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06
May
Diversity Recruiting  ·  Recruiting Best Practices  ·  SeekOut
The Joy of the Search: How to Support Diversity Recruiting

With diversity recruiting at the top of the priority list for many companies, those involved with talent acquisition are continually looking for new ways to discover diverse candidates. But there’s more to finding diverse candidates than searching LinkedIn. 

Think about how you buy airline tickets. Back in the day, people typically went to a given airline’s website that offered the route they needed. Now, search engines and aggregators (like KAYAK & Travelocity) make it possible to see all the airlines flying to your destination, plus their schedules and pricing. You’ve got options and the ability to filter through the results. 

SeekOut takes a similar approach to diversity sourcing. LinkedIn is like that airline you always went to before the advent of sites like KAYAK and Travelocity. Just because it originated the professional network doesn’t make them the best way to access and unpack information about potential candidates. 

Likewise, if you’re keen to ensure diverse recruiting, you shouldn’t need to go to the same spot over and over again. I talk about different ways to promote diversity in the workplace on a recent episode of Sourcing School with Brian Fink and Ryan Leary.  

Here are my top six tips for discovering diverse candidates:   

  1. Establish who is responsible for diversity

Diversity means way more than hiring people who look different from one another. And yet, many organizations get stuck on this foundational aspect. 

Many things need to happen to move the needle on diversity, and one of the first steps an organization should take is determining who is responsible. 

Is it HR? The leadership team? Who is going to do the work and speak for the outcomes? Know your role first. 

  1. Leverage recruiting adjacent resources

There are plenty of great recruiting-related resources – this is one of them. Going to my point above, looking in the same place will yield the same results. 

One of my favorite books to give recruiters (and one that Fink also knows and loves) is The Joy of Search: A Google Insides Guide to Going Beyond the Basics. 

Is it about recruiting? Not really. Is it about being a great online searcher? 100 percent. And that’s what great recruiters are – great online searchers. 

  1. Look beyond the obvious

We need to challenge ourselves to think beyond what we know and how it shapes our worldview. This runs the gamut from the obvious to the not-so-obvious, like preferring candidates who went to Ivy League universities or California colleges because that reminds us of where we’re from and who we relate to. 

With SeekOut’s Blind Hiring Mode, you can focus your sourcing on experience and skills by hiding information that would reveal a candidate’s gender, race, or ethnicity so recruiters and hiring managers can minimize unintended bias. 

  1. Practice mindful sourcing

Mindfulness underpins so much of this conversation – especially as we put searches into action. That means reviewing keyword selection, incorporating gender-neutral or otherwise non-biased language. 

When it comes to finding diverse candidates, every word matters down to the letter. You need to not only look for diverse populations, but you also need to think like them. Our language is evolving and recruiting needs to too. 

  1. Pay extra attention during review

As you start to engage diverse candidates, pause and think about how you interact. The raised focus on diversity and inclusion might mean you make additional attempts to connect, even with active job seekers. 

You will likely need to adjust your outreach by working to understand this talent pool and demonstrating patience, persistence, and politeness. Respect the value they offer. 

  1. Data doesn’t lie

While it’s true that recruiting is about making connections, it’s also important to understand how and where you’re most effective in these efforts. 

Data can be a powerful ally, and SeekOut’s Diversity Talent Analytics will help set targets, drive conversations with hiring managers so you can create diversity-friendly job descriptions and hone your sourcing strategy. 

The overlay of technology works to ensure you’re on the right track and making progress with the candidates you’re looking to engage. 

In Closing 

With diversity recruiting, there are a few critical factors to keep in mind: sourcing goes beyond filters, bias comes from all directions, and headcount is just the start. 

Long-term change doesn’t happen overnight. You will make mistakes. 

You will probably even repeat some of them. It’s a process, one that benefits from thoughtfulness and intention – and thinking outside of the proverbial box as much as possible. 

Learn how SeekOut can help you recruit hard-to-find and diverse talent. Request a demo.

