The Costs (and Benefits) of Employee Turnover

The Costs (and Benefits) of Employee Turnover The Costs (and Benefits) of Employee Turnover Smart businesses are concerned about turnover  because turnover is expensive. There are several costs that arise when you need to replace an employee.   High Cost of Employee Turnover Recruiting These can be high or low, depending on your organization and the level of the position. A grocery store that is constantly recruiting and hiring cashiers doesnt have a huge incremental cost to recruit one more person. But if youre looking for a Chief Information Officer- a highly specialized job- you may have to hire a headhunter, and that can cost you around one-third of the final annual salary. Thats a big chunk of change. Plus, all of the time spent reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates,  and making the final decision are hours that your employees would otherwise spend working. Recruiting can cost a good deal of money. Training Some companies have set programs for training that you can easily quantify. This is common in entry-level positions. But higher level positions also have training costs, even if these are not formalized. Just the time spent getting all the computer equipment set up, passwords procured, orientation completed, and the numerous hours of asking and answering questions are all wrapped up in training costs. Time to Get Up to Speed In a lot of jobs, we figure it takes you six months to become fully functional. Each company is different, so even if you have tons of experience as an accountant, you still need to learn all the historical information about your new company before you are completely competent. As a result, youre not as productive in a new job as you would have been in your old job.   When Turnover Is Good for Your Business Does this mean that turnover is always bad and you should try to retain your employees no matter what? No. A certain percentage of voluntary turnover is, in fact, good and can benefit a business. What kind of turnover is good? The quick answer to this question is: if the new person can bring enough added value to outweigh the costs of recruiting, training, and getting up to speed then the former employee leaving is a positive outcome.   Here are examples of when turnover is good for your business. Bad Employees Lets face it; not all employee problems are caused by management. There are some bad employees out there. Have you ever worked with a complete slacker? What about an employee who loved to steal credit and slander her coworkers whenever possible? What about a gossip who couldnt keep his mouth shut? When one of these people quits, the heavens should rejoice. This voluntary termination has just saved the company the hassle of implementing a performance improvement plan, providing coaching,  and doing damage control for all the problems the bad employee caused. Additionally, you have the truly bad employees- the ones who steal, sexually harass, are completely unreliable, or use foul language in the presence of customers. These people have to go, so its cheaper and easier if the person resigns than if you have to go through your companys termination procedures. (Even though all states except Montana are at-will states and you can fire people legally with no documentation, in practice, almost all companies follow specific, progressive discipline programs.) Miserable Employees Sometimes you have an employee who does a good job, so you cant fault that, but he seems miserable. Its not that hes underpaid or overworked, its just that he isnt happy with this job. When youre happy in your job, youll not only do better work but influence others positively as well. Conversely, one bad apple really can spoil the barrel. When an employee is miserable, its a great day when that person moves on. People With No Good Ideas When you are hired for a job, you often come in with great new ideas. However, if you dont work really hard at it, its easy to slip into the weve always done it this way mode. This can mean a company can lack innovation. It doesnt have to be this way. Some people change and grow with the position, always coming up with the best practices and creative ways to solve problems. But some people dont. Your business can stagnate if you dont have any new ideas. Sometimes its nice when an employee quits so that you can bring on an employee with new, fresh ideas. Dont Panic When an Employee Quits Having an employee resign can sometimes feel like a punch to the gut. Sometimes, it is really bad for your business. Youll suffer not only in turnover costs  but in the lost potential that your former employee had. Its always worth spending time in self-reflection to figure out if you could have done anything differently. For instance, a voluntary quit is a reminder to double-check that your salaries are at market rate  and ensure your policies and practices encourage a great workforce. But its also a time to evaluate if the quit is a blessing in disguise. - Suzanne Lucas is a freelance writer who spent 10 years in corporate human resources, where she hired, fired, managed the numbers, and double-checked with the lawyers.

