!
If you start with an internal network you can quickly leverage large hiring teams to create viral content on the web that drives qualified applicants to your roles for free!
QUALITY Native Content is King
Make it CLEAR
DRIVE ENGAGEMENT
Make people want to React
Gaming the Algorithm is OK = Build your Tribe
FOLLOW UP!
KISS
I talk through these principles in a lot more detail on the Live hangout here.
When I asked him, Hey said the key to good LinkedIn posts are:
1 – Authenticity. Be as authentic as possible with your content. 2 – Make yourself vulnerable. 3 – Timing. How can you leverage other events? I was authentic to myself. Made myself vulnerable and leveraged the event that I was leaving – was his comment.
It definitely seems to be working! Keep it up.
You should take away the fact that hiring people is an event and getting people to share that teams are growing just takes an honest and authentic piece of content that they connect with.
Most social networks are striving to keep users within their ecosystem, so creating content has to be native. For a recruiter, the challenge comes in converting the viewer or engager to the candidate.
While your first mission when hiring is creating good quality content that is shareable and an easy system to gather intent from the job seeker. As a recruiter, once you start to scale this you need to be mindful that candidates on social media should still be treated within a system that ensures a fair route to the role. A challenge I have not seen an HR tech provider truly fix yet in terms of integrating ATS to multiple social platforms and tracking interaction.
Practical take away for every recruiter here is to stop re-posting boring jobs and write about why someone would want to join the team. Take a picture of the work environment. Share an honest story about the challenge you face.
It is so exciting to see more of this content out there and I think we all have an opportunity to lead the way with helping people get jobs.
I hope you enjoy the tips, really looking forward to your feedback.
I wrote this rant on DBR the other day about the people who are always trying to break the recruitment industry. Breaking the recruitment industry is my favorite subject of conversation, I have written about a couple of times before. I start every year blogging about it because I do believe there are still lots of things that need to change in the world of recruitment. Last year I said.
Let not try and break recruitment, let’s get together and build a worldwide community that makes all the recruiters better!
Now DBR has over 1000 members and continues to grow. We are definitely not the only recruitment community out there either. From the Recruiters Online Facebook group to the Recruiters Kitchen in Paris, all of these recruiters getting to know each other and helping each other is making recruitment better for everyone!
So to all of those of you that are still writing “Recruitment is Broken”, I stand by my previous post’s, it is not a wave of bright-eyed and eager tech entrepreneurs armed with Blockchains and Algorithms that will break recruitment.
It’s us recruiters who will fix our industry!
It’s down to every member of the global recruiting community that recruitment is getting better.
We have only just begun!
Here are my tips on how to be an awesome recruiter in 2018. It’s my rant from the other day in a more constructive of 2017 esque Broetry for those of you that are not DBR members, the DBR members will remember a few of these lines!
I hope this will help you be awesome at hiring in 2018. Please share it on your company slack, email lists or and print it out for the people that still don’t have the internet. It is up to all of us involved in hiring to fix Recruitment.
Recruiters aren’t evil, or whatever else Google cares to say about us.
Tech won’t break recruitment, it will make it better.
It’s up to us the recruiters to fix recruitment.
It’s up to us to tell everyone involved!
Not everyone will be happy with a hiring experience.
Not everyone can get the job but if we all work together we can make hiring awesome together!
Here are my tips in general on how to be awesome at hiring in 2018!
These are practical tips for anyone hiring.
Stop writing bland emails
Be Human
Think, People first
Hello, we are hiring people here…
Put yourself in the shoes of the job seeker
Get to know who you recruit for
They probably had it written on the door when you walked in. Convincing stories from people in the company are the easiest way to persuade someone to work there.
Get to know who you recruit
You literally just have to walk up to them and ask them things about their job and their industry. My favorite question to ask people is, how would you like to be recruited?
Understand your competitors
Either in locations or industry or role. Finding out about those companies is simple, try stuff like Owler or Blind or Google Maps.
Partner with your hiring manager
Search with them
Literally, sit down, open up your laptop, go on your fave search engine and search for who they want to hire on a database.
Communicate with Clarity
That takes practice, I’m not sure that I am the best to help you on that one, but try it!
Think about what you can automate
Why do 3 emails when you can do 1? Everyone one enjoys things that are efficient!
Advertise
Write decent job ads.
