SmartRank

02/27/2023

Imagine this:
You walk into a Best Buy to buy a brand new flat screen TV with all the newest technology. You want Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/ Youtube and 50 other apps included, app store access, music streaming, 4k Ultra HD, and your smartphone is the remote.

Strangely, you don't see any of these newer TVs, instead you see a wall full of 1970s tube TVs like the graphic for this post that come fully equipped with radio dials and "rabbit ears." Totally confused, you ask a Best Buy employee where all the newer TVs are and they tell you that the industry has decided to stop manufacturing those newer flat screen models and are now going back to the 1970s models.

What would you be thinking?

Now wonder what an applicant thinks when they have to submit their résumé for your review, and they know that is the ONE determining factor that will either get them an interview or not. Now wonder what your hiring manager thinks when they have to review those 5 résumés you sent over email.

A LOT has changed in all aspects of society over the past 50 years...all except the process for evaluating job applicants. If you're still cranking out those job descriptions, checking out those résumés, and even working with this "state-of-the-art" new technology called an Applicant Tracking System...then your process is very likely outdated...like 25 - 50 years outdated. If you think this process is a good one, well then there may be a high likelihood you are also perfectly content with your tube TV with rabbit ears at home!

02/24/2023

Is "improving hiring manager engagement" on your list of TA initiatives this year? Was it also on there last year? And the year before...

Why does this issue keep showing up?

If you've ever banged your head against the wall because of that one hiring manager who is never engaged and is a pain in your #&%...

Did you ever stop to think about the fact that your ATS wasn't built with hiring managers in mind?

They don't understand the nuances of that piece of software, they might not understand the demands of recruiting/TA, they don't want to spend time editing old, out-dated job descriptions and they certainly HATE reading tons of resumes for people who aren't even remotely close to what they want.

Hiring manager engagement is one of the core problems we focused on when building SmartRank.

Check out what your relationship could look like 👀 :

Hiring manager engagement is usually one of the top 5 initiatives for talent acquisition leaders year-after-year. Why is it on the list EVERY year? If you wa...

02/22/2023

Recruiting agencies: Are you using any of these differentiators?

Expertise, unique process, leveraging technology.

Hate to break it to you but your competition is too...

If you are a recruiting agency (not including executive recruiting here) it's tough to find competitive differentiation. At the end of the day everyone is using the same tools like LinkedIn, résumés, job descriptions, some form of an intake call, etc. to find and screen applicants. Sure, some companies have a little better process than others, and not all recruiters are created equally, but in the end the general process and tools are very similar.

I've personally dealt with a bunch of recruiting agencies and based on that experience I can say that their pitches all sounded the same, and their ex*****on was pretty much the same. I would be asked for a job description, have a short meeting to discuss my "need-to-haves" "nice-to-haves" "knockouts" and "anything else about the role" discussion, and then I'll be patiently waiting for those awesome résumés to come across my email so I can tell the recruiter whether I liked any of them. Here's a weird question, if you already have a detailed JD and we've met to go through my requirements...then why do you need to send me résumés to see if I like any of the candidates? You should know right? Especially if you're charging 15% - 30% of the first year salary.

Similar to the internal corporate talent acquisition space, recruiting agencies have not changed much either.

But you could...

Technology exists that would allow you to prove your competitive differentiation both through technology and the methodology that is derived from the technology.

What if you could tell your customers, "I'm not going to do what 99.9% of other recruiting agencies are going to do. Instead we'll give your hiring managers EXACTLY what they're looking for from a qualifications standpoint, and we'll do it faster than anyone else. Instead of cheap talk, would you like me to prove we can do what I just said we can do?"

It sure beats the heck out of "We're experts in this space and we have a unique process" when asked how you're different from all your competitors!

02/21/2023

How much of your hiring process is done simply because "that's how we've always done it"?

Comfort and complacency shouldn't be reasons to ignore issues. Let's look at another example of that...

Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline (he also invented chlorofluorocarbons or "CFCs") in 1921. We added lead to gasoline because it was an "antiknock agent" which improved the efficiency of vehicles and the performance of the engine. In short, it turned clunky engines into smoothly running engines. Hoorah, right?