When Sound Meets Sand

When Sound Meets Sand When Sound Meets Sand When Sound Meets Sand What is the sound of sand? Is it a gentle shift when lapped by waves? The wet splat of a castle foundation in the making? Or is it a controlled 200 megahertz, operating as an oscillator in a laptop? Nicholas Fang, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and his colleagues, have shown that, when tiny enough, and packed tightly enough, the acoustic properties of sand will soon change the high-tech soundscape. Fang was in the vicinity of Manchester by the Sea, outside of Boston, when he received a missive from a student urging him to visit the nearby shore. Because you are doing acoustics, you must go to the singing beach, where the sand makes sounds, it said. Fang and his group obeyed, and played. They slid their feet on the sand, jumped on the sand, rubbed the sand. And indeed, it sang (or squeaked, or barked). Some students recorded the granular output. Nicholas Boechler (now a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington) said, Hey, maybe this is a problem that happens across different sand scales, explains Fang. Trapping Sound Waves Post-holiday, the group threw themselves into solving that problem. We started to make a serious investigation into how to slow sound waves, how to trap a sound wave. They found that silicon grains of sand, a micron in diameter, would sing, to the tune of 200 megahertz. They covered a substrate with a single layer of tiny silicon spheres. When they excited the substrate with lasers, the resultant surface acoustic waves were slowed and controlled by the sand, by a factor of four to six. In essence, the coating proved itself as a potential oscillator. And with its ability to redirect sound, it could someday work to help mitigate blasts. Photograph of a two-dimensional array of microspheres adhered to a substrate. Image: Tian Gan / MIT.edu The trick resides not so much between the grains of sand as between the single layer of sand and the substrate. At the scale Fang and his lab are working at, the glue that binds stratum and substrate has a much larger effect than it does at larger scales. We need something that is adhesive but also elastic, says Fang. Thats not very easy. Fang managed to tie the two with Van der Waals forces. Its strong enough to provide a resonance frequency when the sound is traveling between the sphere and the substrate. That frequency is two orders of magnitude higher than that found in oscillators in current electronics. The frequency of the standing waves of those oscillators is determined by their size. To make the components any smaller, the sound has to be slowed. The sands ability to rein in sound waves means that the oscillators of the near future are likely to shrink to ten times their current size. Vibration at Nanoscale Long before Fangs frolic on the tuneful beach, researchers had theorized that such a sound-slowing layer of tiny particles was possible, even at the atomic level. In the 90s it was just a mathematical curiosity, says Fang. They knew this could work, but they only had the theory. They couldnt prove it, couldnt do an experiment like we do now. The shift from theoretical curio to applicable invention is owed in large part to recent techniques that measure tiny vibrations with light. This was not available back in the 90s, says Fang. Now we can use X-rays to do that. We hope to see vibration at the nanoscale in the future. The only hurdles to putting the coating on chips ASAP are practical ones. When printing large swaths of such a coating, its hard to keep things uniform. The perfect mosaic breaks down and finger-like patterns tend to emerge. But Fang and his colleagues are currently developing better ways to stitch together large, perfect layers of sand. Once thats been worked out, our thirst for ever-shrinking electronics may be momentarily slaked by the sandy surface. Michael Abrams is an independent writer. For Further Discussion In the 90s it was just a mathematical curiosity. They couldn’t do an experiment like we do now.Prof. Nicolas Fang, MIT

