Resources
Recruiting Tactics
3 min read
Resume Screening Checklist
Screening resumes, especially during a time of higher unemployment and an overabundance of candidates, is a challenging part of the talent acquisition process. Not only is resume screening time-consuming, but most talent acquisition leaders are also concerned about the time spent reviewing resumes of unqualified candidates and missing out on potential superstars. Utilizing an effective resume screening checklist can substantially increase your likelihood of success. To help you identify the best candidates more easily and in less time, here’s a 4-step resume screening checklist that can help you. Step 1: Compile a List of the Job Qualifications The first step in your resume screening checklist is understanding the required job qualifications to be able to do the job, as well as the preferred job qualifications and competencies to excel in the job. The required job qualifications are often a simple listing of the basic work experience, skills and education required to adequately perform the responsibilities listed on the job posting. Preferred qualifications and competencies are the additional work experiences, skills, education, abilities, and behaviors that often lead to someone being a stronger performer. One way to determine preferred qualification is to assess the profiles of your successful employees. Make sure you have a diverse pool of successful employees to ensure there is not any unconscious bias in your determination of what it takes to be a superstar. Thereby compiling an unbiased checklist. Talk to your current employees and their supervisors as well as examine their resumes to find common patterns in: Work Experience Education Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities Behaviors The resume screening checklist also ensures the applicants are compared fairly against the same selection criteria! Step 2: Categorize Each Job Qualification as Minimum or Preferred The second step in your resume screening checklist is deciding if each job qualification is a minimum or preferred one. Minimum qualifications are ones that a candidate must have to do the job. An example of a minimum qualification for a remote customer service associate is being proficient with desktop computer system and have good written and oral communication skills. Preferred qualifications are ones that would make someone a stronger candidate. An example of a preferred qualification is whether the candidate has prior industry related work experience. A good rule of thumb is that a candidate would be unable to do the job without each minimum qualification whereas he or she would be able to do the job without any of the preferred qualifications. For example, a candidate with good communication and computer skills (minimum qualification) who lacks experience in a similar industry (preferred qualification) can be successful as a customer service associate with some on-the-job training. Depending on a job’s workflow, candidates can be screened based on minimum qualifications, preferred qualifications, or both. Step 3: Create a Resume Screening Scorecard for the Job Qualifications The third step in your resume screening checklist is taking the minimum and preferred qualifications and creating a resume screening scorecard. The purpose of this scorecard is to be able to easily rank each candidate based on the job qualifications and shortlisting the strongest candidates. For an Online Customer Service role, your scorecard might look like this: Shortlisting Scorecard: Customer Service Associate Candidate ID Education Industry Experience Online Customer Svc. Experience Communication Skills Total (1=min; 2= desired) (1=< year; 2= a year; 3 = > year) (1=poor; 2= average; 3 = strong) (4-11) Candidate 1 Candidate 2 Candidate 3 Step 4: Evaluate Resume Screening Technology Tools If you’re conducting high-volume recruitment, step four in your resume screening checklist may be the most important: finding and investing in a strong resume screening technology tool. When you’re recruiting for roles that receive hundreds or even thousands of resumes per job opening, you don’t always have the time to manually screen every resume effectively. Intelligent resume screening is software that integrates with your ATS automating steps 1 to 3 of your resume screening checklist. It does this by learning the job qualifications based on the resumes of existing successful employees to automatically screen, shortlist, and grade new candidates (e.g., A to C or Green, Yellow, and Red). For high-volume recruitment, intelligent resume screening is a huge technological step forward. Not only does it save you the time it takes to manually screen resumes, but it also helps you to better predict quality of hires by learning which candidates moved on to become successful employees. Final Takeaways for Your Resume Screening Checklist Many recruiters believe screening candidates is the most time-consuming and hardest part of their job. As hiring volume is predicted to increase in 2021, screening resumes will only become more of a challenge. To help you stay on track and identify the best candidates, follow this 4-step resume screening checklist: Step 1: Compile a list of the job qualifications based on job requirements and current successful employees. Step 2: Categorize each job qualification as a minimum or preferred qualification. Step 3: Create a resume screening scorecard for the job qualifications to shortlist candidates. Step 4: Find a good resume screening technology tool, especially if you conduct high-volume recruitment. Depending on how many people you hire each year, you may want to automate some or all your resume screening function.
