SHRM-CP / SHRM-SCP Certification Exam: People - Talent Acquisition

Functional Area 2—Talent Acquisition
This is SHRM’s BoCK definition: “Talent Acquisition encompasses the activities involved in building and maintaining a workforce that meets the needs of the organization.”
Talent acquisition involves all the HR strategies and processes that are involved in attracting, recruiting, and selecting talent that has the skills, knowledge, and abilities needed in the workforce to meet the organization’s needs. HR professionals will analyze and understand the organization’s workforce requirements and staffing needs to enable them to assist management with assessing current and future labor needs.

Key Concepts
- Approaches to employee onboarding
- Approaches to sourcing (e.g., external talent pipelines)
- Employment categories (e.g., salaried/hourly, contract, temporary, interns)
- Job analysis and identification of job requirements
- Job offer contingencies (e.g., background investigations, credit checks)
- Job offer negotiations (e.g., salary)
- Methods for creating and maintaining a positive employer value proposition (EVP) and employment brand
- Methods for external and internal employee recruitment (e.g., job ads, career fairs)
- Methods for selection assessment (e.g., ability, job knowledge, noncognitive tests, assessment centers, interviews)
- Talent acquisition metrics (e.g., cost per hire, time to fill)
The following are the proficiency indicators that SHRM has identified as key concepts:

Organizational Staffing Requirements
Staffing is the lifeblood of an organization as people are required to make any organization run. Getting the right ones into the right jobs is the function known as staffing.

Staffing Challenges
At any time, one or more of these challenges can appear to the dismay of HR professionals. Dealing with them effectively is the measure of a skilled HR manager.
Changing Demographics   When housing becomes too expensive for job applicants to live close to the job and commute distances are greater than people want to undertake, the workforce demographics can shift, sometimes rapidly. Look at any major metropolitan area these days, and it is easy to identify this problem. Employer responses may be too expensive for practical purposes. Raising the pay scale so new hires have enough money to either rent or buy a home could just be too expensive.
Lack of Skilled Labor   According to a Manpower Group survey, more than 40 percent of all employers globally report difficulty filling skilled jobs.49
Government and Regulatory Barriers to Hiring   The moment an employer hires its first worker, it becomes subject to more than 50 federal laws that require compliance, everything from safety to payroll and credit reporting. There are untold numbers of state laws that also demand attention, depending on the work locations being used.
Brain Drain   The departure of educated or professional people away from an employer to another employer usually is for better pay or living conditions. Particularly in industries such as high-technology and engineering there is a high cost for key personnel exodus.
Availability of Reliable Data   Workforce planning and strategic staffing initiatives become problematic when there is a lack of current, reliable data. A lack of reliability in either the forecast of job openings or the ability to develop high-quality talent pools from which to draw job candidates will quickly bring the recruiting process to a halt.
Economic Cycles   Economy cycles impact employer headcount levels. Employers are often faced with the challenge of identifying qualified recruits from a scarcity of resources when things get better through growth and demand. Likewise, when the economy turns down, layoffs are often the result.
Business Lifecycles   Recruiting and retention strategies will necessarily change as business moves through four stages, or lifecycles, of existence. In the beginning (startup) and through its growth years, recruiting is typically hectic. Expansion means hiring. In its maturity and decline years, layoffs and downsizing/resizing are frequent impacts. Specific strategies are required for each of these four cycles.
PEST Factors   PEST, i.e., political, economic, social, and technological factors, must be considered when conducting an environmental scan, strategic planning, or being engaged in other forecasting efforts. World events often drive, or at least influence, environmental scans conducted by using the PEST factors.
Employee Lifecycles   Staffing challenges are greatly influenced by employee lifecycles. Here are the relationships:
- Recruitment and selection Finding the best fit between a job and an employee
- Onboarding and orientation Gaining information and tools necessary to succeed in the job and getting acclimated to the organization’s culture
- Training and development Promoting engagement and retention by developing an employee’s skills and commitment
- Performance management Working with employees helping them achieve their goals and objectives and priming them to become a stronger employee
- Transition Achieving the best match of an employee’s capabilities with an organization’s needs through transfer, promotion, demotion, resignation, and retirement
Technology Shifts   In years past, recruiting was done with the aid of “position available” advertisements in the local newspaper. Today, social media is the primary source of job candidates. This is a paradigm shift. An example can be found when wristwatches were no longer made with springs but transitioned to models with electronic quartz movements. When robots entered the workplace, helping handle dangerous and repetitive tasks in the automobile industry, employees were tasked with feeding the robot materials and receiving from it the completed subassembly, which was another paradigm shift. When the Bell System used live operators to handle long-distance calls, emergency calls, and questions that are now handled by computer, another paradigm shift took place.
Cherry Picking: Pressure on Salary Levels   Offering more money beyond the approved pay range can effectively entice a desirable job candidate to accept a job offer but can also cause issues for other parts of an organization. If the hiring manager makes a job offer above the pay range maximum, something must happen to bring that individual back into the proper compensation range. Usually, this requires management to “freeze” the new hire’s pay level until natural escalation pressures enable the company’s pay structure to catch up. The short-term benefit of attracting a desirable job candidate this way is often overcome by general employee discontent and, as a result, discouragement. In addition, state and federal pay requirements, when applicable, must be followed in any case.
Creating a Job vs. Hiring for Work   When an engineering firm encounters an engineer with a certain specialty, experience, and educational credentials to back it up, the company may want to hire that person rather than let them go on to some other firm. In that case, it becomes necessary to create a job opening for the new engineer. As opposed to that scenario, often the practice is to have a job opening identified and then seek candidates for that job with the intent to hire the best qualified out of the batch. Filling a job need is quite different from creating a job for someone special we must hire to save the talent within our employee ranks.

