In the not too distant past, tennis great Andre Agassi starred in a series of television commercials in which he proclaimed, “Attitude is everything!” That tagline referred to the young, long-haired tennis star’s renegade outlook, one which went so far as to prevent him from competing at Wimbledon for several years because he refused to give up his bold-colored tennis clothes for the all-white clothes required of the prestigious tournament’s competitors.

Eventually, Agassi relented – and won Wimbledon, to boot. But that doesn’t mean his mantra of “Attitude is Everything” was wrong. Time and again, studies have shown that attitude means a lot. When it comes to hiring new employees, attitude could be even more important than skills and experience, as attitude has now been recognized as the key driver of new hire success.

According to a Leadership IQ study of 20,000 new hires over a three-year period, 46 percent failed within their first 18 months. Eighty-nine percent of the time, they failed due to attitudinal reasons such as lack of coachability, low levels of emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament. Lack of skill was the cause of the failure just 11 percent of the time. These findings have led a growing number of savvy leaders to shift their focus from hiring for skills to hiring for attitude.

Let us be clear: Hiring for attitude does not mean you can forego skills, experience, and requisite training. When it comes to deciding between two (or more) otherwise equal candidates, however, you might want to err on the side of attitude.

How exactly does one “hire for attitude,” you ask? Begin by identifying the specific attitudes that lead to success in your unique corporate culture and then look for those attitudes among candidates.

Take Southwest Airlines, for example. Often cited as a Great Place to Work, Southwest is known for creating a fun environment and encouraging its people to be a bit outrageous. One famous story involves a hiring manager who asked a group of potential new Southwest pilots to don a pair of Bermuda shorts for the interview. Many of the pilots found the suggestion preposterous and refused to put on the shorts, which were actually part of the airline’s summer uniform. Those pilots immediately took themselves out of the running, as the hiring manager concluded they may be great pilots, but would never fit into the airline’s fun-loving culture.

Technical skills can be acquired through training and confirmed through testing, but attitude is either there to begin with or it isn’t. Consider the words of former Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher: “We can change skill levels through training, but we can’t change attitude.”

Getting the right person for the job starts with writing an effective job description. These days, that entails much more than getting all the facts right. It means writing a job description that stands out amongst all the rest. Particularly when it comes to tech-savvy Generation Y (aka the Millennials), job descriptions must be ultra-appealing. They have to speak to the individual and give them a reason to apply for a job with your company.

After all, this is the “everybody gets a trophy generation.” Some generational experts have branded them the most spoiled generation in history. They are used to being given what they want. Now, it’s your job to make them want a job with your company – and to want it so badly they will actually go out of their way to pursue it.

Millennials want to feel like they are part of something important right out of the gate. The concept of “paying your dues” couldn’t be more foreign to them. So make sure to describe why the position matters to the company and where it stands in the grand scheme of things. Be clear about the importance of the role this individual will play once they are hired. And don’t forget to include how much they will be interacting with decision-makers.

Members of Generation Y are expected to job-hop more than their predecessors. Paradoxically, however, they are incredibly brand loyalty. Start building their loyalty to your brand right off the bat. Use your job description to explain why they should want to work for you. Woo them and seek to make them fall head over heels in love with your company. Avoid jargons and clichés and get to the point when describing your ideal candidate.

There’s no doubt that salary and benefits are important to a Millennial. After all, surveys have shown they expect something in the neighborhood of $75,000 starting pay. But they are also savvy enough to recognize that a job can benefit them in other ways, too. So be sure to describe the skills they will gain, the professional connections they will make, and the opportunities they will have to grow and advance within the company. Be sure to mention the other fringe benefits, like gym memberships and flexible work hours, too.

Finally, take the opportunity to tell your company story and explain your vision for the person who gets the job. Make sure you do it quickly, however. Generation Y has no patience for rambling, off-the-shelf, stodgy old mission statements. They want something short, to-the-point, and catchy. Think of it this way: This is the generation that grew up having conversations via text message. Short-hand and slogans are their language.

