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stand out with candidates

How can your Organization and Recruiters Stand out with Candidates?

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We present 4 key points about how your organization and recruiters can stand out with candidates:

1. Feedback. Offering constant feedback.
Once you have received an application, as a recruiter there is only one thing candidates expect, and sometimes keeps them waiting forever. There are at least two scenarios:
When candidates are not a good fit and recruiters forget about their resumes. From thousands of applications on the table or desktop software, the recruiter’s job is to find the perfect match for the position. But what about all the other candidates? Those who don’t make the cut and thus don’t move forward, also deserve an answer.
When you’ve already had an interview with a candidate, they will be waiting for an answer. If you tell them that they should hear from you, and to wait for your call or email, but won’t give them a specific date but rather a vague timeframe (i.e. “in the next few weeks”). When nothing happens weeks later and the position might have been filled, the other candidate’s know nothing. They might be in the process for more than the job with your company, so that leaves them with uncertainty, especially when they have hopes! In both situations, the recruiter’s feedback and response are what shows your candidates that you treat them as people, and not as pieces of paper.

We encourage candidates to pay attention to those hiring companies that keep them posted even when they have to give bad news. That is a result of a good culture that focuses on people and the importance of long-term impact within and outside the organization.

2. Being a good listener.
It will bring many benefits both to the job seeker and the client. When a recruiter listens to what the other parties have to say, he will understand what their needs are. It is said that good communication starts with listening. Communication is not just about how much we talk and what we say. When a recruiter starts working with a new hiring manager, she must not advise, diagnose, or assume anything before having understood their context, plans, and expectations. Use probing questions, quantify expectations as much as possible, verbalize objectives and ask for confirmation of the same understanding. A good listener will be able to reflect on what is being said and restate the message using the same or very similar words. For instance, this is especially useful to discuss the meaning of terms that might have slightly different definition in a client’s organization (i.e. sourced candidate as in prospective – “we have their resumes and they contain the basic qualifications”, or as in “we have their resumes, they qualify on paper, and we’ve talked to the candidates and they’ve already confirmed interest”).
Be ready to invite the hiring manager to speak as much as they can about the position beyond the words of the job description by asking open-ended questions, listening, and asking additional probing questions when needed.

3. Marketing and sales skills.
A professional recruiter will always know how to market and promote the services, knowledge, job opportunities and expertise in an effective way so that both clients and candidates are entirely satisfied with the process and outcome. Hence why understanding the key mechanism of marketing and sales is important: match a need with a solution where everyone has something to win. Recruiters must sharpen their selling skills if they hope to have any relevant results. A recruiter will stand out if she manages to develop a partnership with the client rather than just being a simple vendor.

Most recruiters will approach the recruiting process as merely transactional. They are provided with a job requisition, they post the job ad on known job boards, they search the database for matches and so on and so forth. In other words a simple equation with a few variables and a result. Instead of this shallow approach, recruiters can first start by asking one simple question: “what makes an employee successful in the client’s organization?” In other words: what are those traits that helped new hires to be productive, to grow int he role, to be fully committed and engaged? Same goes for vetting candidates. Recruiters should never settle for a resume or vague interview questions and answer. Validate their skills and experience through probing questions, assessments and add the depth of information that hiring managers need for sounds hiring decisions.

This is why whether talking about the client organization or candidates, there’s no one size fits all. Rather, recruiters need to craft their recruiting strategy and approach to candidates in a way that validates and compares both a role’s requirements and candidates’ complex profiles. Give context to each role by emphasizing the story that goes with it, including aspects such as vision, culture, challenges, opportunities, professional and personal development, etc.. Inspire people and bring emotion. That will help candidates you are interacting with, to think about all the facets of the position you are presenting to them, so the can decide whether they are a fit or not.

4. Relationship building.
We must not forget that recruiting at its foundation is about being able to connect with others. Recruiters should be natural connectors of people. That is why a recruiter must be active on social media and in real life. They interact with many people and should easily connect with everyone. The easiest way to connect with people is by building trust, which only comes with speaking the truth and being straight forward, and non-confrontational. Don’t oversell your ability to recruit to your clients, and don’t oversell a job to your candidate’s. Keeping that balance helps to develop the right relationship on both ends of an outstanding recruitment process: a consultant for both clients and candidates.

