Recruiting (6)
Recruiting
Remote Onboarding Best Practices
Without a doubt, the biggest impact of this year’s pandemic has been the forced move to fully remote work. The traditional 5 days a week, in the office mentality is likely not coming back and if it does, a more hybrid approach to work hours may take its place. The practice of onboarding this remote talent has suffered a bit as companies struggled at first to deal with the new reality. Some have adjusted, others have struggled. According to a recent Promoleaf survey, nearly 35% of all respondents wanted to be contacted by video at least once a day by their manager in the first few weeks of starting a new job. Another 26% preferred contact 2x-4x weekly, while another 18% wanted weekly calls. Only 7% wanted less frequent calls. These numbers underscore the importance for frequency of contact between a new hire and their boss. It may not matter whether you choose to use text messaging, video calls, slack or something else… just stay in contact with new hires if you want to retain and motivate them. Send Welcome Swag Perhaps the biggest impact for a new worker feeling welcome is getting swag from their new employer. Promoleaf says “91% of those who received swag felt effectively welcomed to their new company”. Sending off a shipment of t-shirts, hoodies, stickers and a coffee mug is a good start. It’s one of the activities that also happens in person and can be easily replicated in a remote environment. So be sure to add swag to your employee onboarding checklist. Besides swag, there are a number of other things companies can do to make onboarding a great experience. Hold regular virtual happy hours every Thursday or Friday. Implement a buddy system for new employees by assigning a veteran coworker to show them the ropes virtually. Introduce them to the team during a dedicated Zoom event. You may want to make it a group event if you have multiple hires starting the same day. Give your new employee an allowance to setup their remote work environment with a chair and desk of their own choosing. Allow them to sign paperwork electronically instead of having to print, scan and send. Transparent and frequency of check ins will be vital to your new employees well being. In the survey mentioned above, 38% said their company needed to do more when it came to keeping them informed. This is where a good communications strategy using HR/recruiting focused text messaging software or a Slack room can come in handy. Check In Frequently For at least the first week of employment have the manager check in via video or text message each day to ensure they are comfortable in their new role. This can be learned as the employee progresses but pay close attention to their work output and allow for easy two way interaction as much as possible. A new hire needs to be able to ask a question and get an answer more quickly than established workers. Don’t fret about their work hours either. Most remote workers don’t fall into the 9am to 5pm schedule. Many remote employees tend to work longer than those in the office, so don’t burden them with too many tasks at once. Learn what pace they like to go at and work with them to adjust. New hires must feel as welcome as possible so the first few weeks are a crucial time for getting it right. Being remote at a new company can often be stressful for a new hire and they may not know where to turn to for help. Make sure enough ‘human touch points’ are added to your onboarding plan. This new virtual world of work demands that we emphasize the human in human resources. 5 Ways to Use Texting in Remote Onboarding Texting is of course an excellent use case for the onboarding process. It cuts through clutter and enables companies to communicate effectively with speed. Here are five ways you can use texting to welcome new hires. Have the hiring manager send a welcome text as soon as the candidate accepts the offer. Text directions to your office on the first day of work. Remind them about the paperwork that needs to be signed and handed in in order to get paid. Have their new team members send a welcome message Survey the new hire in 30 days to see how they enjoyed the process. Onboarding is all about the candidate experience. It’s one of the easiest and satisfying things your company can do to make the new hire feel welcome and hit the ground running with a positive attitude.
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Recruiting
What are the 7 stages of recruitment?
