Reading note 4

Module title: Rethinking Recruitment

This reading explores how recruitment is evolving to better connect organizations with talent—

especially those often overlooked by traditional systems. You'll learn about different messaging

strategies (like realistic job previews and employment branding) and how technology, inclusive

hiring, and outreach to “hidden workers” are transforming how companies approach recruiting.

The reading includes practical examples from CVS, JPMorgan Chase, and others rethinking how

and where they find great people.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this reading, you should be able to:

• Compare and evaluate recruitment messaging strategies such as realistic, branded, and

targeted messages.

• Analyze how technology, algorithms, and job descriptions can unintentionally exclude

qualified applicants.

• Identify practices that support inclusive hiring and outreach to underrepresented or

overlooked talent pools.

Key Questions to Consider While Reading

• What are the pros and cons of different recruitment messages for different job types?

• How might algorithms unintentionally screen out qualified candidates?

• What steps can organizations take to make recruitment more inclusive and equitable?

CHAPTER FIVE External Recruitment 237

SEARCHING

Once the recruitment planning and strategy development phases are completed, it is time to actively conduct the search. Searching for candidates first requires devel­ oping a message and then selecting a medium to communicate that message. Both phases are considered in turn.

Communication Message

Types of Messages

The communication message to applicants can focus on conveying realistic, employment brand, or targeted information.

Realistic Recruitment Message. A realistic recruitment message portrays the organization and the job as they really are, rather than describing what the orga­ nization thinks job applicants want to hear. Organizations continue to describe themselves to applicants in overly positive terms, overstating desired values such as risk taking and understating undesirable values such as rules orientation. Some would argue this is not the best message to send applicants on moral or practical grounds. While hyping the benefits of joining up may work for the army, where recruits are obligated to remain for three to five years, employees generally have no such obligation.

A very well-researched recruitment message is known as a realistic job preview (RJP).47 According to this practice, job applicants are given a "vaccination" by being told verbally, in writing, or on videotape what the actual job is like.48 An example of the numerous attributes in an RJP for the job of elementary school teacher is shown in Exhibit 5.6. Note that the attributes are quite specific and that they are both positive and negative. Information like this ''tells it like it is" to job applicants.

After receiving the vaccination, job applicants can decide whether they want to work for the organization. The hope with the RJP is that job applicants will self-select into or out of the organization. By selecting into the organization, the applicant may be more committed to working there than he or she might oth­ erwise have been. When an applicant self-selects out, the organization does not face the costs associated with recruiting, selecting, training, and compensating an employee, only to then have him or her leave because the job did not meet his or

her expectations.

242 PART THREE Staffing Activities: Recruitment

be perceived as met by a prospective employer. Hence, the applicant is more moti­ vated to apply to organizations with an attractive or targeted message than those without. During loose economic times when applicants are plentiful, the branded or targeted approaches may be more costly than necessary to attract an adequate supply of labor. Also, they may set up false expectations concerning what life will be like on the job, and thus lead to turnover.

Job applicants will know more about the characteristics of highly visible jobs versus those of less visible jobs. For example, service sector jobs, such as that of cashier, are highly visible to people, and thus it may be redundant to give a real­ istic message. Other jobs, such as an outside sales position, are far less visible to people. These jobs may seem glamorous (e.g., sales commissions) to prospective applicants who fail to see the less glamorous aspects of the job (e.g., a lot of travel and paperwork).

Some jobs seem to be better suited to special applicant groups, and hence a targeted approach may work well. For example, older employees may have social needs that can be well met by a job that requires a lot of public contact. Organi­ zations, then, can take advantage of the special characteristics of jobs to attract applicants.

The value of the job to the organization also has a bearing on the selection of an appropriate recruitment message. Inducements for jobs of higher value or worth to the organization are easier to justify in a budgetary sense than inducements for jobs of lower worth. The job may be of such importance to the organization that it is willing to pay a premium through inducements to attract well-qualified candidates.

