Samara Parker

Where do you work? Whenever I ask that questions what I really mean is, what is your workplace like? Not whether you work in an office downtown or in a truck… but whether you work surrounded by coworkers, alone in an office, in a group workspace, or in the comfort/discomfort of your own home. I am curious because I work remotely, and as much as flexible work is trendy and totally Gen Y, I do miss being surrounded by colleagues. I am also curious about what other people’s workplace interactions are like. Whether the environment is one of happy collaboration, all work all the time formality, or a festering den of resentment and gossip. Fascinating stuff!

And, why his week’s link love is dedicated to the workplace. How to make it more fun, how to get along with colleagues, and how to perform your best at work. 10 Signs You Are Working in a Happy Workplace - By Amy Johnson In response to statistics showing that 63% of employees are not engaged at work, Amy shares 10 important factors for creating a happy workplace.

How Introverts and Extroverts Can Live in Harmony at Work - By Alison Green Let’s face it, most teams are made up of a combination of introverts and extroverts and this can make workplace interactions tricky. Alison’s fantastic article explains where things go wrong when introverts and extroverts work together and how to make simple compromises that will keep the team dynamic going strong.

10 Powerful Ideas that Will Change the Way You Work – By Angel Chernoff Angel is a respected productivity expert. The title of her blog post may sound a little bit cheesy, but trust me her ideas are sound. I just read her post this morning and am already attempting to implement her advice! How To Build High-Performing Teams - By Sally Hogshead This article is a must read for anyone doing a high volume of hiring. Sally explains how to find hidden patterns within the stacks of resumes piled up on your desk, and how to use those patterns to find your best hires.

10 Reasons Why I Love Being an HR Professional - By Andrea Devers There are three top ten articles in this blog post! Maybe I should take a hint and start writing more 10 best… articles for the Jobcast blog, as this is obviously what the people want. Andrea’s 10 reasons are a lovely reminder for anyone working in HR that it’s a truly rewarding pursuit. The post is a nice bit of motivation to get you through the midweek slump. So, what is your workplace like? Let us know in the comments. Enjoy the links and the rest of your week :D

Automation has developed beyond pushing job posts to online job boards and scanning resumes for key words. Complex HR tech can automate social recruitment, candidate outreach, employee referrals, and a multitude of other repetitive tasks, improving and simplifying the hiring process. From LinkedIn developing mechanized outreach systems to FedEx using an algorithm to determine culture fit, the automation of hiring is everywhere!

From Weeding Out the Week to Finding the Best

Originally, the algorithms designed to help HR sift through applicants was focused on excluding unqualified candidates rather then finding top talent. Today’s best HR tech is focused on finding qualified candidates. - Click to Tweet

Zao, a company we’ve talked about already in our article on candidate matching, is able to search through your current employees social networks to identify the best potential hires. Employees are then alerted by Zao’s software and prompted to make a referral. Xerox is using a computer program to test applicants for their call centers. This test, created by software company Evolv, asks more typical questions such as “How would you respond to this angry customer?,” basic problem solving questions involving pattern recognition, and just plain weird questions like, “Which statement do you most agree with: Most managers are motivated to make ethical decisions or I almost always ask for help in difficult situations.” Job seekers are rated based on both their answers and the way in which they go through the test. The test asks no questions related to time efficiency even though, according to Xerox, this is one of the most important skills call center worker should have. Evolv’s test examines how applicants divide their time spent per question and the efficiency with which they provide their answers to rate them. For more on Xerox's collaboration check out this fantastic podcast: Will a Computer Decide Whether or Not You Get Your Next Job?

Tests like this do not negate the importance of one-on-one interviews, but they do a fantastic job of identifying which candidates should be interviewed. Especially useful about software like Evolv’s is that, unlike older technology, it doesn’t rely on keywords or job titles to make decisions about a candidate’s suitability, a process that really only works in fields where very specific certifications are mandatory. Automation is only game changing when computers make judgments by creatively assessing skill and ability, not based on a minimum number of years of experience or certain degrees!

