Resources

Human Resources

3 min read

How to Use Talent Assessment Tools

In the fierce competition for talent today, companies are turning to talent assessment tools to give them a leg up in hiring and promoting workers who not only have the skills for the job, but who will also be a good fit. Recruiters use talent assessment tools to test the extent of a job candidate’s know-how, learn their work style and see if their personality is a good match for the company culture. These tools help predict a candidate’s performance in the job, providing both recruiters and hiring managers greater insight into a candidate than a resume and interview alone can. Recruiting may be the best-known use of talent assessment tools, but it’s far from the only way these tools help companies made smarter workforce decisions. A report by the Society for Human resource Management says machine learning and artificial intelligence have broadened the reach of the newest talent assessment tools. Beside hiring, SHRM says these tools today are used to “evaluate current employees for different roles, identify employees with high leadership potential, compare talent within an organization against industry or geographical benchmarks, understand talent strengths and gaps, and develop employees’ long-term value.” The SHRM practice report details a dozen different types of assessments beginning with the more common and familiar job knowledge and personality tests to such specialized ones as writing and physical fitness, which, the report explains, “require candidates to perform actual work tasks to determine whether they can meet the physical requirements of a job.” 5 Types of Talent Assessments The most widely used assessments fall into four or five broad categories: skills specific to the job, personality and behavior, cognitive which covers critical thinking and communication, and integrity, which is just what it sounds like. There are talent assessment tools designed to test each of these areas. Many are intended for specific job types. A Google search for “talent assessment tools for customer service representative” turns up dozens, with several specific to individual industries. The hospitality industry alone has multiple generic talent assessment tools available, while most of the largest hotel groups have their own customized tools Before deciding what talent assessment tools to use SHRM says, “The first step in selecting an assessment tool is to understand what the target job or role requires the employee to do by conducting a job analysis that focuses on identifying critical work activities and/or competencies.” This may seem obvious, yet as the example illustrates there are any number of different types of customer service jobs. Generic talent assessment tools abound, however their predictive value for a specific job and industry will be limited. Knowing not just the broad job category, but what the specific role entails and how it’s to be performed is essential to selecting the right talent assessment tool. The next steps in choosing the right tool, as the SHRM report explains, is to determine the validity of the test and its potential for adversely and unfairly impacting protected groups such as those over 40, minorities and women. In addition, how will those being tested react? And, of course, what’s the cost? Talent Assessment Validity SHRM’s practice guide goes into detail about each of these decision points. Briefly, what you need to consider are: Validity: Does the test reliably predict performance? Criterion validity is the relationship between scores on the test and actual business outcomes. Content validity means that what the assessment tests for is directly relevant to the job or the desired behaviors. Adverse impact: Consider whether the test leads to a disproportionate hiring of a majority group versus the minority group. Says SHRM, “If an assessment produces an adverse impact, the only way to defend its use is by showing that it is a valid predictor of performance and that alternative measures are not feasible.” Candidate reaction: Especially in pre-hiring assessments, the test-taker reaction is critical. A negative experience can be expensive to the company, causing it not only to lose the job applicant, but others swayed by reviews posted online. Test-takers have a more positive reaction to talent assessment tests that measure work behavior via simulations and work samples versus abstract and hypothetical multiple-choice tests. Costs: Off-the-shelf talent assessment tools will cost less than those built specifically for a company or job. Technology has reduced the overall cost substantially. Most tests are talent online with scoring and ranking automated. There are many excellent, valid assessments available today for nearly ever industry and job. Whether customized or off-the-shelf, talent assessment tools can help recruiters and managers – and individual employees themselves — make better, more informed workforce and career decisions. ### Contribution by John Zappe ###

