In my post a couple of weeks ago, I noted that Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report shows that talent is now the third-most important concern of senior business leaders – and that I wouldn’t be surprised if it ranked at number one or two in the next year.

That’s because shrinking talent pools put recruiters under enormous pressure to find the sourcing channels that work best and to use them to their best advantage.

What are some of the best practices suggested in Bersin by Deloitte’s research report? How do they work in real-world settings? Those issues are what two experts covered during our August 22 webinar, “Better Talent Faster? It’s Possible!”

Here are some key takeaways I found quite revealing,

Sponsored by SmartRecruiters and Bersin by Deloitte, this webinar featured two well-known recruiting and talent acquisition leaders:

• Robin Erickson, Vice President, Talent Acquisition, Engagement, & Retention at Bersin by Deloitte
• Sarah Wilson, Director, Talent Acquisition & Performance Management at Indigo Books & Music

During the session, Robin pointed out the sourcing strategies used by companies that rank highly at talent acquisition, and how they differ from those used by organizations that don’t rank as highly. Sarah explained some of the tactics Indigo uses to take full advantage of these strategies.

The 3 top talent sources

You’ll want to watch the webinar for all the details, of course, but the recent Bersin by Deloitte study was quite thorough. It reviewed practices at companies ranked as “mature” at talent acquisition to other companies — and as Robin explained, the top three talent sourcing channels at higher-ranking companies included:

• Employee referrals: a valuable and inexpensive resource
• Professional networking: tactics for sourcing specific roles at a reasonable cost
• Internal candidates: an excellent source for those who already understand your organization and more likely to become high performers

Notice two glaring resources missing from this list? What about job boards and recruiting agencies? Robin explained that those sources reflect 41 percent of spending at the least mature companies, but only 23 percent at the most mature organizations.

Although these three sources offer exceptional potential, how are they used in actual practice?

Referrals: “A huge area”

During the webinar, Sarah described some of the challenges for hiring at Indigo, an organization with 200+ stores across Canada, plus an online store. These include seasonal retail demand, a wide range of work environments and roles, and a decentralized hiring model.

Sarah pointed out that employee referrals are “a huge area for us” because it makes sense to “pay our people instead of strangers for the same outcome.” She did make it clear, however, that referral programs must be consistent and transparent to inspire employees to consider referrals – and that incentives need to be designed carefully with strict definitions of what roles are deemed hard to fill.

Finding “purple squirrels” through professional networking

Robin explained that professional networking and social media sites may not always be as efficient as other sources on an overall basis in terms of spending, but with sophisticated search capabilities, sites such as LinkedIn make it easier to find those elusive “purple squirrels” for hard-to-fill roles.

Sarah shared that Indigo made a specific decision to confine its budget in this area to LinkedIn. Although this source represents only a “small sliver” of filled roles, it results in high-quality hires.

Emphasizing internal mobility

Robin pointed out that although resources allocated to finding candidates inside the organization amounts to about 6 percent of spending, it’s a source that represents 14 percent of jobs filled – offering a high ROI.

Sarah’s experience at Indigo suggests that because the company invests in understanding its employees and their career aspirations, internal candidates represent a rich resource of high-quality talent.

As she explained, those hired from within Indigo already understand its culture, so there’s less turnover and less ramp-up time. In fact, Sarah said that Indigo filled 74 percent of its field leadership roles internally in the last 12 months.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the great ideas from this insightful webinar, so be sure to watch it. And thanks to Robin and Sarah for such an excellent presentation!

We work with our customers every day to make it easier to attract top talent and achieve hiring success. But what prevents that success is mistakes – big ones. And often it’s the very same mistakes that crop up again and again (and again!).

Why? I can’t say for sure. But after reading Lou Adler’s recent post on the topic, I began to realize that in some cases, the rush to fill roles leads to missing opportunities to add more value to the process with just a few refinements. If you take a step back and look at your hiring process and tactics from a wider perspective, those opportunities become a lot more obvious.

With that in mind, here are the three most common mistakes I see and, even better, suggestions for fixing them.

Because recruiters are under so much pressure to quickly fill roles, it becomes easier to rely on the same strategies and tactics time and again, but some of them don’t fit today’s competitive market for talent.

