Resources
Human Resources
2 min read
How HR Is Using Text Messaging
Text messaging software for HR is the missing link in effective employee engagement. It gives HR the power to text large groups of employees instantly with the assurance that 95% of text messages get read in the first 3 minutes. With most employees still on lockdown and working from home I asked my HR network to chime in on how they are using texting to communicate with their teams. Nikki Blanche, an HR Consultant had an interesting take. She commented, “I will occasionally text confirmations but only after I have already spoken to the candidate on the phone and if we had a nice rapport. For coworkers (inside and outside of HR), I will text quick notes but only during work hours or if it’s very urgent outside of work hours. I feel it’s less intrusive than a phone call on a Sunday night if I need them to address something first thing Monday morning. I always confirm with the employee far ahead of time to ensure they are okay with this type of communication.” For the most part, HR executives seem to leverage texting for certain situations and/or as a compliment to existing communication tools. Some use it more than others. Here’s what else they’re saying; “I use texting all the time – I work in shipping HR and deal with crew training / certification. I find a lot more people are more receptive to a quick text reminder than an email especially if the changes are last minute. Occasionally we can’t reach our crew by email / call service and have to text to make sure they receive the information and WhatsApp is also something we’ve utilized for this – free and most people have it already installed on their phones also allows for crew to send pictures of medical certificates and doctors notes if necessary.” (Jenna Woodward) “We’ve used a texting service before. It is more infrequent for when we know last minute information would need to go through. For example inclement weather and COVID updates on our office being open vs closed.” (Natalie Peabody) “We text a lot because we feel it’s most convenient for our small business workforce which is made up of many younger workers.” (Crystal Elaine) “I’ve used it informally, meaning there were no expectations, but was a convenience when we were looking for someone in the building. However, as a non-exempt member of HR, I’ve had to ask managers not to text me work stuff on the weekends or after hours.” (Emily Stasiak) “Only if the employee texts me first. I follow their lead as to how they prefer to communicate.” (Dawn Pelej) “We use a mass notification system that includes text, email, and an alert set to everyone’s desk phones. But up until now, it is only used in emergencies or when we’ve wanted to push COVID19 info out. My cell phone number is easily discoverable in our Outlook directory and in my signature line, but really no one texts me except my coworkers.” (Rebecca Vaughan) “I have used text to follow up with employees who are away from work AWOL (often likely FMLA related) where they are not responding to a email or call first or one or two prior outreaches. If it is FMLA, we just need to get supporting docs in place. People need to understand that. I use it sparingly. I always identify myself in the text – not everyone knows my number. I don’t want be perceived to be bordering on harassment, so definitely limit the number and space between texts.” (Danielle Nicoledemou) “The new generation appreciated it. It’s great for transactional or truly urgent communication. Never use it for marketing.” (Eric Freguson) Clearly there are lines drawn when it comes to the use of texting in HR. But the advantages for better workforce communications are there. A SHRM survey of companies with 100,000+ employees indicated that each one lost an average of $62 million due to inadequate communication with their workforce. That’s a huge problem! If you still rely on inefficient, over-saturated communication channels like email, your important messages are not going to get the attention they deserve. For situations like onboarding, sick notifications, announcements, open enrollment and surveys, text messaging is primed to be HR’s favorite new tool.
