Recruiting Technology
Recruiting Technology
Talent Exchange for Recruiting?
What if companies decided to share talent among each other? That’s always been the general idea behind so-called talent exchanges’. Over the years, I have seen a number attempts at startups tackling this idea to help connect job seekers and employers. None took off but that might be slowly changing. What is a talent exchange? The Griffin Groupe defines a talent exchange as an online (possibly cloud technology-based) platform spanning worker type, location , and time . This broad definition could conceivably include job boards, crowdsourcing platforms, and the Staffing Industry. You could also say the exchange of talent can also be applied beyond the organizational level. Many companies now take part in larger scale exchange programs which involve partnering with other organizations or educational institutions in order to access new sources of talent. These partnerships provide an opportunity for companies to expand their networks, exchange best practices and information about new markets and resources, as well as gain valuable insights into how to better serve employees across different industries. Furthermore, such exchanges help employers develop innovative solutions for recruiting top talent that may not have been accessible before. Overall, the exchange of talent can be an invaluable source of recruitment support for companies looking to stay ahead of the labor market. Do talent exchanges exist? Yes in fact the A.I. recruiting platform Eightfold operates a talent exchange in which many of their clients participate. It’s called the “Career Exchange”. They started it in 2020, when the economy saw entire industries disrupted and job seekers “left in a state of uncertainty as they tried to find new opportunities.” Eightfold says many of these individuals have transferable skills that are relevant across industries, but it was difficult to identify employment opportunities at companies that are still hiring. So they launched the Career Exchange free of charge to help recruiters and job seekers find each other using AI-based skill matching. I think a national platform is needed to helped displaced workers find new opportunities. We are seeing companies share spreadsheets of laid off workers. A national talent exchange could; Instantly provide new job opportunities at other companies that are hiring. Let employers communicate with furloughed or laid off workers so they can get rehired faster. Provide a one stop shop to both employer and seeker. A talent exchange has the same kind of features as a job board does its just concentrates the candidate side to laid of or furloughed workers. It should have private messaging functionality, job alerts, automatic skills matching and the ability for employers to search from and source that talent. There is one site today, Layoffs.fyi which does crowdsource lists of laid off workers. Check it out here. The popularity of posting spreadsheets online is a good first step but some kind of online platform that all employers were encouraged to use might be just what recruiting needs right now. Especially with all the disaffected workers out there. Seems to me the big HCM platforms which currently house all that employee data could become the catalyst for such a tool. Being able to export a list of laid off workers into a national talent exchange would be how I’d start to build it.
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Blind
Employer Review Sites
There are a growing number of employer review sites now operating online. Glassdoor was the first of course, and today this space is dominated by them and Indeed which also has tens of thousands of company reviews mixed with their job content. As the job search has taken on a more consumer like experience, employer reviews have become an offshoot of this trend. But that hasn’t stopped other players from entering the market. A number of sites that target women like FairyGodBoss have reviews and a new employer review site, JobSage launched last month. Here’s how they describe themselves; “As a third party, we’re able to maintain employee anonymity and provide a safe space for employees to share with honesty. Moreover, employees can provide their demographic information, which gives jobseekers more context into these insights. Combined, this approach lets us create authentic, accessible conversations about what it is really like to work somewhere.” Are employer review sites good for candidates? Employers have been known to game them by offering incentives for employees to post positive reviews. Glassdoor has been accused by some employers of keeping up bad reviews for a ransom unless you pay them. Sometimes they budge sometimes they dont. A past company I worked for tried to get a scathing post about the CEO removed but they refused to take it down. I’ve heard through the recruiting grapevine that some posts can be removed but you’d better have a good reason to do so. Like with many online review sites, job seekers should take these posts with a grain of salt. Some reviews can be outdated as time goes by and some may focus on certain departments at a company. But if you are looking to join in a different area, the working conditions might be a little better. The main worry from an employer standpoint is that negative reviews discourage people from applying and tarnish your employer brand. That’s why recruitment marketers need to take a proactive approach with these platform in order to better manage your reputation among candidates. You must constantly monitor these sites in order to flag potential false posts and well as respond to candidates which sites like Glassdoor