iCIMS Hire Expectations™

As a Marketing professional at a company that produces technology for Human Resources professionals, I’m coming to realize that Marketing and HR have a lot in common. At the end of the day, we’re both selling something – Marketing is selling a product or service, while HR is selling an employment opportunity. There are certain techniques that are revolutionizing the field of Marketing, and I believe that HR can embrace some of these tools to gain an advantage when it comes to recruiting.

To begin, let’s take a look at the foundation of marketing: the marketing mix, also known as the 4 Ps.

1.Product: An item that satisfies a consumer want or need; either a good or service.
2.Price: The amount the consumer pays for the product.
3.Promotion: The methods of communication used to provide information about the    product.
4.Place: The distribution channels through which the product is provided for    consumers to access.

Now let’s translate this to HR:

1.Product (Opportunity): The position, culture, and employment brand you offer to    candidates.
2.Price (Value): The compensation package you’re extending to the right candidate.
3.Promotion (Communication): The communication you use to recruit and source    candidates.
4.Place (Recruitment Channel): The channels through which you broadcast your    opportunities.

Cover the Basics with Product & Price

You may not have an abundance of control over your “product” and your “price,” since the job descriptions and salaries will be dictated in large part by Hiring Managers and budgets. However, you do have control over your company culture, your employment brand, and some of the peripheral benefits of working at your organization (the “perks” of the job – game rooms, free food, etc.).

Build a strong company culture predicated upon shared values and a strong mission, and clearly articulate it to potential candidates on your corporate career site and social media accounts. Take advantage of images and video to brand these properties, and give candidates a glimpse inside your organization. Show candidates what it’s like to work for your company, and how they’d fit in.

Stand out from the Crowd with Promotion & Place

Marketing has developed a wide variety of tools to promote products. HR has adopted some of these methods, but in my opinion, they can expand upon these tactics by taking advantage of the channels and techniques that are currently revolutionizing Marketing: social, mobile, search, and automation.

Social: By now, it should go without saying that HR should take advantage of social networks for recruitment. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are all prime locations for finding candidates for jobs, and there are tools available that make it easy to get the word out about your opportunities. Make sure your job postings are social-optimized to allow for easy sharing, and make it easy for candidates to follow you and receive updates from your company.

Mobile: It’s estimated that by 2015 more people will access the internet via a mobile device than via a desktop computer. It’s important to mobile-optimize your career site to provide a seamless experience for job-seekers searching on mobile devices. Make it easy for candidates to find relevant jobs, regardless of how they’re accessing your career site.

Search: There is so much information out there; it’s hard to make sense of it all. Do your candidates a favor, and make it easy for them to find your opportunities. Search engines index millions of pages of job-related data, so you need to make sure your candidates can find your jobs easily. Make sure your jobs and career sites are search engine optimized so they show up on page one search results, allowing candidates to come straight to your career site (thus cutting out the job board middleman).

Automation: Nurture your candidates through automated communication campaigns that target them when the time is right. If you’re using a robust sourcing solution, you can build Talent Pools that you can enter directly into “drip” email campaigns that use logic to send communications at a determined interval. You can also set logic to send communications to certain pools when a relevant opportunity opens up.

Many HR professionals partake in one of the most important branding initiatives a company must implement. That’s right, I said HR, not the marketing department…well in some cases, marketing may help…but anyway, this is HR’s branding baby. And what is it you ask? The employer brand.

According to Minchington (2005), an employer brand is:

“the image of your organisation as a ‘great place to work’ in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key stakeholders). The art and science of employer branding is therefore concerned with the attraction, engagement and retention of initiatives targeted at enhancing your company's employer brand.”

Developing an employer brand is essential to any organization that desires to obtain quality talent to optimize the productivity and successfulness of a workforce and ultimately, a company.

