Resources
4 min read
How Virtual Work Is Changing Recruiting
Companies that want to remain competitive in the midst of a global pandemic are pursuing creative ways to stay agile to maintain continuity. This includes providing for new work-from-home (WFH) or ‘remote work’ arrangements, not only to maintain customer service, but also to retain employees. But these changes have consequences, and ripple effects in all directions. This includes recruiting. Generally speaking, work from home has been good for attracting talent but lets dive deeper into the impacts of a remote workforce. COMPETITION Supply and demand analysis are the cornerstone of any good sourcing and recruitment program. Supply: What does the local market look like? What is the approximate size of the talent pool? When sourcing talent for a role that is, or has the option to be, virtual you are no longer looking at just the local market. Your talent pool has now expanded nationwide, or even globally if you desire. With the size of your talent pool amplified exponentially, your sourcing and screening strategy requires adjustment. You can now significantly broaden the scope of your recruitment marketing, and consequently, you’ll need to add a high-volume screening process that will most likely require some form of text recruiting software, ideally coupled with an AI recruiting chatbot. If you don’t have a high-volume, text recruiting centered process that is efficient at weeding out low qualified talent and isolating top quality talent, you can get buried in an unmanageable level of applicants. If your process is not automated and communicative, you can, in effect, nationalize or globalize a poor reputation for your company, creating disgruntled job seekers all over the globe. Demand: How many companies are hiring for the same role in your local market? Who are we up against and what are they offering? Not only has your talent pool expanded geographically, so too has the size of your competitive landscape. Job seekers who work in remote-friendly roles are no longer limited to finding work with your local competitors. Their job prospects have now expanded nationally or globally, and your advertised job opportunity is now competing for talent on a hugely greater scale, making it all the more difficult for you to stand out. You are challenged more than ever to up your marketing and engagement game. COMPENSATION Companies have typically determined salary ranges, based on a combination of the role itself and of the cost of living in individual geographies. There is much circulating debate on how to handle this in a work from home world. Which one will prevail? Pay people what the level of skill and responsibility is worth? Or pay people according to their local cost of living? There are varying schools of thought, each of which should be considered carefully when setting salary ranges and making offers. For some candidates, compensation is not the primary deciding factor, but for many it is. I’ve seen some recent studies that say job seekers are willing to take a lower salary in exchange for working at home exclusively. PERKS & BENEFITS Consider your employer value proposition (EVP). What are you touting? Do remote workers care about on-site perks like ping-pong tables, free snacks, gym, childcare, or dry-cleaning service? Absolutely not. It’s time to rethink what you can offer to attract top WFH talent. What do they want? Things like good technology to perform their roles and stay connected with a dispersed team and flexible schedules to work around childcare, particularly while waiting for schools and daycares to reopen. Benefits will certainly become more important over in person perks. TIME ZONES & TRAVEL This is something that you may want to address in your candidate screening process, and also something you may want to consider from a cost perspective. What will be the impact to the candidate of working outside their local working hours? Is it ideal for them because it allows for them to take care of personal commitments during the day, or is it something they would hope to adjust to? How will team members communicate and collaborate with them effectively, since in person conversations aren’t an option… text messaging, Slack, email, Zoom, phone calls? Beyond salary, what will be the level of need for this person to spend time with the team in the office or to visit clients? What will be the cost to travel this person at the needed frequency based on their home location? Some companies are requesting that remote candidates at least live in the same time zone and I expect that requirement gaining traction going forward. COMMUNICATIONS WFH also now requires a new mindset when it comes to communicating with your talent. Zoom and Teams are now ubiquitous but how will you communicate with your staff about the smaller details that need to be addressed each workday? This is where tools like Slack and texting come in handy to help cut through that clutter. I’d rather get a text message from HR or a team member than an email any day, so be prepared to leverage the new ways of communication if you want to maintain a good digital experience for your staff. They will expect their next employer to offer a great employee experience using the latest and greatest messaging tools. WFH PERSONALITY For some, work from home is new, while others have been virtual workers for many years. Some love it, some tolerate it, and some hate it. Hiring virtual workers that thrive in a virtual environment is going to be critical to success. What are some of the aspects of a strong WFH personality? Self-motivated to stay on task, disciplined to hold themselves accountable for results, flexible to balance home and work commitments, and maybe a bit introverted. When virtual work started becoming more of a thing around 10 years ago, some fell in love with it vowing to never go back, while others missed the close direction, structure, face-time, and social connection of the brick-and-mortar workplace. If you’re recruiting for a position that is work from home eligible, you’ll likely want to consider, not only is this person a good fit for the role, but are they a good fit for a remote work arrangement? Conversely, if the role is able to be done virtually, but your company is not opening a WFH option, not only will your talent pool be reduced, but you may also be at risk for turnover as your current employees seek out that option. Some say recruiting is recruiting, and that the same strategies can be employed regardless of the role, industry, market or economy. To some degree, that basic concept is true. But those employers who achieve the most success examine and adjust their strategies to the evolving nuances in the ways those things change. The remote work revolution has begun. Now it’s time to adapt to the new reality.