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Chris Russell

Recruiting Tactics

2 min read

Subject Lines Guaranteed to Work

As recruiters, we love a great subject line! We love them because we have this belief that the subject line of our email or another type of message will get a candidate to open and reply. And actually, that’s true! There’s a lot of marketing research around why someone opens a message. The chart below shows why an individual makes the decision to open a message: This data makes complete sense, right? If you know the person, you are much more likely to open a message, and after that, the next main reason is what is being told to you in the subject line. The subject line should tell the recipient exactly why they should open the message or quickly just delete and move on. Scientifically based on the data above, I think I’ve created the most responded to subject line of all time! But it only works for me, I’m doubtful it would work for you! What is it? “Sackett” Yes, my last name in the subject line is by far the best subject line for a response that I use! Why does it work? Well, if you know me, then the data gives me a 45% shot you might open it. Also, if you don’t know me, someone just sent you their last name, which makes you think like you probably know me, but you forgot! Either way, the response rate I get with this super simple subject line is over 80%! Does this work for straight recruiting? Yes, but not at the same level as I’m getting, but it is worth you testing it out. This simple subject line works because it’s probably the opposite of what most people send. We put so much thought and effort into the subject line that often they sound like a recruiter or marketing or sales or mostly just something too close to spam! What are my other favorite recruiting subject lines? “Go Green!” – Okay, I’m a Michigan State Spartan fan, so if someone sent me a message with “Go Green,” I would 100% open it. So, “Go Green” isn’t really your subject line. It would be something similar for whatever college or sports team your candidate supports. How do you know what team they support? You do a bit of recruiting due diligence and figure it out! “I’ve got an outstanding career opportunity for you!” – Just kidding, this subject line sucks! Never use this! “This job pays $87,000” – This one works because even if the person makes more than $87,000, our curiosity wants to see who is paying this salary and where it’s at because we might know someone who isn’t making that much, and we want to pass it on to them. Famous song lyrics, movie quotes, etc., that the candidate would most likely recognize. – Again, takes a bit of recon work, but let’s say your candidate is a Star Wars fan. Use the subject line, “Do or do not. There is no try!” “I was referred to you by “pick a name” – Okay, this isn’t my favorite of the favs, but it works! Again, a quick social search of a candidate and you can easily come up with some names of friends, family, co-workers to make this a bit more personal. But, only use first names. So, “I was referred to you by Tim” can be really effective if they have a friend or associate named “Tim.” Now, when the person asks, which “Tim” referred you, you just say, “Oh, Tim in my office, a fellow recruiter I work with, found your profile.” Personalization is the key to great subject line open rates! It takes a little more work, but great recruiters put in a little bit of extra work to get great candidates to respond!