Everyone has different ideas about job ads, so post a couple of different ones if you have to!
Make applying easy
Seriously. I get so bored after looking at a form for more than a few minutes!
Show off your team
You are probably going to need a hashtag and lots of pom poms.
Ask the people who are on the team to show it off too
They will get you referrals, reward them well, they will get you more referrals!
Ask for feedback
It does open up the door for rants and it can be tough to swallow, but ask for it anyway with a simple form. Did I do OK today?
Give Feedback
Constructively and honestly!
Be honest with hiring managers
Use Data, its hard to argue with numbers.
Say No – Often!
Try and do it over the phone, I know its hard but you are not going to hire everyone.
You are a gate keeper, you can’t let everyone past.
Design for Privacy
Yep, we are recruiters, we deal with sensitive data.
Make sure you know how to approach that!
(Oh and GDPR Regulation – this is the newest problem on recruiters list in 2018)
Document
Keep notes, write stuff down. Tag Candidates. I can’t believe I’m still saying this.. seriously.
Analyse
Oh man… there is so much interesting data in recruitment, start here.
Share data
Open up that magic black box of recruitment to the world! (HT Buckland) Telling people it takes 50 interviews to make a hire makes for an interesting conversation.
Help people out that need it
Sometimes it just means looking at their CV with them and showing them how to search for jobs other times and introduction!
In most recruiting workflows, sourcing comes last, I believe that’s wrong and here’s why.
Anyone who works on a sourcing team knows this situation; you are assigned to work on a new role. You pick up the job and realize it has been open for months, the recruiter working the role has had three interviews and got nowhere with it. You sit down with the hiring manager to understand the role and they have a 100% lost faith in you and the recruiting team. Your recruiter is screaming for CV’s and thinks that by finally asking for help you have a magic tap of candidates to turn on. We all know the nightmare, but I have been thinking about why does this happen and what Is it about the recruiting model that leads to these situations?
In most companies these days, sourcing is just part of being a recruiter. As far as I’m concerned, all good recruiters know how to source, all good recruitment managers understand pipeline metrics and can differentiate between a healthy pipeline and one that is not. So why is it that this situation keeps on happening in sourcing teams around the world?
Is it because recruiters and their managers don’t ask for help until it is too late?
Maybe the reason why sourcing is the last resort is the standard recruiting processes most recruiters. Most recruiters get a new job and spend the first week understanding it and writing a job ad, eventually by Friday afternoon get it posted live. The next week they get a huge amount of applications and spend a lot of time treating those and getting screens sorted. By the second week, they have a couple of qualified candidates at interview stage and a steady trickle of new candidates and think that everything is going well. After three or four weeks they have had 6 or 8 interviews and filled the role or they haven’t and that’s when the panic sets in!
I don’t believe there is anything wrong with this process, it works for 80% of hiring and I have used it hundreds of times to fill jobs.
The thing that is wrong is when you can’t fill your job from those 6 or 8 interviews and you turn around and think oh god now I need to source. The thing I then notice is that the recruiter that this happens to is often very busy, finding the time to source is nigh on impossible and they then spend the next 3 or 4 weeks in semi sourcing mode. Praying for a good applicant to come in… and then it’s been 10 weeks and they haven’t filled the job and someone somewhere panics. They didn’t ask for help in the right way or have the right resources assigned and all of a sudden they made everyone look bad.
So maybe the real problem here, is its hard to tell which role is tough to fill?
You might believe that the problem here lies in the identification of the difficulty of filling the role. Is it the recruitment manager or the recruiter to do that or does it lie with the sourcing team? Good recruitment leaders understand the potential hiring problems and work to ensure the problem isn’t delayed. Here at Indeed in EMEA that it is how we work, our awesome leadership team and I sit down and look at headcount plans months in advance and identify roles that are going to be difficult. The prediction models that Randstad showcased at SourceCon were all around identifying the hard to fill jobs and communicating that back to the business to ensure that roles were assigned the right type of resource.
With labour markets becoming more competitive and jobs more complex most of the people that you will hire will already be working and more than 60% percent (depending on which statistic you believe) will be not actively looking and applying for jobs. Sourcing needs to walk hand in hand with recruitment, as a recruiter that means honing your sourcing skills as a source that means positioning yourself at the top of your hiring funnel to ensure that your efforts are being spent in the right place. It shouldn’t be hard to know which role is going to need sourcing because in truth you should source for every role.