Strategic Staffing
Staffing according to the business strategies requires understanding what those strategies are. Even if strategic plans are not formalized, successful employers need some form of organizational goals to effectively manage their business. HR professionals are uniquely positioned to help managers understand the importance of measurable strategic goals to be successful as HR business partners providing appropriate job candidates to the operations units. When accounting is undertaking a conversion of its financial records processing system or operations is installing a new computer-centric milling system, the HR professional supporting them will need to understand the importance of those changes to accomplishing business goals. HR professionals cannot simply enjoy sitting in the HR world. They must be fluent in the language of their brothers and sisters in other parts of the business. Until they are, they will not be as helpful in staffing jobs in those other organizations as they otherwise could be.

Planning for Talent Acquisition on a Global Basis
Global staffing depends on recognizing and acquiring talent with precisely the job skills needed in a given work location, even when that work location happens to be halfway around the world.

Global Integration vs. Local Responsiveness Strategy
Strategically, it may be determined that recruiting, processing, and hiring people can be done from a remote location such as at a company’s headquarters. Certainly, any talent acquisition program must be able to embrace global requirements. It will come as no surprise that maintaining a local responsiveness to acquisition requirements is also a key to success. It is important that people processing job candidates have the same level of empathy for local needs as local staff. Responsiveness to local management will go a long way toward building a strong working relationship. In the end, it is a customer service relationship that is important.

Orientation and Talent Staffing
Nancy Simonelli at Reliance Staffing and Recruiting says, “Employees who attend a structured orientation program are more likely to remain with the company after 3 years than those who do not. If you are going to spend money and time acquiring top talent and paying them to work, why not prepare them to succeed and stay?”50 So, a solid strategy for orientation training after a new hire accepts the job offer is to use a structured orientation program. Be sure to cover everything on your checklist, not just payroll and benefit information. Be sure to include things like, “How we do things around here.”

Growth Strategies
Identifying growth in workforce needs will allow strategic preparation for recruiting and acquisition of talent that will be needed to permit the growth to be successful. It can take weeks or months to identify specific job candidate needs and then to create a recruiting program that will assimilate those candidates as active participants in the selection process. Starting before you have a specific requisition can be a good strategy for being ready when the time comes.

Maturity of the Global Location
How well can your global locations continue to serve your business needs? Is there a ready workforce with the talent necessary to satisfy your job requirements? In the face of an economic downturn, can you continue to maintain a branding program so that the job candidate market will react positively when openings occur again? Are there competitors in the same locations? Do they seek to attract the same type of talent to their workforce as you want to have in yours? The broader the supply and demand in your areas of talent need, the more likely you will be able to find what you want when you actually start looking.

External Factors
Influences from outside the employer’s organization can include such things as local employment laws for wage and hour issues, minimum wage levels, mandated benefit requirements, cultural impacts on production schedules (e.g., holidays), and local commute patterns. All of these and more must be considered as part of your strategic talent acquisition process.

Social Responsibility
Do subcontractors or suppliers participate in pay disparities or racial discrimination because of local cultural practices? It is incumbent upon the employer to determine whether it should even create a work location where those problems exist. And, if so, what will it take to address changes in those cultural standards?

Information Technology
What type of Internet connections are available in the work location chosen for your organization’s needs? What types of computer support are available? Will you be using off-the-shelf software programs or something your in-house programmers have created or modified? Is there local support talent that can address these and other related types of infrastructure needs?

Visa Requirements
What type of visa requirements exist in your prospective work location? Can international candidates come and go without difficulty, or are there special work permit requirements they must meet? Are certain countries barred from sending workers to your location? How will you be able to work within those requirements? Talent acquisition can be made more difficult if there are these types of impediments.

Employment Branding
Branding is another word for reputation. What do people in your target workforce think about your company? How can you influence that?

Employment Branding Defined
According to Chris Mossevelde, “Employer branding is the process of promoting a company, or an organization, as the employer of choice to a desired target group, one which a company needs and wants to recruit and retain.”51

Building a Brand
Mossevelde continues, “The company can only attract current and future employees if it has an identity that is true, credible, relevant, distinctive and aspirational. To achieve this, extensive research needs to be conducted.” What does the public think of your organization? What does the group of people you consider a target recruiting source group think of your organization as an employer? Learning what exists will enable you to determine what action steps must be taken to mold your brand into the perceptions you want others to have.

Employee Value Proposition
An employee value proposition (EVP) is the unique set of benefits that an employee receives in return for the skills, capabilities, and experience they bring to a company.

Harnessing Social Media
In mid-2017, CareerBuilder.com posted the results of its latest study regarding the use of social media in the employment process. Here is what that study found: “70 percent of employers use social media to screen candidates before hiring, up significantly from 60 percent last year and 11 percent in 2006.”52 The lesson is clear. Employers must be using social media outlets to find the best talent available. And, social media can influence the employer’s brand in the eyes of those it will eventually want to recruit.

Best Practices for Employment Branding
To influence your brand, it is necessary to manage the expectations and perceptions of your job candidate target group. The first step is to identify key words that describe your company as a good place to work. If you say things like exciting, flexible, genuine, and challenging, you may advance to the next step. If you say things like old-fashioned, slow (to change), manipulative, and boring, you may have some work to do before moving to the next step. If you need to work on your employment brand, begin with a task force (group) of employees who can help identify key actions that will be needed to improve your organization’s image. Consider focus groups for people in your prime employment recruiting populations to determine what they really think about your organization as an employer.
 

1.   What changes might be necessary if you are to move forward? How can social media become a tool in that change process?
2.   Develop and implement your action plan to bring about the changes your organization needs.
3.   Evaluate the impact of changes you have created.
4.   Repeat as necessary.

Job Analysis and Job Documentation
Establishing job content and determining how the job interacts with other jobs are important. Documenting the results can become what we know as a job description. That job description can become the foundation for analyzing its content and plotting its fit into compensation structures.

Job Analysis
Determining the level of responsibility embedded in the job and how it impacts the overall organization is year around. The other sits inside using a computer keyboard to convert thought patterns into code the machine can use. Someone who doesn’t like heights or working in rain and snow would probably not be a great candidate for the technician’s job. And, someone who has a high need for being outside, working on different job sites each day, would likely not do well in the computer programmer’s job.

