Surveys.  Just about every company does them.  Customer surveys are used to gauge how customers perceive your company's products and services.  It makes sense - after all, customers pay the bills.  Employee satisfaction surveys are also very common to help you identify ways to improve the overall work environment, and the perks and benefits extended to employees, should you care to.  But, how about applicant satisfaction surveys to help you improve your recruiting and hiring process?

Studies have consistently shown that job candidates are generally dissatisfied with the recruiting and hiring processes of many companies.  The amount of time the process takes to make a decision - any decision; the amount of time a candidate... Read more »

A recent survey by career site The Ladders (click here for the survey itself), recruiters spend a whopping six seconds reviewing individual resumes.  By way of comparison, a professional bull rider must remain on the bull for eight seconds for the ride to qualify.  Some job seekers might equate their job search to a rodeo and this survey might only serve to reinforce that perception.  With only six seconds to make the best impression, how can candidates differentiate themselves and rise above the noise?

For many customer service positions, resumes tend to look alike, which makes it significantly more difficult for candidates to distinguish themselves.  The Ladders survey suggests that profiles that include pictures, such as... Read more »

It is conventional wisdom that a recruiter's impression of an applicant is formed very early in the hiring process.  If an applicant's resume doesn't stand out, he or she won't stand out and will figuratively wait by the phone for the employment call that will never come.  As a recruiter or hiring manager, have you ever thought about the impression your organization leaves with a prospective employee?  Do you respond to an applicant's resume with the perfunctory (but standard) thank you letter containing the statement that someone will be in touch if there's any interest?

Consider this: many of those looking for work today, especially college students who have found the employment picture to be particularly bleak, are... Read more »

The regular and frequent promotion of The Voice during Sunday’s Super Bowl made me think about the process of candidate interviewing and evaluation in the hiring world.  And, without too great a reach, I think several parallels can drawn between these talent competitions and employee hiring.

In the event you have been living in some remote corner of the globe without television, internet and/or smartphone and have not heard of The Voice or its biggest competitor American Idol, here’s the casual viewer's take on what they are about.  They are basically amateur singing talent competitions where relative unknowns are offered their shot at stardom from a panel of fairly well-known, successful-in-their-own-right, stars from the... Read more »

Webster defines collaboration thusly, "to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected."  Call center operations and the human resources department tasked with keeping operations staffed with well-qualified agents are not "immediately connected" where close collaboration could benefit both parties tremendously.  For many companies, interaction between the two groups is limited to an arm's-length exchange: operations sends staffing requisitions to HR and HR sends candidates to operations that are intended to satisfy those requirements.  But, how closely do some of these departments really work together for each other's mutual benefit?  Given the persistent high rate of early-stage... Read more »