So, what type of employer brand has been the most successful? Well, that may be an impossible question to answer, but recent trends seem to show that “putting a face to the company” can go a long way. In a recent article on ERE, BP did just that. Notoriously known for the 2010 oil spill that left a great deal of damage in the Gulf Coast region, BP has been able to bounce back with a rebranding campaign dedicated to showing the workers of BP. “Its recruitment advertising has changed, consistent with that brand, but using employees to describe it in human terms.” During this campaign, polls showed that, “more than 50% of people still had an interest in working for BP, and rated the quality of its workforce high.” Putting a face on BP may just be the trick they need to lessen the negativity once associated with them and ultimately, increase the number of quality candidates applying for positions.

McDonalds also leveraged their employer brand to drive recruitment. Back in April 2011, McDonalds made an announcement to hire 50,000 people nationwide during a time when unemployment was high. McDonalds attempted to show they were an employer of the people - striving to help out during desperate times. The ultimate goal being: an increase in candidate submission!

Employer brand is essential. But just having an employer brand isn’t good enough. HR professionals must actively promote this brand to show candidates just what it means to work for the company. Ask yourself the following two questions:

1. Is your career site up to date? Your career site should tell the candidate exactly what they can expect if they apply for a job within your company. Make sure it’s up to date and accurate. Make it fun (yet professional) too! This will increase candidate engagement. Also try leveraging technology to optimize your career site - this will also help candidate conversions.
   
2. What is your employee referral rate? If it’s low, maybe you should check your employee satisfaction rate. If that’s low, make sure employees know of all the benefits that your company offers. The truth of the matter is that most employees can’t name all of the benefits that their company offers. While this is not a set fix for low satisfaction - the more perks employees know they have, the happier they will be. And, the happier they are, the more likely they will be to refer top talent to your organization.
   

Conclusion? Know your employer brand and sell it! Show candidates what they want to see and I promise you will see an increase in top talent hires.

Here at iCIMS, we like to practice what we preach. With a priority set on the candidate experience, we talk a lot about the importance of the application process and how talent management systems can facilitate successful recruitment.

But before you can get a candidate to apply for a job, you have to get their attention. And once you have their attention, you need to give them the info they’re looking for to get them to consider submitting their resume.

Take a step back and look at your career site. Does it represent your corporate mission as well as the fun aspects of your company? Is it organized in a way that candidates can easily find the information they are looking for? How does it reflect your overall brand?

The iCIMS team considered these questions and decided that it was time for a change.  While the basics were available for candidates to review, many of the things that make iCIMS a great place to work just weren’t showcased to their full potential.

Introducing….the Careers @ iCIMS Microsite!

Our new career site is designed to enhance the candidate experience and provide potential new hires with even more information right up front.  As we developed our microsite, we focused on a few core areas based on best practices to further boost reader engagement with an ultimate focus on building out our candidate pool.

Focus on Your People: We spend about a third of our lives at work surrounded by the same people day in and day out. Top candidates will be selective about which jobs they apply to, and who they will be working with may factor into their decision. Don’t be afraid to feature your teams and individuals throughout your organization. Gather testimonials and photos from around the company, and use them to tell the story of what your teams are all about.

Focus on Your Workplace: Every workplace has features that make it unique. Instead of waiting until the interview to share these details, highlight the perks of the job from the start. Adding sections to your career site that call attention to your robust benefits programs or how your office is situated in a prime location not only entices candidates but also eliminates a lot of preliminary questions from applicants during the interview process.

Focus on the Future: While some candidates are looking for a job, many are looking for a career. Applicants with a variety of backgrounds will be visiting your site, and you’ll want to be sure that all of them can easily discover how they can develop their careers with your company. Consider creating a section of your career site for students and recent graduates to learn more about internships and entry-level positions. You can also promote your programs designed for more seasoned employees such as leadership trainings.

Focus on Your Jobs: The ultimate goal of a career site is to motivate candidates to apply for jobs that best fit their skills. Be sure to keep your job search accessible from every page with dedicated links to your career portals in your content as well as your primary navigation. You never know what page will be the trigger for a candidate to decide to apply to your company. Why not give them the option to do so from anywhere in your career site?