Uncover the Candidates Communication Skills in the Interview

Uncover the Candidate’s Communication Skills in the Interview Uncover the Candidate’s Communication Skills in the Interview Uncover the Candidate’s Communication Skills in the Interview Conlan Business runs on communication. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers Job Outlook 2016 report, employers ranked verbal communication skills as most important for employees to have. So how do you assess these skills? Gauging a candidates communication skills is something that is measured from the initial contact to the last contact, says Jessica Meglio, senior recruiter at Turning the Corner, a Denver-based recruiting and career counseling firm. How quickly did they respond to the interview request? Did they provide a one-sentence answer or did they use a few sentences to express their interest and availability? These subtle interactions are very telling of how the candidate may communicate on the job. When its time to conduct the interview, heres how to get more details on the candidates communication skills. Compare Real Life to the Cover Letter Your candidate interactions have been fairly minimal to this point. So when you meet them for the first time, take a moment to assess the first impression they make. Are you surprised by how they communicate, or do you feel like youre getting what you expected? A persons voice or way of communicating should be similar, whether they are writing or speaking, says April Klimkiewicz, owner of Bliss Evolution, a career counseling agency based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A big red flag for me is when the voice in the cover letter sounds like a completely different person than the person interviewing for the position. If everything seems similar, however, thats a good sign. Observe How They Listen Communication is never one way; your candidate will need to be a good listener as well. Someone who struggles with communicating effectively will just answer whatever they think is being asked, without stopping to consider if they have it right or asking clarifying questions, says Stephanie Troiano, executive recruiter at HireTalent in Brea, California. Pay attention not just to the content of the answers that candidates provide, but whether that information actually answers the question you asked. A huge part of communication is actually listening, and if you find your candidate suddenly veering off with something irrelevant to the question you asked, thats a red flag, Troiano says. Ask Behavioral Questions about Communication Behavioral interview questions those that ask the candidate to provide examples of what theyve done in the past are a great way to get more information about how a person communicates. These sort of interview questions provide insight into a persons communication style, says Jana Tulloch, a human resources professional for DevelopIntelligence, a Boulder, Colorado-based company that provides customized technical learning solutions. Here are some sample behavioral questions: Tell me about a time when you had to communicate a difficult concept to someone and what challenges you encountered. Have you ever had to sell an unpopular idea? If so, what was the idea and how did you go about selling it? What was the most significant conflict you had with another employee? How did you resolve it? Tell me about a challenging customer that you had to handle. What was their concern and how did you address it? Again, listen to both the content of their answer as well as how they communicate that content. Do they tell their story in a clear and logical way, or do they dart off into different directions? Its about Role Playing Interview questions about hypothetical scenarios shed light on how a candidate might deal with sensitive topics or difficult situations they have to communicate, says Joe Campagna, owner of My Virtual HR Director consultants. As interviewer, create questions around scenarios that could conceivably happen at your company especially in the role the person is applying for and then evaluate how the candidate responds. Campagna gives the example of the question, Please demonstrate how you would tell a high-profile customer that their project was not going to make a deadline. Answers that are straightforward and clear show the candidate can communicate; an answer that hedges or makes excuses might be an indication that the candidate shies away from difficult discussions.

