Will the real slim shady please stand up…

As the pandemic began, recruiters, along with the rest of the world, had to modify our way of doing business (and life in general). Suddenly, working from home wasn’t just a convenience – it was a necessity. As the Director of Talent Acquisition at CC Pace, remote work wasn’t a seismic shift for my team as I’ve long believed that recruiting can be done effectively from home. We could continue to source, screen, and pipeline candidates from our home office and still manage to meet candidates face-to-face throughout the interview process… just with one small change (enter the video chat). However, that small change had a bigger impact than I ever anticipated.

With remote work becoming the norm, professional ‘norms’ started to evolve – and not all for the better. New challenges emerged that were unprecedented. As if recruiters didn’t already have a tough time finding top-notch candidates that fit in with team and company dynamics, a slew of new challenges were introduced. Among them is the fake candidate.

Fake candidates come in many forms. If you’ve been involved with recruiting or hiring for technical positions, you’re probably chuckling to yourself (or cringing if I’m bringing up suppressed trauma) because you know what I’m talking about. If you’re one of the lucky ones who hasn’t been personally victimized by fake candidates, allow me to elaborate.

Breaking Down the Fake Candidate Personas

First, we’ll start with the ‘classic counterfeit’, which is a candidate who has a fake resume. These are real people who concoct a fake work history tailored to fit the needs of the position they are seeking. These resumes generally include fictional skills and fictional employers. In my experience, counterfeit candidates are doing this to get higher-paying jobs and are prevalent within the corp-to-corp contract/freelance world.

Then there is the ‘bait and switch’ applicant (this is a particularly infuriating one). This approach happens when unethical companies bring candidates to the US, sponsor their visas, and tremendously inflate their resumes, marketing the candidate as a highly skilled technical consultant. Again, the company is trying to recoup its investment quickly. This scenario might sound familiar to the ‘counterfeit candidate,’ and so far, it is. Cue the ‘bait and switch’. This happens when a technical interview is scheduled, and a very senior, highly skilled technical person takes the interview and lands the job, only to have a lesser qualified or even unqualified individual show up for the job. Seriously, who would ever think that this is acceptable?! But sadly, it happens.

My final example (save the best for last, right?) is a new emergent class of faker: ‘the moonlighter.’ You’ve heard of this! Just as the nickname suggests, this is the candidate who has the skills and experience to land a great job. However, instead of landing a great remote job (with a great salary), they decide to accept two full-time jobs (or maybe more!) and work them simultaneously, doing just enough to get by. Not only is that unethical (and a sure way to get fired fast), but it’s also giving the rest of the remote workers a bad name.

While we’ve tried to make light of these new challenges, in all seriousness, they have really complicated the job market. It impacts recruiters and employers in the worst of ways. Experienced recruiters have become very savvy at identifying these folks early in the process, although you can never be 100% sure 100% of the time. However, you can look at individual red flags and make a reasonable judgment. Here are a few of the red flags that can help you identify the real candidates from the pretenders. Note -some ‘legit candidates may show one or two of the signs below, but if more than a few of these concerns arise, further investigation may be warranted.

When verifying a candidate on their LinkedIn profile, be wary/concerned if:

They don’t list their full name
No details or limited information is provided (especially education)
They don’t have a photo (or use a stock photo, cartoon image, etc.)
A very low number of LinkedIn connections
They show no upward progression in their job history; only senior-level positions are visible
Work history only shows large worldwide companies (which makes it difficult to verify on social media)

When conducting a video interview, be aware of:

Video: Not turning on the camera and/or, when asked to use video, giving an excuse as to why they cannot do this.
Long Pauses: When answering questions, the candidate appears to be reading a script or ‘Googling’ to look for answers.
Mute: If you notice audio going on and off, along with a delay in answering questions, your spidey senses are probably going off (and for good reason!).
Other Red Flags:
- Sharing strange phone numbers that don’t line up with past or current physical locations.
- Giving generic descriptions of their role and projects they have worked on.
- Lacking knowledge of the companies they have worked for in the past.
- Requiring 100% remote, even if the position is located in the area they claim to reside.

Hopefully, these tips help to protect your organization from hiring a fake candidate (or you feel like you have a support group if this is something you’ve experienced yourself). While you can’t be 100% sure every suspicious resume is a fake, our goal is to find the right, real candidates for our clients – every time. At CC Pace, we’ve instituted a lot of standard procedures to help us identify and eliminate the fake candidates from the get-go so that you never have to experience a counterfeit candidate, a bait-and-switch, or a moonlighter at your organization! Give us a call if this is something you need help with!

