If not enough candidates fail your drug screening, maybe the problem is you not them

While catching up over the weekend on the latest from Willamette (Oregon), Week, (I mean, who doesn't spend at least part of their Sunday catching up on all things Willamette?), I hit this beauty of a headline - Oregon is Running Out of Workers Who Can Pass a Drug Test.

Since I think from the headline of the piece you probably have an idea where this is going, so I won't bother setting it up too much and just take you to the money quote from our friends in Willamette:

“One labor issue that continues to crop up is drug testing. At least anecdotally, more firms are reporting trouble finding workers who can pass a drug test,” the economists write.

Ok, so maybe I should have set up the quote a little. Oregon, like a lot of the rest of the country, is seeing unemployment levels at almost twenty year lows - about 4.0%. That, coupled with Oregon's decriminalization of marijuana for most uses in 2014, and many employer's slow reaction to changing existing and traditional screening practices has led to a bit of a conundrum in the Beaver State - plenty of open jobs, and also plenty of candidates who are 'failing' old-school employment drug screens.

As the trend/tendency for more and more states to adopt more permissive laws concerning recreational drug use - typically marijuana - I think organizations still conducting pre-employment drug screens and who are facing a shortage of 'acceptable' candidates in these states have three main options as to how to proceed:

(Note, all of the rest of this assumes jobs/roles that are not directly in public safety domains, i.e. I am not going to advocate that airline pilots for example are not screened for drug use)

1. Do nothing - What at least some employers in Oregon and elsewhere are doing. Maintain your strict policy of pre-employment drug screening, knowing that in places like Oregon you will effectively screen out more and more candidates as time/social mores evolve. The potential positive? Not everyone is so permissive about recreational drug use, and you might be able to score some points with that crowd - both candidates and customers. "We're the drug-free burger place" - that kind of thing.

2. Better segment their jobs and screening protocols - Ok in almost every organization there exists some jobs that are more, say, 'sensitive' than others. The payroll manager has access to lots more information (and can do more damage if she chooses), than say, the person who manages the cafeteria. The point is that not all jobs in the organization need to have the same strict pre-employment screening protocols. And chances are you know that, the CEO knows that, everyone knows that. If you are an employer facing 'clean pee' issues, maybe its time to think about how universal your policy needs to be?

3. Throw in the towel - Or, said differently, let a little bit more of the world in, realize you are recruiting (largely in Oregon), from a candidate pool who considers recreational pot use just fine, (and by the way is also legal). Sure, make or continue to enforce 'on the job' rules of conduct as you see fit, no one is arguing that, but let go of this kind of old-fashioned idea of having a 'drug-free' workforce. Because you know what? You don't have one of those anyway, despite whatever rules or policies you have. Said differently - a drug-free 'workplace' is your right (and the right thing to have), and drug-free 'workforce' is more or less none of your business and is out of your control.

Organizations usually often are slow in adapting to changes in the world around them. The great Grant McCracken wrote recently that "organizations are great at keeping things out, not so great at letting things in", (I might be paraphrasing a bit, but that is the gist.

The smart HR/talent leader not only know what is happening out there, they also know how their talent strategies have to adapt. Even in Oregon.

Have a great week!

PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 301 - Re-inventing the Candidate Experience at J&J

HR Happy Hour 301 - Re-inventing the Candidate Experience

Host: Steve Boese

Guest: Sjoerd Gehring, Global Vice President, Talent Acquisition, Johnson & Johnson

Listen HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Sjoerd Gehring, Global Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Johnson & Johnson, to talk about how J&J has re-invented the candidate experience with a blend of enhanced processes combined with new technology resulting in a modern, consumer-like, responsive, and effective new set of tools and processes that combine to create a new standard in large company candidate experience.

Sjoerd shared some of the challenges that J&J was facing in talent acquisition, the need to become more responsive to candidates, the need to leverage new and better tools and technologies that meet candidate expectations that rival their consumer and personal technology experiences, that shaped their journey to create and launch J&J's new platform and experience named 'Shine'.

Shine puts the candidate at the center of the experience - providing increased information, transparency, usability to candidates, as well as driving increased satisfaction from both candidates as well as internal stakeholders. Sjoerd also shared some of the thinking that went behind developing the Shine platform, how and where to prioritize effort and focus, and what some of the early outcomes that have been seen since the new platform was launched.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, or by using the widget player below:

Thanks Sjoerd for sharing information about the J&J journey, and the lessons learned that any company can take direction and inspiration from as they move to modernize and improve their recruiting processes.