 

SeekOut Media Contact:
Eric Jaquith
Senior Account Executive
[email protected]


06
May
Recruiting Best Practices  ·  SeekOut
You Can’t Close If They Don’t Open: How to Up Response Rates

In a world where nearly everything has become quantifiable, it can be difficult to determine which metrics matter most. But when it comes to the top of the recruiting funnel, response rates reign supreme. And for one simple reason: you can’t close if they don’t open. 

Sure, getting a prospect to respond is the first in a series of steps, but any possibility of a relationship is done if they don’t. Not responding is a response. It’s a deliberate decision not to engage. And so, response rates work as a measure of effectiveness. 

Recently, I sat down with Ryan Leary, CMO at Recruitingdaily.com and Brian Fink, Senior Technical Recruiter at Rentpath to discuss response rates and how to move the needle. You can listen to it below: 

Truth be told, early in my career, my rates were low, hovering around 13 percent, but over time, through trial and error, I learned what works and now boast a 68 percent response rate. Brian, acknowledging that his rates are somewhere in the 30 percent range, asked for tips so others might learn. 

A Fact-Finding Mission 

My story starts in a familiar place, sending out detailed messages to potential candidates, giving them background on who I am, the company I work for, the job opening, and more. 

But despite all the time I spent crafting these messages, the rate of response wasn’t great, and I grew frustrated. Using that irritation to my advantage, I decided to go a proven route and turned to AI-powered email personalization with SeekOut. 

More like, “Hi, I’m Jackye, a recruiter at Y company. I am very impressed with your skillset and wanted to talk to you about X job. Are you interested in learning more?” 

Pretty quickly, I saw a pattern emerge as I ramped up these communications and tracked my campaign results within SeekOut. According to data provided by the software, it was clear responses went up when I kept my messages more personalized and asked for permission. My current method relies on this approach, and it’s a theme I carry through each interaction. 

The reason I ask for permission is that prospective candidates aren’t always excited to hear from recruiters. That type of thinking is assumptive. It’s a common mindset and one that recruiters likely need to move away from. 

Instead of presenting as all-knowing, I use curiosity to get the conversation going. That means including a few basics and a call to action, one that asks for permission to follow up. Doing this helps establish credibility and introduce trust, a critical factor for today’s job seekers, particularly those actively employed. 

My goal is to get to them to take the next step and track what’s working along the way so I can always improve my response rates and build a robust talent pool for the role I’m hiring for. 

Once contact is made, and a response is received, SeekOut automatically removes the candidate from the campaign, so I don’t have to do that manually. I save time on admin tasks and devote more time to creating a thoughtful response.  

The second message should explain the why. This is where I take a step back and offer up pertinent information about the job in question. It’s where I explain that I have a position in mind and am working to find the right person. 

Again, I ask their permission before getting presumptive about their intent. 

Additional Ideas 

Building on this format, I have found success with a few additional tactics. SeekOut‘s intuitive AI-powered talent intelligence platform includes suggestions for subject lines, the best time to send, and information from candidates’ unified profiles. 

Use these if and when you see fit: 

  1. Everything should be a separate email until they answer

Rather than “circle back” or look to passive-aggressive cliches like “Per my last email,” I keep each email separate until there’s a reply. An email rarely gets lost. 

By sticking to the same thread, I might wind up reminding my prospect why they didn’t engage in the first place. Whereas when I reach out with a new message, I might find they’re in a different place now, one where they don’t even remember my earlier attempt. 

But instead of assuming a candidate never saw it, I can prove they haven’t opened my emails because SeekOut tracks my outreach so I can validate my strategy with data.  

  1. Set a correspondence day

For me, correspondence day is Thursdays. I dedicate this day to doing outreach, follow-up, next steps, and updates, and by earmarking one day a week, there’s never an excuse for not getting this part of the job done. 

It creates a precedent and adds structure to my process so everyone involved knows when they will hear back (if there’s something to share). 

  1. Leverage the OOO

This is a personal favorite because I see out-of-the-office and auto-responder emails as intel, especially when they include vacation information and, hopefully, a return by date. 

Once the person gets back in the office, I send an email inquiring about the trip, knowing that they’re easing back into their routine and will likely be excited to talk about their experience. 