Continue reading
Human Resources
2 min read
HR Communication Tools for Crisis Management
As companies begin to scramble to prepare their offices and employees for more remote work (aka work from home and WFH) due to the Coronavirus outbreak it makes sense to review some tools and tactics to ensure your HR department can communicate clearly and effectively about what to do and expect going forward. Sure, you could rely on email but times like this call for a more omni channel messaging effort. Alissa Penny, an HR consultant with A Better HR in Texas tells me that HR needs to concentrate on two things during a crisis, communicate loudly and often. She went on to say; “Loudly can mean a lot of different things for different industries, but it is essential that you are communicating your company’s stance on travel, internal policies (especially your sick/leave/PTO policies), and C-Suite messages using methods that will reach employees where they can hear you best. Maybe emails or flyers are best, maybe it’s team meetings, or maybe you have a remote workforce that would benefit from text communications. It’s most likely that a combination of the above will be the most effective. Communicating often should be a given. Employees want to know what’s going on – have things changed? What happens if a family member is affected? What critical things should I know? – communicating often helps reassure employees and reaffirms your company’s stance.” Communicate with Video, Email and Text While your employees are working remotely, it’s more important than ever to make sure everyone stays in the loop with business operations. One company I read about has started broadcasting video messages to staff with the latest information. Hopefully they are doing so through an HR texting platform to ensure those videos are seen and watched ASAP. It’s a little harder to embed video in an email anyway. Recorded videos will give workers an opportunity to catch up when they can’t make it to a live briefing, and follow on bullet points sent by HR via text message can help highlight or reinforce the key takeaways. With that in mind here are some specific channels that HR can leverage in a crisis to communicate. Group Texting: the one to many broadcast ability of an HR texting platform is perfect for organizations or teams that value speed of messaging. It’s also probably the easiest to implement. Emissary’s HR texting tool actually lets users upload a list of employee phone numbers and instantly broadcast to them. Facebook Live via Private Group: companies can leverage a private Facebook group and conduct Facebook Live video events if they want to bring their messages to life. Slack: this group messaging tool can be used via web based desktop or the slack mobile app. Create your own private channels, share documents and more. Zoom: this is the most popular way to conduct video meetings where you could have hundreds of people watching and listening. All video events are automatically recorded to the cloud. Skype: the original remote video/chat tool has come a long way and now supports groups as well as browser based calling. Facebook Messenger: if all your employees are on Facebook you can create a private group chat within the facebook Messenger app. It’s an effective communication tool. Whatsapp: another mobile based messaging tool that is popular with many countries outside of the U.S. Citrix: provides a complete range of digital workspace solutions that unify everything an employee needs to be productive into a seamless, intuitive experience. With Citrix, companies can empower people to work in a flexible, secure and intelligent way that unlocks their creativity and innovation and enables them to deliver better business results. Microsoft Teams: Microsoft’s answer to Slack. Any of the above tool are excellent for broadcasting your messages in a crisis to employees working from home. Pick the ones most relevant to your organization and keep your employees up-to-date.
Continue reading
applicant tracking
1 min read
Emissary and Jobscore Form Partnership
Today, Emissary, the easiest way to embed texting into your recruiting process, is announcing its official partnership with San Francisco based JobScore an applicant tracking system and online network that privately matches people and jobs. This new integration enables JobScore’s clients to make communicating with candidates faster and more efficient. American adults text 30 times per day so it’s no surprise that using text for recruiting is making its way into the hiring process. With this new integration, customers of JobScore can text candidates from anywhere inside of the platform as well as any web page where a phone number is listed. They simply create an account then download the Emissary chrome extension to start texting. Over 1000 employers use JobScore to manage their hiring and they process over 1 Million job applications per year on behalf of their clients. Emissary continues its push to integrate with all the major ATS platforms to make text recruiting a reality in 2020 and beyond.
Continue reading
Recruitment Marketing
2 min read
How to Scale Recruitment Marketing