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Recruiting Trends
2 min read
Future of Work and What It Means for Recruiting
Remote enablement company Citrix recently undertook a year-long study of global work patterns and trends, to understand how work will change and the role that technology will play in enabling people to perform at their best. Their conclusion: “driven by flexible models and intelligent solutions that remove the complexity and noise from work, employees will be more engaged and productive and fuel innovation and growth like never before.” They also say that robots won’t replace us. But they will make us smarter and more efficient. Most respondents believe that in fifteen years, artificial intelligence will significantly speed up the decision-making process and make workers more productive. You can include recruiters and HR professionals among those workers. I’m sure candidates will experience that evolution as well by benefiting from a speedier recruiting funnel. Work Becomes Flexible Technology that allows for seamless access to the tools and information people need to collaborate and get work done wherever they happen to be will fuel flexible models that the future of work will demand. 67 percent of professionals (business leaders and workers combined) believe that a “platform” model – which creates value by facilitating exchanges between groups or individuals using digital technology – will dominate work in the future. 60 percent of workers believe permanent employees will become rare by 2035. 80 percent of leaders believe that technology platforms will provide instant access to the highly specialized, on-demand talent required to power future organizations and accommodate rapid changes in business and customer needs. 39 percent of leaders believe that in 2035, the majority of high-value specialist workers will be on-demand and freelance workers. What’s interesting to note among these numbers is the one about permanent employees becoming “rare” by 2035. The gig/freelance job market has been growing for years and shows no signs of stopping its upward momentum. There may be a day when a full time job becomes an exception rather than the norm. The growth of freelance marketplaces like Upwork, HR Lancers and others is certainly contributing to that trend. Productivity Gets Major Boost More than half of professionals they surveyed (51 percent) say technology will make workers at least twice as productive by 2035. Among the solutions they believe will be commonplace will be things like AI assistants, AI reminders, Wearable technology and AI that anticipates and performs tasks based on your habits. Technology, closely integrated with humans, will drive step changes in productivity as workers are supported by solutions that enable them to perform at their best. “AI-ngels” – digital assistants driven by AI – will draw on personal and workplace data to help employees prioritize their tasks and time and ensure mental and physical wellness. These worker augmented assistants will, for example, schedule meetings to take place at the most effective time based on factors ranging from the blood sugar levels of participants to their sentiments at different times of day. And while the meetings are taking place, they will monitor concentration levels and attitudes and adjust as necessary to drive optimal outcomes. Employees Become More Engaged As technology and AI takes over time-consuming, mundane tasks, work will become more strategic by enabling low-value, mundane tasks to become automated. It will also allow for better upskilling of workers creating more career advancement opportunities for them The global pandemic has forced leaders to reimagine they way their organizations work and recruit talent. The savvy companies, the ones who embrace automation technologies will be the ones that the best candidates flock to in the future. Your company will want that recruiting edge. Automation in all phases of operations is the key to gaining that advantage.