allow you to do. List of employer review sites As I mentioned Indeed and Glassdoor lead the pack but here’s the other platforms you should be aware of that take job seeker reviews. FairyGodBoss: reviews for the female perspective. This platform helps women get jobs where they are “treated fairly”, paid the same as men and appreciated in their work. Comparably: known for providing detailed info of a company’s culture, compensation, and employee sentiment. Their salary data is contributed anonymously. Kununu: Online since 2007, kununu gives job seekers an inside look into companies *before* they work there through company reviews, and allow all employees to contribute to the greater community by sharing their real work-life experiences. Blind: known for its anonymous reviews, users must verify their company address in order to join and their review and posts are completely anonymous. They bill the platform as the “anonymous community app for the workplace. Our vision in creating this space was to break down professional barriers and hierarchy.” CareerBliss: this is a traditional job site plus company reviews which number over 700,000 according to the company. They also claim 4 million salary comparisons to review. JobSage: the newest review site on the market that launched in late 2021, they focus on inclusion, growth, compensation, purpose, focus and flexibility in their reviews. InHerSight: another female focused site where women can rate and review their experience at companies and can get matched to a job at a company that shares their values. The site collects data on 18 key metrics—both formal policies and “soft” policies—that matter most to working women, including flexible work hours, maternity and adoptive leave, family growth support (e.g., child care and lactation rooms), salary satisfaction, mentoring, management opportunities for women, and women in leadership positions. Employer review sites are here to stay but their influence may be waning over the use of social media in general. An employee is more likely at this point to complain about their job on a platform like TikTok for example.
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Recruiting Technology
Mining Your Applicant Tracking Software for Talent
There’s gold in your applicant tracking software. It’s called talent. Disguised as silver and bronze, these are the job seekers who almost got hired the last time. They were edged out by a candidate with a bit more experience, an extra skill or maybe because they had a firmer handshake or were an internal referral. Now a year or two later, these runners-up have more experience. They’ve enhanced their skills and picked up others. They’ve tackled new and likely even more challenging projects than when they were first interviewed. And you know they wanted to join your organization. Especially in this tight labor market, they should be the first candidates to be considered. But they won’t be. Most recruiters never search their applicant tracking software, so they’ll never find the gold candidates waiting there. Several years ago, a survey of some 8,000 companies discovered that the resumes in their ATS might as well have gone into the trash. Not only did two-thirds of the companies have no idea how many candidates were in their applicant tracking software, a shocking 98% never made a hire from there. Rediscover Your Talent If that survey were conducted today, the percentage of recruiters who search the ATS for candidates would be higher. Credit that to the intense competition for talent and, at the largest companies, the candidate pipeline building. Still, at most organizations recruiters never think first, or at all, of searching the ATS. Why is that? Habit, born of the difficulty of searching applicant tracking software. Without training and at least some search skills, recruiters find it easier to send a job posting to job boards and the company career site. Applicant tracking software may have become more versatile over the years, but searching the candidate resumes takes time and, for most systems, a good grasp of what it takes to search with precision. Sending a stock job description out into the world takes seconds. Writing about the search shortcomings of applicant tracking software, recruitment author and marketer Travis Scott said, “They’re pretty awful for nearly everything except being a database.” Yet, as he notes, that database is “a gold mine of candidates that could become a valuable competitive advantage. Most companies won’t leverage this resource. Not because it’s impossible, but because it’s difficult.” Fortunately, today’s applicant tracking software now has artificial intelligence designed in. Instead of being limited to searching by titles, years of experience or keywords, AI enabled systems can extract all candidates matching a job description. If interview scheduling and reporting are part of the applicant tracking software – a feature most systems now include – finding your runners up is easier than ever before. Search Your Applicant Tracking Software There are also third-party AI tools that will search the entire web and your ATS, compiling profiles on the candidates they source and scoring each. As powerful as these tools are, they’re only as accurate as the information they find. If the resumes of your silver and bronze runners-up haven’t been updated, they may get missed in a search. This is why Scott and Jennifer Roeslmeier, senior digital marketing and brands manager at Automated Business Designs, say staying in touch with the best candidates is so critical. Talent acquisition professionals agree that building pipelines of candidates should be something every company