Building a Stronger Candidate Pipeline How to Find and Keep Top Talent

Summary

Melissa Grabiner is a highly experienced HR and Talent Acquisition professional with over two decades in the field. Today, she is a prominent LinkedIn thought leader and is currently ranked as a top female and HR creator. Her expertise includes building talent acquisition functions, managing teams, overseeing large-scale hiring, and leading HR activities through organizational changes.

In this episode of The Speed to Hire Show, Melissa discusses how to develop a more effective and efficient screening process to manage and reduce high volumes of unqualified candidates, and the impact of proactive candidate sourcing and outreach on your talent pipeline, employer brand, and candidate experience.

Notes

As a Job Search Coach and a Global Director of Talent Acquisition with over 20 years of experience, Melissa has interviewed hundreds of candidates, edited thousands of resumes and LinkedIn profiles, and helped hundreds of job seekers land multiple offers.

Melissa is dedicated to utilizing her unique skills and knowledge of hiring and recruitment to help organizations elevate their hiring process through more methodical planning and alignment with hiring managers earlier in the process, and proactive sourcing and relationship-building to develop a stronger talent pipeline.

JOSH TOLAN: So we’ve talked a lot about candidate experience and the importance of that. And you work with a lot of candidates in your several businesses that you have. One of the things I know that’s super important both to employers and to candidates is this idea of culture fit because it goes both ways. So I guess my first question for you is why is culture fit so important?

MELISSA GRABINER: Sure. So I actually feel pretty strongly about this question because when I do my hiring for my clients, one of the things I really look at strongly is, this person a culture fit with the organization? And the reason why is because in my experience, I feel like it significantly affects employee performance, employee satisfaction, retention, and even the team dynamics. So… When I think about like team cohesiveness and collaboration, employees who align with company values and working style, I think tend to integrate more smoothly into their working team. And it just leads to better communication and collaboration and then really just, you know, fewer interpersonal conflicts. And also when employees feel they resonate with the mission and the vision and the culture of the company and the environment, what I have seen is they’re generally more motivated. I’ve seen conversely where when someone’s values and mission doesn’t necessarily align with the cultures, that’s when their productivity kind of wanes and motivation is gone. So culture fit often in my experience leads to higher levels of job satisfaction and higher effort on the part of the employee. And then of course, I think, you know, the biggest piece is the employee retention. So as you know, as a business owner, losing employees can be very, very expensive, right? It costs significantly more money for companies to replace employees than it is to retain them. And a big reason why people do leave their jobs is because of culture fit. And I know this firsthand working in talent acquisition for many, many years where I have conducted hundreds of exit interviews and a big piece of why employees leave is because the number one reason is because of their boss. And the number two reason is the fit isn’t there culturally. It’s not even so much they want more money or it’s the workload. They just don’t feel aligned with the vision and the mission and the culture of the company. So when you hire someone who shares the company’s values and approach, I think it can significantly reduce the cost of turnover. And then of course, I think things to consider are brand and reputation. So employees who believe in the company’s culture are more likely to represent the brand in a positive light. And this is when

MELISSA GRABINER: tools like Glassdoor and Reddit come into play because if people feel poorly about a company, they’re more prone to go onto these sites and air their grievances. So yeah, I cultural fit is very, very important when hiring and For one of my clients, interestingly enough, we actually ask a series of questions that help us gauge if someone’s a fit culturally. I do believe that most jobs can be taught unless you’re like, obviously an attorney or a software engineer, most jobs can be taught. But what can’t necessarily be taught are people’s motivations, their hard work ethic. and if they are a cultural fit. So yes, I absolutely believe this is really, really important and something that all companies should take seriously when they’re assessing talent to come into their organizations.

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, and you mentioned it a few times there. I think a lot of times organizations get confused and candidates get confused with the term culture fit and thinking it’s an assessment of how well the candidate just fits in with the other people around them at the organization. But that’s really not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about fit. And you mentioned the word alignment multiple times. It’s more like cultural alignment, environment alignment, values, mission alignment that needs to be achieved. So you just mentioned with one of your clients, you guys have specific questions that you ask to evaluate and assess for culture fit. Do you mind sharing what some of those are or just thematically what you’re looking for?