Thanks as always to show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com.

Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts, just search for 'HR Happy Hour' to subscribe and never miss a show.

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You might not like 'Time to Fill' as a recruiting metric, but it matters to candidates

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the latest data shows that in the US it has never taken longer, (in terms of business days), to fill the average open position. Here's the chart backing up that statement, in case you want a little bit of a refresher.

After I ran the post I got a couple of emails and a few comments on Twitter that more or less said the same thing - 'Time to fill' doesn't matter. It is not important to the C-suite, and is getting less important to hiring managers'. Most of the comments ended up saying something along the lines of 'It is better to take longer to find the 'right' hire' than simply trying to find the 'fast' hire - the kind of strategy that would negatively impact time to fill.

And while I do grant that there is probably some truth in those sentiments, I also think that like most of the reasonably difficult challenges in the talent game, the real truth is somewhere between the extremes. Does 'time to fill' matter in all cases? Certainly not. But are there some circumstances where it matters a lot? Absolutely. 

Let me share some details from a recent piece from the BBC about how giant consultancy KPMG is adapting their recruiting practices, at least in one important area, all around the idea and realization that their recruiting process has to move more quickly, thus reducing time to fill measures.

From the piece:

Accountancy firm KPMG has changed its graduate recruitment process to suit people born between 1980 and 2000 - the so-called millennial generation.

Instead of conducting three separate assessments over several weeks, it will now combine the process into one day.

The firm says the change will mean applicants will find out if they have got a job within two working days.

It made the change following research suggesting millennials were frustrated by lengthy recruitment processes.

KPMG said its survey- conducted among 400 of this summer's new graduates applying for a graduate job at a UK firm - found that more than one-third were annoyed about how long they had to wait to hear the outcome of an interview, and how long the recruitment process took.

At first read the changes that KPMG are implementing seem totally aimed at improving the candidate experience and adapting to meet the expectations of the newer generation. And that is definitely part of the story. What was not stated in the BBC piece but what certainly must be true was that KPMG was losing out on desirable new hires because their process was simpy taking too long. 

In-demand new university graduates likely have lots of options for employment once they leave school, and rather than wait weeks for KPMG to make a decision, some, if not many of them were just moving on to other, more agile companies. By implementing these process changes, KPMG hopes to both improve the overall candidate experience and reduce the number of candidates that 'get away' to competing firms.

And guess what else happens when the time it takes for KPMG to make offers and execute hires for new university graduates is reduced from weeks to days? 

Time to fill all of a sudden goes down - way down. And while that metric might not matter to you or to your CEO it means something to the these university graduates who make up the talent pipeline for KPMG. 

And it means plenty to any candidate who has options. Time to fill is just code for 'Make sure you can move fast enough to not lose out on the most sought-after candidates.'

Have a great week!

Candidate Advice You Should Not Share With Your Candidates

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s after a spate of run-ins with the law and arrests and general bad behavior amongst members of his Oklahoma University football team, then-coach Barry Switzer was asked by a reporter what he planned to do about better controlling player's off-field conduct. Switzer, probably out of frustration, and the fact that that morning another player had been arrested for assault, is said to have replied "Frankly I am not sure what else I can do, short of putting up a sign in the locker room that says "Committing a felony is against team policy"."

Switzer's point was that he should not have to remind the players of really obvious things - things every decent person just knows to be true, regardless of who they are or how experienced they might be. I thought of that old story when I saw another version of the endlessly repeated 'Advice to job candidates' tips pieces, that includes, among other nuggets, a recommendation to 'Be nice to the receptionist' when showing up for a job interview.

That advice is terrible. Not because candidates shouldn't be nice to the receptionist, rather because no decent person, yet alone candidate, should have to be reminded to be nice to the receptionist, or anyone else. In fact, as an employer you would not want to artificially inject fake 'niceness' into a candidate who otherwise would not be nice. It would be better to catch them being an ass and reject them up front, rather than get duped by some fake interview day charm and learn only later how much of a jerk they really are.

So with that said, here are my Top 3 pieces of candidate advice you should not share with candidates:

1. Be nice to the receptionist/security guard/limo driver - sort of covered above, but worth repeating. No one, once they are older than about 9, should have to be reminded to be 'nice.' In fact, 'nice', needs to be the default setting. You should expect more than 'nice' from people that you really want to be around for more than 3 minutes at a time. Translated - I can accept 'nice' from the Starbucks barista, people I am going to work closely with for 40 hours a week had better be damn nice, if you get my meaning.