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Tim Sackett

Recruiting

3 min read

Holiday Hiring Is Setting Records This Year

Holiday hiring will top 1 million this year, with Walmart and Amazon together accounting for more than a quarter of the total. The global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said retailers, grocers and logistic firms, including Fed Ex and UPS have announced holiday hiring plans of 939,300 workers. That count, which was as of mid-October, was already the largest number of workers to be announced in the 10 years the firm has tabulated holiday hiring plans. Since then, Big Lots said it would add 15,000 seasonal workers and several retailers increased their holiday hiring goals. Amazon, Walmart and Macy’s now are expected to hire 561,000 workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported hiring by the private sector in October surged to 604,000. Among the key sectors for holiday hiring, employers in retail and logistics brought on 141,300 new workers. Bars and restaurants, which have struggled for months to hire workers, added 119,000 workers, partially in anticipation of the seasonal surge in holiday parties and events. To lure workers companies are offering all sorts of incentives. To encourage workers at its distribution facility in Southern California, the discounters Dollar Tree and Family Dollar dangled a $1,000 bonus as well as flexible schedules, healthcare insurance and an extra $2 an hour for peak season work. Holiday Hiring Goals To meet its holiday hiring goal of 90,000 Kohl’s is offering bonuses of up to $400. Competitor Macy’s is paying a $500 bonus to employees who refer workers. Amazon’s holiday hiring bonuses range as high as $3,000 with hourly pay that averages over $20. As attractive as these offers are, the additional incentive is the permanent hiring of some of these seasonal workers. In announcing its holiday hiring plans in September Target said, “When the holidays are over, many of those team members will have the opportunity to stay onboard.” UPS pointed out in its holiday hiring announcement that it has a “track record of turning seasonal jobs into careers.” A third of its workforce began that way, according to the company. In years past the holiday hiring push would begin in August and September. This year, because of worker shortages stemming from the Covid shutdowns, hiring by some companies began as early as July. Incentives also are richer. Retailers like Target promised their existing workers greater flexibility in scheduling, more hours for those who what it, and premium pay. Attracting workers has never been harder, which is why so many companies are hoping to fill permanent positions from among the seasonal workers they hire. Money.com said of the 561,000 holiday positions Amazon, Walmart and Macy’s have, 37% of them are permanent. To meet holiday hiring goals, recruiters pull out all the stops. Besides the incentives and an early start, companies host multiple job fairs and post openings on every major job board and on those targeted to workers looking for temp and part-time jobs. Their ads prominently feature the signing bonuses, improved pay and other incentives. Social media ads extol these incentives and encourage sharing the job postings. Most of these high volume employers also turn to staffing companies to help recruit workers or to have them supply the workers directly. Weeks before launching full-scale recruiting campaigns, recruiters contact seasonal workers from years past hoping to rehire them and, as Macy’s does, asking current staff for referrals. With so many companies competing for workers, speed of hire is paramount. UPS said that of the 100,000 holiday hires many “will have an offer in hand within 30 minutes of applying.” All high volume employers have tools that make it possible to interview, assess and hire workers within hours or even minutes of receiving an application. Holiday Hiring Solutions Indeed.com, the largest and most heavily use job board in the world, has Indeed Hiring Platform, which allows recruiters to post a job, screen candidates, schedule and conduct online interviews, including by video, and make an offer in hours. Most other major job boards have some sort of similar high volume solution. Many of the biggest employers will use two or three of these sites. Smaller companies need to use some of these same tactics to meet their holiday hiring needs. Nationwide, the insurance company, suggests turning to staffing companies as a first choice. It will cost more to bring in seasonal help that way, but the workers will be vetted, are likely to have experience in the particular line of work and all the paperwork and onboarding will be handled by the staffing firm. Nationwide also suggests contacting local schools, “But don’t wait to recruit workers once (school) breaks hit and students leave town for vacation or are hired by other businesses prepping for a seasonal surge.” Some small businesses have had success asking their customers for referrals. As the biggest companies have demonstrated, holiday hiring requires much more than simply posting job openings and waiting for applications. Employers have to use all their tools and techniques to attract candidates and make hires. You can’t expect to compete for workers by doing what’s always worked in the past. This year, holiday hiring is tougher and so highly competitive that, like as many companies have found, it takes competitive pay, flexibility, cash bonuses, speed and incentives such as the possibility of permanent work, to make a hire. John Zappe Contributed