Closing Thoughts 

Ultimately, I’ve found that we need to move away from the expectation that prospects are sitting around waiting for your email. 

Instead, it’s up to recruiters to stay curious, be empathetic, leverage actionable data from solutions like SeekOut, and work to understand potential candidates rather than try and make them understand you. 

It’s in a shift in perspective, cadence, and nuanced messaging that the magic happens – and rates go up. Ready to improve your candidate response rate? Request a demo of SeekOut.

SeekOut Media Contact:
Jackye Clayton
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Strategist
[email protected] 


10
Feb
SeekOut  ·  SeekOut Company Updates
Elissa Fink, former CMO Tableau, Joins SeekOut Advisory Board

February 10, 2021, 8:00 am PST

Redmond, WA – SeekOut today announced the addition of Elissa Fink, former CMO of Tableau, to its Advisory Board. SeekOut, a Seattle-based high-growth startup, is an AI-Powered talent platform that helps enterprises recruit hard-to-find and diverse talent.

“We are very excited to welcome Elissa Fink to our Advisory Board” said Anoop Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder at SeekOut. “Elissa joined Tableau as marketing leader when their revenue was a mere $5M. She helped scale their revenue 200-fold to $1B+ by the time she left. SeekOut is experiencing a similar hockey stick growth. We are thrilled to have Elissa as an advisor and benefit from her experience as we scale our go-to-market strategy. Elissa is hands-on, she brims with energy, she inspires, and we’ll be the lucky beneficiaries of her learnings from the scars and bruises and successes she has experienced.”

Elissa currently serves on a wide variety of corporate boards, including Talend (NASDAQ:TLND), Qumulo, Pantheon, Intellimize, Conversica, and Uberflip, as well as not-for-profit boards Salmon-Safe and Operation Fistula. She advises fast-growth tech companies in scaling and marketing strategy and also teaches at the University of Washington in both the Foster School of Business and the School of Communications. Elissa’s 11+ years of experience as Chief Marketing Officer at Tableau Software’s, was instrumental in taking the company from a small startup to a publicly held industry leader with over $1 billion in revenue.

“SeekOut is transforming the way companies discover, analyze and engage untapped talent. We all know that finding the right mix of people to work on teams drives companies’ success. But so much of the processes around talent are either broken, sub-optimized or inefficient especially when it comes to diversity and inclusion. I am inspired by how SeekOut is creating huge value – and not only for companies but also for employees. Plus, to have the chance to work with Anoop, his execs, the SeekOut team and the amazing Board was a huge attraction” says Elissa.

This short video conversation between Fink and Gupta highlights SeekOut’s vision of building a better working world that embraces diversity, inclusion, and equity. The SeekOut website contains resources designed to help companies and teams recruit hard-to-find talent and boldly champion D&I efforts and make tangible progress in achieving hiring goals.

About SeekOut

With best-in-class technology and breakthrough innovation, SeekOut pushes the boundaries of what’s possible with talent discovery, analytics, and engagement. SeekOut’s trusted AI-powered talent search engine enables Talent Acquisition teams to understand any talent pool and quickly find and engage the talent they need — with a focus on diversity, technical expertise, and other hard-to-find skillsets. SeekOut was founded in 2017 by top executives and engineers from Microsoft and is trusted today by leading brands across industries.

SeekOut is headquartered in Redmond, WA. We are driven by a mission to provide customers with an AI-Powered platform for enterprise talent optimization, ensuring each employee and hire contributes maximally to company growth and personal growth. For more information, visit www.seekout.io

SeekOut Media Contact:

Sapna Maniar

Director of Marketing

[email protected]


14
Dec
Diversity Recruiting  ·  Recruiting Best Practices  ·  SeekOut
Data-driven Diversity: 4 Ways Your Team Can Start 2021 on the Right Path

Diversity and inclusion are top of mind for many company leaders today. It’s the right thing to do to combat social injustice, and research has shown that diverse teams perform better overall. But finding more diverse candidates to interview is one of the biggest barriers to improving diversity.

Data can help. In fact, 81 percent of attendees on a recent webinar agreed it would be helpful to have diversity statistics for setting and achieving goals. However, 91 percent said they had difficulty finding the statistics they needed.

