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There was a time, not so long ago when people used the library for research. They would pore over dusty tomes, hoping to find the answer to their question. Today, of course, we have Google. Within seconds, we can find the answer to almost any question. Just a few taps on a keyboard and we have access to the sum of human knowledge. It’s no wonder that Googling has become an essential life skill.

But while googling may be easy, it’s not always accurate. The key to finding good results is to use the right keywords. A few general words will often give you a long list of irrelevant results. But if you choose your keywords carefully and use the right Boolean operators you can find exactly what you’re looking for.

Start with specific keywords and then narrow down your search using Boolean operators. Boolean operators are words like “AND,” “OR,” and “NOT” that help you to filter your results. Learning how to narrow down your keywords, sift through results, and find reliable sources of information can save you hours of wasted time. That’s why being good at googling is such a valuable skill that can help you find anything on the internet in no time.

Boolean Search Operators

Boolean operators are important for anyone who wants to use the internet for research or even simple search. They are used to combine terms when doing a search. The three main Boolean operators are “AND,” “OR,” and “NOT” (or – sign). By combining these terms, you can create a more targeted search that will help you find the needed information more quickly.

For example, if you wanted to find information about cats and dogs, you could use the Boolean operator “AND” to search for “cats AND dogs.” This would give you results that include both terms. And as any Search Guru knows, any space in Google is default “AND”. So you do not need to use AND in Google, but you will need to use it in some other databases.

Or, if you wanted to find information about either cats or dogs, you could use the Boolean operator “OR” to search for “cats OR dogs.” This would give you results that include either term. Finally, if you wanted to find information about cats but not dogs, you could use the Boolean operator “not” to search for “cats NOT dogs” or “cats -dogs.” This would give you results that include only cat-related information.

The good news is that Boolean operators are not just for Google. They can also help you find anything on other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo and can be used on other websites and databases.

How to Find Anything On the Internet

There are also a few simple tips to help you hone your googling skills. Always use quotation marks, another Boolean operator, around your keywords. This tells Google to search for those specific words (phrases) in that order.

Finally, take advantage of Google’s advanced search options. Here, you can narrow your results by date range, file type, and more. By using these simple tips, you can quickly become a googling pro. So the next time you need to find something fast, remember to google it like a boss! With a little practice,  you save time and find exactly what you need.

How to Become a Google Search Guru

Do you really need to know these operators and learn these skills?

It depends! Knowing how to search like a Pro is a skill worth investing in. Imagine looking for salary information in a specific location. You can run “Salary range Finance Manager London” search query to get many results connected with these terms. Or you can use Boolean operators and target specific information like salary surveys with this string.

filetype:pdf (“Salary survey” OR “Salary guide”) London “Finance Manager”

This simple string may look like something out of a Harry Potter book, but when you learn the basics, you will be able to find anything on the internet within a few seconds.

Learning Boolean operators is also quite handy during your job search. You can use Google and narrow your search to find the perfect job in no time, even those jobs you cannot find on LinkedIn or Indeed. That’s where the Boolean operators come in. These operators can help you focus your search and find the most relevant jobs to your skills and experience.

If you want to learn all the secrets of Google that recruiters already know, consider getting the book, Full Stack Recruiter. With its step-by-step guide, you’ll be a Google Pro in no time, plus you will learn all recruiters’ secrets.

The next time you’re stuck on a project, take some time to hone your Google-fu – you may be surprised at how much it can help.

Being good at googling is a skill worth investing in!

Check this book: https://fullstackrecruiter.net/

“Studies have shown that up to 75% of qualified applicants are rejected by ATS programs because they can’t be read” (Source: Article posted March 18, 2014, on Forbes.)

But is that true? Let’s have a close look at that statement.

That Forbes article was written by the ‘founder of a resume service’, aka person behind a company that is helping people with their resumes for money. It was more of an advertisement than an article. On April 17, 2018, CIO.com published another article that has been often quoted on the internet, like the Forbes one. That article included a statement, “Most companies have thousands of resumes sitting in a database that they’ve never looked at. In fact, 75 percent are never seen by a real person.” Again, no relevant data or study is cited in support of this statement.

During my research, I found several resume-writing services and many articles that say their sources are these articles I mentioned or the search firm Preptel (which is now out of business), but what a ‘surprise’ — they were also offering resume-writing services.

I found one article from 2013 describing an example of the hiring funnel: “75 of those 100 resumes will be screened out by either the ATS or a recruiter, 25 resumes will be seen by the hiring manager.” That made me believe that this article became a primary source for that 75 percent statement.

Is it really 75%?

75% looks like a good number to get attention and also create frustration in readers that this is not fair that so many applicants are disqualified by ATS software. That’s why so many other articles and career coaches blindly adopt this lie without any proper research.

During the last few years, I spoke with dozens of recruiters about their recruitment process, and that statement doesn’t reflect reality at all. Based on what I heard over these years, 90–95%+ of all applications are viewed by a human. Large organizations also have a team of people dedicated to checking every resume and presenting those resumes that recruiters preselect.

What happens to the remaining 5–10% of all resumes? Many of them are not viewed due to the workload of recruiters being higher than usual. And several resumes could be lost via technical issues, like not completing registration. Of course, there could be recruiters not doing their job properly, but if recruiters had 100 candidates and they never checked 75 of those profiles, those recruiters would be without a job.

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Does the ATS Ready Template Really Work?

More than 100 applicant tracking systems exist and there are probably even more that I have never heard of. When some career coach and so-called career influencer will try to offer you new guaranteed tips on writing a resume that will beat the ATS algorithm and get you invited to an interview, keep in mind that they could not check and test it with every ATS system.