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Recruiting
4 min read
Recruiting Metrics to Measure Success
Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “what gets measured, gets managed.” In recent years, the need for data and analytics has reached its way into the field of recruiting often with fortune 500 companies having a whole sub-department within HR dedicated to providing people and recruiting metrics. Measuring and monitoring these numbers helps a business understand the talent market and landscape relative to their overall operations. What are recruiting metrics? Recruiting metrics are ways to measure hiring success and also to optimize your recruitment funnel. When analyzed correctly, they help talent organizations to evaluate the effectiveness of recruiters and the efforts of their outreach and recruitment marketing spend. It’s important to gauge your recruiting “ROI”. After all, hiring someone who is more suited for the job has the potential to create an enormous return on investment for the employer. Recruiting metrics are best used in looking at the short term and long term view of bringing talent into an organization. The short term view can be average time to hire and turnover. Utilizing average time to hire and turnover together can help an organization build a staffing plan. One would not think to look at turnover when considering average time to hire, but it’s important because turnover drives when an opening occurs. Time to Hire Metrics The average time to hire is important to look at not just at the organization/enterprise level but also across disciplines (IT, accounting, legal, etc.) and countries as different cultures have different professional standards. Oftentimes organizations want the fastest time to hire which is great to have, but getting there takes time. According to data from ATS vendor Yello, average time to-hire across all industries is 3-4 weeks. Of course harder to fill roles will always skew these types of numbers. To really find out where hiring is slowing down, looking at each step of the recruiting process and finding the bottle necks allows an organization to truly reduce this time. Why should an organization perform this analysis? Reducing the time to hire is all about generating a positive candidate experience and helping the organization succeed in the war on talent and delivering on its overall strategy. After all, you cannot deliver on strategy without people! Source of Hire Metrics One of the most popular metrics to track is the source of hire which identifies where your candidates are coming from. Following this metric allows you to track the effectiveness of your recruitment marketing spend by showing you incoming applications from job boards, social media, email campaigns, referrals and your career site. Today job search engine Indeed is typically at the top of the list when it comes to source of hire. LinkedIn is also a top performer. Capturing where candidates are coming from is important because it informs the organization/company where talent pools are located, and it is best viewed on an annual basis to allow time to gather the data. Gathering sources of hire is especially important for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives when it comes to recruiting. Cost Per Hire Metrics Cost per hire can include several factors: recruiter salaries, cost of job board postings, interview time, loss of production time due to turnover, etc., and it can also vary by industry. Some employers don’t include recruiter salaries in this number so it can be a matter of choice if you just want to track paid spend that converts to hires. Conversion Metrics Talent leaders often overlook their Apply conversion rates. For instance do you know how many clicks it takes from your Indeed spend to generate one completed application? By analyzing this data (clicks divided by applies) one can learn a great deal about which traffic sources perform best. By constantly evaluating these numbers you can adjust marketing spend and ensure you are getting the best ROI for your money. From the data we’ve seen, traffic from Google for Jobs is one of the best when it comes to generating applications and time spent on your site. Quality of Hire Metrics Quality of hire typically includes the overall performance rating of the new hire which is usually only captured once a year in large businesses. For small to medium size businesses, it might include new hire turnover (employees <1 year of service). Sometimes referred to as “First-year attrition”, this key recruiting metric indicates hiring success. If a candidate fails to live up to expectations within the first year of work something went wrong when evaluating them. This error costs companies money. But there are steps you can put in place to mitigate this risk. It might mean revamping your job descriptions to align better with the role you have an opening for. Oftentimes candidates can misunderstand the job description and/or employers can “oversell” the role as something it is not. Taking the longer term view on metrics allows the talent acquisition department to look into the “rear view” mirror to see how the talent delivered that the recruiters brought into the organization. Job Satisfaction Metrics Candidate job satisfaction is a way to measure whether you are meeting their expectations. So it’s important to survey them six months into their work experience. A low job satisfaction rating surly indicates that what the recruiter told them about the role has not played out. This again points to using a more realistic job preview set forth by the job description and hiring manager. Recruiting Metrics & Business Outcomes In reporting recruiting metrics, an organization’s talent acquisition and/or human resources department can drive accountability with hiring managers in regards to generating a positive candidate experience, but it also allows talent leaders and C-suite executives to measure how they are doing against their business strategy. If the strategy includes revenue growth, then having the right sales force and support in place at the right time is critical. Without knowing and/or reporting on recruiting metrics, the business is losing out on valuable data in order to scale and plan both in the short term and long term when it comes to hiring the right talent. There are certainly other recruiting metrics to be tracked such as things like offer acceptance rates, percentage of open jobs per department, recruiters sourcing times and selection ratio, but the metrics mentioned above provide the best baseline for how effective your recruiting process is. Time spent analyzing these numbers will prove to be a win-win for your recruiting team and the candidates they seek.
