Hiring Process Archives

Improve Your Hiring Process: Cast Wide Net for Talent by Going Social

Much of what I’ve addressed in my Improve Your Hiring Process blog series to this point has been about bringing efficiency and structure to your hiring process. Not to discount that by any means, as larger groups of unqualified applicants for open positions makes this more important than ever. But, ever think about why so many unqualified applicants end up in your pool?

Resume Blasting on Job Boards

The answer is job boards. Job boards have become the dominant tool for most companies to find applicants. For years, the lure has been getting the most applicants in the least amount of time. On the flip side, job boards present an excellent way for job seekers to have their resume available to thousands of companies, even allowing applicants to auto-apply for positions that match certain keyword criteria.

I’m not suggesting that job boards are bad — they are useful tools for most organizations. The primary issue is that technology isn’t advanced enough yet to determine that a candidate who manages a fast food restaurant shouldn’t be submitted for a “Manager of Global Logistics” position — even though that position has the keyword “manager” in it. So, most of us take the good with the bad…we can get lots of applicants, but we know a majority of them won’t meet our criteria.

The Elusive Passive Applicant

At the same time, the most coveted applicants are those we often refer to as “passive.” They’re employed, but not happy. Thinking about a change, but not yet to the point of acting on it. These folks aren’t trolling the job boards for openings, let alone visiting your career site. Everyone wants to reach these folks, but doing so is elusive for most companies. This is where social media is becoming a major factor.

Over the last few years, much ado has been made about the importance of human capital and intellectual capital. If you think about it, social media allows you to leverage both of those resources simultaneously. If you have good people in your organization today, they likely know lots of other good people, who know lots of other good people, etc. You get the idea. So, why not maximize those resources to find good talent?

Lay the Foundation for Social Recruiting

Making this an effective part of your strategy really relies on having the other elements I’ve discussed in place. You must:

be able to brand yourself well
be able to quickly/efficiently “thin the herd” of qualified/unqualified applicants
use technology to more accurately “compare apples to apples” with those qualified applicants
manage those applicants throughout your process to avoid anyone falling through the cracks

Once those elements are in place, you now have a platform to leverage social media to find those passive applicants. From there, your next step is making it simple for you and your current employees to let others in the various social media circles know about your open positions. This is a step where using an applicant tracking software tool with a solid focus on social media can be invaluable.

The right applicant tracking system will make it very easy for your employees to quickly alert their social media contacts about open positions, including auto-generation of links for those contacts to click in order to learn more about the positions. It will also help track sources for applicants, including those sourced through social media channels. Ideally, it will allow those applicants (if they’re not at a point to proceed right now) to “follow” your company for future job openings. Finally, it will allow you to share open positions via your corporate social media tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Going social will ultimately allow you to reach passive applicants, reduce job board related expenses and hire more quality employees. Be sure to look for the next installment in this series…”Keep Your Applicants Informed”.

Image Credit: Paulo Batista (Flickr) CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Improve Your Hiring Process: Manage Your Applicant Pipeline Effectively

in Hiring Process/by Jeff Hallam

Now that you’ve made candidates aware of your position, leveraged contacts to draw applicants, and have gone through the process of thinning the initial herd of applicants, perhaps the most important part of the hiring process begins. Now is the time to dig deeper and take applicants through your remaining steps to hire.

If your hiring process is very short and compact, keeping track of applicants as they go through it likely isn’t much of a challenge. However, this is pretty rare. More often than not, the biggest complaint I hear from organizations is how cumbersome it is to know who’s where in their hiring process at any given moment in time.

Smart Workforce Planning

When you think about it, it’s not much different than than managing a sales pipeline. Since sales are the lifeblood of most organizations, lots of dollars and time are devoted to making sure all necessary team members internally know what new sales are in what stage of the pipeline. Knowing where applicants are in your pipeline is every bit as critical. This allows your organization to plan when certain positions may be filled, what type of background finalists have that may (or may not) work with the team to which they’ll be assigned, what additional dollars may be needed to secure your selected applicant for a given position, etc. In other words…it’s a big deal.

