iCIMS Hire Expectations™

We may not be proud of it, but even the best of us get hooked on really bad reality TV shows. Most recently I found myself glued to Remodeled – a show that stars modeling industry veteran Paul Fisher, who’s planning to bring together hundreds of small modeling agencies around the world in a new venture called The Network.  His mission is to make sure modeling agents in small towns see success and empower models in their careers. 

In the last episode Paul ventured to Columbus, Ohio to bring an outdated family run agency into the 21st century and embrace high fashion. At the end of the episode, the agency in Ohio went from looking like a family room to a high fashion agency space with the help of a little reimaging and improved process.

You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this – but there was something distinct that caught my eye that’s translatable in so many facets of business – including HR. Being successful in carving out an image for your company involves gaining control and understanding the image you want to project to gain the talent you need. On top of your image, it’s the processes you put in place that help maintain the image. Together, this helps support the employer brand in a way that’s not just skin deep.

While we may not be in the industry of finding the next Cindy Crawford, we are in the business of finding top talent and like it or not – the image your organization projects on the World Wide Web speaks volumes of what it’s like to work at your company. With mobile technology use continuing to rise, candidates can easily gather information on what it’s like to work at your company either through blogs, forums, or directly from you.

The good news is that you can leverage technology to ensure that the image and communications you want to project make their way to the right people. Using applicant tracking software supported with tools like search engine optimization and social distribution, your company can get to the right audience and increase the depth of your networks with word of mouth referrals.  As new hires are brought onboard, onboarding software can help reinforce a standard process and your message, while ensuring you remind the new recruit of why they decided to join your organization.

While Paul of Remodeled may not be scheduled to visit your headquarters in the near future, it’s always good practice to reevaluate processes and ensure you’re effective and deliberate in projecting your employer brand to both candidates and new recruits. With so many tools available to help serve as a vehicle for your message and to reinforce the bones behind it – it’s up to you to take the first steps and discover the possibilities!

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!

As far as I’m concerned, there are basically two ways to prepare for a summer BBQ.

The first method is to prepare for the party by breezing through a giant discount warehouse, where you can get everything from outdoor furniture to food and decorations. The store is large, industrial, and devoid of personality, but it allows you to get the job done quickly. The store sells larger portions than your guests will ever consume and your options are limited, so you can take them or leave them. If you need assistance, you’re on your own, since the staff consists of cashiers and shelf stockers with no expertise on any of the myriad products. You’ll buy some low-grade burger patties that aren’t very fresh, along with some frozen items and trays of pre-made food, but you figure the kids won’t notice and the adults will tolerate whatever you serve them. When this is all over, you’ll store the leftover 274 burgers in your freezer and forget about them until you start planning next year’s event.

The second method is to prepare for your party by navigating your way through a half dozen specialty stores that have the freshest ingredients in town. You head first to the local butcher shop – a small storefront with a lot of character, where the expert storeowner waits on you and knows you by name. The store has a large selection of high-quality meats you didn’t even know existed, and the storeowner carefully explains each item and painstakingly prepares your order to your exact specifications. You make the decision to cut back on some non-necessities so you don’t have to scrimp on your primary course. You buy only what you need and won’t have much, if anything, leftover. You make each item from your own recipes, never using pre-packaged items or stale ingredients. The kids don’t pay much attention to your gastronomical feats, but the adults all become loyal patrons of the local butcher, and will never miss another event you host.

These summer barbecues are just like your options in the world of HR software. Would you prefer to stock up for your party at the large, impersonal, generalist store, or the small, personalized, expert shop? I’d take the latter any day of the week!

This is the difference between a best of breed technology and a large ERP or HCM platform. Would it be convenient for me to get easy-to-use, configurable, high-quality technology for each stage of the HR lifecycle from one vendor? Absolutely. Can I realistically do that right now? Unfortunately not. While the vision of a one-stop-shop that produces superior products in every category is a valid and excellent goal, HR technology just isn’t there right now. Technology providers need to focus on adapting to the changes occurring in the industry, and a specialist shop can adapt more quickly and effectively than a behemoth generalist. Moreover, a specialist provider can provide expertise and personalized service that will create a positive experience for you and your team.

