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5 steps to being better prepared for your job interview

July 9, 2019 by Content Team

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5 steps to being better prepared for your job interview

Content Team

July 9, 2019

Congratulations! You have been selected for an interview at Company XYZ. Now what? Are you nervous? Has it been a while since you’ve gone for an interview? Or maybe you have had a few interviews but didn’t get selected to move on to the second stage.

It’s normal to have butterflies in your stomach. Here are some things you can do to feel more confident and better prepared.

1. Keep a copy of the original advertisement

I’m surprised when a candidate asks me to send them a copy of the job description once they’ve been contacted for an interview. Perhaps they are not aware that many companies delete the job posting once they have a strong candidate pool.

Asking for a copy of the job description may give the recruiter the impression that you indiscriminately apply for many jobs, hoping that something eventually sticks. Or perhaps you are disorganized.

Recommendation: For each job that you apply for, immediately make a copy of the job description. The first impression that you want to give at the interview is that you are organized, have a good understanding of the job profile, and are a great match for them.

2. Research the company

What do they do? Have they been in the news? Imagine how impressed the interviewer will be if you can demonstrate that you understand their company. Being able to intelligently discuss the firm’s successes, challenges, and growth areas is a huge advantage to making a great impression!

Recommendation: Research the company in advance. Understand their mission statement. Find articles written about them or the industry. Think of pertinent questions to ask at the end of the interview.

3. Talk to the receptionist

You would be surprised how much you can learn from the receptionist. Furthermore, did you know that many hiring managers will ask their receptionists what they thought of you and your possible fit for the company’s culture?

Recommendation: Be positive. Smile at the receptionists. If they are not busy, make small talk, and make a good impression.

4. Bring 2 extra copies of your resume

There will be times when the interviewer may have forgotten or misplaced your resume. Or perhaps a second interviewer was added to the meeting at the last minute, and they need a copy of your resume.

Recommendation: Bring at least two or three copies of your resume to the meeting. It will give the interviewer a positive impression of how well prepared you are. Also, you may need to refer to your resume if the interviewer asks questions about a certain line or paragraph.

5. Anticipate interview questions

Research the most common questions asked during job interviews. Prepare examples of answers you could give to tough questions. The interviewers are looking for instances where you personally added to the solution of a problem, rather than hearing about what the “team” did.

Recommendation: Even if you were part of a team that got the results, be ready to clearly identify how your personal input was a part of the solution.

Being prepared for your interview will make you feel more confident and allow you to make a good first impression. Research, anticipate questions, and remember to smile. Good luck!

Hudson RPO

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The Hudson RPO Content Team is made up of experts within the Talent Acquisition industry across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. They provide educational and critical business insights in the form of research reports, articles, news, videos, podcasts, and more. The team ensures high-quality content that helps all readers make talent decisions with confidence.

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Manufacturing recruiters: try these 3 tips to find great talent today

July 8, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles

Manufacturing recruiters: try these 3 tips to find great talent today

Content Team

July 8, 2019

Imagine you are a production supervisor walking the floor of a manufacturing facility. Order changes come quickly, and you need to immediately reprogram the machines. Plus, you are responsible for quality control and maintaining safety requirements.

Checking phones on the production floor is strictly prohibited. At day’s end, you enter the designated area for online access. More than 100 emails await, and you answer what you can before leaving.

Imagine it’s a candidate-short market. You are a recruiter trying to contact this production supervisor/hiring manager about an amazing candidate that the organization needs to action right away or risk losing. If recruiting isn’t viewed as a major priority, how do you get the hiring manager’s attention?

This scenario is common in manufacturing, an industry where open production roles can put product quality and even employee safety at risk.

Account Director Anne Payment, who leads the recruitment team for a large pulp and paper manufacturing company, knows how to create a more nimble and efficient manufacturing recruitment process.

She explains: “The manufacturing candidate pool has narrowed, particularly in specialty industries like pulp and paper. Recent mergers and acquisitions have further narrowed the field, and the paper industry also has an aging workforce.

“In the past, hiring managers could take more time with candidates. Today, it’s simply unrealistic to keep a solid engineering candidate waiting for six weeks.”

Manufacturing recruiters: do you also face this kind of predicament?

Discover three tips that can help all manufacturing recruiters find top talent against the challenging backdrop of modern manufacturing.

Set up the communication flow for success

Some smaller adjustments may seem obvious, but don’t always happen. Yet, they can make a real difference in a candidate market where timing is significant.

Anne recommends you educate hiring managers on why recruiting needs to be a priority.