The Downfalls of Tracking Applicants Manually

The challenge for most organizations in the market we encounter (50-1,500 employees) is that this must be tracked manually. Sometimes this is done with paper folders that include an applicant’s resume, physical application, phone screen & interview notes, etc. Other times, applicants are logged into a spreadsheet and categorized by how far along in the process they are.

The paper folder approach accomplishes the objective of keeping most of the relevant information for the applicant in a single place. On the other hand, using this process makes it nearly impossible to keep track of any reasonable number of applicants at a given time, especially if you have multiple openings simultaneously. One other significant drawback is the scenario where one hiring manager needs to review an applicant’s information, but the file is with another hiring manager.

The spreadsheet option is the preferred option, but presents challenges. Chief among those are:

who maintains the spreadsheet — one master administrator, each person who participates, etc.?
how often is it updated?
where are notes for candidates kept? who has access to it?
what happens to candidates who look good, but aren’t hired? How are they considered when the same or similar positions open up down the road?

A final point to consider is that in either of the above scenarios, it is very difficult to protect your employment brand — as referenced in my last blog in this series. Trying to keep applicants updated on their current status, notifying them when the position has been filled, etc. is possible, but requires more time/effort than most organizations are willing to devote.

Applicant Tracking System Benefits

For this part of your process (assuming you hire more than a handful of people per year), using applicant tracking software should be a huge benefit. Applicants are now consolidated in a single data pool, where they may be accessed by those hiring managers and leaders you determine. In addition, you now have the capability to see who has made what notes, what applicants have been moved to different points in your unique process, and easily reference them when similar positions open up down the road. Finally, this also dovetails nicely with the objective of protecting your brand.

Managing your process more effectively allows you to repeat that process more consistently. This continuity, in turn, will improve your hiring results — leading to better employees who stay with you longer.

To see how our ExactHire’s applicant tracking system can help your organization manage the applicant pipeline, schedule a live demonstration.

Image Credit: Traroth (Own work) CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

5 Ways to Use Video in Your Recruiting & Hiring Process

in Hiring Process/by Randi Renee Doerr, SPHR, SHRM-SCP

Looking for ways to spice up your company’s recruiting brand? Check out this quick list of five ways to use videos in your recruiting and interviewing processes. Then, start converting more of your career site visitors into actual applicants, and eventually, new and engaged employees.

1 – Highlight Videos on Your Company’s Careers Portal

This may be the most obvious and already widely used idea; however, it just might be one of the most effective for engaging your site visitors to stay on your pages longer. A wide variety of subject areas can be covered on the branded careers portal available through your applicant tracking system (ATS). Videos might focus on the following topics:

Testimonials given by current employees about why they enjoy working at the company
Highlights from various company events and charitable projects to demonstrate the company culture to potential applicants
Informational videos about the city or region in which your business resides – this is particularly helpful if you do a great deal of nationwide searches for candidates and relocate new employees to your area

2 – Make Your Confirmation Emails Memorable & Informational

These days it can be very difficult for even medium-sized businesses to personally respond to each individual that submits an employment application. As a result, its quite common for organizations to use their ATS to set up auto-generated email responses whenever a new application is received. These are critical as they confirm to the applicant that his/her submission was successful, and they can greatly reduce the number of phone calls received by applicants who want to check on the status of their application. However, even though personalization strings can be used in these email templates, how exciting is email text for the applicant who is anxious to learn more?

In your email message, why not embed or link to a video that your company has created to explain the steps involved in the hiring process:

In the intro, thank the applicant for his/her interest in your company.
Explain how long it might take to process all applications for the position and when responses are generally sent to inform applicants of next steps.
Describe the different interview phases that are usually involved in the hiring process – including time intervals between each phase as well as who is generally involved from the company.

Not only will applicants be impressed that you have created a video for this step, but they will come away from the experience with more information about what to expect — without additional effort from your recruiting staff.

