iCIMS Hire Expectations™

Recently, I have read a number of articles regarding top talent workers who are stuck in jobs that they are over qualified. One article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted how difficult it will be to keep those workers on board once the economy turns around. After I read that article I had a thought…If these highly qualified workers came to my career site looking for a job that was better suited for them, would I be able to pull them in to apply? What a perfect chance to pull in some “A” talent and make my company even stronger. So, ask yourself: is your career site up for the challenge of attracting top talent?

When a candidate arrives at your career site, it is crucial to hook them in immediately by explaining why that candidate should come to you. The career site should give candidates a clear window into the company: what it would be like to work for you and why they should apply. Here are a few tips:

1. It is essential for recruiters to CLEARLY convey your company’s benefits. And, maybe you should even consider offering more:

• 401K Contribution Matching
• Stock Options
• Competitive Pay
• Medical Benefits
• Paid Time Off
• Tuition Reimbursement

2. Corporate social responsibility is also an important ideal you should promote to your candidates. How much does your company give back to the community? This could be what sells a candidate on your company over a competitor.
3. It’s always good to give candidates a quick insight into what it would be like to work for your company. And employee testimonials are the easiest way to do that. Are there any stories about your top producers or best employees that you could upload? A few stories or public recognition about these employees will show the candidate what makes a great employee at your company. It also shows that you value your top people as well as gives candidates the measurements they need to know to become a top producer at the company.
4. Take a look at what your top competitors are doing. Why you ask? Most candidates who are applying for a job at your company are probably also applying for a position with your competitor. Relating to that, your competitor’s employees may also be looking to make a move, which means they will also be looking at your career site!
5. Submitting employee referrals should be simple. Referrals are vital to some companies so ask yourself this: Is it easy for employees to refer top talent??
6. How easy is it to apply to an open position? Try applying to one of your own jobs and see how long it takes to complete. Remember that most traffic on job boards comes between 10 am and 3 pm, which is lunch time across the States. This means that most people are looking for new jobs while at their current jobs. If you are going to make a candidate jump through hoops while applying, they will most likely abandon the application for fear of being caught. Your application process should:

• NOT make the candidate fill in the same information repeatedly.
• Be relevant to the type of job (hourly vs. salaried).
• Be written accurately with qualifications and requirements clearly stated.
• Have applicable screener questions.

7. Try displaying links to your social media pages on the career site. It’s unfortunate but the lack of social media on your career site could signal that you are not keeping up with the industry.

Your company is investing thousands of dollars to drive candidates to your site. And, as we wait for those highly qualified candidates to make their career move, are you doing everything you can to impress them? This year could be a huge year for top talent recruitment and a quality career site could be the edge you need to get those “A” players!

Over the last few years I have visited hundreds of clients and have heard two common initiatives: branding and social media.  Unfortunately, I have seen few, if any, successfully accomplish one of these initiatives and even fewer accomplish both.  I’m sure a few people will read this and think that they are ahead of the curve or that this blog post cannot possibly be about them because they have a Facebook page or Twitter account. But I am willing to bet you a Monday morning coffee and doughnut that you really aren’t even coming close to what you could be doing.

Just creating a facebook page or twitter account is not enough by a long shot. I can hear the Field of Dreams line in my head now. “If you build it, [they] will come.” If only that were true.  Here are some thoughts that could help you get a strategic plan together for branding yourself and using social media:

1. If you have a following on facebook, your fans are NOT logging into your page to see what you are up too. Most people on facebook (at least in my experience) only look at what is posted on their wall. I would venture to bet that most people have over a hundred friends, but never log into each friend's home page. Most users only pay attention to the friends who are posting updates to their status. The same thing applies to companies I am fans of, out of sight out of mind. I need to see your updates on my wall. Post something everyday!


2. Don’t be afraid of negative comments on your facebook page BUT be prepared to answer them. I don’t think any of us are foolish enough to believe that we have a 100% satisfaction rating. But, what I want to know is that your company is willing to fix or address issues that arise.



SOME POSITIVE FEEDBACK:





3. 1/3 of all social media users are accessing their accounts from their mobile devices. It isn’t enough to just have a site accessible by the home computer anymore. Nowadays, more potential candidates are seeking career sites via their smart phone. By implementing a readable and mobile-friendly site, recruiters can up the anti in their war for talent and drive home more quality candidates to fill their talent pool.

 

4. Know your audience. The branding that your Marketing department has in mind may attract me to your social media page, but what information do you have posted that will make me want to work for you? Are you posting information about what your company does for the community? What about your benefits?  How about some stories regarding the amazing employees that you have already recruited? How long do people stay on average at your company? Think about it from a candidate’s point of view. If I, the candidate, already have a good job and financial security right now, why would I want to change jobs?  You are going to have to paint me a pretty darn nice picture to get me to go home, update my resume and mentally prepare myself for everything that goes into changing jobs. This will not happen with the branding that Marketing is putting out. It’s up to you to sell me and change me from a passive candidate into an active candidate.

