iCIMS Hire Expectations™

As we reflect back at last year’s hiring data, iCIMS wanted to provide a glimpse at where our clients were finding their most qualified applicants across the different sourcing tools available today. In order to provide the most current and comprehensive data, we analyzed our 1,500+ clients’ source effectiveness reports. These reports assess recruitment advertising sources and the volume of candidates coming from each. Additionally, the report highlights the quality of such sources by displaying where candidates were in the recruitment process by source (ie: Did a lot of candidates come from a given source, but all were automatically disqualified?). On the flip side, the reports show if certain sources produce candidates who move farther along in the hiring process. We took the calendar year of 2012, and compared that to our previous study done in of 2011.  The results were accurately tracked by leveraging the automated source tracking feature of the iCIMS Talent Platform. This feature takes away the risk of candidates falsely identifying their source by automatically locking in the true origin of a candidate to ensure accurate reporting. The organization’s that benefit from the iCIMS platform range in size from companies of 10 employees, to global corporations well over 100,000; ensuring our report was applicable for a full range of organizations. In total, the data provided insight from over 1.5 million job postings, 30 million applicants, and 400,000 hires.

Of the 400,000 hires, 25% came from external sources (highlighted in the graph below) ; the other 75% came from referrals, internal hires, company career sites, and undefined sources. This data is very similar to the data collected last year (29% and 71% respectively), and confirms that iCIMS clients are better leveraging the tools at their disposal to make jobs visible via their corporate and in-house portals, as well as through employee referrals to bring in qualified applicants.

Though we are thrilled to see a high number of new hires coming in from these types of sources, the data also reveals the impact of external sources in the hiring process. Of the identified external sources of hire, Indeed.com, CareerBuilder, Monster, Craigslist, Linkedin, and Simply Hired, emerged as the top branded external sources of hire with sources such 3rd party recruiting agencies,  job fairs, and campus recruiting also making the list. Indeed alone accounted for more hires than all other branded sources combined and stood far out from the pack, delivering 27% of all external hires. Career Fairs also saw substantial uptick from last year leading us to believe that the economic climate is beginning to look up, and more recent graduates are finding jobs from these sources.

As we look back at where new hires came from in 2012, a few things are clear. The first is that our clients have continued to utilize the tools that are available through the iCIMS Talent Platform to effectively source out and recruit the best candidates. The second is that the external sources that were being used last year are still being used today, but in higher volumes, and lastly the sources may be the same, but the number of new hires has increased by over 25% leading us to even further suspect that many companies are starting to expand their recruitment strategies.

The customer is always right – especially when it comes to what they want to see in the product they use every day. In this case that product is the iCIMS Talent Platform, and iCIMS has always been committed to taking our clients ideas and feedback, and turning them into our newest features. While our annual surveys, client user groups, Product Experience Panel, and daily interactions with clients help us garner an idea of our clients are looking for, iCIMS has also created the Customer Advisory Council (CAC) – a two day conference held each year where an elite group of clients get together with the iCIMS team to discuss ideas and improvements for the system as well as upcoming trends in HR.

This Monday, September 10th marks the start of iCIMS’ 9th Annual Customer Advisory Council . The CAC gives us the ability to work face to face with both everyday users in the system and their executives to not only hear what new features they would like to see, but also things that they feel might not be working to their full potential. It’s a simple, proactive way to keep a pulse on how clients are using the system, ways that we can better the user and candidate experience, and share with our clients where iCIMS is headed as a company.

This year’s CAC is slated to allow for even more free flowing conversation between clients and iCIMS employees. With the largest CAC head count to date, new conference tracks, smaller break-out sessions, and one-on-one meetings all being hosted at iCIMS’ brand new HQ in Matawan NJ, we can’t wait to see the feedback we gain!

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.

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!

Today's guest blog post comes to you from Ron Kasner, iCIMS' Chief Corporate Development Officer. Ron has leadership responsibility for corporate strategy and development, business process improvement, and legal affairs.

A little over one month ago, I attended the 13th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. As the Chief Corporate Development Officer here at iCIMS, it was an excellent opportunity to hear directly from hundreds of HR professionals (mostly high-level), technology vendors, and analysts.

What I immediately noticed is that it seemed every other booth was somehow involved in one way or another in Talent Management. Either they engaged in talent management directly or were an ancillary product. In fact, many of the companies that were not in the space before, now are – well, at least from a marketing perspective. Unfortunately, that means a very crowded, convoluted market for those truly interested in and in need of a talent management solution. As a result, I personally found the need to truly dig into the “real” capabilities of various talent management vendors.