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Recruitment Marketing
2 min read
Employer Branding for Changing Times
2020 memes. I’m sure you’ve seen them all across social media, making light of the horror show that this year has been for most people, from pandemic to murder hornets to race, class, and political warfare. Toss in things like layoffs, furloughs and professional struggles, and traditional employment branding can seem tone deaf or out of place. Priorities have shifted for customers, employees, and job seekers. Who cares about ping pong tables and free donuts when if everyone works from home? Who cares about how many awards your company has won when your employees are turning over and customers or not renewing? Who cares that you offer competitive pay if workers are more concerned about stability? People are not moved by dry technical copy or compliant corporate-speak. Nor are they influenced by superlatives like “exciting,” “cutting-edge,” and “dynamic.” It takes more to stand out to a society with so much being thrown at them. This is really difficult to do in the digital age of political correctness, and so there is the understandable tendency to want to play it safe. But safe and proper are not what drive people towards a common goal. The branding that gets results today takes a stand on a specific set of values and is shamelessly, vulnerably authentic. Here are a few ways you can shift your branding strategy from what used to work to what works now: Old way – promoting how great a place it is to work and how happy people are. New way – talk about your challenges. Dostoevsky said (and I’m liberally paraphrasing here), that if you gave people everything they wanted and everything was perfect all the time, the first thing they’d do is smash something, just to have something unexpected or interesting happen. We are adapted as humans to require some security, but we are most alert and alive when we have one foot out in the unknown and are working to attain something. Talk about where you’re headed as a company and what problems need solving. Old way – culture and work environment are unknown or misperceived until after people are hired or decide not to pursue employment. Potential employees have no idea what it’s like to work for your company unless they know an insider. They are otherwise relying on maybe a statement or video on your career page, asking the Recruiter or Hiring manager, or checking out Glassdoor reviews (and then crossing their fingers). New way – Have your employees promote your culture and work environment on social media, company website and hiring ads. Give top candidates an insider to connect and interact with, and the ability to have an informational interview that is not tied to judgment of their qualifications for the position. If you’re afraid to do it, maybe your culture isn’t worth promoting. Old way – creating a website and social media pages, using them passively and leaving hiring ads to the Recruitment team to post. New way – doubling down on efforts to get brand recognition. Get your name out there with strategic SEO, partnerships and collaborations with other companies, and increasing your number of brand ambassadors to include as many employees as possible doing all of the things above. Employer branding is an evolving message that needs to be calibrated for shifting times. Hopefully these tips give you an idea of where to start. QUICK TIP 5 ways for enhancing your employer brand through texting. Send potential candidates news about your Great Place to Work Award. Push out ‘day in the life’ content about what its like to work there. Alert them of the latest job opening via opt-in subscription. Break down your top perks and benefits for working there and share those. End your messages with your EVP (employer value proposition) to reinforce branding.
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Recruiting Tactics
2 min read
Instagram Recruiting: How to Search & Source
Few employers recruit on Instagram, even though it is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world and represents a great opportunity for recruiters to source candidates. Although you are limited as far as search parameters, Instagram’s scale lends itself to being a huge pool of talent waiting to be found. According to Statista, “With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram belongs to the most popular social networks worldwide. The social photo sharing app is especially popular in the United States, India, and Brazil, which have over 130 million, 100 and 91 million Instagram users each. In the United States, the number of Instagram users is projected to surpass 130 million MAU (monthly active users) in 2022.” Another interesting fact… over two thirds of total Instagram audiences are aged 34 years and younger, meaning that they’re even more likely to be glued to their mobile phones and text messaging apps than the rest of us already are. Sourcing Instagram Bios Most people search Instagram by hopping from hashtag to hashtag, but that’s not really ideal for sourcing people. If that’s how you are doing your Instagram recruiting, I suggest using the site: search function on Google instead. Here’s a query for “software developers” AND Boston”. Site search works pretty well in this case. To reuse this string just replace the job title and city with your own. Feel free to add in negative keywords (ex. -nursing) to help you filter out certain profiles. Google search query: site:instagram.com “software developer” AND boston Messaging You can send messages (from within the app) to someone even if they don’t follow you. Tap in the top-right corner or swipe left from anywhere in Feed. Tap in the top-right corner. Select people you’d like to send a message to, then tap Next. Type a message. You can also tap to take and send a disappearing photo or video, or to select a photo or video from your library. Tap or Send. If you send a message to someone who doesn’t follow you, it’ll appear as a request in their inbox. If someone allows your Instagram recruiting message request, your future messages will go directly to their inbox. Since they probably aren’t expecting to hear from a recruiter on Instagram, try looking them up on LinkedIn if you don’t want to engage directly on Instagram itself. NOTE: Instagram also lets you send photo and video DMs from your PC. Instagram still won’t let you upload posts to your profile from your computer (unless you have a tablet with a rear-mounted camera). But now, you at least can send photo and video as direct messages from your desk using the Windows 10 app. One other sourcing tip to mention is hashtags. Searching for career related hashtags can also help to uncover hidden talent and recruit on Instagram more effectively. Let’s say you were looking for nurses. Check out the hashtag #nursinglife to see real world nurses chronicling their work day.