When it comes to work trends, one thing is clear: the future is all about flexibility – but what does that really mean? Like many things, it tends to mean something different to just about everyone, as there is no ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ when it comes to applying it to the workplace. As many companies seek to craft their definition of adaptable work policies, CC Pace is in the middle of the crosscurrents in deciphering the right balance of flexibility, both for our staff and our team of consultants who are navigating various clients’ policies and expectations.

While we can’t tell you what policies are right for your organization, we can share some of the impacts we’ve seen these decisions have when it comes to recruiting. It should come as no surprise that companies with the strictest remote work policies are having the hardest time finding, and retaining, top talent. They’re having to dig deeper into their pockets to make a hire and are losing good employees to their competition at unprecedented rates. In fact, according to a recent poll, 54% of workers said they’d leave their current job for one that provided more flexibility.

Employers with varying ranges of flexibility (hybrid to fully remote options) attract up to an average of seven times more applicants than fully onsite positions (CareerBuilder). Job seekers have spoken, and they want flexible work options. So much so that, on average, they are willing to take a 14% salary decrease to work remotely, according to a recent survey by ZipRecruiter. Companies with flexible options are less likely to roll out the red carpet to get top talent and go into high-stakes salary negotiations compared to their inflexible competitors.

While employees mostly adjusted well to the changing landscape of this new work environment, companies (read: management), have had mixed results. We see continued refinements as hiring managers try to balance where the future is headed with how their positions stack up relative to the competitive alternatives that job seekers have. This often leads to misaligned expectations – job requirements that say, “completely remote,” to maintain a competitive edge, while managers casually mention to the recruiters that they’d ‘really like it if the candidate was within driving distance to the office’ so that they could ‘occasionally meet up.’ In other cases, all positions are hybrid roles, with no exceptions (although exceptions are made for the ideal candidate). This behavior is confusing and can contribute to a costly increase in turnover as current staff asks, “but what about me?”.

In our experience as a consulting firm, this newfound ability of clients to work with a hybrid/distributed workforce has allowed us to expand with clients that we would not have previously been able to support. Take a manufacturer who is located far from a major city; working with them to transform their IT department would have been cost-prohibitive in terms of sustained travel expenses. The happy middle ground here is spending some time face-to-face up front to establish the basic bonds necessary to be successful throughout the engagement. In this case, we need an employee who can ‘travel a little’ and would rule out anyone who cannot. Surprisingly, there are plenty of job seekers that remain adamant on being ‘fully remote’.

These observations don’t appear to be post-pandemic trends that will die out when the market shifts. In the world of technology services, we have seen that when the C-suite mandates ‘no remote work,’ it pushes away the top talent. After all, these are the same people logging in from home on the weekend when the system goes down, aren’t they? Beyond location, Europe’s 4-day workweek trial run in 2022 caught the attention of both employees and employers alike (albeit maybe for different reasons) and has inspired a lot of chatter stateside. Currently, Maryland has a bill on the table that, if passed, would offer major tax incentives to any businesses that scale back to a 4-day (32-hour) work week without employees losing any pay or benefits. It would be a major shakeup to the US workforce. But that’s for another post…

The bottom line is flexibility isn’t just good for your employee morale. It’s good for your bottom line. Companies with the right balance of flexibility save on upfront recruiting costs, employee turnover and can find higher-quality resources than their less-flexible counterparts. The haves and the have-nots have turned into the flexible and the inflexible.

All sides point to flexibility as a work trend that’s here to stay. In response to this trend, we’re creating an ease of coworking index offering to help organizations measure how easy it is for employees and teams to work together – particularly in remote and hybrid environments. Keep an eye out for this service to be released later in the year!

In a previous blog post, we covered the top 10 challenges organizations face when adopting Agile. In this article, we’ll dive deep into one of these challenges: “Inadequate management support and sponsorship.” We will explore why organizations face this challenge and what can be done to address it.

Lack of management support is one of the most widespread and yet hard-to-uncover challenges. Agile transformation requires an enterprise-wide shift in mindset and culture and this requires buy-in from all levels of the organization, otherwise, it can cause the entire effort to lose alignment.

With Agile transformations, middle management is usually caught, well, in the middle. While expected to embrace the significant amount of change they will be experiencing in their own roles and responsibilities, they are also expected to be the torchbearers and lead their teams through the transformation.

