In this Issue:
Topic of the Month: "Now is the Time to Market Your Company"
Act Now! Supplies are Unlimited!
Article: 10 Great Ways to Make Bad Hiring Decisions
This Issue's Cartoon!
Now is the Time to Market Your Company
One of the first expenses some companies are likely to cut back on during slower economic times is marketing. What those companies fail to take into consideration is that now is the optimum time to attract the most qualified candidates.
But only if the money spent is aimed at the proper target and attracts the right kind of professional. If you want to spend less but still reap a great harvest, then turn to ConstructionJobs.com.
Our job board specializes in introducing the finest professionals to the strongest clients. We simplify your recruiting efforts and reduce your cost.
Construction Jobs has more than doubled in size over the past year. We currently have over 150,000 construction professionals seeking employment through our site.
Now is the time to find the perfect candidate for your company. In a season of economic turmoil, job seekers often assess their careers and look to secure their future. Smart professionals work hard at their jobs but also allow themselves to visit our site and see if a position is open which might have greater challenges and an alliance with a company they’ve always dreamed of working for.
This interest from an ever-growing base of candidates gives hiring managers the advantage of being selective, but it can also be intimidating for organizations that aren’t used to dealing with a large volume of applicants. To address that, Construction Jobs filters the number of unqualified candidates and keeps countless unnecessary resumes from cluttering your desk.
Further, a slower economy provides an opportunity for an organization to recruit high quality candidates that have recently found themselves in the job market. Below, you will find a few suggestions to aide you in your search for the perfect candidate.
- Be selective - You are likely to receive a number of qualified candidates who are interested in working for your organization. When you set up application parameters on a job on our site, narrow down the group by including criteria other than just experience and education. Review other qualities such as enthusiasm for and experience in the projects your company builds, cultural fit within your organization, strong interpersonal communication, empathy, and likeability.
- Don’t settle for less – When unemployment climbs even a little, candidates become desperate to find a job and will be willing to work for less money that their experience, education and skills would normally demand in order to make themselves more attractive. Reducing employment cost is tempting, but may cost more in the long run.
- Wait for the perfect candidate – Even though it may seem reasonable to hire a candidate that has some but not all of your desired qualifications, bringing on anything less than the best will rob your organization of possibilities and profits. Be patient: Construction Jobs receives between 6,000 and 10,000 new candidates each month. Your perfect match is out there.
If your organization is planning to hire anyone over the next several months, now is the time to start marketing your company to job seekers. With a plethora of candidates seeking employment and with that number continuing to grow, chances are the right candidate for your position is out there. Don’t wait!
Dyel Sigmon
Regional Account Executive
Article: Act Now! Supplies are Unlimited!
I was watching a football game last week when an advertisement came on hoping to sell me some revolutionary new cleaning product that would restore luster to my carpets or revitalize my upholstery or make my kitchen counters shine like new. I’m not sure what the product specialized in: I didn’t really pay attention to that. But I was unable to ignore the announcer screaming that I had better “ACT NOW! Supplies are limited!”
Sure, supplies are limited. Truckloads of that revolutionary cleaner are leaving the warehouse every ten minutes, so I better call now to get my share.
Well, rest assured, that we at ConstructionJobs.com are not going to lambast you with advertising aimed at inducing panic buying in our clients.
Plus, here, supplies are unlimited and are expanding every week, not diminishing. We have a greater supply of our product now than we had last week, and about five times greater than a year ago, and about ten times greater than two years ago, and so on.
And what is this revolutionary new product that we can offer you? It is the exact professional you need to help your company grow and prosper. The foreman who can revolutionize that jobsite! The project manager who can revitalize an entire crew! That estimator who can restore luster to the estimating department. Supplies are unlimited!
Well, of course, our database of strong and experienced construction professionals is not unlimited. But the unique place we hold in the industry has attracted thousands of professionals who trust us to help them meet client companies who are, like them, eager and ambitious and proud of the work that they do.
The ability of ConstructionJobs.com to present solid opportunities to the candidate by earning the trust of some of the best companies in construction means we have a growing supply of first-rate builders who have sent their resumes and project lists to us.
So, don’t wait and miss the chance to attract some of those talented men and women. Don’t lose them to your competitors. In the words of every screaming television shill for every over-hyped product, ACT NOW!
Now, or anytime that fits the plans and needs of your company. Our staff of knowledgeable and friendly account representatives is standing by.
10 Great Ways to Make Bad Hiring Decisions
By Lou Adler
- Make emotional decisions and justify them with facts. Most interviewers make quick judgments about a candidate based on the four “A’s” – how attractive, articulate, assertive, and affable the candidate is. Candidates who pass the test are asked easier questions, with the interviewer looking for information to justify the positive impression. Contradictory and negative information is ignored. Candidates who don’t meet the appropriate first impression standard are assumed incompetent, with the interviewer asking tougher questions and seeking only information to prove their initial emotional judgment. Why waste your valuable time? Instead, just conduct a five-minute interview and forget collecting any facts. It won’t make any difference in your final decision, anyway.