Some applicants are less likely than others to be influenced in their attitudes and behaviors by the recruitment message. One study showed that a realistic message is less effective for those with considerable previous job experience.55 A targeted message does not work very well if the source is seen as not being credible.56

Highly experienced candidates are more likely to be persuaded by high-quality, detailed advertisements than are less experienced candidates.57 Inducements may not be particularly effective with applicants who do not have a family or who have considerable wealth.

T ’S B E E N

dubbed the Great Resignation: Nearly 20 million Americans left their jobs in 2021, and the trend is spreading to Western Europe, Asia, and beyond. Yet even as employers scramble to fill open positions, millions of capable candi- dates struggle merely to be considered. Why such a disconnect—and how can companies bridge it?

A study by Harvard Business School and Accenture finds a major reason for the gap: the near-ubiquitous use of automated hiring platforms, which systematically screen out large numbers of job seekers who might well fit the bill were their résumés ever to reach hiring managers’ desks. Applicants with unconventional backgrounds—such as caregivers, veterans, immigrants, people with physical and mental challenges, and the previously incarcerated—are especially prone to being “hidden” from

Illustrations by SIMO LIU

IN THEORY

Tap the Talent Your Hiring Algorithms Are Missing They may be turning great candidates away.

Harvard Business Review May–June 2022  19

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New Research and Emerging Insights

on supplier quality control to working with [suppliers] to address persistent problems—to hiring talent.”

The potential rewards of doing so are considerable. The surveys showed that companies that intentionally seek out hidden workers are 36% less likely than others to face talent and skills shortages. What’s more, those workers outperform their peers on six key criteria: attitude and work ethic, productivity, quality of work, engagement, attendance, and innovation. Because they are so eager to work, they’re less likely than others to quit, so costs associated with turnover may decline. And because many are women or members of underrepre- sented groups, hiring them can move a company closer to its DEI goals.

Many large companies have begun thinking more expansively about how and whom they hire. IBM has elimi- nated college degree requirements for many roles, and JPMorgan Chase no longer asks if applicants have a criminal

prospective employers by the platforms. The report estimates that there are more than 27 million hidden workers in the United States alone. “These are people who want to work,” says HBS professor and study coauthor Joseph B. Fuller. Some may be underemployed or working on a very part-time basis, while others have been locked out of the labor market altogether.

The researchers came to these con- clusions after surveying 8,720 hidden workers and 2,275 executives in the United States, the UK, and Germany in 2020. The technology-fueled exclusion of such a large pool of talent is a tale of unintended consequences, Fuller says. The advent of online recruiting in the 1990s promised employers access to a broader array of applicants than tradi- tional approaches could muster. But the result was an unmanageable deluge. By the early 2010s, each job posting yielded 120 applicants, on average, and the figure continued to rise. So employers turned to applicant-tracking and recruiting-management systems to help winnow the crowds, typically using filters meant to capture those who most closely matched the requirements of the role. And winnow they did: By 2020, employers typically interviewed four to six applicants for each listing out of an average pool of 250.

Many of those excluded could be highly productive workers, the research- ers argue, including in middle- and high-skilled positions. An algorithm might weed out anyone lacking a college degree, having a criminal rec ord or a gap in employment, or deficient in just one of several very specific skills—but “none of those are particularly good

proxies for measuring aptitude, work ethic, and self-efficacy,” says HBS’s Manjari Raman, another coauthor of the study. She adds that “credential creep” exacerbates the problem, as firms pile on requirements over time. The hidden workers she and her colleagues surveyed had applied to an average of 25 jobs each in the previous five years, often without a single response. “Is it any surprise they eventually give up?” she asks.

Today’s tight labor market gives employers a once-in-a-generation chance to rethink their recruiting strategies, Fuller says. Recruiting from previously unexploited talent pools is a major undertaking, to be sure, but he believes that it lies within reach. “Com- panies regularly make extraordinary efforts to revamp commercial supply chains in response to changes in market conditions,” the researchers point out. “But few have extended fundamental principles of supply chain manage- ment—ranging from gathering data

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rec ord. CVS Health hires neurodiverse individuals to stock store shelves. The fast-casual chain Hot Chicken Take- over employs people recovering from substance abuse in its kitchens. And carmakers VW, Daimler, and Porsche have recruited refugees to work on their assembly lines.

