Nathan clearly is a strong performer. He drives the right activities which results in developing a strong pipeline and hiring results. He understands the business proposition and can definitely promote why our company is the place to work and build a career a career. In addition, he’s been involved with some visible training opportunities to help build stronger recruiting efforts with our hiring managers.

Nathan has amazing Customer Satisfaction surveys returned, and he has exceeded the benchmark.

Nathan is involved in a TON of sourcing activites and is viewed as someone who has strong expertise and business knowledge. Nathan continues to champion change and embraces standard recruiting processes. He support team collaboration with division recruiting partners; build strong proactive recruiting support for business; spends time getting to know his peers and continues to share knowledge with others as the recently hired recruiters get up to speed on our process/culture.

Nathan Has managed strong requisition levels while at the same time delivering strong results and high touch service to hiring managers.

Nathan has contributed to hiring 117 racially/ethnically diverse team member (55% of total hires). Retail sales leaders are focused on improving overall diverse representation and ensuring diversity (both race and gender) in candidate pools for leadership positions. Nathan has done a great job ensuring diversity in applicant pools which has translated into strong diversity results for the division. In addition, Nathan was a strong partner for the retail sales diverse internship program. This program has been incredibly important to Retail’s overall diversity efforts and our recruiters have played an instrumental role in making this program a success. As self-reported, Nathan has made personal investments into building diversity through involvement in diverse organizations and networking groups.

Nathan has established some strong partnerships across the recruiting team. He is always willing to volunteer for different initiatives/activites and is viewed as someone with great experience and a strong business sense. He said his goal is to “put people to work” and he certainly does that very well.

As previously mentioned, Nathan has strong business acumen. Nathan keeps current on social media strategies and market intelligence to create value for the business. Nathan continues to look for ways to share market information with his peers and hiring managers. In addition, Nathan Shares recruiting data with hiring managers, and team members.
In conclusion Nathan is a talented team member who is proud of his work, and the company he works for. He is most deserving of recognition, and should be honored for the work he does, the skills he brings to the table, and the selfless sharing of knowledge.

What is My Interview Concierge?
It’s a mobile web app that organizes your candidate’s most important interview details into one master view.

What Problem Does it Solve?

The ever changing details of an interview including, dates, travel logistics, interview panel, and supporting documents can often leave the candidate with lots of important but unorganized interview communications, ultimately eroding the candidate experience before the interview even starts. Come learn how Craig and his mobile recruiting technology partner turned those unorganized and noisy interview communications into order and created a better candidate experience? It’s like Tripit for interviewing.

The Benefits:
• Organize Interview details into one master interview itinerary even if it changes multiple times
• Automatically load the most critical information and supporting documents in your master itinerary
• Receive notifications for any changes that are made to your schedule, the people your meeting with
• Personal Pin # in order to discreetly access interview details directly from your smart phone or tablet
• Responsive web app works on (IOS, ANDROID, BLACKBERRY, Windows pending)
• Great CX!

Why Did We Create Interview Concierge?
Simply put, we just got tired of observing and being a part of BAD CX!
We are recruiting professionals who have witnessed and been part of one too many unorganized and outright bad candidate experiences. We know firsthand the painful result of a candidate decline, all due to the candidate experience, not to mention the unfavorable comments they share with their professional network and ultimately end up on Glassdoor.

In 3 short years the recruiting team at Stillwater Mining Company has gone from CRO (Central Recruiting Office) to PRO (Placement and Retention Opportunities), advertising in newspapers and collecting paper applications to utilizing job boards, social recruiting and a completely automated application process. While for many companies this might not seem like much of an accomplishment, you have to take into consideration our industry. The mining industry has a history of attracting “old timers” and being slow to change.

How do you go from CRO to PRO? This was a personal “pet project”. When I started, I was meeting with an HR manager and he was explaining a process and made a comment about a form that went to “CRO” for approval. I asked who was “crow” and he said “you”. I tried to contain my look of horror, I had only just started and someone was referring to me as a “crow”. Picture the big black vulture, eating road kill off the street, this is what was running through my head. He explained that “CRO” was Central Recruiting Office. Immediately, that went on the list as something we needed to change.