Let me be clear, any resume template may get you the interview, but resumes don’t get you hired; only you can make this happen! Your resume is your intro, based on which you will get a call from a recruiter or invitation to an interview.

Those coaches are selling just a simple resume template that everyone could download for free as a template via Google.

How to Create Your “ATS Software Ready Resume”

There is no magical thing behind it; you only tailor your resume to the job description. There is no ATS-ready resume template that will magically increase your chances of getting a job. You will still need to write your own resume with your relevant experience and your skills reflecting the role you are applying for.

You can tailor your resume to the job description by adding the relevant information (phrases) and keywords from it. When you add the relevant keywords into your career history, recruiters will get more attention from the recruiters. Their attention will focus on the keywords that are in bold; those same keywords the hiring manager put into the job description.

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How to Find Out If Your Resume Is ATS Ready

And if you want to test if your resume could be read by the ATS parser, here is a simple trick for you. If you are using PDF as a format, just click CTRL+A to highlight the whole text in your resume. Then press CTRL+C and CTRL+V whilst viewing your Word document, and if you can copy and paste the text, your resume is ATS ready. If your resume is in formats like DOC, RTF, DOCX etc., and you are not using images instead of text, your resume is ATS ready.

Now you know the secret behind the ATS-ready resume, and you don’t have to pay so-called career coach influencers to get it.

Final Thoughts

ATS algorithms could advise the recruiter that a candidate doesn’t match the relevant requirements (doesn’t have the right keywords in their resume etc.), but the reason you were rejected is simple. You were not a good fit for the role (42 percent of job applicants don’t meet skill requirements), there was somebody better, or your resume is poorly written and not tailored to the job description. There are many ways to improve your resume and get noticed, but another article will cover that. Some people even try to use a fake resume to get attention from recruiters.

Many recruitment myths like 6 Second Resume Scan or this one are spread for years without any real proof that this is true or sources that are backing up those theories. These myths have only one goal: to scare candidates and force them to spend money on some “Resume templates that will beat any ATS” and give them hope that their investment will secure them a new job.

“Thanks” to sites like ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com, spotting a fake profile picture is harder than before. Luckily there are articles like Which Face Is Real? or How to recognize fake AI-generated images that will help you to learn the difference and spot a fake profile photo within a few seconds.

And if you spend enough time on site WhichFaceIsReal.com, which lets you test your ability to distinguish AI-generated profile photos from genuine ones, you will be able to spot a fake profile in no time.

LinkedIn has a fake profile problem

Microsoft’s social network also has a big problem with fake LinkedIn profiles and it is not getting better. In 2019, I wrote the article “Top 11 Reasons Why Fake LinkedIn Profiles Exist” to cover the main reasons why individuals are creating fake profiles.

Why Would Companies Create a Fake LinkedIn Profile?

1. It Is All About Perception

New clients would rather start a business with a company that has 33 people, not just four. That is why some startups are creating the illusion that they are not a company run by a small team but they have a large team. This creates an illusion of trustworthiness and stability, and it also creates an impression that this company is successful and has enough clients or a strong foundation.

Other companies create fake employees that are reaching people to set up a meeting for their manager or salesperson via email. They even have LinkedIn profiles for those “employees” to improve trust with a potential customer. And when you ask to speak with that person directly, they become sick, leave the company, be on PTO or become an external employee without access to Zoom, etc.

2. Email Promotion

Fake people together with their fake LinkedIn profiles are used in email signatures of promotional emails. It is easier to blame an intern or external help for sending spam, rather than ruin your personal reputation.

3. Overcoming LinkedIn Limits

LinkedIn capped the weekly invitation limit for connection requests to 100 invitations per week. That created major issues for companies that use invitations for promotional spam or reaching out to candidates. Right after you accept their invitation you will receive a promotional message. By creating ten new fake profiles they now can send 1,000 invitations per week instead of 100.

And if LinkedIn were to block one of those profiles because people reported this illegal promotion, the people behind it would not lose their official profile that they have had for years as they can replace their fake profile with another one.

4. Catfishing Method

Catfishing is a deceptive activity wherein a person creates a fictional persona or fake identity on a social networking service, usually targeting a specific victim. (Source: Wikipedia)

Several companies and recruitment agencies are using these fake profiles (Good looking, young, highly accomplished people) to interact with their LinkedIn users (potential candidates). As they found out that people will accept connection requests from people they find attractive and it also raises their chances of getting the person interested in the job offer or some other proposal.

Similar tricks were used for centuries by spies and now, as everything has moved to the online world, this catfishing method is not only used by clandestine organizations and spy agencies but even some companies and recruitment agencies are using it.

5. Racial Bias

It is incredibly sad that in the 21st century racial bias is still a thing. That is why several recruitment companies/recruiters are creating fake LinkedIn profiles or using fake photos to create an impression that the candidate is communicating with somebody from the same part of the world, even though they are thousands of miles away.

Several recruiters behind these profiles told me that many of them are facing a lower response rate from candidates the farther they are from the location where their candidates are located. And their response rate grows even higher if they use an artificial profile photo and add the same location as their candidates.

6. Shared Profile

During the last few years, I spoke with dozens of people behind these fake profiles and a number of them were running profiles that were maintained by more than one person. One of the companies had three people sharing access to one LinkedIn profile. That is why this fake virtual HR person was able to contact candidates 24/7, and even if people maintaining this profile left the company, that profile still remained the same.

7. Collecting Information

The CEO of one of the scraping tools was bragging in one of the Recruitment Facebook groups that they have technology that could create dozens of fake LinkedIn profiles during a day and LinkedIn is unable to remove them quickly enough. And why they are doing that?