Eliminating Redundancy

If you are in HR then I’m sure that you are all too familiar with redundancy creep. It is not fun. It is, in fact, quite soul sucking. Having to copy and paste job posts again and again just so that you hit each of the different sites that you use to advertise to candidates is a complete waste of time. Enter automation. HR tech is evolving to become more collaborative. ATS integrations that allow companies to automatically share the jobs they post to major search engines are old news, but current HR tech takes this kind of automation to a new, and much more social, level. Higher end applicant tracking systems now offer automated job post sharing to social networks as well as job boards. ICIMS and Simplicant allow their users to share job posts to their social networks without having to do any annoying copy and pasting. They also automate sharing to search engines. Depending on job volume this kind of mechanization can save you hours each day. Even if you don’t use an ATS that offers social sharing (or an ATS at all) then you can still use recruitment apps like Jobcast to synchronize with either your ATS, or your career site to automate your social recruitment process. Much like Hootsuite or Buffer, which I highly recommend using to automate your social employer branding, Jobcast can automatically grab your job posts and share them to your social networks. Unlike non-recruitment specific tools, the Jobcast app’s technology ‘understands’ things like job title and category and can use that information to ensure that your job posts are properly formatted for social media. Have a look at this article for more excellent social recruitment app recommendations.

Robot Recruiters

No thank you. HR and the hiring process specifically needs a human touch. It may be up to bots to send out quick contact messages, but those messages still need a real person's name attached to them to appeal to candidates! Smart recruitment technology makes the decision process easier, sifts through big data, provides quick reminders, and reduces mundane tasks. It does not, and it never will, replace the recruiter.

I hope you’re all having a fantastic week so far! Here are a few awesome reads to make your workweek even better:

Are You Making the Most of Social Media Recruitment? – Sarah Willis Sarah gives some great advice for making sure that you use your social networks to their fullest possible recruitment potential.

#FirstInHR: Using the Power of Social to Recruit - HR Kitchen I like this article because it explains the all too often neglected topic of candidate’s rights. Definitely worth a read!

New Ways of Working Report: Road Map For How Workplace Will Evolve - China Gorman China Gorman provides a summary of the recently released New Ways of Working report. The report explains what key drivers are changing the way we work and what those changes will be.

What Does House of Cards and Employee Personalities Have In Common? EVERYTHING. - Bridget Webb Have you ever wondered how your work personality matches up with those of the characters on House of Cards? If not, then you should probably take the rest of the day of to watch every single episode of House of cards and then read this hilarious blog post.

Top 6 Facebook Apps For Recruitment - Sophie Deering We’re famous! At least according to Sophie Deering who included Jobcast in her list of the best Facebook Apps for Recruitment.

Candidate-matching is basically alchemy… Except that it actually exists in real life! The ability to match qualified candidates to the right job with the click of a mouse would revolutionize hiring in a way we haven’t seen since the introduction of online job boards. Imagine never having to sort through stacks of junk resumes again. Imagine submitting a job description to an online job board and instantly being connected to 10 qualified candidates. Now imagine what you would pay for a tool that makes this dream a reality. This is why every job board and HR tech company is chomping at the bit to offer effective candidate-matching tools. Many have tried, but for the most part, haven’t delivered, because effective matching technology is extremely difficult to develop. Even Amazon.com’s lauded recommendations are assisted by Mechanical Turks (humans that help machines perform tasks for which they are not suited.) If tech giant Amazon needs humans to help match their customers with the products they desire, then what chance does HR have at succeeding with candidate-matching?! According to companies like Zao, Elevated Careers, and BCjobs.ca, the odds are actually pretty good. HR tech may not have the money and genius that Amazon has, but what they do have is a much more specific data set to analyze, as well as a much more narrowly defined goal. Over the past year we’ve begun to see real breakthroughs in the way HR technology is using big data to solve the candidate-matching problem, and it looks like we’ll be seeing more shortly. Social media is already providing recruiters with a host of incredible tools to improve the hiring process. Companies like Zao are betting on the social graph to provide the next big advancement in candidate-matching. In their case, they run a traditional referral program with a uniquely social twist. Zao’s software accesses your employees’ social profiles, then sifts through their networks to discover which of their connections are a good fit for your company’s open jobs. Employees are then prompted by Zao’s software to reach out and make a referral. Zao claims that this automates and simplifies the referral process, which makes it easier for both employees and employers. It’s a little outside-of-the box and requires your employees to permit a serious amount of access to their personal social networks, but Zao’s matching technology is worth checking out. A more traditional solution to candidate-matching is soon to be released by Canadian job board BCjobs.ca. BCjobs.ca uses all the information gathered from resumes, applications, profiles and user behavior, both from employers and job seekers, to match candidates to specific jobs. This means that when an employer posts a new job ad on BCjobs.ca, the service will immediately connect them with the 10 most qualified candidates for the job. BCjobs.ca’s matching tool not only makes hiring easier by suggesting top talent, but it also prevents employers from missing out on qualified candidates who do not apply for their job posts. Another exciting candidate-matching service on the horizon is Elevated Careers.

