Check out some of the funniest, most cringeworthy encounters with nightmare candidates that these recruiters will never forget.

Recruiting is all about people, and people are hilarious. Nothing like the pressure of a job interview to bring out the most awkward, silly, and mystifying behavior in all of us. So, while we often celebrate the victories—perfect referrals, nailing your LinkedIn search on the first try, the candidate saying yes as soon as they are offered the job—let’s take some time to share of the most comical interactions that the internet has to offer. Spoiler: it includes rollerblades.

Every recruiting vet has one of these stories, so buckle up and see if your experience compares to these hapless interviewers who had no idea what they were getting into.

1. User “Enron_F” shares a story from a former professor who had to choose between the lesser of two bad candidates…

“A long time ago his department was looking to hire a new junior assistant professor. They had narrowed it down to two highly qualified guys, both fresh out of grad school. They knew they were going to hire one or the other. As a final step of the process, they decided to take both of them out to dinner separately.

The first guy is cordial throughout the whole thing, seems to get along with everybody just fine. Then, at the end of the meal, he picks up his empty plate and licks the whole thing clean. Like, tongue flat against the surface of the plate, covering every inch of it until it’s clean. In the middle of a nice restaurant. Then he sets the plate down like it was the most normal thing in the world. Everyone just stares at him, and then awkwardly try to just wrap things up. Afterward, they laugh about it to each other— what a bizarre and unnecessary way to throw away a near clinch on a good job opportunity.

So they take the second guy out, almost just a formality at this point. Again, everything is fine, he’s polite, seems perfectly qualified, seems to know the right things to say. Then, at the very end of the meal, they ask him if he had any questions for them. He pauses and thinks for a moment, then asks, “So what is the student-teacher dating policy?”

Afterward, the other professors are sitting around together when one of them says, “Well, looks like we’re hiring the plate licker.”

2. User “notagoodboye” recounts a time when a candidate clearly didn’t do his research before the interview…

“I was doing a tech screen phone interview, and you could tell the guy was googling his heart out every time we asked a question. He would say, “Hmmm, let me think about that for a second.” The background ambient noise would cut off, and then cut back on a second later, and he’d start reading off stuff from the top Google result.”

3. User “kramblin” has a short dialog about why screening candidates is a good precaution for employers…

“Do you guys drug test?”
“Yes, we do.”
“For like, ALL the drugs?”
“Yes.”
“Ok. Thank you for your time.”

And then he got up and left.

4. User “MichaelTheElder” shares his encounter with a candidate he dubbed “The Candy Man”…

“The interview was for an entry-level retail position. I called him in for an interview, and after introductions, brought him up to the company break room. He looked like a kinda sketchy individual, wearing a beat-up black cap and what looked to be a dirty hoody. I didn’t think too much of it because: a) I did call him in on shorter notice, b) I don’t like to judge a candidate solely on how they look, and c) it’s retail—what do you expect candidates to look like?

I excused myself for 30 seconds to check in on my trainee, and when I came back the candidate looked a little uncomfortable.

Not thinking much of it we start the interview asking the standard questions about what he’s done previously, why he wants to work here, etc. I notice he continues to look uncomfortable and it almost looks as though he’s hiding something in his hands. I eventually ask if there’s something wrong I can assist with and he comes clean.

He explains he has a fistful of candy (jelly beans in this case) and he’s not sure what do do with them. I’m a bit gobsmacked and have questions which I wish I would have asked. Where did he get this candy? Why did he think it was a good idea to eat candy in an interview? What was he going to do with this candy?

As I tried to articulate a response he exclaims, “I know!” and proceeds to shove the entire handful into his mouth. And this isn’t a couple of jelly beans. This is a massive handful of now sweaty, sticky candies that he has just thrown into his mouth. And he starts chewing. And chewing. His hands are stained and he’s really working his jaw due to the sheer amount and chewy nature of them. I swear 30 seconds pass before he finally gulps them down and asks calmly, “You were saying?”

The interview did not continue much longer than that, and unfortunately, the candy man did not get a job with us.”

5. User “PsychohistorySeldon” on why a candidate’s mode of transportation to the office is important…

“Candidate arrived in rollerblades. Stayed in rollerblades the whole interview. He used the word “blade” instead of “walk” or “go” for the whole interview. Can’t tell if I was being punk’d.”

6. User jenjen2317 recalls a candidate who could have picked up a few pointers about phone etiquette…

“We had a guy come in for an interview, and he showed up a full 40 minutes prior to his scheduled interview. One room office shared by three people, so there’s no good place for him to wait. I said you can go to the coffee shop next door and come back at the scheduled time. He said, “No, I’ll just wait here—I have a phone call to make.”

He proceeds to have a very loud phone conversation in our one-room office. When it was finally time for his scheduled interview, he was still on the phone, and actually shushed me, saying, “I’M ON THE PHONE.” Ten minutes later he was ready to be interviewed. Not even sure why we proceeded with the interview, but it was over quickly and his resume was in the recycle before the door even closed.”

7. User “gardenmarauding” shares a time when a video interview ventured into absurdity…

“I was hiring in pharmaceutical sales, and during a large drug launch, the company was hiring almost 200 people nationwide.

Because of this, the first step was a phone screen, then a video interview with the hiring manager, before flying candidates out for the final, panel interviews with five individuals (VPs of HR and Sales of each region, and Sales Directors for those territories).

Because of this, we were very strict with the interviews and who moved forward, which means it REALLY sucked when a guy went into his final panel interview and started doing magic tricks.

Very seriously, he started pulling flowers from his sleeves, and he tried to “vanish” an interviewer’s coffee, but ended up spilling it everywhere instead.