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Recruiting
3 min read
Shortlisting Candidates: Best Practices for Recruiters
The shortlisting of candidates has always been one of the most time consuming pats of the sourcing process. That’s why so much rent HR technology has attempted to help automate this process for recruiters. But despite efforts to automate candidate sourcing the challenges of sourcing, recruiting, hiring of talent still remain. A number of industry studies have pointed to the fact that most employers struggle with attracting the right candidates. One stats reveals that 52% of companies said the difficult part of recruiting was identifying and shortlisting enough of the right candidates from large pools of talent. While shortlisting remains a major problem inside talent acquisition departments, there are steps being taken to overcome this hurdle. Namely by building a strong employer brand, nurturing talent communities, and boosting wages and benefits. The more attractive the job, the more people will apply. It is now more important than ever to invest in this pull versus push talent strategy. Defining Shortlisting It’s important to understand where shortlisting occurs in the hiring process and how it’s defined. Shortlisting is often performed by sourcers who search for candidates inside talent and resume databases online. It’s the process of finding people and vetting them to ensure they meet the general qualifications of the job as well as their openness to hearing about your job opening. Shortlisting happens after the sourcing step and comes before the interview. Resumes are screened and assessed for fit before the candidate is contacted. As you screen, the best candidates (on paper) get moved to the shortlist. How Shortlisting Works A balance must be struck when developing the proper criteria between the minimum qualifications you need to ensure a good quality candidate. You can’t be too dismissive of someone if they don’t meet all of your standards so be aware of this going in. Keep your options open. Your criteria for shortlisting can be based on the skills and traits of your best employee currently working in the role. Leave out personal opinion or “gut feel” since these can often be biased decisions that limit your available talent pool. Diversity and inclusion is important to keep in mind, so apply your standards objectively among your candidates. Criteria for Shortlisting; Past experience Education Skillset Personality Training You can also use results of skill or personality based assessment tests. Separating Essential Versus Desirable Criteria Essential Criteria (aka Must Haves) are those you absolutely need to have for each candidate. Are they eligible to work in the U.S.? Do they have the minimum years of experience? These ‘knockout questions’ force candidates into a yes or no bucket, especially if asked during the apply process. The ‘nice to have’ or desirable criteria are things like professional certifications or experience with a certain software. The differences between must have and nice to have can overlap. For instance a hiring manager may insist on 5 years of experience even though 3 would suffice. This scenario happens a lot in hiring circles but is part of the job you’ll have to deal with. Use Scorecards to Shortlist It’s helpful to create a scorecard for candidates to jeep the process fair and your questions on point. It also helps you to visualize their candidacy in an easy to understand format. How Many to Shortlist? So how many candidates will it take to get a successful hire? Most recruiters I’ve ever worked with say it’s probably between 5-10 candidates. Anymore becomes too unmanageable. If you find yourself working high volume roles you probably need technology to help. Tools like recruiting chatbots, screening by text messaging and self selecting apply processes will need to be used. Some surveys peg the average application to interview rate at around 12% which will mean for every one hundred applicants; You’ll need to shortlist at least 12 of them 2-3 of them might receive an offer 1-2 will accept the job offer Shortlisting Resumes Most of the applicants you’ll receive in your ATS will not be qualified. Some estimates peg that number at 75%-85%. So with that many unqualified applicants, it becomes obvious why shortlisting is your most time consuming task as a recruiter. That’s why ATS providers have embedded ways to screen for you through knockout questions and a customized apply process. Those employers that take advantage of these features can greatly affect the number of shortlisted applicants. Summing up Shortlisting We are slowly but surely moving to an era where AI recruiting software will automate at least part of the shortlisting function. Tools now exist that will search for, screen and serve up candidates automatically to recruiters. But in the meantime, use your scorecard to evaluate and judge applicants in a fair and equitable way. The technology will soon catch up to your efforts.
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Recruiting Automation
3 min read
10 Reasons Why You Need a Recruiting Chatbot
If you shop online you have probably come across a chatbot. You see them on most e-commerce websites because they’re hoping to sell you a product. If you have a question about that item, they want to get the answer in front of you ASAP, so that you don’t leave their site to buy a competitor’s product. In recruiting, the goal is the same. We are essentially selling a role within a company to a candidate. Treating candidates like consumers is the new way to attract and acquire talent. Thats why it’s time to adopt the e-commerce mentality of putting information in front of candidates to provide a better candidate experience. A recruiting chatbot is the perfect tool to do that. Here are 10 reasons why you should implement a recruiting chatbot on your career website. It’s 2021 (finally). These days, we find information we want within seconds from our phones, laptops, etc. Instead of making candidates search your career site for information hidden by countless mouse clicks, use a Chatbot to put the information they want right in front of them, on-demand. Chatbots turn passive candidates into applicants. Chatbots offer text applications. If you are hiring a large number of employees for entry-level positions, in your job postings, ask candidate’s to text “JOBS” to 555-555-5555. Your chatbot will reply asking for their name, email, phone number, anything you want. Whether the candidate applies at that point or not, you have their contact information for future positions. Because we always have our phones, candidates are more likely to send a text to inquire about a position than they are to apply online. Your team will thank you. Chatbots are able to automate your team’s least favorite tasks – including resume review, interview scheduling, and application updates. Chatbots encourage candidates to apply, pre-screen resumes, and allow your team to send a text or email blast to candidates that were pre-screened as a possible fit. The recruiter can simply click a button, triggering a text link to pre-screened candidates asking them to select a time for a phone interview. You’ll save so much time! Chatbots are incapable of showing bias towards candidates. When a chatbot is automating tasks from the top of a recruiting funnel (i.e. resume screening), they