The right data can help you and your team think more strategically about how to approach diversity hiring in 2021.

1. Setting realistic diversity targets

It’s common for HR leaders to be given corporate diversity targets, but they may not always be realistic. Taking a more proactive approach with data can help you get a seat at the table while goals are being discussed and set.

Understand your talent pool demographics by looking at your competitors’ demographic data, as well as regional demographic data. Compare that to your own data to find opportunities to improve. For example, if 3 percent of your workforce is comprised of Black employees, but 10 percent of your regional population are Black, consider how you might better attract and retain Black workers.

Break down demographic data by seniority, discipline, and specific roles to find exactly where you should focus your diversity recruitment efforts. For example, if your competitor and regional data show a higher percentage of Black software engineers than you have on your team, you will know you have a strong opportunity to hire more talent from that group.

2. Strategically advising hiring managers to craft better job requirements

A Hewlett Packard internal report found that men apply for a job when they meet 60 percent of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100 percent of them. Your hiring managers may be inadvertently derailing your diversity recruiting efforts with long lists of must-have skills and qualifications.

Empower your talent acquisition team to have data-driven conversations around job requirements, so they can become true strategic advisors to your hiring managers. For example, they can show how the original job requirements yielded only 50 candidates across the country, with only a handful from underrepresented groups. By removing unnecessary skill, location, or title requirements, they can show hiring managers how to access a larger, more diverse talent pool.

3. Strategically sourcing and submitting diverse slates

Traditionally, sourcers have uncovered candidates from underrepresented groups by building Boolean strings based on where diverse people are. But many of these strings aren’t accurate—and may even introduce bias. For example, searching the top 100 US female names finds less than 20 percent of women, and those women will be predominately white. A quarter of Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) students aren’t Black, and only 9 percent of Black college students attend HBCUs.

Dig into your data to see where candidates from underrepresented groups are coming from, and use that to refine your sourcing strategy. For instance, what companies have they worked for, where are they located, and what colleges did they attend? Help your team go beyond traditionally-used search strings by investing in sourcing platforms that use data and AI to accurately find candidates from underrepresented groups, and reduce bias.

And when hiring managers submit slates to hiring managers, encourage them to include at least two women and two minorities. Studies have shown that a more diverse slate of candidates increases the probability of hiring someone from an underrepresented group.

4. Diagnosing bottlenecks in the talent funnel

Finally, use data to uncover breakdowns in your talent funnel. Is there a stage where candidates from underrepresented groups are disproportionately screened out of your hiring process? Is your turnover rate higher for employees from underrepresented groups?

Diagnosing pitfalls in your talent funnel can guide you toward solutions. For example, blind resume reviews can reduce bias early in the process, while structured interviews and assessments can reduce bias later on.

But simply hiring a candidate from an underrepresented group doesn’t help you build a more diverse workforce if you can’t retain them. Keep a pulse on why employees are leaving, so you can provide more transparency in the hiring process—or move to enact change.

Final thoughts on data-driven diversity

There is a great opportunity for your team to leverage data and insights to set diversity targets, become talent advisors to your hiring managers, and achieve or exceed your targets. But increasing representation at the top of your talent funnel is only part of the equation.

Candidates from underrepresented groups should feel included, and know that their different personal experiences and ways of thinking are accepted and celebrated. Diversity, inclusion, and belonging are all very important, and need to be thought about concurrently to achieve true progress and better outcomes.

Ready to build a more talented, diverse team? Get a demo to see how SeekOut provides you the needed diversity talent insights to get a competitive edge in recruiting hard-to-find and diverse talent.

SeekOut is the #1 rated diversity recruiting software on G2 Crowd.

 

Jen Dewar, SeekOut Content Writer


01
Jul
SeekOut  ·  SeekOut Company Updates
SeekOut appoints Ed Pedini to lead Customer Success

SeekOut, the AI-powered talent search engine, announced today that Ed Pedini has joined the company’s leadership team as the Director of Customer Success. In this role, Ed will lead the company’s post-sale customer engagement strategy, building upon SeekOut’s world-class reputation for customer focus and ensuring SeekOut customers are realizing and optimizing the value of their investment.