does. Segment them by skills or job function so you know which pipeline to tap when an opening arises. Keep them engaged by regularly sending newsletters of useful company and industry news and periodically having them update their resume. Candidate relationship management (CRM) software allows you to automate the workflow and will schedule mailings into the future. Applicant tracking software can do some of this, though a CRM makes the process simpler and more automatic. Developing pipelines and staying engaged with your best candidates, especially those who almost got the job, gives you a competitive advantage. This talent rediscovery helps you win the war for passive talent. Says Bennett Sung, a recruitment technologist and marketer, “You are sitting on a metaphorical goldmine. Without a strategy for candidate rediscovery, segmentation, and engagement, you will never know its full worth. In today’s tight talent market, employers can’t afford to lose out on any candidates — especially not those already in their pipelines. “By combining the right technology with a curated content strategy that accounts for candidate segments, you’ll be able to keep the pipeline flowing.” Written by John Zappe
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Recruiting Technology
How to do Video Job Interviews
For the better part of two decades, recruiters have used video interviewing to accommodate working or distant candidates, hiring teams with busy schedules and save on travel costs. It was a modestly growing trend among large and some mid-sized employers until the covid pandemic ended face-to-face meetings. In just a few months, 89% of all companies were conducting virtual interviews. Suddenly recruiters and hiring managers accustomed to face-to-face interviews had to cope with a whole new way of conducting an interview. Few knew how to do video job interviews, so most just plunged ahead and interviewed candidates as they always had. Yet video interviewing is different from in-person interviews in ways that are both obvious and subtle. Each has unique advantages — convenience and speed for virtual interviewing and engagement and personal connection for in-person interviews. With 81% of talent professionals expecting video interviewing to continue post-Covid, knowing how to do video job interviews is essential. The new norm will be a hybrid model combining video and in-person interviews, according to 41% of recruiting leaders. In this primer we’ll discuss how to do video job interviews and describe differences and some of the best practices. When to use video interviews Video interviews are most often used in situations where the candidate is remote and so is the job, or when a highly desired candidate is hesitant to take time off from work to travel. Video interviews are also a convenient way to avoid scheduling challenges, especially when the candidate is to meet with more than one person. In high volume hiring, one-way video interviews, where candidates respond on camera to a pre-recorded set of questions, are often used because they make it possible for a recruiter to review dozens of candidates in the time it would take to do just a few phone screens. Virtual job fairs serve the same end enabling two-way conversations that can lead to immediate job offers. Best practices How to do video job interviews effectively takes more than good lighting and a solid internet connection. It’s not just conducting an interview the same way you would if the person was sitting in front of you. Just as for an in-person interview, candidates need to be told the when and who and what to expect. Beyond that, they need instructions on how the technology works, especially if you’re using one of the many video interviewing platforms instead of the more familiar Zoom, Skype or Google Meet. Communicate technical details Give your candidates tips about lighting and the proper setting. Remind them the video will be recorded. To avoid the potential for interviewers being biased by what they see behind the candidate, suggest the candidate use a neutral, virtual background or, better yet, provide each candidate one. Encourage candidates to do a test run before the actual interview. And be sure everyone knows what to do in case of a loss of access. Be professional – and forgiving Log on early. No one likes to be kept waiting, but online there’s no one to reassure the candidate that the interviewer will be right with them or is running a few minutes late. If that is the case, let them know by text or email. During the interview, be professional. Without the clear cues from having a live person in front of you, there’s a tendency to be more casual. Turn off your phone and messaging apps on the computer. Focus on the candidate and don’t multitask. If you’re taking notes, let the candidate know. Otherwise it can appear you’re not paying attention. Adjust the camera position so you’re looking straight ahead at the candidate. Look directly into the camera and not down at the screen when speaking, as that’s how you make eye contact. Be forgiving of the unexpected. Latency in the connection can cause slow responses and image freezing. If your candidate is interviewing from home there may be interruptions: a barking dog, FedEx at the door, or children talking. Show the company culture One of the less obvious differences with a virtual interview is that candidates don’t get to see anything of the company culture and the environment. LinkedIn says 51% of candidates want an office tour. As a substitute, offer a virtual one. Bigger companies bring in a production team to create a highly polished tour, like this one. You can also create a compelling tour by doing what Datadog