Job Documentation
Written descriptions of the key elements of a job, its working conditions, and its mental and physical demands will eventually constitute the documentation of the job and its content.
Job Descriptions   Job descriptions follow a general template for content. The same template can be used in constructing a CEO’s job description as for an airline pilot. It is the content that falls within the template that varies.
Elements of Job Descriptions   Here is a typical job description template:
Administrative
- Date the job description was prepared
- Title of the job
- FLSA status: Exempt or nonexempt
- Objective: What does the job accomplish and how does it impact other jobs in the organization
 

Summary of Job Content
Essential job functions: Brief description of the specific tasks, duties, and responsibilities
Mental and educational requirements: Formal education (degrees), certifications, licensing, journey-level craft training, extensive mathematical training (essential job requirements; the job cannot be done without these educational requirements)
Skill requirements: Typing, welding, swimming, running harvesting equipment, docking spacecraft
Physical factors: Hearing, seeing (watching/inspecting), touching, operating, standing, bending, squatting, reaching, lifting, carrying
Environmental factors: Outside weather conditions, inside workplace conditions, confined spaces, heat, cold, wet, dry, odors, dust, hazardous materials
Hours: Number of eight-hour shifts per week, overtime requirements, lunch/break requirements
Unplanned activities: Duties or tasks that could come up, interactions, and support of other jobs
Approvals: Reviews and approvals of management people authorized to design job content
Job Descriptions in the Global Environment   Global consistency can be helpful over time. While compensation rates may vary from country to country, the same job content may apply across borders. Having job content consistency may be helpful in the outreach and recruiting efforts your organization makes. Be sure, however, that the wording used accurately communicates the message. Expectations for honesty and forthrightness exist at many locations around the world. Yet, depending on the work location, how the message is expressed may be quite different. In France, value is often placed on open disagreement as discussions move toward consensus. In Mexico, open disagreement is considered rude and disrespectful. In Indonesia, an open disagreement would be considered aggressive and negative because the reputation of the other person can be damaged. International differences do matter.
Job Specifications   A job description is a series of statements describing the role, responsibility, duties, and scope of a particular job. A job specification states the minimum qualifications required for performing a that job. What education is required? What physical and mental abilities are a must? What experience is essential? Those answers are posted in the job requisition so potential candidates will be able to assess the match they may have with the job requirements.
Writing and Updating Job Descriptions and Job Specifications   It is the duty of the supervisor and/or manager to develop and maintain accurate job descriptions and job specifications. Often this is done with the help of HR professionals. In larger organizations, there is a staff of HR people who are responsible for evaluating, rating, and assigning pay levels to job descriptions and compensation classifications as appropriate. They support line managers and supervisors in documenting their subordinate jobs. An annual review is mandated for all federal contractors who are required to maintain affirmative action plans for the disabled. Those requirements are focused on the need for accurate descriptions of physical and mental job requirements. Essential tasks, duties, and responsibilities are considered in order to determine whether a job accommodation can be made or circumstances call for it.
Accurate job specifications are important when a job opening occurs because the hiring manager often needs to move quickly. Pausing the process to be sure job specifications are accurate will be unnecessary if the specifications are already reviewed and updated.
Employment Categories   The term employment categories is used by many to mean often conflicting things. The two most often referenced are categories evolving from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and those based on company policy. So, SHRM generally considers the following to be employment categories.
These are the FLSA classifications:
- Nonexempt Employees are people whose job content is not exempt from the requirements for minimum wage and overtime requirements.
- Exempt Employees are people whose job content does not require overtime payment.
These are the company policy classifications:
- Regular full-time employees are regularly scheduled to work the company’s full-time schedule. Usually, they are eligible for company benefit programs depending on eligibility conditions.
- Regular part-time workers are regularly scheduled to work less than the company’s full-time schedule. They may be eligible for some company benefit programs.
- Temporary full-time employees are interim workers assigned to specific projects or scheduled to work for a specific limited duration. Benefits may or may not be offered.
- Temporary part-time employees are hired to temporarily supplement the workforce or to help with a specific project. They are regularly scheduled to work less than the company’s full-time schedule for a limited duration. They are usually not eligible for company benefit programs.
- On-call employees are scheduled as needed for a nonspecified time period. Normally there is no eligibility for company benefit programs.
- Interns may be college or university students, high school students, or post-graduate adults who perform work for a specified period of time, i.e., summer, academic semester, and so on.

Sourcing and Recruiting
Geoff Webb writes on LinkedIn, “A Sourcer finds the passive candidates, the ones not applying through the corporate website or posting on the job boards. A Sourcer is a hunter. A Sourcer creates interest and drives talent to the organization. This means doing research: pouring over org charts, job descriptions, and social media profiles, while sourcing talent by accessing search engines and competitor web pages. This means engaging potential candidates: messaging through social media, sending emails, picking up the phone. And because a hunt often involves a chase, this means repeating, tweaking, and refining these activities—until you have a slate of qualified prospects to hand off to…
“…the Recruiter. The Recruiter manages the relationships, guiding the candidates and the hiring manager through the screening, selection, and hiring process. This means phone calls, meetings, and interviews. This also means administration—a lot of it: posting jobs, reviewing applicant submissions through the corporate website, coordinating schedules, uploading documents, extending offers—going back and forth until all the details come together and the job opening has been filled.”53

Sourcing and Recruiting in Diverse Markets
McKinsey & Company studied the relationship between diversity and financial returns in business terms. Among their findings were these:54
- “In the United States, there is a linear relationship between racial and ethnic diversity and better financial performance: for every 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior-executive team, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) rise 0.8 percent.
- “In the United Kingdom, greater gender diversity on the senior-executive team corresponded to the highest performance uplift in our data set: for every 10 percent increase in gender diversity, EBIT rose by 3.5 percent.”
The conclusion is that sourcing and recruiting in diverse markets is a positive thing for the employer and its financial returns.

