by Katy Ibsen, managing editor, PostPress

Skill Scout is a Chicago-based hiring firm that assists companies in modern-day recruitment practices. Founded in 2014, the company strives to help other companies understand that they cannot be what they cannot see.

“Job descriptions don’t show what a job is like,” said Elena Valentine, Skill Scout CEO and co-founder. “The hiring process is missing out on an important opportunity to help candidates consider careers they may not have considered before.” Valentine and her team quickly learned the power of video provided more intel for candidates, demystified requirements and offered more information about the opportunity.

“We saw it as our mission to use video and storytelling to help make more meaningful hiring connections between candidates and companies,” she said.

Since its founding, Skill Scout has partnered with more than 100 manufacturers to educate them on improving the hiring process, increasing retention and increasing the amount of quality talent that comes down the pipeline – all through the power of video storytelling.

PostPress asked Valentine more about her firm and its value to manufacturers seeking new, millennial team members.

Tell us about your operation and what Skill Scout offers to companies looking to expand their hiring practices.

Skill Scout is a media company that helps manufacturers tell their story on video as a way to attract and retain talent. In addition to full-scale media production services, we have a DIY video product offering that puts the storytelling in the company’s hands. We give them the plan and the video kit. They film. We edit and create a compelling video that they can share across their platforms. Our main mission is to empower manufacturing leaders to be chief human storytellers of their business and use video as part of their creative tool kit to do so.

Based on your research and work, why is there a shortage of millennials in the world of manufacturing?

Long and short of it: exposure and perception. We were the generation whose education system did away with shop class and vocational tracks. We were the ones with guidance counselors and parents pushing us to see college as the best and only route. Fact is, we didn’t have the same kind of exposure to this industry as others did. You cannot be what you cannot see. Only now are these programs making a comeback, thanks to society wising up to the crippling student loan debt and manufacturing’s strong hold on the global economy.

Ninety percent of millennials believe manufacturing is fundamental to America’s prosperity, yet we rank it dead last as a career choice. What we’ve come to know of manufacturing is outdated and negative. So much of the rhetoric either harkens to the Upton Sinclair days or the opposite extreme – robots taking over all of those jobs. We know this isn’t true. For too long, manufacturers have allowed others to take control of the narrative. I’m relieved to see that’s quickly changing.

Why do you believe millennials are good hires for manufacturing?

Millennials aren’t just good hires for manufacturing. At this point, they are the hires for manufacturing, with Generation Z quickly to follow. Hiring good millennials is inevitable. In fact, the majority of companies reading this probably have a large contingent of millennials already working for them.

Manufacturing still has a place for this generation and beyond. It’s simply how we communicate the value and opportunities of this industry that we have to highlight more. This includes things like:

• How might their roles fit in with the overall mission and vision of the company?
• What growth opportunities exist? And, what kind of pathways does the company provide to help them get there?
• How would companies describe and showcase their culture?

Why do varying sectors within manufacturing need to think differently about how to hire millennials?

Some of this is about exposure. Depending on the sector, products might be hidden and relatively unknown to the everyday consumer and candidate. Think of a small component that goes inside the engine of a car. While it’s an essential component, most would be hard pressed to open the hood, point out that component and know that Company X made that.

For that reason, some sectors will be pushed more than others to communicate a story that shows how their work contributes to the whole – in this case, a car. However, this goes beyond just talking about the car, to answering an even more important question: What is the value of a car in someone’s life in the first place? A car helps someone get to work and take care of their family. A car connects loved ones from far away. That’s the story candidates – millennials and beyond – can understand and get behind.

What are some antiquated hiring practices companies should eliminate?