did and pull together a collection of individual pictures. Standardize the interview Whether virtual or in-person, the most effective interviews are structured. Because virtual interviews can be recorded, asking a standard list of questions of each candidate allows for easy comparison and reduces the potential for bias. At the conclusion, inform the candidate of the next steps. The video job interview advantage For companies that know how to do video job interviews effectively, they can be an advantage over competitors that don’t offer them or don’t do them well. A survey by the hiring technology provider iCIMS found 83% of candidates see employers that use them as more innovative. Virtual recruiting is not just here to stay; 7-in-10 talent acquisition professionals expect it to become the new standard in recruiting. In fact, 23% expect to rely exclusively on video. In this tight hiring environment to be competitive and attract the best people wherever you find them, it’s more important than ever that every member of the recruiting team knows how to do video job interviews well. John Zappe Contributed
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Recruiting Technology
How to Make Google For Jobs Work For You
With the majority of job seekers beginning their search on Google, no employer can afford to ignore the opportunity to post their openings to Google For Jobs. Its been said that up to 80% of all job searches start on the search engine. This free job listing tool gets as many as 150 million searches each month. And that’s just in the U.S. Indeed, which is the most heavily trafficked job board in the world, counts about 250 million monthly job searchers worldwide. The numbers alone are a reason for employers to submit their jobs to Google. Casting a wide net in this competitive hiring environment only increases the chances of attracting candidates. The phrase ‘jobs near me’ is actually of the most popular searches on Google. But more than just numbers, Google’s emphasis on user experience and its search prowess make it simple for job seekers to zero in on exactly the jobs they want. That benefits companies because the candidates that apply have targeted the job and the company with a precision few other job boards can match. When Google For Jobs was launched in 2017, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said the goal was to “better connect employers and job seekers.” To that end, Google added search filters to so finely tune a search that job seekers can narrow down openings by the length of the commute. A search that might start as generically as “retail jobs near me” can be filtered for only certain companies, location, title, skills, date of the posting, and whether the job is 2 miles, 15 miles or anywhere. That level of filtering and search matching, unrivaled by most commercial job sites, makes Google For Jobs as useful for employers with only a few jobs as for large enterprises with thousands of openings a month. So valuable is Google for Jobs that with the exception of Indeed, job boards and staffing companies send their listings to Google. To make searching even more job seeker friendly, Google For Jobs is prioritizing listings where job seekers go directly to an application without an intermediate step to register. In announcing its “directApply” feature, Google also said it won’t allow content from career sites that spam their pages with obstructive text and images, excessive and distracting ads, or content that doesn’t add any value to the job posting or is grammatically incorrect. ATS vendors should take note because Google may penalize you after October 1st 2021 for not letting candidates apply immediately rather than forcing them to login or go through other hoops before they can submit a resume. Participating in Google For Jobs requires an employer or other contributor to code their job postings according to Google’s specific formatting requirements before uploading them. Complying with this schema can be complicated. However, most of the leading applicant tracking systems now do this automatically. Job boards also do the same, hoping to benefit from the additional job seeker traffic Google For Jobs sends. As attractive as Google For Jobs is, the tricky part is getting a job to place high up in the search results. That’s where search engine optimization is important and Google’s famed algorithms come in. They take into account a number of factors including how many of the schema’s properties are included and how specific the posting is. The ability for a candidate to directly apply for the job will rank a job much higher than a similar one without that capability. Even with a high ranking in the search results, there’s no guarantee an employer’s career site will be listed among the places a candidate can chose to go to apply. Since it’s common for a job posting to be distributed to several sites all of which may send it to Google, those from sites that best comply with the editorial content guidance are most likely to be listed as an application destination. That means Google won’t just look at the job posting, but will also weigh the value of each site submitting a job. Employers who want to benefit from the job seeker traffic and the visibility Google For Jobs can provide should do whatever housecleaning is needed to comply with the editorial guidance. Improving the candidate experience on your site not only will aid your chances of ranking high up on Google For Jobs, but it will make you a more attractive employer to candidates no matter how they get to you. ### John Zappe Contributed
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Recruiting Technology
What is Resume Parsing?
