Sally

Today marks 5 years to the day that a routine mammogram changed my life. I reflect on how lucky I am that I was covered for the test when so many in the USA are not. How fortunate that due to scheduling challenges with work travel, I was 6 months late to get the test. Grateful that a radiologist has the eyes of an eagle. You see when he looked at my results, he saw these tiny white spots and had them redo the mammogram with a magnified lens. He found calcified cells, and I learned that I had to have a biopsy. I was in shock; I was reassured by the medical team that 70% of the time these things are not cancer. 2 weeks later I had the biopsy and waited for the results. One week after the procedure, my husband and I were driving to Miami airport, he was heading to our home in Toronto, and I was heading to Puerto Rico for a conference. Halfway to the airport I got the call.

“Ms. Voticky, you have cancer.”

Nothing prepares you for that. Nothing. My husband and I somehow parked the car and went into the airport and found a seat at Starbucks where we just held hands. We kept up the mantra that it was early, and everything was going to be okay. We went separate ways for the weekend, he sat on his plane trying to figure out if he could just walk off the plane, I was sitting in my plane wondering the same thing. I had to give a speech to Cruise executives about hiring. I cried on Michael Jaworski’s shoulder, I didn’t know him that well, but that weekend, he was my hero. 

Nov. 3rd, I meet the surgeon. He assures me that the cancer is in-situ and it’s such an early catch that I likely won’t need more than the lumpectomy and some radiation. Dec 3rd, I go in for surgery early in the morning. During pre-op work for the wire-guided surgery, things have changed. I now have 2 tumors; the original one has doubled in size and there is a second smaller one. Post Op I learn I’m HER2 positive and cancer had developed to stage 3.  

Weekly Chemo 12 weeks – Herceptin every 3rd week for a year – 16 rounds of radiation – 5 years of medication. I expect to get a 5-year clean bill of health in January, but let’s be clear; there is no cure, I have cancer and am in remission. Every person who has been diagnosed has cancer, they are never without that shadow. For me it was a gift, if I had the test on time in April, it wouldn’t have been there. It gave me the opportunity to slow down and think through what the next chapter, however long it may be, would or could look like. I chose to start to work for myself. I chose to start my company because I want to work in an environment where trust and fun are paramount. I work for and support clients who value what I do. I work every day to ensure everyone feels valued, and their contributions are recognized. I’m one of the lucky ones and I’m grateful every single day.  

Find a local Breast Cancer organization where you can donate, or volunteer. 1 in every 7 women will be diagnosed. That number is getting worse not better. MXA is supporting Amy Beck who is walking for a Cure on Oct 6th. If you are able, please donate here, it’s way past the time for us to find a cure! 

by Lisa Brennan

Do we really know who we are hiring?

Talent Acquisition grows more challenging by the day. Our job is to put the Right People, in the Right Job, at the Right Time. And that right time usually means today – or yesterday.

But the barriers and roadblocks keep coming. For we are also accountable to manage Risk. Risk in the Talent Acquisition world means you have checked the candidate’s credentials, their background and their skills/education. That potential hires are who they say they are, and they can do what they say they can do.

And now, factor in AI.

But how do we really know? And how can we spot “fraudulent” candidates?

True Story:

Recently, I met with an SVP of HR of a global giant. She told me of a situation that blew my mind – and continued to launch bombs in my brain for weeks afterwards.

This company was looking to make a permanent hire of an IT consultant for a high demand/low inventory Systems Specialist role. The search was long (3 – 4 months), painful and the leaders were agitated that this pivotal role was taking so long to hire. A candidate was identified, completed 4 or 5 virtual interviews – offered and accepted the position. This was an onsite role, and the candidate was good with that. A background check was completed, employment offer extended and accepted. This New Hire shows up on Day 1; ready to go.

The problem…

The line manager called the SVP of HR and said, “I don’t think the person who has shown up for work is the same person whom we have been interviewing.” The source documentation matched but the physical features of the New Hire were slightly different from the interviewed candidate.

What do you do now?

Fast forward 3 months. 

I’m at a dinner party and speaking with a friend of mine who is an HR Business Partner in a large organization and his partner, a Project Manager in an IT function.  As I shared this story, the HR person is shocked that someone could get through a 5-step interview process and somehow a different person shows up to work on Day 1.