How to Hire Quickly and Make the Right Choice

How to Hire Quickly and Make the Right Choice How to Hire Quickly and Make the Right Choice How to Hire Quickly and Make the Right Choice Conlan For growing companies, fast growth can be exciting, but it also comes with risk. You dont have much time to agonize over every new hire. And yet, bringing in the wrong people could send your growing company into a tailspin. You need to set realistic timelines and follow a hiring process, says Matt Doucette, director of global talent acquisition at Worldwide. Heres how to keep your hiring pipeline moving quickly when you need it most. Know What You Need Having a clear idea of what the new role entails and the needed competencies will be key to hiring quickly, Doucette says. Instead of focusing on the job description, identify some key metrics: Define the mission of the role Identify the objectives the role should achieve Clarify these annually and quarterly Determine what core skills are required to make that happen This homework will give you a much clearer picture of what youre looking for in a new candidate, Doucette says. From a sourcing perspective, it will also help generate better information for keywords. When you know what youre looking for, its easier to find, he says. In addition, advanced search technology such as Power Resume Search is built around semantic searches for synonyms of these competencies and objectives, creating richer results than simple Boolean searches for lists of job skills. Dont Compromise on Values and Culture Hiring someone whos a bad fit can be worse than not making a hire at all.The best way to avoid a bad hire is to align the process with your companys values. Hiring people with values that mirror your companys culture is crucial, says Laura Yip, co-founder and chief people officer at Storm8, a mobile game network based in Redwood Shores, California. If your companys success relies on its company culture, avoid risking it just to fill a position, she says. Focusing on your company culture in the interview can also uncover the candidates style of work. At Storm8, we look for candidates who thrive in an entrepreneurial environment, Yip says. If they require a ton of hand-holding, it probably isnt a good fit. Interview in a Group Having several people participate in one interview saves time it also can provide multiple perspectives to the same answer, says Scott Wintrip, founder of Wintrip Consulting Group in St. Petersburg, Florida, and author of the upcoming book, High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant. There are limits to our perception; you tend to miss things that arent your expertise or are unexpected, he says. In a hiring environment, this can mean missing small cues that a candidate might not be the best choice if only one person is in on the interview. In addition, panel interviews can help avert decisions based on emotion, Wintrip says. The moment we become comfortable with a candidate, we stop asking some of the questions we had planned on, he says. Group interviews arent a new idea, but if you put four people in a room with the candidate, it can give you differing perspectives that can help you reach a faster, better decision. Look Twice for Red Flags If youre moving fast, you may be tempted to cut corners in your interview process. That can leave out important steps or worse, make you ignore a nagging feeling that something is a little off. When that happens, youre more likely to make the wrong choice. Do your reference checks and listen closely for concerns and red flags, says Mikaela Kiner, founder and CEO of UniquelyHR, an HR consultancy in Seattle. In the post-interview debriefing with other team members, spending a little extra time talking about why the person might not be a good hire. Ask everyone to answer the question If this person doesnt work out, why would that happen? Kiner says.

How to Choose the Best Job Offer, Part I

How to Choose the Best Job Offer, Part I How to Choose the Best Job Offer, Part I How to Choose the Best Job Offer, Part I Wahoo! You got an offer! Your job search and interviewing strategies paid off. But wait ... what's that? You have two offers? Three? Holy cow! If this is the boat you're in, consider yourself lucky. While getting even one offer is great news, having more than one gives you a safety net, increases your negotiating power, and raises your sense of control over your future. You get to choose which deal is the sweetest, and ask for more of what you want if one offer isn't good enough to win you over. To give you an idea of how you can sort out the details, I've created a handy chart to compare the terms of two hypothetical job offers. Offer #1 Offer #2 Personal Notes Wage / Salary $42,000/year $46,000/year Bonuses / Raises Merit increase probable after annual performance review Merit increase probable after annual performance review Paid Time Off 2 weeks' vacation, 5 sick days, 11 paid holidays 2 weeks' vacation, no set number of sick days, 7 paid holidays Insurance Health, life, dental, vision, prescription, reimbursement account Health, dental, vision, prescription, long- and short-term disability Need life insurance to protect family 401(k) Contributions Enroll after 6 months, company match up to 6% Enroll after 90 days, company match up to 3% Tuition Reimbursement N/A N/A Stock Options Available after one year N/A (Non-public company) Relocation N/A N/A Commute 25 minutes to downtown 35 minutes to small town Potential for heavy morning traffic downtown - could take subway Opportunity for Advancement Title change flexibility only, unless higher position opens Non-hierarchical structure but ability to move within departments Level of Independence Mainly independent, report directly to manager Report to senior level, who reports to manager Closer supervision with #2, not sure I'd like that Cost of Living Manageable Manageable Would be more comfortable with higher salary for higher 401(k) contributions But don't stop there. Other important factors to consider include: Hours, work environment, boss and coworkers, job security, training and career development, and work-related travel, if any. So now that you've mapped out the differences, how do you determine what the best fit is for you? Identify Level of Importance Is a higher salary more important than life insurance? Is a longer commute to a small town that big of a deal? Is moving up the corporate ladder more important than lateral transitions? Identify Most Attractive Offer Overall Which offer, before any negotiating, meets most of your needs? Identify Areas of Negotiation Let's say you consider Offer #2 more attractive overall, but you could really use employer-paid life insurance and would prefer more paid time off. With another offer to fall back on, you have the upper hand in negotiations and if the company really wants you, they just might step up to meet your needs. In the end, your decision may come down to something as simple as which offer feels right. Think it through, weigh the pros and cons, and trust your gut. When you've made your choice, follow up with How to Choose the Best Offer: Part II, in which I address how to reject an offer without burning bridges.