The research team offers several recommendations for employers:

Change metrics. Companies should scrap short-term measures of hiring success, such as cost and time to fill vacancies, in favor of longer-term ones, such as how long it takes new employees to get up to speed, how long they stay, and their rates of promotion. That’s harder than it sounds, Fuller says, because many firms have siloed recruit- ing and operations departments and are not accustomed to sharing performance management and other data.

Analyze data and rewrite job descriptions. Employers should ana- lyze this longitudinal data to determine the must-have attributes for long-term success in each position. They should rewrite job descriptions accordingly, being especially vigilant about eliminat- ing extraneous skills and ones that can be taught on the job. Armed with that information, employers can work with their technology vendors to ensure that candidates are screened and ranked according to the new criteria.

Employers should then form hypoth- eses about which segments of hidden workers are most likely to possess the must-have attributes. For instance, call centers have benefited from recruiting older workers, while aerospace and defense contractors successfully tap out-of-work veterans. Companies will

often need help connecting with the identified segments. For some groups, such as veterans, immigrants, and previously incarcerated people, compa- nies might turn to relevant nonprofits and social entrepreneurs for insights. In all instances, job listings should be as inclusive as possible. That means stripping out daunting jargon, excessive superlatives such as “world-class” and “expert” (which have been shown to deter female and minority applicants), and gender-biased language that appeals to men (no more ads seeking “rock stars” or “ninjas”).

Focus on onboarding. Finally, employers of hidden workers should accept slightly higher onboarding costs, given that a typical “one size fits all” approach is often ineffective for hidden workers, who have their own needs, strengths, and experience gaps. Employers must also ensure that such workers are not ostracized, perhaps by involving more colleagues than just the hiring manager in onboarding, or by enlisting a senior leader to debunk myths that surround hidden workers.

“The practices that help pave the way for re-entry for hidden workers [are] nei- ther exorbitantly expensive nor extra- ordinary,” the researchers conclude. “They are commonsense practices that help attract any worker.” By improving practices, they argue, companies are better able to attract all types of talent quickly and intelligently.

HBR Reprint F2203A

ABOUT THE RESEARCH “Hidden

Workers: Untapped Talent,” by Joseph

B. Fuller et al. (Harvard Business School and

Accenture, 2021)

IN PRACTICE

“Employers May Not Be Looking in the Right Places” As the longtime senior director of workforce initiatives at CVS Health, Ernie DuPont has built a career finding talent in unconventional places. His team partners with local governments, community groups, and nonprofit organizations to recruit workers typically overlooked by corporate America. He recently spoke with HBR about his efforts to bring “hidden workers” on board at CVS Health. Edited excerpts follow.

CEOs complain about a hiring crunch, yet millions of people are unemployed. What’s your take on the situation? Employers may not be looking in the right places. Twenty years ago we made the business decision to tap pools of workers who were otherwise overlooked. One of our first projects was in Washington, DC. Working with the mayor, we identified a district that was economically depressed. We set up a career center that included a mock pharmacy so that commu- nity members could see shelves with products, see the registers, understand what working at CVS would entail. We now have similar

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centers all over the country. We’ve hired more than 120,000 people who were previously on some type of public assistance. We have initiatives to recruit veterans and mature workers. We also have 50 simulated sites around the country aimed at attracting and training people with disabilities. Since 2012 we’ve recruited 4,000 workers through these programs.

Has it paid off? Yes. Retention among people from those initiatives is often higher than that among workers who come through typical channels.

What are the keys to your success? The key element is our strategic partnerships with organizations that can help us access these workers. When we’re vetting a potential partner, we try to find common goals so that we can deliver results that matter to all the stakeholders. That might mean that CVS Health invests in the community. We have a career center in Pittsburgh, where we work to address food insecu- rity and provide on-site health, dental, and eye care clinics. We were able to expand our initiatives through a partnership with a local church. We believe that a healthy, thriving community delivers a better workforce, and that fits with our mission as a health care company.