Traditional management in a non-Agile culture operates largely in a command-and-control mode. It’s how they make decisions, forecast, and get work done. Agile principles strive to decentralize some of that control in favor of building self-organized and autonomous teams. This factor directly threatens management’s perception of control and can make them feel a loss of power. The root of this problem can sometimes trace back to a poorly executed change management strategy, or lack thereof. Agile is not just a small incremental change in the way organizations plan and deliver, but a fundamentally different way altogether that requires careful planning and execution to accomplish.

Below are some of the indicators that show management is not fully aligned and supportive:

Teams do not get enough support from management when delivery challenges manifest
Management puts a greater emphasis on following the practices and mechanics than the mindset
There is a lack of psychological safety in the organization
Management overvalues Agile metrics and dashboards, leading to an increase in Agile antipatterns
Agile coaches struggle to maintain a coach and influence teams
Key Agile tenets get ignored in favor of the sponsor’s wishes, e.g., artificial deadlines

To prevent this issue from becoming a challenge in the first place, it is important to acknowledge and plan for it while developing the transformation strategy. Here are a few ways to address this challenge:

Address the “why”. Organizations can prevent resistance from happening by making sure management understands the “why” behind the change. Leadership needs to invest in and sponsor education and awareness campaigns to make sure people managers understand and align with the spirit of agile and are able to effectively articulate the value expected from the transformation.
Engage and recruit management as advocates of change: Change is hard, and advocating change requires skill. If we want our management to be those advocates, it is necessary to ensure they have the right knowledge and training to play their part. Key members of management should be strategically identified and trained for advocacy, early in the transformation.
Answer “What’s in it for me?”. While it might be well understood that Agile helps organizations deliver value early and often, it is human nature to seek personal benefit. Ensure they get a clear understanding of their future, feel secure from a career and work-life standpoint, and are able to see the benefits they stand to receive if the transformation goes well.
Let managers know that you have their back. Agile transformations are always full of ups and downs. And the ‘downs’ ideally should be learning opportunities. However, if management is held to their old expectations and they feel they will be penalized for failures as a result of the new delivery approach, they will be less inclined to support the transformation because of potential negative impacts. Leadership needs to understand and acknowledge how ‘fail fast’ manifests itself when using Agile, and ensure management understands that they won’t be penalized when failures do occur.
Create a ‘Growth Roadmap’. Just like ‘what’s in it for me,’ in the short term, it is important to address long-term personal benefits. As part of change management, ensure there is a clear understanding of how people will advance in their new roles in the next 3-5-8 years, what resources they will have to gain, new knowledge and credentials to consider, and which career paths they can pursue. Leadership should explain to middle-management how to be successful in an Agile culture, and ensure they recognize and reward managers for the new behaviors they want to see in them.

There is a lot that can be discussed about this challenge, and I would love to hear more from you. Have you faced similar challenges? What did you do to address them? At CC Pace, we love to engage with the community and provide value wherever possible. Reach out, we’d love to help.

What makes a good recruiter? Well, it depends on who you ask. I’ve been in the industry for over two decades and generally see my fellow recruiting directors answer that question one of two ways. The first answer: a high-volume recruiter – someone who can source numerous candidates quickly and move on to the next requirement. This recruiter excels at meeting goals, is generally very organized, and is a transaction-oriented individual. The second response (and the answer I firmly subscribe to) is a high-value recruiter – someone who is more focused on building strong relationships with both candidates and hiring managers than they are on transactions and numbers.

As a candidate, you don’t want your career treated like just another number, so finding a high-value recruiter is important. You want someone who can help you identify if a position is a fit for now versus the right fit based on your values and long-term career goals. If you’re wondering how to tell a high-volume recruiter from a high-value recruiter, I’ve put together some of the top attributes to look for to ensure you aren’t selling yourself short next time you’re on the job hunt.

High-Value Recruiters Get to Know YOU vs Your Resume

High-value recruiters take the time to get to know you beyond your resume. They are great listeners and pick up on the subtle details that indicate if a position is going to be a good fit for your personality, career goals, and values. The relationship-oriented recruiter is focused on your long-term aspirations and considers how those align with an opportunity versus simply submitting you for positions for which you may be qualified. For example, if you have a relatively low-risk tolerance, make sure you have a recruiter who can walk you through all the considerations that moving from a full-time employee to a contractor imposes. This sort of move is more than just a salary and benefits conversation – it requires a level of consulting that a recruiter focused on value and your long-term goals are going to be willing to have, even if it means a missed hire for them in the short term in order to ensure the best fit. A great recruiter puts the candidate before the position at all costs as they are more interested in finding the right fit for both sides.

