A recent report from Google on diversity in hiring states that hiring has increased among workforce segments such as women, Black+ and Latinx+ groups (The report uses the “plus system” because multiracial people are “plus-ed in” to each racial category they identify with). The hiring of women rose to 33.2% globally and to 34.9% in the U.S., Black+ and Latinx+ hires increased to 4.8% and 6.8%, respectively, in the U.S.
In 2018, global hires of women in the tech sector increased to 25.7%, continuing the positive trend we’ve seen since 2015. In this four-year period, the hiring of women in tech has increased from 22.1% to 25.7%. In the United States, hiring of women increased to 51.6%—”the single biggest year-over-year shift for any underrepresented group within this data set”. The proportion of women leadership hires decreased, according to the same report. In the United States, women leadership hires decreased to 26.0% and to 25.9% globally. Latinx+ leadership hires increased to 5.1%, while Black+ leadership hires decreased to 3.6%.
The first report from Google of its kind was released in 2014 and an updated version has been published every year since. Although there is a lot of progress to be made, Google’s commitment is to increase diversity in the tech industry. Many other tech companies are following its example: Ada Developers Academy (an intensive software developer training school for anyone who identifies as female; the program is tuition-free and targeted at those who have a strong passion for technology but no formal programming training), Other Machine Co. (its tech staff is split 50-50 between men and women), ZestFinance (two of the company’s 10 principles center on diversity). Senior Vice President Hiroshi Lockheimer at Google argues that diversity is a business solution.
Statistics say that 57% of recruiters have strategies to attract diverse candidates.
Diversity in hiring can make a difference in the long-term vision of a company, and among the benefits, we can name: multicultural employees bring a unique perspective to the workplace, competitive and healthy environment, learning opportunities and improved customer service.
What is YOUR approach towards diversity in hiring? Reach out to us to learn more!
Technology offers many helpful tools that recruiters can utilize. It can improve the recruiting process by making it more efficient, organized, and productive. Technology can also help recruiters stay up to date with the latest skills and trends in the recruiting world.
Helpful Websites for Sourcing
The many available websites that make recruiting more efficient give recruiters access to candidates and clients as well. LinkedIn offers a recruiting portal (fee) or free access for browsing current subscribers. Here, you can browse for potential candidates by searching for particular skills and education. You can also browse current job openings, and reach out to potential clients. Linkedin has become a great resource for employers to network with others and to help in their recruitment needs. The potential for LinkedIn — and other social networking sites — to play a major role in your employee recruiting strategy increases as more job seekers post their profiles each year.
Indeed and Glassdoor are some other helpful websites for recruiters. These sites are job boards where recruiters can access current job openings and potential candidates who are interested in a career change. By posting a job on these sites or researching candidates, recruiters improve efficiency and create awareness in the job market among candidates about their openings.
Indeed Resume hosts millions of resumes from job seekers across nearly any industry and location. Employers can quickly find candidates by entering a job title or skill and geographical area. You can narrow down results by criteria – such as years of experience, education level, and more. Also, by setting up a Resume Alert, you can receive daily emails with links to new resumes that match the criteria for the positions you’re looking to fill. (Recruiting Strategies)
Glassdoor has more than 64 Million monthly unique users looking for a job. Glassdoor claims “Using numerous customization options to create targeted search capabilities, you can reach candidates on and off-site by occupation, location (country, city, state) and on competitor pages. As well, you can support your diversity and inclusion initiatives with laser-like focused data.”
Assessment Software
By narrowing down skill sets, assessment software offers recruiters an avenue to improve candidate matching. Analyzing behavior, skills, and language assessments; allows recruiters to better match a candidate to a particular position. This saves time for recruiters, clients, and candidates. SourceMatch combines assessment software and candidate analysis for our clients. We develop 360-degree profiles for candidates that allow the Hiring Manager to have a deeper understanding of each candidate while saving them the time of having to browse or review hundreds of resumes.
Organization Software
There are quite a few ways to organize recruiting tasks and goals. Asana is a powerful tool for organizing your team’s workload as well as your own by projects, or simply individual tasks. You can assign tasks, deadlines, and comment on what needs to get accomplished in a very structured way that eliminates some of the conundrum of doing the same via email threads. Gmail is also a great tool to use for staying organized. You can set up reminders, invitations to meetings, and times that you will not be available for meetings. By far the ability to connect multiple software solutions creates the ability to integrate a clear workflow with specialized software for every step of the way.
Agave.com is a great option for recruiters. They offer free or low cost recruiting Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) or Applicant Tracking System (ATS), rich API support, nurture campaigns and follow-ups, transparent offers, detailed reports, scheduling, and candidate sourcing. Some of these features are automated saving time as well as keeping everyone in the process up to date with the status or action items.
Communication Software
Skype is a free tool to use for conferencing with teammates, clients, or candidates. You can stay connected to your team and update them with questions or answers, as needed. You can Skype to interview potential candidates for open roles, to see which one matches your clients’ needs. Customization can be added through a project or interest-based groups making it easy to unify specific topics/discussion as well as separate the top priority ones from non-urgent chats.
Zoom is also a popular option to use for conferencing. Zoom is popular for meetings, webinars, conferencing, and business IM. Some other popular options include Google Meet (conferencing app), Webex (web conferencing), Blue Jean (conferencing, online meetings), Join.me (conferencing, online meetings), or even Slack (team collaboration).
Intelligent and Automated Screening Software
Using AI to screen applicants is a powerful tool. AI can recognize keywords, skills, education, and background knowledge. Using this, AI “filters” potential candidates from the larger group of applicants. SourceMatch uses 360-degrees AI as well as holistic screening, to find the top talent.