She explains: “Their day-to-day-jobs are so demanding, sometimes they aren’t seeing the bigger picture about why recruiting and resume review need to be a priority. One, because we want the best talent, but two, because open roles will affect their day-to-day responsibilities. It’s harder to impose quality control and even abide by safety requirements when you are short-staffed. Having an HR business partner and other more senior stakeholders on the client side reinforcing this message can help drive the message. “

It’s a 50-50 partnership of course, and recruiters need to adjust to hiring managers’ schedules. For the most urgent needs, recruiters should text the hiring managers so that when hiring managers leave the floor, a text immediately prompts them.

Production hiring managers tend to check email in the morning prior to walking on the floor.

Anne gets terrific results by building that awareness into her approach. She says: “Our recruiters either get up early or schedule candidate interview invitations to send early morning. We’ve found that this increases the acceptance rate on the first try.”

Plant the seed while candidates are young

Young people aren’t thinking about manufacturing—particularly in niche industries such as pulp and paper. For professional roles, Anne recommends that companies have a college recruitment team and offer internships with training beginning sophomore year. Target the three or four closest schools. Bring in interns to learn the industry at a time when they are contemplating what career path they wish to pursue.

For both professional and non-professional roles, attend career days at local high schools that might serve as feeders, particularly for labor jobs. Educate students that labor roles pay well with the opportunity for advancement.

Also, students don’t realize the innovative aspects of working in manufacturing.

Anne says: “At my organization, IT professionals are programming massive machines and constantly seeking ways to optimize process efficiency and reduce waste, which makes the process more environmentally friendly. Find things that will resonate with what young people want in their careers.”

Be open to other industries

In a candidate-short market, hiring managers need to be open to candidates from other, similar industries.

Anne says: “After several mergers in my industry, there are only four major players left in the market. Making experience in our industry a deal-breaker is no longer realistic. Candidates with backgrounds on similar machines used by chemical, steel, or other manufacturing companies, may acclimate easily to our machines. To fill the role with high quality candidates, it’s important to be flexible.”

Discover more tips for recruiting manufacturing employees, including ‘walking the floor’ to build top relationships that translate into candidate leads.

Hudson RPO

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Government recruitment and the case for agility: adapt and flow

June 17, 2019 by Content Team

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Government recruitment and the case for agility: adapt and flow

Content Team

June 17, 2019

Agility. Why is it so critical for government recruitment?

To answer that, let’s reflect briefly on the private sector, which excels at planning and executing strategic business plans and corporate objectives.

In a similar respect, many government departments are adept at setting and executing bold, visionary policies.

The challenge, however, is that we live in a dynamic and constantly changing environment.

Priorities can shift quickly, often in tandem with the amount of resourcing and investment available to deal with them.

So, how can teams respond effectively? As resourceful leaders and talent executives, we must all be in a position to adapt and flow. Agility makes that possible, talent acquisition leader Matt Saxty writes.

Become a champion of agile government recruitment

The ability to reprioritise and change direction has become increasingly important for government departments. Leaders in these departments recognise that the ability to plan and execute policy no longer suffices. This capability must be augmented with an agile and flexible way of working.

Lean, flexible recruitment strategies must be in place to deploy these new government operating models. The right strategies also make them effective.

An agile government recruitment function drives this success.

Government recruitment teams are modelled on a range of factors, including hiring volumes, requirement scoping, locations, technology, and process. What is changing, however, is the need for teams to respond quickly to fluid requirements. Government departments must be readily able to scale up.

Explore an example of government recruitment agility

Want to better understand how your government recruitment function can become more agile, and the difference it can make? Let’s use a real-life example.

We recently supported a large Australian government department with their organisational transformation program. We helped them scale up by deploying a Hudson RPO project team of more than 50 people within six weeks to support them with a significant volume of recruitment activities for both internal and external candidates.

In that example, the support for our clients’ transformation programme required a multi-step approach by Hudson RPO, including:

Allocation of dedicated resources based on an initial scoping of client requirements
Deployment of several team members from the Hudson RPO shared services team
Ongoing use of our internal talent pool, managed by our Talent Acquisition Manager

The great benefit for government departments in adopting this ‘partnering approach’ is the opportunity for immediate scalability. They also become highly responsive to the ever-changing business landscape.

Agility is an important part of the picture in government recruitment, but it’s only one part. Continue the journey towards a more effective government recruitment function with three tips for government recruitment success.

Hudson RPO

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RPO project helps launch major retailer into new market

June 13, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles

RPO project helps launch major retailer into new market

Content Team

June 13, 2019

We recently helped a major European retailer launch their first store in Central and Eastern Europe.