High-Value Recruiters Have a History of Success

As a candidate, you want to work with a recruiter who has been there, done that. It’s not just about the years of experience, but it really does make a difference when you work with a recruiter who has a relationship with the client and has a history of successful hires. Don’t be afraid to ask the recruiter to reference their past success at the company you’re interested in! This will help you understand the insights your recruiter may have that you couldn’t possibly get from a job posting or even a Glassdoor review.

This is one area in which a relationship-oriented recruiter will add value to your job search in more ways than you may imagine. For example, what does the recruiter know about the company culture that you don’t know? They have relationships with candidates who work there, so they have a clear sense of what it’s like to work for the client and can accurately describe the company culture, projects, and expectations. They know and understand client nuances (e.g., manager personalities, team dynamics, corporate culture) and have awareness of what you need to do in order to succeed in the interview.

A high-value recruiter will not only take the time to prepare you for the interview process but will also prepare you for success once you land the job. Great recruiters are the face of the company and it’s their job to ensure that candidates walk away from the experience feeling positive about an opportunity, even if it ends up not being the right fit.

High-Value Recruiters are an Open Book

A high-value recruiter should talk to you like a good friend and tell you what you need to hear over what you want to hear. As a job seeker, you want someone who will give you candid, honest, and constructive feedback and advice before you get to the interview. You don’t want a ‘yes man’ who only tells you what you want to hear – you want someone who can help you grow and put you in the best position possible to make a great impression on the hiring manager. A stellar recruiter will be honest with you, even if it’s uncomfortable (but will always do so in a professional and helpful way). The job may be out of your league or the money you desire may not be realistic. You may not like to hear these things, but it’s better to find them out before you get too far down the process!

High-Value Recruiters are Relationship-Oriented

Finally, one of the most important characteristics of a high-value recruiter is that they are driven by people, not numbers. You’ll know when you find them as they are laser-focused on your needs and finding out more about what drives you. They want to understand your goals, your expectations, and what job characteristics you prioritize over others. The value-driven recruiter keeps an open mind for the best long-term fit, not just the opportunity on the table.

These recruiters tend to be likable and build strong relationships with both candidates and hiring managers. There’s a level of trust on both sides, knowing that the recruiter is in it for the long haul and will go to great lengths to find the best fit for everyone because they value the relationship over a goal and would put that at stake just to get a hire. Their reputation, relationships, and referrals are more important than the instant gratification of a single transaction.

A high-value recruiter can make all the difference in your job search. When you find a recruiter who values the person over the transaction, they act like a consultant to your hiring process – advising you, redirecting you, and making sure you’re landing in the right place where you’ll be happy, have alignment with your career goals and are getting the best compensation possible.

One final piece of advice: when you find high-value recruiters, make sure you stay in touch with them, even after you have found the job because those connections can be invaluable to your career. If you have any questions about the recruiting process, feel free to connect with one of our recruiters today to see how we can help you find your next position!

Now that you have hired millennials, this last blog in our millennials series discusses integrating them to become part of your team, and making changes to your organization to fit their professional needs. As with any new employee, it takes time for that person to become acclimated to your organization.

This article, 2018 Millennials at Work Report, touches on managing this generation, millennials in leadership and long-term change. Making small changes across the board to create a more relaxed work environment seems to be a key starting point. Even employees outside of this generation will welcome change as they too seek more flexible schedules, cutting edge technology, professional development and management feedback.

If leaders are willing to take the time to invest in this generation of workers, it will surely make a difference to not only their teams, but their business.

We came across in interesting article on Tips for Interviewing Millennials (And What They Really Want from a Job). It discusses how, in the workforce today, there are 5 different generations of workers. How does an employer position themselves to be attractive to each of these generations?

The first step would be understanding what each generation is looking for in an employer and seeing how that fits within your organization. Millennials have quickly become the largest growing pool of candidates and interviewing them may be a bit different than previous generations.

The top items they want to hear about are equality, flexibility and growth. This article will give you some key questions to ask to ensure both you and the candidate are on the same page to create a perfect union.

This post, The No. 1 Thing That Causes Millennial Employees to Quit, states that more than one third of the workforce in the United States is between the ages of 18 and 34 years old. It also points out that millennials are currently the largest group of workers in America.

Dominating the recruiting pool, millennials have made it well known that if they are not happy in their current work environment, they will move on without hesitation. So, what can companies do to meet the needs of millennials? It seems the answer is not that difficult to find – to recruit and retain these workers, employers simply need to provide them a corporate culture that provides positivity, flexibility and the latest technologies.

