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Mobile Recruiting Strategy Fails – When Your Organization Isn’t Prepared

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You built a mobile recruiting presence, the applicants came…but then your organization wasn’t ready. Or, maybe you’re well on your way toward social recruiting Shangri La and you sense that a few hiring managers may be late to the party. In this blog, I’ll review five mobile recruiting strategy fails encountered when a business is not prepared in the hopes that you can avoid the same mistakes.

1 – Failure To Get Buy In

Even if you’ve already put a few mobile-friendly recruiting elements into play, or if you continue to evolve your social media content calendar to include career-related advice, you will still struggle if the rest of the team at your company isn’t prepared to buy into and participate in the new talent acquisition model. Start by educating them with statistics that paint a picture of this trend–no, this new way of doing business–to get their attention.

According to a 2015 survey by SHRM, 65% of employer respondents indicated they had sourced candidates from social media in the past year. And if it’s not your organization regularly leveraging the power of professional networking sites like LinkedIn or career community-focused networks like Beyond.com, then you can bet your competitors are.

Skilled workers who are willing and able to participate in the workforce aren’t as easy to come by these days. For example, in October 2015, recruiting difficulty reached a four year high for the 19th consecutive month according to SHRM’s Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) Report. Your organization must utilize the latest resources available in order to grab its share of scarce talent.

2 – Failure To Be Candidate-Centric

Remember when Tom Hanks’ character told Meg Ryan’s character that she needed to take it “to the mattresses” to save her business in the movie You’ve Got Mail? As you may recall, the dialogue was actually a reference to the famed Godfather; however, I like to mention the former, more recent movie because it represented how (at the time) email was a revolution in the dating game. It changed the face of courtship forever.

So now has social media and the proliferation of smartphones and tablets forced the evolution of talent acquisition. Take it to the mattresses. Be candidate-centric…maybe not in the same context that a staffing agency might because you have to fill a specific job rather than amass resumes for the future, but in a way that empowers your company to find the candidates where they are…on the networks and devices they are using. Don’t make it difficult for candidates to research your company online; and do make it easy for them to share jobs and positive career-related content on social networks when they want to chat with their peers about what they heard about working at your organization.

3 – Failure To Know Your Candidate Personas

If you fail to identify your target applicant audience across various job categories, then you will miss the mark when it comes to selecting specific social networks, mobile job posting apps and even customizing the applicant interface for your jobs portal to optimize your user experience (UX).

And while the thought that “mobile is coming” often conjures images of my favorite Stark family characters warning that “winter is coming” along with an onslaught of white-walkers in the binge watch-worthy Game of Thrones, the extent to which your organization needs to plan out its mobile and social strategy is dependent on the types of jobs you offer and the demographics and preferences of the top talent filling those positions. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center Report on U.S. smartphone use, it is lower income smartphone owners who are the most likely to use a phone during a job search.

Translation: The mobile candidate experience will make or break your recruiting success when it comes to your less specialized and entry-level positions.

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In fact, according to the report, “compared with smartphone owners from households earning $75,000 or more per year, those from households earning less than $30,000 annually are nearly twice as likely to use a smartphone to look for information about a job — and more than four times as likely to use their phone to actually submit a job application.” So ask yourself what percentage of your recruiting efforts focus on that population and then take appropriate action.

This insight doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels if you manage HR at a professional office setting with higher income levels such as a physicians group or an engineering firm. Mobile is coming and the statistics on usage in the job seeker space will continue to climb across all income brackets.

4 – Failure to Communicate Internally

In your haste to reach out to candidates in their own space and ensure that your applicant tracking system is mobile responsive, did you miss explaining the consequences a more savvy candidate hiring experience will have on your internal stakeholders? If you’re not catching my drift, think about whether the following comments elicit a grin…or a chagrin.