Well it turns out lead is a toxic pollutant, particularly for children, and it was polluting the air in towns and cities across the world. Even with concerns about its use, we continued using leaded gasoline for decades. The first clinical studies proved it had toxic impacts on humans in 1969, but it wasn't until 1986 when the first country, Japan, banned it completely. Then the U.S. banned it ten years later in 1996, and Algeria became the last country to ban leaded gasoline in 2021.

Résumés were in full swing in the 1970s as well, just as they are today. Studies have been out for decades about how biased names and résumés are in the screening process, and yet we still use them. You simply need to do a quick Google search to find that screening applicants by reviewing résumés one-by-one is usually the biggest consumer of time for a recruiter. I would argue that reviewing résumés is also the most ineffective way to screen applicants. And just check out social media if you want to see what applicants think about submitting résumés into an ATS in 2023. So the data is there...using résumés to screen applicants is a 50-year old (actually even older than that) process that arguably sucks worse today than it did 50 years ago.

I think we can all agree that getting rid of leaded gasoline was a good idea, and certainly should have been done much earlier in most countries. I also hope we can all agree that getting rid of résumés in the screening process is a FANTASTIC idea. The question is, when it comes to résumés, are you going to be Japan or Algeria?

02/14/2023

This is one of the greatest leadership quotes of all time. It's so important because it gets at the very core of which type of leader a person really is.

We count on leaders to take care of their teams and put themselves last. As leaders it's our job to remove obstacles, problem solve, and above all...take action.

If leaders allow their self interests or even self preservation (e.g., not getting fired) to rise above their responsibilities, then they need to be an individual contributor, and NOT a leader.

There are a lot of words people would use to describe a good leader such as; brave, strong, selfless, smart, creative, etc. Those are all accurate descriptions and there are plenty more. Leaders come in all different shapes and sizes with different strengths and weaknesses. But at the end of the day, real leaders need to take action. Being complacent, existing in the status quo when they know there are problems that need to be solved, following what everyone else does (or has done in the past), and choosing inaction as their default decision-making mechanism makes them a sheep, not a lion.

By the way, there is NOTHING wrong with being a sheep...they just shouldn't be in a leadership role!

02/10/2023

Do your job descriptions use phrases like "proficiency in", "high level knowledge of", "detailed understanding", or "highly familiar with"?

Well you're definitely not alone... But what do those words mean exactly?

SmartRank CEO Keith Hulen talks about WHY JDs and resumes are always going to fail.

Job descriptions and intake meetings are equivalent to the "tip of the iceberg" when it comes to truly understand EXACTLY what the hiring managers are lookin...

02/06/2023

100+ applicants to a job within a day?

Yep. We're starting to see it. How do you screen everyone?

The answer is: you're probably not able to review every single applicant. If you are, you might have to close your posting quickly because you get so many applicants and it is overwhelming.

But what if the best applicant applies last?

Hundreds of applicants don't need to make it harder to find the right fit. There is another way...

Maybe a better title for this post would have been "waste your time focused on manual & tedious tasks looking at surface-level information that ultimately decreases hiring manager engagement and DE&I" or "the opposite of that"

Is there a more inefficient way to review/screen applicants than going through them one-by-one in an ATS?

Are there not more effective ways to review/screen applicants than matching keywords between résumés and job descriptions?

There are definitely some parts of the hiring process that are really tricky to "automate." But the screening & selection process for deciding which applicants you want to interview, is NOT one of those. It's simple, it makes perfect sense, and it will 100% be automated in coming years.

Talent acquisition is arguably more challenging now than it ever has been in the past. Not automating the screening process is like trying to tread water with a weight belt on. You can either use your arms/hands to try and stay above the surface of the water with the weight belt dragging you down, or allow yourself to sink below the surface of the water for a couple seconds so you can use your arms/hands to get the weight belt off and then swim back up to the surface of the water. If you fell in the water with a weight belt, which option would you choose?

Keep your head above water (without the weight belt) with SmartRank!!