The answer is simple; they are doing that because some fields of profiles out of your network have limited visibility as described here. And as your LinkedIn profile is not accessible via Google (if you didn’t activate it) scraping companies need to get access to your profile information so they can update your information in their database. To get full access they ideally need to be your 1st-degree connection and not your ‘Out of Network’ connection.

Trust is a fragile thing — hard to earn, easy to lose.

Fake profiles are not going anywhere, they are here to stay! Even though LinkedIn will try to battle this issue, we should not expect any more serious steps from LinkedIn. They will have to remove millions or even dozens of millions of profiles from their network as it never looks good in the business reports that the user base is lower than a year ago.

Companies and individuals will continue to create fake LinkedIn profiles as the benefits outweigh the negatives. And the only risk here is that LinkedIn users will report their profiles, LinkedIn will block those fake profiles, and they will need to invest more time to create new ones.

And what you can do? You can learn how to spot fake profiles on Linkedin and how to report them.

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In today’s world, where everything is controlled by technology, it is impossible to consider recruitment without mentioning machine learning or Artificial intelligence (AI). It is not necessarily a negative thing because we live in a technologically advanced and exciting time. But don’t you think everything comes with drawbacks?

There are a plethora of AI tools available that control everything from interviewing candidates to hiring them. Many companies use AI interview systems as gatekeepers to assess their applicants before candidates even have a chance to speak with a human. Of course, these tools come with many benefits, from saving time to choosing the top candidates, but there are some potential downsides as well.

I consider myself an AI fan because many technological tools not only help recruitment teams but also improve the candidate experience. There is, however, one thing that deserves our attention. I am talking about AI face-screening interview platforms. These platforms bring many positives, but they also bring many negatives to the hiring process that candidates and hiring managers are not aware of.

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The pros of AI interview platforms include

• Saving time (especially in the initial screening process)
• Accelerating the hiring process
• Eliminating the need for candidates to travel
• Potentially improving the quality of hire and candidate experience

All these things, especially hiring process acceleration and improved quality of hire, are heavily dependent on the roles the AI tool aims to fill. And yes, automating the hiring process and using AI tools are helpful in high-volume workplaces, and we will definitely see more of them in the future.

And as Frida Polli says that without automation, many applicants are never even seen, but AI can assess the entire pipeline of candidates. Additionally, it can eliminate unconscious human biases with the right amount of auditing (source: “I Got a Job at an Amazon Warehouse Without Talking to a Single Human”).

But there is a difference between using AI and machine learning and using AI face-screening tools.

Face analysis tools create new issues because they do not analyze only the answers that candidates provide during interviews, but also their behavior, intonation, and speech is fed to an algorithm that assigns certain traits and qualities. Many AI experts warn that algorithms trained on data from previous job applicants may perpetuate existing biases in hiring. (Source: Job Screening Service Halts Facial Analysis of Applicants)

And that was also the reason why in 2018, Amazon reportedly abandoned the use of its own technology for automating the assessment of candidate résumés due to biased results. (Source: Job Screening Service Halts Facial Analysis of Applicants)

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Why We Shouldn’t Use AI Face-Screening Tools in Recruitment

Let’s look at some of the top reasons why we shouldn’t use AI in recruitment.

1. Not 100% Reliable

Most AI-based tools are not 100% reliable. These tools are black-box solutions, and in most cases, you will not get a chance to analyze or even understand how exactly the algorithms work. These tools are still going through a development process, so they still have many errors, inconsistencies, and bugs.

Moreover, these do not produce enough data. We need a plethora of data to identify patterns. For example, an applicant screening system may reject a candidate because they don’t meet the precise requirements set by the algorithm. As Elisa Harlan and Oliver Schnuk’s study “Objective or Biased” confirms, candidates can easily lose out on jobs because they do or do not wear glasses.

Finally, with the rise of social recruitment, these AI tools also judge candidates based on their social media profiles, activities, and digital footprints.

2. Bias that emerges from algorithms

AI face-screening tools promise to bring less prejudice and more objectivity to the hiring process. But how far they are from that promise?

Software programs promise to identify candidates’ personality traits from short videos. With the help of AI, they are supposed to make the selection process more objective and faster. However, BR (Bavarian Broadcasting) journalists’ exclusive data analysis shows that AI can be swayed by appearances. This issue could perpetuate stereotypes while potentially costing candidates a job (source: “Objective or Biased”)

The journalists tested highly rated AI software to determine if things like glasses a hair scarves affect the candidate’s chances of getting hired. The differences in the results compared to the candidate not wearing glasses or a hair scarf was huge. The AI rated her as more open, more conscientious, and less neurotic without the glasses and hair scarf, with a difference of nearly 20 points (source: “Objective or Biased”).

AI is expected to decrease the bias in the hiring process, but it actually creates many biases related to age, gender, and nationality. AI recruiting tools analyze certain set patterns and then make decisions based on those patterns. Even though one AI company has implied that an external audit showed that its algorithms had no biases, the audit itself tells a different story (source: “Independent Auditors Are Struggling to Hold AI Companies Accountable”)

While people with disabilities or unusual accents are likely to experience the worst outcomes, anyone with an atypical speaking style or quirky mannerisms should be concerned (source: “Independent Auditors are Struggling to Hold AI Companies Accountable”)

AL has certain challenges when it comes to practical application in the recruitment process. Even AI experts are concerned about these tools.