3 – Embed Video in Job Descriptions in Your Applicant Tracking System

When adding a new job listing to your ATS, embed code from your video hosting website to feature relevant videos from right within your job description. In this scenario, videos focusing on your office or field environment, and/or interviews with other employees in the same position or department would be well received. ExactHire applicant tracking system even has a designated field allowing video embed code to be pasted in when adding a new job description.

R+L Truckload & Global Logistics in Fort Myers, Florida, is a big believer in incorporating video into the organization’s job listings. Many different employees have roles in the videos it has produced. Here’s how one of its videos appears within the ATS on a recent job description:

And, check out their video:

4 – Insert Safety Videos Into Employment Application & Survey Applicants

If certain positions available in your organization require heeding important safety procedures or following certain protocols, then consider the benefits associated with embedding a video for applicants to watch during their employment application submission. This can be a powerful way of better qualifying your applicants for a position that normally attracts a high volume of application submissions – especially if many of the submissions have traditionally been from people who aren’t qualified or truly engaged in the role.

A short video might discuss certain steps that are followed as a regular part of the job. In the application, ask applicants to watch the video and then answer a series of short questions about the video. Serious applicants who want to work for your organization will watch the video and then answer the questions correctly. Candidates who are just applying for anything and everything will hit the video speed bump and think twice about taking the time to finish. For those candidates who do answer the questions, utilize scoring and/or disqualification filters in your ATS to rank applicants based on the number of questions they answered correctly.

5 – Video Resources for Long Distance Interviewing

There are times when it isn’t practical or cost-effective to interview candidates in person. Luckily, a number of affordable (and in some cases free) tools are available to enable organizations to video conference with applicants. Companies that conduct nationwide searches for specific positions can especially benefit from the modern convenience of interviewing applicants on-screen. Applications such as Skype, Google Hangouts, FaceTime, and GoToMeeting are just a few that can meet this need.

Take it a step further and record the video interview to make it available to other managers who are unable to participate in the interviewing process. Or, reference the recorded session to remind yourself of interviewee answers when you are comparing final candidates and near making an offer.

Image Credit: Indianapolis at Night by Rob Annis

Why Use Employee Assessments in Your Hiring Process?

in Hiring Process/by Randi Renee Doerr, SPHR, SHRM-SCP

We all know that turnover is expensive; however, so is the cost of having an under-performing employee who continues to work for your company. Consider also that terminating employees is more difficult due to the number of laws that exist. Is it any wonder that companies are becoming more diligent and taking additional steps in the hiring process to ensure they are hiring the right people? By “right people” I mean, candidates that have the same characteristics as your current top performers and ones that fit the job and the culture of your company.

X Factor Company Culture

Many different studies conclude that the companies that have proven to be great at identifying, hiring and retaining top talent are the most successful companies in their space. These companies usually have higher market capitalization values. One of the reasons is because having a top performing organization is hard to replicate, and leads to great cultures and the “X factor” that makes companies grow at accelerated rates and become more creative.

Many companies, when hiring, struggle with finding that right person for the job. While using tools like applicant tracking software and external job boards makes the process more efficient and helps with initial screening, help is needed when you get down to the short list of candidates you are considering.

As a result, more companies are using employee assessments to help with this process.

Identify Success Factors in Top Performing Employees

To start, consider how good of a job you have done in determining what the true success factors are for the job. A starting point should be to determine the traits/characteristics your top performers possess. This needs to be an objective process that you can utilize when interviewing potential candidates. To accomplish this, we recommend that our clients give their top performers a validated employee assessment to identify these success factors. From this you can develop a job success pattern against which potential candidates can be compared. This makes the process more objective, allowing you to be more prepared in your interview process and to focus on the areas of concern. It also helps to reduce the subjective nature of the questions and the answers that we typically see in an interview.

When you consider the fact that most of us are not that good at interviewing, we need all the help we can get. In fact, the interviewees are usually better prepared than the interviewer. Unfortunately, we tend to hire candidates that are more like us as interviewers, regardless of what the job requires. To make matters worse, we tend to reach that conclusion early in the interview.

