HCI Blog

A passive candidate is a candidate who is not necessarily actively seeking a placement and is already employed. They are willing to listen to proposals, yet are selective.

Passive candidates comprise 84% of the potential workforce. Here’s how to reach this type of candidate!

1. Mine your applicant tracking system

• Search your applicant database back to one year and cross-reference with their personal data in social networks and people search engines. Today, they might have the necessary skills and be a good fit for you placement.

2. Start blogging

• Create a blog to write about industry topics, not the company itself. With a blog, aim to become an authority through the generation of relevant content which will be shared online, becoming visible to passive candidates.

3. Be good to your employees, and they will spread the word.

• Make employees cause a positive impact over potential passive candidates. Current employees should also be aware that the company is hiring so that the news can be spread through their community.

4. Inquire about specific talents, not job seekers

• Once inquiring about a person who is seeking for a job to a referrer, ask for someone with a specific set of abilities rather than for someone who is simply seeking a different placement opportunity.

5. Study and listen to candidates real motivators

• Many times, money isn’t the central motivator. Achieving a balance between personal life and work is important to passive job seekers.

6. Keep presenting opportunities and let the response guide you

• Passive candidates have the ball in their court, making it difficult to know exactly what they seek. Present them with opportunities and read their reaction and responses guide you.

7. Invite people to events

• Suggest to passive candidates possible networking events and meetings so that you can get to know him in an environment which offers less pressure.

8. Present yourself as a subject matter expert, not a recruiter.

• Do not treat passive candidates as passive candidates. Presenting yourself as an expert rather than recruiter will build a more informal relationship, causing the passive candidate not to feel as an applicant.

9. Build a candidate referral network with other recruiters

• Mutually exchanging candidate referrals with other managers will increase the odds of finding the best candidate possible.

10. Engage passives in a non-public talent community

• Many times, candidates remain passive because they don’t want their employer to know they are searching. Closed social networks are a good choice to search for candidates without them exposing themselves publicly.

11. Monitor online discussions for industry relevant conversations

• Keep an eye out for online groups which candidates may be a part of. This chatter might give you leads of candidates who are searching for a new placement. Approach them as an advisor rather than a recruiter.

12. Approach recruiting like dating

• Approach recruiting in a softer way. Let the candidate know you are interested in connecting with him and get them to like you.

SOURCE: Dice

Leadership is a characteristic which is a must for executives and managers. But many times, the way I which they exercise their leadership may lack in quality and consistency.

But let’s imagine that we put all of these leaders into a same team, which is a common scenario for any board meeting, for example. These leaders will take decisions which will decide the direction and the future of the organization they manage.

Therefore, a team composed of such people must have these seven characteristics in order to be highly successful in their leadership skills:

1. Every decision is argued from the top

All decisions should be debated. If a problem or an issue arises, the focus of everyone should be on resolving it, using a 360 view, which is the sum of all the different points of view.

2. Putting the team before oneself

Achieving a team goal is more important than achieving individual goals which can help one rise quickly or obtain some personal advantage.

3. The highest priority in the company will be the highest priority of the team

This means that team members do not prioritize their functional team’s action items as more important than the leadership team’s action items.

4. They all have a unique goal and can give their point of view clearly

Each team member will have a different way of seeing things, rather than being redundant and repetitive. This will contribute strongly towards getting decisions done!

5. Each individual can conform to not having things their own way

This is central to having a good outcome in a highly efficient team. All must conform that their own way is not necessarily the best way.

6. Support and back up each other

Knowing that others are there for you is very reassuring. Back up your colleagues as they most likely will do the same for you.

7. Communicate openly and socialize well amongst themselves

Open and frank communication is very important, as well as socializing among colleagues in order to discuss ideas.

Based on: TLNT

A bad manager can cause major damage to his team and the company as a whole. Poor management skills, inferior leadership capabilities and lack of commitment are factors which can affect all in a very negative form.