The different stages of recruitment comprise a workflow familiar to even the most entry level recruiter. They include prep, sourcing, applicant conversion, selection process, the interview, reference checks, and onboarding/hire. Employers that want to attract the best and brightest need to ensure their process is running at peak efficiency. To do that, you need to break down the different recruitment stages and optimize for each. There are several options based on your level of need, frequency of hiring, complexity of process, etc… You can outsource the process to a consultant, you can hire an experienced Talent Acquisition leader, or you can just implement some basic internal structures on your own with your current team. If you’re keen to give it a go on your own because you don’t have the budget or the hiring volume to support the cost of adding headcount, here are some of the things they would likely implement or advise you to implement. 1) Prepping for Your Ideal Candidate Just as important as getting applicants to your job by posting it, is getting the RIGHT candidates to apply. Volume without quality equals a lot of time spent on unproductive administrative work, and either no hire or the wrong hire. Spend some time sharpening your axe before you start chopping at a tree. Develop an ideal candidate profile first. Otherwise you’ll be doing what is called “post and pray.” Ask yourself what makes up an ideal candidate profile? This is the person who has the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to achieve the goals of the position. In other words, based on those KSAs, process, how do you write the job description? What niche sites or organizations will you market and network in? Where do they hang out (virtually or in person)? Who/what are they likely to follow? What are they most likely to be interested in and respond to? How can you best attract them with outreach and marketing messaging? Once you define what those are, you can use that candidate profile for effective targeting, outreach and attraction. 2) Sourcing and Attracting Talent This stage is about being resourceful and focusing on the candidate experience. Don’t frustrate candidates by not responding to and communicating with them, by taking too long to make a decision, by creating too many hoops to jump through, or by having unrealistic expectations. Develop a process that is efficient, communicative, standardized, and reportable by investing in a modern Applicant Tracking System (ATS) There are several basic low-cost ones out there to choose from, and you can work with one of their representatives to set it up and configure a workflow. At the very least you should leverage automated screening to knock out unqualified applicants and automated emails to communicate application status and let them know where they stand. You’ll also have the ability to disposition and communicate with people in bulk using pre-written email templates. You’ll also need a sourcing strategy that allows you to proactively find talent through various online sources. If you have the budget perhaps a LinkedIn recruiter seat is in order. Or you could go with a lower package and augment it with a sourcing tool such as Hiretual or Seekout. Sourcing is a time consuming function however so having a dedicated sourcer on staff to uncover names will certainly improve your chances of filling roles faster. 3) Converting Applicants On a very basic reporting level, you can evaluate your process by looking at what are called conversion rates, or click through rates. This is the number or percentage of people that move from one step to the next. If you have a step that has high fallout or no fallout, you may be getting too few or too many out the back end. If a step has high fallout, you can re-evaluate if the step is screening out too many people unnecessarily. If a step has little to no fallout, what value is it providing? Maybe get rid of it. You can also evaluate your process by looking at the overall time to fill (from position opened to filled) and also time in each individual step. If your hiring process is taking too long, which step is the bottleneck and why? All of this process management will help ensure a quality candidate experience, which will help get the good candidates all the way through the process to hire. Some of the best metrics to track are the number of clicks your job postings get vs the number of people who apply. If your conversion rate is 10% or less your apply process needs a lot of work. A good ATS will convert applicants between 30%-40% based on my experience. 4) Selecting and Screening Candidates When it comes to the selection process its important to be diverse and set expectations. Explain the full hiring process to each candidates you speak with, so they know what to expect, what the steps are, who they will speak with, how long it will take, and how to prepare. Be as respectful of their time as you’ll expect them to be of yours. Additional note on position requirements (KSAs) and screening: Define your must-haves and your nice-to-haves. Your must-haves are the bare minimum requirements or qualifications to be able to perform the job. Nice-to-haves are the extra over-and-above qualifications that would be ideal to have. An automated pre-screen with a recruiting chatbot is a great tool that can knock out or disqualify all who don’t have the must-haves. If you also add the nice-to-haves in your prescreen (without knocking anyone out on these), you can quickly get to your short list. 5) The Interview Process Focus on efficient convenient scheduling. Speed really counts in this step. Eliminate the time and effort of going back and forth to coordinate phone screen or interview dates and times by using a calendaring app like Calendly or go a step further and purchase an interview scheduling tool. You set aside blocks of time that you or your team can be available and allow candidates to self-schedule into into any of the slots that work with their schedule. It’s a good idea to offer slots during lunch time or outside of normal working hours to accommodate those who are currently employed. 