Ed brings a 20+ year track record of success in startups as well as the HR technology industry, most recently as the co-founder of his own HR tech startup, ALL2. Prior to running his own start-up, Ed was the Tech & Startup Recruiting Practice Director at Recruiting Bandwidth where he worked with organizations and VC firms to solve challenging problems around how they attract, hire, and retain key talent.

Ed Pedini, Director of Customer Success:
“As a long time user and advocate of SeekOut, I’m excited to join this customer-obsessed organization, and lead our efforts to ensure every recruiter and sourcer is able to leverage the power of SeekOut to be outrageously successful.”

Scott Gudmundson, VP of Sales: 
“We are excited to have Ed join our team and lead a strong group of customer success professionals. His real-world knowledge of our product and deep understanding of the customer experience make him a great choice for helping to build our world class customer success team.”

John Tippett, Co-Founder and Head of Product:
“At SeekOut, we love our customers and want them to be incredibly successful. As we grow, it’s crucial we have an experienced leader to help us scale our personalized support and customer success efforts to meet the needs of our growing customer base. I’m excited to work with Ed and learn from him as he leads our customer success efforts.”


05
Jun
SeekOut  ·  SeekOut Company Updates
Addressing Injustice in Our Society

Over the past week, our company has come together to discuss the recent events. Black lives matter, and we must be a part of the needed change. SeekOut stands in solidarity with the Black community.  Words matter, but actions matter more. We realize that together, we have the power to use our voice, our resources, and actions to address this injustice in our world.

As a start, we have identified four areas where we will take action.

  • We need to educate ourselves. We are providing funds to all employees to purchase books on the topic of combating racism and injustice, to learn and to share what they learn.
  • We need to start with ourselves. We must make sure that we are rid of our unconscious biases. We will organize D&I training for our whole team. We will hold each other accountable every day, so we continuously improve.
  • We need to follow with action.  We know that our criminal justice system is not fair, and Black people are the overwhelming target. As our first-action: we are donating to WA-Bloc, a Seattle-based organization focused on educational programs to dismantle racism.
  • We need to give back.  Our employees feel strongly about the importance of giving back to our community. We encourage and support our employees to take paid time off to volunteer with organizations combating racism.

There may be more we can do.  We will listen to our customers and community to learn about additional steps we can take both now and, in the future.

Silence is not an option. Inaction is not an option. Together, we will create a world of justice and equal opportunity.

Anoop Gupta


14
Apr
SeekOut  ·  SeekOut Company Updates
SeekOut Named an IDC Innovator for Talent Intelligence Platforms

SeekOut is excited to announce that we’ve been named an IDC Innovator in the IDC Innovators: Talent Intelligence Platforms, 2020 (doc #US46115220, March 2020). IDC Innovators reports present a set of vendors chosen by an IDC analyst within a specific market that offer an innovative new technology, a groundbreaking approach to an existing issue, and/or an interesting new business model. It is not an exhaustive evaluation of all companies in a segment or a comparative ranking of the companies. IDC INNOVATOR and IDC INNOVATORS are trademarks of International Data Group, Inc.

Defined by IDC, Talent Intelligence (TI) is the gathering and subsequent analysis of internal and/or external labor data in order to inform talent strategies and tactics. TI platforms help HR professionals create a holistic view of talent pools around the world by aggregating labor market data such as skills, functions that enables them to be more efficient and effective when finding, engaging, and eventually retaining talent in a labor market that is short on skills and diverse talent.   

SeekOut helps talent acquisition (TA) teams gain a competitive edge with our comprehensive database of candidate profiles for in-demand professionals in many sectors. The database is powered by an intuitive machine learning-powered people search engine compiling information across sources such as GitHub and Google Scholar to help you search untapped talent pools. 

