Gareth Callaway’s Post

🎯Job seeking is tough right now. It's tough for job seekers and it's tough for employers. 🎯That's compounded by some of the lowest employee engagement rates we've ever seen. 🎯And guess what? Interviewing a candidate any more than 3 times has been shown to be ineffective. Drop me a note to find out how we can help eliminate the guesswork in hiring, expedite the hiring process, increase employee retention and increase employee productivity (oh, and actually have happier employees).

With employee engagement at an 11 year low I can't help but be reminded of the other big thing in Canadian business news regarding lower per capita productivity and the impact on the per capita GDP. This doesn't have to be scrounging for a 1% bump in productivity by upgrading the ERP or introducing some accounting tweaks. Try hiring and engaging your workforce to increase motivation and yes, productivity. We don't just recruit against a checklist of experiences, we show you how to engage and motivate your new employee. Want to find out more? I'll show you how in 6 minutes by telling you how I'd engage and motivate you. And if you read this and didn't reach out, congratulations on having the 30% of the workforce that is actively engaged.

I've been doing this job for a long time but I was talking to a candidate last week and even I was amazed, gobsmacked and otherwise astounded by his recent experience. I promised him faithfully that I wouldn't share the name of the company but I sincerely believe that a public shaming is the way to go. He did his first interview on Teams. All good. Then went for a face to face interview in the morning with the line manager. That afternoon they rejected him, not so bad. But HR sent him an automated "Dear John" letter, nobody could even be bothered to craft a personalized note. Like I said, gobsmacked.

This short video beautifully captures the essence of the "post and pray" school of recruiting. Post your job, get the candidate to do all of the admin in getting their resume onto the ATS so that somebody who knows nothing about the job can make the decision on whether aforementioned candidate is qualified. Last time I checked, recruiting was part of human resources. I like that word "human", the overly automated, volume outreach approach is not "human", it's quite the opposite.

I read a lot about employee engagement on LinkedIn. You know the posts, they start off with "So grateful to my employer [INSERT COMPANY NAME] for [INSERT CAUSE OF TOXIC POSITIVITY]. I'm big on employee engagement. And data. And as anybody who has had the good fortune to sit on a sales call with me will know, I take both of those things and use them in Gateway's recruiting. (Drumroll, enter stage left, The Predictive Index. So here's another little tidbit of data. Statistically, according to this survey, 70% of executive leadership is either not onboard with me or is failing at retaining the people that work for them. If you need help, reach out. We offer crazy long placement guarantees precisely because we don't have to, the people that we place stick around.

While not my client, the Builtech use case makes for compelling reading. Imagine actually being able to hire for culture AND engagement using a data driven approach. Our clients don't have to imagine :)

Uncomfortable truths.