Recruiting Methods
Finding the right job candidate is a process that has changed little over time. What has changed is where we go to look for that stellar candidate. Two words say it all for external sourcing: social media.
Internal Recruiting   Looking for people who can fill openings often begins by looking internally. Notifying current employees about job openings can be done in any of several ways: sending an e-mail blast to all employees with the announcement, posting the opening announcement on the employee bulletin board, posting the opening announcement on the organization’s web site or employee channels, and asking all managers and supervisors to announce the opening to their employee groups. Some organizations believe it is good for morale to give current employees the opportunity to apply for new job openings, especially if it would mean a promotion to the candidate. Whatever the reason, selecting someone from the current employee ranks will cost less than searching for and screening a group of people from outside the organization.
 

External Recruiting   These are proven external recruiting methods:
- Job boards This includes services such as Monster, ZipRecruiter, Career Bliss, Recruit Net, Jobs2Careers, CareerJet, and Glassdoor.
- Social media This includes LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and more.
- Web site The employer’s Internet site is a perfect place to post job openings and even an application form.
- Referrals Employee referrals are a wonderful source of job candidates. And don’t discount referrals from clients, customers, vendors, and the general public.
 

Other Recruiting Strategies   Employment agencies and temporary help agencies are more traditional, but they still have appeal today. Temporary help workers can “test-drive” the company to see whether it is a good match with their objectives, and the company can “test-drive” the employee to see whether they would be a good match for the employer’s culture.
Employment Branding   An employment brand is the market perception of what it’s like to work for an organization. It relies heavily on culture and current and former employee testimonials about experience on the payroll.
Robust Sourcing Strategy   Sourcing, as you know, is the art of seeking candidates before they apply for a job. Hunting may be a better term. If your sourcing strategy is robust, you have an active presence in the employment market looking for organizations, Internet sites, and social media accounts that represent the type of individual knowledge, skills, and abilities that you believe you will require now or in the future.

Recruiting Effectiveness
Establishing and maintaining a recruiting program is not cheap. It requires the investment of an internal staff of people dedicated to that activity or the time and effort of consulting support that will offer the same services. The trick is to be sure you are getting your money’s worth in the bargain.
Measurers of Recruitment Effectiveness   There are two general areas of interest when measuring recruiting efforts.55
- Speed and efficiency
- Time between opening the requisition and presenting a qualified candidate slate
- Time for feedback from hiring manager to recruiter
- Requisition aging
- Quality metrics
- Number of candidates selected for interview
- Interview to offer ratio
 

HR Metrics   In addition to the recruiting measurements, we can measure the quality of new hires (job performance ratings, the percentage of new hires promoted within a year, the percentage of new hires retained after a year) and turnover cost (unemployment insurance expense, workers’ compensation expense, cost of training a replacement, cost of recruiting and hiring a new employee).
Cautions Regarding Metrics   We need to be careful that the metrics we choose to use actually report on something that actually matters in our recruiting program. It is easy to get sidetracked into believing something is important when it really isn’t. Who really cares about things like the number of typos in a job requisition or the number of people who don’t know how to use social media? Be precise in what you measure because if it doesn’t tell you something that can help you manage the process, it shouldn’t be in your portfolio of metrics.
 

Peoplepower Reporting   Slicing and dicing the demographics of your workforce can have some value if you are interested in identifying representations of various groups for your diversity program. Here are some things that can be computed and reported.
Headcount   These are the number of people on the payroll, the number of people in candidate pools, the number of people who come from each recruiting source, and so on.
Groups and Subgroups   Numbers can be analyzed for group or unit representations such as department, division, unit, work location, or country. Within these there can be subgroups that might offer additional focus on your recruiting efforts. Focus on what will provide you with the most valuable feedback for the process. You must be able to “do” something with the information you compute. If you don’t, there is no point in doing the analysis.
Demographics   Race, gender, disability, veteran status, and national origin are some of the affinity groups that can offer insight into the nature of your workforce composition and the effectiveness of such sourcing options such as employee referrals. You may have reporting requirements as part of your affirmative action program compliance. Be sure there is both value in collecting and analyzing the data and that someone will be doing something with it.
Cost of Hire/Cost per Hire   The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has some standards for hiring metrics. Along with their partner, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), ANSI has developed and published the following standards.
 

Cost of Hire   This measurement uses external costs and internal costs to determine overall cost per person hired during any given time period. This formula looks at the number of hires and the costs to obtain them. It enables us to derive expenses for each new hire stated as an average.

External costs are those expenses such as external agency fees, advertising costs, job fair costs, travel costs, and other similar expenses for the time period being analyzed. Internal costs are expenses that can include fully loaded salary and benefits of the recruiting team and fixed costs such as physical infrastructure.

Cost per Hire Internal/Comparable   Determining the internal cost per hire uses the same formula but includes only internal costs in the formula numerator. It is possible to compute external cost per hire and compare the two results.
Days to Fill   From the time a requisition is posted until the employment offer has been made can be called the Days to Fill measurement.
 

Attrition   There are several analyses that could prove helpful when looking at attrition. Consider these:
- Number of employees leaving before the first service anniversary
- Number of employees leaving before the fifth service anniversary
- Number of employees leaving total
- Number of employees leaving voluntarily (within a job or group)
- Number of employees leaving involuntarily (within a job or group)
 

Recruitment Cost and Yield Ratios   Ratios are the numerical representation of comparisons. They are normally stated as a percentage. The recruiting cost ratio (RCR) is one of those measurements. It is looks at the cost per hire based on compensation rather than headcount.

The RCR tells you how much you spent recruiting for every dollar of first-year compensation paid to the new hires.

Obviously, the lower the percentage, the better (more efficient) the result.
Another measure of recruiting efficiency and effectiveness is the recruitment yield ratio. It can be calculated at each step of the recruiting and hiring process to determine how successful you are at each stage of the process.
- How many people were minimally qualified compared to total responses?
- How many people were sent to the hiring manager compared to minimally qualified?
- How many people were interviewed compared to those sent to the hiring manager?
- How many people were hired compared to those interviewed?