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Chris Russell

Human Resources

2 min read

The Importance of Employee Perks

Not that long ago employee perks were those extra benefits employers gave their workers. Retailers give workers a discount on store merchandise. Airlines grant free or deeply discounted airfare to their employees. In restaurants, the employee perks include free food and leftovers. Undoubtedly, in the past some job seekers were attracted to an industry or a company because of these types of employee perks. Rarely, though, were they a job’s selling point. Workers signed on because of the compensation, the type of work, and the medical, dental and retirement benefits. That started to change with the rise of the tech industry. Companies began providing free food, installed foosball and ping-pong tables and on-site workout rooms. As the competition for workers grew ever more intense, tech professionals came to expect these employee perks. Companies then began offering more meaningful and more popular perks such as paid time off and paid family leave, flexible schedules and even unlimited vacation. Today, companies that don’t offer at least some of these employee perks find themselves at a disadvantage in the war for talent. Yet companies are going beyond those employee perks to offer a broad and unexpected range of employee perks. Ben & Jerry’s (and many other companies) allow workers to bring their pet. Oracle provides on-site dry cleaning, auto detailing and oil changes. Abbot and Fidelity Investments and others provide help paying off student loans. Airbnb gives its workers $2,000 to stay at any one of its listings in the world. The five most popular employee perks, according to a survey by benefits provider Unum, are paid time off, flexible and remote work, paid family leave, fitness or wellness incentives and personal financial planning. Employers mostly agree. The Society for Human Resource Management found well over half the HR professionals in a recent survey saying family friendly benefits, wellness, flexible work and paid leave were extremely or very important to them and their workers. Insurance benefits such as medical, dental, vision and disability are so important and so much a part of a compensation package that few workers think of them as nice to have perks. A Fractly survey published in the Harvard Business Review, found that 88% of workers would give at least some consideration to accepting a lower paying offer if the medical benefits were better. These employee perks have become table stakes in the competition for workers, which may be why 90% of the employers in the SHRM survey consider health care benefits very or extremely important. But as the SHRM and Unum surveys show, other employee perks are growing in importance. The Covid experience of working from home convinced many workers that’s a perk to be highly valued. The global business consultancy McKinsey found that before the Covid shutdown, 62% of employees preferred working on-site. When the firm conducted the survey again last December and January, only 37% wanted to return to an office; 63% preferred working in the office two or three days a week (a hybrid work model) or working remotely full-time. Forcing workers to return to working on-site full time will lead some employees to quit, McKinsey’s survey found. 12% said they would be “very likely” to find another job; 16% said they were “likely” to. Driven in part by the pandemic, which prompted so many workers to reassess what’s most important to them, and by the years’ long difficulty in hiring workers, the employee perks offered by employers continues to grow. Melanie Tinto, CHRO at the global financial technology company WEX told HRExecutive last spring that businesses are revaluating their employee perks to focus on those that support and enhance worker wellbeing. “The pandemic has shown me that flexibility is impacting every part of the way we work, and our benefits packages are going to need to be just as flexible going forward.” Written by John Zappe

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Chris Russell

Recruiting

2 min read

You only have one job as a Recruiter!

As recruiters, we really only have one job. That job is to get a candidate to tell us “Yes” or “No.” Yes, I’m interested, please tell me more, or No, I’m not interested in the job you have, but here’s what I would be interested in if you ever have it available. When you break recruiting down to this simple premise, it doesn’t really seem that hard. The problem most recruiters run into is that they believe a non-answer is “No.” But it’s not. A non-answer is nothing. It’s neither yes nor no. It’s you better keep trying until I give you a real answer! The best recruiters I’ve ever worked with keenly understood this concept. The average recruiter gives up trying to contact a candidate after two tries. I sent Candidate A a text message and an email, and she didn’t reply, so that must mean they are not interested! What we’ve found is that top recruiters will go as many as 9 attempts to contact candidates they truly want to get to Yes or No. NINE! At nine attempts, the Yes or No rate jumps to around 90%. Now, imagine you have a list of 25 potential candidates. You force rank them for most desirable to least desirable. You do your “average” outreach of two attempts, and you get 3 out of the 25 to reply to you. The ranking of the three that replied is numbers 7, 15, and 24. You screen and send them on to your hiring manager with the belief, “we only hire the best talent!” Actually, you are trying to hire 7, 15, and 24 because you gave up on numbers 1-6, who were your best possible candidates, but they didn’t respond! The best recruiters in the world won’t stop until they’ve gotten around 70% of their top candidates to tell them they are either interested or not interested. Why, as recruiters, do we stop trying to contact candidates? We stop because we believe it’s rude. It’s rude to keep trying to contact someone who “clearly” isn’t interested if they didn’t reply back after two messages. This obviously is wrong, but it’s a giant psychological barrier for average and below-average recruiters. Now, before my European recruiting friends lose their minds, there are also cultural barriers as well. In Europe, especially, almost no recruiters go past one or two outreaches to candidates, as culturally the norm is we’ll try you once, and if you don’t respond, you must not be interested. By the way, I tease my European recruiting friends about this as well because I think this concept is very dated. My experience has been that for every candidate that we contact up to nine times who thinks we are stalking them, and there is another candidate who thanks us profusely for continuing our efforts. Out of one hundred candidates, the vast majority don’t have any issues and will eventually tell us, Yes, or No, a couple will tell us to stop stalking them, and a couple will thank us and apologize for not getting back sooner. This really all comes down to our belief within our recruiting departments do we really hire the best talent, or do we just hire the talent that responds to us. If you hire the best, you must truly go after the best and actually see if they are interested or not. If you just take only those who respond on your first or second outreach, you really aren’t hiring the best talent.