Companies need to take a closer look at what they offer, and make the necessary changes to not only attract, but keep, these valuable employees who are the future of their organizations.

Can you believe it is already 2018? Think about all the technological advances there have been in the last 10 years… no actually make that 5 years - it is truly unbelievable! All of this new technology has created a culture of “now”. Interested in watching something on TV – just stream it, “now”. Do you want to ask someone a quick question, no matter where they are – just shoot them a text, “now”. Do you want to order something and have it delivered today – just get online and order it, “now”.

Move that thinking to the human resources or recruiting department of an organization where they think, if only we could start to screen for this position “now”. If only we can confirm this candidate is as good in person, as they are on paper “now”. This is where the advantage of video interviewing comes into play.

This article, 15 Advantages of Video Interviews You Didn’t Know About, discusses how companies, both big and small, are using this technology to screen candidates, streamline the hiring process and save these organizations time and money. A video interview is a great way to connect with a potential employer, so be prepared as you begin your next job search and make sure you are camera ready!

On the first day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
update your resume quickly

On the second day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the third day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the fourth day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the fifth day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Spend five days networking
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the sixth day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Schedule six meetings
Spend five days networking
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the seventh day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Here’s seven interviewing tips
Schedule six meetings
Spend five days networking
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the eighth day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Set up eight interviews
Here’s seven interviewing tips
Schedule six meetings
Spend five days networking
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the ninth day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Send nine thank you emails
Set up eight interviews
Here’s seven interviewing tips
Schedule six meetings
Spend five days networking
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the tenth day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
You have ten offers, accept one already
Send nine thank you emails
Set up eight interviews
Here’s seven interviewing tips
Schedule six meetings
Spend five days networking
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the eleventh day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Only eleven days until your start date
You have ten offers, accept one already
Send nine thank you emails
Set up eight interviews
Here’s seven interviewing tips
Schedule six meetings
Spend five days networking
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

On the twelfth day of Job Hunting
my recruiter said to me:
Enjoy twelve months of paychecks now
Only eleven days until your start date
You have ten offers, accept one already
Send nine thank you emails
Set up eight interviews
Here’s seven interviewing tips
Schedule six meetings
Spend five days networking
Research four preferred companies
Post your resume on three job sites
Take two days on LinkedIn
and update your resume quickly

As a manager or leader, some of the biggest mistakes you can make are not sharing your vision, holding on to control, not letting your team grow as professionals and simply not saying thank you enough.

In this article by Dave Ramsey, he has a list of 4 Ways to Empower Your Team. It’s a quick read with a solid message:

Share Your Vision
Stop Micromanaging
Enhance Their Skills
Brag on Them

Yes, that’s a short list, but each item has a significant impact. Employees do not feel connected when they don’t know where the company is planning to go, things to do not move forward quickly and time can be wasted when they are not able to make decisions on their own. Your team needs the ability to grow through training and mentoring, and they need to feel appreciated so that they know that you are aware of their efforts.

Start today, pick one task and give your team the ability to make a decision. It will make your employees feel valued and may increase morale in your workplace. So, just just let it go and see what happens. You may be surprised and find that your job just got less stressful!

At CC Pace, we aren’t trying to fit you into a role; we’re committed to finding the best fit for you. Why? Because we are not your average staffing firm. This commitment is the reason our clients have stayed with us for over 35 years and why many of our candidates have worked with us for over a decade. As a recruiter at CC Pace, I strive to get the best sources available to keep up to our firm’s reputation.

‘Purple squirrel’ is a term used by recruiters to describe a job candidate with precisely the right education, specific, hard-to-find experience and qualifications that perfectly fits a job’s multifaceted requirements (Wikipedia). It may sound unrealistic, but if your hard work pays off, and maybe with a little luck, you find just the right candidate which fits your clients requirement – and that’s your purple squirrel. You simply cannot afford lose them!

They’re in high demand. As the author of the article below says, you can’t just blast them with impersonal email and expect them to respond. They get dozens of those emails each week and it’s never going to work. You can’t just tweet them a job title or send an InMail with a link to your job posting and expect them to drop everything and apply online. It just isn’t going to happen.

So, how is it going to happen? There are some great tips in this article, Recruiting Purple Squirrels? Here’s the Trick, by Stacy Donovan Zapar, for courting your purple squirrel. Enjoy and hopefully it adds to your recruiting arsenal.