I’ve heard from a number of employers this year who are looking to scale their recruitment marketing efforts in order to attract more applicants using less resources. Many companies have small teams and recruitment marketing duties often get shifted to HR professionals who weren’t trained on the various ways to market your jobs. If you are an HR department of one you probably understand this more than anyone. As attracting talent gets more technically challenging, a number of tools and techniques have emerged to reach many candidates with the click of a button. To maximize your scaleability you’ll need a few important assets; a job XML feed that contains all of your job listings, a modern ATS and a solid social media tool. Note: If you don’t know what an XML jobs feed is, just ask your ATS. Most applicant tracking platforms provide a job feed as part of the service. Here are my top five solutions to ramping up your recruitment marketing campaigns through technology platforms. Programmatic Job Advertising: Still spending time posting jobs manually? There’s no need to with programmatic job vendors like PandoLogic, Recruitics, Joveo and others. These platforms take all the jobs from your ATS and automatically distribute them to many job boards at once. All you do is set a budget and the technology does the rest by sending money to the jobs that need the clicks. For example if a job hasn’t gotten enough applicants after a certain timeframe the algorithm will automatically start to spend more to reach more candidates. Programmatic advertising is perhaps the cheapest and most effective form of job seeker traffic you can buy today. Automated RSS Campaigns: This is one of the best kept secrets in marketing. I frequently use MailChimp to send automated email newsletters. If you have an RSS feed of jobs or blog posts you can automate that content by creating an RSS Campaign inside their platform. You simply enter the URL of the feed, choose a day and time to send it, add your logo or choose a template and press the launch button. Then once new content gets put into that feed the email goes out according to the schedule you set up. I think this functionality exists in tools like Hubspot as well. Texting: No surprise here, but adding a text recruiting platform to your HR tech stack will supercharge your efforts and save you valuable time by reaching more candidates. 90% of texts are read within 3 minutes vs. 80% of emails that are never read at all. Those are convincing numbers to make the switch now. ATS Triggers: Just about every company needs to review and revamp their automatic message triggers in their applicant tracking software workflow. This feature (which any good ATS has) sends a message via email or text to the candidate alerting them of their new status. Those messages should inform the candidate to what’s happening to their application and where they stand in the process. If you aren’t leveraging those alerts to their maximum use you are not optimizing the candidate experience. Social Media Tools: Social media management tools like Buffer, Dlvr.it and Zapier allow you to send and track job and other career content to your followers. They feature RSS publishing campaigns like I mentioned above and more importantly you can schedule and recycle important content. Zapier even has several ATS integrations with platforms like Workable, BambooHR, Greenhouse, BreezyHR and many others. Employers can set up automations called “Zaps,” to build candidate nurturing funnels that provides custom content to candidates based on their actions. For example when a candidate is added to a specific Breezy HR stag, Zapier will share the details as a Slack message. Leveraging these tactics will, for many of you, become a set it and forget it solution, thus leaving you more time to connect with those most important to you…the candidate. Do you have other suggestions on scaling recruitment marketing? I’d love to hear them so drop me a note on our contact page.
Continue reading
AI recruiting
3 min read
How is AI used in Recruitment?
Recruiters, chances are you know a job seeker, or you were one yourself not too long ago. And thus, you know the plight of being lost in “the resume black hole.” For candidates, the application process seems to be where resumes go to die. But YOU know that an average job can receive up to 250 applications and the average Recruiter can typically carry 30-90 requisitions at a time. Multiply that out and you are overwhelmed. PLUS, you have to conduct phone screens AND service all of your hiring managers AND coordinate interviews, feedback, offers and communications AND attend way too many meetings AND handle an endless amount of phone calls and emails AND attend to compliance and administrative tasks AND prepare pipeline and activity reports AND make sure you’re hitting your metrics AND spend time sourcing, researching, networking and cold calling on positions that don’t have qualified applicants. You need help! Enter AI and automation. For all these reasons, AI has a growing presence in Recruiting because of its ability to automate repetitive high-volume tasks like sourcing, screening, scheduling, and communicating… and as an added bonus can even eliminate bias. But beware of some of the common pitfalls. SOURCING AI AI can sift through enormous volumes of data across your CRM and ATS, on external job boards and social profiles and can make decisions or recommendations on who out there might be the best fit for a short(er) list based on key words. Advantages: Saves immeasurable amounts of research hours scouring databases and the internet for qualified prospects to reach out to. It can also augment profiles to incorporate information from multiple sites including contact information – more research time saved. Eliminates bias by focusing only on job skills and competencies. Machine learning continues to improve results with Recruiter feedback. Where it can go wrong: Your AI may start out unbiased, but machine learning can begin to incorporate bias as it adjusts results to Recruiter feedback. It also doesn’t possess independent judgment to evaluate the quality of one’s content over another’s and therefore strong prospects may be overlooked if they have incomplete profiles, use different wording, lingo, acronyms or have highly transferable skills but lack specific key words. A colleague of mine once worked with a team in a Sourcing Center of Excellence where they compared the top recommended prospects from an AI sourcing tool to the top recommended prospects from a human Sourcer. Guess who found the best overall quality profiles? (Hint: the one with a pulse and the ability to make qualitative judgments). Lastly, depending on how the sourcing jobs are set up in the AI platform, Recruiters may need to refine the searches for machine learning repetitively for a single role