will not pass on a candidate because of their name, the year they graduated high school, or the college they attended. Instead, chatbots process responses to questions based on qualifications, time in roles, etc. Chatbots alleviate the risk of biases towards candidates. Chatbots provide data. It is easy to determine if your chatbot is working for you. Some examples of metrics you can pull include user metrics (total users, engaged users, user sentiment), message metrics (total/new conversations, miss messages, which are messages the bot can’t respond to), and so many more. You are always available. Chatbots are available to candidates any time, day or night. A candidate browsing your site at 3:00am can ask questions in real-time. If that candidate is awake at 3:00am because they feel stressed about work, they might ask your Chatbot about work/life balance. Your chatbot lets the candidate know that work/life balance is important to your organization, and now you have an applicant. You’re always on! Chatbots are the future of work. HR functions are starting to rely on chatbots to complete simple tasks. Think self-service benefit requests, employee-facing HR intranet bots, and reminders and follow-ups for onboarding new hires. Teams are getting creative and automating as much as possible – you can get ahead of the game. Chatbots are agile. Chatbots let you know what you don’t know. When a question is submitted and the chatbot doesn’t know how to respond, it alerts the system admin, who should either create a new response for the bot, or, edit an existing response so the bot knows to use it should the question be asked another time. It lets you know what candidates want to know. Branding. Giving your chatbot a personality and setting a friendly tone will make your organization and the candidate experience warmer. By customizing chatbot responses, you give candidates a look into how your company treats employees. If it is fun to work at your company, let a candidate feel that by making your chatbot transparent and fun to engage with. Chatbots integrate with your existing software. You spent a lot of time and money making your ATS work for you; make it better by implementing a chatbot that integrates easily with your suite of software. You’ll get the most out of your chatbot by linking it to your ATS to send candidate info, and with your email calendar for scheduling purposes.
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Recruiting Tactics
3 min read
Recruiting via Text Messaging
More and more recruiters are using emails and messaging platforms on the web, social media and smartphones to connect with job seekers quickly and conveniently. In an increasingly competitive job market, speed matters. Of these communication channels, texting offers the recruiter the speed they need to recruit faster. In fact, text messages are read within 5 minutes of receipt 95% of the time. So if your talent acquisition teams aren’t using text messaging to communicate with job seekers, you’re already behind the curve. And while mass messaging to candidates can be mis-used, 1 to 1 messages can feel much more personal which is key to establishing relationships with candidates. When it comes to guidelines don’t be too “wordy”. Less is more. Texting candidates after the initial connection is established by email / phone and till the offer is a commonly accepted practice. Texting is also a good option if the candidate is at work and can’t pick up calls. We surveyed recruiters to see how they use texting to recruit. Here’s how they recruit via text. Recruitment Text Message Examples Cold Recruiting Text: Hi this is Ryan. I have an open (role/location & sell). I can call you in (20/30/60 min) to tell you more. Interested? Cold Recruiting Text: I use text constantly. I generally try to call first, then text if they don’t answer. Something along the lines of “Hey its Lara with COMPANY. I called because I saw that you have a ton of experience in X, and I’m looking for a Y. Are you open to a discussion about the role?” If I found a resume online, I usually end with “Are you still interested in exploring new opportunities?” Cold Recruiting Text: Hi, Joe, this is Tom Johnson, a recruiter. I saw your resume on XXXX, and I am working on filling a hot JOBJOB there in CITY. When is a good time for us to talk about it? Cold Recruiting Text: Same thing I would say in a InMail on LinkedIn. Just make it more condensed. Text is king nowadays. Cold Recruiting Text: “Hey Chris! So good to talk today. You’ve done a lot in your time as an HR tech guru! I’d love to keep taking about it this role. What do you think?” I get about 50 percent response on the first send, and a little lower on follow ups. Cold Recruiting Text: My last few placements started out from cold texts… both lead level software engineers in the Bay Area. I was specific to why I was reaching out, how I got their number, mentioned a specific role, referenced the hiring manager and mentioned some things the hiring manager liked about their background. Also my meme and gif game varies or is nonexistent depending on their personality. Followup Text: I didn’t want to do another contract but a recruiter called me, left a voicemail, then followed up immediately with a text and an inmail. I respected his game and here I am, on another contract. Followup Text: Voicemails are outdated. When I call and nobody answers, I hang up and send a text with my profile picture and a short intro. They almost ALWAYS call me back immediately! More Texting Advice From Recruiters Keep it short, direct and casual…texts should beMUCH SHORTER than an email. Use punctuation and emojis as you see fit. Candidates want to work with relatable people, not “headhunters”. Continue to use text to check in post interview for feedback or schedule a quick touch point. Be sure your mobile application process is quick. The last thing you’ll want is a bad mobile apply experience. One recruiter, Stacie Ratliff told me this about her texting efforts. “I use text more often when I have a candidate in process for a position and they are not responding to their emails. I’ll text them to nudge things along. Sometimes they respond faster: “Hi Dave. Wanted to follow-up on my email earlier this week and see what your availability is to do a tech phone screen. We’re excited to take the next step. Look forward to hearing back from you.” She said she rarely ever contacts someone by text that she doesn’t have a pre-existing relationship with. “Some people may find this to be too personal or intrusive, so I tend to stick to email reach outs. Once I’ve met the person, I feel comfortable shooting them a text if I have an opening or want to fish for leads. I keep it short and sweet: “Hi Susannah. How are you? Last time we connected was about 6 months ago. I have an exciting opportunity for a Sr. iOS Engineer at XYZ company that I thought you might be interested in. If you’d like to know more, reply back and I’ll be happy to share a position profile. You can schedule a call with me here: calendly.com/recruiterabc”. Notice the use of the calendar link to make it easy for the candidate to schedule a call with her. Recruiting via text can be a game changer for recruiters if they make it a primary communication tool. Today’s generation of candidates expects to be texted so meet them where they are. Platforms like Emissary exist for this very reason.