At each state, you can compare a ratio or percentage. The greater the percentage, the better.

Achieving a higher ratio (percentage) means your yield is greater for whatever comparative group you are using. Here is another example:
We have hired 25 new computer programmers. It took an average of four interviews for each new hire. So, our recruitment yield ratio is 25 / 4 = 6.25. If we only required an average of three interviews per new hire, the RYR would be 25 / 3 = 8.33. The higher our RYR, the better. It allows us to recognize that many interviews in the hiring process add to the cost of hiring. Lowering the average number of interviews per hire will raise our ratio.
 

Workforce Analytics   Looking at the existing incumbent population, we can parse the numbers to tell us things like the representation of PhDs in a given job title or the number of people by gender in trade jobs (carpenter, plumber, electrician, landscaper). Recruiting cost ratio can be computed for job titles, job groups, departmental units, and more.

Leveraging Technology in Sourcing and Recruiting
Even if you are a small employer and don’t have access to expensive computer programs, it is still possible to use Excel spreadsheets to provide you with periodic analysis results. Once you have established your spreadsheet to track things like the number of requisitions per month, the time between requisition and job offer, and the cost of hiring at each occupational level, you can create pivot tables that will provide automatic analysis charts once they are set up. Be sure you learn how to create and use pivot tables. They can make your life easier.
 

Internet Recruiting   Getting candidates from your own organization’s web site is a great way to recruit. Other sources can be the state employment service web site, the web site run by your industry, or the web site run by colleges and universities. All of those activities can be tracked and the data analyzed.
 

Social Media   Social media sites have become a primary recruiting aid in many organizations. It wasn’t long ago one expert offered the belief that 70 to 75 percent of jobs are being filled through social media sources. If you are not using social media in your recruiting efforts, you should be considering it.

Selection
Once the recruiting effort has yielded proper candidates qualified for the open position, it is incumbent upon the hiring manager to determine who will get the job offer. That offer should go to the person who is best qualified for the job. That is the best business decision. The best qualified will provide your organization with the greatest return on your investment. Selecting someone other than the best qualified will cost your organization more in the final analysis.

Talent Selection Process
It is helpful sometimes to use a matrix constructed of the job qualifications specified in the job posting, as shown in the table.

Table: Candidate Selection Factors Chart

You can easily tell which candidate is the best match for your job requirements when you look at the chart. Candidate 1 is clearly better qualified than the others. Candidate 2 is running a strong second, and should you be unable to hire your first choice, you might feel quite comfortable with Candidate 2 as your alternate. The only possible downside to that individual is independence. Candidate 3 is clearly the poorest of the four candidates. Having fallen asleep during the interview, this candidate received a “minus” score for “Drive/Energy.” Candidate 4 is good and solid but not quite as good as the first two. And, then, there is the problem with Candidate 4’s ability to travel, which is something the job will require.

Screening
Screening is the process of presorting job candidates to determine who meets minimum eligibility requirements of the job opening.
Screen   The first pass in screening should be to determine whether the candidate meets the job qualifications as specified in the job requisition posting. Anyone who does not meet the job requirements should be removed from the group. No further processing of that group is needed. Sometimes a telephone interview is next in the screening process. Then comes an “in-person” interview, with the hiring manager and, possibly, with the HR manager, too. There may be other interviews with people who will be in the same work group or other supervisors. The process should contain decision points that match your organization’s requirements.
Lately, video interviews have become popular. That can be helpful to job candidates who are a far distance from the work location.
Tracking Applicants   Data on job applicants is really important. Keeping track of it is even sometimes required. If you are a federal contractor, you will be required to maintain specific applicant-tracking data points. It will be used to analyze disparity in the selection process, comparing females to males and minorities to nonminorities. Disparity analysis can suggest that there is more investigation required, and you will want to do more follow-up to learn more about the specifics of given selections. Ultimately, an enforcement agency, like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), would be doing the same type of analysis if a complaint is filed with either or both agencies.

According to EEOC guidelines, it is alright to invite job applicants to self-identify their race/ethnicity and gender. You should use the standard EEOC categories for each.
- Race/ethnicity White, Black/African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Native American/American Indian, two or more races
- Gender Male, female
Inviting self-identification suggests the information being given is voluntary. If an applicant doesn’t want to self-identify, they don’t have to. And, employers are not required to have the information for job applicants. Its only use is in disparity analysis. Race/ethnicity information will become mandatory for employer tracking once the applicant accepts a job offer and joins the payroll. The laws enforced by the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) require employers to collect and keep employee race and gender information.
 

Application Forms   Application forms are not required by any federal law. In addition to being a handy device that can mitigate an employer’s risk of discrimination claims, they are a handy way to collect information about job candidates that an employer would like to have. They can also be a test for honesty. It is estimated that as many as 60 percent of job applications have exaggerations or false information in them.
 

Résumés and Curricula Vitae   Résumés and curricula vitae (CV) are documents prepared by an individual to describe educational and employment history. Résumés are normally used with employers other than educational institutions. CVs are documents with much the same information, but a different format used in educational employment settings. Both résumés and CVs are intended to offer potential employers an overview of the individual’s background with a positive “spin.” They almost never contain compensation information, information about gaps in the employment timeline, or contact information for reference checking.
 