I fundamentally believe that sourcing and recruiting walk the hiring road hand in hand. If you think they are different you are wrong. If you think you don’t need to source your are not a recruiter. If you think you don’t need to know how to recruit to be a sourcer you are wrong. If you want to get really good at recruiting then you need to get really good at sourcing and vis versa.
The knowledge gained from sourcing to start with vs sourcing at the end means that your efforts complement your organic pipeline; you are recruiting effectively when you are doing both. Through the knowledge you develop in your initial sourcing efforts your hiring managers will trust you as an expert and you become effective faster in your hiring efforts.
Whether you are one recruiter in your company or hundreds, for sourcing and recruitment to walk hand in hand successfully then;
Leadership should try and use data to predict where sourcing and hiring efforts should be directed and resources should be put.
Recruiters should try and source first – even if it is just a few search string to look at some profiles you will learn stuff before you sit with a hiring manager that will make you look like an expert.
If you have a stand alone sourcing team then you should be assigning them to roles and recruiters as early in the hiring process as possible.
Everyone involved in hiring needs to be honest, hiring managers not getting the right people? Tell someone. Recruiters not getting the right people? Tell someone. Sources finding it tough? Tell some one. Asking for help does not mean you are bad at your job!
Finally in a big team or a small one, working together is the only secret to hiring well.
Here at Indeed in EMEA all this boils into regular syncs between every stakeholder in the process, regular updates and regular communication. To hire more as a team it means weekly sourcing jams with recruiters and sources so we can work as a team on tough roles and peer to peer sourcing session with new hires and existing teams to find out who they know.
Sourcing walks hand in hand with recruitment and if you think I’m wrong, I’m keen to hear why.
In my next why sourcing post I am will share my top tips on how to source for a job before you have got it, on how to use data to do market sizing exercises! If you haven’t allready, check out why sources are not baby recruiters and hit me up with a tweet or on LinkedIn.
Automation, Robots and AI have been prolific in my career as a Recruiter.
I find myself talking about it a lot… competing against them often, but actually making it work is something I still haven’t cracked fully. The biggest players in AI; Google and IBM are moving into the HR tech space, startups are turning to bots to try fix traditional recruiting problems and yet I’m still having to stitch together spreadsheets and manually de-dupe data to make any real predictions or rankings.
With all of these new fangled tools being so on trend right now, I thought it would be fun to write down from my own quick guide to how far you can go with automation and what it really means for you as a Recruiter or Sourcer in today’s world.
When I was at TruParis this year, I lead a track called; Automation, how far should you go!
It wasn’t me that bought up a slightly utopic vision of a world where when HR person is asked to make a new hire, turns to her laptop, drops in the job order and sits back and waits; A few months/weeks/days later she gets an alert saying that the new hire was starting next week. Maybe it is only a French HR person could be so lazy to dream of this… but without a doubt, this is probably the most advanced vision I have ever heard of automation within the sphere of recruitment. I loved it, my inner cyber punk jumped for joy!
…but there is something seriously wrong with this vision. Even if Google Hire plus Google Job Ads plus Google Apps multiplied by the fact they know everything about you and your company means that one day (soon) they could start to put something like this together. The limiting factor is the data we provide to these systems is still human. If we were hiring robots it would be easy, I want a robot to do X, Y and Z… a few months later a robot shows up that can do that.
You Can’t Go That Far with Recruiting Technology?!?
Even if Google Hire plus Google Job Ads plus Google Apps multiplied by the fact they know everything about you means that one day (soon) they could start to put something like this together. The limiting factor is the data we provide to these systems is still human. If we were hiring robots it would be easy, I want a robot to do X, Y and Z… a few months later a robot shows up that can do that.
For now though, If we were to automate the recruitment process from end to end then we would need consistent data. Humans are not consistent while computers are, you can only go as far as the data allows you. Data on a linked in profile or on a CV are controlled by the person who puts them there. How many times have you read a CV that is unbelievable?
In a world where you don’t need humans to do interviews, you don’t meet the new member of your team?
You could probably validate the human discrepancy in the data provided to the system with Blockchain or a similar technology verifying claimed experiences, with references from hiring managers and colleagues. Companies could be on a system that would mean sharing career data, appraisals and salary data but this seems a complete impossibility.