So take some time to review your hiring practices and ask yourself if you’re making any of these three key hiring mistakes:

1. Focusing more on employer branding at the expense of selling specific jobs

There’s no doubt that organizations with the best employer brands get their choice of highly talented candidates far more quickly and at a lower cost than other organizations. And they make better hires, which prevents costly turnover.

Yet in many cases — especially for passive candidates — your employer brand becomes less meaningful than the specific opportunities you present. If you view branding as an essential aspect of marketing, go to the head of the class! But don’t forget that you’ll need to put your sales hat on from time to time, too.

For any role, think of a 10-second elevator pitch that job and how it will benefit a candidate’s career in specific terms. If you can persuade a candidate that they’ll be working on something really meaningful to them, you may not need to represent a well-known company to gain a significant interest.

2. Job descriptions focused on skills and experience, not about the work

I see too many job descriptions that emphasize “required” and “desired” skills and experience, but is that what you’re really looking for?

Conditions that a candidate has spent a specific time in a specific industry may seem too arbitrary and not zero in on the key question: Can a candidate accomplish the goals you need to be met?

So instead of highlighting skills, (“5+ years of operations experience with at least 2 years at a supervisory level…”), list what needs to be done. For example, “Prepare weekly operations reports detailing…”

Most candidates merely scan job posts anyway. Those seemingly arbitrary specification of experience may turn off promising candidates. Focusing more on expectations for success is far more enticing. Indeed, those who are passionate about meeting and exceeding those expectations are often the very best candidates.

3. Relying on standard 30-minute interviews

How did the tradition of a series of separate interviews, for example five 30-minute interviews, evolve? I’m not sure, but all too often, it’s just a waste of everyone’s time. Given that the same overall basic aspects about a candidate’s experience, values, and goals are covered again and again, why not hold one 90-minute or two-hour panel interview for promising?

No, it’s not as easy to arrange, but it allows drilling more deeply into a candidate’s potential, and even better, adds objectivity by preventing individual interviewers from forming subjective first-impression biases on their own.

Easily fixed?

Are these mistakes “easy” to fix? Perhaps not. For example, changing interview practices and learning to write better job descriptions does take some time and resources.

But the decision to fix the mistake? That’s easy — do it. You won’t regret it.

You probably don’t need yet another reminder that keeping your talent pipeline filled with high-quality candidates isn’t getting any easier — a trend not likely to change anytime soon.

Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report notes that talent acquisition ranks number three as a top concern of business leaders. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ranks number two or even number one next year.

So don’t miss our upcoming August 22 webinar, “Better Talent Faster? It’s Possible!” — when two leading talent acquisition professionals will reveal the top three sourcing channels where the most successful companies focus their resources.

You’ll get plenty of data-driven insights on these sources, plus actual examples of how one successful retailer uses these channels to keep their talent pipeline filled with excellent candidates.

Bersin by Deloitte has compared the top sourcing channels successfully used by companies ranked as “mature” talent acquisition organizations to those that aren’t as highly ranked.

Robin Erickson, Vice President, Talent Acquisition, Engagement, & Retention at Bersin by Deloitte will present some of these findings.

She will be joined by Sarah Wilson, Director, Talent Acquisition & Performance Management at Indigo Books & Music, who will show you how she and her team use these top sourcing channels in actual practice.

Real-world case study on how top organizations source the best talent

Deloitte’s report points out that a company ranked as “mature” at talent acquisition as a business function is 2.6 times more likely to have a robust talent pipeline than other companies. Robin will explain best practices that contribute to greater success.

To see how these best practices work in action, Sarah will present a wide variety of strategies and tactics Indigo uses in maintaining its talent pipeline for an organization with 200+ stores across Canada, plus an online store. Employing more than 6,000 people and making more than 4,000 hires per year, Indigo’s sourcing challenges include:

• A decentralized hiring model that requires effective collaboration between managers and recruiters dispersed across a wide region
• Seasonal hiring reflected in spurts of high-volume recruiting
• A retail environment that makes candidate experience critical because candidates may also be customers

Three top talent sources

As Robin and Sarah present both data and various sourcing strategies, they’ll explain how the best companies use these three top talent sources:

1. Employee referrals: Learn how sourcing from inside the organization can be a valuable and inexpensive resource, and how various incentives and criteria can create a competitive advantage.
2. Professional networking: Discover the many benefits of networking, but also pitfalls, and why Indigo made a significant decision to focus on only one specific networking resource.
3. Internal candidates: Find out how to identify highly qualified candidates within your organization and determine which ones are likely to be high performers.