across multiple geographies, rendering it completely inefficient. WHAT IS AI SCREENING? AI will scan applicant resumes for key words (a convenience for Recruiters) and can also pre-populate information into the online application (a convenience for candidates). It will weed out resumes that are the least key word rich compared to the job description. Advantages: This form of screening saves time for Recruiters in having to visually scan every applicant. It also eliminates bias by focusing only on job skills and competencies. Where it can go wrong: Again, the AI does not make any judgments on who might be the best fit, only who has the most matching key words. Also, if a resume has a complex layout, file type other than Word or PDF, fancy graphics, bullets, borders, lines, symbols, fonts or special characters, the AI may not be able to interpret it properly. So, strong candidates may be screened out through the automation and you’ve created a poor candidate experience. SCHEDULING AI can automate the scheduling process for phone screens and hiring manager interviews and sync with individual calendars. Advantages: Saves time and lots of back and forth trying to coordinate schedules and mutual availability via emails, phone calls and individual calendar management. Convenience creates a good experience for all and reduces time to fill. Where it can go wrong: Poor management of availability time slots. COMMUNICATION AI chatbots can automate the communication process, allowing candidates to get on demand answers about the company, the benefits, the process and their status in the process. Advantages: Can create a higher quality experience, when job seekers can get responses and answers to common questions. Text and chatbots can also automate and shorten parts of the apply process by collecting profile information up front during the Q&A session. Where it can go wrong: If poorly or incompletely configured, can be a source of frustration and waste of time contributing to a bad candidate experience. How AI can help recruiting? In a lot of ways, AI has made great improvements to the Talent Acquisition profession. Where it is able to sift through large amounts of data, keep people informed, shorten the process and provide convenience, it creates efficiencies of scale, enhances communication, removes bottlenecks and provides a higher quality experience for all parties. However, when used ineffectively or in place of necessary valuable human judgment or interaction, it can do more harm than good, resulting in inefficiencies, overlooking quality prospects, screening out quality candidates, and frustrating job seekers, recruiters and hiring managers. I’m also not sure AI can follow a “hire for attitude, train for skills” model. We’d love to hear your feedback. Drop us a note to tell us how your company is using AI and what advantages and drawbacks are you seeing.
Continue reading
Product News
2 min read
Emissary.ai Partners With Greenhouse
NEW YORK – Today, Emissary, the easiest way to embed texting into your recruiting process, announced its official partnership with Greenhouse, the fastest-growing enterprise talent acquisition suite. This new integration enables recruiting teams to make communicating with candidates faster and more efficient. With an average response time of 60X vs email, texting is becoming a primary recruiting channel that enables talent acquisition teams to scale up their efforts by reaching more candidates in a shorter time frame. With this new integration, Greenhouse customers can text candidates from anywhere inside of the platform as well as any web page where a phone number is listed. They simply create an account then download the Emissary chrome extension to start texting. Conversations are stored within the candidate profile pages and can be seen by any user within the same Greenhouse account. “Emissary is the easiest way to connect with candidates faster, and more effectively…wherever they are,” said Euan Hayward, CEO of Emissary. “We are continually partnering with modern recruitment software vendors like Greenhouse to help make text recruiting a primary tool in every recruiters toolbox. This new integration can be setup quickly allowing users to text within minutes of activation.” Emissary is listed under the Productivity & Collaboration section of their Partners page. About Emissary Emissary is a candidate engagement platform built to empower recruiters with efficient, modern communication tools that work in harmony with other recruiting solutions. Our text recruiting platform features 1 to 1 texting, text campaigns, short codes for events, apply reminders and more. We provide enterprise grade texting that lets your team reach the best prospects instantly, wherever they are. Learn more at Emissary.ai. About Greenhouse Greenhouse is the hiring software company. We help businesses become great at hiring through our powerful hiring approach, complete suite of software and services and large partner ecosystem – so businesses can hire for what’s next. Based in New York City with offices in San Francisco, Denver and Dublin, Greenhouse Software has nearly 4,000 customers. Some of the smartest and most successful companies like HubSpot, Cisco Meraki, Buzzfeed, J.D. Power and Warby Parker use Greenhouse’s hiring software platform to improve all aspects of hiring, helping them to attract top talent. Greenhouse has won numerous awards including Glassdoor #1 Best Place to Work, Forbes Cloud 100 and Crain’s Fast 50. The company’s talent acquisition suite has recently been named a leader in the IDC MarketScape Worldwide and U.S. Modern Talent Acquisition Suites for Medium-Sized Enterprise 2019 Vendor Assessment. Greenhouse lives its mission of helping companies become great at hiring, having been recognized as an Inc. Magazine Best Workplace in 2019 and 2018. Greenhouse has been named to the Inc. 5000 2019 Fastest Growing Companies, Deloitte’s 2018 Fast 500 North America Technology Ranking and Crain’s New York Business Fast 50.