- Do not seek out objective data if it contradicts your beliefs or ignore it if you find some. I remember meeting a very attractive and seemingly quite competent candidate for a VP HR spot, who gave a superficial answer to an HR strategy question. I had to fight with myself about whether to ask a challenging follow-up question which would prove she was unqualified on this important job criteria. After some soul searching, I asked the question, which she flubbed, and she was not presented. The point of this is that it’s very tough to eliminate a candidate you like, and even tougher to seek out positive information for candidates you don’t initially think would fit. So rather than get to the truth, go the easy route, and trust your gut feelings and first impressions.
- Make sure no one knows the real job. The purpose of the interview is to determine competency and motivation to do the actual work required. If you don’t know what work the candidate is actually going to be doing it’s impossible to assess motivation. Compentency, on the other hand, is pretty easy to figure out with just a rough understanding of job needs. Unfortunately, when you look at the underperformers in your company, you’ll discover most of them are quite competent to do the work, they just don’t find the work they’re doing very satisfying. These are the people that need to be over-managed and pushed to achieve average results. So to make sure you hire more of these people, go out of your way to not tell the person you’re hiring anything about the job until the day she starts. What a surprise that will be.
- Use skills-based job descriptions to find, screen, and assess candidates. The best candidates tend to have a track record of achievement, comparable (but not identical) skills, and are quick-learners. This is how the best talent is promoted within an organization. Yet, when hiring from outside we use a criteria that eliminates these top performers from consideration, seeking only those candidates who have exactly the right skills doing exactly the same work. The only people who fit this criteria are average candidates. So keep up the average work. While you won’t get promoted, you will get hired.
- Make sure your ads are hard to find. When top people begin the job-hunting process they tend to seek out former associates, Google for jobs (e.g., “construction jobs Dallas”), or conduct some top-down industry research looking for the best industries and companies that meet their needs. If your jobs can’t be easily found by candidates using these techniques, you’ll never see the best people. To continue not seeing any good people make sure you continue to post your ads on the major boards, where the best people look last.
- Write boring ads that start with the req number. If your ads are found, make sure they’re so boring that they preclude a good person from even applying. You can do this by leading off with the req number, a dumb title, telling the person whether the job is full-time or not, and if you’ll pay for relocation. Then go into a boring description of the job. Then make sure you clearly state that the candidate must not apply unless the person possess a laundry list of skills and experiences that was lifted from some job description written a few years ago.
- Make sure that interviewers are untrained and can ask any questions they want. Hiring mistakes are no big deal, so why not let anyone interview the candidate, ask any questions they want, and then ask them whether you should hire the person using whatever criteria they think appropriate. To make matters worse, only let untrained interviewers meet your candidates. This will certainly impress those top candidates you see regarding your company’s level of professionalism.
- Add up the yes and no votes. Here’s a sure-fire way to get the hiring decision wrong…let each untrained, biased, emotional, and superficial interviewer have a full yes/no vote on who should get hired. Then to even out these errors, give a no vote more power than a yes vote, give unprepared interviewers the same voting rights as prepared interviewers, and then add up the votes. To make sure this process works as described, do not challenge anyone’s assessment, just in case the person might get offended. This is more important than the right answer.
- Force candidates to formally apply before you can even chat with them. Top people, when they just enter into the job-hunting process, have lots of questions and are comparing different companies and situations. One good way to prevent seeing or hiring any of these people is to not let them just talk with a recruiter or hiring manager unless they formally apply first. Most won’t, but if you have some persistent person who still decides to apply anyway, make sure you have him complete a rigorous application process, submit a resume and a statement that everything stated is true. Of course, to make sure a good person doesn’t sneak through this bureaucratic blockade, be sure not to contact the person for a least a week. Collectively, this will show the person you mean business.
- Focus on compensation and skills rather than career opportunities. Since the best people are more concerned with career growth, the opportunity to make an impact and want to know the broad details about the job before getting serious, we don’t want to give them any of this information. Who knows, somebody good might actually be interested in and qualified for one of our open jobs. Instead, to prevent this from happening, don’t discuss the job at all, first screen candidates only on their skills and then tell them what your comp range is. If there isn’t a fit here, don’t waste your time, just go on to another candidate. You certainly wouldn’t want to ask candidates about some of their major achievements first and see if any of your other openings better match their needs. They actually might be interested in one of these jobs, despite the comp range. Wouldn’t that mess things up?
You can see why these are my favorites rules for not hiring good people. What amazes me is that so many companies follow them and expect different results.
Lou Adler (lou@adlerconcepts.com) is the president of The Adler Group, a training and consulting firm helping companies find and hire top talent using Performance-based Hiring(sm).
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Happy Recruiting,
The ConstructionJobs Team