Elevated Careers is the latest project from the matchmaking experts of eHarmony.com. Between 2000 and 2012, eHarmony was responsible for 600, 000 marriages. Even more impressive is their scant 3.8% divorce rate. CEO Neil Clark Warren hopes that Elevate Careers will do for retention rates what eHarmony has done for divorce rates. We’re excited to see if their candidate-matching tool can deliver on improving retention rates for employers and helping job seekers find fulfilling careers.

If the midweek doldrums have set in and you just can’t brig yourself to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, then it’s probably time for a reading break. No, I am not advising you to slack on the job, not at all! This list of articles will help take your mind off the Wednesday hump and provide you with some motivating recruitment insights.

This week’s top recruitment blog posts are:

Are We Ready For Recruitment via Snapchat? - Roxanne Abercrombi Maybe I’m getting old and curmudgeonly, but I don’t know if I think Snapchat is ever going to be a great tool for recruiting. I’m probably wrong. Apparently it’s a hotbed for Gen Y and Gen Z talent!

In 2015, Should Facebook Access Be Banned at Work? - Katrina Collier You know who is not curmudgeonly? Katrina Collier! I bet she could whip up an incredible Snapchat recruitment campaign… Katrina’s article challenges employers to rethink banning Facebook recruitment for the sake of their staff’s trust, their employer brand, and their employee referral program! Simply Hired Employer Brand Index: 2014 Winners – Simply Hired The team over at Simply Hired have released their yearly list of the best employer brands out there. I bet none of these companies ban Facebook at work! SimplyHired’s Top Employer Brands: Interesting, But Not Your Typical List - John Zappe If you want to understand why Simply Hired chose the brands that they did for their list, then this article’s for you. John Zappe explains the somewhat unusual mix of companies included in the index, and why they made the cut.

The 100 Most Influential People in HR and Recruiting on Twitter - Moodvise If you’re still feeling daunted by the work piled up on your desk, then why not tackle a small task to get the ball rolling. Hop on to Twitter and follow all of these HR and Recruitment influencers… There are a lot of them, so by the time you’re done, it’ll probably be time to go home anyway! Happy humpday :D

Number two on our list of HR tech game changers is the employee referral system. Employee referrals have stood the test of time as the most effective source for quality hires. - Click to Tweet

Employee referrals are the number one source for volume of hire and the top source for quality of hire, even beating out social recruiting! According to HR thought leader Dr. John Sullivan, if 50% of your company’s hires aren’t coming from referrals, then you need to get proactive with your referral program! Creating an effective employee referral program is no cakewalk. Employee engagement ranks highest on the list of human resources challenges according to a study by SHRM. Employee referral programs rely entirely on employee engagement! Employees must be aware of what jobs their company is looking to fill, understand what type of skills those jobs require, and then actively seek out and connect with qualified peers. That’s a whole lot of legwork on their part. Offering attractive rewards for their efforts will encourage employees to a certain extent, as will making referrals a part of your organization’s culture. But, this is still not always enough to overcome the natural instinct towards inertia. HR tech can help! New cloud-based employee referral programs are using gamification, automation, matching, and social media to make the referral process easier and more fun for employees. Bonus, theses programs make tracking and rewarding employee participation a breeze for human resources!

Careerify uses gamification to encourage employee participation. The Careerify employee referral system allows companies to create challenges based on the candidate, the type of job, the location of a job, and many other data points. The system administrator can also choose to create hidden challenges that employees can unlock by participating in the referral program. Zao’s employee referral system uses big data and matching technology to make the referral process easy for employees. Their system gathers data from employee’s social channels to find out which of their connections are best suited for open jobs. Then Zao will encourage the employee to reach out to these specific candidates, even providing them with an email template. The Jobcast employee referral system makes the referral process more social. With Jobcast, employees have a dashboard that keeps them up to date on all the open jobs that their company needs to fill. When they see a job that looks like a good fit for one of their friends, with one click, they can share that job posting through any social network that they choose.

All three of these employee referral systems automate the referral process through deep integration with Applicant Tracking Systems. Automation cuts down on repetitive tasks, ensures that employees are always aware of their company’s open jobs, and lowers the chances for human error. All three of these systems also make tracking and managing employee referral programs much easier by providing reporting on employees’ participation and results. If your organization is struggling to make the 50% benchmark for employee referral based hires, then using a technology driven employee referral system could be the game-changer you need. For a detailed analysis of the different platforms currently on the market, check out this employee referral systems comparison guide by HR Tech Advisor. To learn more about Jobcast’s social employee referral system, shoot me an email at samara@jobcast.net :D

Time for another round up of the best recruitment, HR, and workplace themed blog posts of the week!