The cost of these employee assessments and the additional time you spend in determining success factors really do pay big dividends. The payoff shows up in reduced turnover, shorter learning curves, less conflict in the workplace and better overall job and culture fit. You should work with your trusted advisors to help guide you through the process of selecting the right employee assessment tool and learning how to use it in your hiring process. Like they say, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

If you’d like to learn more about which employee assessment tools might be right for your company, contact ExactHire.

Image credit: generator.x show by jared (contact)

Improve Your Hiring Process: Protect Employment Brand

in Hiring Process/by Jeff Hallam

The importance of branding is often overlooked when talking about efficiency and technology in the hiring process. There’s definitely a parallel here with my last blog about comparing apples to apples in the hiring process, where I covered the importance of data in both day-to-day business and in recruiting. The same concept applies to branding. Organizations (both large and small) are very conscious of branding themselves to customers and partners. This same focus should be spent on branding to potential employees, i.e. applicants, as well.

As a quick aside, taking this philosophy to heart is especially critical to organizations whose applicants are (or may be) clients. Retail providers, hospitality, restaurants, financial institutions, etc. are just some of the industries where this applies.

Easy Peasy Employment Branding

There are some very simple steps to take in terms of employment branding. Below are the key ones I stress to our clients:

Make your career site welcoming and informative (maybe go for a different look than this blog’s photo!) — use the same look and feel as the rest of your overall website. Be sure to share information that will help applicants see the benefits of working in your organization. Make it clear how they can find your openings and apply for those positions.
Make it easy for applicants to apply for multiple jobs — either at the same time or over a period of time. Avoid forcing them to start from scratch for each job.
Leverage social media so that applicants can “follow” you and be kept abreast of new jobs as you post them. Statistics overwhelmingly confirm that hoping applicants will return to your site on their own to seek new openings isn’t a great answer.
Take advantage of social media relationships that exist within your current employee ranks. While it’s important to allow applicants to stay connected with you, engaging your current employees’ social contacts can drive more “passive” applicants to your site. In turn, these folks may choose to follow you or share your jobs with others. Either way, you’re improving brand recognition and expanding reach — all at no hard dollar cost to you.
Confirm with applicants that you’ve received their application submission and let them know what to expect from there. If an applicant tracking software tool is in place, this should be very easy to do. If not, develop an email template that may be used for this purpose.
Be timely with feedback to applicants about where they are in your process. Again, if you use an applicant tracking system, this should be pretty easy. In our solution, for instance, you can actually do this for groups of applicants at a time vs. each one individually. If you’re managing candidates in your email folders or in spreadsheets, this may still be done with email templates.
When a position is filled, take the time to reach out personally to those finalists not selected. Ideally, do this by phone. First off, it’s the right thing to do. Just as importantly, leaving these finalists with a positive impression keeps the door open if other opportunities arise down the road.

Be sure to tune in for my next blog in this series about managing your candidate pipeline effectively.

Previous blogs in Improve Your Hiring Process series include:
Improve Your Hiring Process: Thin the Herd
Improve Your Hiring Process: Compare Apples to Apples

Image credit: Welcome by alborzshawn (contact)

Let’s Have a Laugh: Applicant #LOL

in Hiring Process/by Randi Renee Doerr, SPHR, SHRM-SCP

Laughter, like coffee or wine, is best when shared with friends. So let us share these chuckles with one another. #LOL

We have all seen at least one resume, applicant, or cover letter come across our path that leaves us unsure of whether we should be appalled, reach out to help the person…or just laugh. If this has not yet happened to you and you are in a role or industry where you deal with resumes, applicants, and cover letters on a regular basis, it will soon.

Some of my favorite cover letter chuckles.

“I look forward to hearin from ya.”
Oh yes. At first I thought maybe this person simply forgot the “g.” Maybe the applicant was typing too fast? But then when I read the “ya” for you, I realized the applicant was typing as s/he speaks. Bless her/his heart. That is all I could think.

“I am qualified.”
You have got it…that was the entire cover letter. Are you intrigued yet?