In that same round of hiring, we also had an individual who did his video call from his coffee table (he sat on the floor) and he had someone ring his doorbell. From the conversation with the hiring manager, he asked politely if he could go answer the door in case it was an emergency. She said, “Sure”—no big deal—and the guy stood up, flashing his tightie whities.”

8. User “tybrromian”, on why recruiters should spend more time scanning resumes for errors…

“I once saw a resume that stated they were a “valid Victorian”. Either they were trying to say they were top of their class or that they were a genuine person from 19th century England, neither of which were true.”

Losing candidates at the offer stage can destroy a recruiter’s confidence. Here’s how to make an offer even the most demanding job seeker can’t turn down.

After vetting and interviewing down to a final selection, a recruiter’s efforts culminate with a final step, one that can make or break the hiring process: the offer. This moment marks the beginning of a professional working relationship with a new employee, so it’s important the experience is smooth and painless. Communication is key to orchestrating a successful offer, which is why we’ve broken down every stage of the process so recruiters know exactly how to professionally extend a job offer, negotiate terms, and close the deal.

The Setup

As recruiters and candidates work towards a final offer, it’s important that everyone’s expectations are aligned as early as possible. Any mistakes made during the hiring process need to be addressed at this point. Before moving forward, recruiters should have a solid grasp of the following information:

• The company’s preferred start date and salary range for the position (including bonuses, benefits, and company perks)
• The candidate’s requested compensation, desired start date, and most recent compensation (including bonuses, commissions, and benefits)
• Background and reference checks from the candidate’s previous managers.
• The candidate’s motivation for wanting the position

While financial compensation is the top concern for candidates, many of today’s job seekers place a high value on company culture and work-life balance, making them important considerations when entering salary negotiations. Knowing what truly matters to the candidate is essential information that can help close the deal.

Prime Your Serious Candidates

Recruiters should discuss a possible job offer with serious candidates during a late-stage interview or a post-interview phone call. This gives recruiters another opportunity to discuss the candidates’ expectations and ensure they align with the company’s position. Emphasizing that the conversation is not an offer, and that other candidates may still be considered, recruiters can assess the candidate’s salary expectations, targeted start date, and benefits package. Does the candidate agree with these terms? This is another opportunity to uncover obstacles that could slow the offer process, such as counter offers from current employers.

Professionally Communicate & Deliver the Offer

Normally, a recruiter verbally communicates the offer before sending an official letter. In addition to the phone or in-person confirmation, an email announcing the offer along with an attached formal letter is common practice. For even faster offers, many modern ATS platforms automate approvals for candidates and hiring teams, preventing unnecessary delays in the sign-off process. When sending this email, the body copy should briefly reinforce the company’s culture, values, and the opportunity being offered—save the professional language and fine print for the job offer letter. There, be sure to include the following:

• Congratulations to the candidate
• New job title & short job description
• An agreed-upon start date
• Work hours
• Probation period
• Base salary, bonuses, or commissions
• Any legal requirements (employment visa, non-disclosure agreements, etc.)
• Health benefits
• Time off entitlements
• Other benefits
• Deadline for candidate response

Timing and momentum are crucial, and maintaining a fast-paced hiring plan ensures candidates aren’t being lost in the tangles of lengthy processes. In today’s job market, top-quality candidates juggle multiple offers at once, and will not wait for companies that procrastinate. With tech-forward features in modern ATS’s like real-time offers and one-click offer acceptances, hiring teams have no excuse for not closing candidates quickly and effectively. Remember: your top choice candidate is likely a top choice at another company as well. Almost half of employers in a recent recruiter sentiment study said their offer rejection rates range from one to 10 percent. Top reasons candidates turned down offers included: accepting another job, insufficient compensation and lengthy hiring practices.

Recruiters can pitch their company and appeal to the candidate’s motivation by describing the candidate’s immediate and meaningful impact on the team, highlighting future career opportunities, and mentioning the company’s strengths (growth potential, desirable culture, financial security, etc). Recruiters should aim to connect the candidate’s previous experience and skills to the new position, and demonstrate how this will positively impact their career growth.

Negotiating Salary

Inevitably, recruiters will need to negotiate financial compensation in order to maintain a candidate’s interest. Some factors to take into consideration include:

• The candidate’s quality, cultural fit, and value to the company
• The industry standard rate for the position
• Cost of living adjustments based on the city
• The possibility of a counter-offer from a current employer

Rather than approach the salary negotiation as a way to secure the best candidate for the lowest price, recruiters should package the job as an opportunity for long-term career growth.

Reiterate and Close

The more preparation a recruiter can do before extending the official offer, the more likely a candidate will be receptive and agreeable to the terms. Recruiters who bond with candidates by aligning the candidate’s skills, experiences, and motivations with those of the company prepare them for a rewarding career path. The more these expectations are communicated before and during the offer stage, the more likely the employee will put forth their best work for the company. By streamlining the job offer process with a technology-forward approach, recruiters get top candidates to “Yes” quicker.

Recruitment has transformed rapidly, but some insights remain timeless. We mined the slush pile at the quote farm, unearthing some untarnished gems from which the most cynical can’t help but draw wisdom.

The hiring process is a different beast whether you’re a recruiter, a hiring manager, or a candidate. While the ultimate goal is to match the right candidate to the right job, sometimes the procedural challenges offer the most valuable insights for the future. TA professionals lean on past leadership to improve recruitment today. That’s why we’ve gathered quotes from accomplished entrepreneurs and business leaders that will challenge your perceptions of recruiting, and give you that much-needed kick in the ass.

