Req Intake

Key Objectives to Target

A successful search starts with an effective req intake, period. The pace of business offers very little room for error - one careless jump and you're going down the wrong rabbit hole, consuming precious time and resource that could have been spent elsewhere.

In the meanwhile your HM is still left in the cold, someone is doing doubleshift because of the lack in headcount, and your competitor may have picked up the second coming of Bill Gates because you didn't catch him in time.

It is very difficult to start your hunt without knowing the complete picture. A Req Intake provides the opportunity to collect this wealth of information. We're the Sherlock Holmes of the corporate world, and unless you want to constantly go back to the drawing board, it's crucial we gather up all the clues before attempting to solve the mystery.

William Wong April 2017

CHECKLIST

Synopsis: explore team and role
Candidate Profiling: identify perfect candidate, alternative profiles and reevaluate skillsets
Leveling: Job grade and comp package.
Diversity Training: checkpoint to make sure everyone in the hiring panel has received proper training on how to avoid bias.
Rewrite JD: set correct required/desired skillset, scan for D/I standards
Champion: who can we utilize to answer candidate questions? As part of nurturing campaign.
Referral Network: get a list of all team members so you can approach for referrals.
Set Expectations: create future check-in plans with manager and put it on their calendar.

Synopsis

Regardless of whether we're in a recession or a booming economy, there's always going to be a War for (good) Talent. This means you'll need more than just a job description to nab them. Partner with your HM to get this intel.

Synopsis of Group: Ask your HM to describe the function and purpose of the group/division/team. Is there anything interesting about their technology? Is their product/service solving a problem? Are they unique in their offerings? Be genuinely interested in what they have to say and ask lots of questions as if you were the candidate. Research the heck out of this. Summarize your findings into an elevator pitch and use it as ammo to solicit interest from your prospects.

Synopsis of Role: You'll also want your HM to tell you in their own words the purpose of this role. What will be the primary responsibilities of this person? Is there anything unique/interesting about the position that we can sell? What will be the expectations of this person within the first 30, 90, 180 days?

The Sell: Ask your HM why would anyone want to work for this group/team/product? Even though I can gather a lot of info from the first two questions, I'm often surprised by the answer the HM provides when I ask them this question directly.

Take note of what they say because you're going to cross reference this during the candidate's interview debrief to make sure what the manager tells you is the same as what they're saying to candidates.

Candidate Profiling

This is probably the area most TA folks struggle with, but with a little practice and experience, it can become second nature. Profiling a tech job is easy, but people always sneer at me and claim my sys admin background has everything to do with it. Well let me tell you a secret - they may call us "Technical" Sourcer/Recruiters, but you don't need to be technical at all to do the job. All you need is a genuine interest in tech, a business mentality to understand where this person falls into the overall scheme of things, and an ear for solutions. Actively listen to what the HM has to say to get a grasps of their needs. Compare it with the skillsets listed in the JD to see if there are any discrepancies. Then look for alternative solutions.

Required vs. Preferred: Figure out which skills are absolutely required and which is preferred. If you think the requirements are still too tough after this assessment, it's your responsibility to educate the manager on the market conditions and drive for a compromise.

Alternative Profiles: Map out what the perfect candidate looks like, then start striping away pieces of it to identify alternative profiles. For example, let's say we're looking for a developer that has NLP, ML, Java, React, RESTful and node.js and must be in Austin, TX. That's a loaded request! Bring the specs back down to earth by figuring out what is the most important component in that search (e.g, is it the domain expertise in NLP/ML or the full stack exp?). If its the domain expertise, then maybe we can bend on the languages. What's the percentage breakdown between front/back? Is it 50/50 or is it 20/80? If it's heavier on the back, then maybe we can substitute React with something else (vue or angular?). Is there another team member that's really good with React that can help guide our candidate while he/she focuses on the NLP/ML/Java/RESTful/node.js piece? Must this person reside in Austin, TX? Will remote or work in another office suffice? You see where I'm getting at? There's always a solution, you just need to step back and find it.

Top Asks: Identify the top 3 or 4 things that makes this role unique and confirm with the HM on these specs. You will be using these to guide you on how to qualify candidates and to develop a candidate summary.

Job Grade and Comp Package

Show me the money! Now that we know what the mgr is looking for, let's figure out if we can afford this person. What is the grade and salary range? If you think the comp to skillset requirements are off, then strategize with your HM on what else we can do. We may have to rewrite the JD in order for the exp to be commensurate with pay grade (e.g we find out the manager is looking for is an architect vs a sr dev, so rewriting the JD will give us more funds). If there is absolutely nothing we can do about pay, then coach the manager on being more flexible on the years of exp, skills requirement and WFH options. Remember the manager does not have as much experience as you do in terms of market rates. Coaching them at this moment will help set expectations and save everyone a lot of grief.