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Human Resources
4 min read
Remote Work Expectations for 2021
The global pandemic is changing what employees want in a prospective job offering. According to a new study from Citrix Systems, workers believe flexible models, digital technology, diversity and inclusion and learning and development will drive the future of work. And they will seek opportunities with companies that share their vision and give them the space and tools they need to succeed and advance their careers. “As the economy gears up again and the job market begins to make a recovery, we’re likely to see a surge in people seeking new roles,” said Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Strategy, Citrix. “But the pandemic has forever changed the way employees view and approach work, and if businesses want to attract and retain the talent they need to move forward tomorrow, they must understand their mindset and desires and develop plans to accommodate them today.” In the Talent Accelerator, Citix surveyed 2,000 knowledge workers and 500 HR Directors in large, established corporations and mid-market businesses based in the US. Among the key findings? Workers Want to Be Digital Nomads Now, more than ever, employees want flexibility in where, when and how they work. In fact, 88 percent of those workers surveyed as part of the Talent Accelerator said that when searching for a new position, they would look for one that offers complete flexibility in their hours and location. And 76 percent believe that employees will be more likely to prioritize lifestyle over proximity to work, even if it means taking a pay cut. Other findings: 83 percent of employees and 69 percent of HR directors think that workers will be more likely to move out of cities and other urban locations if they can work remotely for a majority of the time. 78 percent of workers and 67 percent of HR directors predict that the geographical decentralization of organizations will result in the creation of new work hubs in suburban/rural areas in the next 12 months. In addition, the majority of employees surveyed are of the opinion that flexible work models will ultimately become the norm in the year ahead. 83 percent predict that, in response to global skilled talent shortage, companies will leverage flexible work models to reach out to suitable candidates no matter where they live. Yet only 66 percent of HR directors feel the same. “As the global battle for talent heats up, companies will need to embrace more flexible models for work that allow them to meet employees where they are in order to position themselves to win,” Minahan said. “Companies that leverage technology to enable remote work can not only attract hard-to-find talent, but increase employee engagement and boost their productivity. And this research proves it.” Virtual Reality Will Bring Workers Closer While the pandemic and the remote work mandates associated with it have physically separated workers, technology is proving its worth and keeping them connected, engaged and productive. As the Talent Accelerator discovered: 89 percent of employees believe that technology makes workers within their organization more productive. 86 percent of employees and 69 percent of HR directors report that business leaders in their organization are using technology to collaborate effectively and innovate. On average, around two thirds of employees and HR directors say they feel more connected to their direct manager, CEO, senior management team, and peers when working remotely than when working in the office. 73 percent of employees and 72 percent of HR directors think the increased use of technology in the future will break down hierarchies and lead to more open communication with business leaders and senior management teams that may advance their careers. “Organizations that provide employees with digital tools that remove the friction from work and enable them to be and do their best are the ones that will ultimately thrive,” Minahan said. “Because when employees feel empowered by the solutions they use rather than hamstrung by them, they can focus, innovate and deliver value.” Outcomes over Output In the future, companies will need to rethink how they measure productivity because traditional metrics – and views that real work can’t get done outside the office – will no longer cut it. Modern employees want to be measured on the value they deliver, not the volume. And they expect to be given the space and trust they need to do their very best work, wherever they happen to be. 86 percent of employees said they would prefer to work for a company that prioritizes outcome over output, but just 69 percent of HR directors say that their company currently operates in this way. 69 percent of workers say they are more productive – by an average of 72 percent – when they feel their employer trusts them to get the job done without monitoring their progress; while 51 percent of HR directors think that their organization would be more productive as a whole if their employer/senior management took this stance. “Work is no longer about getting the most out of people, but the best,” Minahan said. “Forward-thinking companies recognize this and will focus on designing people-centric experiences that unlock the full potential of their employees and empower them to deliver transformative results.” Diversity Matters to Employees Diversity isn’t just a boardroom agenda item. As the Talent Accelerator reveals, employees and HR directors alike believe it will be a defining feature of the future workforce. 86 percent of employees and two-thirds of HR directors believe that a diverse workforce will become even more important as roles, skills and company requirements change over time. 78 percent of employees and 69 percent of HR directors believe that neurodiversity is increasingly recognized in their organization and will drive competitive advantage in the future. “People want to work for companies where they can pursue their passions and explore, create and innovate alongside individuals with different perspectives to deliver meaningful outcomes,” Minahan said. “And as we progress and create a world where there is more equity and opportunity for all, companies must focus on creating diverse and inclusive environments in which employees can be their authentic and whole selves, take risks and are empowered to contribute to the business.” We live in the most uncertain of times. But as Minahan notes, “One thing is clear: talent will be critical to not only recovering from the pandemic, but emerging stronger and better.”
