iCIMS Hire Expectations™

You may not know it yet, but the people entering your stores, purchasing your products, and returning time and time again, may be the perfect candidates for your jobs. These people are your customers, and many retailers sometimes forget that their customers can be a valuable recruiting source. In fact, they may even be your best candidates because they are users of your products and services, which means they can best represent them to other customers, like themselves.

Here are 3 tips on how to jumpstart a successful customer recruitment campaign:

Tip #1: Use Your Resources

You have the resources to communicate with your customers, so why not use them for recruiting too! These resources are your emails, your company’s social media accounts, and even your store receipts. I would approach emails with caution because you don’t want to annoy your customers with tons of recruitment emails. Instead, send an email every quarter highlighting all of the great perks of working at your company (i.e. employee discounts, work environment, and events). Keep in mind that a lot of your customers are passive candidates and may already have a job; however, it may take just one email from their favorite retailer to persuade them to apply.

A lot of retailers are now using social media to connect and engage with their customers. It’s their way of sending and receiving instant feedback about their products and services. It is also a great outlet to let customers know that they are hiring. Use your company’s Facebook Page to post out current openings, or create a Facebook Page dedicated to your careers. With a Facebook Career Page, you can post helpful articles and tips on resumes, cover letters, and interviews, as well as your jobs.

Lastly, use your store receipts for more than, well, a receipt. ERE.net posted a great article on how Wells Fargo used their ATM receipts as a recruitment source. On the bottom, it said, “With you when you want a career opportunity that’s right for you”, along with a link to their career site. Genius, I know!

Tip #2: Provide a stellar candidate experience

Although customers can be your best candidates, they are still your customers. It is highly unlikely that you will hire every person who applies, ensure a positive candidate experience so they will remain loyal customers. Make the application process as simple as possible. Nothing puts an applicant in a worse mood than filling out a long and tedious application. Let your candidates apply with their social profiles from LinkedIn or Facebook. This way, they can skip the manual data entry and have all of their information auto-populate in your forms. Also, open the channels of communication and build a relationship with your applicants. It could be simple things like sending an email to confirm their application or thanking them for applying to your job opening that can have a big impact on their candidate experience.

Tip #3: Automate your tasks

All of these tips can be implemented, but if you want to receive maximum ROI on these campaigns, you need to automate your tasks with a recruitment technology like iCIMS. Instead of manually posting jobs to your Facebook Page, use a technology to post your jobs during set times and frequencies – set it and forget it! In addition, if your customers aren’t looking to apply to your jobs, allow them to pass your jobs along with one-click job sharing to their social networks. Don’t forget to enhance your candidates’ experience with branded career sites that allow them to easily search and apply to jobs. Lastly, send automatic, mass-personalized emails to notify applicants that their resume has been received.

Put these tips to the test and you’ll be one happy and successful recruiter!

There never seems to be enough time in a day. Whether it be spending time with friends and family over the weekend or tending to numerous to-dos during your workweek, it seems impossible to fit in everything.
 
For example, as a recruiter you may come into work realizing that you need to fill five positions by the end of the week. So, you decide to pass on the bagels in the kitchen, because these job openings won’t post themselves! By noon, you are sorting through the never-ending paper pile of resumes and applications. You realize lunch is no longer an option. Suddenly, the day is coming to a close but you still need to schedule interviews and bring new hires onboard. You stay late and decide which frozen dinner you will have later. There has to be a more efficient way to source, screen, and hire the talent you need!

Here are some tips that will increase your quality of hire and decrease your time-to-fill …without miss breakfast, lunch, or dinner:

Breakfast: Sourcing

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Likewise, sourcing is an important part of recruiting. Don’t waste time manually posting open requisitions on every job board known to man. Automate it. If you are using recruitment software, it should allow you to post jobs once and share them with one-click. You can also automate your posts by choosing times and dates for posts to go out, just set-it-and-forget-it! To reach large audiences and passive candidates, send your “position announcements” to social media communities and build your talent pool.  Furthermore, attract applicants with a branded career site where candidates can learn more about your company and its careers. Now that all of your jobs have been posted to your job boards, career sites, and social media networks, have a bagel. You deserve it!

Lunch: Applicant Tracking

Resumes and applications seem to be pouring in at the speed of light. How will you screen, rank, and qualify the large volume of applicants? How will you track which candidates filled out the application forms and which didn’t? How will you effectively communicate with all of the candidates? HR management tools, such as applicant tracking systems, can simplify all of these processes for you. No more sifting through papers. Eliminate your paper processes by electronically screening and collecting resumes, cutting down the time to find qualified candidates. View candidate information in an electronic profile and search within those profiles easily and quickly. Lastly, these systems often allow recruiters to send mass personalized and branded emails to candidates in one shot. Think of how much time you’ll have now-I think the cheeseburgers are calling my name!

Dinner: Onboarding

Dinner is the last meal of the day; and onboarding is the last stop in the candidate lifecycle. If you want increased new hire productivity, retention, and engagement, the onboarding process should be quick and easy. Cut down on time to productivity with an onboarding portal. In this portal, host electronic paperwork that new hires can fill out before their first day, as well as view information about the company’s culture, mission, vision, and values.  It’s a sure-fire way to have new hires quickly up and running on their first day. Home cooked meal, here I come!