Turning data into action

I’ve seen some of this research and the success Indigo has enjoyed putting these ideas to work. The results will be surprising – so you won’t want to miss this August 22 webinar. Yes, it is possible to acquire better talent faster, so register now.

Is working in your organization a dull and dreary chore? The careers section of your website might make it seem so. That’s a shame. I see so many career pages that are so boring and lifeless when I know the company is actually an exciting place to be.

Remember that your main careers page is not just a place to collect information from candidates. It’s your introduction, your chance to make a great first impression. Attracting top talent requires an attractive presentation. Make the most of it.

Here are examples of 10 companies with career pages that are both attractive and communicate the essence of the organization’s mission, values, and employer brand.

These 10 companies, not in any specific order, each offer insights into techniques you might want to consider as you update your career site

10. iAdvize

iAdvize is a leading real-time customer engagement platform in Europe used in 40 different countries, promoting itself as adding a “human touch” to customer service.

The career page makes excellent use of video to show off its team and explain what life at work is really like. Also impressive is that the site has a prominent “our advice” section that demonstrates a level of transparency into the application and evaluation process that candidates appreciate.

9. Oath

Oath is a new subsidiary of Verizon, including brands such as AOL, Yahoo!, and others with a career page making it clear that “opportunity is infinite” to “build brands people love.”

Rebranding for multiple brands is never easy, but this career page displays a minimalist design that’s clean so it’s easy to find those opportunities at specific brands. There’s an attractive global map of job locations and dynamic imagery that makes it clear that “having fun at work isn’t optional.”

8. Balsam Brands

Balsam Brands is a home decor and consumer products company best known for their ultra realistic artificial Christmas trees. Their warm and engaging careers page leads with company culture.

Job openings are presented in a simple, clear, yet attractive layout while colorful and expressive photography conveys the company’s fun work environment. The related Team page emphasizes the value they place on their people – highlighting company trips and office games as well as the unique personalities of their employees.

7. Visa

Visa asks visitors to “find your everywhere” with an employer brand that fits the “everywhere you want to be” framework of its overall branding.

At the careers page, it’s easy to find potential roles. Content introduces visitors to people who work at Visa, and explains the company’s mission and commitment to giving back to the community. It also links to various social media networks so everyone can discover their “everywhere.”

6. Square

Square makes it clear that they are “looking for curious, hard-working leaders to join our team” on its page that presents information clearly and concisely, yet also shows specific areas of expertise asking candidates to “see where you fit in.”

The page also includes a section that features teams that are in exceptional need for high-quality talent.

5. PayScale

PayScale, a salary, benefits and compensation information company, displays its core values clearly on its career site: trust, creativity, fun, and community – under an umbrella employer brand of “Important work. Fun play.”

The page also presents its generous benefits in a “pretty sweet deal” section, which include a list of more than a dozen perks to impress potential candidates.

4. Atlassian

Atlassian, a global provider of collaboration technology displays a colorful career page that introduces some of its team members, not only in terms of their job, but also their outside interests ranging from juggling to dancing to knitting.

This approach adds a dynamic personality to the site, which also clearly shows the awards Atlassian has won as a great place to work, the company’s values, plus its many perks.

3. Pluralsight

Pluralsight, a leading enterprise technology learning platform dedicated to “democratize professional technology learning,” makes that mission clear in a video that appears front and center asking candidates, “Are you ready for new challenges and new opportunities?”

In addition, a clearly designed section for searching for opportunities plus two clear links to guides on benefits and corporate culture offers candidates quick access to information they’re looking for.

2. Equinox

Equinox operates 80+ upscale, full-service clubs in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, offering exceptionally designed facilities and specialized training to those who aspire to a high-performance lifestyle.

The career site clearly presents the company’s mission, ambitions, and values with a design that matches its upscale branding and makes it easy to search for opportunities.

1. Scality

Scality, the world leader in object and cloud storage, makes it abundantly clear on its site that the company expects to “revolutionize enterprise storage.” There’s a clear link to the company’s hiring strategy, which makes it process and expectations transparent.

The main career page also features company employees so candidates can find out more about the team with another section showing how the company is committed to recognizing individual excellence.

Your one first impression. Make it count.

You only have one chance to make a great first impression. Today’s candidates are not impressed by a list of job ads, but will engage with you if you demonstrate your culture, your values, the benefits you offer, and potential for career advancement.