6) Reference Check Don’t dismiss top contenders until you have an accepted offer with all conditions met and a start date (salary/schedule accepted, references checked, background check/drug screen complete). Know that anything can happen and often will. Candidates will change their mind, accept a counter-offer, or fail pre-employment testing. When that happens, you’ll want to have your backup candidates warm and ready to go. Keep in touch with them, even just to let them know you don’t have any updates yet, but they are still actively under consideration. Once you reject them, it’s harder to bring them back. 7) Onboarding Lastly, onboarding! This area is frequently overlooked and your best opportunity for all that hard work to go to waste. It’s kind of like a murky grey area that is the handoff between Recruiting and Operations. If you don’t make sure that you have a strong onboarding program that involves training, mentorship, information, and necessary resources, you will wind up with hires that feel not welcomed, not trained, and in a job that is not what they were sold. I recommend digitizing all parts of onboarding especially now that most of us are working remotely. Let candidates receive and sign their HR paperwork electronically. They will certainly thank you for it. Having a recruitment process that is well thought out to meet the specific needs of your organization and structured in a measurable platform can help you evaluate and continually improve your hiring plans, and eliminate or revise non-value-added steps that eat up time and may eliminate good candidates needlessly. It will also ensure you cover all important steps, creating a standardized experience for all candidates, and reducing the opportunity for bias.
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Recruiting
Candidate Engagement Best Practices for Recruiters
Candidate Engagement has become a big concern for employers during the past year. All kinds of new studies are pointing to a disconnect between the candidate experience and what most companies can deliver. Why does that make candidate experience so important? Because it can be a critical advantage (or disadvantage) vs. your competitors! For example, a lack of information about pay and benefits (50%) and interview schedule changes (50%) are the two biggest causes of frustration during the interview process according to recent research from Glassdoor. Companies who get candidate engagement realize that it can differentiate them in a tight labor market. How you make job seekers feel during the hiring process can make or break their perspective on coming to work for you. Among the most common candidate engagement problems reported by candidates include; A long or cumbersome apply process (especially on mobile) Lack of status updates regarding their application Job descriptions that don’t tell the whole story Long hiring process (too many interviews, drawn out process) Lack of feedback and communication with recruiter Not rejecting them in a timely manner With that in mind, here are several ways to make that experience more inviting to prospective candidates. Streamline Your Apply Process Look for ways to reduce the amount of fields in your online application form. Consider moving to a new ATS if your current one isn’t job seeker friendly. Vendors like Greenhouse actually let you put a short apply form right at the bottom of each job description which cuts down on clicks and improves applicant conversion rates. Set Their Expectations Candidates want to know what your process is like before they apply. So tell them! Publish it on a page on your career site like what GEICO does here. They break down the entire process in several steps that detail what the candidate will experience. Content like this is easy to create for any HR team. In addition be sure your recruiters explain it during the initial phone screen to reiterate what they may have seen online. Personalize the Experience Whenever possible make your career site more personalized. Technology now exists to show different content to different candidates based on their job preferences. Tailor that experience to them and they will be more likely to apply. Things like auto suggest when performing a keyword search or detecting their location via the web browser is a simple tactic now offered by many modern applicant tracking systems. Also be sure to personalize all email communications with their first name. You can personalize the interview too. One company we know about asks candidates what type of soft drink they prefer to drink and have it ready for the on site visit. That is a simple low cost way to say you care. Send More Status Updates Nothing frustrates the candidate more when they go days or weeks without hearing back from the employer after the initial touch point. This is where technology like text recruiting can be extremely helpful. A simple text message about what’s happening with their candidacy is a good weekly touch point. In fact I’d argue it’s a MUST do in today’s competitive market. Make Onboarding Simple Even if you get the candidate to say yes, you still need to onboard them properly. The good news is that onboarding is one of the easiest things to get right. It just takes a concerted effort by your team. Onboarding means setting that candidate up for success. So try to digitize as much of the paperwork as you can. Use e-signature services to get their forms filled out quickly before their first day so they can hit the ground running. Have a plan in place for their first few days. Introduce them to the immediate team members, take them to lunch, orientation or whatever else is needed to get them off to a good start. A good