 

5. Posting on twitter is a little like fishing. When fishing, you figure out what depth the fish are at and what type of bait they are attracted to. Even then it could take several casts just to get a nibble; therefore, you need to be persistent. Candidates are probably following a hundred or more friends, celebrities and companies. Updates fly by and if I don't log in within a short period of time of your post, I will probably miss it. You may have to post several updates a day on different topics until one catches and I finally check out your career section.

 

6. What about the opposite? If I happen to make my way to your career site, are you offering me the option and encouraging me to follow you on Facebook or Twitter?

 

7. Have you ever made a small video about a day in the life of some of your most common positions? If I clicked on the video that was posted, I could visualize myself doing that job. Job descriptions are great but some people are visual learners.   

 

8. What about all those job postings that you have out there? Did you know that as a candidate, I have a way of tasking search engines to send me postings that fit my location and job types directly to my facebook or twitter inbox?

As my Dad used to hammer home to me throughout my teenage and college years, “Hoping and wishing is not a plan.”  With a little strategy and planning, you can turn passive job seekers into active job seekers and hasn’t that been the goal for years?

Early in my career, I was a developer and one of my first projects was to work with the HR team to build an candidate management system in Lotus notes. I started by having meetings with recruiters, then recruiting managers, then hiring managers and finally leadership. Each of these groups had different needs, request and demands. Leadership eventually overruled many requests that were made by recruiters and I was able to start building the new tool for the recruitment team. I spent several weeks designing and building out what I thought would fit based on their requests. We had meeting after meeting to redesign, tweak and address new issues that came up. Several months later, I had this monster of a database with candidate applications, work flows, and all kinds of other bells and whistles. I then moved on to a new billable project. 

A few months later, I was sent several change requests but unfortunately I was on a new project. And, the internal project took a back seat to the billable one. The company was forced to put a new developer on the candidate management project who was unfamiliar with the background of the project or why things were designed the way they were. Recruiters left and new recruiters, who wanted more changes, came in and eventually the once completely customized candidate database, meant to meet the needs of the recruiters, was outdated and needed lots of updates and changes in order to keep up with the quick changing HR industry.

In retrospect, the thought of “Build vs. Buy” seems like an easy one and here is why.

1. Using internal resources seems like a great idea but usually after a developer rolls out the project they are not nearly as accessible to make needed changes. If the developer is on another project you may be assigned a new developer to make the changes. Therefore, you must either wait for the new developer to understand how the software works and what you would like it to do now or worse, you must stay in limbo waiting for your original developer to find the time to make those changes. In that time, you may be losing valuable candidates that could make a significant impact within your organization.


2. The recruiting industry changes fast! Look at a couple of years ago; we had a shortage of candidates and wanted easy applications as to not deter candidates from applying. Nowadays, there are so many candidates that recruiters are often overwhelmed; therefore, the application may need to change in order to weed out candidates that aren’t a good fit. The industry is getting more and more complex. Further, integrated background, drug and assessment testing are available. Electronic job distribution and sourcing tools that will post your job to multiple job boards in real-time or search multiple job board databases at once are available. There are integrations to payroll systems, onboarding, succession planning, compensation, and performance management. And, now video interviewing and mobile solutions have even emerged. This could be entirely too much for any developer to keep up with, without being dedicated to the project.


3. Cost, yes cost! According to salary.com the average cost of ONE web software developer is right around $71,000 per year. That is just one resource. A candidate management system with all the bells and whistles would not even come close to that cost.

   

4. If your company needs to report on EEO and OFCCP, this could be really difficult with a home grown system.  A true candidate management or applicant tracking tool has these pieces built in and can run real-time reports if they were ever needed. Not being able to accurately report on these could result in steep fines by the government or worse the loss of your government contract.

Candidate management systems with tools such as applicant tracking have come a long way in the last few years and have a team of people behind them to ensure that the system is on top of all state and federal government regulations. They also are constantly trying to stay on top of where the industry is going and creating best practices for current customers. They hold user groups to ensure that each of their customers is being heard, and their development requests are being put into place. They are fighting to stay ahead of the game and either win or keep your business; all for less than half the cost of a web software developer.

So really, it just makes sense to avoid building!

Companies have a plethora of options to choose from when it comes to recruiting avenues. You can choose the expensive big boards, cheaper options, and free options like social media tools, but how do you tell what is REALLY working for you? How do you truly measure the success of your financial investment and more importantly, the TIME invested? Did you know with a little tweaking you might be able get some real numbers that could help you concentrate your budget and time to resources that are truly working for you. Here are a couple of suggestions to help.