While acronyms may seem insignificant, it is amazing how many people inside your organization refer to them while talking to folks outside your organization, i.e. potential candidates. Candidates should not be told they had to go through CRO to get hired. I asked the recruiting team (we are a team of 3) to think about an acronym that would be professional, and this just proves the point that you can’t always see what is right under your nose…we brainstormed and came up with PRO (short for professional, but it took a 30 minute brainstorming to come up with it). We recognized that job placement is just one piece of our job, retention being even more important and we always want to talk about “opportunities” vs “jobs”….so we are Placement and Retention Opportunities (PRO).

This led us down the path of our overall look and messaging. We ran newspaper ads in different mining community newspapers, no pictures, just the same old blah, blah, blah that our competitors were running. If anyone has visited Montana, you recognize what we have going for us. We live in an absolutely breathtaking place. We needed to get this message to potential candidates. We started by including a picture with our newspaper ads, we progressed to backlit displays in airports (Alaska and Nevada), banner stands, table cloths (recruiting events), our website, and candidate and employee communication. All have the same look which represents what a great place we live and work.

We were told that our candidates are not technically savvy, if we didn’t run ads in newspapers, no one would ever find us. If candidates did somehow learn about opportunities they would never be able to use a computer to apply. Within a year we had completely moved from paper applications to an on-line applicant tracking system, though the system was a bit archaic we still had a feeling of accomplishment. We were no longer manually typing in candidate information from paper applications that were almost impossible to read. It is amazing what candidates will do when there is great job opportunity involved!

When it came to figuring out how to get away from the newspaper print ads, there were multiple conversations with people from different departments. The common theme was “miners are in high demand and can go anywhere without going through an interview or filling out an application”. So where are all these “high demand miners”? Typically in Alaska, Nevada and Idaho. Guess what the Alaska miners work a crazy schedule, don’t typically live in Alaska and fly in and out. Well, if they are flying in and out, why not put a sign by the gate where they are dealing with flight delays, trying to get home. Show them how nice it would be to live and work in the same community.
What else do these “hard to find miners” do? Well, in their spare time they enjoy hunting and fishing and the occasional night out. The airport signage highlighted our rivers and wildlife. How about we take those newspaper ads and put them on a coaster (that cardboard thing that goes underneath your drink) and then order enough of them to take a road trip and drop them in bars in mining towns? We received lots of interesting feedback on this technique.

The team recognized there were additional opportunities for increased efficiencies. It was great that information was coming directly from our candidates into our ATS, but from there we were back to a manual process. All of the new hire information was being manually entered into our HRIS, wouldn’t it be great if we could integrate our ATS and HRIS? What, this isn’t new technology? It was for us and we are still going through the growing pains, but we have updated our ATS and there is much less data entry.

Another challenge was ensuring we were getting the right people. This is similar in all industries. We had to take a look at what we really wanted and what we were getting. Was it really important to get experienced miners, regardless of quality or could we train the skills. After many conversations we recognized the need for a balance between experience (quality had to be there) and trainees. After attending Recruiting Trends last year, we changed the interview process to “Hiring for Attitude”. Our interviews have gone from asking technical questions and trying to dig out nuggets of behavioral responses, to asking behavioral questions and being able to identify if the technical aptitude is there and more importantly an attitude that fits our culture of safety.

Onboarding is a necessity, we have to get the paperwork so the employee gets paid and receives their benefits. While many companies have gone to an automated process for this, we are gradually moving in a direction that balances the paperwork with a great introduction to our company and industry. What was once a day of nothing but forms, sign here, sign here has grown into a training on our safety culture, the history and future of our organization, education on our benefit programs (why they are important and who needs what) and policies, along with some fun getting to know each other.

The sustainability of an organization is largely dependent on its ability to attract future talent. We have created a structured Internship Program to ensure a strong candidate pool for our technical roles going forward. The recruiting team partners with several departments and attends college career fairs.

None of this would have been possible without a team of people with a vision. It starts with a VP of HR that is willing to take risks and supported making changes. Ideas are encouraged, speaking up when you disagree creates great conversation! Coming into an industry that is completely foreign, having a team of strong managers that have a goal to attract and retain the best talent is critical. Stillwater Mining has this group of people and took the time to educate a new recruiting group about the uniqueness of the mining industry. The people working on the recruiting team share a common commitment to providing the highest level of customer service to our hiring managers while ensuring a great candidate experience.