In the end, it comes down to an organization’s not-so-hidden agenda when hiring people: “How do we develop the right recruiting strategy so that both candidates and ourselves win?”
At SourceMatch, we take joy and satisfaction in assisting our clients with this process that creates value long term, not just short term!

leaders

Why Should you Recruit Leaders?

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For a company to be successful it needs to have a team that is constantly improving. This is the ultimate goal of every company: to serve the market and create valuable results. But, in order to do so, the company must have a strong team of leaders. They are the ones who inspire other people to take action by showing them the way and taking the first steps towards a clear goal.

Be selective.
This means to be discerning when choosing certain individuals to be part of your team. When you think of adding someone to your team, get know that particular person as much as you can before doing so. The best piece of advice would be to start first with the people you already know. They are the people from your office you interact with on a daily basis. You know their skills and how they work. At the same time pay close attention to their skills and how well they use them.

Good leadership drives the vision
Best-selling author and keynote speaker, Jon Gordon, believes that people follow the leader first and the leader’s vision second. If the leader is not an individual who is followed by the people around him, then his vision won’t be taken into consideration by anyone. Another important aspect is to let your entire team know the vision of the company. If they truly believe in the company’s vision the will passionately work for it. Consequently, the growth of the company will be visible. As a company you need to identify a compelling goal and, in this way, your team will be focused to work well on the assigned tasks. However, having a number of goals will not determine the engagement of your team. Their motivation to work for the company is fueled by their belief in the company’s vision.

Ask, don’t tell
Having a team of leaders means asking them questions and not telling them what to do. If you ask questions they will share their own opinions. In this way, they will be encouraged to think proactively as their responses matter to them. Seeing that you care about their answers they will be more and more involved. Every time you meet with them make sure you ask them about their insights, fresh ideas and other suggestions they might have. Your team won’t be able to develop if you are the only one who does the talking.

Nothing under the rug
An important lesson every organization must learn is to confront the ugly. There will always be situations where employees make mistakes. The leader should understand that he can’t avoid difficult conversations. What he has to do is confront the issues as soon as possible to get things back on track as quickly as possible. It is very important how you talk with each individual and, remember, a good attitude is key. A true leader must pay attention to the attitude towards the people he is interacting with. American captain of manufacturing and magnate, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford used to say: Don’t find fault, find a remedy. When something wrong happens, the leader finds a way to make things work. Telling someone about a problem without giving a solution is redundant.

Be real with appreciation
Last but not least, appreciation means a lot to the employees. Knowing that someone truly appreciates the work you are doing will give you a boost to do even a better job. A leader should know that his responsibility is to motivate the individuals he is interacting with, develop themselves and aim higher. That is why, he must not use cheap compliments that do not mean a thing, but genuine appreciation.

Recruiting is key
At SourceMatch we are recruiting leaders for other companies, not just simple employees. We encourage you to do the same. In a great article in Forbes Magazine, Ken Sundhein expressed his opinion that, although recruiting leaders may be stressful, hard and time-consuming, it pays off in the long run. In his opinion, leaders are the ones who will enable a specific organization to reach its goals.

One thing you must understand is that true leaders get things done. We are not only referring to those people who work in top management roles but in every position. You need people who think and act like a true leader. Imagine what your company would look like if your teams would be formed by leaders.

People in management roles must know that a firm lives and dies by its ability to recruit leaders. If you are a business, one of your goals is to increase the level of productivity and motivate your employees to make quantifiable progress. You can’t do this unless you have a strong team of leaders who are able to act for the benefit of the company and with the good of the employees in mind. However, if you hire incompetent leaders, your clients won’t be satisfied and you won’t get any competitive advantage.

Thrive, don’t just survive
Businesses can only thrive in each business when leaders don’t just replicate other people’s ideas but also create. Each business needs to be innovative so that is why you need to have creative leaders.

These are some important ideas you might want to take into consideration if you want both your company and your team of leaders to succeed.

Contact us to learn more.

 

How can a manager best motivate his team

What Motivates Someone to do Their best, and how can a Manager best Motivate his team/ Employees?

By | Blog, Leadership | No Comments

Motivation has a lot to do with a few factors: source (why), time (when) & space (where), and outcomes (what). The first two are for context and in my view are important to get a deeper understanding of what motivates people, and if you’d like to have the “what can I use now “ part, you can just skip to “3. Outcomes”.

  1. Source

It would be superficial to assume motivation is just external – i.e. I give someone a bonus that will motivate them, if I create the right environment, everyone will be motivated to be productive, etc.

