Tag Archives: Human Resources

6 tips for remote hiring success

Posted on

By Sarah K. White

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only shaken up business as usual, sending large portions of the workforce to work from home, it’s also pushed companies to hire from home. Recruiters and hiring managers are now faced with the task of vetting candidates remotely, a challenging prospect for many organizations and roles, especially for technical interviews or for establishing a culture fit. While there are obstacles to this “new normal,” some companies have found positives in the new hiring process.

If your company is one of the many that will be hiring virtually, even temporarily, moving forward, here are six tips to help smooth the transition and ensure a strong candidate fit.

Bring structure to the process

Jocelyn Lai, director of talent acquisition at Duolingo, says her team had just 24 hours to completely revolutionize the company’s hiring process after the COVID-19 lock downs went into effect. Part of that included building out a structured process for recruiters and candidates to follow while the company continued to ramp up hiring.

Lai recommends establishing a quick guide for instructing candidates on how to run through their video and sound equipment ahead of time in case there are any compatibility issues and to give them a general sense of what to expect. The same goes for your recruiters, she says. Make sure everyone is using the same video conferencing software, that they have all the resources for quality video calls and that they are trained on any software or services you may use to conduct any technical interviews.

Bringing structure to the process not only helps your recruiters be effective, but it also alleviates potential added stress on candidates. Candidates may feel more anxious or stressed about a virtual interview, especially if they are new to the process. By “over communicating” with candidates, you can help them feel at ease, which will help avoid any potential performance issues during the interview, Lai says.

Re imagine the technical interview

Technical interviews can pose a unique challenge during the virtual hiring process. Engineers who are used to using physical white boards for technical interviews may have to embrace Google Docs or a third-party service such as HackerRank or CodeSignal. It’s important to take into account any potential limitations of your setup — and to consider giving candidates a chance for a do-over if they’re new to virtual technical interviews. Let candidates know in advance how you plan to conduct technical interviews — again, communication is key in helping ease anxiety and to get the best out of your candidate.

Embrace a new pace

While the current situation isn’t ideal, plenty of companies are finding positives in this new employment landscape. Orkideh Shahidi, vice president of people operations at SADA Systems, says her team had already conducted some virtual interviews prior to the lock downs, but the company’s recruitment process has now moved entirely online due to Covid-19.

One benefit Shahidi has noticed is that, with recruiters and candidates working from home, recruiters are no longer vying for meeting rooms or conference lines, and candidates also have more availability. More over, SADA hiring managers no longer have to wait weeks to schedule time to fly a candidate in for an in-person interview if they’re in another state or country.

“Candidates don’t need to rush to their cars to take a call and we don’t have to wait for them to take a day off to fly over here. It makes the interview process and the hiring process a lot faster,” says Shahidi.

Adjust your outlook on perks

Perks and benefits are big draws for tech candidates. Tech giants like Facebook, Microsoft and Google are well known for in-office perks such as unique working spaces, healthy snacks, free meals, on-site gyms and roof decks.

With new hires likely working from home for the foreseeable future, however, these perks are off the table, Lai says. If your organization leans on these perks to sway talent, you’ll need to find other ways to get candidates engaged in your corporate culture.

“Once you remove the perks, there is nothing to stand on, so it’s all about authenticity now. Now there’s another bar that companies have to hit in terms of candidate experience and it’s that authenticity piece because you have nothing to hide behind,” says Lai.

Source: CIO Magazine

How businesses could emerge better after COVID-19, according to B Lab

Posted on

By Adele Peters

As the coronavirus crisis and the ensuing economic fallout grows, many companies shifted their policies—in some cases, giving low-wage hourly and gig workers temporary access to paid sick leave for the first time. But when the crisis is over, will the companies that survive make more lasting changes?

Andrew Kassoy, cofounder of B Lab, an organization that certifies companies that focus on social good as B Corporations (B Corps for short), argues that the pandemic might accelerate shifts that were already underway. “I think there is already a new consensus that has formed over the last couple of years that we were moving from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism,” he says, pointing to examples such as a 2019 letter signed by CEOs in the Business Roundtable that signaled a new commitment, at least in words, to more social responsibility.

“I think that message has already been heard loud and clear in the culture,” he says. “And I think this crisis creates an opportunity because it makes it clear that we haven’t built a resilient economic system. This is an opportunity for us to focus on both how business and government play a role in building a more resilient economic system for the next crisis, and there’ll be more of these.”