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Tim Sackett

Recruiting

3 min read

10 Recruiting Metrics to Watch

Recruiting metrics are a vital measurement of the effectiveness of a talent acquisition program. They speak to the performance of individual recruiters as well as that of the entire recruiting group. They guide the development of recruiting strategies and help talent acquisition professionals learn where they get the best results from their marketing spend. While large staffing teams track dozens of metrics, no recruiting group, no matter how small, can afford not to measure the most basic of them. Time to fill, cost of hire, source of hire, candidate diversity, and applicants per opening / per hire are among the most essential metrics and the ones most commonly used by recruiting teams. Ask any group of recruiters and you’ll quickly get a dozen more metrics, all of them valid, useful and critical. Several years ago, Jibe, a recruiting technology company since acquired by iCIMS, surveyed recruiters about the metrics they most used. In addition to the ones we mentioned, the others that made the top 10 list were: candidate experience, retention, offer acceptance rate, quality of hire and vacancies vs. positions filled. As much as these metrics might seem like a rock-solid, objective measurement, the reality is that they are each subject to some interpretation. At many companies, the cost of hire metric is what is spent advertising the position and any travel expenses as well as background checks and other direct costs. The more sophisticated measurements include recruiter salary and office overhead, the loss of productivity attributable to the vacant position and other indirect expenses. A decade ago, the Society for Human Resource Management developed a set of specifications for calculating cost per hire so thorough it runs three dozen pages and is an ANSI standard. How ever your team calculates the various metrics, as long as you do it consistently, they’re as essential to the recruiting function as financial reports are to investors. Common Recruiting Metrics Here’s a brief look at the other nine most commonly tracked metrics and the percentage of recruiters using each, according to the Jibe survey: Source of hire (57%) – Knowing where your hires are coming helps you make better decisions on where to spend your recruiting budget. Time to hire (50%) – Not only does this provide insight to the overall efficiency of the hiring process, it lets you know, which positions take longer so you know where to place an emphasis in building our talent pipeline. Applicants per opening / hire (42%) – These two measures work with the source of hire metric to evaluate the effectiveness of individual job postings and sites and recruitment marketing campaigns. Candidate experience (41%) – More than ever, the impression applicants have of your recruiting process – from the job posting through the interview process – is essential. A bad experience can damage the company’s brand and negatively impact the quality of candidates who apply. Measuring this is done by surveying candidates. Retention (38%) – This may not be an obvious performance indicator for the recruiting group, but it offers insights into the quality of the selection process, the accuracy of the job description and visibility into other aspects of hiring. Most often retention is measure for the first several months and up to a year after hire. Offer acceptance per hire (37%) – When the percent of candidates accepting an offer is low or is declining, it’s a signal that there may be a problem with the comp package. When examined in conjunction with the time to fill, it may show that the candidates you want to hire are accepting other offers because the hiring decision is taking too long. Quality of hire (36%) – LinkedIn last year found this the most important metric., used by 48%. The reason should be obvious: the best and most talented hires have a disproportionate positive impact on productivity. It’s also the most difficult to measure, taking months or even longer before it’s clear how good a new hire actually is. However, it’s worth making the effort, because great hires make hiring managers happy and demonstrate the value of your recruiting process. Vacancies vs. positions filled (36%) – This is a measure of the productivity of the talent acquisition team. The sooner positions are filled, the lower the percentage. Fewer vacancies mean lower costs for the company and better productivity overall. Diversity (25%) – The LinkedIn survey found 34% of recruiting professionals today track the diversity of candidates and hires and 56% declare the metric will very useful in the coming years. In addition to the strong social value of a diverse workforce, studies show the positive impact diverse teams have on innovation and revenue. This list is just a sample of the wide variety of metrics recruiting teams used to measure their performance. If the Jibe survey were to be conducted today, there’s no doubt many of these measures would still make the top 10. As the LinkedIn survey demonstrated, the percentages of talent acquisition teams that monitor them would change. LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting report says the two most significant metrics in today’s world are quality of hire and sourcing channel effectiveness, a measure like source of hire. Knowing where the top talent was sourced, doesn’t just improve the recruiting process, as LinkedIn notes, “It speaks to the long-term business impact of new employees — and your recruiters.” ### John Zappe, Reporting ###