Below are some items to iron out before you being your search:

Salary
Bonus: starting, sign-on, guaranteed annual increases, performance incentives, commissions
Insurance: cost and details for Health (medical, dental, vision) insurance. Counseling, EAP, Life, disability, accident, or travel (benefits, fees) insurance are cool to mention but don't play a prominent factor in decision making.
Retirement: complete breakdown of 401k (matching %, max, etc.). Are there Pensions?
Equity Play: stock options, ESPP, RSU, etc.
Holiday, Vacation, Shutdowns: what do these look like
Relocation assistance if needed (moving, hotel, travel, realtor fees)Higher education tuition, certification or license reimbursement
Travel and transportation (company car, airline perks and privileges, car expenses)

Diversity Training

There is quite a bit of misconceptions on diversity recruiting and this leads to poor adoption. Make sure the team sees the benefits of a diverse workforce and then educate them on what diversity recruiting really means. Once the team is on-board, we'll train them on what unconscious bias is and how to reduce them in an interview process.

Figure out everyone that is going to be part of the interview panel and make sure they've gone thru training on the importance of diversity and how to avoid biases. While we're on this subject - what does the panelist look like? Is there a decent representation of URGs? Is there at least 1 female?

[ 1 ] Training: Benefits and Definition of Diversity Recruitment. A clear messaging on the importance of diversity should have already been delivered on the corporate level. Next step is to follow that up with training for anyone who'll be part of the interview panel. I recommend a revolving training session that managers/employees attend but if that is not possible, then create an ad hoc session for each hiring team. These training should be conducted in a small group setting to encourage interactions/discussions. Your job as the TA leader is to ask questions and act as the facilitator. You want to encourage discussion and allow the the audience to come up with the answers instead of a pure lecture. I often play the devils advocate by bringing up opposing viewpoints or topics too taboo for others to mention.

1st Objective: I often start off asking the question "What is a diverse workforce and why is everyone talking about it?" This allows people to chime in and provide their thoughts of what a diverse workforce looks like and why they think it is (or not) important. Follow up with factual info on benefits. This first part of the session is to win their hearts - cause if they don't see a value in a diverse workforce, they definitely won't embrace a recruitment strategy to obtain it.

2nd Objective: Then I ask "What is diversity recruiting?" Again, I let them have the room to discuss and call on individuals for more engagement. There is quite a bit of misconception surrounding diversity recruiting and this is where I provide clarification. Here are the usual suspects:

Lowers the Bar: People often think diversity hiring lowers the bar and will become frustrated on why we're doing it. Take this opportunity to clear it up - that Diversity Recruiting is still about hiring the best person for the job, and it doesn't exclude or is anti non-minority talent. All we're trying to do is make sure everyone has an equal chance by eliminating any procedures and biases that may have kept the best and most qualified talent from being hired. Diversity Recruiting is actually more merit-based than people give credit for - it opens up your talent pool and raises the bar by encouraging a greater amount of talent to be seen by the team.

Feelings of Being Threaten: This is a symptom that could be exhibited by what ever group is the majority in an organization (often white, cisgender, heterosexual men). They sometimes see themselves as being on the wrong side of what the company is trying to do, and that the company is trying to exclude them. Ensure them that there is no wrong side to diversity and that it works both ways. For example, before we start a search, we always take a look at the demographics of the group and think what's missing. If the group consisted predominately Asian females, then white men would be part of our diversity search. Diversity recruiting is about looking to balance out whatever is missing. Also make a point to ensure them that they matter, because they're part of the melting pot.

Tried It Before, Nothing Happens or It's Too Hard: This sort of diversity fatigue often comes from ones that truly championed the idea in the past but saw very little progress/outcome. They were simply burned out. Praise these individuals for their efforts and reassure them that progress takes time because it requires tremendous work to dismantle the years of implicit biases and ingrained perceptions that everyone carries with them. D&I is a long game and it's OK to feel discouraged but you need to stay in the fight. Just know that you're helping regardless of what the numbers say. Speaking of numbers, to help with this type of diversity fatigue, make sure you set realistic expectations or else it will only demoralize everyone involved. Make sure to celebrate the small successes.

[ 2 ] Training: How to Reduce Bias. The objective of this section is to provide awareness training. The hiring process can be bias and unfair. Unconscious racism, ageism and sexism will alter which candidate receives an interview, determine how a candidate performs during that interview and ultimately which candidate gets selected for the role. This step will help unravel unconscious bias by directly talking about it. It allows the team to understand what hiring prejudices are, how to avoid them, and hopefully identify their own. Facebook offers a really good training program on this. Our goal is to make sure the interview process is as free from bias as possible. After training the team on unconscious bias, we go thru the following:

Standardization. Identify the factors that will have a direct impact on the performance of the role. Ask your interview panel to create a uniform set of questions ahead of time for each. Then use an interview scorecard to grade the candidate's responses to each question on a predetermined scale. This way we're being objective about the skillset of the person vs their likability.