Luckily, I found many visitors to iCIMS’ booth doing the same. The people visiting our booth generally already knew about the functionality iCIMS and other technology vendors are offering, and subsequently knew what features they need out of a system. What was made clear to me is that ATS functionality alone isn’t enough; these professionals are interested in the total package – not only the complete HR system, but the entire customer experience.

HR professionals, especially those working for small and mid-sized companies, wanted talent management software beyond the traditional ATS. They wanted a solution that would drive their entire HR program from recruitment and onboarding to performance and training management. Finding one system that can support those needs is no longer a bonus, but a requirement.

Many people appeared to truly recognize that the right functionality is pointless without the right people to implement it, support it, maintain it, and enhance it. They asked many probing questions about our company history, growth, and future, as well as, how we service and benefit clients, and what we do to ensure a great transition to and experience with iCIMS. A handful of people shared some poor past experiences with other vendors, including long, costly implementations, confusing product navigation, limited configurability, inadequate training, and slow responsiveness to issues.

Candidly, this put me in a very good position to respond. iCIMS has over a decade of experience in delivering talent management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). We have over 850 customers, the 2nd largest number of customers in the talent acquisition market, with one of the highest customer retention rates in the industry. Not only have we been recognized by Inc. Magazine and Deloitte for our growth in the industry, but we’re also one of the most profitable vendors in the market. We have the only “pure” SaaS offering, with the most vast configuration capabilities. We also provide free, unlimited storage of candidate, employee, hiring manager, and job profiles. In addition, we offer free, unlimited email and toll-free support, training webinars, and learning materials.

From a customer’s perspective, this means we can provide one of the quickest implementation times, at one of the lowest implementation costs. This not only translates into a lower overall investment, but a faster return on investment as well. This also means superior usability and greater flexibility, driving more user adoption. This translates into a greater return on investment.

While I admit these conferences are good for seeing what competitors are doing or what technology partnerships can be made, I think the most important takeaway is the information and feedback received from the HR professionals, themselves. This may just be my two cents, but in order to be the best in the business, it is essential to provide what your clients need and not just what competitors are doing. These conferences give vendors the opportunity to hear what prospects want and what trends seem to be steering the HR industry. It will be interesting to see which technology vendors were listening…

These days, everybody is talking about search engine optimization (SEO) which, as the online traffic coordinator for iCIMS, I know a bit about.  Is my website optimized?  Is my blog optimized?  Are my tweets and social networking profiles optimized?  These are some of the more common SEO questions people are asking themselves.  The internet is a busy place and it can be hard to get noticed, but HR professionals should be asking themselves one important question: Are my job postings optimized?

Companies spend a fortune listing their open jobs on job boards, but recruiters are starting to realize that getting access to the best candidates may not be as simple as signing that fat check.  More and more candidates are starting their job searches with a visit to a search engine, not a job board. If the first point of debarkation for candidates is no longer the job board, the portion of the talent pool which can see certain job postings may be significantly reduced.  This shift in candidate behavior has led me to come up with the following suggestions for HR pros to maximize their jobs’ exposure.

1. Use appropriate keywords in your posting - A lot of job descriptions boil down to being acronym soup.  Make sure that you actually spell out what you’re looking for in the description so that you capture people who search for “Human Resources Manager,” rather than “HR Manager.”


2. Keep your postings where they are – The more sites they are posted on, including your friendly neighborhood job boards, the better.  This is especially true if they link to the posting on your company’s career portal.


3. Avoid using flash-based interfaces and portals – Flash-based sites are indexed by search engines as blank and, in many cases, forego the benefits of search engine optimization.  You need to make sure that you use appropriate keywords and that the search engine can read them. 


4. Make sure your talent acquisition software enables SEO – Did you know that you can turn off search engine indexing for security purposes?  What I find strange is that some providers of talent acquisition and talent management software do just that on their career portals, robbing their clients of valuable traffic.


5. Employ adequate candidate-screening capabilities – You will be tapping into a new source of traffic for your job postings and thus have more candidates to screen through.  Your time is valuable, so make sure that your talent acquisition software can handle the load for you by auto-responding to candidates who do not qualify.

As companies start hiring through this recovery, the best talent will be the first to go.  HR professionals owe it to their organizations to do what they can to get in front of the best candidates.  While that may not mean an immediate investment in new technology, it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.