My friend, the PM says, “of course this is happening out in the market”.  “Did you two not know that there are organized ‘imposter interviewers’ for hire?”.  In fact, he tells us, his cousin, a junior IT professional (whom we shall call “Newbie”) had recently immigrated here and had been approached to ‘engage the services” of an interview imposter.

How does it work?

For a fee – this ‘imposter group’ finds a similar looking person possessing more advanced education and work experience than Newbie has.  The imposter attends all the virtual interviews, posing as Newbie. Newbie provides copies of all pertinent information – passport, diplomas, Identification which the imposter can provide, if asked.

The Payout:

If Newbie got the job, Newbie would be accountable to pay upwards of 50% of his paychecks for 1 year.

Where is this happening?

We know of companies in both the USA and Canada that have experienced this.

You may be skeptical but – fraudsters only work where the money is – this has to be successful, or it wouldn’t be happening.

A short time ago I had the privilege of presenting a talk on how to attract qualified candidates versus a quantity of candidates. In this mini series, we break down the essential job boards and how best to leverage them. The biggest take away is to make sure you can measure the results for yourself, understand how each of the job boards work, and ensure your recruiters have the routines and operating procedures to manage the candidate flow.  Please enjoy, and don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you would like to explore further.

 

I was sitting on a webinar today that was going really in depth about AI and skills based hiring, and how as recruiters, we need to focus on this & build our AI so it can better select candidates based on skills so that we can move to this skills based hiring model. And I really had to think about that. I do know and understand that there are a lot of jobs out there that are strictly skills based- for example, you either can or cannot code in a certain language on a certain technology. You either can or cannot be a doctor in a certain country based on your credentials. And I have never in all the years that I’ve been recruiting had a manager say to me, “I’m not selecting that candidate because of their skill set.”

I have heard things like:

“That person doesn’t bring anything new to my team.”

Or

“I don’t think that person has the desire to do this job.”

Or

“I don’t think the person is motivated for this job.”

Those are some of the reasons managers give for not hiring…and AI is not yet at a place where it can determine those things. So my little note to all of the recruiters out there today is this: don’t worry, we still need you.

But we need you to get your skills up to speed. Use the technology. Use chat GPT, or whatever other technology is out there that helps you better manage your candidates & better manage your workflow. Leverage the technology, and be rest assured- your job isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I’ve been hearing a lot about how AI will help Recruiters to be more efficient and ultimately take away the need for recruiters.

This will not ever be true as long as we are hiring human beings. The other side of this that must be discussed is how people can “cheat” when being screened with video screening tools, online assessments and video interviews. You can easily find ways to use AP (ChatGPI) to refine your interview answers, or create a better resume. My thinking is this will drive us back to a time when we brought people in person for interviews.

The downstream impact of this, of course, is that our whole view of virtual and hybrid work will be impacted. The cost of hire will increase exponentially if we are bringing people into our offices again to meet with us, OR we are creating a smaller pool of talent to source from.

We don’t have the answer today, yet this is an important conversation to be having. We need to begin to rethink our in house Talent Acquisition function. It will be critical to ensure we have market information when determining the Talent Selection process, is there talent locally? How will our recruiters mitigate the potential for “cheating”. Search agencies will need to adjust as well, we will want to define what a “final” slate looks like, perhaps we’re even moving back to references?

No one knows for sure at this point, we, at MXA, would like to encourage you to reach out to us, let’s start the conversation.

10+ Ways to Use ChatGPT to Prepare for a Job Interview

I have been musing over what it means that we have a day to recognize women. I’ve heard men grumble that there isn’t an international women’s day… why don’t they have a day? Well for me it’s not immediately obvious, why? 

 Because I grew up in the late 60’s into the 70’s, when there was a revolution of young people demanding a change to the status quo; where women literally burned their bras in protest of the most egregious inequities. As a married mother of two, my mother could not legally open a bank account, apply for a loan or credit card, and she would only earn $0.57 for every dollar earned by a man. 

 There is an International Woman’s Day because women have had to overcome systemic suppression of their status as equal humans to men. And this is exacerbated if you happen to be a woman of colour or an ethnic minority.

 Long before colonization, indigenous women had a voice in the decision-making process of their communities. The Iroquois and the Mohawk, for example, were a matrilineal society- where property rights, inheritance, voting rights and even the arrangements of marriages were held and passed on through the elder women of the community. It’s taken hundreds of years for women to lift each other up and create a more equal playing field.