An Historical Resume Looks to the Future

An Historical Resume Looks to the Future An Historical Resume Looks to the Future Revamping a sales-focused resume for a career changeThis month’s “Does Your Resume Stink?” contest winner is a sales professional who wants to steer her career away from sales jobs and towards marketing and brand management jobs. Yet her original resume still emphasized her sales skills over her marketing prowess. It needed a near-complete overhaul to show how her skills were transferable and that she could confidently make the career change.Every resume has a strategy for the content, the design and the organization. The old resume had been created with a more historical view in mind. So we built the new resume around the new career goal, always looking to the desired career path, not just her work history. It is always important to have the goal in mind when creating a resume because the information that builds that story should be highlighted.Promote desired responsibilitiesWe created a core competencies section, following a professional summary up top, to pull in industry-s pecific keywords that relate to marketing and brand management.This will promote how frequently the resume shows up in recruiters’ searches. Recruiters will conduct Boolean searches for strings of keywords, and we want to catch as many as possible - not only in the core competencies section but also within the entire content of the resume.For example: The job seeker is targeting larger companies, so we inserted the keyword phrase “Fortune 500.” It was easily done by creating company descriptions for her two previous employers. Both had been Fortune 500 companies and by mentioning that, we would be sure to catch searches where recruiters were searching for candidates with Fortune 500 experience.Showcase progressive careerIn the original resume, the experience with a large automotive manufacturer was fragmented; each job had been listed separately with the company name being repeated. At first glance, it appeared that the job seeker had hopped around to different jobs. It was o nly upon a second, closer reading that the long tenure with that company became apparent. We leveraged that by changing the structure and only listing the company name once at the beginning. With this organizational scheme, it became easily apparent that she had enjoyed a progressive career.Additionally, we changed up the format used to feature dates. The old resume had dates written in month/year format. We shifted to a “years only” format which not only further emphasized her tenure but eliminated the fragmented appearance. During our information-gathering process, we also discovered there were many details about her work and accomplishments that never made it into the old resume. By bolstering the new resume with marketing-relevant specifics like development of programs and events, the hands-on experience would stand out.The new resume should be a powerful tool for her achievement of her goal of a management position in marketing and brand development.