The current crisis makes it obvious, if it wasn’t already, how many people have been living financially fragile lives. “There’s this oft-quoted statistic that 40% of Americans aren’t prepared for a $500 emergency, and now, we’re all having that emergency together,” Kassoy says. “While shareholder primacy didn’t cause the COVID-19 crisis, it certainly laid bare the fact that we have a system where workers and communities aren’t prepared for a downturn like this. You can see it in how fast the unemployment numbers went up. You can see the desperation of lots of workers to find alternative sources of income and the need for a massive bailout. And so in a different system, where companies were actually paying our workers well enough that people had reserves, we might be in a different situation than we are today and needing a multi-trillion-dollar bailout. And this will only be the first of several, I’m sure.”

Kassoy argues that B Corps, which have to meet strict standards for social and environmental performance, are actually better prepared to weather crises; during the last financial crisis, B Corps were 63% more likely than other businesses of a similar size to make it through the downturn. “We think that’s because those companies were more resilient,” he says. “They had stronger relationships with their workers, or their customers, or through their supply chains, that allowed them to make it through. I hope that we’ll see something similar this time around.”

It’s possible that more companies will choose to make changes to benefit workers. While many businesses are obviously struggling now, when the economy improves, some may decide to pay living wages and offer better benefits rather than adding to oversized CEO pay or making other investments.

Investors should also push for broader improvements, Kassoy says. “It’s pretty tough to expect individual heroic CEOs to change the whole business system. So we need the investment community to play a role as well. They, more than individual companies, have an interest in the stability of the whole system.” Government also has an obvious role—both in terms of setting conditions on companies if they’re given bailouts during the crisis, and by passing laws to permanently improve policies such as sick leave and access to healthcare. “It’s really about changing the rules of the game so that all companies have to be like B Corps.”

“If we get to the other side of this and we end up with the same system that we started with,” Kassoy says, “then we won’t have learned much.”

 

Source: Fast Company

Leadership assessment: Do men and women influence differently?

Posted on

By Darleen DeRosa

Do men and women lead differently in the workplace? Based on much of the research, the short answer is “yes.” Although the gender leadership differences often align with the stereotype that women lead with a more interpersonal style and men with a more task-oriented style, it appears that gender does play a role in leadership style and preferences.

Because a leader’s success often depends upon their ability to gain the support and cooperation of people who frequently have competing priorities or conflicting goals, OnPoint Consulting wanted to understand what gender differences, if any, exist in how leaders use influence. To help answer this question, we used a 360° feedback questionnaire to collect data on the influencing skills of 223 leaders (116 men and 107 women) across organizations and industries.

While the data pointed to some significant differences in the approaches men and women use to gain others’ buy-in and support, we also uncovered some surprising similarities. The following is a summary of our findings.

Most Effective Influence Tactics
Our previous research on influence identified 11 influencing tactics used by the most effective managers. We then grouped these tactics according to their effectiveness in gaining others’ support and commitment—most effective, moderately effective, and least effective tactics. The four tactics that are most effective in gaining commitment from others are: Continue reading →

The most underused asset at work: being human

Posted on

By William Arruda

I was moderating a panel on leadership for a client of mine and received the bios of the three very accomplished executive panelists. All three bios were simply a list of credentials— impressive credentials, but that was it.

There was nothing human. Nothing personal. Nothing that gave the audience any understanding of their thoughts on leadership or success. This robotic resume in prose form is all too common, and it erases our most valuable asset: our humanity. Especially in our digital world, being yourself—your unique, human self—gives you a distinctive competitive edge.

Yet somehow we have been led to believe that at work, we must diminish our humanity, behaving (and appearing) like robots who are prized for their automation and conformity. When we get to the office, we leave our true selves at the door, ramp up our “work” mindset and keep our human traits muzzled until we leave for the evening. The belief that we need to be as efficient as an LED bulb and as knowledgeable as Wikipedia, as productive as an assembly line and as human as a doorknob, might have worked in the industrial age, but we have been in the relationship economy for decades.

Today, we can’t afford to forget the one ingredient that’s essential for business success— humanity. After all, relationships are the currency of business. More than ever, business is a truly human endeavor. Continue reading →

Women Chairs: The Time Is Now

Posted on
By Helen Pitcher OBE, Chair of Advanced Boardroom Solutions

 

With more women as board chairs, business can better serve society.