MELISSA GRABINER: Sure. So some of the questions that we ask, and they’re very targeted questions, is what kind of environment brings out your best performance? Can you describe a company culture where you’ve worked in the past where you’ve thrived and also ones where you didn’t thrive? How do you prefer to receive feedback? Tell me about a time you had to adapt to a company’s values or way of working. What does a healthy team culture look like to you? How do you celebrate wins? How do you celebrate accomplishments? What are you passionate about outside of work? I like this question because it gives you a window into the person’s personality, which I think can really affect team chemistry. And I like the question, what’s something unique that you can bring to our culture? And this encourages reflections on past contributions, really just beyond their technical skills. The other thing too is that I always believe that, and I’m sure you’ll agree with this as a business owner is interviewing is always a two way street. And I always say this to my clients who are in the job search that we, they should be interviewing the company as much as the company should be interviewing them. And I think some good questions to ask the company regarding culture is how do you describe the company culture? What behaviors are rewarded here? What’s not tolerated here? How does leadership support work life balance? You know, it’s interesting, one of my clients right now does not allow their employees to work remote ever. And it’s a five day a week in-person job. There’s very, very little flexibility. And that speaks to me about the company culture, because I don’t think work-life balance is important to this company as much as it is to some of my other clients. And we have had many, candidates decline. moving forward in the interview process when they hear that the work-life balance is pretty poor and that there is no flexibility. And part of the culture is because of the fact that there really isn’t a lot of flexibility. I also believe that company culture starts at the top and trickles its way down. So it starts with the CEO, it starts with the values of the leadership team, and then it disseminates from there. So if the culture of a company is strong, I attest that to having

MELISSA GRABINER: a really strong CEO who cares about the culture.

JOSH TOLAN: That makes a lot of sense. And I like that you brought up questions that a candidate can ask a company to learn more about their culture. What, and it’s good when the candidates do from a company’s perspective as well, because you want your candidates to get that insight because you want alignment, right? It’s not just about you finding a candidate at where there’s cultural fit or alignment. It’s also about the candidate finding that because if it’s a mismatch on either side, you know, even if you do end up hiring them.

MELISSA GRABINER: Mm-hmm.

JOSH TOLAN: to your point, there can be retention issues down the line just because of misalignment. So you mentioned some questions that candidates can ask a company, but what are maybe some things a company can do to proactively put this information in front of candidates? So maybe earlier in the hiring process, before a candidate has the opportunity to ask some of these questions that maybe they had reserved for a more later stage interview, what are some ways that a company can showcase their culture at like different steps and maybe earlier in the hiring process.

MELISSA GRABINER: I think it really starts with the job description. One of my clients, a different client in their job descriptions talks about the culture at the bottom of the job description. And it talks about the values of the company, the mission, and kind of the leadership principles, which all speaks to the culture. So what we’re doing by doing that is in essence saying to these candidates or these applicants or people who might be interested in pursuing an opportunity at the company is, here in the job description, we’re laying out our culture, what we believe in, what are our guiding principles, and you’re being upfront at the start. talent acquisition, there’s so many pieces to staffing, but I really do believe it starts with the job description because that is what the candidates see. also think LinkedIn, I think that companies should write posts about their culture. Maybe they’re doing fun events with their team. Maybe they give two days off a year to do volunteer work. But if a company uses their LinkedIn page in a way to showcase what the culture is like, that is going to give candidates or prospective individuals interested in a job, they’re kind of a window into what would life be like if I joined this company. So it’s utilizing LinkedIn, it’s utilizing job descriptions, and it’s utilizing your careers page. I would say the vast majority of companies have a careers page on their website. Talk about the culture there. Showcase the culture. That’s your time to shine and you really want to make it seem enticing to bring in as many applicants as you can.