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AI in Recruiting
2 min read
HR Automation is the New Normal
For some time now the move to remote work (aka work from home) has been evolving as the digitization of HR takes hold in the corporate world. But the global pandemic has accelerated that trend forcing employers to adapt to the new way of work. For some this transition has been easy. For others, not so much. Covid has forced working life to change overnight, as teams become distributed resulting in schedules having to become more flexible. HR has had to adapt quickly. The new normal means that to maximize the talent pipeline and keep the employee base supported/engaged, employers need better insight into their workers’ performance. But if you ask HR professionals most say they are not succeeding in the new normal. In fact, a study by Sage People says that only 18% of leaders in HR believe they have been successful in making HR interactions more employee centric. 86% of these leaders also say that it will take 8-10 years to fully achieve that goal! Thankfully HR process automation is here to help. Apps, HR texting software, AI chatbots, and the cloud now allow you to create a more self-serve focused, digital experience for all employees. HR Automation = Speed Now that we are entering into a recovery phase, many employers are beginning to plan for a return to the office and the pace of hiring has picked up a few ticks. But, companies must remain vigilant in case of a surge in COVID-19 cases. Human resources teams are on the frontline of this new landscape and find themselves at the center of an enormous change in how employers manage the workforce. A significant part of this focus is now on the health and well being of employees in order to keep them healthy and productive. But if you have legacy systems and processes in place, they become an impediment to the speed of work. Today’s employees need fast and easy access to data and communicating with each other over distance. Furthermore, if your team can’t extract your human capital data quickly, they won’t be able to help in the transformation to better, more automated HR systems that make their working life easier. People Want Automation The acceleration of HR automation trends means that human resources leaders must quickly learn to maximize productivity for their organizations. If you are still suffering through mundane, repetitive daily tasks, you are losing ground to your competitors and limiting your organizations ability to respond quickly in a crisis. It is wasteful to have a team member approve a vacation request if HR automation software can do it for you more effectively, leaving your team free for higher priorities. HR process automation is the solution and the people want it whenever possible. Adding AI and automation to the employee experience means freeing up valuable HR time and doing more with less resources. Going back to the vacation request example, these types of transactions can be automatically approved through software as long as the employee meets the parameters set by a manager or company HR policy. Or, if you need to collect feedback from workers, automated surveys sent via HR texting software and administered and aggregated by an AI chatbot can be executed with the click of a button. Employee FAQS can and should also be automated using AI chatbots and made available by text message and on the web. A self service approach works well in these circumstances leaving your HR team freed up for more value added activity. Plus HR automation also reduces cost and avoids costly human errors that happen too often. After all, you don’t want your new hire to lose his/her onboarding paperwork when it can be handled & signed digitally. Today’s HR is all about being agile and adapting quickly to a rapidly changing environment. Yet for many, navigating the new normal is challenging if you can’t see the forest for the trees. As an HR professional, you have a tremendous opportunity to leverage the latest in AI and automated HR tools to emerge as a leader in these uncertain times. HR automation is your friend, and can make a real difference in the daily lives of your employees as well as impacting your company’s bottom line.