Continue reading
Recruiting Automation
2 min read
How Recruitment Automation Software Improves Hiring
Automation is coming to recruitment. As we enter this new age, it’s important for recruiting teams to embrace these new tools in order to keep up with the times. Those that don’t embrace automation will fall behind and candidates will notice. Thankfully, most recruiters have seen the light. According to one 2019 study, over 80% of recruiters agree that recruitment automation software can help increase their productivity. And the most successful talent organizations see automation as a core component of their recruitment strategy. Though some may think that it may be hard to see how automation and candidate engagement can coexist, there is a way to ensure the right balance. It starts by looking for aspects of your workflow where a machine can replace a human. Then its a matter of finding and selecting the right platforms to make that automation a reality. The question surrounding recruiting automation is no longer “should we?” but rather “how do we?” With 75% of recruiters indicating that technology will play a larger role in their companies hiring process in 2019 and 22% increasing their spend on recruiting automation, it’s absolutely critical that these talent teams get the “how” piece right. ~Entelo With that in mind, here are five ways to better engage candidates with automation. Set their expectations. More information about your company’s recruiting process is needed for your website and on the ‘Thank You for Applying‘ autoresponder. Tell candidates what they can expect to happen next. Spell out your entire hiring process for them so they can be at ease after applying. Doing so will also prevent questions later down the funnel. Insurance giant GEICO does this well (example). There’s no reason you couldn’t replicate something similar and deliver it to job seekers in an automated message. Talk to them through chatbots. Having a chatbot that can answer basic FAQs about your company, culture and process is a no brainer these days. It acts as a virtual recruiter saving your humans valuable time instead of having to respond to individual emails. Keep them updated. Most modern ATS (applicant tracking systems) allow for automated emails to be sent as recruiters change the candidate status. Be sure your workflow is set up to trigger these alerts so you can keep candidates in the loop about their application. Nothing frustrates a job seeker more than NOT knowing where they stand. Automated alerts can aleve some of that pain. If your ATS doesn’t have automatic triggers give our friends at Greenhouse or SmartRecruiters a call. Let them self-schedule. The scheduling of phone screens and interviews is ripe for automation especially on the high volume side of recruiting. Home Depot allows candidates to self-schedule interviews with their store hiring teams once they pass the online screening. Tools like Calendly can be used on an individual basis to let candidates pick a time slot that works for them. Stay on their radar. Lastly use automation to stay in touch with candidates with important company news, job alerts and more. For instance in the email tool Mailchimp, you can create automated newsletters using RSS feeds. If you blog, you can automatically send out a newsletter at a scheduled day/time each time you post a piece of content. Just set it and forget it once its in place. What is recruitment automation? Recruiting automation is where the candidate experience is headed. It is going to free up immense amounts of time for your recruiters so they can return to the more valuable parts of their day—connecting 1 on 1 with candidates and holding meaningful conversations with them. Automation is already part of today’s workflow via tools like the ATS and HRIS system that provide self guided funnels into the apply process or employee experience. So get them involved to help you map out your automation strategy. Ask your vendors how they specifically automate certain functions. Devise a rollout plan with milestones, and work closely with your team to identify specific needs by walking through your hiring process step by step. If you lay the groundwork upfront your recruiters will see firsthand the benefits of recruitment automation software for getting candidates in the door faster.