practice is to have their future boss reach out to them and describe how excited they are to have them onboard. Taking the time to welcome a new hire (who may be nervous) is a great way to set the right first impression. Ask for Feedback It’s important to provide the candidate with feedback on their interview performance but the same is true for the reverse scenario. Employers who ask for feedback from candidates stand to learn a great deal about their hiring process from an outsider perspective. Create a short survey of 4-6 questions about how they were treated during the hiring process. Not only will you engage them, but the data you will learn will help you tweak the process to make it as engaging as possible. The candidate experience should be a mindset for any talent acquisition professional hiring today. Companies that go the extra mile to please strong candidates who they end up not hiring will leave a positive impression which could lead to new referrals and positive ratings on sites like Glassdoor. They may even apply again later in the career. Here’s a quick recap of what we covered; 5 Ways to Add Texting to Your Candidate Engagement Enable share by text of your job descriptions so others can easily refer your openings. Update candidates by text every step of the way. Personalize any text messages that they opt into with their first name. Alert them of their onboarding paperwork (remind if still not completed) Survey them once hired to get their opinion of the process.
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Recruiting
Recruiting Chatbots: Present & Future
In case you haven’t noticed, recruiting chatbots have become one of the most talked about trends in hiring technology the past few years, alongside text recruiting. And by most accounts I’ve read, many job seekers seem to like interacting with them, at least for specific ‘automation friendly’ recruiting use cases like FAQs and applicant pre-screening. It is still early in the game for recruitment chatbots, but many vendors in our space are racing to build them (including us). So, it seems likely that they will evolve over time into more sophisticated hiring tools deployed by more and more recruiting teams. Chatbots Defined: Recruiting Chatbots are automated conversational interfaces through which candidates can interact with your company/recruiters for job related purposes. I asked Emissary’s CEO Euan Hayward where he thinks chatbot technology is headed. In a recent call he told me, “A lot more employers will be deploying recruiting chatbots in the coming years, especially for high volume hiring. But, increased penetration depends a lot on the pace of improvement in the underlying technologies like AI and NLP. Progress in those areas will define the quality of the candidate experience, which in turn dictates which use cases will be viable for employers. Does the bot help a candidate get information more easily? Does it allow them to complete required steps more easily than doing it by other means? Value to the candidate/employee will directly dictate the how much benefit recruiting and HR can extract from the automation and scaling qualities that chatbots offer” How do you make a recruitment chatbot? Since recruiting chatbots are still in their nascent stages, there can be challenges with deploying them. Unless your chosen vendor onboards you carefully, setup can be an issue because many chatbots must be customized to deliver a high quality candidate experience. In addition, chatbots may not work well for higher level roles where candidates expect a more personalized experience. Today recruiting chatbots work in three main channels: SMS, Web and popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Depending on your country, candidates may prefer one channel over the other. For example, WhatsApp is a very popular tool in the APAC region, while SMS is preferred by many U.S. job seekers. When setting up your chatbot you’ll need to consider these four main buckets; Asking Questions: FAQs related to the recruiting process are often easy for chatbots to answer, since the most common questions are repeated over and over and don’t change much over time. Every company has a list of common questions candidates ask, making FAQs an easy target for chatbot implementation. Pre-screening Candidates: By taking the candidate through a series of screening questions, a chatbot can easily gather important data and filter out applicants who are unqualified. It’s often much more efficient to screen candidates before they click the apply button on your ATS. Interview Scheduling: Letting candidates self-schedule themselves is a great use of a chatbot. Scheduling is a huge time killer for recruiters and coordinators, so it just makes sense to offload that heavy lifting to a chatbot that can ask the candidate when they’re available and setup that first call or visit automatically by syncing with your Outlook or Gmail calendar. Applying: Chatbots still can’t collect a resume (unless it is a web based chatbot) but they can let people apply if you just collect the basics: Name, phone, email and phone number. By limiting the initial number of form entries you can get a greater percentage of candidates to indicate interest in the position. Interacting with a chatbot is a lot more fun than filling out a form. This helps employers build out their candidate lists by expanding the top of the funnel. Recruitment chatbots are definitely here to stay as the consumerization of the candidate experience continues. Expect more innovation in the next few years as companies demand more from these helpful tools as technology evolves. The more these chatbots can personalize and automate these hiring conversations, the more time you will free up for your recruiting team. Stay tuned to the Emissary Insights blog for more chatbot news and to hear about our coming offerings with our own text recruiting chatbot.