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Recruiting
3 min read
Remote Onboarding Best Practices
Without a doubt, the biggest impact of this year’s pandemic has been the forced move to fully remote work. The traditional 5 days a week, in the office mentality is likely not coming back and if it does, a more hybrid approach to work hours may take its place. The practice of onboarding this remote talent has suffered a bit as companies struggled at first to deal with the new reality. Some have adjusted, others have struggled. According to a recent Promoleaf survey, nearly 35% of all respondents wanted to be contacted by video at least once a day by their manager in the first few weeks of starting a new job. Another 26% preferred contact 2x-4x weekly, while another 18% wanted weekly calls. Only 7% wanted less frequent calls. These numbers underscore the importance for frequency of contact between a new hire and their boss. It may not matter whether you choose to use text messaging, video calls, slack or something else… just stay in contact with new hires if you want to retain and motivate them. Send Welcome Swag Perhaps the biggest impact for a new worker feeling welcome is getting swag from their new employer. Promoleaf says “91% of those who received swag felt effectively welcomed to their new company”. Sending off a shipment of t-shirts, hoodies, stickers and a coffee mug is a good start. It’s one of the activities that also happens in person and can be easily replicated in a remote environment. So be sure to add swag to your employee onboarding checklist. Besides swag, there are a number of other things companies can do to make onboarding a great experience. Hold regular virtual happy hours every Thursday or Friday. Implement a buddy system for new employees by assigning a veteran coworker to show them the ropes virtually. Introduce them to the team during a dedicated Zoom event. You may want to make it a group event if you have multiple hires starting the same day. Give your new employee an allowance to setup their remote work environment with a chair and desk of their own choosing. Allow them to sign paperwork electronically instead of having to print, scan and send. Transparent and frequency of check ins will be vital to your new employees well being. In the survey mentioned above, 38% said their company needed to do more when it came to keeping them informed. This is where a good communications strategy using HR/recruiting focused text messaging software or a Slack room can come in handy. Check In Frequently For at least the first week of employment have the manager check in via video or text message each day to ensure they are comfortable in their new role. This can be learned as the employee progresses but pay close attention to their work output and allow for easy two way interaction as much as possible. A new hire needs to be able to ask a question and get an answer more quickly than established workers. Don’t fret about their work hours either. Most remote workers don’t fall into the 9am to 5pm schedule. Many remote employees tend to work longer than those in the office, so don’t burden them with too many tasks at once. Learn what pace they like to go at and work with them to adjust. New hires must feel as welcome as possible so the first few weeks are a crucial time for getting it right. Being remote at a new company can often be stressful for a new hire and they may not know where to turn to for help. Make sure enough ‘human touch points’ are added to your onboarding plan. This new virtual world of work demands that we emphasize the human in human resources. 5 Ways to Use Texting in Remote Onboarding Texting is of course an excellent use case for the onboarding process. It cuts through clutter and enables companies to communicate effectively with speed. Here are five ways you can use texting to welcome new hires. Have the hiring manager send a welcome text as soon as the candidate accepts the offer. Text directions to your office on the first day of work. Remind them about the paperwork that needs to be signed and handed in in order to get paid. Have their new team members send a welcome message Survey the new hire in 30 days to see how they enjoyed the process. Onboarding is all about the candidate experience. It’s one of the easiest and satisfying things your company can do to make the new hire feel welcome and hit the ground running with a positive attitude.
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Recruiting
5 min read
What are the 7 stages of recruitment?