• Talk to your talent management system provider because most TMS or ATS providers have the ability to track the site a candidate came from by either collecting the referring site or through a tag attached to the apply URL. You will want to automate this process because if you leave it up to the candidate to populate the “How did you hear from us?” field the candidate is either going to choose the option that they think makes them a better candidate for the position, viewing this as a pre-screener question, or just pick any option to get past this mandatory field so they can continue on with the application. By taking this option out of the candidate’s hands and by automating the process you can ensure that you accurately run your source report to see who is providing you with candidates.

• Are these quality candidates? So, three major boards sent you over 1000 candidates. Success right? Not so fast. It’s great if you got a boatload of candidates from your job posting as it means that the posting was seen by a lot of candidates and many of those applied. That is success by marketing standards but what about by HR standards. Were these quality candidates? There are several ways to tell if a source really is as successful as they claim. A high number of applicants from a source is great, but it is important to take a look at the number of candidates that made it to the Phone Interview.  If a recruiter took the time to pick up the phone and call the candidate then that candidate fit the requirements of the job.
  
  I know some of you may say what about just looking at hires. And my answer would be, hires may be a misleading stat simply for the fact that it does not tell you the whole story. Candidates get cold feet and back out or sometimes there are personality conflicts with the hiring manager or the hiring manager went with the first quality person they were able to get on the phone. If a source is supplying you with quality candidates they are definitely worth the time and money.

• Social media is all the rage these days and many companies are hiring specialists to help them recruit on social media. But is social media the right avenue for the HR department or for the Marketing department? By accurately tracking the number of candidates that come to your career section from a social media site and then looking at the number of quality candidates that came from that traffic, you will be able to tell if this is something you want to invest time and manpower in or if it is better left to your Marketing department to increase your brand awareness.

So, take a look at your metrics. How well is your online recruitment program? And, how well is each channel performing?

An evaluation of Candidate Management Systems in regard to recent federal reforms.

Recently, President Obama issued a memorandum on “Improving the Federal Recruiting and Hiring Process”. ERE did a great article about this and when I read it, I couldn’t help but start to break down these problems and see if candidate management solutions would also address them. Let’s investigate just a few of the most common issues and how HR technology solves them.

Candidates complain that the application is too long - What’s the best way to counter this complaint?  As a recruiter, it is up to you to acquire these candidates. If they are losing interest in the application; you are potentially losing out on highly-qualified talent. 

Solution: Create an online application that can be easily completed in 3 steps.  1. Create a login (this will allow candidates to come back and apply even faster in the future), 2. Enter personal information (First name, Last name, Phone number, E-mail Address), and 3. Upload the resume. Three simple steps! You can also add in pre-screening questions and EEO questions but they are optional and only add minimal time to the process. Candidates are notorious for having limited patience when applying, so the more simple you can make the application process the better.

Candidates never hear back after they apply – The “blackhole” for resumes is essentially an unwelcomed consequence of recruiters with full plates. With that in mind, how can recruiters make sure they are replying to all candidates?

Solution: This too is a very simple issue to resolve. Utilize some sort of Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) tool.  For example, some candidate management solutions have advanced CRM tools that allow a recruiter to set up letters in a communication center for virtually every possible circumstance.  A recruiter can set up an acknowledgement letter that will be sent directly to the candidate immediately after applying. This letter can have a simple acknowledgement that their resume was received and under review AND/OR can also include the company’s logo, links to learn more about the company, a video about the company and even links to any company social media sites.       

With some solutions, recruiters can create letters to inform the candidate if they have been moved to different stages of the hiring process. Recruiters can select multiple candidates to send PERSONALIZED letters to, which only takes a few seconds.  In addition to that, candidates can check their status by returning to the company website and logging into the career center. The career center can be set up to display the exact status the candidate is currently in (see below).

You must remember that these candidates are not just candidates but also could be customers of your product. Properly communicating to them helps create a positive view of your company and builds a strong brand that will make your marketing department very happy!

Hiring managers need a pool of qualified candidates not just two or three - We all know, the larger the talent pool, the more likely recruiters are able to source top talent. Building up that talent pool is a task that must be done.

Solution: Some solutions usually offer hiring managers a very simple way to review candidates sent over by recruiters (i.e. logging into simplified platform), and allow the hiring manager to make notes on the candidate and move them along in the process. Recruiters have the ability to filter through candidates and move them to the hiring manager in a matter of seconds. This allows the hiring manager to see as many candidates as they would like and not take time away from their day to day responsibilities.

Yes, it’s true, recruiting in the federal workplace has become a bit more demanding. However, I do believe that with candidate management solutions already capable of automating the recruitment process, there is no need to worry, HR!