Getting to Yes:
Engaging Candidates Throughout
the Recruitment Process
Geoff Ramey & Debra Watkinson
October 2012

Introduction / Agenda
• The evolution of the candidate experience
• Creating exceptional candidate and employee interactions
• Assessing and understanding hot buttons
• Creating and selling a compelling employer value proposition
• The role of the recruiter: not just getting to “yes”
• The power of Choice Architecture and how it relates to
getting a “yes”
• The fine art of building trust and relationship-based
interviewing
• Ensuring offer acceptance, a great First Day and engagement
beyond the Honeymoon

The old “contract”
• Employees used to:
– Work hard, be committed, be loyal, spend all or
most of a career at a single employer
• Employers used to:
– Provide a job for life, promote a culture of
“longevity”, be more like home, offer (mostly)
time based incremental advancements like salary
adjustments, promotions, service awards, etc

The new workplace
• Workplaces now tend to:
– Be fast paced and aggressive, focus on competitive
advantage, push for market dominance, emphasize
employee performance and discretional effort, be more
reliant on worker knowledge, tolerate fewer mistakes
• All of these factors often require other sacrifices
• If we are creating workplaces with short term
competitive thinking, why would we expect long
term commitments from employees?

Regardless of your brand,
not every top candidate is
kept awake at night with
hopes of working for you!

Sources: 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report (November 2, 2011)
http://hothardware.com/News/College-Grads-Say-Salary-Is-Less-Important-than-FacebookFriendly-Work-Policies/

The New Recruitment Landscape
• Macro challenges
– Demographic trends will continue to cause under-supply of knowledge workers
– Job liquidity on the rise
– Increasing employee expectations
– Proven role of the Internet – easier to move between jobs
– New and changing roles as technology advances—candidate experience, education
and/or skill sets can’t meet new demands
• Micro challenges
– Companies have shrinking qualified candidate pools to select from
– Companies are increasingly cost conscious as budgets across functions remain tight
and market pressures push asking salaries up
– Companies must leverage technology to source and recruit candidates through
new and unique channels aka fish where the fish are
Top talent will always be in demand

Recruitment Objectives
Success in the global-connected economy depends on
the ability to attract, evaluate, hire, integrate and
retain the critical talent necessary to execute your
business strategy.
• You must:
– Develop a compelling Employer Value Proposition
– Effectively partner with all stakeholders in the
recruitment process…including the candidate!
– Develop a consistent process to identify, assess and
engage top talent
– Hire with your head, not your heart

When does relationship building start
and where does it end?
Screening/Interviewing
Job posting Recruitment
First Days Future experiences...
First Year

Candidate Experience
To talk acceptance only is to talk within limited
confines.
Think...
Getting to Yes!

Top 4 Business Pressures
80% Source: AberdeenGroup 2009
70%
60% 67%
63%
50%
40%
30%
34%
20% 25%
10%
0%
New hire retention New hire Employer Brand Improve customer
productivity experience via
more effective
Source: AberdeenGroup 2009 via HR.com employees
Best in class organizations ensure new hires are engaged
and assimilated into culture before day 1

Engagement & Retention Facts
Many Managers and Organizations:
• typically think about engaging and retaining employees
only when an employee gives notice
• do not actively tie engagement or retention strategies to
critical organizational activities (ie. Recruiting,
onboarding, performance management, project
assignments, job assignments)
• do not embrace a career planning approach and if they
do, it consists of infrequent informal conversations that
are not documented or followed up on
• believe succession planning equals retention/engagement
strategy
• are not proactive about retention and engagement

Evolution – why we need to think different
Interviewing Assessing Engaging

The EVP
Employer Value Proposition:
• Reflects & represents the culture; the people
and our values
• Is emotional
• Is meaningful to candidates, not just the
organization
• Is human, organic, not staged or idealistic
• Makes a promise for the future (Vision)

Key Benefits Of An
Employer Value Proposition
 Provides employees with
personalized experiences
 Improves loyalty
 Builds employer brand
 Builds market brand
 Creates shared expectations
 Promotes understanding of company processes
 Creates an emotional attachment to the business
 Improves acceptance and retention

The magic bullet (sort of)...
To retain an employee, think
like the employee and build
your recruitment and
engagement programs from
the perspective of the
employee.