Companies should benefit all their stakeholders. This is increasingly on the minds of regulators, activists, politicians, pension investors and individuals of this world. As Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of Blackrock, wrote in his 2019 Letter to CEOs, “society is increasingly looking to companies, both public and private, to address pressing social and economic issues”.

If we want boards to deliver benefits for a wider stakeholder group – and stop focusing on short-term profits – we need to shift the dial on women becoming chair of these boards. Failing that, the corporate landscape won’t change.

While there are excellent male chairs, too many are products of the old boys’ network. These men pay scant attention to their increasing accountability towards stakeholders beyond their shareholders. In the United Kingdom, the days of the Financial Reporting Council (the watchdog for auditors, accountants and actuaries) are now numbered after it was embroiled in one controversy too many.

Why more women chairs is a game changer

McKinsey & Company has a long history of published reports that have established the business case for diversity. Organisations with greater gender diversity outperform others, typically have a healthier risk profile and make better investment decisions. All of this generates greater client and customer satisfaction.

Based on peer-reviewed research, surveys and anecdotal evidence, we now know what makes an effective board chair. Beyond the obvious group of traits including integrity, personal strength, courage and intelligence, the critical skills are:

  • an ability to influence others without dominating
  • an engaged vision of the future
  • strong emotional intelligence
  • coaching skills.

If we schematise the skills of an effective chairperson, it may look like this:

At the base of the pyramid lie the rules-based, measurable hard skills. While they are necessary, they can be taught and learnt.

At the top of the pyramid, we find the intuition-based soft skills that require a high emotional quotient (EQ). Those skills can only be developed through experience, practice and internal focus.

EQ & soft skills are more often associated with women than men. Though differences between ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ traits have little bearing on the attributes of individual men and women, research does not support the notion that men are somehow better suited to the chairperson role.

It should be clear that women are just as capable as men in directing and chairing our companies. Furthermore, they have as much right to succeed, and fail, as their male counterparts do. Our reservoir of chair talent is not so great that we can afford to ignore 50 percent of the potential candidates.

Time to accelerate the pace of change

As the leaders of our companies are called upon to strengthen their engagement with society and all stakeholders, we need to better understand and articulate what a chair role entails. The “job description” must move beyond the domineering CEO stereotype, with its descriptors of drive, ambition and ruthlessness.

The soft skills of facilitation, collaboration, listening, synthesising, defusing conflict and ensuring consensus are the hallmarks of a successful chair. At the other end of the spectrum, directive, overly assertive and antagonistic are the traits of an ineffective chair.

By acting as role models, women chairs can provide additional societal benefits. For instance, they can act as a driving force for empowerment and to promote the inclusion of a broader talent pool. In the UK, advocates of increased acceleration of women in chair roles are multiplying. They include existing female directors, the Women on Boards network, the International Women’s Forum (IWF), Men as Change Agents (MACA), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the Institute of Directors (IoD) and the 30% Club.

While the positive pressure for more diverse boards does show results, the action on women chairs is far behind. Too many active resistors – including old-style chairmen and nomination committees – continue to reinforce the false idea that chairs must have at least a decade of board work under their belt. Head hunters tend to say that female chairs are difficult to find, repeating a narrative they used before national targets were established for women on boards. The statistics show this is not true.

Stopping the erosion of trust in business

We need a strong push to free boards held hostage by reductionist thinking. According to research by INSEAD Professor Stanislav Shekshnia, only 20 percent of boards in the UK will be women-led by 2027. This is not enough. It is time to take action to accelerate the acquisition of more female chairs, right across the public and private corporate environment.

In the UK, the new Combined Code with its cap of nine years of service on a single board will create more churn. Investment companies must start asking mediocre chairmen to step down. Women need a greater number of enthusiastic sponsors and more board-level development. I challenge more female directors to aim for the top role.

Having more women chairs will help rebuild the trust in our corporate environment and foster businesses that deliver performance mixed with social and environmental benefits. It may just be the key to a new era of sustainable long-term profit.

Helen Pitcher OBE (IDP-C) is the chair of Advanced Boardroom Excellence, which works with board effectiveness, board evaluation reviews and coaching chairs, CEOs and NEDs. She is a graduate of INSEAD’s International Director’s Programme.

Source: INSEAD