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Chris Russell

Recruiting

3 min read

Dealing with Today's Recruitment Challenges

What are employers thinking when it comes to the recruitment challenges of today’s crazy job market? A lot of companies are scrambling to fill positions and so they have started to resort to desperate measures, now offering free tuition (Wal-Mart, Target etc) to big signing bonuses of $1k-$2k-$3k or more. Eric Smith, CEO of applicant tracking system TalentCare told me this on my podcast recently. “We tell people today that you need three things with one thing underlying in order to compete. One is you have to know what’s competitive in terms of compensation that changes quickly. Sometimes it’s going up, but pretty soon when things level off and go back down. So if you don’t have a mechanism to understand what local compensation for this role, that location is, you need to get one fast. The second thing that we say is that you really need to invest in your brand in today’s markets. Retention comes with having a clear story, but having that brand laid out is critical to attracting applicants.” Boost Your Recruiting Speed He also said employers need to look at the underlying data. “It gives you the ability to make recruiting process much, much better, right? So people don’t always think of recruiting as a process, but data can inform how you can make that better. So, as an example, I ask people all the time, do you have a report that tells you every time a new applicant comes in, it looks like good applicant qualified. meets all the criteria. Do you have a report that tells you whether your hiring manager or recruiter reached out to that person within two hours by texting you guys, if you don’t have that report, then you can’t possibly know if you’re meeting best practice, that’s best practice in today’s market. So recruiting processes is something that people overlook.” T-mobiles Director of Talent Acquisition Sheri Ratliff told me over Zoom that they are trying new channels. “We’re getting very creative with the marketing, with the places we are finding talent. That includes looking at new talent communities specific to underrepresented talent with just sites and marketplaces that we haven’t gone before… even apprenticeships. Those are things that we probably wouldn’t have considered or not moved as quickly on, but we are now because we know there’s talent that does want to work. We just need to find them.” Get Creative with Recruitment Marketing Gina Alioto from Symphony Talent points to recruitment marketing. She told me on my podcast that “we know that technology, particularly recruitment marketing platforms and CRM is a significant investment for organizations, and it’s not only the cost of the platform itself, but also all of the time and resources that it takes to implement. And then on top of that, if it’s not the right system or not implemented the right way, the costs of having to go back and change all of that plus missed opportunities, all the while are huge.” “No matter where you are in your journey, we’re all experiencing change to some degree. And we also know that top of mind for all of your listeners right now probably is that there are over 10 million jobs open, which means there are about 1 million more jobs open than active job seekers. So for everyone it’s very challenging, more than ever to find, attract and retain talent right now. And technology is going to help you do that better. In fact, 74% of organizations, the spend for HR tech increasing, but technology can also significantly complicate already complex situations. And adoption seems to be a barrier to achieving all that the technology has to offer. Um, in fact, 82% of organizations are struggling with adoption challenges”, Alioto added. Tough Challenges Ahead By most estimates the labor shortage isn’t likely to abate anytime soon. In iHire’s latest talent retention report we see a peek at why; 1.) Voluntary employee turnover is up 6.5% year over year. 31.4% of employees left a job voluntarily in the past year, compared to 24.9% who said the same in iHire’s 2020 Talent Retention Report. While 6.5% is not a staggering jump, resignations are occurring at a greater rate than terminations or layoffs – 20.2% of survey participants left a job involuntarily in the past year. 2.) Workers are changing careers. 21.1% of respondents said they’ve made a major career change in the past year (i.e., they left a job to pursue a completely different industry or career path versus simply changing their place of employment). This trend is likely propelled by employees in industries most impacted by COVID-19 who are reevaluating their career goals and eyeing sectors promising greater stability. 3.) Salary is the top motivator for leaving (and staying). 70.9% of survey participants said they would leave a job due to unsatisfactory pay, while 77.9% said a pay raise would convince them to stay with their employer if they received a better job offer. For this report’s third consecutive year, salary is the No. 1 factor in leaving or staying at a job. Suffice to say these are challenging times to be a recruitment marketer. Employers must remain vigilant to the latest trends, speed their hiring funnels and cultivate every channel they can find for talent.