Don’t waste these opportunities to make your career brand really shine! It’s not that difficult, but this is an investment that pays off in filling roles in a lot less time at a far lower cost.

A recent Deloitte report, “2017 Global Human Capital Trends,” contains a wealth of information about demographic and economic trends that put technology into a much sharper focus as HR organizations begin to establish digital leadership.

Think about this: Executives surveyed for the report ranked talent acquisition as their third most essential challenge, with more than 80 percent defining it as “important” or “very important.”

The result is that recruiting and HR professionals are scrambling to demonstrate technology leadership — a bit ironic considering that HR has traditionally been a laggard, not a leader in this area.

But that’s changing. Deloitte’s report is certainly a wake-up call. As transformation accelerates ever more rapidly, innovative technologies become even more essential.

In the past, HR has traditionally been characterized more as a “support” function — delivering services to hiring managers, tracking applicants and employees, and maintaining compliance. As HR teams are now under pressure to fill roles in a world where the talent pool is quickly shrinking, leaders are asking themselves how to create more digital opportunities to be more competitive.

“Be” digital — don’t just “do” digital

I see this shift in a wide range of organizations — in full agreement with Deloitte’s view that hiring success will come from a focus to “be” digital, not just “do” digital.

The difference may seem subtle, but it represents an entirely new way of thinking about technology. Legacy systems and processes won’t be up to the competitive challenge as more companies become digital organizations in actual practice, not just “talk the talk.” HR teams will need to be empowered to embrace the essence of “being” digital.

Artificial intelligence to cope with growing transparency

Roughly 33 percent of HR teams reported that they are using some type of artificial intelligence to address the need to make better hiring decisions. These technologies enable data-driven decisions, yet also bring with them the need for far more transparency.

Only a few years ago, HR processes and performance were exceedingly opaque, both within organizations and to candidates applying for positions. Now the environment has shifted, making it essential to not only acknowledge but welcome transparency.

For example, compensation data is far more widely distributed across social networks and on sites such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor. Candidate experiences are also far more widely shared, making it more important to use the best technologies available to deliver a more engaging experience these candidates discuss online.

Being prepared for being digital

As transformative change continues to evolve, business leaders – especially in HR – need to adopt new practices for leading, organizing, motivating, managing, and engaging a workforce for the 21st century.

The report recommends several steps and best practices. These include:

• Upgrade technology: Replace legacy systems with integrated cloud-based platforms that are far easier to use and streamline processes.
• Build a digital HR team: Dedicate staff to exploring new vendor solutions, including artificial intelligence and cognitive computing to improve recruiting, collaboration, and decision making.
• Benchmark: Study how other organizations meet similar challenges, plus join organizations where industry professionals discuss these issues.

No, it’s not easy to become digital, but emerging macro trends and a changing economy demand that you do so. Your new focus needs to center on more than merely delivering a service, but to optimize productivity, create more engaging candidate experiences, and to take full advantage of artificial intelligence and other new technologies to make data-driven decisions.

Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report is certainly a wake-up call – and well worth reading.

Some think that, during an interview, it’s the candidate who is in the hot seat. But often, the tables are turned.

Every recruiting and hiring professional knows that interview questions can be a dangerous area. We’ve all heard stories about expensive action taken by a candidate who has been asked illegal questions—putting the interviewer and the company in the hot seat instead.

Regulations are designed to avoid blatant bias and encourage diversity, which we all embrace. In many cases, however, we need specific information to make an informed hiring decision, but asking these questions in a compliant manner can be tricky.

In most cases, however, you can get answers you need. It’s often not what you ask, but how you ask that makes the difference.

One rule of thumb that’s best to follow for interview questions: ask yourself if the questions are candidate related or job related.

Tread carefully when asking candidate related questions. If you’re asking about the ability to perform a specific job, it’s more likely to be an appropriate question to get the information you need to make a decision.

Keeping interview questions focused on jobs

Here are a few examples that illustrate my point:

• Work schedule: Let’s say you’re hiring for a position that requires Saturday working hours. Some who strictly follow specific religions may not be able to do so.  Asking a question about a candidate’s religion is illegal. Asking if a candidate has any limitations on schedule availability is appropriate.
• Disability: You cannot ask a candidate directly about their health or disabilities. But perhaps you’re hiring for a role that requires frequent travel. Asking a question about availability for traveling and what accommodations they may need to do so can be a legitimate question.
• Family status: You are not allowed to ask questions about an applicant’s family or whether they plan to start a family. You can, however, ask a question about whether that candidate can accept a job with a work schedule that requires a specific level of flexibility.