Looking to hire a “star” employee? Of course, you are! Deep down, that’s every employer’s dream for star employees tend to outperform everyone around them. So even if you have to pay them more, you still end up getting so much work and ingenuity out of them, it turns out to be a wise investment in the end. 

The problem lies in attracting star employees when you don’t necessarily have a dream job to offer them. After all, star employees are in demand and can basically write their own ticket. They don’t have to take just any old job offer. They can pick and choose and wait for the right opportunity to show up on their door step.

The secret lies in hiring those people who don’t yet know they are stars. Sound difficult? It can be, but there are a few tips you can follow to help you determine who has what it takes to someday be the kind of employee you have to worry about your competitors poaching. 

1. Recruit Mediocrity – On the surface, that may sound counterintuitive, but experience has shown that mediocre students often have a sixth sense about what really matters in life. Sure, they may not have been motivated by the prospect of impressing their professors and racking up stellar grades, but when it comes to earning a decent salary, they are generally ready to kick it into high gear.
2. Seek the Well-Read – A well-developed interest in reading – anything, everything! – displays a natural curiosity and level of engagement. It doesn’t really matter if they read comic books, romance novels, or Guitar Player magazine, the important thing is that they read.
3. Test them Out – Before hiring someone, have them take the Myers-Briggs test. You will gain incredible insight into how they will perform on the job by finding out if they are an introvert or extrovert, etc. This can be particularly helpful if you are looking to hire a natural born leader.
4. Become Their Mentor – New to the workforce, college grads often feel lost because the real world is different from what they have envisioned. They need someone to guide them and help them feel their way through new territory. Show them from the beginning that you have a true interest in their career development and they just may blossom into a star, even if they are stuck in a decidedly non-dream job for the time beginning.
5. Pile on the Responsibilities – From their first day on the job, give your potential future superstar a massive amount of responsibility. See how they respond. If they dive in headfirst without asking questions or balking at the enormous amount of work before them, chances are they will fail. Once they have fallen on their face, do they look to try again? If so, you probably make a good choice. Most people who are destined for greatness consider their own failures a tremendous learning experience.

An unseasonably warm winter and a downright hot spring have many employers thinking about summer. For many organizations, summertime brings the specter of seasonal hiring. The good news is there are plenty of talented people out there just chomping at the bit for a summer job — if you know how – and where – to look.

Unfortunately, small companies often feel they are at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting summertime help, simply because they don’t have the same reach as a major employer. While it’s true that large companies have broader resources for casting a wide net, there’s no reason why small companies can’t have a successful seasonal recruitment effort, too.

Successful seasonal hiring requires a well-thought-out process, based upon the following key principles:

Begin Early: While it may be difficult to start thinking about summer when the snow is still falling, it’s best to start planning for seasonal hires as early as possible. Savvy companies begin the process in January, seeking to lock in the best people before someone else snatches them up. This strategy is particularly helpful when you are looking to hire high school or college students, as they feel a sense of security going into their spring semester knowing they have a summer job already lined up.

Be Choosey: Last year’s summer job market was an employer’s dream. High unemployment rates led many terrific employees to seek out seasonal jobs as a means of making ends meet. Employers were clearly in the driver’s seat, receiving countless applications for each open position. That gives them the opportunity to pick and choose to their liking, never having to settle for a substandard hire.

Extend Your Search: When looking for professional entry-level hires, it’s tempting to gear your recruitment efforts towards Harvard, Stanford, and other top-notch schools. It’s important to remember that smaller, lesser known schools also produce desirable candidates, so be sure to reach out to them as well.

Act Quickly: Once you’ve identified someone you wish to hire, make the offer immediately. Any worthwhile candidate is likely to be deluged with offers, so you must act quickly if you want them to commit to your company in advance.