The different stages of recruitment comprise a workflow familiar to even the most entry level recruiter. They include prep, sourcing, applicant conversion, selection process, the interview, reference checks, and onboarding/hire. Employers that want to attract the best and brightest need to ensure their process is running at peak efficiency. To do that, you need to break down the different recruitment stages and optimize for each. There are several options based on your level of need, frequency of hiring, complexity of process, etc… You can outsource the process to a consultant, you can hire an experienced Talent Acquisition leader, or you can just implement some basic internal structures on your own with your current team. If you’re keen to give it a go on your own because you don’t have the budget or the hiring volume to support the cost of adding headcount, here are some of the things they would likely implement or advise you to implement. 1) Prepping for Your Ideal Candidate Just as important as getting applicants to your job by posting it, is getting the RIGHT candidates to apply. Volume without quality equals a lot of time spent on unproductive administrative work, and either no hire or the wrong hire. Spend some time sharpening your axe before you start chopping at a tree. Develop an ideal candidate profile first. Otherwise you’ll be doing what is called “post and pray.” Ask yourself what makes up an ideal candidate profile? This is the person who has the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to achieve the goals of the position. In other words, based on those KSAs, process, how do you write the job description? What niche sites or organizations will you market and network in? Where do they hang out (virtually or in person)? Who/what are they likely to follow? What are they most likely to be interested in and respond to? How can you best attract them with outreach and marketing messaging? Once you define what those are, you can use that candidate profile for effective targeting, outreach and attraction. 2) Sourcing and Attracting Talent This stage is about being resourceful and focusing on the candidate experience. Don’t frustrate candidates by not responding to and communicating with them, by taking too long to make a decision, by creating too many hoops to jump through, or by having unrealistic expectations. Develop a process that is efficient, communicative, standardized, and reportable by investing in a modern Applicant Tracking System (ATS) There are several basic low-cost ones out there to choose from, and you can work with one of their representatives to set it up and configure a workflow. At the very least you should leverage automated screening to knock out unqualified applicants and automated emails to communicate application status and let them know where they stand. You’ll also have the ability to disposition and communicate with people in bulk using pre-written email templates. You’ll also need a sourcing strategy that allows you to proactively find talent through various online sources. If you have the budget perhaps a LinkedIn recruiter seat is in order. Or you could go with a lower package and augment it with a sourcing tool such as Hiretual or Seekout. Sourcing is a time consuming function however so having a dedicated sourcer on staff to uncover names will certainly improve your chances of filling roles faster. 3) Converting Applicants On a very basic reporting level, you can evaluate your process by looking at what are called conversion rates, or click through rates. This is the number or percentage of people that move from one step to the next. If you have a step that has high fallout or no fallout, you may be getting too few or too many out the back end. If a step has high fallout, you can re-evaluate if the step is screening out too many people unnecessarily. If a step has little to no fallout, what value is it providing? Maybe get rid of it. You can also evaluate your process by looking at the overall time to fill (from position opened to filled) and also time in each individual step. If your hiring process is taking too long, which step is the bottleneck and why? All of this process management will help ensure a quality candidate experience, which will help get the good candidates all the way through the process to hire. Some of the best metrics to track are the number of clicks your job postings get vs the number of people who apply. If your conversion rate is 10% or less your apply process needs a lot of work. A good ATS will convert applicants between 30%-40% based on my experience. 4) Selecting and Screening Candidates When it comes to the selection process its important to be diverse and set expectations. Explain the full hiring process to each candidates you speak with, so they know what to expect, what the steps are, who they will speak with, how long it will take, and how to prepare. Be as respectful of their time as you’ll expect them to be of yours. Additional note on position requirements (KSAs) and screening: Define your must-haves and your nice-to-haves. Your must-haves are the bare minimum requirements or qualifications to be able to perform the job. Nice-to-haves are the extra over-and-above qualifications that would be ideal to have. An automated pre-screen with a recruiting chatbot is a great tool that can knock out or disqualify all who don’t have the must-haves. If you also add the nice-to-haves in your prescreen (without knocking anyone out on these), you can quickly get to your short list. 5) The Interview Process Focus on efficient convenient scheduling. Speed really counts in this step. Eliminate the time and effort of going back and forth to coordinate phone screen or interview dates and times by using a calendaring app like Calendly or go a step further and purchase an interview scheduling tool. You set aside blocks of time that you or your team can be available and allow candidates to self-schedule into into any of the slots that work with their schedule. It’s a good idea to offer slots during lunch time or outside of normal working hours to accommodate those who are currently employed. 6) Reference Check Don’t dismiss top contenders until you have an accepted offer with all conditions met and a start date (salary/schedule accepted, references checked, background check/drug screen complete). Know that anything can happen and often will. Candidates will change their mind, accept a counter-offer, or fail pre-employment testing. When that happens, you’ll want to have your backup candidates warm and ready to go. Keep in touch with them, even just to let them know you don’t have any updates yet, but they are still actively under consideration. Once you reject them, it’s harder to bring them back. 7) Onboarding Lastly, onboarding! This area is frequently overlooked and your best opportunity for all that hard work to go to waste. It’s kind of like a murky grey area that is the handoff between Recruiting and Operations. If you don’t make sure that you have a strong onboarding program that involves training, mentorship, information, and necessary resources, you will wind up with hires that feel not welcomed, not trained, and in a job that is not what they were sold. I recommend digitizing all parts of onboarding especially now that most of us are working remotely. Let candidates receive and sign their HR paperwork electronically. They will certainly thank you for it. Having a recruitment process that is well thought out to meet the specific needs of your organization and structured in a measurable platform can help you evaluate and continually improve your hiring plans, and eliminate or revise non-value-added steps that eat up time and may eliminate good candidates needlessly. It will also ensure you cover all important steps, creating a standardized experience for all candidates, and reducing the opportunity for bias.