Using AI to simplify and shorten the time it takes to process various sets of information can lead to significantly faster decision making. At SourceMatch, the speed on some of the automated stages of recruiting reduced lead time by 2-3 days. It starts with simple workflows that keep candidates updated as to where they are in the recruiting process, as well as to remind them via email and text messages of their next steps (i.e. provide additional information, take assessments, complete their application, etc.). This is especially helpful to keep candidates interested in a job they’ve applied for when they also have a job, and multiple other personal priorities The advanced workflow stages rely on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to evaluate statements of interest and writing samples submitted by candidates.
Organizing Social Media Accounts
Buffer allows the user to create one post for multiple social media accounts. You can even set up a specific day and time to share the post. This is great for social media marketing and posting job openings.
Hootsuite also analyzes and executes social media data and marketing. You can pay for these services and choose the right plan for your needs.
In conclusion, technology improves the recruiting process in many ways and it helps recruiters be more efficient, productive, and organized. What are your top technology “go to’s” when it comes to recruiting?
The ‘skills gap’ is the phrase used to describe the difference between the skills that employers want, as shown by their job advertisements, and those that are available from professionals looking for a job. According to Glassdoor, the high needs jobs include: project manager, physician assistant, software engineer, marketing manager, nurse practitioner, business analyst, operations manager, occupational therapist, electrical engineer, and product manager.
The top reasons for the skills gap include: competition from other employers, candidates who do not have the needed experience, candidates who do not have the correct technical skills, low number of applicants, non-competitive benefits or salaries, and candidates who do not have the right soft skills (shrm.org).
To address the skills gap, companies will need both short and long term goals. There are many ways to help support business growth, while also addressing the skills gap seen within some sectors. To do this, businesses need to be prepared. SourceMatch helps businesses prepare for both the long and short term employee skills gap.
Long Term
Provide Career and Professional Growth
Companies can better prepare for the skills gap by providing career and professional growth options; to employees. Managers can set up discussions about opportunities for more education in high need areas, and learn from consulting companies such as SourceMatch, about the current skills trends. By doing this, you invest in your workforce and create career ladders for employees. SourceMatch stays up to date on the current high need skills, as well as how to educate your workforce in those areas.
Invest in Future Employees
Investing in future employees can mean a few things. Employers can reach out to high school students as well as college students, and share knowledge about your organization, industry and how they can best prepare to be a valuable professional. This will create an interest for students to possibly invest in the skills needed for your company. To do this, SourceMatch can help, by offering our consulting and recruiting services. Sharing knowledge of your company’s needs and wants, better prepares the future employees, as well as your company. Your company can get a better grasp of the future workforce as well.
Provide the Cost of Education
Companies are also offering to cover some or all of the cost of education for their employees. According to Forbes, Many companies like Starbucks, Walmart, Chipotle, and Disney offer tuition assistance for employees. This boosts employee retention and morale, as employees can “grow” with their company.
Short Term
Refer to Outsourcing
For immediate hiring needs, SourceMatch offers assistance to companies looking to fill their skills gap. We specialize in finding and retaining the right talent. Outsourcing recruiting, allows for an immediate request to be filled, as we do the legwork in regards to finding the right candidates for the open roles. Because we specialize in consulting and recruiting, your company is enabled to be efficient at using valuable resources and funds, as we use our validated Engaged Recruiting model to find and fill in those skill gaps.
Utilize Recruiting and Consulting Services
To utilize recruiting and consulting services, companies reach out for qualified support. SourceMatch specializes in filling the skills gap for companies. Using our services, companies save time and money training or retaining “high needs” positions. In the short term, companies who use our services, are able to fill in their skills gap. Recruiting and consulting companies can reach out to untapped sources of talent, that many companies are not even aware of.
The Evolution of Technology
How to Keep Up
The digital skills gap is costing the US economy roughly $1 trillion in lost productivity – Entrepreneur. To keep up in the new age of IT, companies can utilize recruiting organizations; to fill their skills gap. Because technology changes so quickly, the workforce can lag a bit behind. This makes it so valuable for companies to stay ahead of the gap. By planning and using SourceMatch’s consulting services, companies are better prepared for future IT skills gaps.
Training the Workforce to Evolve
Many companies also offer paid training and certificate courses, for employees to learn and grow. This is a faster-paced solution to that individual skill gap. By doing this, employers and employees can keep up with the current high needs skills.
Faster Learning Opportunities (Rather Than Traditional 4 Year Degrees)
Some of the top-paying certificates take less time to earn than a traditional 4-year degree. These certificates may need a certain level of experience or hours, though. Some top paying certificates include: Google Cloud Architect, PMP, ScrumMaster, AWS Architect and Developer, MCSE, ITIL, CISM, CRISC, CISSP, CEH, Citrix Associate, CompTIA, and Cisco (CCNP). By gaining a base level of knowledge and then gaining a certificate, employees and employers can bridge both blue-collar and white-collar skills gaps.
The Case for Creativity in the Workplace
To keep up with the skills gap, many companies are turning to creative time in the workplace. This allows employees to “think and plan” and develop solutions to current skills needs. By allowing creativity in the early years of employment, professionals gain a way to be “forward thinkers” allowing them to innovate and create solutions for the future. Some companies also rotate managers, to allow for new, fresh ideas in the workplace. By switching things up, companies can evolve and entertain the skills gap, rather than be forced into it.
By being prepared for both the long and short term, future and present skills gap, companies can save time and money. Using creativity, planning, outsourcing, and education, companies can overcome the skills gap and create a veritable, efficient workforce.
Reach out to us to see how we can bridge the skill gap together.
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