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Recruiting
A Guide to Increasing Offer Acceptances
As of March 2019, the US unemployment rate is at a record low at 3.8%, making it the ultimate candidate’s marketplace. With the market tight and more jobs opening than recruiters to keep up with, the one area that can always be refined is the offer acceptance rate. Top echelon recruiters follow a formula to ensure that offers are accepted even in this hot market. Here are the top 8 tips to use as your guide to taking your recruiting game to the next level and making every offer count. #1: Create Transparency in your Job Ad There are job descriptions and then there are job ads. People want to know not just the skills and requirements of the position, but also what’s in it for them. This includes not only specs of the position, but the cultural expectations, benefits and most importantly, what the job is paying. Being open about the company and the salary range will save you time and surprises from candidates who you fell in love with during the interview process, who ultimately you can’t afford. #2: Roll Out the Red Carpet Highly qualified candidates have options, many options in the marketplace. This means that not only do you have to sell your candidates, but you need to roll out the red carpet to them in the interview process. From your very first interaction, you want every candidate walking away wanting the position, even if you are still unsure. Share information about your company, talk about a day in the life, get hiring managers on board, share personal experiences and create a first class candidate experience until the very end. #3: Time Kills All Deals You have heard the saying, and it’s true, especially with candidates. The market is moving fast and candidates want to be chased and wooed. Move your communication to texting instead of emailing to increase faster response rates. Having a sense of urgency in the hiring process will maintain candidate interest, reduce negotiations and ensure your offer is at the top of the candidates list. #4: Know Your Market Intel As a recruiter, your job doesn’t stop at creating a short list of candidates for hiring managers and driving the process. Your value to hiring managers, executives and clients is your keen market intel and network in your space. They seek you out as a key business partner to understand who is moving where, what companies are buying who and how competitors are reaching talent. Keeping an ear to the ground will allow you a competitive edge with candidates in the offer process. #5: Get Personal People are attracted to people like themselves. This includes who we chose to work with. Get to know your candidate on a personal level by asking deeper questions to understand their expectations and lifestyle needs. Get to know what is truly motivating them to move and be open to them along the way. Include more personal ways to connect with them, including texting. By the time the offer is ready to be presented, you are not just presenting a job with numbers, but a life changing opportunity that is customized to your candidate. #6: Be Open to Negotiation Everyone loves to “win” a negotiation. Be prepared on the front end to negotiate your offer and have your negotiation window ready when the offer is presented. Allow your candidate the opportunity to “win” a negotiation while still meeting your hiring expectations. It’s a win-win. #7: Remove Obstacles By the time you are extending an offer, you know your candidates wants and desires, but understand that some obstacles need to be removed for them to take your offer. For instance, if you are offering to relocate a candidate, be prepared to offer a relocation package. Or, if you are asking for significant travel, be prepared to increase their weeks of vacation. #8: Ask the Tough Questions At the end of the offer process, ask candidates the uncomfortable questions, such as, why they are rejecting your offer or what can you do to overcome their reservations. Many times, it’s the answers to the uncomfortable questions that are the most telling in ways that we can improve our offer acceptance rates or finalize a final offer. Ask and you shall receive.