Whatever you do, don’t wait until the last minute to start looking – or to make your hiring decisions. Even in today’s job market, that could be a fatal mistake, as you just may find yourself heading into the summer months without a sufficient staff to deliver warm weather success.

Much like the synopsis on a book’s dust jacket, a job description is intended to generate interest by providing a few critical insights into what is contained inside. Specifically, it provides clear and concise summary of the responsibilities and requirements of the job in question. Not only are job descriptions used to advertise for new employees, they are also a key component of the performance review process, as they allow the employer to compare the employee’s performance to the expectations which were set forth when they were hired.

Job descriptions typically consist of the following components: title, summary of the position, essential duties and responsibilities, qualifications, terms of employment, the title of the person to whom the employee will directly report, and any special considerations, such as working conditions or physical demands that may be out of the norm. The last piece of information is crucial in that it will be used to monitor compliance with the ADA.

It’s critical for an employer to write accurate and appropriate job descriptions. Here are some tips for ensuring that your job descriptions not only provide you with a pool of qualified candidates, but help build your company’s reputation. 

• Be Concise – The goal is to write a useable document, not the great American novel. Avoid the temptation to ramble on needlessly. Don’t make a seemingly endless list of responsibilities, for example. Limit yourself to a manageable number of duties, typically six or eight. You will find the description much more user-friendly if you keep it short and to the point.

• Be Specific – Don’t merely state that you need someone who is “computer literate.” Rather, state exactly what programs (Microsoft Word, Excel, QuickBooks, etc.) you need them to know. Likewise, if the person you are hiring will be responsible for administrative duties, list the specific duties you will need them to perform. Also be sure to state what level of proficiency you require. Use qualifiers like “basic,” “intermediate” and “advanced” to reflect exactly what you are seeking in a candidate or employee.

• Be Generic – Avoid gender-based language, even if your workforce is predominantly one sex or the other. After all, how would you feel if you were a male nursing professional reading a job description that consistently refers to “she” or “her duties?” Likewise, a female construction worker might be put off by a job description that is clearly geared toward men. Far better to take the modern –some might say politically correct – route and be gender neutral. After all, you want to attract the best candidate, regardless of gender.

When appropriately written, a job description can be a powerful tool as it relates to numerous aspects of the employment relationship. Take advantage of these tips to draft the kind of job description which will give your organization a competitive edge by attracting qualified candidates, conducting effective performance reviews, and boosting your company’s reputation.

Looking for a job? Then chances are you’ll come in contact with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Nearly all major corporations now use some form of ATS to help automate the recruiting process. Even small to medium companies have begun relying on ATS applications through Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings.

In today’s economy, employers can easily receive thousands of applicants for a single job opening. An ATS is a software application designed to handle job applications and manage resume data. Its primary function is to provide a central location and database for the company’s recruitment efforts, allowing human resources to track applicants from their initial contact all the way through the hiring process.

For the employer, an ATS makes it easier to monitor and coordinate job openings and manage the recruitment process. Jobs are posted online and then data is either collected internally from applications or extracted from applicants on job boards. Resumes and applications are stored inside the secure database, allowing for searching, matching, and routing of applicants. This allows for faster and more reliable hiring decisions.

Job seekers benefit from an ATS because it allows them to search open positions by location and entity and upload required materials. They can even check their status electronically. Applying for positions is even easier for internal applicants because the system automatically adds information the company already has on file. Once a positions has been filled, the system automatically removes the posting, eliminating endless guessing over whether a candidate is still in the running.

Here are a few tips for increasing your chances of getting a job by optimizing your resume for an ATS search:

• Be Simple — Steer clear of a highly formatted resume. Most ATS will scramble the tables, graphs, and graphics you worked so hard to compose. Instead, stick to a simple format. If you feel you simply must exhibit your creative flair, save a highly formatted resume as a .txt (ASCII) file.