In our experience, intrinsic motivation comes prior to external motivation. Take for instance the case of a person going to work from 9 am–5 pm. Why do they do it? Is it the salary? Yes, and why are they motivated to have a/that salary? It’s the level of comfort given by an income, not having to worry about tomorrow. It might be that the person is motivated to start their own business and needs the assurance of a fixed income until the business is up and running. Yes, and why are they motivated to have their own business? It can very well be a sense of independence, fulfillment, and happiness.

That’s why before you can pinpoint someone’s motivation, think of what is their true (intrinsic) motivation. Most of us don’t go flaunting these hidden motivations around. Someone else (say a manager) will not have access to them unless you see in them a genuine interest in what motivates you. In essence, not unless they win your trust first, the basis of human relationships.

External motivation is typically tied to an action/outcome that can be more or less evident.

For instance, the less evident one is when you try to motivate children to walk and you applaud them at every step they take so that they feel the happiness of having progressed. Although they might not be aware of the connection between the applause and their increasing ability to walk, they instinctively pursue the external motivation by repeating what caused it. (I’m not a psychologist, we just have kids!)

The obvious one is clearly defined with cause and effect (finite as opposed to the intrinsic such as happiness). When our annual revenues reach a certain amount, you get a certain bonus. If your performance assessment indicates that you’ve reached all of your goals, you will be provided with an award and a cash bonus. You’ve done well in the past couple of years, and your manager tells you that you’re being promoted (recognized) for your hard work.

Understanding the source of motivation is pretty straightforward, and there are plenty of books and research done on this topic.

However, a simple strategy is to just ask “why” until you have a hard time providing an answer, or know that there’s no deeper level (i.e. like happiness).

  1. Time and Space

Throughout our career, motivation changes with each time period and place we are in. The first job after graduation might be all about making ourselves valuable, earn a good salary, building our knowledge and expertise beyond a piece of paper, and gather as many wins in a renowned organization. Once we go past our second or third role, we first start thinking about where we could have the most impact, how long it would take to grow enough to become the next best version of ourselves and finally it would be great if we could earn an even better compensation. You’ll notice people taking time periods of 3–5 years to plan their career.

Time and space influence what motivates us. As a manager, you must be aware of the kind of time period and space that each person in your team is in. Some might have just joined your team right out of school and some others might be experienced professionals that can already bring a certain set of knowledge and expertise. For instance, the recent graduate employees might be motivated by working with the more experienced professionals in your team. And the more experienced professionals might be motivated by the possibility to coach and mentor some of the young team members.

  1. Outcomes

Whether intrinsic or external, motivation always needs to be tied to outcomes.

However, understanding the time and space helps you correlate the right outcomes with the right motivation. When someone new comes in, be aware of the fact they are not going to be with you forever. They could be there for 2 years or 5 years. But for them to be motivated to give their best, you need to commit to helping them be their best, regardless of how long they’ll stick around.

  • Create a personal development path (i.e. not related directly to company performance requirements) for them with the sole purpose of enabling them to reach their potential and beyond. Make their job about them first, and your company second. It’s a counter-intuitive approach, but when your employees and teams are motivated by their own personal growth first, they will thrive in their jobs and bring results to the company. I like to call that “owning your job.” Even if they work for you today, when they walk out to take another job or open their own business, they leave with all of what they’ve learned, whether you like it or not. So better use that knowledge today to build a win-win situation. Meet regularly to review with the employee the progress of their personal development. This will help you discover the deeper way that feeds your employees’ motivation.

People are motivated to do their best when managers help them know what their best is.

  • Open up problem-solving and decision making to all of your team. Its double effect is a tremendous gold mine, that managers tap into so rarely. The first benefit is, of course, the potential of crowdsourcing ideas which can bring so much creativity to the table. Brainstorm, talk about them, turn problems around, and be ready to discuss any apparently crazy idea. The second benefit is the team’s motivation through empowerment. Your team will feel motivated because their manager acknowledges that everyone can contribute, can voice their ideas and be part of the solution. If you can, allow the winning idea to be implemented by the person in the team who came up with it!

People are motivated to do their best when managers give up on trying to be the best by themselves.