On Candidate Experience

“Understand your candidates and why they’re making job changes. People leave people, not companies, Make sure you’re giving them something they’re excited to come to.” — Robin Mee, President and Founder of Mee Derby

If we truly believe that people are the core of HR, then creating the best possible candidate experience should be a no-brainer. In an era where company reviews on sites like Glassdoor are widely accessible to prospective applicants, organizations cannot afford to ignore the importance of a positive first impression. Today’s companies are increasingly aware of how candidates view them, not just as potential employers, but on their social initiatives, and even how they write open job descriptions.

On Employer Branding

“Engagement has to be human, because people trust people more than brands. Our employees are the ones who personify Shell.” — Ana Alonso, Global Marketing Head at Shell

A company’s reputation as an employer is hugely important to candidates. Today’s job seekers have greater access to company information than ever before, with 75 percent considering an employer’s brand before even applying for a job. Company fit and culture are moving into the top considerations for candidates who value connections with people more than with a brand. Employers wanting to attract the right candidates should focus on building an internal culture that supports these relationships.

On Hiring the Right Person (or People)

“When you’re in a startup, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is ten percent of the company. So why wouldn’t you take as much time as necessary to find all the A players? If three were not so great, why would you want a company where 30 percent of your people are not so great? A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does.” — Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple

“If we weren’t still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become some mediocre company.” — Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft

Steve Jobs may be right about one thing. True, individuals have more impact at startups, but that doesn’t mean they are less influential at larger companies. While we would be hard-pressed to argue with the man who built a successful multinational tech firm, Microsoft’s equally savvy tech mogul makes a strong counterpoint – that maintaining great hires is crucial to an organization’s growth. The takeaway: hiring top-quality talent starts in a company’s infancy, and if done correctly, will carry things into maturity.

On Training

“The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.” — Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company

Onboarding rarely goes beyond the typical welcome packets, employee handbooks, and payroll forms for many recent hires. And while no organization wants to suffer the financial cost of losing a freshly trained worker, this quote from Henry Ford argues that companies who don’t invest in employee training risk greater loss. The future workforce will need a balance of technological, social and emotional, and higher cognitive skills, and many of these will require occasional honing. To that end, it behooves companies to initiate skill workshops, training seminars, and other exercises to maintain a high level of employee performance.

On Team Building

“The best teamwork comes from men [and women] who are working independently toward one goal in unison.” — James Cash Penney, Founder of JC Penney

The founder of JC Penney opened his first store in 1902, and over the course of his life grew it into a $12B organization with 850 stores across the US. Feats like this are only possible with a united team working towards a common goal, where every person understands how his or her role is instrumental in achieving success. Expectations on an individual level demonstrate to employees how every team function aligns with the greater company mission. This not only establishes a value-add for all tasks, but instills a sense of purpose among the entire team.

On Management

“Many think of management as cutting deals and laying people off and hiring people and buying and selling companies. That’s not management, that’s deal making. Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it’s a magnificent profession” – Clayton M. Christensen, HBS Professor & Disruptive Innovation Expert

It can be difficult to know exactly what happens behind the closed doors of corner offices as recruiters fight in the trenches for the next great hire, but as this quote from Clayton Christensen suggests, the function of management is to provide support and mentorship to employees. Great managers identify potential, maintain a pulse on company health, and empower employees to reach their goals. Companies can only grow as fast as the people who run them, from managers to executives.

News and analysis from the latest in HR Tech

Today we go live with HSJ | Hiring Success Journal 2.0 with one simple belief: when it comes to business success, people are what matter.

“Hiring success is business success and that’s why we need to think about smarter recruitment”

Hiring success is business success and that’s why we need to think about smarter recruitment. You are who you hire. It’s all about people. It’s as simple as it is true. In our time of accelerating change, a company’s ability to source the right talent, and to do so at scale, will ever more determine its path – whether it ultimately leads towards growth or failure.

Our platform will be a news and information resource for professionals interested and involved in the world of HR Tech and in the coming years that will be everyone. It’s becoming increasingly clear in the popular conscience that the difference between success and failure for companies of the future will be their ability to attract, select, and hire the right people on demand and on a budget.

“Companies need people who understand the digital landscape of now”

It is no longer an option to lean on patent holding or even capital to ensure the longevity of a company. Companies need people. People who understand the digital landscape of now and can adapt a business to the ever faster innovation cycles that are driving the economy forward.

This means that the way companies retain these top performing employees is becoming evermore strategic. With the advent of sophisticated Applicant Tracking Systems employers can hire the best people in less time at a lower cost. Gone are the days of post and pray, companies who want to move forward won’t have that luxury.

ATS not only increases hiring velocity and overall hiring success, it allows companies to engage reliable matrixes and analytics to quantify the major return that comes from successful hiring prompting serious investment in recruitment.And now that the investment is there the research is following with contributions across disciplines that will transform how we recruit forever.

“SRHSJ will be the vanguard of HR Tech news documenting and unraveling the intricacies, innovations, possibilities and latest news from across disciplines”

HSJ will be the vanguard of HR Tech news documenting and unraveling the intricacies, innovations, possibilities and latest news from across disciplines. We present you with topical content from key categories in the HR Tech World. Hiring success — demonstrates how companies get the right people at the right time, Customer Success — shares stories from customers who have used ATS to grow their business and find the right people, Future of Work — focuses on the latest in innovations that will affect the way we work going into the future, Recruiting Hacks — showcases research for on the ground HR professionals to build purposeful Customer Relationship Management systems that translate to successful hires, Product Tips — delves into the full potential of SmartRecruiters with the creators of the product, and Inside SmartRecruiters — keeps you up to date on the latest from inside our company.