“It’s a profoundly disturbing development that we have proprietary technology that claims to differentiate between a productive worker and a worker who isn’t fit, based on their facial movements, their tone of voice, their mannerisms,” said Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute, a research center in New York. “It’s pseudoscience. It’s a license to discriminate,” she added. “And the people whose lives and opportunities are literally being shaped by these systems don’t have any chance to weigh in” (source: “A Face-Scanning Algorithm Increasingly Decides Whether You Deserve the Job”).

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What the Future Looks Like for These Tools

If you are planning to invest money in these face-scanning tools, you should reconsider. Many countries and organizations are fighting for more AI regulations.

Recent news reveals that Europe is seeking to limit the use of AI in society. The use of facial recognition for surveillance and algorithms that manipulate human behavior will be banned under proposed EU regulations on artificial intelligence. That includes algorithms used by the police and in recruitment (source: BBC).

The latest EU legislation leaked to the public aims to heavily regulate these tools in recruitment. The document regulates the definition of so-called high-risk AI systems. For example, companies will not be able to use AI to recruit or monitor employee performance in the same way they can now. (Source: “A European Approach to Artificial intelligence”)

In the US, these tools are already facing several investigations. For example, the Washington Post reported that “The Electronic Privacy Information Center urged the FTC to investigate HireVue’s business practices, saying its face-scanning technology threatens job candidates’ privacy rights and livelihoods.” We should expect similar actions across the world in the future.

Many states and countries have already started implementing similar legislation:

“Set to take effect January 1, 2020, the state’s Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act has three primary requirements. First, companies must notify applicants that artificial intelligence will be used to consider applicants’ “fitness” for a position. Those companies must also explain how their AI works and what “general types of characteristics” it considers when evaluating candidates. In addition to requiring applicants’ consent to use AI, the law also includes two provisions meant to protect their privacy: It limits who can view an applicant’s recorded video interview to those “whose expertise or technology is necessary” and requires that companies delete any video that an applicant submits within a month of their request” (source: “Illinois Says You Should Know if AI is Grading Your Online Job Interviews”).

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Last Thoughts

If “Objective or Biased” study is accurate — and we have no reason to believe it is not — we can conclude that candidates interviewed through those apps in the last few years were not only fairly evaluated. We could even say that the companies that used these tools discriminated against them during the interview process.

Their chance of getting the job was influenced by bad lighting, glasses, scarves, skin color, and more. Even people who did not speak English as their native language or who were disabled were likely to get lower scores (source: For some Employment Algorithms, Disability Discrimination by Default”)

AI tools promise to remove the bias from the hiring process, but “Objective or Biased” showed us that they make the hiring process more complicated rather than more transparent. And because these algorithms are not public, we don’t know what they’re looking for.

It is obvious that AI and automation affect many industries and recruitment processes and will continue to do so in the future. However, that does not mean that we should remove people or traditional processes from the equation completely.

We cannot deny the fact that people will always be important in any industry because they have qualities that make them essential. Thus, human recruiters are not going anywhere, even with the introduction of these AI tools.

We accept the fact that technology can be exciting, and in most cases, it is. All we need to do is to ensure that we objectively and wisely weigh the pros, cons, and impacts of every technology — especially if we are implementing tools that could impact humans’ lives.

A company’s culture can vary across different locations and departments. But there’s one thing they all have in common if our managers or our colleagues are creating a toxic and depressing environment for us, we are unproductive. On the other hand, if our work environment is positive and filled with excitement, our production is higher than ever before.

Evidence proves that a positive work culture results in more productivity and profitability for companies. It boosts employee engagement, which in turn increases business outcomes. It has been shown that businesses that are highly engaged experience up to 40% less absenteeism and achieve up to 20% more productivity. Moreover, highly engaged companies and business units also experience less turnover according to a report by Gallup.

According to another study done by Glassdoor, companies with a positive work culture outperformed significantly in the market as compared to companies where employee satisfaction was low. That is why many companies are focusing on the well-being of their employees. They offer mindfulness lessons, various wellness programs, yoga lessons, and gym memberships.

But those free lessons are not only measures that companies take to improve employees’ work-life balance. The work-life balance has become more important for employers than in previous years because data shows that a good work-life balance affects productivity and results in better business outcomes.

What are the problems associated with a stressful work culture?

According to many experts, a workplace with constant pressure and stress is highly dangerous as it results in many health problems such as cognitive stress. Excessive workplace stress causes a staggering 120,000 deaths and results in nearly $190 billion in health care costs each year. Constant stress in the workplace also leads to depression and depression is as costly as heart disease or AIDS to the US economy, costing over $51 billion in absenteeism from work and lost productivity and $26 billion in direct treatment costs.

According to the American Psychological Association, over $500 billion are drained off from the economy of the United States of America due to workplace stress and over 600 million workdays are lost every year because of job stress. Likewise, more than 60% of accidents in the workplace are directly attributed to stress. Workplace stress has been related to many health as well as economic problems, which affect the employees as well as the company.

A high-pressured workplace also results in less engaged employees over the long term. On the other hand, a positive workplace is associated with happier employees. A study titled “Happiness and productivity: Understanding the happy-productive worker” found that happy employees are up to 20% more productive than employees that are not happy at work.

Why are positive work cultures more productive?

A positive work culture where the employees are happy and satisfied can do wonders for your business. Such a work culture boosts employees’ satisfaction, and thus they find their work culture more motivating. Consequently, they enjoy working in such an environment that ultimately promotes workplace productivity.

Those statements are not plucked from the air; they have a strong foundation and are backed up by profound research. In 2012, Gallup conducted its eighth meta-analysis using 263 research studies across 192 organizations in 49 industries and 34 countries. Within each study, Gallup researchers statistically calculated the work-unit-level relationship between employee engagement and performance outcomes that the organization supplied.