The Harvard Business School/ Accenture study says that résumé-screening algorithms weed out strong candidates. Has that been your experience? They can. We’ve made some changes over the past year to

remove some educational require- ments from some of the roles in our company.

What’s stopping other compa- nies from doing the same? We’ve worked with other compa- nies to help them set up nontradi- tional hiring programs. T.J. Maxx is an example. What I say to leaders up front is that you must accept

that you won’t get immediate results. I see companies try initia- tives like these with a traditional “experimental” mindset: If they don’t get results right away, they shrug and move on. My advice is to commit to two or three years. And you can’t apply metrics such as cost and time to fill positions to measure success. That’s not how our initiatives are judged.

What metrics do you use? We emphasize the quality of programming, the relationships, and the long-term outcomes. We define success as building and maintaining a pipeline of talent that is steady regardless of what’s going on in the wider labor mar- ket. So as you can imagine, we’re proving the value of our approach at the moment. 

Photograph by BRYAN DERBALLA Harvard Business Review

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OUTSIDE INFLUENCES « IDEAS FROM OTHER MARKETS

Talent Rewire recommends that restaurants diversify their recruitment criteria beyond “ a majority population that no longer exists.”

Rewiring recruitment to attract more diverse talent Got labor problems? You’re going to need a bigger hiring pool. BY JOANNA FAINTOZZI

sk almost any restaurant operator what the top industry challenge is, and their answer will inevita- bly be “labor shortages.” According to a 2018 study from

Nation’s Restaurant News and Fourth, 67% of restaurant operators cite staffing concerns as a key cost driver, and nearly half of restaurant operators have seen a significant increase in turnover. Talent

SIXTY-SEVEN PERCENT OF OPERATORS CITE STAFFING AS A KEY COST DRIVER.

Rewire—a nonprofit arm of the Bos- ton-based consulting group FSG that specializes in recruitment—believes an answer could be expanding the hiring pool.

Through personalized workshops that they call “innovation labs,” Talent Rewire works with human resource teams — from companies as large as McDonald’s and MOD Pizza to smaller operations like the 100-employee Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, N.Y.—to rewire their hiring thought process by giving opportunities to a broader swath of the population.

“Most of our employment systems were designed for a majority population that no longer exists,” says Nicole Trimble,

managing director at Talent Rewire. “The goal is to change our hiring practices to meet the changing demographic shifts [of job seekers]. Since unemployment is at a historic low, how do we change our practices to meet the external environ- ment?”

Opening recruitment practices to communities populated by people of color, disabled adults and formerly incarcerated individuals is part of the training process that Talent Rewire teaches in its innovation labs.

The innovation labs are a nine-month process, during which employers and HR teams attempt to “rewire” their hiring and employee-training processes.

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Talent Rewire’s labs involve skills training for potential employees as well as management practices and post-hire support.

Teams are assessed for barriers and opportunities as they currently stand, and a pilot program is designed based on the company’s hiring goals. Talent Rewire does an onsite workshop, and the program is implemented and evaluated for results, with check-ins with employees after 30, 60 and 90 days. They also have a three-day accelerator program for a crash course in rejuvenat- ing recruitment.

During one aspect of the workshop, Talent Rewire brings in real-life restau- rant employees (or potential employees) from diverse backgrounds as consul- tants, and they advise companies on what they could be doing better to retain talent. Another aspect of the innovation lab is helping managers with their “soft skills,” including emotional intelligence and people.

MANAGING ABILITIES “Talking to someone else’s employee, rather than your own, without the risk is an incredible way to bring in diversity training without risk,” Trimble said.

For some companies, this means rewriting their hiring practices from scratch. But for others like Smashotels —a Chicago-based hotel and hospitality management company in partnership with Hilton and Marriott that has always worked with diverse community organizations for recruitment—Talent

Rewire was more about fine-tuning what they already had.

“One of the biggest things we learned is to take a look at any potential barriers we have to people applying for jobs,” says Mitch Langeler, Smashotels vice president of talent and culture. “You look at the way you do background checks and drug testing ... I think that now, after [the innovation lab], we are more open to individuals who have a story to tell rather than just automatically saying, ‘Sorry too many red flags!’ We’ve learned to slow down and have real conversa- tions.”