The retailer’s arrival created 200 new jobs in Slovenia. We helped fill these via a hugely successful RPO project.

The hiring project worked so well that the retailer is now partnering with us to support more store openings in emerging markets, including one in Poland.

Succeeding with RPO projects in a retail environment

RPO projects of this nature are designed to provide a turbocharged engine for urgent hiring. RPO can support hiring projects that need to happen at speed and with impact, particularly when launching into a new market.

That’s exactly what the client required, and what they received, within a compressed time frame.

Despite the client lacking an established presence in Slovenia, we partnered to initially hire a team of managerial staff. We then supported them in hiring general staff.

Over three months, nearly 150 retail assistants were hired.

We also recruited:

134 students in two months
10 managers in two months
13 supervisors in one month

In addition to deploying four specialist recruiters in Slovenia, the team accelerated its growth with remote talent sourcing support from the Centre of Excellence, based in Edinburgh.

Our multilingual recruitment expertise, including Slovenian and other regional languages, allowed us to quickly fill key retail and head office roles.

Elizabeth Williams, Hudson RPO Operations Director, said: “We’re delighted to successfully implement and deliver this project. This is a terrific win for both the client and Hudson RPO. We’re thrilled to have helped ensure a successful launch into this major new market.”

Congratulations to everyone who delivered on this fantastic success story, including all of our project RPO specialists, and the terrific retail leaders who have worked closely with us in this partnership.

Hudson RPO

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Hudson RPO ranks No. 1 worldwide for best RPO implementation

June 11, 2019 by Content Team

Hudson RPO excels at contract implementation, according to third-party industry research.

In 2018, we ranked No. 1 for RPO implementation on the HRO Today’s Baker’s Dozen Customer Satisfaction Ratings of the top 13 recruitment outsourcing providers worldwide.

In that assessment, 100% of our clients came to the same conclusion: when implementing recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), we perform on time and on budget, with minimal disruption to the client’s business.

Watch the video to learn more. Or, scroll down for text only.

No. 1 for RPO implementation in the Baker’s Dozen (text only)

We are thrilled to share that Hudson RPO was named No. 1 for implementation among global RPO providers in HRO Today’s Baker’s Dozen Customer Satisfaction Ratings for 2018.

Our No. 1 ranking means that 100% of our client agreed that during implementation, Hudson RPO was on time, on budget, and posed minimal disruption to the business.

Discover success with RPO worldwide, or locally

Of course, there’s much to consider when you’re transitioning to an RPO model.

Start planning ahead with five tips for a successful global RPO implementation. You’ll want to focus on people, governance, contracts, trust, and communication. Then, combine a global mindset with local awareness and sensitivity for consistent and custom service delivery.

To ensure project success, make sure you’ve got an implementation toolkit and a phased implementation approach. The right toolkit and approach drive best practice in the RPO world.

Gender diversity in the workplace: practical strategies

June 7, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles

Gender diversity in the workplace: practical strategies

Content Team

June 7, 2019

The business case is clear on the benefits of workplace diversity. With that comes the competitive challenges around recruiting women in the workplace, given most organizations recognize the business performance benefits of a more diverse workforce.

Now let’s explore a few of the ways in which you can help your workplace achieve gender-diversity goals.

Achieving gender diversity in the workplace is a business challenge, not a talent acquisition team’s problem to solve for the business.

A sustainable solution takes commitment from the all levels of the organization, starting with the highest, writes Talent Acquisition Director Nerida Loth. Progress in this area relies on a number of factors beyond the control of HR.

Too often, the job is squarely placed with HR or Talent Acquisition Teams to “fix” on behalf of the organization which is akin to asking the HR department to “fix” employee engagement.

While it remains every leader’s role to work towards a more diverse workforce, the talent acquisition function works in partnership with the business to support them along this journey.

As leaders, we can employ a range of strategies to improve gender diversity in the workplace.

From creating female-friendly job advertisements, to crafting competitive work policies, small steps can help shift our workplaces towards becoming more gender balanced.

We’ve acknowledged the challenges around recruiting women in the workplace. Now let’s explore a few of the ways in which you can help your workplace achieve gender-diversity goals.

Make your job advertisements more inviting

It’s well recognized that these days, most candidates are viewing job ads on a smart device. With that in mind, a “less is more” approach is more important than ever, regardless of demographic.

In terms of appealing to a female audience, one of the most important things you can do is limit the job ad candidate “wish list” to a maximum of five mandatory criteria. Otherwise, females in particular are more likely to self-select out by being overly critical of their experience match to the person requirements.