Gallup’s research also shows that companies with engaged workforces have higher earnings per share (EPS), and they seem to have recovered from the recession at a faster rate.

Engaged and satisfied individuals at a workplace are a byproduct of healthy and positive work culture. According to a report by the University of Warwick made in 2017, a happy work culture boosts inventiveness and innovation, which in turn increases productivity, and happy employees are 10–12% more productive.

Here’s why positive work cultures are more productive:

1.      They promote happier employees and a healthy environment

Spending all those hours in a nine to five job isn’t easy if the work environment isn’t relaxed. You don’t want your employees to keep checking their watches and waiting for 5 p.m. Microsoft Japan started trialing a four-day workweek and this activity boosted productivity by 40 percent and their employees were happier.

In addition to the increased productivity, employees took 25% less time off during the trial and electricity use was down 23% in the office with the additional day off per week. Employees printed 59% fewer pages of paper during the trial. (Source: The Guardian)

Unhappy employees not only affect the work environment, but there is also less productivity, which will, in turn, have a negative impact on the quality of work. It is quite evident that when employees are happy, they want to exceed expectations, and they will more likely love to stick around.

That means that there will be less job turnover as well, and you don’t need to pass through the interview and hiring process continually. That is why it is essential to promote a positive work culture where the employees feel important and remain excited to do their job all day long.

A positive work culture keeps projects moving at a consistent as well as productive pace.

2.      They promote unity and unity means creativity

Positive and healthy work culture is highly helpful for the employees as it encourages them to get acquainted with their coworkers as well as other team members. A culture wherein the employees are interested in getting to know each other by chatting, spending time with each other and sharing ideas and opinions doesn’t only promote unity, it also has a psychological effect on the employees, and they feel relaxed and motivated. Unity among the employees also ensures that things are moving in the right direction.

Moreover, a positive work environment also encourages the employees to take full interest in their tasks and ongoing projects. When individuals feel like they can share ideas and speak up with each other, they come up with the best problem-solving and creative ideas.

Therefore, if you want to keep your employees and workforce productive, you need to make sure they are happy and motivated. Only then will they be able to express their thoughts and creativity. Remember! The more invested your employees are, the more productive and creative they will become!

3.      They promote loyalty

A positive work culture fosters loyalty. According to the American Institute of Stress, workplace stress results in higher voluntary turnover and based on a CAP study the turnover of a single employee costs more than 20% of that single employee’s salary. Twenty percent of the annual salary for midrange positions, but for the highly educated executive positions it could be even up to 213 percent of their annual salary.

On the other hand, a workplace where employees feel encouraged is one where they provide their best input and remain loyal to the company.

Final Thoughts

There are more than 615 million people suffering from depression or anxiety around the world, an increase of nearly 50% from 1990, according to a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry. Together with a high-pressure work environment, this leads to lower productivity, which is often costly for businesses.

That is why the only way a company can move forward is by fostering a positive and relaxed work culture for its employees. And they need to start considering the mental health of their employees as one of their priorities. People are not leaving companies only because of an offer of a higher paycheck but also because they work in a constantly high-stress environment.

By going the extra mile, companies can achieve greater productivity, lesser turnover, higher loyalty and more innovation from their employees. Staying positive is the only key to success, whether it is related to health or profit.

Engaged and happy employees result in better business outcomes!

Hiring managers and recruiters have a shared goal: to hire the best people and fill the role as fast as possible. Having a common goal and working in the same company should theoretically turn hiring managers and recruiters into best buddies.

Yet the reality is too often otherwise — in many cases, there is friction in their cooperation caused by different expectations from each side, and one doesn’t always understand the other’s role in the process. At times, this can make cooperation difficult.

While they are both trying to fill the position as soon as possible, hiring managers’ expectations are sometimes not aligned with the reality of the market. Hiring managers often expect their role to be prioritized by the recruiter, even if the recruiter has other open roles to fill. For example, a hiring manager may expect the recruiter to find dozens of great candidates and fill the role in three weeks because that’s what happened last year, but just because it happened once doesn’t mean it will happen every time.

These misunderstandings can pile up. So what can hiring managers and recruiters do to establish a good partnership and ensure they’re on the same page?

Set the expectations early on

Setting expectations early on could remove much of the friction from the recruitment process. Recruiters should always bring the data to the table for their first intake meeting and discuss with hiring managers factors such as how big the candidate pool is and how quickly this type of role is usually filled. That data could also provide additional insights, such as why hiring a senior candidate for a position could take five months but hiring a slightly less-experienced candidate could shorten the time to fill the position and increase the pool of potential candidates.

Another way recruiters can set expectations for hiring managers is to include them in the first part of the hiring process so they have a better understanding of how it all works. For example, recruiters can provide hiring managers with a list of qualified candidates and ask them to approach these candidates via email. Then check in every few days to see how your hiring manager is doing in terms of replies.

Chances are, candidates are not replying to every message. This is a great way for hiring managers to understand a little more about what recruiters face on a daily basis — and realize that repeatedly asking “How many people responded?” will not influence how quickly candidates respond.

Where are my candidates?

“Where are my candidates?” is another question that recruiters hear every few days or weeks when a role is open. When it is said out loud, it doesn’t matter how many roles recruiters have filled for that manager in the past — it’s as if any previous success disappears in seconds.

Finding people is not only the recruiter’s job; it is also partly the responsibility of every hiring manager.