Expect insights into new candidate demographics as with Taylor Sternberg’s new piece Recruiters: Get Ready for Gen Z. They’re Not What You Think, breakdowns of the latest data like Jennifer Goode’s in depth article about the new data privacy law coming into effect next year  TA Leaders: Are You GDPR-Ready? and it’s affect on your bottom line, podcasts on the trials of the candidate experience with To Whom it May Concern from fellow Smartian Charlie Nelson, and up to date news from leading industry conferences like Carly Todd’s preview of HRTWA 2017 in SmartRecruiters Hits the Stage at HR Tech World Amsterdam.

We leave you with this thought: as of today a company can expect 3.5 times more growth through better recruitment and if that’s the case where does that leave your company on the spectrum of success? Think of your goals as a company and how attainable they are with the right people.

We welcome your engagement! Comment below with a topic you would like to read about.

Nancy Altobello is a big fan of millennials.

Altobello, Vice Chair of Talent at EY, shared her thoughts on the changing global professional landscape and how companies can attract and nourish top talent–particularly among recent college graduates–at Universum’s Employer Branding Conference this morning in New York.

Talent, and recruiting it, aren’t just on the minds of campus reps and college seniors, says Altobello, noting that in a world where everything is increasingly more complex, talented, skilled labor is more important than ever before–and there’s less of it.

“Talent is now being viewed as an important resources by executives and by boards,” Altobello told Forbes. ”The dichotomy of talent being more important and less available has invented an executive issue.”

Below are Altobello’s observations about how to recruit and hang onto top-notch millennial employees.

1. They’re not all running for the door–if you can keep them interested. 

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that millennials only tend to stay in each job an average of 18 months. Altobello says this doesn’t have to be the case.

“We’re starting to hear from a lot of people who’ve had two jobs in three years and want to stay somewhere,” she says. “But the work has to be interesting, they don’t want to keep doing the same thing.”

2. When it comes to compensation, cash is still king.

In this way millennials are just like professionals at every other stage of their careers; the best way to attract and keep the best and brightest is to pay them well.

 3. To younger professionals, flexibility is almost as important as salary.

Altobello says in this context flexibility means millennials want choices about how to deliver a job well done. With the understanding that deadlines and client needs must always be met, they want options about where and when they work–and they want their managers clearly on board.

“People are looking for approval around flexibility.”

 4. Millennials want to be regularly evaluated and advance quickly–but they’ll do the work to get there.

It’s a regular drumbeat about millennials: They want to be constantly told how they’re doing and see the payoff.

Altobello says managers need to understand that this is a population accustomed to “quick knowledge”–they grew up contacting their parents over cell phones with a single question, or consulting Google–and to view this as an opportunity. A yearly performance review is simply not the right approach.

“They want the trophies,” says Altobello, “but they’re very willing to earn them.”

5. On-the-job training is essential. 

According to an annual survey by Accenture of soon-to-graduate college seniors and graduates of the classes of 2012 and 2013, 80% of 2014 graduates expect to be formally trained by their first employer, but 52% of professionals who graduated from college within the past two years say they received no training in their first job.

Altobello says the best way to meet your company’s demand for skilled labor is to invest in developing current employees.

“So many skills are teachable and coachable. Most important is on-the-job training. Move them fast through a lot of experiences.”

Follow me on Twitter @KathrynDill. This article was written by Kathryn Dill from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.

The typical job ad is a horrifying anti-marketing message to the talent community. When you read a job ad, you should immediately get a sense for why a smart person would want the job. The job ad should focus less on what the Selected Candidate Must Possess, and more on answering the question “What’s so great about our company, and about this job?”

We market to customers. It’s time for us to apply a marketing mindset to the recruiting side of our business, too. If we don’t, we’re encouraging the sparkiest and most-valuable people who read our job ad to skip it and go on with their lives. What talented person with normal self-esteem wants to read 1000 words of corporate drivel that drone on and on about what the perfect candidate requires? That’s putting the marketing cart ahead of the horse. If we remember that the best job candidates — the kind we’re marketing to, if we care about talent in our organizations — won’t keep reading a job ad that turns them off in its first few lines.

If the whole focus of the ad is on the job requirements, you’re artificially depressing the caliber of the candidates who’ll respond to it.

It’s easy these days for a job-seeker to read a typical job ad and have the reaction “The people who wrote this job ad are high on their own exhaust fumes. Why would I want to grovel to convince them I have something valuable to offer?”

The more talent-repelling your job ad is, the lower the quality of candidate you can expect to respond to it. When I say ‘lower the quality,’ I’m talking about marketability. The more in-demand a job-seeker’s skills and experience are, the less he or she needs to spend hours filling out tedious forms in a corporate or institutional Black Hole (also known as an Applicant Tracking System). Here are ten easy tweaks that will dramatically increase the quality of responses your job ads get. Why  not try a few of them with your very next job opening?

Tell Us Who You Are

We need to know where the organization came from — is it a new spinoff of a larger company we know, or is it a joint venture between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and NASCAR, or what? Give us the backstory. “Massive Boring Industries is a leader in plastic extrusion” might be great branding for potential investors, who are going to do lots of their own digging if they’re smart before they put a dime into anything.

For job-seekers, you have to bring your branding to ground level and tell us what the company does and why anyone would care. If you yourself don’t know why you do what you do apart from the fact that you’re already doing it, that’s a vision-and-strategy problem that needs to be solved before you hire anyone new.