Resume parsing is one of those behind the scenes technology most recruiters never see in action. The job of a parser is to analyze a resume, then extract the candidate’s information into a database using the proper fields for each piece of data such as job title, past employers and contact data. Once completed the recruiter can then search that data via keywords and filters within the ATS. Some resume parsing tools even include semantic search which adds content to search terms with the goal of understanding user intent to provide more relevant results. Without resume parsers all of the resume data ever collected would not be organized. Resume parsing software provides employers an effective tool to identify skills and keywords in order to sort through large amounts of applications to identify the best applicants. It’s also a time save for recruiters since it removes the burden of hand reviewing each application. Parsing Isn’t Perfect According to Wikipedia, Resume parsers have “achieved up to 87% accuracy, which refers to the accuracy of data entry and categorizing the data correctly.” But challenges still remain since not all resumes are created equal. Interpreting what a candidate says on their resume can be problematic. So resumes are bound to fall through the cracks when it comes to being found in an applicant tracking system. Language is ambiguous, and some words can have multiple meaning. The key to a good resume parser is being smart enough to interpret the language properly. Optimizing for Resume Parsers Job seekers are often faced with the complications of resume parsers. Who among us hasn’t encountered a job application form that did not properly import our resume data, thus forcing us to go in and re-type our entire employment history? A frustrating experience that happens too often. But there are things you can do to optimize your resume for this experience. Candidates need to design their resumes with parsers in mind if they want to be more discoverable inside that vast resume databases that employers guard so closely. First piece of advice, use simple fonts and text. Don’t get fancy. Fancy means un-parsable in many cases. Write your name in the filename of your resume Save resumes in .docx format for best parsing compatibility Use the same font throughout the entire document, don’t mix them Avoid tables and columns at all cost Avoid using images in your resume Resume Parsing Vendors Only a handful of resume parsing tools actually exist today. They are Rchilli, Sovren, Daxtra, Hireability and TextKernel. These platforms are typically built into job boards and applicant tracking systems as a feature but you can also use them individually though an integration. Future of Parsing We can expect parsers to extract more structured data from around the web including things like LinkedIn profiles and other unstructured data graphs. As the internet explodes with more and more information about people, parsers should be at the forefront of capturing this data and putting it into readable context for searchers. You can also expect more features like OCR or Optical Character Recognition to be more widely used. Rchilli is using OCR currently and says the benefit is that any formatted resume can be scanned, eliminating missed candidates.