That’s not to say that hiring managers need to start sourcing or calling candidates, but we know that candidates choose companies not only for their strong reputation but also for the people they’ll be working with. And often, the main influence in a candidate’s decision to accept or reject the offer is the hiring manager. People want to work with people they get along with and who care about helping them learn and grow.

That’s why recruiters should also ask hiring managers, “What did you do recently to attract candidates?” And that could mean “How many events have you attended?” “How many meet-ups did you have outside the company you visited?” “Did you share on social media that you are hiring?” “How many articles have you written to show that you are a person worth talking to?” “How many recruiters’ posts about your open role have you shared?” and “How many passive candidates have you contacted or had a coffee or lunch with?”

The positions that take the shortest time to fill usually have hiring managers that are eager to spread the word about their jobs and companies. When hiring managers share their knowledge and expertise outside of their own companies, that brings benefits like attracting outside talent, more referrals and higher offer acceptance rates.

Recruiter vs. hiring manager: Who is really responsible for hiring?

The answer is both. Finding people is not only the recruiter’s job, it is also the responsibility of the whole company and especially that of the hiring managers. They play a crucial part in the entire process not only because they are going to manage the new hires, but also because their strong personal brand attracts others. Recruiters help to build an employer brand to consistently attract suitable applicants to the company, and hiring managers should do their part here too.

For instance, if you have a candidate for a graphic designer role and that person gets an opportunity to work with your hiring manager or with the hiring manager who is most well-known in the community, the candidate will most likely choose the well-known person because they know that they can learn more.

Your hiring manager could be better than that person, but if nobody knows that, it’s impossible to sell it to candidates. It is also about the impression.

Conclusion

If expectations are set during the intake meeting, the role is very often filled faster and the hiring manager is less likely to ask the recruiter, “Where are my candidates?” every second day.

Hiring managers should also act as recruiters and work on their personal brand outside the company. A good personal brand works like a good company brand — it attracts people. And the more the hiring managers are involved in approaching candidates at events, the more information they will have about their companies and why people love to work for them or why they don’t work for them. This will give them information from the market that they will not find on the internet.

A good partnership where hiring managers and recruiters speak freely to each other and the expectations are set early on raises the chance of better hiring results.

Making any prediction is not easy because you can only predict the things you can influence, or you can make a prediction based on the information you have sooner than others, and people will believe that you predicted that. The rest of the projections you are reading on the internet are just guesses, and that’s why most predictions that people made during 2018 never turned out to be correct, especially not in recruitment.

That’s why recruitment didn’t die in 2018 as many people tried to predict; A.I. did not replace recruiters in sourcing and interviews are not done only through chatbots.

The good news is that people have another year to predict that this is THAT year when chatbots will be everywhere, AI will replace recruiters, and smart applications will prescreen candidates, offer them a perfect job based on the best algorithm and hire them.

Here is one spoiler alert for you. Nothing of this is going to happen, not entirely. This year will be almost the same as the year before. Recruiters will be saying that they are hiring people from sources other than LinkedIn, yet most of them will be using only LinkedIn as their primary source.

LinkedIn will still be trying to convince us that all the changes they made are improvements and they are making them for us, yet they will be trying to stop all the chrome plugins that people are using. And this activity will lead only to a bad candidate experience for all users. And instead of limiting people like Mr. Gelo, LinkedIn will support these people to keep other people engaged on LinkedIn.

And, as years before, in 2019 every company CEO and manager is going to say that hiring is a top priority, yet only a few of them will invest in the training and tools that recruiters need.

What about technology in 2019?

Technology will be just a little bit cleverer than a year before, yet chatbots are still going to be like the old gamebooks. You know those when you have “Now you are in front of the bridge, there is a troll on that bridge would you like to: Speak with the Troll (turn on page 132) or return to the village (turn on page 64)?”

Every tool that will appear on the market during 2019 will use an “A.I. inside” label, yet most of them will only use smart algorithms or humans. But you can charge 20% more if you put the A.I. label on your product.

What is going to happen during 2019?

As always, any prediction is hard. But if I must bet on something my money will be onGrowth Hacking and Storytelling.

Why these two? I am expecting to see a financial crisis in 2019, and this will lead to the situation that companies are not going to invest in new technologies. Growth hacking is a relatively cheap way to attract talent, and that’s why I expect that growth hacking will continue to rise during 2019, especially where marketing works in months, and growth hacking works in days.

And together with the storytelling recruiters will be able to attract new people, support the company brand and be more visible than before for smaller budgets and quicker than through standard marketing methods.

That’s why growth hacking and storytelling is going to rule 2019, and that is the reason why improving your storytelling skills is going to be important.

The Power and Importance of Storytelling

Finding the best talents is not an easy task these days. Companies compete with one another to attract the most skilled people that will help the business grow. Considering that people hunt for more than just a generous paycheck these days, you need to do more if you want to find candidates worthy of offering them a position in your company.

If you published an open role in the job market but face a small number of candidates, it’s time you change things a little. What does this mean? It means that you should employ the power of storytelling when composing an ad for a job because job ads, career websites, and recruiters are the first things that candidates see.

How will storytelling improve your recruitment game? Let us take a closer look at what this strategy has to offer. First of all, everybody enjoys a good story. Through stories, our ancestors learned new things and that how we are still learning.

So, the first thing storytelling will help you achieve is visibility and the desire of people to read your story. And to keep people reading something longer than a few short paragraphs is quite a challenge these days.

Secondly, people like to know the story of the company they are considering working for. It is a nice feeling to know that you can be part of a story, having an individual role in making that story successful. Thus, this method works so well because it stirs emotions in people. An audience connects much better with a type of content if the content generates a series of emotions.