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. A lot of companies underutilize the assets and the web properties that they have available to them to share that information with candidates. The careers page is obviously a great example. It’s just an evergreen page. It’s always going to live there that you can constantly direct candidates back to. But to your point, you know, I think where a lot of companies miss on LinkedIn is they think, well, it’s not like I’m going to be posting every day about our company. Like we have other things that we’re sharing on our LinkedIn and marketing controls are linked in. But the reality is like, you really only have to post a few times to share the content or share relevant information. If you feel like there’s value to be added in a post where it can actually share something meaningful about your company and your culture, you should share it. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it every day. It doesn’t mean that all of your candidates are in the hiring process have to just naturally come across on their feed because the reality is it lives there. So there’s a link. And so now what you do is you take that link and you embed it into your candidate communication. So even if the post is four months old about maybe something about your culture, or maybe some way that you guys were giving back at an event you participated in. You can link those things in your candidate communication. You can link those things from your careers page. So those assets, those posts live on. It’s not like a candidate just has to see it today or they’ll never see it. It’s up to you for how you distribute it to those candidates. And I think that’s a thing is what talent acquisition teams need to be thinking about is creating content, you know, quote unquote once. but distributing it over and over and having a program for how they distribute it through the hiring process so candidates don’t have to just come across it, you’re putting it in front of them. And that’s how you really get that information in front of them that helps them decide to the point in the earlier part of our call is, am I gonna self-select into the next step of this process? And so each step of the process when you’re communicating with candidates, you want to give them information that helps them self-select in or self-select out. And that self-selection is a good process for everybody that’s involved.

MELISSA GRABINER: Yeah, and I’ll tell you something really interesting too. So one of the things one of my clients does, and I love this and I tell them this all the time, is right before someone, a candidate is interviewing, we send them an email the day before the interview wishing them luck. We, it’s a very nice email. It’s a very encouraging email, basically saying, we’re so excited to meet you. Thank you so much in advance for your time. We wish you all the best of luck in your interview. And it, it’s really like nurturing the candidate and it’s making the candidate feel valued. It’s like just like a feel good behavior. And it’s the first time I’ve ever seen any company do that of all the companies that I’ve consulted with and worked at over the years. But candidates want to feel cared for. They want to feel like they matter. And a simple message. And what’s interesting about it is we send it directly from our greenhouse. app contracting system. So it’s not time consuming. You basically spend 10 seconds and you send this email to the candidates, but it makes them feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside. Like, hey, this company took the time to send me this email and they want me to succeed. That to me is a sign of a really cool culture. And I do believe, and I post about this on LinkedIn a lot, is that a company’s hiring process to me is also a window into their culture. When I look at companies that take months to make a decision and they put candidates through 10 interviews and then they have to create this detailed presentation and these hiring managers get paralyzed and making a decision, it makes me think like, how do they treat their employees? If they can’t even get the candidate experience right, what does that mean about the employee experience versus companies that have very quick processes? They care about their candidates. They take care of their candidates. Those are candidates that are more prone to say yes to an offer because they felt they were cared for during the interview process. And it would make me think as a candidate, well, if I was taken care of this well and treated this well during the interview process and the hiring process, I can only imagine how great I would be treated as an employee. So I do think there is a big correlation again between how candidates are treated and how employees are treated.

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah, and it’s funny, like it’s the simple things like that, you know, and they’re simple in hindsight, like when you’re saying it out loud, but they’re not simple in the sense that so many companies clearly aren’t doing that. But, you know, I think you bring up a good point in that candidates just want to know that you as their employer, you’re going to have their back, you’re going to be there to support them, you’re going to be there to set them up for success. And so even a small touch point of just wishing them luck, it takes what’s normally like a quite transactional communication, which most companies, if they even do this, are going to remind a candidate about their interview tomorrow. Here’s where to go. Here’s who you’re going to meet with. That’s it. Show up on time. And so it takes a moment like that and turns it to more of a relationship oriented communication touch point. it makes, to your point, gives the candidate the warm and fuzzies of like, okay, this is a company that cares about me as a person and truly wants me. to perform my best and is wishing me luck. And that’s a good sign of how I’ll be treated when I join that organization. And you and I talked earlier in the call about small employers, know, a hundred employees, less, a little bit more, give or take, and what are the things that they can do to stand out in the market, especially with a lean team when resources are tight. And this is like a perfect example of it. Like you said, it takes a few minutes to send the email. It takes 10 minutes to come up with the template, save it. And then anytime a candidate goes to that step, you just send the email. And it goes a long way, as you’ve seen from, you know, with your anecdotal, you know, experience and evidence that you’ve got, it works. And so these are the things that I think like small employers really need to embrace is like, how can we stand out when we’re competing with a big organization? Like a big organization is probably going to offer better pay and better benefits and a lot of things that a small employer can’t offer. But what can a small employer do to stand out? the candidate experience, it’s making quick decisions, it’s giving good feedback, it’s giving the warm and fuzzies at all these touch points within these different hiring stages. So that would be a big takeaway I think I would have if I were a small employer listening to this, is just do the little things and do them well. And if you do that, you’ll stand out nine times out of 10 compared to other employers.