For me personally, I think of the women who have lifted me up, those who supported and believed in me. The women I admire, some I know well, and some I don’t personally know, but their focus and authenticity inspire me. What I have seen is that women in large part, still haven’t gotten past the competition mode that so many of us grew up with. Today, young women are addicted to social media and how they look compared to other women/girls. Photo filters that “improve” the way they look, all smiles and travel and relationships, for everyone to see and compare. What I know is that at some point we have to see ourselves without the overlay of how we compare.

I thank all the women mentors in my life, I especially thank all the women for whom I have been a mentor or coach, you all have helped me in so many ways get comfortable in my own skin- start a business in the 3rd act of my life-and you all inspire me to be a better woman every single day.

I want to lay out a challenge to everyone woman who reads this- For one whole week, you cannot judge another woman for how she dresses, talks or acts just because you think it’s unattractive. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be real, let’s face it there are public figures out there who act in disgusting ways who happen to be women. Let’s call them out for their actions, not their gender. So that behavior is unacceptable for any PERSON. Or that person is not dressed appropriately for a day in the office. Give it a try, I don’t think it’s easy not to fall into gender stereotypes:

“She’s aggressive”
“She has a resting b*&ch face”
“What was she thinking when she put on all that make up.”

 So, cheers to all the women who stood up for all the women and helped get us to this place in time. And thanks to all the men who understood how important it is to be an equal with the women in your professional and personal life. To my four sons, may you always be one of those men. To my husband, thank you for understanding the dichotomy that exists when you’re a woman, mother, and wife.

Some Canadian history on women…

1960’s: The start of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It consisted largely of white, well educated women who fought for reforms such as paid maternity leave, rape crisis centres, and changes to abortion laws.

1964: Women entitled to open a bank account without obtaining their husband’s signature.

1969: The Criminal Code is amended to legalize the distribution of information on methods of contraception and their prescription as well as sexual acts between two consenting members of the same sex.

1970’s: Women earn 57 cents to every dollar earned by men.

1971: Manitoba no longer fires female municipal employees who marry.

1975: Women earn 60 cents for every dollar earned by men.

1975: United Nations declares the International Year of Women.

1975: The Canadian Federal government modifies eleven pieces of legislation to bring them into conformity with equality principles by adding equal rights between men and women with respect to the federal pensions.

1977: The Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) was passed, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender, and ensuring equal pay for work of equal value.

1978: The Canada Labour Code was amended to eliminate pregnancy as a basis for lay-off or dismissal.

1978: Airline flight attendants gain the right to work after marriage and after they reach the age of 32.

1988: The Supreme Court of Canada invalidates the Criminal Code sections with deal with abortion.

1990: In 1990 male managers earned an average salary of $48,137 while women managers earned an average salary of $27,707; men in teaching earned an average of $38,663 while women in teaching earned an average of $24,767; men in sales earned an average of $27,825 while women in sales earned an average of $13,405.

To all my wonderful, powerful, confident women- Happy Women’s Day.

~Liza

I have been watching Mika Brzezinski for several years in the morning, and when she launched “know your value” it was an eye opening moment for me. I was post chemo and in the middle of radiation treatments, I was on sick leave from what I had anticipated would be my dream, final destination, job; the global leader in my field for a massive multi billion dollar company.

Turns out I didn’t really know my value, as I listened to Mika and others speak about “value” and how we see ourselves, I realized that I had let a toxic environment convince me that I was not valuable, that I was less than. It changed my trajectory. I didn’t ever want to go back to a place where I felt under valued or dismissed because of my gender, my age or my lack of an MBA. I had to feel valued within myself.  It takes a lot of self-talk, but here I am with a new business just a year old, at 60 driving incredible results with a true value statement. I don’t work with clients who don’t value what we do. I won’t subject myself or my team to environments where they may feel dismissed. I highly recommend that you follow this organization:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-your-value

https://www.msnbc.com/knowyourvalue

Get involved or just get inspired. Women supporting women changes the way the world works.  Follow us to see what we will be doing next for working women, young and not so young, bringing women together for the purpose of developing tools that will help you to “know your value”.

You can connect with us on linkedin here

When we think about the #futureofhiring and how that should look for your organization, it’s important to think beyond the hiring one person for one open job. We spend time and money running assessments, conducting recruiter interviews, setting up interview panels and scheduling multitudes of people.  All of this to accomplish one hire for one job.