Lose the Zombie Voice

We don’t have to talk down to our job applicants in zombie-language job ads that read like government manuals: “You will performs tasks and duties in accordance with the Central Task and Duty Allocation Procedure outlined in blah blah blah.” There’s no reason for that kind of language ever to appear in a job ad. Its only effect will be drive anyone with a pulse away from your job ads and your organization.

Speak To Us Directly

We don’t speak to our customers in the third person, a la “The Appropriate Customer at 7-11 is a person with the following qualities.” We don’t specify what our customers must have. If they have a need for the stuff we sell and they have money, they’re perfect customers for us. Get any third-person language out of your job ads, too. The most common one is “The Selected Candidate will possess….” That’s insulting. It’s like you’re saying to the reader of your job ad, “This stuff we’re talking about is the stuff the Selected Candidate will have  — not YOUR sorry ass.”

Nuke The Bullets and Tell a Story

Bullet points are the opposite of conversation. They don’t tell a story. Use your job-ad real estate to tell us what the job is about, instead. Tell us the story of the job, like this:

Acme Explosives has just received clearance to ship our modular dynamite sticks through UPS and the Postal Service, and our e-commerce business is exploding! We need an E-Commerce Operations Manager to run interference between Marketing (who manages our website) and Production (who make the stick dynamite) to keep our online business running smoothly, and growing. If you love the back end of an ecommerce site and working with Marketing to merchandise and promote our online offerings to customers around the world, this could be a great spot for you and the next place to grow your career. 

How Do I Fit In?

Use a sentence in your job to explain how the open position fits into the overall organization. Here’s an example featuring the E-Commerce Operations Manager at Acme Explosives:

In this role you’ll report to the VP of Operations, Don Drysdale, who reports to our CEO Chuck Jones. You’ll work closely with our Marketing, Production and Inventory teams. 

A sharp job-seeker is going to read those two sentences and jump on LinkedIn to see who Don and Chuck are and where they’ve been. The more we can tell job-seekers about who they’d be working with in the job, the more appealing your ad (and your opportunity) will be to the people who can help you most.

What’s Fun About The Role?

You’ve got to tell the job-seeking community (made up of every working person, let’s be honest) why this job would be fun and enriching for them. If you can’t explain why a person would grow his or her flame in the job, then you’re saying “Come for the money,” except the money is never enough. If you’ve got anybody on your payroll who is doing it for the money, you’re shooting too low in the talent-acquisition process. Here are two sentences that give a prospective Acme Explosives E-Commerce Operations Manager a reason to apply:

One of your first priorities will be to look at our site’s usability to make whatever changes will make the buying experience more pleasant. You’ll come to our CustomerSlam 2014 global conference in San Francisco and meet our biggest customers. You’ll be the principal voice for e-commerce inside our company, and right in the middle of our strategic planning conversation.

Direct Us To A Person

If you’re going to take the approach I’m talking about here and that we teach, called Recruiting With a Human Voice, you’ve got to give job-seekers an alternative to the soul-crushing Black Hole recruiting portal. To put a toe in the water, take one job ad and try this new approach for that opening. Use a human voice in the ad, and take the other suggestions we’ve listed here. In that job ad, use a human being’s name and email address rather than a sterile website address.

Whomever has the least risk aversion on your HR team is the perfect person for the assignment! Let job-seekers write to your designated Talent Liaison rather than pitching resumes into the void. Watch the level of engagement and quality of response zoom up!

Give Us An Assignment

If you’re worried about your Talent Liaison getting crushed with resumes, don’t panic. Give the talent community an assignment to fulfill, right in the job ad. Ask them to send you a Human-Voiced Resume and a 300-word essay on a topic you choose. Choose a topic that will allow the best candidates to show you in a few sentences why they should be high on your interview list. Sad to say, most job-seekers will respond to your ad without completing the assignment. That’s an automatic “no thanks,” so your Talent Liaison is unlikely to work any harder using this process than he or she did before.

Since you need candidates eventually to get into the Black Hole database if you’re going to interview them, you can ask only the folks you interview to fill out those forms, once they have a reason to expend the energy.

Here’s the assignment that appeared in the Acme Explosives E-Commerce Operations Manager job ad:

If this sounds like a good fit for you, send us a 300-word reply that explains why this job and your background are a great match. Tell us how you’d approach the role and how Acme could support you best in building an e-commerce operation to support our global customer base. Send your reply plus your Human-Voiced Resume to Declan McManus at declanm@acmeexplosivesizdabomb.com.

Tell Us Why You Need Us

Lastly, save a line in your job ad to tell the brilliant, creative, funny, energized and passionate people who are evaluating you as an employer what their presence would do for you. Most job ads have a voice embedded in them that makes a job-seeker feel like the company thinks it’d be doing him a favor by interviewing him. Why would we ever do that? We need our employees. They make our engine go. They delight our customers and our shareholders and frustrate our competitors. Your employees are your company.

There is no shareholder value, no new product pipeline, no accounts receivable, nothing of any value without them, just a pile of PCs and boring beige cubicle walls.

Tell us in the job ad why you need us, like this:

“We’re excited about our e-commerce opportunity and excited to meet the person who will take us a big step up in our operation. If that’s you, we can’t wait to meet you!”

Like Liz Ryan’s worldview? Follow her on Twitter (@humanworkplace)! Send Liz a LinkedIn invitation at liz@humanworkplace.com. 

This article was written by Liz Ryan from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, the only platform managers and candidates love.

I was intrigued last week when I received the results of a survey from the giant Menlo Park-based staffing agency Robert Half, saying that more than three quarters of hiring managers think it’s appropriate for job candidates to ask about compensation and benefits in the initial phone screening or first two job interviews. I’ve written at least three stories saying it’s best for job seekers to put off salary negotiations until an offer is on the table. Was I wrong?

Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at Robert Half, says, “In this market, with 1% or 2% unemployment for some jobs, employers want to get to this business quickly. They want to see if there’s a good fit and they’re OK with the candidate bringing up the salary in order to be efficient with time.” Conversely, he says, applicants should be ready to answer questions about salary early in the process. “We believe honesty is the best policy,” he says.” If someone asks what has been your salary in the past three positions, we coach the applicant to be prepared for that.” The firm surveyed 300 hiring managers by phone in December 2013.

Has something changed in salary negotiation strategy since I first wrote about the topic two years ago? To answer that question I turned to three of my best career coach sources and to Heidi Ellingson, senior director of employment services at Middleton, WI-based Spectrum Brands, a diversified consumer products company with 13,500 employees worldwide, which makes everything from Rayovac batteries to George Foreman grills. She doesn’t recommend that candidates bring up the subject but instead she has her own staff raise salary in the very first phone screening. “We want to make sure we’re in the right ballpark,” she says. Frequently candidates don’t want to reveal either their salary or what they hope to earn, in which case Ellison’s team tries at least to get a range. “We don’t want to waste people’s time if we’re $20,000 apart,” she says.

Have I been giving my readers bad advice? In a word, no. The job of staffing firms like Robert Half is to screen candidates for employers so they can present the most viable candidates, and hiring managers have an incentive to get candidates to name a number early in the process. But from the candidate’s perspective, especially if you are negotiating for a managerial or executive position, it’s best to avoid saying anything specific about salary until a job offer is on the table.

“It’s like saying on a first date, ‘how many kids do you want,’” says Roy Cohen, a longtime coach and author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide. Sarah Stamboulie, a coach who previously worked in human resources at Cantor Fitzgerald, Morgan Stanley and Nortel Networks, agrees. “You don’t want to be negotiating salary until they’re at their maximum love—their maximum enthusiasm for you,” she says. Once a prospective employer has convinced themself and their colleagues that you are their first choice, they are much more likely to bump up your package in order to get you.

Longtime coach Ellis Chase, author of The Fun Forever Job: Career Strategies that Work, agrees with Cohen and Stamboulie and lays out four reasons naming a salary is a bad idea: 1) If you come in very low, the potential employer won’t take you seriously, 2) If you come in low the employer will think they can pay you less than they had planned to offer, 3) You price yourself out of the running, and 4) Even if you fall in the right range, you may not realize that the job comes with more responsibilities than you had thought and now you’ve ruined your negotiating stance.

There are a couple of exceptions however. Stamboulie has worked with young up-and-comers at top consulting firms who have gotten multiple offers from employers who might not know the candidates want to make at least, say, $150,000. The fact that they don’t need to accept any of the offers puts them in a strong position, especially if they know they want to shoot high.

The other reason would be if you’re a superstar, you’re happy where you are and you’d only leave for a certain number. A third reason could be if you’re talking to a small startup where it’s tough to glean ahead of time what the salary range would be. Then you might want to name what Stamboulie calls an “anchor number” that will help the firm know what you think you’re worth.

What if the hiring manager or decision maker asks you what you make? That’s a tougher question. Chase says you should rarely volunteer a number and instead counter with a line like, “I’m very interested in this position but I would hate for a dollar figure to eliminate me from consideration because if there’s a fit, I’m sure we’ll be able to work it out.” If that doesn’t work, you could try, “Could you give me an idea of your range?” The goal, as I’ve written before, is to wait for the offer and then to get the decision-maker to be the first to name a number. If the hiring manager becomes visibly annoyed, says Chase, then you have to relent, but it’s always better to give a range, rather than a precise figure.

Cohen agrees. “A lot of hedge funds will bring it up. They’ll say what are you earning and what are you looking for. If you don’t give them some sort of benchmark you’ll look like you’re trying to tap dance around it.”

One of Cohen’s Wall Street trader clients can’t hold himself back. “He won’t do his homework,” says Cohen. “He’ll go into an interview and say, ‘I want to know what this job pays, I want to know the base, I want to know the formula, I want to know what cash I’ll get at the end of the year.’” According to Cohen, this candidate has blown three or four opportunities in the first interview. “When the market was stronger, they would tolerate this sort of thing,” he says. “But now he’s shooting himself in the foot.”

The folks at Robert Half may be right about the preferences of recruiters and HR managers, but it’s always best to try to bypass those gate keepers and go straight to the person who will make the ultimate decision about whether you get the job.

This article was written by Susan Adams from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.

When I made my first foray into the big bad job market, I had some pretty crummy experiences. Sending out my resume, leaving a follow-up phone message and then getting in response: nothing, nada, zip. Not even the courtesy of a cursory “No, thanks.” Or being interviewed by an underling with sadistic impulses who asked me rote questions and then barely paid attention to my answers. I came away from those experiences and others equally demeaning with a real respect for the companies that treated me like a serious adult with something to offer, even if my talents weren’t a good match for their needs. Now to present day. Guess what?

Too many organizations and leaders still don’t get it: the way you treat your job seeking candidates matters. A lot. It’s a reflection of who you are as a company and a leader. It reveals a great deal about how you run your other processes. It’s an opportunity to enhance your brand in the world of HR and beyond. In fact, it’s so important there’s an award – the Candidate Experience Award – given out by the Talent Board, a non-profit dedicated to improving the candidate experience. 2012 winners include such heavy hitters as Intel, Intuit, Mayo Clinic, Adidas, Deloitte, Hyatt and Stryker.

What is the winning recruiting formula these companies and leaders use?