Recruiters and leaders can learn:

  • Insights for highly specific talent pools: Insights are available based on location, roles, skills, experience, locations, and 20+ filters that allow you to map talent for your very specific needs.
  • Insights for talent on GitHub and Experts: SeekOut is unique in providing talent pool insights for developers on GitHub and for Experts who have published papers and patents, controllable by numerous filters. It is a must have if you have need for such talent for your digital transformation.
  • Driving Hiring-Manager and Recruiter Alignment: Talent-pool insights are easily leveraged for intake meetings with hiring managers to gain alignment, and alignment is shown to significantly shorten time to hire and increase quality of hires. SeekOut Insights are available with no extra charge, unlike some other solutions.
  • Diversity Talent Insights: SeekOut makes it easy to understand diversity in their own company, at competition, and in the region, and set realistic goals for specific roles and for teams.
  • Optimized Sourcing Strategy: Talent pool insights also enable every recruiter and sourcer to optimize their sourcing strategy, to make choices about companies to target, current and past titles to target, skills to require or list as nice to have in searches, and so on.
  • Exportable Talent Pool Insights: SeekOut lets you export insights as an Excel file with data and graphs pre-included making it easy to share with managers and colleagues, and highly valued by users.

“Talent Analytics are becoming the foundation for any strong TA organization” said Anoop Gupta, co-founder and CEO of SeekOut. “This is no different than any other business function in a modern corporation. SeekOut’s best-of-breed talent analytics platform empowers TA organizations to deliver results faster and with higher quality for hard-to-find talent and diverse talent”.

“According to an IDC survey of US talent acquisition buyers, organizations that categorized themselves as best in class overwhelmingly use SeekOut as their talent/labor market intelligence solution” said Megan Buttita, Research Director at IDC, Emerging Trends in Talent. This conclusion is based on the recent report, IDC, Talent and Labor Market Intelligence Technology in Organizations: Key Findings from the 2019 IDC Talent Acquisition U.S. Buyer Survey, Doc # US45689219, December 2019

Media Contact:

Sapna Maniar: [email protected]

Interested in seeing how SeekOut can help you find the best candidates? Click the button below to sign up for a demo.


23
Dec
SeekOut  ·  SeekOut Company Updates
SeekOut’s Customer Advisory Board

At SeekOut, our customers are the heart of our business. Beyond providing value and exceptional customer service, we strive to learn from our customers how to design products and services that meet their needs.

We are excited to officially announce the launch of SeekOut’s Customer Advisory Board (CAB). This new Customer Advisory Board partners with our product and customer success teams to make sure the voice of our customers is represented in all that we do at SeekOut. The CAB is a highly interactive group that gives strategic direction to our work.

CAB members meet quarterly to discuss industry trends and emerging challenges, give feedback on our product roadmap, and discuss business challenges. SeekOut’s CAB is comprised of the industry’s experienced talent leaders from innovative companies including Amazon, CapTech Consulting, Danaher, Esurance, Kapsch TrafficCom, Koch Industries, Niagara Bottling, Under Armour, Verb Surgical, VMware, and 23andMe. 

With the SeekOut CAB we aim to capture value and guidance from our customer. We want to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

In our first CAB meeting, we:

  • Reviewed feedback on some of the newest SeekOut features, including exportable People Insights, SeekOut Robot, and ATS/CRM Rediscovery
  • Discussed workflow challenges and opportunities combing SeekOut with other tools
  • Considered the most effective ways for teams to Keene about new SeekOut features

The positive and negative feedback from the CAB has already proved very helpful to our product efforts. We look forward to all the things we will learn with the CAB in the future.


30
Oct
Recruiting Best Practices  ·  SeekOut
Building Successful Sourcing Strategies with Talent Insights

During this webinar recording you will hear how Marc Hamel, Senior Technical Recruiter at Amazon unpacks successful sourcing strategies you can put to use today. Learn how to:

  • Understand the talent market
  • Influence leaders with data
  • Develop sourcing strategies based on market research

Jump to these hot topics:


06
Sep
SeekOut
SeekOut Unified Profiles Webinar

In this short 17-minute webinar recording you will listen to SeekOut’s CEO, Anoop Gupta and Head of Product, John Tippett discuss how Unified Profiles can improve your effectiveness by exposing what candidates have actually done, not just what they have said about themselves.

This latest feature to help you find more – and more – qualified candidates


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