• Be Concise – Avoid the temptation to add all kinds of extra headings. Most ATS will only recognize the most common headings: Work Experience or Professional Experience, Education, and Professional Summary. Other headings won’t be stored, so include certifications, community activities, publications, and the like under the Education heading.

 • Be Uncommon – Go beyond the common keywords for your position, level, function, or industry. Many ATS will peg uncommon, unique-to-the-job-posting words or phrases as keywords.

• Be Complete – Don’t rely on acronyms or abbreviations alone. If you mean to say “unique selling points,” don’t say USP. Use the full language. Also, don’t forget to mention where you heard about the job. An ATS will track sources. Some, such as employee referrals, are ranked higher than others.

Today’s labor pool is the most diverse in the history of the United States. More generations are in the workforce than ever before; women comprise roughly half of all workers; and most companies’ employees come from a plethora of ethnicities and national backgrounds.

However, there is one thing they pretty much all have in common: mobile devices. In the U.S. alone, 262 million people subscribe to wireless services. More than 138 million of them send and received text messages. If you think texting is just a “Gen Y thing,” think again. Fully 72 percent of wireless subscribers use text messaging, and 53 percent of texters are 35 and up. The impact of this trend on recruiting is clear. Potential employees are increasingly mobile. They are no longer just waiting for a phone call – or an email, for that matter. They are on the go – and savvy employers need to reach them wherever they are at any given moment.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of employers lack a basic understanding of how to take advantage of the mobile web when it comes to their talent sourcing strategy. According to a study by online recruiting research lab Potentialpark, a limited number of employers have implemented mobile recruiting strategies via apps and mobile websites. Only 29 percent of the top 10,000 websites have a mobile version and a paltry 7 percent of career sites are mobile-enabled. Just 3 percent have a mobile job app.

Compare those figures to these, also from Potentialpark:

* 57 percent of job seekers would like to be able to conduct their job search online

* 51 percent wish to receive job alerts about new positions via SMS/mobile email

* 39 percent want to be able to track their progress through the application/recruiting process via mobile

* 39 percent would like to see a mobile-friendly online calendar of recruiting/career events for target companies in their job search

Nearly 80 percent of job seekers now use mobile applications when searching for a job. With smartphone sales rapidly outpacing sales of regular cell phones, those numbers only stand to increase in the very near future. It’s no wonder mobile recruiting was one of the hottest subjects of 2011 – and promises to grow even stronger in 2012. Mobile phones are revolutionizing the way employers reach potential candidates.

A mobile-enabled site is not just your website adapted to be accessible on a mobile device, but a mobile-optimized version, made to automatically detect when someone is visiting the site through a mobile browser. Granted, mobile recruiting should never be looked upon as a replacement for standard talent sourcing strategies. However, for specific campaigns and targeted candidate segments, it is a powerful instant response tool.

Mobile recruiting can be a key component of a company’s talent sourcing strategy. Companies that ignore this powerful trend do so at their own peril.

Team interviews are becoming an increasingly common recruiting strategy. Recognizing that hiring should be a team sport, companies are incorporating a number of different stakeholders in the process. These extend beyond HR into the candidate’s potential new supervisor and teammates. Some organizations even invite an objective third-party, like a member of the Board of Directors, to participate, depending upon the level of the hire, of course.

The rationale behind this strategy is simple: The more eyes and ears, the more thorough picture of the candidate will emerge. Different people tend to notice different things, so bringing multiple people together to interview a promising candidate makes for a wise hiring decision. It can also help build consensus that the best person for the job was, in fact, the one brought onboard. And having future teammates help select their future co-worker builds commitment to helping the new hire succeed.

But having a diverse team present for the interview doesn’t do any good if no attempt is made to elicit their input afterwards. Therefore, it’s crucial to conduct a post-interview review to gather their insights and concerns before making any kind of hiring decision.