1) First and last: Respect: C’mon, this is a no-brainer. You’re dealing with people’s lives here. Treat each and every person with basic human courtesy and dignity. Explain the process to them. Be direct and honest.

2) Keep your word: Once you’ve explained the process, stick with it every step of the way. Be consistent.  Give the candidate a way to contact you for any follow-ups or updates. Think of the candidate as a partner in the process, and a potential star in your organization.

3) End on a grace note: This particularly applies to candidates who are not hired. You want them to walk away with their dignity intact, understanding why they weren’t hired. Aside from just plain being the right thing to do, this bears fruit in many ways. These people spread the word about what a top-flight operation you are. They refer talented friends and colleagues. Your brand is bolstered. First and last impressions are lasting for job seekers.

4) Design your process to fit your needs: There are a lot of fancy recruiting and hiring software, tests and consultants out there. Many of them are well worth the money. But don’t lose sight of your goal: finding talent that fits your unique needs. If your process is designed correctly you’ll see very few truly unqualified candidates. This will enable you to treat those you do see with all the diligence and respect they deserve.

Implementing a winning candidate experience is an opportunity to strengthen your organization. It dramatically ups the odds of making stellar hires. These hires come into the organization imbued with a positive impression, ready to hit the ground running and deliver amazing performance. They tell their friends, contacts and former colleagues. Word goes out on social media : this is a great company. What goes around comes around. Bring it all home with a candidate experience you’re proud to be part of.

This article was written by Meghan M. Biro from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.

In a previous Forbes post, we considered the disconcerting reality that while we find ourselves in the midst of an unemployment crisis—one characterized by highly educated candidates who are unable to find skilled work—employers from myriad industries are nevertheless reporting that they’re unable to find the talent profiles they’re really looking for. And evidence indicates that this talent gap primarily refers not to an absence of technical skills, but to an absence of “soft skills,” or what we’ll call 21^st century skills. These primarily refer to interpersonal and general analytic abilities like: teamwork, empathy, leadership, negotiation, adaptability, and problem solving.

This is highly useful information to students and educators, but employers can also learn a lot from this research about how to hire successful candidates. The problem is that 21^st century skills are very difficult to assess with any kind of rigor, especially before one can evaluate a candidate on the job. Can a candidate think innovatively? Collaborate with other team members? Assimilate feedback and coaching? Will the candidate get along with her team members and other colleagues? Will she bring personality strengths to the table that the current team might be lacking? Will the candidate be adaptable to new environments and successfully integrate with teams? It is very difficult to reduce these questions to discrete qualifications and quantifiable metrics in the same way we can assess recognized degrees and numerical grades.

Certainly some approaches exist. For example, businesses have used “type”-based personality tests for decades in attempts to measure the 21^st century skills of prospective candidates, assuming that certain personality types would correlate with high performance. One example is the Jung Typology Profiler for Workplace, which purports to measure qualities such as “Power” (leadership index), “Assurance,” “Visionary,” “Rationality,” and so forth.

The reality is that personality tests such as these have serious methodological flaws and lack the statistical reliability to predict performance among prospective employees. In fact, the makers of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a closely-related profiler that also has its origins in Jungian typology, clearly state in their ethical guidelines that “It is unethical, and in many cases illegal, to require job applicants to take the Indicator if the results will be used to screen out applicants.”

It’s clear that we need 21^st century methods to assess 21^st century skills. Unfortunately, that seemingly simple idea proves to be much trickier in practice than it is in theory.

Tools for talent development do not work for pre-employment screening

Part of the problem is that many companies are using the wrong tools for the job.   There is a fundamental difference between tools intended to develop existing teams and tools used for pre-employment selection.

While typical personality tests are poor tools for pre-employment screening, there is evidence that newer tests can help managers better develop and deploy the talent they have already hired. For example, Gallup’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a tool that helps individuals understand and describe their own talents, and is commonly used by managers to understand and capitalize on the strengths of those they hire. More importantly, it is methodologically sound, and its reliability and validity are backed up by clear evidence.

For example, Facebook uses StrengthsFinder in a clever way to deploy talent efficiently. Regardless of the job openings they have available, Facebook simply hires the smartest people it can find, then uses StrengthsFinder results to understand their talents and create a job tailored to the candidate.

One might naturally assume that the same type of test that helps identify and develop strengths in an existing team could also be used to assess suitable candidates for entry into that team. In the words of Gallup, “Absolutely not… A development-oriented assessment such as StrengthsFinder is markedly different from selection tools because its purpose is not to assess whether an individual is suited for a particular job or role. Instead, it aims to provide talent insights for developing strengths within roles.”

Pre-employment selection tools can predict employee performance on the job

Many pre-employment selection tools succeed at predicting performance because they have a completely different design than development tools like personality tests. Instead of seeking general traits and preferences, selection tools are tailored to a particular job in a particular organization, and are statistically calibrated to provide reliable predictive results (i.e., candidates who score highly on these tests also tend to perform well after they’re hired). In addition to the StrengthsFinder development tool, Gallup also offers these pre-employment selection tools, which include analytic services to ensure the validity and predictive value of the measures for candidate screening.

Pairin, Inc. is another organization that seeks to combine the personality test approach with specialized testing (for specific jobs, values, culture, etc.) as part of a pre-employment selection system. Using the Job Pairin System, employers can assess the presence of around 100 coachable/changeable behaviors such as emotional intelligence, leadership, attraction of followers, and even character.

A new spin on the behavioral interview

While services from Gallup and Pairin provide strong, evidence-based methods, the debate on using metrics to assess 21^st century skills will certainly continue. For good or bad, it is unlikely that the traditional way to measure 21^st century skills – the behavioral interview – will be unseated anytime soon. (Behavioral interviews are those that include questions like “Tell me about a time when you worked effectively under pressure.”)