  • Have you engaged hiring managers in the process of revamping your recruiting process? If not, then the shorter, concise job descriptions you may want to use may irritate them since they don’t understand why you are condensing details about their department’s opportunity. (The answer of course would be due to the shorter attention spans and impatient click behavior indicative especially of mobile job viewers).
  • Ever since social media has inserted itself into the selection process, the next generation of candidates who used to place phone calls to hiring managers and HR staff are now inviting employers to connect on social media; or, they are simply tweeting at your organization’s Twitter handle with specific job questions. With this increase in inbound activity comes the heightened responsibility for employer representatives to be ready to respond in the same manner solicited. And, for your organization to have documented policies on how you handle social media inquiries (using the best hashtags BTW) and candidate social screening.
  • Have you documented details on which social platforms and external job boards you use to post which types of positions? After all, what works for attracting manufacturing-minded machinists will probably fail miserably at securing interest from content marketers.
  • Have you discussed how to approach scenarios in which you may need to privately source talent for a position that is not yet open? If individuals in management but outside of recruiting are involved, a lack of coaching to show constraint when it comes to covertly posting future jobs can spell disaster for many…especially the existing employee who has not yet received the termination memo.

5 – Failure To Enable A Talent-Focused Culture

When was the last time you paid a placement fee to an external recruiter? Not something you want to do for every open position, huh? While there is certainly a time and a place for such engagements, in the meantime you should be focused on maximizing awareness for your job opportunities via in-house resources. The right approach starts with making sure that your existing employees, vendors, clients, alumni and friends know about the amazing roles available with your organization. The best approach kicks it up a notch (like Emeril) and incentivizes crowdsourcing behavior with a socially savvy employee referral program.

Make it easy for individuals to share your job listings with their networks using a unique permalink (URL address with an individual identifier) that tracks their referral activity and rewards them when their candidates are hired. Then, when it comes to amplifying the reach of your latest career-related content, share examples of suggested wording for social posts so that your co-workers can quickly copy and paste to spread your message (for ex., if they are outside of human resources and don’t necessarily want to spend time/thought on crafting their own version of a message). Also, consider whether any rigid social media policies or limited access to certain websites will limit your long-term hiring objectives by handcuffing your employees’ talent-focused social behavior.

This is the first post in a series of blogs about mobile recruiting fails. Stay tuned for the next post which will examine what happens when the technical aspects of your mobile-friendly recruiting experience don’t align with the rest of your hiring process.

ExactHire’s HireCentric applicant tracking system is a mobile responsive software application for your job posting and recruiting needs. Contact us for details today.

Image credit: FAIL Stamp by Hans Gerwitz (contact)

Trending: Reverse Job Fairs

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Money makes the world go ‘round. And time is money.  So it is no wonder that companies and job seekers alike look for ways to save time and money in finding the right employer-employee match. A newer fad that seems to be catching on in the recruiting world is a trend referred to as Reverse Job Fairs, or RJF.

What Is A Reverse Job Fair?

Job seekers set up booths with science-fair like flair. Stacks of printed resumes, posters of accomplishments, degrees, pictures, recommendations, achievements, and samples of individual works can be displayed around the main attraction, the job seeker. All the while, hiring managers and recruiters can walk around and see what type of talent is available.

  • Employers Come to Candidates

    A divergence from the normal job fair, where HR professionals display information about their company and wait for candidates to act interested and approach their booth, this approach offers a different perspective. RJFs display the job-seeker’s assets and allow the HR/ recruiting role to peruse the stock of potential candidates.

  • Spotlight On The Candidate

    The time is now. As the job markets continue to become more competitive and companies are fighting over qualified candidates, this approach allows you (the job seeker) to present yourself in a way that highlights all your best assets and abilities.

  • Where Are RJFs?

    Many colleges are already setting these RJFs up for seniors and recent graduates to help them land the proper job that can launch their careers. Most colleges host industry-specific RJFs or organize them with a common theme in order attract many employers. Having a focused theme also yields a pool of qualified candidates with desirable traits.