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Recruiting
Candidate Experience Hacks
Providing a good candidate experience is gaining more traction inside talent acquisition departments as it gets harder and harder to attract talent. From an applicants perspective, the “Candidate Experience” is simply how they perceive your company’s recruiting process. And since perception is many times the ‘reality’, employers must take a more holistic approach to shape that journey. Ideally, this is what you want to happen when someone has a great candidate experience: “Even though I didn’t get the job I’m so impressed by your firm that I’m going to tell my friends and family how valued I felt during the process.” Obviously not everyone will say this, but it should be every employer’s goal to make them feel this way. Imagine how your employer brand will look then! With that in mind here are 10 hacks you can implement today to impress your future applicants. 1. Let Them Express Interest Most people hitting your career site are just passive candidates not ready to apply. You need to have a way to capture these folks so you can stay in touch with them when they are ready. Capture their name and email so you can add them to a talent community and send them regular updates about life at your firm. 2. Set Expectations Tell them what to expect in the hiring process and alert them each step of the way. Here’s how Google does it. Be upfront about how you hire and what they can expect to face as they make their way through your process. 3. Give Them A Peek Show off life at your company through photos, blogs and videos. Candidates are dying to know what it is like to work there so the more transparent you can be the more they will love you for it. 4. Re-write Revamp all your automated candidate communications, from auto responses to rejection emails, give them a second look and rewrite them to be more personable. Include ways to interact with you on social and other channels. Add value to those responses by personalizing them as much as possible. 5. Over Communicate Touch base with your shortlist of candidates once per week to keep them updated. Let them know where they stand. Even if it just a quick note to say “hang tight”, they will appreciate the effort. 6. Orchestrate Onsite Interviews Have a greeter prepped so they know to expect the candidate. Make sure they get enough breaks and offer them water/coffer as they head into their first interview. If they have multiple interviews in one day give them an agenda ahead of time so they can better prep. 7. Give Feedback This may be the hardest thing to do for some employers but candidates crave real feedback. Good or bad, they will learn from it. Be as honest as you can about why they didn’t make the cut. 8. Ask For Feedback You can’t improve your candidate experience unless you know what’s wrong. So survey your applicants after they apply and after they interview. You will gain valuable insight into where your flaws are. 9. Pick Up The Phone If a candidate took the time to come to your office for an interview they deserve a timely yes/no follow up call. Respect their time and don’t leave them wondering. 10. Onboard them with Tech Use cool onboard technology to get them started like being able to sign paperwork electronically. Many ATS providers now offer this or you can use external services like HelloSign. Shaping the right candidate experience takes time and a little effort, but it goes a long way towards making you an employer of choice. They also love it when companies leverage new tools like chatbots, texting and other new technology to engage. In the end, if you care about their experience, they will reward you for it.