Certainly, behavioral interviewing has problems of its own – for example, canned and otherwise disingenuous responses are all too common. While most companies still use a behavioral interviewing approach, those with top hiring practices tend to put their own clever spin on the questions to weed out rote responses and thus generate better insights from candidates. Questions like this tend to yield a wider spread between canned responses and those that show more nuance and self-awareness. Google also uses behavioral interviews, but structures them in a way that allows them to perform analytics and prove that certain responses predict employee performance.

Beyond the interview

Whatever method companies use to assess 21^st century skills in prospective employees, it’s important that they reflect on the key principles behind the assessment approaches. Findings from research on 21^st century skills provide an extremely valuable lens through which companies can view all interactions with candidates. Consider: What can you teach a new hire on the job, and what can you not teach? With information now abundantly available to us, almost anyone can learn basic Photoshop skills, for example, via online seminars. But what about abstract but indispensable skills like connectedness and empathy – can they be taught on the job?

When you interviewed the person who is now your highest performer, how did you know she would outperform the rest? Did you spot her innate ability to relate to other people, her ability to intuit the needs of different kinds of people? What were the indicators that she possessed those abilities?  We’d like to hear your thoughts on these questions and your experiences with hiring for 21^st century skills.

This post was written by Kate Jenkins, editor at Ashoka and editor-in-chief of The Intentional Quarterly, and James Ray, a Strategy Consultant for Nonprofit, Human Services, and International Development clients at Accenture It was originally published in Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network  This post does not necessarily represent the views of Accenture. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.

Many of us in HR and Leadership circles – I am among them – bemoan the negativity that springs up during the process of recruiting employees, affecting positive candidate experience and your employer brand.  One would think companies would have a stake in ensuring candidates, whether they are hired or not, have a positive experience with the hiring company and your recruiting process. Others might point out that not getting the job is in itself enough to sour the candidate on the company if he or she is passed over. Yet studies have shown even unsuccessful applicants retain a positive experience of the company, if a too-often-overlooked link is maintained: clear, unambiguous communication.

Most people just want to know they’ve been heard. We need the organizations we engage with – as consumers, as personal brands, as parents, as just about anything  – to be clear, to set or correct expectations, and to do us the courtesy of responding. There’s even an annual award for companies that maintain a good candidate experience, the Candidate Experience Awards. I’m proud to be on the council for this organization because it’s such an important cause. The most recent awards report, issued in 2013, highlighted 63 companies that excel at creating a positive candidate experience. Before you roll your eyes and say ‘ugh, another vanity report,” let’s consider the following:

• Nearly 60% of survey respondents (candidates at surveyed companies) feel they have a relationship with a company before they apply for a job. In the Internet age, what recruiter or company would expect anything less? Most people research a company before they decide to apply, using social media, career pages, LinkedIn and networks of acquaintances and friends who work for the target company.
• A staggering 75% of candidates who apply for a job never hear back, according to a recent CareerBuilder survey. Yes, this is staggering and not good. This is unacceptable.

How can any rational Leader or HR team justify this? How can any responsible company decide it isn’t worth the time to respond to an applicant? We’re not even talking constructive feedback here: we’re talking common courtesy. Even an auto-generated email, followed up with a note or call, would be 100 times better than dead silence.

There’s tremendous risk in ignoring applicants, even unqualified applicants, when sites like Glassdoor and blogs are so easy to access – and so simple to use to leave anonymous critique of an employer.

And criticism of an employer brand does not begin and end with a spurned candidate. Your own employees are looking at those sites too. The more often they see their employer called out for shoddy recruiting practices, the more likely they are to decide it’s not a company they want to work for. Then your recruiting problem morphs into a retention problem.

So what’s the solution?

Communication. It’s that simple, and that hard. You must respond and acknowledge applicants, even if it’s via an automated response from an HR software package. If you can provide direct and constructive feedback, so much the better.

Why does communication matter so much?

A 2013-2014 study (download the PDF) by Towers Watson proves the link between ROI and effective communications.  Quoting directly from the report summary (emphasis is mine):

• “Companies with high effectiveness in change management and communication are three and a half times more likely to significantly outperform their industry peers than firms that are not effective in these areas.
• The most effective companies build a differentiated employee value proposition (EVP), and are three times more likely to focus on behaviors that drive organization success instead of focusing on program cost.”

That last point bears repeating: “focus on behaviors that drive organization success.” It’s simple, elemental, and utterly dependent on good communications. To be a successful company, you need to focus on behaviors that foster a culture of success.  Communications is one of those behaviors. Towers Watson reminds readers of its report, quote, “Cultivate a culture of community and information sharing.” Within and without, with employees and candidates, the key to success – and attracting the candidates who will help your business grow – is good communications. There’s just no substitute.

So I’ll throw down a challenge for HR practitioners and Leaders everywhere: tell me about how you communicate successfully. Share how you communicate progress – with job applicants? Where does data fit in? How do you create a workplace culture of open and honest communications with employees, so they recommend your workplace to their peers? What tools do you use – software, back of the envelope, or other – to remind yourself daily that good, honest and direct communications are fundamental HR and Leadership skills?

Let’s close the gap between candidate experience and communications, even if it’s one applicant at a time. Let’s be good communicators, more than just stewards of process and regulations. Let’s take back good HR and Leadership that drives a better culture, before it’s taken away from us. What do you say?

This article was written by Meghan M. Biro from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, the only hiring platform managers and candidates love.