More specifically, the following occurs to each element within a company:

• Employees – They may feel unsupported, undirected, bullied, confused, unmotivated, unappreciated, frustrated, and constantly questioning, “is it me?” So they are not engaged and they are not productive.

• Executives – They will begin to lack confidence in the team which they depend on and have to make up for the poor work done by managers, as well as their own work.
• Business – The pace at which the business functions is altered. It may become sluggish and inefficient, resulting in financial setbacks for example.

Research shows that the having a good manager can influence business positively more than many others factors:

• Naming a superior manager can make all the difference to businesses.

• Poor managers can cost billions of dollars per year to companies. Having too many of them can result in a company shutting down.

• Businesses with the best managers will thrive and have a significant competitive advantage.

• The best managers may seem rare to find at times. Here are some characteristics a good manager must have:

• Motivate everyone around them to engage in the company’s vision.
• They have the ability to overcome adversity.
• They create a culture of clear accountability.
• They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.
• They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.

Improve your managers

Since it may be difficult to find the perfect manager for your company, a solution is to improve the managers you already have inside. Usually, average managers may be lacking orientation and the correct set of tools to become even better at what they do.

The most important thing a manager can do is to build a highly capable team beneath them — a team that is able to do what the business needs now and in the future.

This is where coaching comes in!

Through a well-structured coaching program, managers can build themselves to become highly efficient in their positions. Therefore, he will also become a better leader, making his team respond more efficiently to the tasks they are delegated.

Based on: TLNT

Nowadays, coaching has become a fundamental centerpiece to the development of leaders within companies. Even so that many companies include in the job description of its new leaders “the ability to coach and develop others”. Unfortunately, many of today’s managers and leaders don’t live up to this.

The 2010 Executive Coaching Survey has shown that 63% of organizations use some form of internal coaching, and half of the rest plan to. But even still, coaching is a small fraction of the job requirement for most managers; half of the interviewed managers spend 10% of their time coaching others.

The central purpose of coaching is to assist individuals on how to retain focus and improve the activities they perform. The growth that coaching stimulates is done by provoking thought rather than giving directions and on holding a person accountable for his or her goals.

In other words, the purpose is to increase effectiveness, broaden thinking, identify strengths and development needs and set and achieve challenging goals.

Here are the five main skills that managers should be able to coach others on:

1)     Constructing a relationship

Simply put, your coach needs to be somebody you trust. Once there is a true link of trust established, learning and coaching will be a smoother process.

2)    Adequate assessment tools

Coaching is no good if you don’t have the right tools to measure the yielded results. This is part of the process of self-awareness that comes from the changes that occur due to coaching. This type of feedback should show all aspects of change (or lack of it).

3)    In depth questioning

This process can be summarized as “the art of thinking about thinking”. In other words, a coach should make the coachee ask himself the correct questions through the usage of open ended questions.

4)    Full support

A coach must always allow for employees and coachees to vent their emotions without judging them. Also, they should encourage them to reach their goal through the recognition of progress which has been made and recognize their success.

5)    Establishing goals

This step is central to coaching. The establishment of reachable and realistic goals is the central pillar of coaching. Reaching each of the set milestones will make the coachee and the coach truly visualize how far they have come since the beginning. Milestones should be set in order to keep tabs on how things progress through time.

You should seed your organization with coaching role models. The key is to create a pool of manager-coaches who can be role models, supporters and sustainers of a coaching mindset.

Always link the purpose and results of coaching to the business. Managers have to know the business case for coaching and developing others if they’re to value it and use it effectively. Where is the business headed? What leadership skills are needed to get us there? How should coaches work with direct reports to provide the feedback, information and experiences they need to build those needed skills? Set strategic coaching goals, tactics and measures for the organization as well as including coaching as an individual metric.

Finally, give it time. It’s not surprising that managers feel they don’t have enough time for coaching. Even if you make learning and coaching explicit priorities, time is tight for everyone. But as your coaching processes and goals become more consistent and more highly valued, in-house coaching will take root.