What are we really hiring for?  Shouldn’t we be looking at this candidate’s potential?  When a candidate decides to pursue a role with a company, they aren’t looking at one open position, they are looking at the company holistically.  Candidates make decisions based on whether this is a place they can grow, learn, and achieve their career goals or not.  Our hiring leaders are often only looking at whether they can do this job, rather than considering where this person may fit in the future.

Hiring for potential versus a specific job fit also impacts your diversity and equity objectives.  When we narrow our focus to the one open role, we often obscure the full scope of what this candidate brings to the “organization”. Your recruiting teams are thinking “what else could this person do? And if not this role, then what other roles would we consider this person for?” when speaking with candidates.  This is a standard practice amongst recruiters who are pipelining talent for the future. The challenge is how do we get leaders to see it that way too? Can we change the mindset to have leaders looking at a candidate in terms of this role and their next role?

We have inundated leaders with long and complex interview guides.  Our recruiters build standard interview guides for each member of an interview panel specific to that one job.  It takes hours to produce an interview package for each role, and yet they are infrequently used. So, your organization may have invested tens of thousands of dollars in a behavioral interviewing (BI) training for leaders, a database with thousands of competencies, or perhaps you’ve had an internal IO Psychologist build a BI package.  Whichever you can identify with, has it worked in improving diversity talent selection and quality of hires?

In my experience, this is not something we have measured with actual, quantifiable data.  Our interviewers ask the same questions to every candidate and we believe that this will make every interview equal. Ultimately, using the standard BI interview guides that are cumbersome, overly complex, and hard to follow, doesn’t get you to a candidate’s potential.

What 20+ years of BI has created is standard and what candidates are familiar with. Questions are posted online, and people can prepare their responses to meet what your expectations are.  We’re not saying that probing for someone’s previous experience and behavior isn’t the right thing to do, it is! Having said that, standardized multipage interview guides make the interview about the scripted questions and answers instead of about the candidate’s actual capabilities.

How do you find the potential in your candidates?  What’s the best way to help your leaders make better talent selection decisions? How are your assessing your employees and are you truly promoting the best person for the job?  We believe that the Future of Hiring is about asking relatable questions that help the candidate express their experience while highlighting their alignment with the organization’s values.  Our team is building the next big thing in interviewing and we look forward to launching it by Summer 2021.  Feel free to contact us for more information.

The concept of Work from Anywhere has replaced Work from Home over the past year. This has created some incredibly positive changes as well as some very real challenges.  Not only did we find ourselves re-thinking how to select talent in a remote way, but also how we think about where people will perform their work.  To be successful in the competition for talent, we’ll need to adapt how we source for talent and, most assuredly, how we interview and select talent.  Of course, with technology, we can source candidates from all over the world and easily schedule and manage interviews.  But still, there are technology challenges which impact the candidate experience in a less than positive way.  As a result, organizations have to re-think how they screen, interview, and select talent remotely. Today, we’re beginning to consider what hiring will look like post-pandemic: what elements will we pull through to the future state, including the concept of working from anywhere?

 At MXA Talent Solutions, our process and TA operations experts have been busy putting together ideas to help you build better remote selection processes.  Here are some things you may want to consider as we move towards a post-pandemic workplace:

Be clear about your hiring needs:

Job descriptions and go-to-market talent attraction always begins with a clear understanding of who you need and what they will be doing.  Today, you also need to consider how flexible you will be about where they perform the work. If the top talent for your vacancy is sitting in another city, region, or country, can they still perform the role at a high level?

Having a custom decision-making matrix for remote candidates is a great way to make sure that you’re making good hiring decisions. Determining if you are flexible about where they will be working, is a good place to start, this will drive your attraction strategy. Additionally, consider offering a technology package (laptop, phone, internet, hotspot, etc.) to show the candidates how dedicated you are to supporting remote workforce.

Improve the Candidate Experience:

Hiring for remote positions is a unique experience for most of us. Studies show that almost sixty percent of job seekers lose interest when the recruitment process is lengthy. With that in mind, take the opportunity to tailor your remote recruitment experience to make it simple and engaging for your candidates.

• Tailor the candidate experience and follow a structured plan to maintain consistency across all interviews with different candidates.
• Be transparent about company culture, and ensure it is tied into the screening and interviewing process. Company culture that remote employees embody needs to be incorporated into your hiring process to be successful.
• One key element of this plan should be communicating expectations and the details of the interview clearly.

Prepare the Candidate!