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Recruiting Tactics
3 min read
What is a CRM for Recruiting?
CRM traditionally stands for Customer Relationship Management. The first CRM platforms were focused on retaining customers and driving repeat sales. Typical names in this space are Siebel, Oracle, and of course Salesforce. But for recruiting purposes, many recruiters simply refer to it as Candidate Relationship Management. It is a software platform that allows recruiters to communicate with prospective candidates in order to engage them with the employer and/or get them to apply to jobs. The purpose behind a recruitment CRM is about treating candidates like customers. A good recruiting CRM enables you to communicate effectively through email or text to your candidates and see what emails have been opened and if those opens led to clicks on your career content. A CRM is used at the top of the funnel and its best use case is for candidates who have expressed an interest in your company but have not yet applied to a job. Several major ATS vendors have created built-in workflows and automations with CRM like functionality. A modern ATS, or recruitment CRM, allows users to manage every aspect of the candidate relationship, from initial sourcing through to the job offer stage. Employers today need the ability to attract talent not just manage them. A good CRM can engage candidates and guide them throughout the hiring process. Features of a CRM for Recruiting The key features for a recruiting CRM platform include the following: Creating and segmenting a pool of candidates according to skill or job type Sending personalized emails and texts to prospective candidates Creating engaging email campaigns that reflect your company brand and important news and updates Conducting candidate surveys to get their feedback on their experience with your process Candidate relationship management analytics such as the ability to track open rates and clicks to your career site. What a CRM for Recruitment can help you do: Make communicating with candidates much easier. Build a strong talent community from a single database that can be searched. Engage, attract, source, and manage candidates from apply to interview. Facilitate hiring workflows – automate recruiting emails, automate job offers, interview scheduling, background checks, etc. Analyze and measure your recruiting activities through a dashboard (generate reports) Some CRMs can also be used to collect applications (just like an ATS) but generally speaking they are more for job marketing purposes rather than an ATS which is used to store their data and make it searchable. The ATS is not a good replacement for a recruiting CRM. The CRM can replace an ATS however. Why use a recruiting CRM? Candidates are twice as likely to accept cold emails from recruiters if they have interacted with your brand before (source:OfficeVibe). So it will make your job easier if you use it to increase your employer brand so more candidates know about it. If you have thousands of candidates in your ATS you’ll need a tool to organize, manage and engage those people. Much of a CRM can be automated. For instance you can setup an automated email campaign to contact job seekers on a monthly basis. If they don’t open your email you can set up the CRM to automatically email a reminder to those candidates who haven’t opened your first email. Not only will it make your job easier, you can use campaigns to drive more applications to your open jobs. So how do you know if a recruiting CRM is right for your company? If you… Actively source candidates a CRM can help you establish relationships with them through content and messaging. Still use a spreadsheet to manage candidates you can become much more efficient with a CRM Have more than one person recruiting a CRM can empower each one on your team to market your employer brand more effectively. Have hard-to-fill jobs a CRM can help you build a pipeline of those candidates overtime and let them express an interest in youropening even if they are ready to move. Hold virtual job fairs a CRM can be used to effectively capture those attendees so you can later market your openings to them. Recruiting CRM systems let you automate the majority of the marketing process and administrative tasks that take up valuable time, and let you get back to the important efforts like building rapport. Another way to think of a CRM for recruiting is as a candidate “nurturing” tool. Employers can use it to nurture talent much like a sales person nurtures a lead in the sales lifecycle. Recruitment CRMs are a talent ecosystem, full of passive and active candidates. The best recruiters know how to optimize and manage this intelligence tool to get the most out of it. Running a CRM for recruitment certainly takes effort. It’s best to assign a full time person to the role, someone who understands marketing as a core function. But don’t correctly, your own CRM can help you recruit more efficiently while providing an awesome experience for those career seekers who interact with you.
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Emissary is a candidate engagement platform built to empower recruiters with efficient, modern communication tools that work in harmony with other recruiting solutions.
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