• Post and pray no longer works. Throw a sign on the lawn and expect people to walk inside and apply? With unemployment at an all-time low, gone are the days of “posting and praying.” Recruiting strategies have to be proactive and less reactive.
• Update those old boilerplate job descriptions. When was the last time hiring managers looked at the job descriptions? Technologies have evolved, products have evolved and so have the people being hired for those jobs.
• This is not a one-way interview conversation. What impression are candidates leaving the interview with? Are managers trained in how to effectively run a Company X interview? If not, they should be. They could very well be driving candidates away and not know it because of a negative impression during an interview.
• Resumes alone don’t lead to understanding someone’s skills. Many manufacturers are looking for highly skilled and highly experienced individuals. An easy way of trying to navigate that is through the resume. Managers can peruse where candidates come from and how many years of experience they have. But – does that really show what they can actually do? The answer is no. One thing we’ve implemented at Skill Scout for our own hiring practices is the use of work samples. It’s giving someone a chance to try their hand at the job. Work samples are the best predictor of job performance, and they significantly reduce hiring bias. It’s like giving the candidates a blueprint and having them walk through how they would troubleshoot a machine. Or, if this is for a quality role, it’s giving them two products and having them inspect for errors.

What challenges have you run into when consulting manufacturing companies on hiring?

Like all things, change is hard. Despite that the current way of doing things is not working, it’s an outcome and a process that you’re comfortable with. It can be hard for manufacturing leaders to see that what worked for them coming into this industry doesn’t work today. What’s more, the level of technology and new approaches feels foreign and something that might be hard for someone to pick up on top of the multitude of responsibilities they have.

Yet the question I always ask in these cases is, what will happen if you don’t change? It becomes a conversation less about whether they hire Skill Scout and more a question around a call for them to act on anything.

The other thing we come up against more often than not is whether the company culture is set up for something like this. What we typically find is that these approaches bring candidates in, but does the company have what they need to keep them and develop them? What’s their pay structure like? Do they offer clear paths for promotion? What’s the work environment like: family or hostile? No one likes to admit that they have a negative working environment, but we’ve had a few companies halt video because the planning of it brought up some heavy issues regarding low morale and conflicts among leadership. Suffice it to say, an approach like Skill Scout’s doesn’t work unless that company has a culture to embrace it.

Why promote video as the best means for reaching millennials?

Media is the literacy of the 21st century, and we are the YouTube generation. By 2020, video will be the largest driver of internet traffic. Video and visuals is how we learn, and there is science to prove it. We retain 65% of what we see and hear vs. 15% what we read. We watch videos to learn everything from how to fix our kitchen sink to learning math equations. Given the already overwhelming data that supports video, it’s not surprising that this works to expose a new generation to the manufacturing industry.

How can companies that have never used video to hire move in that direction?

Start small by simply taking out smartphones and snapping photos/videos of the company’s work and environment. Share them on the website. Craft social media posts with a caption of what viewers are seeing. Attach them to job posts to give candidates a glimpse into the requirements. This is all free and something managers can start doing tomorrow.

Beyond video, what advice do you have for hiring managers who want to attract millennials?

Call me biased, but it’s all in the story and how managers communicate the opportunities candidates would have with their company. All communications from the phone screen to the job ad should center around the candidate first, not the company. How will the opportunity at the company help this candidate grow in life and their career? If managers can answer that question authentically, and put in some resources to spreading that message, they can become an employer of choice in this industry.

For more information, visit www.skillscout.com.

by Pam Butterfield, Business Success Tools

Here’s the challenge many employers are facing today: baby boomers stayed in the workforce longer than anyone expected. As a result, many employers put off any efforts to recruit their replacements, and now those employers have forgotten – or never really knew – how to onboard new workers so they’ll get up to speed and stay.

Today, the onboarding process is critical. This is especially true when hiring millennials, who make quick decisions about their workplaces and have no problem leaving if they are unhappy. If a company doesn’t onboard the boomer’s replacement properly, chances are the replacement will leave. And, by the time the next employee comes along to fill the spot, the boomer (and his or her institutional knowledge) is long gone. Without that knowledge, the newest hire has a much higher chance of failing.

Get really good at developing and retaining your people.