If your organization is using a remote selection and interview structure, it’s possible that you’re using tools which the candidate may not have. Be clear in communicating:

• Who will the candidate be interviewing with and their role in the selection process?
• Will the interview be conducted via audio or will it be a video conference?
• Will the candidate need to share their screen?
• Does the candidate need specific technology, and will they need to download it prior to the interview?

Adapting to Remote Interviewing

Traditional interviews over the past decade or so have likely included a phone interview followed by a face-to-face interview with the hiring leader or a panel.  Often there were multiple such interviews. Transitioning your interviewing process to a remote medium allows you to make it more seamless by adjusting certain elements.

Use Video to Build Trust

According to Gallup, great leaders need to show compassion, provide stability, and hope but most importantly build trust. A friendly approach helps to build trust quickly when conducting remote interviews. The interview should start by opening the interview by introducing themselves in a friendly manner, followed by an overview of the interview process.

Creating a connection through video can be more difficult than in-person, think about being more expressive so that your candidate can get a relate more easily.

Keep up the Pace!

Candidates can veer off-topic trying to answer a question, especially when they are nervous on video.  A video screen can make it difficult for candidates to realize they’re diverting off-course.

Technology Limitations

Slow computers and poor internet connections can make candidates more nervous and stressed when trying to prove their worth and skill set during an interview. Be considerate and allow them the space to shine.

Practice Makes Perfect

Planning and establishing the roles that remote interview and selection team will take, ensures they can make it function as it did when in-house, if not better.

Remote interviewing allows you to acquire talent from a global pool. Widening a talent funnel is a huge benefit but also requires more patience, planning and accommodating candidates from different time zones.

Building a properly supported in-house recruiting organization, or developing the support you need from an RPO, is a key to ensuring that you get the right people into the right job at the right time. It doesn’t stop there, once you’ve determined the number of people you need, you also need to consider the level of expertise required, the seniority of the recruiters supporting you. Your solutions must be data driven, strategically aligned and executable.

Having studied the challenges in getting the right people into the right jobs at the right time, we have built resource models to support staffing agencies, RPO providers and in-house regional and international recruiting teams. After working with teams of recruiting leaders, consultants, and recruiters themselves, we know this can be applied to virtually any organization.

Here are some of the things we’ve learned:

1. Dig into the data! Start with an understanding of how many people you’ve hired year over year. Additionally, you’ll want to examine the talent market for those roles. Ensuring you look at it through the lens of talent segmentation will help you in determining what your team will look like.

2. Look at your projected growth, determining where you will need external hiring versus internal mobility. You’ll need different strategies for each of these hiring approaches.

3. What were the inherent challenges in hiring for roles in the past and what does the talent market look like for your projected future external hiring needs?

These steps will provide you with a complexity equation and directly relates to the expertise level of recruiters required. High volume, lower skilled requirements doesn’t mean it will be easier, don’t be trapped by that idea. High volume lower paying jobs generally have lower retention, so you’ll want to factor that in.

• Generally, a high-volume recruiter will manage more hires than a professional level recruiter but pay attention to the skill level required. For example, CDL drivers are rare and hard to retain, and expecting a recruiter to cycle through them quickly is not realistic.

• At the professional level of recruiting, such as finance, IT, administration or leadership roles, there are variances in the availability of that talent. If you neglect to segment the talent properly, you may not build the support for your team.

• Consider if there is an opportunity to align recruiters functionally, this can lead to siloes so you’ll want to be sure it’s necessary based on the talent segmentation exercise.

Once you’ve analysed all the data, and considered the talent market, you’ll want to look at your processes as well.

1. Recruiter SOPs, are you regulated and have additional requirements that recruiters must complete? If so, it will mean tweaking the equation.

2. Determine where your hand-offs are and whether or not that complicates a recruiter’s daily functions.

3. Finally, is your technology optimized? Are your systems helping you speed up the recruiting function or slowing it down?

The math used to determine how many recruiters you need at what level is standard with some flexibility based on the process and technology analysis. In highly performing teams, considering today’s competitive talent market and that recruiters manage more technology, and sift through hundreds more candidates than ever before, the following generally applies:

A recruiter can be responsible for anywhere from 50 hires per year (Executive or Senior IT roles) to 350 hires per year for high volume minimally skilled roles.

Digging into how recruiting teams are set-up, how they deliver to their clients, and then using data, workforce projections and the talent marketplace are all elements of determining what your organization needs for recruitment support.