When change happens in your company or on your team, how adaptable is your hiring strategy or process? Are you equipped to make confident, informed decisions when trying something new? In this webinar, Humana shares how it used labor market data and an opportunity presented by the COVID-19 pandemic to shift its hiring strategy 180 degrees. Join CareerBuilder for this 30-minute chat to learn how to keep hiring, find higher-quality candidates and improve processes amid uncertainty.
And below is the Q&A section, edited for clarity and brevity.
Elizabeth Laurent (Moderator): You guys definitely make a great team and the results are very impressive. The audience really liked your case study and there are several questions for you. First, how big of a team was working through applications and phone screens?
Michael Cristancho: It’s a collaboration, but that would be so CareerBuilder’s responsibility to sort – there is some sourcing that Humana does and there's some sourcing that we do. We put everything together to drive candidates to the site. There were about four main project managers and then obviously the team members, around 25.
Danielle Farabee: I had two recruiters. They both had three sites they were responsible for, and they were, as Michael mentioned, a kind of liaison helping go through the process. The one thing I would tell you is I think it's really important that CareerBuilder was included in all the meetings. I think we all need to be privy to the same information so that we were all together with the key stakeholders.
Elizabeth Laurent (Moderator): Next, what virtual hiring platform did you use and why did you select it?
Danielle Farabee: We used a landing page that CareerBuilder built for us, and we also used platform Modern Hire. We were able to use a workflow with a link where candidates would apply [and go through] some of our prescreening questions, such as, where do you have an active license. Based on some of those prescreens, [candidates] would then move to being able to attend [virtual] events and we would schedule [interviews]. There was opportunity for us to really build something with what we already had. It was great.
Elizabeth Laurent (Moderator): How did you prepare the hiring leaders for the change in staffing?
Danielle Farabee: I think we held kind of like a virtual interview refresh. I remember [leaders] were buried in meetings throughout the day, because they were deploying thousands of people to work at home during the pandemic. We met with them before each hiring event and made sure they had all the resumes bundled, we had all of their interview guides, and made sure they had all of the collateral they needed for the next day and had an opportunity to ask us questions. I think that was a huge opportunity for us to just make sure that we were mitigating any issues that could have occurred.
Elizabeth Laurent (Moderator): And final question – was the reduction in attrition attributed to making compensation more competitive or was it based on identifying a different type of candidate?
Danielle Farabee: Anytime we can make headway with compensation, it's good, right. And even though these folks are sales, you have to always think about how money is not always the only motivating factor. We were offering an opportunity to work remote, and this was something that not a lot of people had gone to. But we were out there, checking as we were doing this, and we really were seeing that they were still at the time being required to go into the office. I think the money was definitely an incentive. We didn't even know at the time, with the [new] compensation range, that we were going to have to go to a licensed only new hire population.
We were able to offer something that was very much desired and not being offered by others, and, with Humana. This was a brand-new offering with a well-known company with great benefit options.
Elizabeth Laurent (Moderator): Thank you, Danielle and Michael, for this. It's time to wrap up. Unfortunately, the coffee break is over, but I really want to thank you all for joining. If you wish to connect with Danielle, Michael or myself, please do connect with us via LinkedIn. Thanks again everybody.
