Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Mobile Recruiting Is on the Rise

Over the past few years, social media recruiting has garnered a lot of discussion in the HR world — mobile recruiting, on the other hand, is a topic that has yet to make it into the mainstream conversation.
Employers lack knowledge of how job seekers are using mobile devices and how their businesses could take advantage of the mobile web to find top talent. As a result, only a limited number of employers have implemented mobile recruiting strategies via apps and mobile websites, according to a study by online recruiting research lab Potentialpark.
For the study, Potentialpark surveyed more than 30,000 job seekers worldwide and analyzed the mobile career presence of more than 350 top employers in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Since the data has not yet been published online, Mashable spoke with Potentialpark about its findings.
The study found that a healthy 19% of job seekers use their mobile devices for career-related purposes (and more than 50% of could imagine doing so), yet only 7% of employers have a mobile version of their career website and only 3% have a mobile job app.
One out of five job seekers may not sound like a huge deal, but it's no number to scoff at. Since smartphone adoption rates are ever-increasing, this number will likely increase as more mobile users get the power of the Internet into their palms.
So, what exactly are job seekers looking to achieve on their mobile devices? Potential recruits want to use their mobile phones to look for jobs and receive job alerts — but they have many other activities in mind, as illustrated in the graph below.
While employers aren't quite up on their mobile game this year, Potentialpark believes more companies will get into the mobile recruiting game in the coming year. In a separate Potentialpark survey of 150 employers, 75% of respondents stated they were planning to have either a job app or mobile career website by September 2012.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Neustockimages
By: Erica Swallow @Mashable  

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

6 Words That Ruin Behavioral Interview Questions

What's the matter with behavioral interview questions? They often fail because they contain an obvious "tip off" on how to give the "correct" answer; they're leading questions.  Let's take the question: "Tell me about a conflict with a co-worker and how did you solve it?"  This question goes wrong with the phrase "and how did you solve it."

We've just signaled that we don't want to hear about any times that they did NOT resolve the conflict with a coworker.  But that's the really important information.  What if they solved a conflict one time, and failed to resolve it 500 times?

By asking this leading question, we've lost the data on the 500 times they couldn't resolve a conflict.  And those are just the words at the end of the question; there are lots of other 'tip-off' words that get embedded right into behavioral questions that you need to avoid.

So, what should you be asking in interviews?  (And how do you avoid those other 'tip-off' words?)  Leadership IQ's research discovered that attitude, not skills, causes 89% of mishires.  Issues like Coachability, Emotional Intelligence and Temperament determine whether new hires will succeed or fail.  So you need interview questions that will reveal those characteristics (and differentiate high and low performers).
In our upcoming live webinar Hiring for Attitude, we'll replace your bad questions with great questions that reveal whether an employee has the right attitude to be a high performer and fit your culture.  Based on the bestselling book Hiring for Attitude, this webinar will teach you:
We look forward to seeing you on this special webinar. And register today, because there are limited spaces for this program.