HR and the sandwich

I have heard a lot of talk lately about the merits of the employee referral system, and I have to say I have mixed feelings about the subject. Long ago before I had risen to such illustrious heights, I was once hired at a deli. I had absolutely no qualifications in food service (having spent the previous years languishing in a marketing department), but I was friends with all of the employees and used to have beers with the owner. Was I a good cook? Yes. Was I a fast learner? Did I get along with my fellow employees? Yes. Was I the best person for the job? No. No matter how fast you work, there is no way to compensate for the lack of a lifetime of experience. Did my fellow employees (aka friends) rat me out? No. We gave the appearance of being a seamless team because my friends were willing to help me cover up my mistakes, pick up slack etc. There was no dissent in the ranks because, lets face it, I'm relatively personable and was able to make up for my inefficiencies by being fun to take coffee breaks with. So from a business owners standpoint was there really anything wrong with this picture? I mean the work was still getting done, right? What does it matter who exactly is doing it, provided that production isn't slowing down, correct? In my mind, no. Energy that could have been spent charming new customers or devising new recipes or making things run a little smoother was instead spent on picking up my slack.
The upside: I can still make a damn good sub.

Niche Markets

As someone who spends a lot of time on line (and who doesn't?) I've noticed the way websites blend together...Everyone seems to be using the same phrases (About Us), and when you click on them you get the same spiels...'an essential hiring resource, essential staffing solutions, your staffing resource since 1996,'. As a recruiter, how do you make yourself noticed? How do you stand out from this slew of bland copy?
You can take the quirky approach with graphics or text, but that doesn't work for everybody. We tread the middle path in order to appeal to as many people as possible, and I'm not sure there's any way around that. This leaves us with content. What can you offer that will set you appart from other recruiters? Obviously you want to turn the realities of your situation into strengths. If you're self employeed or a small company you want to emphasize your ability to provide personalized service. Because if you're small, lets face it, no matter how much money you spend, masquerading as a larger company is difficult and innefectual. Anywone who has spent enough time looking at websites can spot the telltale marks of a small business. Instead of hiding your smallness, accentuate it. Use words like niche, include warm and personal profiles of yourself and your employees, promise your clients that you take a different, more human approach, and, most of all, mean it. If you are emphasizing the 'niche' aspects of your board, think about ways that you can actually specialize, services that will set you appart. Your speciality doesn't have to be something terribly obscure. For example, bilingualism is a big one right now. 2005 was a peak year for new immigrants in the US, and experts predict 2006 will show an even larger increase in the immigrant population. More and more companies are looking for bilingual employees...How can you work this to your advangage? You don't even need connections within a niche community to offer a speciality. Have someone else do the work for you. Websites like http://www.BilingualCareer.com
are more than job boards. They offer jobseeker screening services, international resume checks and more. Partnering with sites like this allows you to cater to multiple niche markets while freeing up more time to work with your existing clients. As they say, 'Less Effort, More Results'.

HR Solution # 1

Look within. No, this is not an article on spiritual growth, but a friendly reminder that fiscal growth can stem from the same precept. While you are busy spending vast amounts of money on outside consultation, it’s vital to remember look within and consider your own employees.
For example, lets take bilingualism. If your company only occasionally needs bilingual services, its likely that you are occasionally required to call in an interpreter. With interpreter costs typically ranging between .50 and 1.00 a minute, it might pay off to look for someone in-house to help out. It’s quite likely that this has already happened, but in a casual, ‘Oh, why don’t you see if Martin can talk to this guy’ kind of way. There a few simple steps you can take to utilize your internal bilingual resources in an efficient and professional way.
First, it's important to evaluate your resources. Some bilingual employees take their bilingual skills for granted; they grew up in bilingual areas and their ability to speak two languages seems perfectly ordinary, nothing to be advertised. I recently posted a bilingual job and received a number of resumes in which bilingual was not listed as a skill. To these applicants their bilingual skills were incidental. You may have bilingual employees you don’t even know about.
Send out an internal memo asking for people with language skills to come forward. If these employees are amenable to being occasionally called upon for bilingual services, make a list with their contact info and hand it out to the rest of your staff.
Lastly, it's advisable to ask these employees to take a simple language certification test so that you can assure yourself that you are providing your clients or customers with comprehensive service. There you have it: a team of certified internal interpreters.

Personality Tests and the Hiring Process

We are gearing up for another hiring session. I have until after the holidays to really get down to it and I trust my employement servies people, so I don't have to worry much about finding qualified candidates or language screening. Which leaves me with the question of personality. To me personality goes a long way. Unfortunately job interviews have a nasty effect on most people's ability to be themselves. In a way this is useful because it gives us information about how well the employee is able to be a chameleon, conduct themselves professionally, etc. On the other hand, it makes it difficult to tell how annoying they'll be in the morning before I have my coffee, how interesting they'll be to lunch with, and, more seriously, wether they are adaptable enough to quikly overcome gaps in their own training, effectively work with my team, blah blah blah. According to a recent CNN article 40% of employers use personality tests, but I haven't tried them out yet. There are two reasons for this:
a) so far the example questions I've seen don't seem that hard to see through
b) something about the whole idea creeps me out
I know I'm being old fashioned and as an HR professional who also works in the employment service industry, I know I'll propably eventually have to overcome this hesitance. For now I'm just really interested to hear other peoples experiences with personality testing.
Here's another thing: I was only half joking when I said I wanted to be able to tell if a prospective employee was going to be fun to lunch with. So far as I know they still haven't come up with a test for that.

But Can They Talk the Talk?

The idea that bilingual employees increase profit margins is nothing new, and with big sites like LatPro (the Monster of Hispanic job search engines), finding bilingual employees is easy enough. But if you don’t speak the language yourself, how do you know that your applicant is really bilingual?
“I think the word bilingual gets thrown around a lot. There’s a lot of people who were raised in multicultural households who can understand two languages, but aren’t really bilingual. “ says Felisa Rogers, CEO of http://www.bilingualcareer.com/. “ Just because they understand or even speak a second language doesn’t necessarily mean they have the vocabulary or adaptability to really provide the best customer service possible.”
The U.S doesn’t have an across the board bilingual certification process, though the courts and healthcare systems typically require applicants to pass translator’s tests.
“The healthcare industry and the legal system both obviously require a high degree of specificity; a mistake could literally be fatal. But anyone with a background in sales or marketing knows that the difference between a sale and a failure often hinges on one poorly chosen word. Similarly, anyone who understands customer service knows a satisfied customer and an irritated customer are often a few words a way.” says Felisa.
Felisa launched BilingualCareer’s language screening system in response to provide HR departments with applicants who could speak a second language with quantified precision. A few other sites (http://www. http://www.lingualearn.co.uk/ etc.) offer similar testing options, but most focus on screen tests for translators. Bilingual Career is currently the only site that offers employment search services and bilingual screening in the same stop.
Corporations seem quick to jump on the band wagon
“After 25 years in management, the idea of hiring someone whose proficiency is questionable seems ridiculous.” says Helen Cohen, HR manager for Optimal. When Felisa reads this quote, she laughs,
“I don’t know about ridiculous, but definitely hit-or-miss.”