Potential Problem Warning Signs   Here are some examples of things that should attract your attention so you can probe more deeply with the applicant:56
- Foreign jobs that do not follow a logical pattern of job progression, pay little, or conveniently have the exact requirements you are looking for.
- Jobs at companies that have gone out of business (although there are more legitimate examples these days).
- Too many jobs where the supervisor that the applicant worked for is gone with no forwarding address.
- Jobs at companies whose line of business is the normal line of work of the applicant, but this one position under a long-gone supervisor is the exact type of experience you are looking for. This is especially suspect if this experience is outside the normal work patterns of that company.
- The experience is so long ago that any references would normally have moved on, retired, or died.
- Self-employment where the experience may well have taken more equipment, structure, organization, or industry position than a small self-run company would be able to provide.
- “Volunteer” experience for a company that most probably would not entertain the notion of such an arrangement.
- Volunteer experience for an extended period of time when a means of support would have been required for the applicant.
- A job at a company that has since been merged and cannot find a record of the position having existed.
- Dates of employment that always start and end on exact starts of months or years; January 1, April 1, and so on.
How should you react when you discover one of these flags waving at you from your applicant’s résumé? Mark it for follow-up with the applicant, perhaps in an interview. If you know that a claim is untrue, you would be justified in putting that applicant’s documentation in a “Suspect” file folder without further consideration.

Interviewing
Interviews are conducted so you can get more information from an applicant and impart information to them about your organization. Sometimes interviews are conducted by HR professionals and other times by hiring managers or groups of people from the hiring department. Interviews can be conducted face to face, on the telephone, or by a video hookup such as Skype. Often, these days, there is more than one interview before a selection decision is made.
 

Type of Interviews   There are many types of interviews. They are named for the characteristics applied to the process of interviewing. The following are the primary types of interviews used today.
 

Structured Interview   An interviewer asks every applicant the same questions along with follow-up probes that may be different depending on the initial response. Structured interviews make it possible to gather similar information from all candidates and use it to comparatively measure relative job-based attributes.
 

Unstructured Interview   While not exactly “freewheeling,” these interviews follow threads of information as they are revealed. No two interviews are alike in that regard. The interviewer must discern key information from the overall discussion.
 

Behavioral Interview   In a behavioral interview, an interviewer focuses on how the applicant previously handled actual situations (real, not hypothetical). The interviewer probes specific situations looking for past behaviors and how the applicant handled those experiences. The questions probe the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other personal characteristics identified as essential to success of the job. The interviewer looks for three things: a description of an actual situation or task, the action taken, and the result or outcome. The principle behind behavioral interviewing is that past performance is the best predictor of future performance.
 

Competency-Based Interview   In this type of interview, each question probes a specific skill or competency. Candidates are asked about their behavior in certain circumstances. Then, they are asked to explain how that happened in a real-life example.
 

Group Interview   Group interviews happen when multiple job candidates are interviewed by more than one interviewer at the same time. Group interviews are used in specific situations where several candidates are being considered for the same job in which the duties are limited and clearly defined, such as a merry-go-round operator. A fishbowl interview brings multiple candidates together to work with each other in an actual group activity or exercise. It is similar to an in-basket exercise except it involves a group of candidates. A team interview typically involves a group of interviewers with a perspective of the actual interactions associated with the job. This might include supervisors, subordinates, peers, customers, and so on. It is like a 360-degree exercise. Finally, in a panel interview, questions are distributed among a group of interviewers, typically those most qualified in a particular area. At the end of the panel interview, the panel caucuses with the purpose of coming to a group consensus regarding the result.
 

Stress Interview   In this type of interview, an interviewer creates an aggressive posture—in other words, deliberately creating some type of stress to see how the candidate reacts to stressful situations. For example, using a room where the candidate has to face an open window with the sun in their eyes can put the candidate under stress. (That could also be problematic if the candidate has serious vision problems that rise to the level of a disability.) This type of interview is used more often in law enforcement, air traffic control, and similar high-stress occupations. The stress interview was more common in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, it is not recommended because of the likelihood that it will be interpreted as personal bias.
 

Guidelines for Interviews   The University of Nebraska at Kearney offers these tips for interviews:57
- Directly observe certain aspects of an applicant’s behavior, such as ability to communicate, alertness, self-confidence, understanding of necessary technical concepts, and so on.
- Obtain additional information regarding the applicant’s education, work experience, relevant community activities, or job-related interests that can supplement or fill gaps on written application materials.
- Identify and assess the extent of the applicant’s knowledge, skills, and other characteristics or competencies by inquiring about past performance and achievements.
- Preview the job and what the organization expects of employees and what employees can expect in return—so that the applicants can determine whether they are interested in the position.
- Identify the need for any accommodation that might be required to enable the applicant with a disability to perform the functions of the position.
- Promote a good public image of the institution.
 

Interview Questions   Questions you can and can’t ask in an employment interview are described in this Table.

Table: Questions You Can and Can’t Ask in an Employment Interview (continued)
 

Interview Biases   Hiring managers who interview may inadvertently create EEO problems or make ill-fated selection choices without the proper training and guidance from HR. Hiring is typically not a frequent responsibility of a line manager; it may have been several years since they had to hire an employee. A discussion of some common factors that may create problems in interviewing would be helpful from HR. They include the following:59
- Stereotyping This involves forming a generalized opinion about how candidates of a particular gender, religion, or race may think, act, feel, or respond. An example would be presuming a woman would prefer to work indoors rather than outdoors.
- Inconsistency in questioning This involves asking different questions of different candidates. An example would be asking only the male candidates to describe a time when they used critical-thinking skills in their last job.
- First-impression error This is when the interviewer makes a snap judgment and lets their first impression (be it positive or negative) cloud the entire interview. An example is where added credence is given to a candidate because the person graduated from an Ivy League college.
- Negative emphasis This involves rejecting a candidate on the basis of a small amount of negative information. An example is when a male candidate is wearing a large earring plug, and in the interviewer’s judgment this is inappropriate, yet the job the candidate is interviewing for is a phone customer service position—there is no customer visual contact.
- Halo/horn effect This is when the interviewer allows one strong point that they value to overshadow all other information. Halo is in the candidate’s favor, and horn is in the opposite direction.
- Nonverbal bias An undue emphasis is placed on nonverbal cues that are unrelated to potential job performance. An example is a distracting mannerism such as biting the nails.
- Contrast effect This is when a strong candidate has interviewed after a weak candidate, making the person appear more qualified than they actually are—only because of the contrast.
- Similar-to-me error The interviewer selects candidates based on personal characteristics that they share, rather than job-related criteria. An example would be that both the interviewer and the candidate attend the same local NFL sports team home games.
- Cultural noise This is when a candidate is masking their response, providing what is considered “politically correct” and not revealing anything or being factual.