Implementing these timesaving tips will allow you to source, screen, and hire the talent you need. You might even have time for a mid-day snack!

Adventure is my middle name when it comes to food. And lucky for me, I got to chow down at some great restaurants over the holiday break. At one of the restaurants I went to, I decided to order their holiday tasting menu. I was so excited to try some great dishes that I could hardly wait for the first course to arrive. After what seemed like forever, the tinniest crab cake was set before me. Another eternity passed when the second course arrived, and it was then, that I realized that this was going to be a very long dinner. The time between each course seemed to be increasing, and I just wanted the next dish to be the last dish, dessert. As I waited for the thousandth dish, my mind couldn’t help but wander off into HR space. I started thinking, “I would never survive an application process if it was as long as this dinner!” 

Many recruiters and HR professionals forget that the candidate experience is a crucial part of a hiring process. Long and tedious application processes can have a negative effect on a candidate’s experience.  If you want to ensure that your candidates have a positive experience, the application process should be no longer than a 3-course meal.

Appetizer
Prospective applicants come to your career site because they are interested in your company.  For an effective career site, it should be like a restaurant menu. Provide the right information to entice your reader to order something (apply for a job). Applicants should be able to easily find and read information about your company’s history, corporate culture, available jobs, and more. The more interactive and branded your career site is, the more traction your job opportunities will get. It is also great to add your company’s Twitter and Facebook to your site, to increase candidate engagement.

Entrée
The job application is the meat and potatoes, and it should be an easy and efficient process. This is the step where you can either win or lose a candidate. No one likes filling out the same information over and over again. It gets tiring and frankly, it gets boring. Many recruiters avoid this problem by implementing an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). With an ATS, an applicant can upload his/her resume and the information will pre-populate within the application form. This avoids redundant and time-consuming manual data entry. Another key factor in the application process is communication between the candidate and the recruiter. The number one frustration for a candidate is not receiving a response. This can be easily fixed by utilizing a Communications Center, like the one offered by iCIMS. Recruiters can send out emails to all applicants, while maintaining a personal and positive experience. Email communications will also allow candidates to know exactly where they stand at all times, in the application process.

Dessert
If your candidate toughs-out the entrée course, they’ve made it to dessert, and it’s time to bring them onboard! To ensure that your new-hire has a seamless transition into your company, utilize an onboarding portal. Post electronic forms to your onboarding portal so your new-hires don’t spend their first day filling out paperwork. Also, help save time for you and your hires by allowing them to work and manage their own training sessions. Give them flexibility and control over their own work schedule. With a positive outlook from the application process and onboarding process, your new-hire will be ready to jump right into work with increased productivity!  

Use these 3 key ingredients and your candidates won’t leave the application process with a bad taste in their mouths!

It’s the day after Halloween! Yes, that means that it’s time to shed that itchy polyester costume, pick the fake spider webs out of your hair, and empty out those pockets filled with candy wrappers. What’s next you ask? Well, with all the Halloween festivities, you didn’t have time to think about how to solve your recruiting issues at work! But there’s no need to fret! Perhaps we can use some of that Halloween spirit to help you out!

First things first, take a look at your trick-or-treat bag. Think of your bag of Halloween treats as your talent pool, and your candies as candidates. Just as you would sift through all the candies to find the one you want, you also need to sift through your talent pool for the right talent. But finding the right person for your organization isn’t an easy task. Candidates’ resumes are like colorful candy wrappers, each one is different with so much to look at, making it even harder to choose one from another. This is where automation would be helpful. Instead of manually going through each and every resume, there is technology out there that can automatically filter, screen, and rank qualified candidates. They can also sort through resumes to find specific skills sets and requirements through an easy-to-use keyword search.

Secondly, keep the candies you’ve picked. Once you find the candy you want, you don’t want someone else taking it away from you! What many people don’t realize is that retaining key talent starts with the onboarding process. Having an onboarding portal can help new hires transition into a company more smoothly and efficiently, while making it a positive experience. Allow your new hires to fill out electronic forms and documents prior to their first day of work. This will ensure faster new hire productivity and increased retention rates!

Last but not least, know which houses give out the best candy…so you can go there next year! Sourcing is one of the biggest challenges recruiters face. Many have a hard time finding which job sources bring in the best candidates. Whether it be job boards, employee referrals, or social media outlets, it’s important to identify the most effective outlets for acquiring top talent. One thing you can do is measure the effectiveness of sources you currently have. And, if you have already automated your program, reporting and tracking is as easy as 1-2-3. Once you find your most successful sources, you can manage and optimize them. You can then try using social recruitment tools to post jobs on Facebook and Twitter, or reach specific talent through unique job boards to optimize your job search!

You’ve picked the best candy (candidates), you learned how to keep them (employee retention), and now you know where to get the best candy for next time (sourcing). Thank goodness for all of the Halloween spirit!