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Chris Russell

Recruiting

2 min read

So You Want to Be a Recruitment Coordinator

In the world of talent acquisition, recruiters are the ones getting all the attention, but the heart of a busy department are the recruitment coordinators. Recruitment coordinators, sometimes called staffing coordinators, are the ones keeping the proverbial trains running on time. They juggle so many tasks that the top requirements you see on a recruitment coordinator job description are organizational skills and good time management. Not far behind are excellent communication skills, multitasking and teamwork. Not that long ago, most of what a recruitment coordinator did was clerical and administrative. They screened job applicants, scheduled candidate interviews and arranged their travel, and tracked open job requisitions. As newer, AI-enabled applicant tracking systems and candidate relationship management tools took on some of the routine clerical tasks, especially such time-consuming ones as scheduling, screening and candidate tracking, the job of a recruitment coordinator broadened. While today’s recruitment coordinators still have responsibility to ensure administrative functions are being handled, the role is likely now incorporate planning of recruitment strategies and campaigns. Recruitment Coordinator Tasks At companies hiring dozens or more workers a month, a recruitment coordinator may work with HR business partners and hiring managers directly to anticipate openings and update job descriptions to stay ahead of developing skills and talent needs. They may be charged with analyzing recruitment data to track the department’s progress toward meeting its goals. As part of that responsibility, a recruitment coordinator may be expected to identify and report on the key performance indicators (KPIs). Ensuring government required reports, such as the annual EEO-1 survey to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and compliance with company and government hiring laws and policies may be delegated to a recruitment coordinator. Historically, the job of recruitment coordinator was a stepping-stone to an HR generalist or recruiting job. It still is. Recruitment coordinators routinely are called upon to help source and recruit candidates, especially passive candidates and assist in building talent pipelines. Frequently, they manage those pipelines, staying in touch with the candidates there by newsletter and email. Particularly at smaller companies, a recruitment coordinator may find themself making job offers, handling the onboarding paperwork of new hires and sometimes even conducting new employee orientation. It’s not unusual for a recruitment coordinator to also be an event organizer. For a company large enough to hold its own job fairs, it’s often recruitment coordinators who plan, arrange and oversee the event. They are as likely to do the recruiting at job fairs and on campus as schedule them. Because of the breadth of responsibilities, most recruitment coordinators have at least an undergraduate degree. According to the job board Zippia, 73% of recruiting coordinators have a bachelor’s degree; 10% have a masters. ZipRecruiter says a degree in HR, psychology, business administration or related field is preferred. Recruitment Coordinator Salaries The salary range for the job is broad. Payscale puts the median at $50,246 with a high of about $67,000. At the lower end, around $37,000, the job is largely, but not exclusively, clerical. So far in this article we’ve discussed corporate recruitment coordinators. That’s where most of the jobs are. However, a few sports teams and many college athletic departments have recruitment coordinators. A college athletic recruitment coordinator shares many of the same responsibilities as a coordinator in a corporate job. But instead of recruiting employees, the job involves working with college athletic prospects, helping to identify promising young players, arranging their campus visits – and their parents’ visits – monitoring recruitment practices to comply with the school’s policies and NCAA rules and budgeting. SportsCareerFinder says a college athletic recruitment coordinator is “among the hardest working members of the staff and commits very long hours to the job. Responsibilities range from on field coaching to evaluation of talent.” It can also be particularly lucrative. At the largest schools with top teams, the job is exclusively about recruiting and carries a six-figure salary. Written by John Zappe