MELISSA GRABINER: Yeah, I actually call that the employer value proposition, the EVP. You know, right now, as you know, this is a very, very challenging job market for job seekers. But I’ve been in talent acquisition long enough to know that every couple of years the pendulum switches. So right now, I would say most companies have the upper hand because there’s so many candidates versus when companies can’t find talent enough and the really good candidates have their pick of their job. I really hope the pendulum changes back because there are so many amazing and talented people looking for work right now. But regardless, it’s super imperative that companies really care about their, their, you know, candidate experience, especially the small companies, because that is when especially small companies, because that’s a lot of them are in their growth stage too. So you want to have a reputation where you’re known to be an employer of choice, and as your company continues to grow, it is the best interest of any company. For sure, small companies, you always want to hire the best possible talent that you can. But starting small and you’re building a workforce that’s going to really set the tone for success or failure versus, you know, when I worked at Takeda, There were thousands and thousands of employees globally, thousands. It was a global Fortune 500 company versus these biotech startups that I consult with. These are very, very small companies that are in their inception stage. And one of the clients I was brought in was really to map out their entire talent acquisition process, systems, technology, so on and so forth. And one of the things that I always say to them is in every stage of your hiring process, whether it’s starting at the job posting, whether it’s a phone interview, whether it is sending them a benefits brochure, whether it’s the verbiage in an offer letter, you want to make the new hire or the candidate feel taken care of because that’s how you’re going to hire the best people. People are going to want to go where they feel in their gut is like a good match with like their culture and their values.

MELISSA GRABINER: or I should say their values and what’s important to them. So when you’re working at a small company and the company has a lot of growth, it’s important to get it right. You can always pivot along the way. But I always say to my clients is if you put yourself in the shoes of a job seeker and you think about how would I want to be treated, you can never go wrong.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. And I think that goes back to what you were saying in terms of, you know, in your career, when you’ve seen, you know, employees resigned from companies, and one reason is their manager. And oftentimes, whether you want to say it’s their manager or the company, the reality is the sentiment is that they weren’t taken care of in some way or the other, right? Their needs weren’t met, whether it was professional development, or maybe it was just how they were treated on a day to day basis. The reality is they just didn’t feel taken care of. And maybe that you know, somebody or the company didn’t have their back or their best interest in mind. And I think that ties back into the hiring process. If you think about a candidate and where that, you know, if they’re deciding between multiple employers at the end of the day, if comp is similar, if they’re excited about both companies, products or services or whatever it may be, the differentiating factor is going to be how do they feel about that company? Do I feel like this company and the manager I’m going to be working with and the people I’m going to be surrounded with. are people that are gonna improve the quality of my life more so than the other employers that I’m considering. So Melissa, this has been great. I really appreciate your time. You’ve shared so many insights here. So I’m so glad we were able to connect. Where can people find you? Where’s the best place for people to connect with you?

MELISSA GRABINER: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, more time than I probably want to admit. But yes, and I’m very responsive to I receive probably 150 messages a day on LinkedIn from people. It’s a lot. But I always feel that if someone takes the time to reach out, then I owe it to them to respond. So it might take me a day or so to respond, but I will respond to you. But yes, you can definitely find me on LinkedIn.

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah.

JOSH TOLAN: Well, thank you so much.

MELISSA GRABINER: Thank you. I appreciate being a guest. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.