As you write your job ads, consider using a “female friendly” voice. Writing tools such as Textio can help.

Communicate supportive HR policies

Female talent is in demand, so ensure your HR policies are market-competitive or market-leading. This applies to parental leave, flexible work, and any other types of leave offered.

These policies should be easy to find by all candidates as they research your company and culture as much as the role itself.

The decision to leave an organization and join a new one is a big one regardless of gender, especially if there’s a fear that hard fought flexibility benefits earned over time will be lost or diminished in the new organization. Having clearly communicated workplace benefits and flexible work options in your job ads or on your corporate careers site will help overcome this fear for candidates.

Bring culture into the interview process

For proactively sourced talent, offer informal meetups such as a coffee catch-up before scheduling a formal interview process.

Casual conversations help candidates learn more about the opportunity and corporate culture before deciding whether to formally apply. People want to know what the workplace norms are, including dress code, flexi-time, etc.

When planning the interview stage, ensure the panel includes female leaders.

Randomly including women onto an interview panel as a façade of diversity, however, is not the answer. The panels must be assembled thoughtfully, with each member able to provide meaningful input, and everyone acknowledging the value of diverse opinions. Otherwise, it is a token gesture and will not achieve the desired result of a better hiring outcome.

Spruiking a culture to candidates where women are valued, supported and treated equally is meaningless if women are noticeably absent during the interview and selection process.

Incentivise leaders on workplace diversity outcomes

Having diversity measures as part of a leader’s scorecard is a powerful way of shifting the dial on gender mix outcomes.

While holding leaders accountable on engagement scores for their teams is not uncommon, setting clear targets on workplace diversity is less so. Meaningful change is likely to follow if leaders’ bonuses are tied to such targets!

Always ensure your policies comply with your country’s hiring laws.

Proactively offer career development opportunities

Want to develop your female leaders and stretch them beyond their comfort zone? Actively seek secondment opportunities for them. This helps develop and diversify skills while building capability in a safe environment.

Providing an internal “Women’s Network” where female employees from across the business can interact, network, and share their experience in an informal setting can be a powerful way of building connections. Support networks can also encourage retention.

Closing the gender pay gap: EnergyAustralia’s story

Ensuring gender pay parity is a powerful message to attract female talent given historically, women have more often fared worse with regard to equal pay for the same work.

Coinciding with International Women’s Day in 2018, EnergyAustralia, a key Hudson RPO client, closed the gender pay gap overnight.

In 2018, EnergyAustralia invested $1.2 million (AUD) to ensure women and men with equivalent experience and skills would receive the same pay for doing the same job.

Interestingly, it wasn’t just women who had their pay adjusted. 20% of the increases were for male employees, but with 80% of the increases being for women, it was clear that the imbalance disproportionately affected women.

Maintaining the gender pay balance is an ongoing focus. With every annual salary review, the Rewards Team undertake analysis to ensure a gap has not returned as a result of new hires or internal promotions within the previous year.

Since 2014, EnergyAustralia has been actively working to reduce or remove gender bias in:

recruitment
working arrangements
succession planning
internal appointments and promotions
performance assessment
remuneration and reward

As a Talent Acquisition Director who has been onsite with EnergyAustralia for more than 6 years, I’m pleased to be part of a team that believes in a fairer, more equitable workplace, and is actively committed to achieving this.

Content Team

5 steps to being better prepared for your job interview

1. Keep a copy of the original advertisement

2. Research the company

3. Talk to the receptionist

4. Bring 2 extra copies of your resume

5. Anticipate interview questions

Content Team

What is RPO?

What is MSP?

Related articles

Manufacturing recruiters: try these 3 tips to find great talent today

Set up the communication flow for success

Plant the seed while candidates are young

Be open to other industries

Content Team

What is RPO?

What is MSP?

Related articles

Government recruitment and the case for agility: adapt and flow

Become a champion of agile government recruitment

Explore an example of government recruitment agility

Content Team

What is RPO?

What is MSP?

Related articles

RPO project helps launch major retailer into new market

Succeeding with RPO projects in a retail environment

Content Team

What is RPO?

What is MSP?

Related articles

No. 1 for RPO implementation in the Baker’s Dozen (text only)

Discover success with RPO worldwide, or locally

Gender diversity in the workplace: practical strategies

Make your job advertisements more inviting

Communicate supportive HR policies

Bring culture into the interview process

Incentivise leaders on workplace diversity outcomes

Proactively offer career development opportunities

Closing the gender pay gap: EnergyAustralia’s story

Content Team

What is RPO?

What is MSP?

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