  • Set, measure and celebrate your team’s impact on your key indicators like client satisfaction, quality of service, a decrease in product returns, process improvement, and even your bottom line. Take time to quantify what performance impact looks like, and challenge them to get there. Start measuring and let them know when you see progress/milestones being achieved and where things didn’t go as expected. Recognize their effort, and challenge them to reach the next milestone. As you quantify the impact, people understand the connection between doing their best to the nitty-gritty details of an organization’s performance.

People are motivated to do their best when they can see or envision an outcome. It’s a manager’s responsibility to paint a vision of that outcome in as many details as possible, and let them know when they have gotten closer to it and by how much.

A motivation that isn’t aligned with your team members in mind is bound to be short-lived, and of little impact.

If you are already a manager or own a company, and have not considered motivating your team, switching to a culture of motivation might seem impossible.

The great news though is that you can tackle some of the possible and apparently impossible things in the real world. And we are advocates of starting small.

Start with building trust and transparency with your employees, without expecting anything in return. They will be skeptical at first. Repeat it every month, start writing down what you hear, holding them accountable to their own words (again, not performance items, but rather what they are good at, what they appreciate about the team, or environment or not, etc.) just by asking (not imposing). Then find out whether there’s anything you can help them with: to either help them grow or integrate some of their personal objectives in what they do at work (if possible). And finally, when you are able, help them see their potential when they can’t.

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”

― Theodore Roosevelt

Schedule a chat with us to start the conversation about your future employees.

Will Talent make or Break the Future of your Organization?

By | Blog, Future of work, Leadership, Recruiting | No Comments

The concept of Talentism has been coined down by Charles Schwab (founder of the World Economic Forum) back in 2012 as being the only logical era to replace capitalism. Capital has been one of the key drivers for the industrial era, fueling technology innovations as well as the development of private companies to carry out the entire process from product creation to market delivery as opposed to being state-owned and state-driven. This improved productivity and enabled consequent competitive advantages that stood for a few decades.

The New Economy is not fueled by capital, but rather by talent.

Whereas capital is important, it is no longer the presence of it that significantly influences the potential to succeed of an organization. It was capital that made it possible for the main technologies to taken certain industries from zero to one: i.e. the steam engine which multiplied the potential of many industries tenfold. Information technology plays a significant role as well being among the revolutionary advances (i.e. 3D printing – which leads the democratization and digitization of manufacturing), being considered by some economists as one of the general purpose technologies along the telegraph and the steam engine.

In the era of Talentism, talent becomes the driver for many of the advances that revolutionize industries (i.e. Uber, Airbnb, Tesla). We can see its impact when creativity, combined with the proper skills, tools, and information technology creates tremendous organizations (i.e. see Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) These no longer find themselves in the areas of activity that they initially started but have become organizations with a mission to change the world (see Google that started as a search engine trying to take the lead on autonomous cars, or Facebook – a social media platform – trying to take the Internet to everyone on the planet, just to mention a few).

None of these companies lack the capital. In fact, they have a significant amount of cash available on their hands. However, by far, they are in a group for themselves (although some consider them to be monopolies), which exist by the sheer advantage that their talent has given them. A competitive advantage that took them by an order of magnitude in technology beyond their competitors.

Talent and the future of work

Now that organizations have understood the importance of talent they are faced with the challenge of the skills gap. It has pushed them to find new ways to source talent, primarily by giving up on geographical limitations, switching to a remote work relationship (either from home or through outsourcing to vendors operating in nearshore or offshore models). That opens up a whole new way of working, bringing up other quasi-challenges such as finding the right communication means (i.e. phone, text chat, conference meetings), switching to cloud software platforms, adjusting for cultural variations, or time-zone differences. Other solutions may be found through freelancers or collaborative workspaces/hubs.

Never before was the future of work so interconnected with the past. Social media platforms provide a network of information, organizations, and individuals who can easily be accessed to locate the right talent, vet them through references and even carry out background checks.

The future of work also calls for professionals to consider that an education is not an insurance that guarantees a successful career throughout their lives. On the contrary, professionals need to be open to life-long learning alternatives (i.e. certifications or online course platforms) and developing an alternate primary skill. This gives way to varied work opportunities and increases their flexibility to switch from one project to another.

Talentism is changing the face of businesses around the world as they strive to become and stay competitive in the New Economy. How will you take advantage of the vast array of talent available across the world?

I would love to hear your experience about capital versus talent. How have both shaped your strategy in the past 5 years? How about the next 5-10 years?

Leave your comments below, and don’t hesitate to contact SourceMatch about how we can help you leverage talent for your organization.