  • How Much Does it Cost to Attend?

    Time is the biggest investment here. Not only in the time a job seeker stands at a booth, but in the time invested before the RJF. Like most things, you get back what you put into a RJF. Spending time to prep the booth, materials, and presentation are worthwhile for the job seeker.

  • Results

    Hiring managers and recruiters agree that RJFs offer them a good bang for the buck, so to speak. Being able to scan over 100 potential candidates in a few hours and dig in deeper to the most qualified candidates saves a lot of time.


ExactHire offers small- to medium-sized businesses the opportunity to save time and money with hiring technology. Applicant Tracking, Reference Checking, and Onboarding can all be automated and streamlined with the use of our cloud-based solutions. To learn more visit our exacthire.com or contact us today!

 
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How to Overcome Employment Screening Challenges in Small Business

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I know from experience: being part of a small human resources department often creates a close-knit team, but the workload can make you long to clone yourself a few doppelgangers. Small business HR professionals are often slowed down with manual processes, like ordering background checks and chasing down references. Moreover, they are often pulled away to put out unexpected “fires”; thus, making it difficult to get to every to-do on time. That’s why more small- and medium-sized companies are looking for ways to accomplish more without adding expensive overhead in the form of extra HR staff members.

Our ExactHire e-book, The SMB Guide to Superhero Pre-Employment Screening, reviews best practices in pre-employment screening; including, application review, assessments, background checking and reference checking. In chapter six (embedded below) the challenges of traditional reference checking are reviewed. This chapter comments on how automated reference checking software can gather objective feedback more quickly and with little effort.

For the complete resource to help guide you in fighting potential inefficiencies within your organization, download ExactHire’s complete superhero-themed e-book. Think of automating the candidate screening process as a means to arm yourself with enhanced senses and special, super equipment. After all, what would Wonder Woman be without her lasso; or, Spiderman without his webbing?

SMB Pre-Employment Screening Guide Ebook
Image credit: Thunder of Hooves by JD Hancock (contact)

Fresh Eyes On Your Hiring Process

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How is your hiring process? Does it get the job done? Could it be better?

Several months ago, new owners took possession of our office complex. Since then, parking lots were re-surfaced, carpeting was replaced, signage was updated, entry foyers were completely remodeled, and many other improvements were made.

Before the purchase, I think that most visitors walking into our building–myself included–would have considered it to be a pretty nice place. It got the job done. But the new owners, by seeing things through fresh eyes, were able to identify things that needed improvement. And now, it is indeed markedly better.

This leads me to the topic of improving your hiring process. Is yours, like most, similar to how our building was–functional, but in need of some improvements?

If you’re not sure, below are some items to contemplate when looking at your hiring process with fresh eyes:

5 Areas of Your Hiring Process To  Review

  • Career Page — Do you have one?  Does it really help potential applicants get a sense of why they might enjoy working with your organization?  Does it match the current branding of the organization?  Is it easily found through your website?
  • Application/Resume Submittal — Is it applicant-friendly?  Does it take too much time or effort for the applicants to get their information to you?  Can applicants apply from a tablet or mobile device?  Are you and your hiring team able to get the information you need to properly screen applicants for further consideration?
  • Consistency and Flow — Are all applicants for given positions considered equally?  Are the same screening/interview questions asked of everyone for given positions?  How is feedback from hiring managers and others gathered?  How well is the overall process documented?  Are applicants moved along smoothly and as quickly as possible?  Is there easy access to assessment results, background check results, reference check results, etc?
  • Communication — Do all the internal staff involved in the hiring process receive updates regarding the status of open positions? Are applicants notified as they’re moved through or out of the process? Are applicants notified that positions in which they’re interested are closing?
  • Future Needs — Are good applicants earmarked for future openings?  Do you have a mechanism to easily identify those good applicants when certain opportunities come available in the future?  Is there solid documentation to help remind you and others why these applicants should be considered for other openings?