There was one cover letter that came through with the closing of, “Needing employment. Much appreciated.”
I thought his/her directness was appreciated. Granted, the majority of the cover letter was actually nicely written…so by the time I read the closing, I was a bit biased.

“please reply back asap. thank u so much & have a great day.”
I personally happen to despise the term “ASAP”. That does not give me a definite deadline to work against and your ASAP might not be the same as mine. But putting that aside, when did texting language become acceptable formal writing language?

Here is another one that has just appeared in my inbox, “In attachment pls find my latest…”
As Michelle Tanner from Full House would say, “Puh-lease!!!!”

So What if Grammar Ain’t My Forte?

There are the standard grammar issues: there vs they’re vs their, your vs you’re, two vs to vs too. These make me roll my eyes, but depending upon the position for which the applicant is applying, I may or may not focus too much on it.

The grammar mistakes that stop me in my tracks are passed vs past, then vs than, wonder vs wander, plane vs plain. The problem is that I read the sentence the way it is written and that takes on an entirely different meaning than the meaning intended. “Some people see me as a plane Jane.” No, I can assure you that no one sees you as a Jane flying through the air like a big hunk of metal.

While all of this makes me laugh, it does bring up a good question:
How much do grammar gaffes (and other instances of Twitter-fied vernacular) affect your applicant screening process?

Then, how much does it vary by position? Clearly, many people are responding to job listings on some sort of mobile device (or at least I hope so since they are using text shorthand.) Should I go so far as to ask applicants to pick the proper usage of a word in a sentence as part of my screening questions? Of course I make these mistakes occasionally, too. It is possible that the person was having an “off” day? Should I add instructions around my cover letter area reminding the applicant that this is considered a formal document where formal language is expected?

What kinds of interesting and/or amusing comments have you come across in cover letters, resumes or interviews? Please share them below in the comments area! We could all use a good laugh now and then.

Improve Your Hiring Process: Compare Apples to Apples

in Hiring Process/by Jeff Hallam

Now that you’ve narrowed your initial list of applicants to a more manageable number, it’s time to look at those remaining candidates in more detail. So, what’s the best way to do this? As with the first step of your candidate management process (see my prior blog: “Improve Your Hiring Process: Thin the Herd”), you have options.

Resume Review: Are You Getting the Info You Want?

Let’s look at how this has typically played out to this point. For most recruiters or hiring managers, this is commonly the time to examine resumes in much greater detail. As a result of this review, live interviews are scheduled for the “best” candidates. But…how do you know these are the “best”?

It’s not that resumes are bad or evil — they aren’t. In fact, they contain lots of good information about applicants. At the same time, there’s lots of information they don’t contain, too. Some applicants tell you way more than you really care to know. More often, they may not tell you enough. Think about whether or not most resumes you review answer these questions:

Why are they interested in a position with your firm, in particular?
What specific skills do they feel they bring to the table (as they relate to your available position)?
How did they hear about your opportunity?
What were their start/end dates with prior employers? Are you able to obtain references from those prior employers if you get to that point in the process?

My Resume is Better Than Your Resume

The other challenge with resumes is that we tend to look at them very subjectively. If two applicants have very similar backgrounds/qualifications, but one has a much more physically attractive resume, it becomes an easy tiebreaker. On the other hand, what if the candidate with the more attractive resume paid to have it done by a professional? What if one applicant is better with Microsoft Word…but that isn’t necessarily critical to success in this job? You probably see where I’m going with this.

Finally, resumes promote inefficiency. Because each applicant is trying to outdo the next, resumes tend to be very different. When you start trying to compare candidates to one another, it becomes difficult to recall why one looked better than another.

The simple fact is that resumes create bias. It’s become an arms race to see who can put together the resume with the best keywords and eye-pleasing layout. In my opinion, that shouldn’t carry as much weight in the process as it does in most cases today.

The question, then, becomes…how do you really compare apples to apples? The answer lies with data. Data is used to make decisions in every facet of our business lives. Why should a process as important as hiring be any different? Resumes contain data, but it isn’t always complete and is often in very different formats. You need complete data in a consistent format to improve results.