But learning how to expand your recruitment circles is one part of the

equation, according to Talent Rewire, and what happens after hiring someone is just as important.

“Placing people is just the beginning," Trimble says. “What are the management practices and post-hire support? We work with groups on providing pre- and post-training for employers. One thing we do is encourage a bonus program for managers to put in place these better management practices.”

Talent Rewire’s labs try to get compa- nies to implement inclusivity-oriented practices that they otherwise might not have thought about before, like imple- menting flexible scheduling, childcare solutions and not taking race or ethnicity into account when deciding who gets to work the front and back of the house.

Another specific challenge facing hospitality employees today is transpor- tation. For example, Trimble says in New Orleans, where Talent Rewire has held workshops before, a lot of public transportation ends at 10 p.m., so for an employee without access to a car, working late-night shifts can be nearly impossible.

“Right now, the restaurant industry is looking for employees who don’t exist anymore,” Trimble says. “Historically, working in the restaurant industry has been a ‘down the pipeline’ job for other jobs, and we have to open it up to other people who might not have seen themselves as the face of a company, who would work in a front-of-the-house position.” FMMOD Pizza opened its recruiting— and hiring— to a broader cross section of the population.

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C INTERACTION

VIEWPOINT

18 RECRUITER MAY/JUN 2024

STEVEN INGRAM

is the founder of

workplace consultancy

Neurodiversity

Together.

Neurodiversity in recruitment

It’s the time to make a change B Y S T E V E N I N G R A M

Some might choose to disclose their neurodivergence, whilst others might not. Some might request adjustments as part of a recruitment process, others might be fi ne without.

Approach neurodivergent candidates with an open mind and no preconceptions.

Recognise that successful neurodiversity recruitment processes are a team effort At Neurodiversity Together, we are constantly emphasising the importance of recognising the role that everyone can play in growing successful neurodiversity recruitment processes. Here are some examples of how this might work in practice: ● Recruiters work with hiring managers to make ads more appealing to neurodivergent candidates. ● An HR team or recruiter ensures that interviewers are aware they will be interviewing a neurodivergent candidate and provide additional information to help better inform the interviewers. ● An interviewer is nervous about saying/doing the wrong thing in an interview with a neurodivergent candidate. Openly admitting this at the start of the interview helps the candidate and interviewer work together to both have a better interview experience.

Gett ing the right adjustments for candidates during a recruitment process As standard practice, recruiters should be asking all candidates if they need adjustments during a recruitment process and companies have a legal duty to implement the adjustments if they are reasonable. As a recruiter, when a neurodivergent candidate requests adjustments, think about the following: Does the candidate and the client know all available adjustments and understand the potential benefi ts of them? If a candidate is unsure of what adjustments to ask for, might a short call between the recruiter, candidate and client be benefi cial? Do you, as a recruiter, know what you can do to help the candidate throughout the recruitment process?

Th ese are just a few ways recruiters can play their part in making processes more inclusive. When speaking with candidates and clients, help them understand that inclusion must continue throughout the employee life cycle, such as onboarding, benefi ts and career development. ●

T he recent Neurodiversity Celebration Week off ered a chance to refl ect on how far neurodiversity has evolved at work but it’s also a reminder of how far individuals and organisations still have to go every other week of the year. Eff ort must continue consistently– the

following statistics must be made a thing of the past: ● 65% of neurodivergent people fear discrimination at work ● over 70% of autistic people are unemployed ● only 55% of managers (between the ages of 25-64) felt confi dent to have discussions on neurodiversity.

Despite these shocking fi gures, neurodivergent employees can be up to 140% more productive and quite often, approaches put in place for neurodivergent people will have a positive impact across an entire organisation – on culture and on productivity.

So, how can recruiters, whether agency or inhouse, progress the neurodiversity journey and help their candidates, organisations and clients?

Remember, every neurodivergent person is different Neurodivergent people, regardless of their condition, can be in any industry, working at any level, doing any type of job. No two neurodivergent people are the same, even if they have the same condition.

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