Continue reading
2 min read
9 Ways HR Should Be Using Text Messaging
It’s an exciting time to be running a texting platform for businesses. We’re learning a lot and and supremely passionate about what we do. Though text recruiting still has inroads to make in corporate America we are glad to be along for the ride. Our customers teach us new things almost everyday. One of the early learnings we’ve picked up is how some of our customers began using our tool to send internal communications. By simply uploading a list of employee phone numbers your HR team can reach nearly every employee in an instant. It’s great to see how our user base finds new ways to make texting a primary part of their day to day activities. So with that in mind, let’s explore all the ways you can use SMS to foster a more engaging internal human resources communications strategy. Onboarding New Employees: Texting offers you a simple effective way to remind your new hire where to go on their first day of work as well as links to important information. Mass Notifications: Having a snow day? Want to remind employees of the upcoming holiday schedule? Notify your workforce about schedule changes, closings and more. Open Enrollment: Every fall you need to communicate the latest options and enrollment forms for their healthcare. Text messages offer a much faster way at ensuring everyone is prepared. Employee Feedback: Send survey links by text to get a better completion rate. You will get more responses if you use SMS instead of email. Motivation: Keep your team motivated with exciting company news or perhaps by giving 1 to 1 shoutouts to personnel who go above and beyond the call of duty. Let them know they are appreciated. Payroll & Timesheets: Remind hourly workers about payroll changes and timesheets that are due. Avoid delays by automating payroll reminders before pay periods! PTO information as well. Training Classes: Having an upcoming lunch and learn? Or perhaps you are sending your team to a new training class? Remind them of the details for their learning and development. Performance Reviews: Annual performance review reminders are perfect for SMS. Let your employees know when they are happening so they can be prepared. Leadership Messages: Most companies send out important CEO messages via email but again your open rates for these messages will not match what text can provide. Emails can get lost in the shuffle of everyday work making deadlines more difficult to meet or getting workers to show up. Meetings are time intensive and interruptive. Texts cut through that clutter. The ideas above can and should be a part of your text messaging strategy this year and beyond. Just be sure not to over do it, there is such a thing as too many texts. Book a demo today and learn more about getting started with text messaging for your business.
Continue reading
Recruiting Tactics
2 min read
Streamline Your Text to Apply with Google Forms
When it comes to the apply by text application process, candidates are often still faced with the fact they’ll be redirected to a web page to continue. This usually presents problems in that each ATS handles applying differently, sometimes requiring the candidate to register first or worse, being forced into a long form which would take forever to complete on mobile. As the web moves to a ‘mobile first’ environment so too must recruiting software vendors if they want to convert that traffic into applications. Programmatic job platform Appcast says that 55% of all clicks to jobs they tracked in 2018 came from a mobile device. Therefore if you want more mobile job applications as an employer, it will greatly benefit you to streamline your apply by text and mobile apply experiences. You could allow people to apply by text using an AI recruiting chatbot, but only if you >didn’t> require a resume. Grabbing their name, contact info and answering a few questions is easy over SMS but they still won’t be able to upload a document. That requires a web browser. In my opinion, one of the best ways to handle the mobile job apply is to keep the number of required fields limited, provide a cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive, LinkedIn etc) resume upload option and remove the register to apply function. Combined, those steps make an effective apply by text process achievable for most employers. One simple hack to do that (without an ATS) is to leverage a simple >Google Forms page for your text or mobile apply process. Part of the Google Drive product set, >Google Forms> feature easy to build web based forms that any business can use to collect information. Importantly, all Google Forms are mobile friendly out of the box, so they will look good and be easy to use on your candidates’ screens. Google offers a number of prebuilt forms that anyone can use for conducting surveys or collecting job applications. All the data collected is stored online and you can export it as well as be alerted by email that someone has completed the form. Below is a sample job description form I set up. The page is customizable in terms of colors and cover image. The upload resume function can be implemented via Google Drive. This type of hack is great for an SMB owner who doesn’t have an applicant tracking system of their own. But, it can also work for large employers that want an elegant apply by text application form, but need to work around the constraints of their enterprise ATS to get it. For those SMBs looking for a mobile friendly apply ATS out of the box, consider vendors like >Greenhouse> (an Emissary partner) which provides a simple job application form directly on the bottom of each job description, thus eliminating the need to even click the Apply button to get started. Emissary & Greenhouse offer a powerful way to improve your own text to apply experience.
Continue readingAbout Emissary
Emissary is a candidate engagement platform built to empower recruiters with efficient, modern communication tools that work in harmony with other recruiting solutions.
Stay in the loop!
Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter and keep up to date with the latest Recruiting and HR tips and trends.
By clicking send you’ll receive occasional emails from us.