Think Like An Employee
• Think about one of your most engaged employees.
– Why did he/she join your company?
– What keeps him/her happy?
– Why is he/she so productive?
– Why does he/she stay?
• What do you think it would take to make that
employee leave?
– how can you reverse engineer?
– How can you leverage this knowledge in recruitment?

In the words of employees…
• A significant percentage of employees left one
particular organization within the first year
• When asked why, they gave the following
reasons:
– I didn’t feel like I fit in
– I never got any feedback
– I didn’t get any help

Why do some organizations still
choose to neglect new hires?
Brad Shorr, Word Sell, Inc

Walk a day
• Would you tolerate your recruitment process?
– Timelines
– Job portals & ATS’s
– Number of interviews
– Depth of feedback
– Personal interaction
– Quality and type of people involved
– Listening to needs and wants

The players
• Interviewers
• Employment Agencies
(if involved)
• Hiring/Line Managers
• Human Resources
• Executives
• Trainers
• Mentors

Building Trust
Make candidates like you (your company) better by:
• Building a relationship with them
• Treating them as client, not a candidate
• Respecting their time and investment in the
process
• Keeping connected
• Providing feedback

Coaching Up
• Polish off those hiring managers in the rough:
Engage hiring managers as partners in
the process
Have them articulate the EVP to you in
their words (this is what they are
sharing with the candidates)
Guide them toward successful
practices-don’t focus on process
Help them see from the candidate
perspective

Choice Architecture
Many employers are inclined to believe
overselling EVPs and its aspects and/or
inundating candidates with information gets
them to Yes.
But remember:
“A wealth of information creates a poverty
of attention.” (Herbert Simon)

Levels of Investment
• What degree of investment are you making in
your candidates pre-hire and post-hire?
• Should you consider moving some of the
activities forward into the pre-hire process?

Choice Architecture:
Level 1 – The Basics
• Need to know information
• Satisfies HR / Legal Needs
• Benefits packages
• Overview of the organization
• Mission, Vision, Values
• Overview of the company/products
• Computer policies
• Safety/security procedures
• Compensation, bonus, vacation

Choice Architecture
Level 2 - The Affirmation
• Providing a fun interactive experience
• Meeting with or introduction to executives
• Tour of office or facilities
• Introduction to others / team snapshot
• Discussion about culture / environment
• Company “schwag”

Choice Architecture
Level 3 - The Fit
• Mission/vision/values overview – Detailed discussion
with hiring manager of expectations and how
employee would contribute?
• Org Charts – understanding role / responsibility
– At the individual level
– At the team level
– At the departmental level
– At the organizational level
• Discussion on overt and covert culture
• Clarify work conditions / expectations
• Job specific information
• Career and development discussion

Choice Architecture
Level 4 - The Job
• Detailed job and responsibility
discussions between employees and
managers
• Goal & strategy alignment
• Objective setting
• Provide mentoring and build the
foundation for essential relationships
• Understand employee strengths or
weaknesses (knowledge & skills) and
seek ways to shorten the learning curve

Keeping candidates passionate and
connected to the process
• Communicate with candidates
• Anticipate candidate expectations
• Communicate with candidates
• Solicit the needs/wants of candidates directly
from them, have open conversations
• Meet candidate needs and exceed their
expectations
• Communicate with candidates

Extending the Honeymoon
• My candidate said yes, now what?
“Because you have developed a relationship
with your new hire, you’ve got to continue to
do to keep ‘em what you did to get ‘em.”

Getting Full Disclosure
• No surprises
• Ask early, ask often
• Process Transparency
• Come to me
• Communicate

Final strategies and thoughts
• Start with a documented plan
• Think like a new hire
• Listen for overt cues
• Listen for subtle cues
• Communicate regularly
• Ensure all players know their part
• Be realistic about your expectations
• Never take for granted that top talent will always
have a CHOICE to select you or another employer

Thank You
Debra Watkinson
Director, People Development & Engagement Geoff Ramey
Maple Leafs Sports + Entertainment Ltd. VP, Human Resources
St Andrew Goldfields Ltd.
dwatkinson(at)mapleleafsports.com
gramey(at)sasgoldmines.com