2. Show up on time, be dressed appropriately, take a shower before the interview - Everything that falls into the category of 'Basic rules of conduct in a civilized society' should not be repeated under the mantle of candidate advice. The only exception possibly being when advising students preparing for their first experience in an interview setting, where some coaching on dress/conduct might be warranted. For everyone else though, if a candidate needs to be reminded to skip the flip-flops for the interview, then you should just let that candidate flip-flop on out of your office.

3. Research the company/industry prior to the interview - 'Normal' people will read 27 reviews on Yelp before choosing a lunch restaurant and scour page after page of Amazon ratings while considering which pair of earbuds to buy. So we have to remind candidates to know something about the company they are about to interview with? If a candidate turned up for an interview less informed about your company than they were about the last season of The Walking Dead, then again, you want to catch that lack of intellectual curiosity and conscientiousness up front.

I am sure if we really wanted to we could dredge up several more pieces of 'Candidate Advice' that are really just 'How to behave like a decent human being' tips, but you get the idea. Not taking a cell phone call in the middle of the interview probably deserves a mention too, but I think you get the idea.

You don't want to coach your candidates to be decent human beings, you want your process to allow those 'not decent' folks to reveal themselves before you make the mistake of hiring them.

Otherwise, you could find yourself tacking a 'Committing a felony is against company policy' sign on the break room wall.

Buying a car, choosing your next job - more similar than you think

The good folks at Careerbuilder recently released their 2012 Candidate Behavior Study, conducted in partnership with Inavero, and while the big, catchy conclusion from the study was boiled down to essentially read as 'Passive Candidates Don't Exist', I found even a more interesting, (to me anyway), finding from the study's data.

According to the Careebuilder study, job candidates consult nearly 15 resources per job search, including company career sites, Facebook, online job boards, employer review sites (such as Glassdoor.com), professional and personal networks and staffing and recruiting firms – before they even decide to apply to a job. Below is a chart from the study showing how job search research stacks up against other, similarly important and complex purchasing decisions:

Job Searching is complex

While we have been talking for a while, (here just last Monday), about Human Resources and Recruiting looking and acting more like the classic Marketing function, but as I pointed out in my post last week, and the Careerbuilder study reinforces, Marketing is changing dramatically as well, making, especially for HR and Talent pros, the shift to more of a Marketing mindset even more challenging.

From the report on the study's findings:

It used to be that a consumer would go to the store and find something on the shelf for the first time and make the decision to purchase right then and there,” (Careerbuilder's) Barnes explains. “Today, however, thanks to technology that enables us to research and compare products – at any time of day, from anywhere – consumers are doing significant research on products before they even step into a store.

Job candidates, we’re finding, are using this same approach to their job search.” For employers, these findings underscore the need to put as much effort into “marketing” their job opportunities and employment brand as they do their products, services and consumer brand. Candidates are utilizing multiple platforms to interact with employers, search for opportunities and find out what it’s like to work at companies – and they’re doing so increasingly through social media and from their mobile devices.

That means employers need to explore and take advantage of the many and various opportunities to connect with candidates these platforms afford.

Some quick thoughts on what this all might mean for you - the HR and Talent pro that might feel themselves in a position not at all unlike our friends over at a Big Box retailer like Best Buy, who watch shopper after shopper wander around the store, viewing and touching the merch, then immediately pulling out their iPhones to price check all over the internet, read product reviews, and figure out if their might be a better deal out there.

1. You probably don't need to everywhere, but you need to be moving in that direction. If your candidates are hitting up as many as 15 sources of informaton to learn about your company and jobs, then having a wide (and deep) employer brand presence across multiple sources.

2. True source of hire will become almost impossible to pinpoint. The candidate you eventually hired saw your opening via a job alert from Indeed, talked to a friend who used to work at your company, read some reviews on Glassdoor, checked out your Career site, then found someone in their LinkedIn network willing to forward their resume to the hiring manager. So - what was the source of hire?

3. If HR and Recruiting is becoming the new Marketing, then HR pros are even more behind the game. The Careerbuilder report pulls pretty deeply from a Google-led marketing research project called the Zero Moment of Truth, (ZMOT). If you want to speak the language of the modern marketer and job seeker, then you probably need to know what the heck the ZMOT is and how it impacts your employment marketing efforts.

I don't post about too many research reports, (honestly, there are too many to post about anyway), but I did learn a few things from the Careerbuilder research, and I recommend you check it out if you want some new insights into how candidates are searching for jobs, and how you can best adopt and adapt to these changes.

Have a great Monday everyone!