Use Application Data to Drive Employment Decisions

“So, what does that mean?”, you may ask. Personally, I favor the use of online employment applications. This trend has been gaining momentum for several years and is used by thousands of organizations (both large & small) across the country. The key is utilizing a solution that allows you to gather what you want the way you want it.

For example, you may want to implement a full application with more information submitted from people applying for entry-level positions — or those positions that tend to generate a higher applicant volume than you’d like. Emailing a resume is easy, so often applicants throw their hat in the ring for these openings, even if they know they’re not really a good fit. This creates additional screening burdens for you. Asking applicants to instead complete an online application for these positions requires just enough effort to ensure they look more closely at the position requirements. In turn, this typically helps to curb the number of unqualified applicants for these jobs.

On the other end of the spectrum, you may want to streamline and/or shorten the online employment application for those positions for which finding qualified applicants is difficult. This scenario provides an excellent opportunity to balance the screening question tips from my “thinning the herd” blog with our topic here of getting consistently-formatted applicant data. If you find yourself with many of these positions, it doesn’t mean an online application won’t work for you. Instead, you may want to choose a solution that allows you to either break the application process into two steps, or one that allows candidates to auto-fill the more mundane sections of the application (employment history, education, etc.) with information from social media profiles like LinkedIn. Either option maintains a very “applicant-friendly” process, while still providing you the consistent data you need to make good hiring decisions.

Regardless of whether you partner with an applicant tracking software vendor for this solution or develop it yourself internally, the end result should be the same. Having your candidate data in a consistent format is another significant step forward in streamlining and improving the overall results of your hiring process.

Be on the lookout for the next blog in my series where I look at the importance of protecting your employment brand.

Could you use an ATS solution to help bring consistent data into your hiring process? Contact us to discuss our applicant tracking system. – See more at: https://www.exacthire.com/improve-your-hiring-compare-apples-to-apples.blog#sthash.lzHQfahv.dpuf

Image credit: Green-Red by It’s All about Rock (: (contact)

Improve Your Hiring Process: Thin the Herd

in Hiring Process/by Jeff Hallam

As you might gather from the title above, this is the first blog in a seven-part series about core concepts your organization can use to improve the efficiency and overall results of your recruiting and hiring process. While not the most glamorous topic out there, I think the majority of people involved with recruiting will agree that doing it right, and with as little wasted effort as possible, is critical to the ultimate success of any organization.

To be clear, this blog series isn’t about “process change” or anything nearly that advanced. Instead, I’ll be writing about simple concepts that are easy to incorporate into your existing process and can dramatically improve results. So, off to our first suggestion — thin the herd efficiently.

Screen Employment Applications

I don’t mean to imply that your applicants are a herd of animals, although you may disagree in some instances! However, this analogy holds true for most organizations when you look at what chronically-high unemployment rates have created. We’ve all read the stories about hundreds or thousands of applicants lining up when career fairs are held for new job opportunities. The simple fact is there are a lot of people continuing to look for work, so open positions attract larger volumes of applicants than they did 10 years ago. The “herd” of applicants is typically pretty big depending on the role.

On the one hand, that’s a good thing for you as an employer. There are more options from which to choose and a more diverse pool of potential hires available. On the other hand, it creates a dilemma many of you have encountered…”how do I possibly review all of these applicants for this opening?” That’s usually followed by…”I don’t have time for this AND my actual job!” So, how can you thin the herd?

Screening Questions Are Your Friend

The easiest solution I’ve found is to develop job-specific screening questions for your different positions. While there is initially a little time involved in creating these questions (including making sure they are legal & non-discriminatory), they can allow you to separate the clearly-unqualified job candidates from the possibly-qualified individuals much more quickly than the traditional option of reviewing resumes and applications individually.

It’s possible to do this with existing paper applications or downloadable PDF applications, although these options take away the ability to have the screening done in an automated fashion. Similarly, some of the more prevalent job boards allow you to require applicants to answer screening questions before they can submit their information for your job openings.