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3 min read
Best Practices for Recruitment Communications
In the age of instant gratification among consumers and the next generation workforce, it’s all about ease and speed when it comes to your recruitment communications. These are the keys to keeping prospective candidates engaged and responsive while inside your hiring process. The three most common ways recruiters typically use to communicate were email, text and phone. Now we can add two more channels to the mix, AI recruiting chatbots and video. With technology changing the way we communicate so rapidly, let’s review some of the best practices when it comes to chatting with and keeping your applicants in the loop. EMAIL Every recruiter should have a great signature that not only contains their contact info but also your company’s social media links and potentially your logo and calendar link. Using that space as a promotional tool will help you get more followers and encourage them to reach out when needed. In addition your ATS probably comes with a set of templated emails that get triggered when the applicant workflow changes. If you have yet to customize those templates to reflect your company brand, now is a good time to revamp that messaging. Take a look at the employer branding and words used to communicate the message. Make a point to personalize them and soften the tone so that it doesn’t sound like a robot wrote it. In short, put some thought into what it says. TEXT RECRUITING SOFTWARE If your company isn’t using text recruiting software to communicate with candidates yet, then it should be at the top of your shortlist of things to implement next. Millennial job seekers want ease of use when communicating about a job and texting is their preferred way to do that. It’s also attractive for recruiters as well since the response time is almost immediate. According to a CTIA study, the average email response time is 90 minutes, but only 90 seconds for a text message. Plus text recruiting is a better option when it comes to reaching people at work. They are much more likely to reply to a text than answer your call since an SMS is private and let’s them engage on their own schedule. The speed of a text recruitment message is such a killer feature in today’s job market. Remember also to first get their permission, keep all text messages professional and consistent with your employment brand and have a clear objective in mind when sending them. RECRUITING CHATBOTS & AI AI Recruiting chatbots are an important feature offered by top tier recruiting software vendors (Emissary included), especially those focused on recruitment automation. A number of studies have indicated that a majority of job seekers like interacting with them because it makes the process more efficient and puts the candidate in control. Plus a recruitment chatbot is available 24/7 and never takes a day off. If a candidate visits your career page at 10pm at night, they easily ask an AI chatbot a question and get an answer instantly. When it comes to the wording inside your recruiting chatbot, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, be as brief as possible with the answers to the preset questions that you create… remember that efficiency enhances the candidate experience. Two, avoid asking for open ended responses, unless it’s truly necessary and three, set expectations that it’s an automated process, not a real person. Think of your chatbot as an AI powered automated recruiting assistant that acts a bit like an ATM in that the user should prefer the automated tool over live assistance, at least for basic transactions. Recruiting process automation can be a major boon to your recruitment communication strategy when implemented with care. PHONE When it comes to the phone we are mainly referring to the phone screen. That time honored tradition of qualifying a resume that looks interesting. Best practices start by making sure the candidate knows what to expect. Let them know how the process will unfold and set their expectations up front. A typical phone screen should last no more than 20-30 minutes. Therefore you’ll want to focus on the most important questions such as; Why are you leaving your current role? What type of opportunity would make you switch jobs right now? How did you hear about this opportunity? Which core skills are you really good at? On a scale of 1-10 how would your last boss rate your performance? What are your salary expectations? Any questions for me? VIDEO As video interviewing takes hold during the pandemic some recruiters have struggled to use it properly. In my experience it just takes repetition and some attention to the small details that will make you look good on camera. You’ll want to have good lighting and a camera that fills the screen with your face and shoulders. I have seen too many people on a Zoom this year with half the video feed showing more of the ceiling than the person. That is easily corrected by tilting your camera down until you fit in properly. Also invest in a good microphone and be sure to wear your company swag or have a backdrop with a company logo to provide an employer brand boost. Remember that every interaction with a job seeker is a candidate experience that can’t be redone. Make all your recruitment communications, no matter the channel, a good one so every candidate experience is delightful.