Assessing and Evaluating
Assessing candidates and evaluating their assessment tests is helpful in screening to ensure the best qualified for the job position is forwarded on for hiring manager’s consideration.
Assessment Methods   These are measurement approaches for behavior:
- Personality tests These tests are self-reporting, projective techniques (ink blots), and behavioral assessment (role play).
- Ability tests These tests tend to have high reliability but risk disparity results for race or gender.
- Performance tests and work samples Candidates are asked to perform one or more of the tasks required by the job opening. If the job involves writing, the candidate is given a pencil, paper, and an allotted amount of time to write a sample for consideration. Performance tests can be set up in a workstation model so working conditions can be much the same as on the actual job.
- Integrity tests These are designed to assess the applicant’s tendency to be honest, trustworthy, and dependable.
- Structured interview The aim of this approach is to ensure that each interview subject is presented with the same questions in the same order.
 

Discretionary Assessment Methods   Other methods are used to separate those who will receive a job offer from the other finalists; they might include consideration of the following:
- The person’s match to the organization
- Personal motivation level
- Behaviors complementary to organizational personality—doing work in the community outside the individual’s assigned job
 

Contingent Assessment Methods   Job offers can be made contingent upon the applicant succeeding in an assessment exercise. That may be a visit to the job site and interaction with current employees or successful participation in a formal assessment process structured for the job in question.
Cross-Cultural Assessment Tools   This can be a self-assessment tool used extensively in training, consulting, and program evaluation, as well as employment screening, that is designed to address a person’s ability to adapt to different cultures. The assessment process should be designed to respond to several needs or practical concerns that are expressed by both culturally diverse and cross-culturally oriented populations.
Criteria for Selecting and Evaluating Selection Methods   There are four important criteria for selecting and evaluating selection methods.
- Validity The extent to which the assessment can predict job behavior (performance)
- Adverse impact The extent to which protected group members (race, gender, age, national origin, disabled, veteran, and other minority groups) score lower on the assessment than those in majority groups
- Cost The cost to develop and administer
- Applicant reactions The extent to which applicants react positively rather than negatively to the assessment process
Establishing Reliability   Reliability is important in the face of an observation or assessment being made by multiple people within the same circumstances.
- Inter-rater or inter-observer reliability Assesses the degree to which different raters/observers give consistent estimates of the same phenomenon
- Test-retest reliability Assesses the consistency of measurements from one time to another
Establishing Validity   Since 1978, the government has had specific expectations for employers to offer validation of their employment selection devices. An employment selection device can be a written or oral test, job interview, assessment center participation, or job skill demonstration requirement. Regulations were established by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and are published at 41 CFR 60-3. They are known as the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. Validity can be processed in several ways.
- Construct validity The extent to which a test actually measures what it claims to measure
- Content validity The extent to which a test measures all facets of a job
- Test-retest or stability The extent to which a test produces stable and reliable results and the results remain consistent from test to retest
 

Establishing Equity   Determination that the employment test treats people equally, regardless of their personal group membership. Groups include race, gender, age, pregnancy, mental and physical disability, national origin, veteran status, religion, sexual orientation, and additional state-protected groupings.
 

Establishing Cost-Effectiveness   Cost-effectiveness is the relationship between the cost to develop and administer a test and the benefit derived by it.
 

Background Investigations and Reference Checks   Job offers are often conditioned upon successful completion of background checks, reference checks, and sometimes even credit checks. In some instances, a job offer could be conditioned on passing a medical evaluation or drug screen.
Before conducting background checks or credit checks, review the current legal limitations on their use. The EEOC has issued guidelines on consideration of conviction records because the population of convicted felons is so heavily skewed with Blacks and Hispanics. Considering conviction records60 has a disparate impact on those two racial/ethnic groups. Thus, only if the conviction has a direct relationship to the job content will considering it in the hiring decision be permitted by the EEOC.61
International Background Checks   Employers will typically use international background checks only if a candidate has lived abroad or if the company has facilities abroad.
Employment, Education, and Reference Checks   Résumés and job applications usually contain information about educational background and employment history. While not always successful, verification calls should be made to the organizations on the résumé or job application to confirm the accuracy of the claims.

Select and Offer
Once all screening has been done, a decision must be made. When the best qualified candidate has been selected, a job offer should be made.
Decision Process   There are several steps in the employment decision process.
1.   Summarize information Use a summary sheet or matrix to pull together comparative key points about each finalist.
2.   ID and rank candidates Using a tool such as the Candidate Selection Factors Chart, it is possible to summarize and rank each candidate against the others.
3.   Collect additional information Additional information can include the candidate’s willingness to accept the standard benefit package, verification of a professional license, or a pending certification. They all are the loose ends that need to get tied up.
4.   Make an offer Offers can be made verbally or in writing. Many employment attorneys counsel their clients to put a job offer in writing.
 

Contingent Job Offer   A job offer can be made contingent upon any number of conditions.
- Legal right to work in the United States
- Verification of educational degrees
- Verification of professional licensing (medical doctor, lawyer, accountant)
- Confirmation of certification for the job duties (highway flagger, elevator repair technician, HR professional, certified professional accountant)
- Receipt of national security clearance
 