Taleo 4 Ways the Most Popular ATS Ranks Your Job Application

Taleo 4 Ways the Most Popular ATS Ranks Your Job Application Taleo 4 Ways the Most Popular ATS Ranks Your Job Application Virtually all large employers utilize anapplicant tracking system(ATS) to manage their simultaneous job openings and high volumes of applicants. These systems make it possible for recruiters and hiring managers to comb through hundreds or thousands of applicants, but theyre not without their drawbacks.Resumes and applications that arent optimized for these systems might never see the light of day in what many job seekers call the resume black hole. Read more: What is an applicant tracking system? If youre on a job hunt, one ATS you have probably encountered (whether you realize it or not) is Taleo. What is Taleo? Taleo is the most used applicant tracking system today with adominant 30%market share among Fortune 500 companies. Owned by Oracle, Taleo doesmore than simply organize inbound job applicants. Human resource representatives can use Taleo to track communication with applicants, onboard new hires, generate reports, and much more. The system is highly customizable to a companys needs, meaning any two companies could be relying on a completely different set of features. Companies that Use Taleo A few of the many companies that use Taleo include: Starbucks Nike Marriott Nintendo Tesla Kaiser Permanente Nordstrom Boeing Walgreens HP US Bank United Airlines Deloitte American Express Siemens Dell Toyota Intel Citi ATT Visa American Airlines Johnson Johnson Intuit You can often spot the specific ATS a company is using by looking at the URL of the job application. For example, a Starbucks job listing has a URL that looks like this: starbucks.taleo.net/careersection/1000222/jobsearch.ftl?lang=enLOCATION=200000194CATEGORY=200000027src=CWS-11700 4 Ways Taleo Ranks and Filters Applicants There are a number of ways that Taleo could reject or breeze past your application depending on how a recruiter chooses to use the tool. If youre applying for a job through Taleo, keep these in mind. 1. Tiered Scoring for Knockout Questions Knockout questions are commonly incorporated into online job applications. They are typically pass/fail and allow recruiters to automatically screen out applicants who dont meet basic requirements. For example: Do you have a valid drivers license? or Are you willing to work weekends? Taleo takes knockout questions beyond pass/fail by allowing recruiters to designate more than two examples and assign point values to the answers. In this example, the recruiter is asking,How many years of research and management experience do you possess? They can then enter different experience ranges and assign each a score. This recruiter is most interested in candidates with 3-6 years of experience as illustrated by the corresponding score. Additionally, the buttons on the right allow the recruiter to highlight or knockout candidates based on certain answers. Applicants answer a series of these questions and, if not rejected outright, earn a score that is compared to the other applicants. 2. Bonus Points for Certain Resume Keywords Similarly, point tiers and knockouts can also be assigned to specific keywords within the ATS resume and application itself. For example, a recruiter can set up Taleo to assign a 15-point bonus to an applicant that mentions one of the skills in the nice to haves section of the job description. 3. Automatic Resume Scoring Even if a recruiter opts not to manually assign extra points to certain keywords, Taleo automatically scores applications and resumes based on their contents in what they call Req Rank. Taleo parses the text from your resume and application then compares it to the job description. Recruiters can filter out applicants that dont score above a certain threshold. Naturally, theyre more likely to consider applicants that jump to the top of the ranking. Because of features like these last two, its critical for you to tailor your ATS resume to the job description and home in on the most important resume keywords. One way to do this is by analyzing the job description for key skills and phrases that are emphasized or repeated. Jobscan was built to mimic the scoring algorithms found in Taleo and other top ATS. You can get an instant analysis of how your resume keywords stack up against the job listing by pasting them in below. span data-mce-type=bookmark style=display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0; class=mce_SELRES_start?/spanspan data-mce-type=bookmark style=display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0; class=mce_SELRES_start?/spanspan data-mce-type=bookmark style=display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0; class=mce_SELRES_start?/spanspan data-mce-type=bookmark style=display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0; class=mce_SELRES_startspan data-mce-type=bookmark style=display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0; class=mce_SELRES_start?/span?/span   4. Boolean Searches Recruiters can search their applicant pool within Taleo for specific skills and keywords, or even craft complex Boolean searches with “and,” “or,” and “not” operators (among other modifiers) to fine tune their results. You should hope that the recruiter is using a robust Boolean string because Taleos search is not very intelligent on its own.It cannot differentiate between the searched term and common variants based on tense, plurals, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. For example, a search for project manager wont return results containing only project management, nor would a search for Certified Public Accountant return results containing only CPA. Because of this, its important to try and mirror the language found in the job description. If a recruiter or hiring manager used a specific form of a keyword while writing the job description, its a reasonable assumption that theyll use the same version of the word to search their applicant database. If you have room on your resume, try using both forms of the keyword just in case. For example, Master of Business Administration (MBA). Get Additional Taleo ATS Tips Get more Taleo-specific tips by using Jobscans ATS Tip feature. Learn more by watching the one-minute video below: Learn more about ATS: What is an Applicant Tracking System? 8 ATS Resume Secrets You Need to Know Jobscan Learning Center: Applicant Tracking Systems