Practically, storytelling takes a person from his or her quotidian life and places him or her in “another world.”

As they read your story, tension will be accumulated on the way. It is in your power to take the line of the story where you want the reader to be. If you’re going to take them to a cliff from where they will want to “jump” into your company, you can do so with the power of storytelling.

The purpose of creating tension is to make them feel the need to apply for your job. You first seed the desire of working for your company and then make them feel that this is one of their best options.

But besides just telling the story of your company, make sure to include some stories of your employees as well. Choose successful and positive stories as they will give people a clear image of what could happen in their case as well if they join your company.

Why should you focus on storytelling?

Statistics show that a story helps people to remember more. In 1969, Stanford professors did a series of tests. Students were asked to memorize and recall ten sets of unrelated words. One group retrieved the words in any order they wanted, and the second group constructed a story that contained all the words. When both groups were asked to recall the words, the students that created stories were able to remember six to seven times more words than the first group. (Source: Narrative Stories)

So, if you want to make an impact and make sure that a person retains as much as possible from the information you are providing, then a story is the best way to do it. Stanford University research shows that retention of statistics in a presentation is between 5 and 10%. But when you add an anecdote connected with the story, this rises to 65–70%, which is impressively high. And when you tell a story, your audience tends to pay more attention and listen. Sharing stories lets people hear your insights more effectively.

Stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts or figures alone. Stories are an effective tool to advocate for your ideas, especially when you can weave facts and figures into your story. (Source: Stanford)

Use storytelling to submerge the reader in a different state of mind. Use successful stories of your current employees and make the reading process fascinating. Also, go further than just posting your recruitment ad on recruitment websites. Share your story on social media networks and even with the media in general.

The best part about utilizing a story instead of traditional job advertising is that it looks well no matter where you publish it. It is very easy to create that “wow” factor connected to working within your company with the help of storytelling. Use it and see that attracting talents just became easier and more effective.

Conclusion

Now that you know all this, it is time to change your recruiting strategy. If you want to get the attention of talents and find the right people, then you need to consider storytelling seriously. Just put yourself in their shoes.

Wouldn’t you like to join a company that has a goal to build some products like rockets? Or how about joining a company that is trying to get humanity on Mars? Both companies could do the same thing, but the story will make a difference here. Use this technique to connect with people and make them want to join your company and recruiting will become much easier.

Storytelling should be the number one skill you want to improve during 2019. And together with growth hacking, you can spread the news cheaper, faster and more effectively than through billboards and typical job ads.

Have a great 2019!

Sssshhhh, I have a secret, but you can’t tell anyone, deal?

As Thomas Powers said: “The first rule in keeping secrets is nothing on paper: paper can be lost or stolen or simply inherited by the wrong people; if you really want to keep something secret, don’t write it down.”

We can customize that quote a little bit by replacing “paper” with “computer.” Every company is working hard to protect their data, and they are training their people on how to do this adequately. Companies are also using many tools to prevent data leaks that could potentially hurt their business or reveal their plans and strategies to their competitors or investors.

There are many ways for this information to be leaked on the internet. Sometimes confidential information is leaked intentionally, sometimes it is leaked because of human error, and sometimes it is leaked because of a technical error.

However, as you know, “Everything posted online is there forever, even after it has been deleted.” So, when you combine the possibility of technical and human error, the result is that confidential information could easily appear on Google.

And we sourcers love secrets!

Confidential Information

As a sourcers, we always depend on our carefully selected search keywords, and targeting confidential information is going to be no exception. We will need to target the keywords that are most relevant to our search.

There are many keywords that you can target like: confidential; internal use only; not for distribution; not for public distribution; classified; document is private, etc. Don’t forget that these words are only applicable to a search for English documents. If you are living in France, Germany or another country, you should use these words and phrases in the relevant language.

Creating the string when you are searching for confidential data is very easy; just generate the best list of the keywords for that search.

Example: (“confidential” OR “internal use only” OR “not for distribution” OR “not for public distribution” OR “classified”)

You can add more operators like intitle: with the current year, which should find all the pages with 2018 in the title of the page.

Example: (“confidential” OR “internal use only” OR “not for distribution” OR “not for public distribution” OR “classified”) intitle:2018

If you would like to target more years, you can just add more intitle: operators.

Example: (“confidential” OR “internal use only” OR “not for distribution” OR “not for public distribution” OR “classified”) (intitle:2017 OR intitle:2018)

You can also combine inurl: operator with intitle: operator.

Example: (“confidential” OR “internal use only” OR “not for distribution” OR “not for public distribution” OR “classified”) (intitle:2018 OR inurl:2018)

You can also try to target file types. That’s where the filetype: operator comes in handy.

Example: filetype:pdf (“confidential” OR “internal use only” OR “not for distribution” OR “not for public distribution” OR “classified”)

When you are using a more general keyword like “confidential,” you are going to get lots of results with that keyword in it. Often, you are going to get lots of results that are not relevant, and that’s why I choose not to use it in my strings.

Example: filetype:pdf (“internal use only” OR “not for distribution” OR “not for public distribution” OR “classified”)

If you would like to use some advanced strings, just add more operators or keywords.

Example: filetype:pdf (“internal use only” OR “not for distribution” OR “not for public distribution” OR “classified”) (sourcing AND recruitment)

You can also use the site:operator to target specific sites.

Example: site:com (“internal use only” OR “not for distribution” OR “not for public distribution” OR “classified”)

This string is targeting .com domains. If you would like to target, for example, domains only from Germany, you will just replace site:com with site:de.