Employment Offer   An employment offer should include start date, wage, or salary (in weekly or monthly amount62), benefits, job title, work location, name of supervisor, restatement that the offer is made under an “employment at will” understanding, and any other pertinent information. In practical terms, phone calls are made to the applicant for confirmation that they are still available and interested in the job. Then, a written offer can be sent to confirm all of the details. A written offer should have a provision for the applicant to sign, accepting the offer and acknowledging the conditions specified. The offer is not considered completed until the signed acceptance is received and any contingency is met.
Employment Contract   You will recall that the alternative to employment at will is an employment contract. A contract can be either oral or written, express or implied. Oral contracts can be created even inadvertently if the employer isn’t careful. When a hiring manager tells the newly hired employee something like, “This is a great company. You can spend your whole career here without worry of getting laid off,” you run the risk of creating an implied oral contract.
Handing Nonselected Candidates   There may be a few or there may be many job candidates who did not receive a job offer. What do you do with them? Some employers just ignore them. Best HR practices, however, suggests that it is courteous to notify each individual who did not receive a job offer. You do not need to be specific about the reason each person was not selected, but a kind letter can go a long way to boosting your organization’s reputation in the marketplace. People will remember for a long time how they felt about their application experience with you and your organization. You can make that a positive memory for them.
Special Considerations: Reasonable Accommodation   According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP)63 “A reasonable accommodation is any change in the work environment or in the way things are usually done that enables an individual with a disability to participate in the application process, to perform the essential functions (or fundamental duties) of a job, or to enjoy equal benefits and privileges of employment that are available to individuals without disabilities.”
Applicants and employees must make their request for accommodation in writing, explaining how the accommodation will help them accomplish the duties of the job or the application process. Then the employer is obligated to review the request, enter into a dialogue about the request, and explore any other accommodations that may be more appealing to the employer (e.g., less expensive) while still permitting the applicant or employee to accomplish the tasks involved in the job or the application process. If the employer feels it cannot make the accommodation requested, it is permitted to decline the request and notify the applicant or employee of the decision.

Job Previewing
A job preview is a way for candidates to see how the job is actually performed. The preview itself can be presented in several different ways.
- Video preview Incumbents can express their thoughts about what they like and dislike about the job.
- Simulation Workstation mock-ups and task processing that can last 8 hours or longer can provide the candidate with a feel for how the job is actually accomplished.
- Shadowing Candidates can spend time on the job with an incumbent to see what happens during the course of a normal workday.
 

Characteristics of Realistic Job Previews   Job previews must provide an honest picture of the job content. What physical and mental effort is required? What skills are used? What happens when something goes wrong? Honest representation of the job in all respects will give the candidate an opportunity to accept or not accept your invitation to go further in the process. Job previewing can be done after a contingent job offer is made, or it can be done earlier in the employment process. Simulation and shadowing can both be expensive if there are more than a few candidates. Video previews can be much more cost-effective, but they lack the “hands-on” view that a live presence on the job site can provide.
 

Benefits of a Job Preview   The candidate gets to experience the next best thing to actually performing the job. Seeing incumbents working on the tasks, having a chance to ask questions, and even doing parts of the job can be a great way to gain exposure to how it feels to do that work. It can give candidates the chance to determine whether they will like doing that work. If not, they can resign from further consideration. It also gives the employer a chance to observe each candidate in the working environment and judge their reactions to the work’s demands.

Orientation and Onboarding
Orientation and onboarding are two activities that will set the tone for the balance of an employee’s line on the job with this employer. If we get off on the right foot with people, the chance for retention success goes up. If we skip this step, we miss the opportunity to define the new employee’s image of us as an employer. And, we miss the opportunity to establish the employee’s expectations for the rest of their experience with this employer.
It is a common belief that the first 90 days of a worker’s experience on a new job will determine how the relationship goes for the balance of their employment. One way to get off on the right foot is to provide a quality orientation program (also referred to as onboarding) to every new employee.

A strong orientation program will include such things as follows:
- Welcome by the CEO/senior executive This shows a new hire that senior management cares about employees. Senior executives who believe it isn’t worth their time convey a strong message also.
- Discussion about culture An opportunity to discuss “the way we do things around here.” What does the employer value? What gets rewarded in the organization? What type of image does the employer want to project to the world? What are expectations of ethics? Assimilating and socializing the new hire into the culture and expectations of behavior that is expected of them while working in the organization is a necessary and important step for orientation and onboarding.
- Enrollment in benefit programs This is an opportunity to complete payroll tax forms, benefit enrollment forms, and self-identification forms for race, sex, disability, and veteran status.
- Tour of employee common areas This can include the cafeteria or break room, the location for labor law compliance posters, and restrooms.
- Safety equipment and emergency exits This is often overlooked when it should be on the orientation agenda. If there are emergency breathing apparatus, eye wash stations, emergency shutdown switches, first-aid stations, or other important safety points of interest, this is the time to show each new worker where they are. Safety training in how to use emergency equipment will come later.
- Introduction to co-workers and supervisors Guide the employees to their new work locations and introduce them to their new co-workers and supervisors, even if they may have met some of them during the interviewing process. Have someone designated to explain where to get office supplies, how to access computer terminals, and whom to ask when questions come up. These things are just common employment courtesy.

Onboarding
Onboarding new employees is the process of integrating them to the organization and its specific culture, as well as getting a new hire the tools and information needed to become a productive contributing member of the organization. Onboarding should be a strategic process that lasts at least 1 year because how employers handle the first few days and months of a new employee’s experience is crucial to ensuring a smooth transition into the organization and high retention.
Getting Started with the Onboarding Process   The process of onboarding new employees can be one of the most critical factors in ensuring recently hired talent will be productive and happy workers. Not to be confused with orientation, onboarding is quite different. Orientation involves paperwork and routine tasks to place new hires in the organization’s payroll and organization chart. Onboarding is a more comprehensive process involving management and other employees that normally lasts up to a year.

An effective onboarding program helps assimilate new hires and addresses the following:
- What impression do you want new hires to walk away with at the end of the first day? First month? First quarter? First year?
- What do new employees need to know about the culture and work environment?
- What role will HR play in the process? What about direct managers? Co-workers?
- What kind of expectations, especially behavioral, do you want to set for new employees?
- Who will be the new employee’s sponsor (generally someone out of the direct line of command)?
- How will you gather feedback on the program and measure its success?

Once these questions have been addressed, HR professionals and upper management can devise a plan of action to help new employees quickly assimilate company policies and workflow while getting fully acquainted with the organization’s culture.