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Recruiting
Top 10 Ways to Build a Referral Pipeline
For many recruiting teams, building a candidate pipeline from scratch can be daunting. This is where referrals come in helping to bridge the gap and save you time and energy in your recruiting process. The question is, what is the best way to build a referral pipeline? Here are our top 10 ideas to build a referral pipeline that will continue to yield results in both the short and long term. 1. Incentivize Your Employees In a recent study by Careerbuilder, they noted that 82% of employers rated employee referrals above all other referrals and generating the best return on investment. We have also seen that employers also note that an internal referral can reduce their cost per hire by 3k on average.* Overwhelming support shows that employee referrals are of incredible value. The best way to continue to encourage these referrals in your pipeline is with a healthy incentive program that includes a generous monetary carrot. 2. Hone your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) Your Employee Value Proposition all comes down to messaging and your brand. People want to know that they are selling/referring to others. Your brand message should be authentic, easy to understand and personable. Hone your message and value proposition so that you communication stream to the market and to your top referrers is crystal clear. 3. Make It Simple No matter the source of your referral, don’t make the process difficult. Invest in technology and systems that create a seamless, mobile-friendly submission process. Less is more. Remove obstacles in the referral process and watch your submissions soar. 4. Support Mobile-First Recruiting In line with making your referral process simple is the next greatest step- making all of your recruiting and content messaging mobile-first. Our lives are on the go and in the moment. A mobile-first recruiting strategy includes partnering with vendors that share this same philosophy and have created user-friendly mobile applications to streamline your referral process. 5. Communicate Frequently Communicate often and on a frequent basis. Depending on your needs, this could be 5 times a week and others once a week. Figure out what works best for you, but keep it fresh and frequent. One of the best ways to reach your referrers and build the pipeline is through a strategic texting strategy. We know that more people check text than any other medium of communication. Start here and then grow. 6. Personal Touch While it’s great to have a lofty and relatable employment brand, people want to know what’s in it for them. Allow your messaging, your email and text campaigns, and your social strategy to relate to your ideal candidate persona. Make it as personal as possible when reaching out. While the person you reached out to may not be the best fit, they will be more likely to refer a person within their network to you that is the perfect fit. 7. Tap Former Employees While research shows that employee referrals are the pinnacle of a quality hire, the next in line would be your former employees. Harnessing the vast networks of your alumni who have lived and breathed the roles and the culture is crucial. Create alumni networking groups and allow them to work on your behalf to submit candidates that are more than likely a solid fit. 8. Energize Your Talent Community Members Whether you have built a talent community through social, a CRM or a job board, don’t let the opportunity pass you by to truly energize your talent community. Put them in action. Not all members of your talent community will be your next hire, but someone in their network will be. Share content to your community that is easy to share through text or social networks. Share content not just about jobs, but your culture and other relevant events that are happening. 9. Attend Events with High ROI If you have been recruiting for some time you have come to realize that not all events are created equal. When planning your event strategy have your referral pipeline strategy in mind. Focus only on events that members of your talent community, your employees and their networks or alumni may attend. Plan to attend events that increase your ROI by focusing on content management of the event and the communication strategy afterward. 10. Get and Give Feedback Your referral pipeline is living, breathing, ever-changing and developing. To feed its development is to actively gain feedback from those that refer and at the same time give feedback in return. No matter the source of the referral, the goal is a quality hire. Without honest and transparent two-way feedback the pipeline may begin to deteriorate. Be open to all feedback and alter your course accordingly.
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Recruiting
How Recruiters Can Avoid Being Ghosted
If you recruit today you’ve probably noticed that “ ghosting” may be creeping into your hiring process by candidates who consider themselves in charge due to a tight labor market. A recent Washington Post article highlighted that candidates are blowing off interviews and workers are turning into no-shows, unable to be contacted further. It’s especially problematic in lower wage positions. For years, candidates had been on the receiving end of this issue but now the tables have turned on hiring organizations. Until the job market shifts, candidates know they are in demand and will continue this behavior. The question now is what can you do about it. For companies there are things you can do to minimize the chances of being ghosted. You’ll need to take a hard look at your hiring process and tighten up loose ends to make it more candidate friendly. Here’s five ways to do that. Tell Them Where They Stand Let Candidates know where they are in the recruiting process (and what to expect). Though keeping candidates in the loop can be time consuming there are some software solutions to help automate this. Many applicant tracking systems have built in reminder emails you can use to provide feedback to candidates as they progress through your process. Go beyond the standard “Thank