More commonly, organizations are looking to automated applicant tracking software tools to help with screening. If implemented properly, web-based recruiting solutions like these can automate this screening process significantly. In many instances, you can automatically “score” applicants’ answers to your unique questions and designate certain responses to mark applicants as not qualified for a given position.

Download our hiring process questions guide

Streamline and Improve the Hiring Process

An applicant tracking system shouldn’t be viewed as a way to “automate” hiring — in an impersonal sense. Rather, it’s merely a tool, that when used properly, can help you quickly identify which applicants merit further consideration for your particular job openings. Once you’ve “thinned the herd” initially, you will then be in a position to focus more time and effort on engaging with the shorter list of qualified applicants moving forward.

Be on the lookout for the next blog in my series where I relate the concept of comparing apples to apples to the recruiting process.

Could you use an ATS solution to help streamline your applicant screening process? Contact us to discuss our applicant tracking system.

Image credit: Stampede by Gopal Vijayaraghavan (contact)

Help Wanted: Applicants Needed!

in Hiring Process/by Randi Renee Doerr, SPHR, SHRM-SCP

I did some window shopping recently and I saw many “help wanted” signs plastered front and center of doors, cash registers, in yards, etc.

Many signs said, “See Associate” or “Inquire at (insert phone number)”. If you are hiring, chances are your staff is already stretched thin. Is it in their best interest to be talking with potential new hires? Depending on your business, you may hire applicants on the spot in which case this blog may not provide much insight for you.

Take Out the Middle Step

I enjoy making processes efficient. Instead of asking for an applicant to “see associate” to get more details or “inquire at…”, tell the applicant exactly what the other person was going to tell them – “Apply online at our website under careers.” This helps your current employees to be free to do their job and respects the time of your applicant. If you have multiple locations, it would be valuable to create a standard help wanted sign for each of your locations. It can be simple:

HELP WANTED. TO APPLY VISIT CAREERS AT WWW.YOURCOMPANY.COM

This will help your locations to present a standardized company recruitment brand and also avoid the need to have signs similar to those below.

The Sign Did Not Work

Even with a sign directing applicants to apply on your website, there will inevitably be applicants that still inquire with your staff. Some may see this as an applicant that cannot follow direction. I see this as someone with drive, determination, and possibly higher on the scale for social and creative behavioral traits according to some employee assessments. Be prepared. The easiest thing you can do is create an extra set of business cards. Provide a link to your organization’s website or applicant tracking system (ATS) portal on these cards, along with any steps associated with finding your online employment application.

If you have space and resources, the next best thing is to set up a computer/kiosk on-site and allow applicants to apply right then and there. You would need to speak with your IT department about setting up the computer so that only the ATS and/or your organization’s website is accessible. This keeps applicants from lingering and surfing the internet while applying. If you utlilize the on-site apply option, you would want to make sure that the resume upload section of your application is not required or that it is set up as a two-step application. Two step application processes allow HR staff to invite specific applicants who meet minimum requirements to complete additional sections of an application further into the selection process.

While You Have the Applicant’s Attention

Now that the applicant is on your applicant tracking software portal, tell them about your organization. Job descriptions can tell a lot about the organization’s personality and culture. What do your job descriptions say about your organization? How about your application? Does it accurately portray the culture and brand? These two things should entice the type of applicant you are seeking to find. If your organization thinks of its employees as a giant team and expects the perfect applicant to be a team player, this should shine through on the job description and in the application.

Spend some time adding additional pages to your careers site – benefits, testimonials, pictures, etc. These pages tell stories of your organization and the type of people who are employed there. If an applicant is not interested in working within that type of environment, then he/she will likely not apply. Whereas if your ATS does not have additional informational pages, the applicant may make it past the phone interview only to show up and realize at the first face-to-face interview that your organization is not a good fit. The opposite could happen as easily, too.

Time is valuable – your time, your employees’ time, and your applicants’ time – utilize your applicant tracking system’s features and direct all applicant traffic to the careers portal.

Photo Credits:
1 – “Help wanted,” © 2006 Nonsequiturlass, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

3 – “Creative Person,” © 2008 Wade M, used under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en