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Chris Russell

Recruitment Marketing

2 min read

Job Aggregators - The Big List

Back in 2004 Indeed and SimplyHired launched our industry’s first job aggregators. Since that time, numerous players have emerged to take advantage of this trend. The end result is that jobs are now everywhere. Heck even Google got into the market back in 2017 with the Google for Jobs service. And Indeed eventually bought SimplyHired to remove them as a competitive threat. In between, there are seemingly dozens of so called job aggregators that want to help employers find talent. We’ll cover some of the biggest in this blog but let’s take a look at the difference between job boards and aggregators. Job Aggregators vs Job Boards Traditional job boards are marketplaces that simply allow employers to post jobs related to a certain niche: MarketingJobs.com, SupplyChainCareers.com etc. A job aggregator has always been a search engine first by indexing all the jobs from their client base and sometimes other job boards. Many aggregators now allow employers to post individual jobs in an appeal to small business owners. Job boards also now can scrape your jobs and are often backfilled with listings from players like Ziprecruiter. So the two channels have certainly merged features and functionality over the years. So should you use job aggregators. The answer is usually yes but here’s some reasons why; Comprehensive Search: Job aggregators server ever part of the job market not just a niche like a typical job board. They are a huge database of jobs. More Efficient: Job seekers love aggregators since it makes their search more efficient vs having to go to multiple sites. More Jobs: Because aggregators list so many jobs candidates can discover jobs they normally may have missed. It levels the playing field for small businesses. See Who’s Hiring: Aggregators are also a great research tool for staffing firms to see’s who’s hiring. Indeed even has a trend section to see which job keywords are trending. Top Job Aggregators Here is a list of the largest and most popular job aggregators: Indeed is the largest job aggregators in the world (by a large margin). Ziprecruiter is a ubiquitous player in the space that does a ton of advertising in order to generate traffic. Juju.com has comprehensive search results for millions of jobs found on thousands employer career portals, recruiter websites, job boards, and other employment sites all over the Internet. CareerJet.com is also similar to Indeed, but is available in more countries and in more languages than SimplyHIred. LinkedIn Jobs is more than a career social media site, it also aggregates job postings. GetWork (formerly Linkup) is an aggregator that pulls jobs exclusively from company websites. Talent.com is a global job aggregator with sites in 60+ countries around the world. Upward.net will post your jobs to 100+ other job sites. Jooble is an international job search website used daily by millions of people in 71 countries. Adzuna is another global player in the aggregator world. Also big in the UK. Maximizing Your Job Aggregators There are certain things you can do to maximize your use of these sites. Keep your job titles simple and use the right keywords. List your keywords multiple times throughout the description. Ensure your ATS has the proper XML feed so aggregators can scrape your data properly. Get listed on Google for Jobs (its free)

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Chris Russell

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