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Recruitment Marketing
3 min read
Not Hiring? Build Your Talent Community Instead
Since many companies have had to freeze hiring or layoff people due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, a lot of them are still posting jobs in hopes of “pipelining” candidates. One industry insider told me recently as many as 50% of employers are actively still posting with no intention to hire. But this strategy has one big flaw. It exacerbates the resume black hole for candidates who are looking to find work now. Instead of this tactic, I recommend employers look at building and curating their own talent communities if you truly want to fill your pipeline for future hiring needs. A talent community also provides a slew of long term cost saving benefits especially when it comes to job advertising. The bigger your talent community is, the less you have to spend on external marketing in the future. Your organization already has the foundation of a talent community. It’s the database that sits right inside your ATS but most companies fail to use it properly. A talent community is merely a group of people who have shown interest in working for your company at one point or another. It could be as broad as everyone who’s applied and been rejected or as narrow as your “silver medalists” – those that you interviewed but didn’t hire. These networks usually manifest themselves in an online format which allow you to maintain a relationship with the candidate over time using channels such as email, social media, and video to communicate industry news, job alerts and other updates about your hiring plans. By staying in touch with prospective candidates, a talent community allows you to maintain that relationship the next time a job opening occurs as well as building your employer brand for when they are ready to make a move. If I were building a talent community from scratch, the first order of business would be to hire or assign someone to be the community manager. This person would be responsible for building a digital relationship between you and your candidates through the above mentioned content tactics. Talent Communities Are Not Lists The Talent Community should not be thought of as just a list of people that you communicate with, it should also be a place where they can talk to each other. A number of cloud based software platforms like MightyNetworks or Hivebrite already exist which allow anyone to build a dedicated, private online network. It just takes effort and consistency to make it work. Candidates (especially the good ones) need a good reason to join your talent community. They don’t want to be marketed to with just job alerts. They want to learn and grow in their field and it’s your job to help them do that. One great example of a talent community that works is by a European company called Specsavers. They are an optometry retailer with locations in about 10 different countries. Their talent community is called Green Club, and it’s not branded as Specsavers at all. It’s a login website, with a message board, video content, professional development courses, events and more. It’s become a powerful tool to augment their optometry hires year in and year out. You can setup your community as a pre-screen tool as well by asking some qualifying questions during the signup process to give you better data about the candidates who are joining. Once they’ve signed up you can create and curate content that interests them. In a past role in recruiting I once set up a twitter account to retweet news from the industry my company participated in (ecommerce). I found RSS feeds for all the major news sites that covered the space and rebroadcast their headlines to the twitter account which was branded as a free resource for the industry “powered by” my employer. It became a solid channel to build our brand and share job leads. If you don’t want to go that far you can do something like what the LinkedIn Talent blog does each week. They put together a list of the 10 Must Read Articles for Recruiters each week. This type of content curation is easy to do for any industry. 3 Ways to Use Texting in Your Talent Community Send potential candidates a monthly update on upcoming hiring plans. Offer text based job alerts according to their preferences. Send them a monthly reminder with one of the perks about working for your company. In addition to industry news, you should be sharing content such as company news, interview tips, hiring manager spotlights, career paths, new hires, hiring process FAQs, perks and benefits and related events. Within your talent community, whether its just an email list or a full blown online platform, don’t bombard your members with content. Sending them an email every few weeks with relevant news and if possible segment those emails based on their job type interest. Over time, as your community grows it becomes another channel that you own which will certainly reduce your reliance on outside hiring sources that you are paying for.
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Recruiting Tactics
2 min read
Recruitment Planning After the Pandemic
There’s a ton of uncertainty in the labor market right now. Unemployment claims have slowed but still seem to hit 1 million each week. The cycle of hiring, letting go, and rehiring has thrown everyone a curve. The effects that the pandemic has had on companies has been uneven to say the least. Those working in essential services are extremely busy, while others have to let workers go just to stop themselves from going under. It’s a stressful time for the recruiters that are still actively searching for talent. Be Transparent With Talent Now that many areas are reopening and hiring has started to pickup, it is important to keep potential candidates engaged NOW. Be transparent about when and how you plan to hire. How potential candidates are treated right now creates a lasting impression, making sure you treat people well is extremely important. Now is not the time to post jobs just to collect applicants you don’t plan to hire. Now is the time to keep people interested in your company so that they will still be interested when it is time to hire. This means funneling them into a talent community. For the vast majority of companies this could simply mean collecting emails from candidates who one day have an interest in working for you. You can then send them periodic updates as to your hiring plans and include news and information about your company and industry to keep them informed. Review Your HR Tech Stack After the pandemic some companies may have to go back to high volume hiring, where efficiency is key to recruiting talent in multiple vacant positions before other companies get to them. While idle, now is a great time to invest in newer better technology to make the hiring process more efficient. I have heard from a number of HR tech vendors who said they saw an increase in demos during the height of the pandemic. If your ATS is still a road block for hiring, replace it asap. If you need automated scheduling tools, get that too. Recruitment automation tools and features will become more dominant inside the modern talent organizations of tomorrow. Make Remote a Priority According to new research from background screening company Checkster, they found that 72 percent of recruiters will have to option to work from home permanently, while only 16 percent required to come back to the office. That represents a significant shift from pre-pandemic times when only 8 percent of recruiters reportedly worked from home. The study also indicates that the majority of recruiters employed some form of video or other virtual communication, with Zoom mentioned most frequently, followed by email, phone calls and texting. If you haven’t yet mastered remote working, interviews and onboarding then you will soon need to. Remote hiring is poised to become the norm not the exception as the world of work goes virtual. Once we get through this crazy period in history there will be new changes to the recruitment process as well as the nature of all work. But for now, planning for what lies ahead is what most good talent teams are prepping for.