Here are a few tips for conducting an effective post-interview review:

1)      Take Notes – Prior to the review, ask each person who participated in the interview to make extensive notes on the candidate. Encourage them to note their experience, specific capabilities (technical or otherwise), past accomplishments, and anything in particular that struck them as impressive or concerning during the course of the interview. If the team is going to be reviewing more than one candidate, ask each stakeholder to rate them.

2)      Together Is Better — Bring all the constituents together in one room. Talking to each stakeholder separately is only somewhat effective. It’s far better to hold a free-flowing conversation. What one person shares may jog another’s memory, leading to a more thorough review of the candidate.

3)      Sharing Time — Begin by going around the table, allowing each person to share their impressions of the candidate. Ask specific questions like: What impressed you? Which of the candidate’s answers did you find unsatisfactory or incomplete? What lingering questions did you have following the interview?

4)      Foster Honesty and Openness – You don’t want anyone to hold back, so have the senior-most participants wait until the end to share their impressions. Otherwise, junior members of the team may feel pressured to fall in line with what the bosses think.

5)      Narrow It Down – The goal of the post-interview review should be to whittle down the candidate pool. If this was the first round of interviews, you should look to create a short list of those you have selected to bring back for a second interview. Aim to exclude those who clearly don’t qualify for the job or who were simply so unimpressive in the first interview that you can’t imagine ever hiring them. You may wish to shake up the hiring team for the second round of interviews, incorporating other stakeholders to ensure an even more thorough review of the candidates.

Not that many years ago, a business could post a “Help Wanted” sign in the window and hire someone on the spot if they had the desired qualifications. Sadly, those days are ancient history. In this era of identity theft, data breaches, embezzlement, and workplace violence, it’s become absolutely essential to perform thorough background checks on any potential new employees. Insurance providers frequently offer a discount to companies who conduct background checks as a routine part of the hiring process.

In their most basic sense, pre-screening or “background checks” serve to verify the identity and background of a potential employee. They include a host of information, including criminal records, academic records, credit records, driving records, and workers’ compensation history. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 96 percent of companies now conduct background checks on new hires, up from 66 percent in 1996. There are lots of good reasons for that increase. In today’s economy, companies can’t afford to make a bad hire. Recruiting and training a new employee is an expensive proposition and one which shouldn’t be undertaken on a whim.

However, background checks do far more than cut down on bad hiring decisions, they also protect your company and minimize the risk of lawsuits. They are of particular importance when it comes to those employees who come into direct contact with customers, especially in sensitive positions like daycare or healthcare workers. An employer may be held liable if such an employee does harm to a customer. Thus, it’s even more critical that a thorough background check be undertaken to uncover if a potential new employee has a history of wrongdoing.

With so much on the line, it’s crucial to select a trustworthy background screening company, as that will ensure that you are receiving accurate, complete information. A professional background screening company will also help you navigate legal requirements, including federal and state regulations such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Working with a trusted partner may also give you limited legal immunity if you make a hiring decision based on what turns out to be inaccurate information. Thus, it’s crucial to do proper due diligence upfront. Ask trusted friends and colleagues whose services they have employed – and request to speak with past customers of any potential vendors. Do a quick Internet search to learn what others are saying about any companies you have in your radar.

However, you should resist the temptation to simply “Google” a potential employee and trust that you’ve learned everything about them – or that everything you’ve found is accurate. It’s all too easy to enter false information about yourself – or others. Also, be aware that “instant” public record searches available throughout the Internet by dozens of different vendors are not appropriate sources of information for employee background checks. Such databases have not been fact-checked or updated and are notoriously unreliable.

Therefore, it can’t be stressed enough that Internet searches are not trustworthy and cannot replace a formal, professional pre-employment background check. That said, a quick web search can supplement a formal background check, as a review of an individual’s social networking profiles or blog posts may provide valuable insight into what kind of person they are. You just may discover they are exactly what your business needs.