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AI
What Is an AI Recruiting Assistant
Regis Corporation, the largest salon owner and franchiser in the United States, hires thousands of stylists a year with almost no help from a recruiter. How do they do it? By using an AI recruiting assistant. “Tasks that are assumed to take a team, or an individual, to manage are no longer the case,” explains Jacob Kramer, associate vice president of talent acquisition and head of the Regis automation project that turned over the sourcing, contact, and application process to an AI assistant. “AI can be used to thoroughly streamline the recruiting process, enhance the candidate experience and build out workforce planning automation.” AI-powered natural language assistants are fast becoming must-have recruiting tools, freeing their human recruiters from tedious routine tasks while simultaneously improving the candidate experience. As the Regis example demonstrates, these assistants make it possible to connect with candidates, walk them through the application process answering questions as they go, qualify them and schedule them to meet with a hiring manager in minutes or hours instead of the days it would take a human to handle the details. AI assistants are chatbots AI assistants are chatbots, similar to Siri or Google Assistant, and deployed not just by large companies with high volume hiring needs. Smaller organizations benefit just as much by implementing them on their career sites. There, they will answer questions about health benefits for one candidate, help another with their job search while asking others qualifying questions – and do it all at the same time. These bots as they’re sometimes called are a far cry from those of just a few years ago. The first chatbots were text-based decision trees, identical in approach to the “touch 1 for this or 2 for that” of automated corporate phone systems. While these types of chatbots still outnumber AI assistants, they’re rapidly being replaced by bots that understand questions the way a human can. For example, an AI-enabled recruiting assistant can tell from the context and nature of a conversation about benefits that a candidate asking, “What about pets?” is probably inquiring if the organization offers pet insurance. Without the help of an AI assistant, a potential candidate who considers pet insurance essential might simply choose not to apply if they couldn’t reach a recruiter directly. Answering questions on a career site is the most common use of AI or natural language processing chatbots. A 2019 survey found half of all TA leaders that have deployed a recruiting assistant on their career site say the single biggest benefit is an improved candidate experience. Not far behind is the saving in recruiter time they provide. What’s more 71% report candidates were satisfied by their interaction with the chatbot. That alone makes deploying an AI assistant a worthwhile investment. More Than a Bot Yet, there’s much more these bots can do. Regis and other companies are using recruiting assistants to sift through the digital resumes and applications they keep on file to find talent matching current needs. Without having to involve a recruiter, the assistant will send each an invitation to become an active candidate, directing them to update their resume, answer a few questions, take an assessment or directly schedule an interview. Companies like Ernst & Young and Triumph Motorcycles are also deploying them internally to answer employee questions about vacation accruals, sick leave, scheduling and others that previously would require an HR person to answer. Ernst & Young’s Goldie HR chatbot saved more than 10,000 HR staff hours over six months. Call them AI recruiting assistants, conversational chatbots, virtual assistants or just bots, they are all built to serve the same function — improve the user experience and free up talent acquisition professionals to do what they do best.
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Recruiting Technology
What are the Best Sourcing Tools?
Like a good carpenter, recruiters need a variety of tools to get the job done. And like good carpentry tools, sourcing tools make the job of proactively finding the right talent easier and more efficient. There are dozens of sourcing tools on the market. Some are free, though they limit the number of searches or the amount of information they provide. The more powerful and effective tools can cost from a few dollars a month to enterprise versions costing well into the hundreds. There are specialty tools for tracking down email addresses and phone numbers, sourcing top tech talent, identifying the best candidates among the resumes already in your ATS or CRM and others that will search the internet, social media or just specific sites. We’ve compiled a list of some of the more useful all-around sourcing tools, and, for good measure, a couple specialty tools. Most offer a free trial or have a freemium version, perfect for recruiters who actively source just a few positions. Hiretual Imagine having a highly skilled researcher at your elbow. That’s Hiretual, a 2018 product of the year. What makes Hiretual a standout is that it employs artificial intelligence to analyze a job description using its contextual understanding then sift through hundreds of thousands of candidate profiles to find the right match. Hiretual’s ready database contains more than 750 million profiles with information aggregated from dozens of networks and social platforms and the open web. It has specialty search solutions for tech and healthcare professionals, and searches for candidates based on their patents and academic and professional journal publications. Its Chrome extension provides additional insights and contact details right from candidate profiles on several professional networks. SeekOut Only four years old, this sourcing platform already has 600 million profiles in its database. Each is compiled from a broad variety of sources to create, as the company says, a 360 degree view of a candidate. Besides providing all the basic, resume essentials about experience and education, SeekOut’s profiles include enhanced details about skills, interests, talents, diversity and professional contributions gleaned from more than three dozen social and professional networks, publications and public