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Recruiting Automation
3 min read
Candidate Experience in Recruitment Automation
We’ve written a lot about AI and recruitment automation here on this blog. But recruiting automation without empathy for the candidate could have disastrous implications for their experience and how they’ll view your brand in a post Covid-19 world. In an unsettled world where many jobs have been upended, some employers are really putting empathy to work for them. Take Truss for example. The software consulting firm has recently placed the following statement at the top of all their job postings; A note from Truss: We know you’re likely experiencing a lot of disruption as our nation (and our world) responds to COVID-19 – we’re experiencing it, too. There are two things we want you to know when it comes to hiring. First, we’re financially stable. We have a variety of well-established government contracts that we expect to continue over the next few years. Also, we’re winning new work, and we have a robust rainy day fund. Second, during video interviews, you’ll likely see more of our human side. Family members, partners, kids and pets are home with some of us! We promise to be present and engaged, but we may be a little…harried. It’s OK if you are, too – we understand that everyone is experiencing extra stress right now. If you have any questions along the way, please let us know, and stay healthy and safe. There is so much empathy in this paragraph it’s hard to understate. Their words help reassure the candidate that the company is stable and secure and most importantly humanizes the company in ways that most don’t. Automating a recruiting message like this to candidates can be done so easily with most recruiting software that I wonder why most employers haven’t done this yet. You can simply add it in the thank you email or text message that gets sent upon applying in addition to placing in your job description templates. If your company is still using the same language in your automated recruitment communications with applicants, perhaps you should change it to reflect the times we are in just like Truss has done. Setting Expectations Most candidates want the same thing when applying for a job. They want clear communications as to the status of their candidacy. They want to know what will happen next along with some form of timely resolution should they be disqualified. If you don’t think your current recruiting workflow and messaging provides those answers, now is the time to re-read that candidate content and ask yourself if it’s still relevant for the world in which we now find ourselves? Automation in recruiting can save valuable time for talent acquisition teams, but it can also add to the empathy factor for the candidate when it comes to what they want and need to have a good experience. That has a major impact on employer brand perception and candidate experience. There may not be an easier way to increase good will with candidates in this environment. The key factor is then striking the balance between in-person and automated recruiting touch-points so that talent doesn’t feel like they were hired by a machine instead of a recruiter. If job seekers take the time to invest in your recruiting process, then your recruiter (and your recruiting automation software) needs to return that respect by valuing the seeker as a person, not just a resume. A great candidate experience can only happen with the right mix of thoughtful recruitment automation put in place by a human with the job seekers journey in mind. Not only will you get higher acceptance rates from those that apply but your reputation for treating them with empathy will skyrocket your employment brand to new heights. 5 Ways to Use Texting for a Better Candidate Experience Send them a text message to confirm their application was received. Text them directions to your office before the interview. Update them via text as their application status changes in your ATS. Remind them via text that they have an upcoming interview. Send a welcome message by the hiring manager upon them accepting your offer. In the end, recruitment automation is the perfect way to set candidate expectations, provide assurances about your company and the hiring process, as well as letting them know if they are moving to the next step. Those organizations who embrace this new mantra will be the ones who become the employers of choice for the next generation of talent.
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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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