Scrub-a-dub-dub. Inform the team that you will be scrubbing the resume to remove as much bias as possible before presenting it to them. This includes DOB, years attended school or graduated from school, personal info, street address, etc. When it comes to STEM positions, studies have shown hiring managers (whether male or female), rated male candidates more favorable than female candidates. When possible, consider deleting the name or use initials to remove gender out of the equation. This tactic also helps remove any bias toward race.

Interview Availability. When it comes to scheduling interviews, the onus is often on the candidate to conform to the interviewer's schedule. "Can't make the provided times, then too bad, they're moving on to others." Sway the team away from this type of thinking. We all have busy schedules and projects to deliver, but be as accommodating as possible when it comes to scheduling interviews if you want to bring in folks who may be working several jobs or supporting their families.

Rewrite Job Description

Rework Job Requirements. An HP internal report showed men apply for jobs they are 60% qualified for while women apply only if they meet 100%. A gender insight report from LinkedIn showed women are 16% less likely than men to apply to a job after viewing it, and they apply to 20% fewer jobs than men. Keep this in mind when you're reviewing the job description with the manager to re-evaluate if certain skillsets or years of experience is necessary for the job. For example, do you really need 5 years of React or can someone do the job with just 2? How about an alternative? I know Angular is in the opposite camp, but would that work? Or better yet, how important is any of this to the job? What if front-end dev is only 5% of the job. In this case I would recommend the HM set it as a preferred vs required. The key is always ask if we can reduce or remove skillsets.

Audit Job Ads. Studies on job postings found females gravitating away from roles with masculine-type words like "ambitious" and "dominate." Are some of the language you're using in the ads more geared toward a specific demographic of experience level? Consider altering your ads to make sure it speaks to a broader range of candidates. Use this tool to audit your ads.

Champion

Here's food for thought: in study of over 600,000 people, McKinsey&Company found a relationship between quality of talent and business performance. For very high complexity roles like managers and software developers, high performers produce an astounding 800% better. So I think it's safe to say that Talent Acquisition isn't just the responsibility of the Sourcer/Recruiter, it should be everyone's.

Enlist the help of your fellow hiring manager or find someone in the hiring team to be your champion. Sometimes we run across very passive candidates that is an absolute perfect fit for our job but won't entertain an interview unless they're interested in our tech. This is a great time to connect that candidate to your champion.

Drip/nurturing campaigns have been the norm in the marketing world and they've just started making their way into TA. I find them to be amazing tools and total productivity enablers. A success nurturing campaign centers around proper targeting of candidates, the right messaging, and some creativity. Inserting your champion as part of the 3rd iteration of email falls within the creativity bucket.

Referral Network

Grab every single member of the team and ask them for referrals. Check out their github account and look at what they're committing to and see if there's any low hanging fruits there. See if there's any groups/blogs they belong to that may prove to be good hunting grounds. Invite their friends/old coworkers in for a lunch/tour and casually show them some tech that the team is working on.

Set Expectations

I can still remember the parting words from my sr. drill instructor at my graduation ceremony of the Marine Corps bootcamp. He ran up to me, punched me on the chest and started ranting about how he sacrificed so much of himself to train me into the best shape of my life - and that I'll never be at this level ever again, so I better not **** up his efforts.

I think the same can be said about the attention span of a hiring manager when he/she meets you for the first time. You'll most likely not experience someone more motivated in filling the role then at that very moment, but as time passes, they'll get pulled into all sorts of directions and may not have you at the very top of their list. This will cause a delay in candidate feedback, losing out candidates to other offers and an overall poor client experience.

Your job then is to constantly maintain a level of interest. Do this by setting expectations of when they might see their first candidate. If it's a tough role, maybe it'll take two weeks, but let them know now so they don't think you're ghosting them. Set up weekly reoccurring meetings until the req is filled. Only block off 15 minutes so it doesn't feel like you're consuming too much time. Use this opportunity weekly to drive for anything you need from the HM (that's not to say you can't reach out to the HM for feedback until this window, but having a structured check-in time allows you direct access). Also use this opportunity to fill in the HM on your efforts. They don't need a play by play, but just a general update with your strategies, what worked, what hasn't, what you're trying now. Sometimes HM are not very flexible at the very beginning on skills, but after seeing your efforts and reported results after several weeks may change their mind. Use this to tweak JD if necessary and rethink your search strategies.