 Here are our top 5 picks:

Combating the Modern Recruiter’s Unrealistic Expectations – By Matthew Kosinski Despite the much-bemoaned skills gap and it being a job seekers market, according to a recent Career Advisory Board study, recruiters have unrealistic expectations of candidates. Matthew’s article explains the negative consequences of waiting too long for the ideal candidate and urges recruiters and hiring managers need to adjust their expectations. This Is What Companies Do When They Are Getting Kicked by Entry-Level Turnover... – Kris Dunn More war for talent inspired writing, this time from the wonderfully blunt Kris Dunn. Kris explains why increasing base level salaries is the smartest, and often, most affordable way to combat turnover.

Lead With Love And You’ll Love The Results – Meghan M. Biro Offering decent wages may be the key to retaining talent, but a high salary isn’t the only thing that matters to your employees. According to Megan, leading with love is mandatory as well, and not just for retention, but for the overall good of your organization. I know it sounds a little bit cheesy, but she’s got the numbers to back up her theory. According to Megan, leading with love is the best way to encourage “whole person” employee engagement, which results in: • 37% lower absenteeism • 48% fewer safety incidents • 41% fewer quality defects • 28% less inventory shrinkage • 10% higher customer satisfaction  and • Up to 22% higher profitability Nothing cheesy about that! Why Buffer is a Tool You Should Be Using in Recruitment – Sophie Deering Buffer is a tool that you should be using period. But definitely for recruitment! As much as you may be tempted to only share job postings on you social networks, it is equally as important for you to share interesting articles, photos, and links, in order to attract more followers. Buffer helps you find new content, add content from your favourite RSS feeds, and schedule that content so that you share at peak times throughout the day.

40 Considerations When Choosing Your Next ATS - Bridget Webb Buffer may be great for recruiting, but a good ATS is essential! According to Bridget choosing the right ATS for your organization is a decision that affects not just your recruitment team but also your entire company. Her article gives you a checklist that you can use to determine which ATS is best for your needs. Enjoy the links, and happy social recruiting!

Out of sheer curiosity (read, nerdiness) I spent my Sunday morning clicking through a Ceridian Slideshare presentation on the history of HR technology. Yes, my life really is that exciting! Comparing tech from the 1960’s to that used by HR professionals today made me feel an overwhelming sense of sympathy for the human resources departments of the past. Completely manual payroll systems, no ATS, no Excel... Oh the humanity! Access to personal computers and the internet has revolutionized HR and recruitment helping to facilitate the wealth of fantastic HR tech tools at our disposal today. As someone who works in the field of recruitment technology, it’s my job to stay informed about the latest trends and innovations in HR tech and what these changes mean for recruiting. By researching performance reports, surveys, and our own user generated data, I’ve noticed 5 key areas where HR tech is changing recruitment for the better: Candidate Assessment, Employee Referrals, Matching, Automation, and Reporting. This article is the beginning of a five part series on the most game changing innovations in recruitment technology. Starting with...

Candidate Assessments

Candidate Assessment is an interesting area of HR tech because it can go so very, very wrong! Take this example from an article in the Economist about “a case where the [assessment] software rejected every one of many good applicants for a job because the firm in question had specified that they must have held a particular job title—one that existed at no other company.” But, when used well, assessment tools are an effective way to boost retention rates and quality of hire.

Xerox used Evolv to mine their employee data in an effort to improve their candidate assessment process. Evolv found that the best predictors that customer-service employee will have a lengthy future at Xerox, is that they lives nearby their place of work and that they can get to work easily. Neither of these things were previously priorities to Xerox when assessing potential hires. Xerox used the information that Evolv gave them to cut attrition by a fifth! Another way that assessment tools are helping companies find the right talent is with intelligently designed survey tools. Surveys can measure soft skills by asking a series of indirect questions, such as “How good at computers are you?” followed up several questions later with “What does control-V do on a word-processing program?” Good assessment tools are linked to the actual performance of the people they are used to hire, so that HR can measure success, and better understand how to optimize their use in the future. These tools with help minimize bias in the recruitment process, analyze employees soft skills, and change how and what questions we ask to determine a candidate’s fit.