Conclusion

The best way to keep a secret is to pretend there isn’t one. Don’t add keywords like: confidential; internal use only; not for distribution; not for public distribution, etc. If you need to use these words or phrases in your own documents or presentations, there is a simple trick that you can use to protect these documents. Replace the text “internal use only” and similar warnings with an image of that text.

Search engine robots that are indexing your domain are not able to run an OCR (optical character recognition) on images that are included in the file. And because they can’t read that text in the photo, people searching for accidentally leaked confidential information are not going to find it online.

Your material will still have the “Internal use only” warning on it, but you will make it a little bit harder for others to find those files through search engines if the search engines are going to index them.

The most challenging part of applying for a job is obtaining an interview and getting the chance to talk to your employer in person. But you need to send your resume first and hope that it is good enough to land you that interview.

You see, employers, especially big corporations, receive a high number of resumes when they announce an open position. As you may suspect, the employer doesn’t have the time to read all the resumes that come in, so they will be quickly scanned in order to see if a candidate is worth a more in-depth analysis.

This is called the “6-second scan” of the resume. Practically, the employer is looking for any details that are worth considering. If you get an employer to spend more than 6 seconds to look at your resume, then your chances of getting an interview are considerably higher.

You probably read something like this in the article that was full of the right tips to beat this 6-second scan. And maybe you asked yourself whether that was actually right. Really 6 seconds? It’s this true?

I asked the same question when I saw those articles and offers promising to customize my resume, so I could pass the 6-second screening test.

The 6-second Resume Scan

I started my search for a study that was the source of the information for all these articles and offers. Many articles led me to one source study: “Keeping an eye on recruiter behavior” published by TheLadders. I recently read many studies about how formatting of text is influencing readers and I was curious about that new study that is a source of data for so many articles.

It was quite easy to find it; however, I was surprised that it’s just a 5-page PDF file (brochure) full of statements with no detailed information. It was like the brochure that any marketing department could create during two days and not the type of study that you usually see, dozens pages supported by research.

I was trying to find the whole study and not this brochure. I spent quite lot of time trying to find more information on that study. But maybe I don’t know how to find information on Google, I don’t have sufficient luck or there is nothing else about this study, only this 5-page brochure.

When you open the PDF, there are few interesting statements; let’s have a look at them a little more closely.

“The study gauged specific behaviors of actual recruiters as they performed online tasks, including resume and candidate profile reviews. Thirty professional recruiters took part in the study during a 10-week period.”

The “study” does not provide any information about the recruiters that were part of it. There is no information about what types of roles they were trying to fill or what candidates they were screening during those 10 weeks. Even the information about how many profiles each recruiter checked during that time is not mentioned there. I was also expecting information about whether all the recruiters that were part of that study were from US or from some other countries. The location is important because in many countries people use a different format of resume.

And because of lack of data you don’t even know if the recruiters were looking to fill specific roles or if they were responsible for high volume hiring. This would also have effect on the study because if recruiters were looking for people from one specific location and rejecting all candidates from other locations they would have needed only 2 seconds. They needed only to check if the person had the right city or country on their profile or not.

I personally can’t really imagine that 30 recruiters could invest 10 weeks in this survey. And even then they had time to responsibly fill in self-evaluation reports about their progress without trying to just “fake” their data and save time.

“They were able to review key data points faster because TheLadders’ profiles were 55% easier to read than LinkedIn.”

Of course TheLadders’ profiles was easier to read than profiles on LinkedIn. This study was created and paid for by TheLadders! If LinkedIn is going to publish a similar report, I am pretty sure that the result will be supporting LinkedIn instead of TheLadders.

“Professionally prepared resumes also scored better in terms of organization and visual hierarchy, as measured by eye-tracking technology.”

If the study is ending with “Click here to learn more about TheLadders’ resume rewriting services,” I think that says everything you need to know about that study.

Not only did the study fail to provide any data supporting the 6-second scan statement, what surprised me a lot was how many sites wrote and published an article about it without checking the facts or even asking the right questions in their articles. I know that the numbers are working great in headlines: “How to Pass the 6-Second Resume Test,” “What Recruiters Look for in a 6-Second Resume Scan,” and, yes, these headlines definitely sound better than “32-Second Resume Test,” “What Recruiters Look for in a 2-minutes Resume Scan.”

Conclusion

Sometimes we all fall into the trap of using incorrect data, but it’s always good to double-check it. I also made a mistake recently when I didn’t properly check one statement and I mentioned in one of my articles that “videos can be processed 60,000 times faster than written content” (source: 3M).

When I was working on my second book, I was double-checking all the data and found out that this statement “videos can be processed 60,000 times faster than written content” is not correct. I found this article and it looked like even the author of that study (from 3M) wasn’t able to provide the source of this claim. It was a great reminder for me not to trust numbers blindly and always double-check the data.

And is this 6-second statement correct? I don’t know how quickly other recruiters are reading the resume of their candidates and maybe I am just slower than others, but I am sure that I spend more than 6 seconds with each profile. A study from Careerbuilder states that one in six (17 percent) hiring managers spend 30 seconds or less, on average, reviewing resumes; according to a new CareerBuilder survey, a majority (68 percent) spend less than two minutes. That study provides better data than TheLadders and, as you can see, you have more than 6 seconds.

Offers to rewrite your resume to help you pass the “6-second resume test” are only playing with our minds because they are putting psychological pressure on us, telling us we need their service because we have ONLY 6 seconds! The reality is different, many recruiters and hiring managers are spending more time with your resume than 6 seconds.

And if you still believe that 6-second resume study is correct you can test yourself on the 6-second resume challenge and maybe you will realize that you can be fast, but the quality of work will be reflected in your speed.