Hopefully this will inspire you to take a look at your own career site and identify the ways that you can make it even more engaging for candidates. You know all the differentiators that make your company a great place to work. Use your career site to tell the World Wide Web all about it, and watch your candidate pipeline grow.

Let’s face it. Even if you’re not a fan (a.k.a. Little Monster), by this point you have probably heard of the pop singer Lady Gaga. Over the last few years, she has managed to not only have a successful music career but also evolve herself into a multi-million dollar brand. Most recently, Lady Gaga was named the most powerful celebrity in the world by Forbes, beating out Oprah for the top spot. Due to her recent rise in the news and the release of her latest album, I thought it would be interesting to see what we could glean from Gaga and apply to talent management. While the notion is admittedly a little farfetched, there are some core tactics that fit in the HR space.

Branding, Branding, BRANDING!
While she has a different “outfit” every time she makes an appearance, Lady Gaga has portrayed herself as a dependably out of the box brand. Whether in live appearances, video recordings, or marketing promotion materials, the Haus of Gaga produces a variety of materials with an undercurrent of consistency that resonates with her fan base. While I’m not suggesting you dress up in outrageous costumes and over the top wigs, there is value in underscoring your brand through your recruiting. By syncing up your candidate management with your career sites, email communications, and web-based forms, you can facilitate brand awareness while building stronger ties with your applicant pool. Of course, the wigs are optional.

Stay In Touch with Your Fans (Candidates)
One of the keys to Lady Gaga’s continued success is her high level of engagement with her fan base. She fosters a sense of camaraderie by using social media, blogs, and videos to stay in touch with her followers. By remaining in communication with her fan base, Lady Gaga retains a receptive audience for her products and promotional offerings. On the recruitment side, striving to maintain an engaged candidate pipeline can be viewed similarly, as the ultimate goal is to sell top candidates on the idea of working for your organization. With a CRM tool built into your talent management system, you can schedule and send a steady stream of updates to candidates with customized content. Keep them engaged, and when you have a requisition that matches their talent, you candidates will be looking for it.

Showcase What Makes You Unique
Clearly Lady Gaga is not afraid to be herself (or a caricature of herself). She is open to the media and her fans about her beliefs and doesn’t hold back when it comes to expressing herself artistically. Lady Gaga has achieved astronomical success by finding ways to stand out in a crowded pop music scene. With all the competition for top talent in our economy, do what you can to stand out from the crowd. Showcase what makes your organization unique compared to your competition. Do you have interesting programs that would appeal to your candidates? Highlight them on your career site to emphasize how and why your organization is a great place to work so candidates will gravitate toward what you have to offer.

Although starting a new career can be exciting, I think that everyone would agree it can also be very stressful. Whether it is searching for a position, completing a tedious application form, or getting accustomed to the company, the candidate is rarely ever at ease. Most companies would probably say that they want their new hires to feel comfortable, but are they doing anything to make their transition easier?

New recruitment technologies allow for some of this ‘new job stress’ to be alleviated, however will making an applicant less stressed really help your company?

The answer is YES!

An article on ERE discusses how, “mobile phones and social networks now make it amazingly easy for unhappy candidates to almost instantly spread a message about their negative application and hiring experiences”. A negative comment about working for a company posted on the web could scare away top talent from pursuing that position. On the other side of the spectrum, who wouldn’t want to work for a company that is branded ‘the best company to work for’? Candidates’ feedback can either hurt or help your company, so improving your candidate experience may not be a bad idea.

In order to avoid negative publicity, recruiters should focus on how to make the candidate experience a positive one. At iCIMS, recruiters and employees go out of their way to make sure new hires are comfortable and enjoy the transition experience.