Improving your company’s ability to develop and retain good employees is a process, not an event. Improvements take time and resources. Here are three things successful companies do to help new employees get off to a good start and become confident contributors:

1. Onboard employees. Imagine this. You’re standing with one foot on a boat and one foot on a dock. If you don’t put both feet on one of the surfaces, as the boat pulls away, you’ll fall into the water. The goal of a well-thought-out onboarding process is to get a new employee to move both feet solidly onto the boat (your company). You want new employees to be proud of the company they have joined – to feel like they belong and fit in. Successful companies have an onboarding process that fits their size, culture and needs. An Internet search using the term “onboarding new employees” will help you find excellent, free resources to get started with onboarding in your company.

2. Provide company and job-specific training. Training costs money and takes time. Not training your employees costs even more. Good people do not want to go to work every day and screw up. And millennials, who seek engagement and development, will quickly sour on their jobs without new challenges.

What that means is that you must have an established, repeatable in-house training program. This will help your employees develop the skills they need to do the job the way you want it done. It will reduce the likelihood of mistakes and rework, while helping new employees learn the procedures that allow them to do it efficiently. By the way, “I talk. You learn,” is not training. The ultimate training solution might require you to design and implement a formal apprentice program, and that may be several years away from reality. Start with small steps. How about providing checklists for routine tasks to minimize employee errors and yield more consistent results? Or, create written work instructions for more complicated job tasks? There’s more to effective training than checklists and work instructions, but at least this is a start.

3. Give ongoing feedback. Regular on-the-job “guidance” catches problems before they become huge performance issues. With newer employees, it allows you to provide course corrections, on-the-job training and feedback. If an employee improves, mistakes get nipped in the bud. If the person does not improve, you’ve spotted a potential flaw in your hiring process.

This kind of ongoing feedback also is the key to retaining millennials. They’ve grown up with constant, supportive feedback. You can make fun of that as much as you like, but it’s what they expect. The annual performance review doesn’t cut it with this crowd. They consistently want to know how they are doing now. Look for ways to provide that feedback if you want to keep them.

Millennial disruption: It’s happening, and it’s not going away.

Millennials (one in three American workers today) are disrupting the way companies find and keep talent. They expect more from companies before they will even interview with them. They expect to be engaged and challenged where they work and to move on when they’ve learned all they can from a job or employer.

Employers that are dependent upon this generation for their next round of workers need to stop complaining about these new expectations. They need to learn ways to onboard employees quickly and to get the most out of them for as long as they have them. Employers that learn how to adapt to this disruption will attract and make the best use of this tech-savvy, knowledge-hungry and growth-seeking group of employees.

Here’s the mind-bender for many employers: In the past, companies hired people. Today, people are hiring companies. Millennials learn about potential employers before they submit their resumes. They won’t hesitate to withdraw from the selection process if a company is not a fit for them.

The big takeaways

I’ve worked with and worked for small companies that have succeeded in building a strong workforce. These companies have learned how to get, grow and keep employees. What I’ve noticed is it takes time – typically one to three years – for a small company to improve its ability to acquire, develop and retain the right employees. These companies often are reluctant to accept this new reality, and they suffer for it. They kick and scream (“We don’t have time” or “It’ll cost too much”) and push back on the need to invest precious resources in reinventing how they hire and train their people. The time and cost concerns are valid; truly, they are. But, if you plan to remain in business, doing nothing to improve hiring and managing people is not an option, especially in today’s hunt for scarce talent.

Take a good look at your recruiting, onboarding, training and employee engagement processes. Start evolving now to meet the needs of the labor force you’ll need today and tomorrow. Develop repeatable processes that can be used over and over as these restless employees move on. Stop complaining and start learning from them. They may just have something to teach you.

Pam Butterfield is the founder of Business Success Tools, which helps small businesses (1 to 1,000 employees) grow productively and accelerate growth through people and processes. For more information, visit www.BusinessSuccessTools.biz.