You would also completely eliminate the human elements… Humans need to talk to each other before they work together.
The utopic vision of the magic recruitment button means a universal way of tracking people’s career and acceptance to not talking to people before you work with them, Humans don’t do that.
Most people would hate that!
So as a Recruiter/Sourcer don’t be scared, you are not about to be replaced but your job will be changing really fast in the next few years. As an interesting study from the MIT Sloane Management Review suggests, you should be changing your career now and upgrading yourselves. So here are my simple tips for what to focus on!
Do Recruiting Automation Right, Adopt the Right Mindset
In your non-recruitment life, you probably have a voicemail and a direct debit set up… you facebook your friends.. you have a smartphone… this is all automation.. why not apply a few of the same principles to your daily job? Accept the tech!
When I asked how many people who were actually in the room at TruParis who was actually using automation, only a smattering (i.e 3) people that were actually using in their daily work. You can go further than that!
Automation is about mindset (thanks Ed) if you find yourself doing the same thing twice, and it takes you ages, figure out how to automate it. You are probably going to need to do it again so you may as way remove the pain. Sourcing, Recruitment is not an exciting job, you find people, interview them and hopefully recommend that your company or the person you are recruiting for, hire some of them. If you take away some of that boring stuff that you are doing every day, then you can probably start to find some more fun things to do.
Focus on the few simple, tedious things that you wish you didn’t have to do and see if you can automate them, quickly!
Adopting the right mindset of acceptance of these new technologies, coupled with a hunger to explore them will set you apart and make you more productive. It’s a win win, right? You do less tedious stuff and make more hires, no one is going to complain here.
Recruiters Become a Data Guardian
Data in recruitment is a pain! Accurate data is difficult to find in the open market and our own Data (if we are lucky) is stored in an ATS that often has an analytics function designed by someone who learned UX at the same time as finger painting.
When we get accurate data out of these systems though, the story it tells and we can tell with it are fascinating and beguiling to our hiring managers and clients. We finally open up the block box of how much work goes into recruiting someone into a story made accurate with facts.
Don’t hate the fact that you are going to spend a lot more time handling data, inputting it into a system and being checked on it! The evolution of a recruiter in a data lead world is someone who cares about data, understands why they are collecting it and can tell good stories with it. It starts by the boring admin stuff, we need to make sure we put data into whichever system we use accurately so we can tell cool stories about it afterwards.
Here are some interesting articles to get you started on data in recruiting:
– Cred to Matt Buckland and Matt Bradburn cos working with them got me to understand this
Become More Human (Seriously?)
Sadly, I believe HR people and recruiters remove themselves so far from the human element of the hiring process that they forget about their own humanity in the work place. The truth is this is the bit we need to focus on. Looking at the world today and the influx of technology, our human interactions are going to become less and less frequent and more and more important.
When I was writing this, I was thinking about where can you learn to be Human? Does someone really need to teach me? When are people going to stop saying this to me?
As Recruiters, we flex HR, sales and marketing skills. We need to be on brand but at the same time, human and building relationships. Yikes. Glen Cathy goes as far as saying we need to be focusing on social engineering but having read books on social engineering, mind control, the art of persuasion, I really don’t think that is the way forward.
Most recently I got into a muddle writing a bot version of me – yes my half finished bot will talk to you – and it was only doing this exercise that I realised what it meant being more human. I needed to inject my humanity into a blank canvas that would hopefully build excellent relationships with people. Reverse engineering like this made me realise I need to understand the overall experience I want to give a candidate and understand how I am going to get there.
I believe that as recruiters we should understand the same type of techniques used in sales (Open questions, closed questions, yes ladders etc) coupled with a strong underastanding of what we are looking to get from people in our day to day conversations to create an amazing experience for ourselves and our candidates.
The easiest way to exercise you empathetic muscles is to consistently put yourselves in the shoes of the person you are talking to. Think about what does a good conversation to my candidate look like and why. You won’t find tips in recruitment media on this sort of stuff, go outside the box, watch some Ted talks or find a cool book about it (and send it to me when you have read it 😉 )
The most important thing to remember here is at the end of the day, every experience you have, every candidate you talk to is a person and they will talk about you. Try and create a something real with them, don’t act like a machine!
Paul Wolfe sums it up here far more eloquently than I just did…