02/03/2023

Looking to fill an open position?
Hiring managers don't really need to be involved. The recruiters should know who they're looking for (that's their job after all). Right?

Wrong-o.

This is one of the fundamental breakdowns in the hiring process. SmartRank co-founder and CEO Keith Hulen discusses this very common issue and hits on what these roles should actually look like.

If the hiring process was a play, the hiring managers should be the "lead" instead of a "supporting cast member." Unfortunately that is not the case 99% of t...

02/01/2023

"𝙄𝙛 𝙄 𝙝𝙖𝙙 𝙖𝙨𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙, 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙨."

In this cleverly worded quote, Henry Ford illustrates that most people live and think inside the box. It's never more true today than it was 100 years ago.

One of the places this happens all the time is when teams are considering a new Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The first ATSs were created around 1998 - 1999. They were intended to allow applicants to apply online, submit their resumes along with other information like education, experience, contact information, etc. Unfortunately recruiters had to go through every single applicant one-by-one so they could compare keywords on resumes and job descriptions, but at least they weren't dealing with paper anymore.

And we need to cut these first ATSs a little slack, they were pioneers in this space and created a whole new way to manage applicants. I respect that.

Now here we are 25 years later and what do most ATSs do? Well they allow applicants to apply online, submit their resumes along with other information like education, experience, contact information, etc. Unfortunately recruiters have to go through every single applicant one-by-one so they can compare keywords on resumes and job descriptions, but at least they weren't dealing with....wait a minute, this sounds eerily familiar.

That's because it is. They're functionally the EXACT SAME.

In two and a half decades the ATS industry has managed to NOT change the foundations of how they work and therefore not creating solutions to real problems that talent acquisition has. Sure, they have a few more bells and whistles, they can connect to a bunch of stuff, but they have not fundamentally evolved from where they were 25 years ago.

Most of the ATSs being used today were built before or during the emergence of the Smartphone. How's that going to go when Millenials and younger generations will comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025? They want to apply on phones, and if your ATS wasn't built to be mobile-first (not mobile-friendly...they're different), that's probably going to deter applicants from applying and it certainly won't differentiate your company from all the others out there.

If you're unhappy with your existing bad ATS and you're looking to fix that by getting a newer bad ATS, you're going to find it challenging to fundamentally solve big problems in talent acquisition...because you're just getting a "faster horse."

01/09/2023

🚩 If your company is talking about an "innovative" plan to improve the hiring process by getting AI to read resumes for you... Run.

What is that telling potential applicants? What are you really selecting for? Unless you're hiring for a professional resume writer, this is not the answer.

On the flip side, how do you know you haven't missed out on a great candidate because they're not an excellent resume writer?

Spoiler: AI can certainly read resumes quicker and find you those keywords but it doesn't solve any real problems.

A truly innovative idea?
- Allow candidates to be compared apples to apples
- Screen 100% of applicants (give 'em all a fair shot)
- Ditch the resume and get rid of unconscious bias with it

01/06/2023

New Year, same me?

❌ So many companies will fill their websites with initiatives and feel like they've done enough.

Actions > Lip service

For example:
Want to prove how dedicated you are to DE&I?
💩 Talk about your "dedication to diversity" on your website. Do nothing else.

VS

✅ Use resume-free screening to eliminate unconscious bias
✅ Screen 100% of applicants to give everyone a fair + equitable chance
✅ Weigh applicants apples to apples and quickly identify who is most qualified based only on their fit for the role

01/03/2023

"Our process is perfect, no need to make any changes."

If you can say that you:
- Screen 100% of applicants 💯
- Never ghost anyone 👻
- Have hiring managers who are happy and engaged 😁
- Consistently hire the right candidates with record time to fill 🏆
- AND have eliminated unconscious bias from screening ⚖️

Then you are right, that's a pretty ideal 🔥.

If you can't say all of those things yet or if you're using 2023 to improve your hiring process... You might want to consider the underlying cause that you're struggling.

RESUMES.
Using resumes as the main source of truth and building your process around them is a thing of the past. It is 2023, we can and should do better.

Ditch the resume. Hire Smarter.