If you’re looking to get everything in one place and aren’t too concerned with the quality of the product or the level of service you’ll receive, an HCM platform will do just fine. But if you’re looking for high-quality, cutting-edge technology and a superior customer experience, a best of breed provider is the only choice for your HR technology needs!

I always start off my morning the same: get up, take out/feed the dog (Penny), get myself together for work, pour my cereal and coffee and grab my copy of Entertainment Weekly…I mean the New York Times. Yesterday was no different. Cereal was in place, newspaper was in line. All I needed was my coffee and I was good to go. I stood up from my chair, went about seven feet and bam…sneak attack…the dog went for the newspaper. (Oddly enough, not the food…) Even the dog wanted to read all the news that's fit to print! Or eat it anyway. Slow to react, the dog shred the paper in about 2.53 seconds. In a huff, I got the newspaper away from her, dumped it in the recycling and opted for the entertainment magazine instead. Penny lives and breathes the very definition of troublemaker, but there is one other word that I like to describe her as: a Doer. Penny is proactive. She searches for what she wants and she gets it. I chose to write about this little anecdote because 1) I find any chance I can to talk about my dog and, 2) what Penny did made me think, ironically enough, about my job. By studying my movements and waiting for the exact moment, Penny was one step ahead of me. I was unprepared for her move and thus, she gained an advantage over me. Now, let me subtly link this to Human Resources. It reminds me that HR thinkers need to stay one step ahead in order to develop a competitive advantage in the “war for talent”.

Everyone is competing to become an expert in their position. And, being in an industry that connects directly with Human Resource topics, I, too, find myself on this quest for absolute knowledge. Through research and analyses, HR professionals can stay one step ahead and create a competitive advantage that will lead to a more effective HR department.

Creating a competitive advantage can be process or employee specific. Let’s look at an example:

Company X and Company Y both operate in the Retail Industry. Both have stores in all fifty states and both require 30 employees per store. Company X has a 75-person talent pool to acquire candidates from while Company Y only has a 45-person talent pool. With a larger talent pool, Company X is more likely to source qualified talent quickly; thus lowering time-to-fill and improving employee retention. Obviously, Company X has developed some sort of competitive advantage causing an increase in candidate engagement as compared to Company Y.

The main question is: what did Company X do differently? Well, there are a number of possible answers. For example, Company X has an:

• Easy-to-complete application process
• Notably positive corporate culture
• Correctly targeted recruitment campaigns

But the real answer is they took the knowledge they gained through research and applied it to the challenges they were facing with departmental efficiency.

Human Resources is an age old department with age old processes. What companies CAN do is take those standard processes and learn how to effectively deploy them. And, as time passes, so do techniques. Bigger and better techniques surface (i.e. social media, applicant tracking systems, CRM tools, etc.) enabling companies utilizing them to create larger talent pools, acquire more specialized candidates, lower recruiting expenses and create a competitive advantage in the war for talent.

Here are a few examples (as you know, there are many):

Global Competitive Advantage:
Global firms can focus on a more diverse employee base when targeting top talent. In a SHRM study, more than half of the companies evaluated found a greater competitive advantage after focusing on diversity. The greater the diversity, the larger the scope of backgrounds and skills; thus, companies were able to effectively operate in a more global environment.

Hourly Competitive Advantage:
Companies that rely on hourly hiring can drastically reduce paper expenses and lost document error associated with high application volumes. By installing on-site web-based application kiosks that enable all walk-in candidates to directly send their information to an online database, these companies can eliminate the time and money spent on application data entry and printing. More time can be spent on sourcing top talent.

Employee-Type Competitive Advantage:
Healthcare organizations, for example, require a wide variety of workers often with necessary certifications. These companies can target LinkedIn focus groups to source specialized employee types such as nurse, part-time and volunteer.

So, stay one step ahead by researching, analyzing and implementing. Acknowledge the challenges you face, research solutions, and implement for a more effective department. Create a competitive advantage within your HR department to acquire top talent before your competitor does. As for Penny, I think it is time to practice “Stay”.