Do you see a pattern here? Questions that may be important in evaluating a candidate’s suitability for a job can often be asked, but only if you ask about it in terms of the job, not about the candidate. These types of questions must be asked very carefully, or not at all.

Obviously, questions about race and ethnic background are illegal and should never be asked. Asking about gender can also be risky (unless it’s specific to a specialized role, such as working in a locker room).

Be consistent: Maintain ongoing training

The best way to stay out of hot water on interviewing practices is to maintain consistency in your questions and processes. Avoid the tendency to allow hiring managers to “wing it.”

Ongoing training can help make sure your organization remains compliant. After all, studies have shown that up to 20% of employers unknowingly ask questions that may be illegal and up to 30% of hiring managers often can’t even tell if a specific question is legal or not.

It’s all about the job

In the end, an interview can be both informative and compliant when questions are focused on the job to be filled. Ask about skills, experience, stories of how a candidate has succeeded or even has failed and what they learned.

Lead with questions like these and avoid asking about a candidate’s specific attributes. That will keep you out of the hot seat, help protect against potential legal action, and allow you to make more informed hiring decisions.

You might think I failed math class if I tell you how one SmartRecruiters client now saves 1,100 hours every week. After all, there are only 167 hours in an entire week if you work every hour every day.

Based on an 8-hour day, those hours add up to the equivalent of 137 work days – about half a year of one person’s time.

But yes, when one of our clients, DFC Global Corporation (also known as Dollar Financial Group), first adopted SmartRecruiters to automate manual tasks, company recruiters and administrators gained 1,100 more hours per week to spend on more essential tasks.

Not only that, as this case study notes, they’re sourcing 30 percent more qualified candidates at the same time.

How does DFC source more qualified candidates in a lot less time? As Jason Fischer, DFC Director of North American Talent Acquisition explains, the processes his team were using were virtually prehistoric.

“Before SmartRecruiters we were in the dark ages.”

During those dark ages, DFC recruiters were incredibly frustrated by inefficient processes, poor visibility on status of job openings and progress, and an inability to effectively track performance, let alone achieve hiring success. Recruiters and hiring managers were sifting through hundreds of responses and screening candidates one at a time.

That’s why Jason says that “before SmartRecruiters, we were in the dark ages.” He’s right. The company had been using email and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets as their “solution.”

Wow! That seems painful.

As Jason explains, “Finding a solution that was leading-edge in terms of recruiting capabilities was a top priority. Our leaders were spending far too much time on manual hiring processes and not focusing on the things they needed to be focused on like running their business.”

It’s even more painful when you consider that DFC isn’t hiring at high volumes. As a leading financial organization, DFC Global has 1,000 locations with 6,500 employees in seven countries. Its North American recruiting team alone needs to make more than 1,000 hires per year – in coordination with local hiring managers in 700 locations.

“It has transformed our company.”

As the company evaluated new talent acquisition solutions, DFC had three criteria for their new platform:

• Easy to learn and easy to use in order to centralize recruiting teams across multiple brands
• Flexible integration with other human resource tools
• Analytics on operational, sourcing and pipeline metrics to track effectiveness

The company selected SmartRecruiters and nearly instantly realized significant improvements. These include:

• Eliminating approximately 900 hours per week in manually transferring candidate assessments
• Reducing administrative recruiting tasks by approximately 200 hours per week
• Increasing the number of qualified candidates to present to hiring managers by 30 percent

Jason and his team now have the insights and knowledge to make better hiring decisions to support the company’s growth.

“SmartRecruiters has been able to deliver a system to really provide value to our recruiters and hiring managers while being adaptable and open to our needs. It has transformed our company,” Jason points out, explaining that hiring managers at hundreds of locations can better “focus on their business.”

Now that the company uses SmartRecruiters, they’ve said goodbye to email and Excel spreadsheets. They’ve said goodbye to the Dark Ages of recruiting with all of its tedious manual processes.

Being able to focus more on business and less on routine tasks. Saving 1,100 hours per week. Finding more qualified candidates. That’s what happens when you update from the Dark Ages to a modern talent acquisition suite.