This week’s link love has some excellent articles to satisfy your thirst for recruitment knowledge.

You’ll learn tricks for sourcing in demand passive candidates, what recruiting tech talent in 2015 is all about, and another way to assess the risk vs reward of using social media to reach job seekers!

Here’s our list of the top 5 HR and recruitment articles this week:

 The 7 Steps for Recruiting Hard-to-find Passive Candidates – Lou Adler

Lou walks you through the steps he took to successfully source top talent for a difficult to fill tech role. He explains the techniques needed to find, attract, and recruit the best passive candidates.

Recruit Tech Talent in 2015 by Going Back to the Basics – Holly Glover

Out of LinkedIn’s recently released 25 most desirable skills list, only 5 of the skills listed aren’t related to tech. So this refreshing on recruiting tech talent by Holly is very apropos!

Outsourcing Social Recruitment the Pros and Cons – Cheryl Morgan

Social recruiting is about more than sharing your job posts on Twitter, but many companies struggle to build strong employer brands and grow their social networks.

A great way to solve this problem is to enlist the help of a social recruiting agency.

Social Media Recruiting Has Similar Risks as Word of Mouth – Allen Smith

Allen puts the various concerns arising about the legality of recruiting via social platforms in terms that most recruiters are more familiar with by comparing social recruitment to word of mouth recruitment.

If your worried about the diversity implications of using social media to share job openings, then you’ll definitely want to give this post a read.

HR Trends You Can’t Ignore – Todd Owens

Although I simply cannot agree with his title (I can ignore pretty much anything should my brain so desire!), I sincerely hope that the trends Todd lists become top priorities for HR in 2015. Especially when it comes to mobile!

Happy link Loving and stay social.

Recruiting with social media is the new normal. For years we’ve written (and read) about how social recruitment is the next big trend in HR, how it’s just about to take off, and we’ve worked pretty hard to show employers and recruiters the effectiveness of using social media to hire… Despite the positive statistics and encouraging research, social recruitment remained just a trend. Something people talked about but didn’t necessarily practice. I’m not sure exactly when that changed, but it has. According to Jobvite’s latest research, 94% of recruiters are using social media to hire. – Click to Tweet

Here are 7 reasons we think that social recruiting is here to stay:

1) Increases Job Visibility Facebook has over 1.35 billion active users, Twitter hosts job search chats, and Gen Zers are using LinkedIn. Your potential candidates are social! Using social media to broadcast your job posts makes them more visible and increases your odds of reaching top talent.

2) Improves Quality of Hire 59% of recruiters rated candidates sourced from social networks as “highest quality." – Click to Tweet

This stat makes a ton of sense to me because of just how targeted social media allows recruiters to get with their job posts. With Facebook you can target by demographic, interests, skills, and even by peer group. LinkedIn is awesome for targeting based on work history, and Twitter’s search is perfect for sourcing candidates based on interest.

3) Better Employer Brand Awareness Not only does social recruiting increase the visibility of employer brand, it strengthens it. Candidates want to work for employers that they trust. Establishing a strong social presence for your employer brand is and essential part of building this trust.

4) More Referrals Referrals are the number one source of hire. – Click to Tweet According to Guidant Group, employee referrals also lead to better quality hires, and improved retention rates. Encouraging your staff to reach out to their peers via social and share links to the jobs you post on line will simplify the referral process for employees and lead to in increase in referrals made overall.

5) Engages Employees Posting jobs to your company’s social media platforms and encouraging employees to spread the word makes them active participants in your hiring strategy. The same goes for encouraging them to interact and comment on your social career page.

6) Reduces Cost to Hire I’m not going to tell you social recruiting is free. It’s not. But recruiting-related transactional costs of social recruiting are almost always lower in comparison to other hiring sources. Running a Facebook Ads recruitment campaign will cost you less to reach a larger audience than many traditional newspaper ads and popular job boards.

7) Opens the Door to Engagement Social media allows you to connect, chat, and engage with people you might never come into contact with in “real life.” Many old school recruiters fear that social recruiting means less phone and face-to-face interaction with candidates. But, when used right, social networking is just another way to facilitate more personal interactions. Conversations that start on Facebook lead to phone calls, then interviews, then hopefully, your next winning hire! You’ve probably already begun using social to recruit, but keeps these benefits in mind when your planning your strategy to make sure you’re capitalizing on all social has to offer. If you want to simplify your social media efforts, then try the Jobcast social recruiting app. Jobcast automates the social recruitment process for you to save you time and stress.