Top 4 Things We Learned from Greenhouse Summit 2015

March 26, 2015 at 11:43 AM by Kathleen de Lara

greenhousesummitThe first ever Greenhouse Summit opened its doors this week, combining the forces of over 300 talent pros to discuss their top techniques for finding the best people and transforming their company into a lean, mean hiring machine.

Folks by the likes of Lou Adler, Stacy Zapar, and Jason Medley, to name a few, shared their know-how and solutions for some of recruiters' oldest and biggest problems.

Here's what we're going back to the drawing/hiring board with – share them with your team!

Focus on the impact of a candidate’s performance, not the cost of them.

By considering who an employee can grow into, you focus less getting what you want out of them now, and more on their career development at your company. To build an A Team and hire top people, you need to have a top job available for them, says hiring guru Lou Adler. Ask the hiring team, “What does this person need to be successful?” – this question changes the way you qualify candidate as it gives an understanding for this employee’s career path and what they should have and will expect from your opportunity. 

Tell a story to capture candidates’ willpower – don’t sell the job description!

Remember that employer brand we keep talking about? Yup, confirmed – it’s still important! Your employer brand is a key element of the candidate experience and empowers your hiring team to paint a realistic, approachable, relatable representation of the company. Instead of thinking of hiring as purely transactional (The mindset of “I’ll give you a job if you contribute your talent.”), think of the process as a relationship to be nurtured. To attract and engage talent at the top of the funnel, give them an understanding of what life is like in the office, after work hours, and who they’re awesome coworkers could be!

Build an employer branding culture with all team members by creating an employer brand roadmap. Train the team on who their audience is, how to use social sites and find their “virtual voice,” and the difference between good and bad content. Translate branding goals into talent goals. For what roles are you hoping to attract people through each channel? How many candidates do you expect to come into the funnel from a month of sharing content on social media? Establish goals and benchmarks to get feedback on employees’ brand initiatives.

Build an effective interview plan by lining up the expectations of your recruiters and hiring managers.

There’s a prevalent lack of accountability in hiring teams – sourcers are blamed for finding unqualified candidates, recruiters are heckled for taking a long time to arrange interviews, managers are held guilty for making bad hires that need to be replaced just a few months into the job. Unless you like headaches and frequently starting at Square One, let’s stop and take a minute.

Before starting any hunt for talent, hiring teams should meet and discuss the skills and experiences of the right candidate for the open role. Remember job titles are arbitrary and fall short in illustrating people, and expectations are subjective and variable.   

Pro tip: Pay attention to how candidates react to an interview question to see if it illustrates their fit, experiences and skills, or if its actually a turnoff to their candidate experience.

Understand the capacity of each recruiter on the team.

Like a sales team, each recruiter needs a hiring quota. Understand how much time and effort it takes for each recruiter to find candidates and fill a role. What’s a comfortable, realistic range and pace for sourcing candidates and converting them into hires? Too often, hiring teams believe having lots of candidates coming through your funnel is a good thing, which isn’t always true. Assess the cadence of filling the funnel and quality of the candidates. Are there enough recruiters on your team to follow up and manage candidates, or are there applicants waiting too long to hear back from someone? Avoid overwhelming the team with a massive funnel of ignored, qualified talent.

What other highlights did we we miss from this year's Greenhouse Summit? Any cheers you'd like to shout from the mountains to the Greenhouse team? Share them with us in the comments and tweet us @Entelo and @Greenhouse!

entelo greenhouse

  Subscribe to the Entelo Blog today!

comments