you for applying” response by telling them what to expect next. By detailing what will happen to their application once they apply you can make the process more transparent. Give them a time frame for their resume review and tell them what lies ahead. Constant communication is key and text recruiting reminders would serve you well to implement. Make a Point to Follow Up If a candidate goes dark on you send a reminder email or text but don’t be pushy about it. Share a piece of content about your industry that they would find interesting. By adding value to your conversation you may be able to grab their attention. Or go a step further by adding phrases like “2nd Attempt” or “I’m concerned” to the subject line or opening sentence. This tactic works well in sales so it should also help you get a response if they realize you are wondering about them. Make It About Them If your candidates are ghosting you after the interview you may need to look at that phase of your hiring. Be sure you are asking about their career goals and how they might align with your career advancement possibilities. Make it clear that you have their long term interest in mind as they proceed throughout the interview process. The more invested you are in them, the more they will care about communicating with you. Establish Clear Timelines When it comes to making an offer to a candidate have both your recruiter and hiring manager follow through. The recruiter should extend the offer via phone followed by an email with the official offer letter. The offer letter should have a clear timeline of the deadline for which the candidate must make a decision. Once accepted, have the hiring manager place a call to the candidate to welcome them to the team and set expectations for the start date. Fill the Cracks Every major employer has candidates that fall through the cracks. It is still a common problem in the job search process. Most Applicant Tracking Systems allow you to see if a candidate has been “touched”. Dedicate a time each week to review new applications and avoid the dreaded resume black hole. Every candidate that takes the time to apply deserves an acknowledgement that they have submitted their application properly along with a yes or no vote at some point for moving forward. One recruiter we know goes a step further. Stacy Zapar, a third party recruiter in California does her own “Friday Feedback Blitz” when she sets aside a few hours each Friday afternoon to update every candidate in her pipeline on where they stand. Ghosting is likely to continue in the job market until some kind of economic downturn hits. But by focusing on the tips above, your company can avoid being a victim of this new trend.
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Recruiting
The Golden Rules of Rejecting Candidates
Here’s a statement that won’t get much argument. Recruiters hate sending rejection emails and candidates hate getting them. It’s no wonder then that most companies don’t pay much attention to this important recruiting chore. But with a little thought and effort your company can easily improve the rejection process in order to change that dynamic. By implementing a more refined workflow you can actually help turn those you can’t hire into allies while letting them down gently. The last thing you’ll want is for them to head to Glassdoor and leave a rant after you say No. Those candidates could actually become a candidate in the future and/or a customer, therefore how you reject them matters if you want to keep them coming back. So here’s four golden rules to add value to the dreaded rejection email process. Ignore them at your peril. Time It Right When it comes to sending mass rejection emails, those should be sent no earlier than 24-48 hours after applying. Let a day or two pass so that it appears some thought was put into their application. If you are rejecting a candidate who did a phone interview, let them know as soon as possible. The same goes for anyone you interviewed in person. Respect their time and don’t make them wait, you might be impeding their job search if you do. Be Honest, But Not Too Honest When you have candidates who take the time to come to an interview it is best to contact them by phone within a day or two. Let them know you chose another candidate but give them as much feedback as you can to help them understand why. Honest feedback is valuable to them. But don’t make it too personal. Tell them it was more because “another candidate performed better” for example. Thank them again for their time and if they are a good candidate be sure to connect with them on LinkedIn. Have Multiple Email Templates When Johnson & Johnson revamped their hiring process a few years ago, they actually took a hard look at their candidate communications including the rejection email templates in their recruiting software. They rewrote them into nine different templates for certain types of candidates depending on how far they got in the process and which department they were hiring for. So for example, create a general mass rejection email and one for shortlisted candidates that sounds more personable. Get Their Feedback Want to improve your overall recruitment process? Survey each candidate afterwards and find out where things can be improved. Send them a short survey (4-5 questions max) using a free tool like Google Forms or perhaps a paid service like what Survey Monkey offers. Send a candidate feedback survey about a week after the rejection note and your department will learn where improvements can be made. Understanding that rejection has a long-term impact on hiring and employer brand is the mark of a good recruiting department. You can’t hire everyone who applies, but you can let them down by being respectful of their time and effort. So think about revamping your rejection process and adding a bit of humanity to it. Your candidates will thank you.
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Emissary is a candidate engagement platform built to empower recruiters with efficient, modern communication tools that work in harmony with other recruiting solutions.
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