profiles. Like other AI sourcing tools, SeekOut has a Chrome extension to enhance Google candidate search results with supplemental information. HiringSolved The company was one of the early pioneers in candidate profiling, aggregating data from multiple sites to build profiles far more detailed than any resume or LinkedIn profile. Last year, it announced it would focus on searching only internal databases, which may well be the most underutilized sourcing resource at any company. HiringSolved’s AI search engine now will quickly surface the silver and bronze medalists and others with the required skills that already exist in every company’s ATS or CRM. Matching can be by keyword, Boolean string or uploading a desirable resume or the job description itself. Humanpredictions Any recruiter ever tasked with sourcing tech professionals knows how hard it is just to find the right talent, let alone convince them to become a candidate. Humanpredictions simplifies the first part of that job. Focused exclusively on the tech industry, the company builds candidate profiles from a variety of sources and especially the open source code sites like GitHub and StackOverflow. That much it shares with the general sourcing platforms. Humanpredictions, however, goes a step further, logging changes to each professionals public profiles to predict who among them might be or might soon be starting to look for another job or who are at least most likely to respond to a cold call or email. Using Humanpredictions is pricey when compared to other sourcing tools, but then, hiring tech professionals is highly competitive so getting an edge can be well worth the cost. Swordfish This is one of the simpler, yet powerful tools for finding individual contact information. It’s a browser plug-in that will search for email addresses and phone numbers for profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and a few others, including Bing and Google. Besides business email addresses and business phone numbers, Swordfish will also list cell numbers and personal email addresses. The free version provides for five lookups a month. Lusha More limited than Swordfish, Lusha works exclusively with LinkedIn profiles. As a Chrome extension, one click yields not only contact information, but also, for the premium version, some details about the company where the person currently works. Five lookups are free each month. Paid versions allow for many more, and export as a CSV or into a CRM. Your results with each tool will vary, try the free versions before you buy and then determine which sourcing tool is best for your team.
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Recruiting Technology
Intro to Interview Scheduling Software
One of the biggest pain points in recruiting today is the interview scheduling process. It often ranks as the biggest complaint among recruiters and candidates. All that back and forth, multiple calendars, different time zones can be a headache to actually complete. The actual process of scheduling candidates for interviews is important for two key reasons: Candidate Experience: By not having a simple and easy way to schedule an interview your candidates will notice. Today’s tech savvy generation expects a nearly one click experience to get on your calendar. Disappoint them at your own risk. Opportunity Cost: the time wasted in the scheduling process can be a detriment to recruiting. Speed is essential in today’s competitive job market. By dragging out scheduling you can lose a good candidate. A slow or incompetent scheduling process can only lead to disaster. Just head to Glassdor to see those rants! Making scheduling painless should be a priority for your entire talent team including the hire manager. Thats why having interview scheduling software in place is the answer. But before we dive into that, let’s talk about ways to improve that interview invitation. Ways to improve your interview scheduling invite Be mindful of the time commitment required to interview. Realize that the candidate is missing their own work to interview. Check with them to see how much time they can devote to your interview rounds. Reminder them via text and email about who they’ll be meeting with, the time and address (if in person). Add directions your office inside the invite if necessary. Keep a tight schedule. Try to eliminate down time between interviews if they are happening in a single timeframe. Lastly, get yourself some interview scheduling software to streamline, automates, and sync the entire interview scheduling process for all parties involved. Platforms such as Cronofy say that automating interview scheduling saves recruiters 284 hours per year and results in a 59% faster time to hire ratio. How to Choose Interview Scheduling Software A host of interview scheduling tools exist today in the market. But what should you look for before making a commitment? Obviously you’ll want a full demo and perhaps a few client referrals. Below are some things to consider if you’re in the market for this kind of software; Look for the following features; Automated Triggers: alert and invite candidates to self schedule themselves according to a calendar you set in place with certain interview times. Calendar Management: users should be able to update interview details at anytime, and see availability. Room Bookings: employers should be able to add physical meeting spaces to the app. Multiple Interview Types: the software should allow for group interviews as well as one-to-one. Support is an essential piece of any HR technology. Be sure your vendor offers some form of live support (chat/phone) to assists you with questions. Ask about their onboarding prices as well. If they just promote it as a DIY solution you could run into problems. Pricing generally involves how many employees you have. Many are subscription based (monthly) based on your company size. The beauty of this kind of software is that your recruiters can send customized emails to candidates to self-schedule themselves. Recruiters can be direct, rather than engaging in frustrating back-and-forth email chains. Interview scheduling software can and should be part of your modern recruiting technology stack.
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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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