At ERE's last conference in San Diego, Alise met David Lee, principal of Human Nature at Work which specializes in helping companies better motivate and engage their workforce. David asked a few interesting questions.... here they are, along with Alise's responses.
David: You said something that I thought was very quote worthy in our conversation regarding some employers are afraid to find out what their employees are thinking because "what if we can't do anything about it" or other fears. I'd love to have you riff on that.
Alise: I applaud all our clients who have actually applied financial resources and socio-emotional wherewithal to collect feedback from job seekers, employees, hiring managers, and interviewers about the quality and effectiveness of the hiring process. In my view, those who are willing to solicit and listen to feedback are serious about improving their processes and bottom-line financial results. But the fact of the matter is that while it’s lovely to hear flattering feedback, it can be very uncomfortable to hear where we fall short in providing an enticing or even acceptable experience for job seekers.
A couple years ago, I was in conversation with a large telecommunications company about the prospect of integrating candidate experience feedback to their metrics efforts. I described how the feedback would be collected via an email solicitation and subsequent online feedback portal and how the results would allow the company to measure and improve overall recruitment performance, employer brand, targeted and diversity outreach efforts, and early employee engagement. The gentleman with whom I was speaking listened intently and then responded, “We have a fair number of people who come through our recruitment process who are not happy with us, either because they didn’t get an interview or the job. It doesn’t make sense to me that we would want to ‘prick the boil’ and ask them to tell us what they specifically liked or didn’t like about their experience with us.”
Now, in my view, I think the company is seriously missing the point, to their own detriment. In their case, the recruiting executive not only didn’t want to hear what the candidates had to say, he was concerned that inviting their feedback would only worsen their opinion of the company. Our own experience of soliciting feedback, even from disgruntled job seekers, is that contrary to pricking the boil, we constantly see open-text comments from candidates indicating their appreciation that the company even solicited their feedback, that they found it refreshing that the company was interested in what they had to say about their experience, and that in being able to provide feedback it felt to the job seekers a little less like they had fallen into the proverbial “black hole.” What a concept -- somebody was listening! And further, early research and development research conducted prior to developing our candidate experience product told us that 53 percent of the 500 job seekers we surveyed said they would think more highly of a company if they asked their opinion, even if they didn’t get the job.
Contrast this apathetic view with an organization that perhaps has a more serious problem. Whereas the telecommunications company I’ve been talking about probably had the ability to conduct the candidate experience survey and respond to the results (if they were so inclined), another company I spoke with had neither option. Chatting with a small software development company about our various enterprise feedback management products, the Recruiting Manager said dismally, “Oh, it all sounds amazing. Really amazing. But even if I did have the ability to spend money on surveys, we in Recruiting are powerless to do anything about the results. We have no budget, and whatever we did learn about how to improve our recruitment process would fall on deaf ears because our company executives don’t think we have to compete for talent. They don’t understand that job seekers have a choice of where to work, even in this market, and that if we provide them a crumby recruiting experience they won’t want to work for our company.” I thought to myself, “Humm, maybe it’s time for this poor woman to find a new employer!” And not only will their candidates not want to work for the company, they will surely tell their friends and colleagues about the poor experience they had, which will ultimately further diminish this company’s prospects to hire in that community.
David: Examples of clients (anonymous is fine) who discovered areas that could be improved upon, that they had no idea were issues.
Alise: I’ll give examples from two different clients. In order to understand the context of the examples, let me say that our candidate experience product (Get Better Hires) collects self-reported demographic information from job seekers and feedback about four specific experiences a job seeker has with any one company: applying for a job on the company’s career website, interviewing on site with hiring managers and other interviewers, receiving a formal offer containing pay and benefits information – whether or not it is accepted, and the experience of being on the job 90 days post hire. In the case of one of our customers, a small healthcare organization in the Pacific Northwest, the interview part of the hiring process is completely handled by the hiring managers – the recruiting team does not get involved to schedule or release the results from the interviews. It was a complete surprise to the recruiting director that of the four stages we score for satisfaction, the interview part received by far the lowest satisfaction scores among the four stages across all categories we survey. With this data, she then had data to make a business case for change – either help the hiring managers improve the interview part of the process they owned or allow Recruiting to take it over and manage.
Another example comes from a pharmaceutical company in the Northeast. In their case, they knew at the outset of activating their candidate experience survey subscription that their selection and hiring process resulted in mainly a Caucasian male middle-aged workforce. What they were surprised to learn in their results was that African Americans and Hispanics were quite pleased with the process, employer brand, and competitive differentiation and that they could leverage that satisfaction to hire a more diverse workforce. Prior to this understanding, they just incorrectly assumed that their message was only attractive to white males. Armed with new information, they came to understand their selection and hiring process somehow favored white males, a powerful realization to understand and ultimately change their workforce diversity dynamic.
David: Other points you would like to make and examples of why it's important to tap into the "voice of the customer” (employee in this case).
Alise: Two thoughts, both examples from two different customers, come to mind. First, in early conversations with a healthcare organization in the Midwest, the Recruiting Director understood the power of leveraging candidate feedback and how opening a dialogue with job seekers would help her measure and improve her recruitment process, employer brand, and competitive differentiation. What I was surprised to hear her say is, “You know, it occurs to me that even if I never do a thing with the feedback I get – I never implement any changes to improve our processes, the mere act of simply asking our candidates for their feedback puts us ahead of our competition. We’re showing them that we listen to them and care what they think.” The second example from the healthcare organization in the Pacific Northwest I mentioned earlier comes from an open-text (qualitative) comment penned by one of their recent survey takers, as follows: “(Organization Name) is known for its training and development of employees. The fact that even the application/recruiting process is being analyzed is telling - and impressive.” The reason this comment is worth repeating is that when job seekers see how serious a company takes the quality of their recruitment process, employer brand, and competitive differentiation, the higher quality candidates they tend to attract and the more the quality candidates want to work for them. And that’s a win/win every company strives for.
About Alise Cortez: my day job is VP of Marketing & Sales at Improved Experience, where our mission is to capture the voice of experience one job search at a time for employees and empower employers with the metrics of engagement and retention.
Technorati tags: enterprise feedback, survey.
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