Below are some easy-to-implement and highly-effective ways to improve the candidate experience at your company:

• Make it easy for applicants to apply to your jobs online – Implementing an applicant tracking software makes it easy to apply to your company, while also allowing recruiters to easily track each applicant.
• Communicate with every applicant – Receiving a rejection letter leaves a much nicer impression on the applicant than simply never hearing from the company again. 
• Explain the company and the position accurately – Applying for a job offer only to find out that the position is nothing like what was advertised can be a bad reflection on the company.
• Implement a strong onboarding process – A flawless onboarding program allows new hires to feel comfortable in their new positions so they can start contributing to the company immediately.

Large and small sized companies are seeing how making minor changes to improve their candidates’ experience can result in big changes for the company’s branding and reputation. What other tactics is your company using to ensure positive feedback from candidates?

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!

Sure, you might be getting some applicants, but could you be missing out on a lot more? To get a better idea of what I mean, check out this Washington Post article from September:

Applying for a job with the federal government can be a miserable experience. Announcements of vacancies are often written in arcane, incomprehensible jargon; applications can stretch for dozens of pages; one branch of an agency might not have any idea of the hiring needs of a second branch.

Unneeded jargon, Unreadable, Hard to navigate, Stuck in the ‘90’s -- Is this you?

There are so many reasons to create a nice-looking, fluid, and easy-to-use career site that if you’re guilty of the above, it might be time to refocus. You could start first on content, for example. Make sure that all of your job listings are concise and don’t scare potential applicants. In fact, before an interview, the language you use on your career site is one of the most telling indications of what it would be like to work for a company. If it takes ten minutes to click through links just to find your open jobs, candidates might think they’re walking into a bureaucratic nightmare. Likewise, if your job searching tools are outdated and hard to use, they can easily make your company look behind the times.

Here are some other quick tips to making your websites a little more current:

1.       Trackers– Website trackers and free tools like Google Analytics can tell you a lot about visitors to your website: how long they stay, where they come from, what they do, and more. Plus, they might help you figure out why they leave: do candidates flee your website one second after a full-page splash covers up all of your content? You know what to do.

2.       Keep it simple – I mentioned this above, but keeping your career site accessible bears repeating. If candidates are getting lost just trying to find your career site's open jobs, you won’t be getting a lot of follow-through. I’ve heard complaints from applicants at some career sites who’ve actually had to leave the corporate site and go back to Google to find the open jobs page. Unless a critical job skill is escaping a labyrinth, don’t do that. Make an easy to see “Careers” tab that lets job-seekers go right to your page and see your openings.

3.       Video – If done right, videos can be a fantastic way to engage your applicants. Consider Whole Foods, an iCIMS client that uses sidebar videos from real employees to tell applicants about the benefits and opportunities for working at Whole Foods. Making these videos can be cheap and easy to embed in your page, and also show how employee-oriented your company is.

4.       Social Linking – Add some web tools and social media. Google maps, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and beyond: all of these resources are fantastic. With LinkedIn and Facebook, potential applicants can see if they know anyone else at your company. Google maps lets applicants see where your jobs are and whether they’d mind commuting to the office. Of course with all of these, it’s important to ensure that you’re using tools that are actually going to motivate candidate or increase your company’s perception -- there’s no point of creating an interesting tool on your career site if no one’s going to use it. Likewise, don’t link to your Twitter account if you don’t use it; why direct potential talent to a ghost town?

5.       Search Agents –Why limit your ability to reach out to candidates only when they visit your site? Letting candidates opt-in for email alerts for specific types of jobs, search agents are pretty cool and are offered with iCIMS’ Talent Acquisition software.

6.       Keep it Simple – If a candidates leaves after page 92 of your job applications, it may not be their fault. Screening questions and assessments are vital for pinning down the best talent, but sometimes you can scare applicants away by asking too many questions. Keep it simple and remember that you can always reach out to them if they match your requirements – people are appreciative when you save them time.

These are just a few ways to spruce up your career site, but there are dozens of things you can do to create a better environment for candidates -- you can even experiment. But, at the end of the day just make sure that for all the money you're paying to attract new hires, you aren’t scuttling your plans on a poorly designed career site.

Happy holidays!