Taking a fresh look at your hiring process may help you identify important areas for improvement. In making these improvements, you should see better efficiency and improved hiring results.


To learn more about how ExactHire can help you in your “remodeling” efforts, visit our website to learn about our HireCentric ATS and other HR Solutions or contact us today!

Image credit: Eyes For You by Alan L (contact)

Hiring Process Hurting Your Employer Brand?

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Your marketing team has worked hard to ensure that marketing campaigns communicate exactly what your company promises to be–your company brand. So hard in fact, that people are listening and business is growing! Now your company needs to be on top of their game as they seek to attract and hire the right people–your employer brand.

When hiring–especially when hiring aggressively–the perception of your employer brand can start to go one of two ways: your employer brand is knocked as contrived marketing fluff; or embraced as an authentic representation of what your company is, who your people are, and how you seek to do business.

Frequently, the people applying for jobs at your organization are also the people most familiar with your company’s brand–and many times they are direct or indirect customers. They’ve received your marketing. Now, through the hiring process, they get to pull the curtain back and really see what’s going on. It’s important that you meet their expectations.

Delivering On Your Employer Brand Promise

Let us pretend that your company brand stands for integrity, prompt communication, truthfulness, and transparency. You’re on the hunt to hire people who exemplify those characteristics. As you begin the hiring process, you portray these characteristics yourself by outlining the stages of the hiring process and roughly how long each stage will take. Even if you were to reject an applicant at this stage, your employer brand has been upheld by communicating and being truthful. On target so far–your marketing department is loving this!

But the next thing you know, massive chaos has broken out across your organization. Maybe someone quit unexpectedly, or you’ve had a benefit provider change rates on you, or…chaos of whatever type. It’s all you can do to keep yourself from drowning, let alone notify individual applicants that the next stage in the hiring process has been delayed!

But you stay cool, and you find the few minutes it takes to update your applicants. Maybe it’s just a generic, automated email that’s sent out to all applicants remaining in the hiring process, but this simple effort supports your employer brand image. The applicants thank you, and the marketing team does too.

Breaking Your Brand Promise

But let us examine what might happen if you did not take those few minutes to send an update to the applicants.

Scenario 1: Your potential new hire may not trust you to be timely, transparent, or communicative– and that mistrust could remain once they’ve been hired as part of your organization.

Scenario 2: The applicant could assume that they weren’t selected, and that you–uncomfortable with confrontation–just didn’t want to break the news to them. This might lead them to take a position elsewhere.

Scenario 3 In the worst possible scenario, the applicant tells everyone they know about their negative experience thus far with your company, severely damaging your brand image. If you think this is hyperbole, think about a company that is hiring aggressively:

20 positions X 50 applicants = 1,000 brand promises broken

1,000 miffed people X 300 followers of miffed people = 300,000 people who now have a bad perception of not only your employer brand, but perhaps your overall company brand as well. Ouch.

What’s the Good Word?

Word-of-mouth is the oldest and still the hottest marketing tactic–good, bad, or otherwise. Your hiring process will likely touch a lot of people and generate conversations about your  company. These conversations can either tarnish or reinforce your brand. Ensure a positive experience for your applicants–don’t keep them in limbo. By staying true to your employer brand, you will strengthen your company brand.


Looking for hiring software tools to improve and maintain your organization’s employer brand? Visit our resources page for more information about our applicant tracking system and pre-employment screening software, or contact us today.

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When Should I Buy Applicant Tracking Software? – Whiteboard [VIDEO]

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If your organization has never used an applicant tracking system before, you might be curious about the telltale signs that it might be time to buy applicant tracking software. In today’s Whiteboard Chat, Jeff Hallam shares his insight on the most obvious indicators that it may be appropriate for a small- to medium-sized business to implement a recruiting software solution for the first time.

Video Transcript:

Hi there! Today we’re going to take a look at something that comes up quite a bit as I’m out talking with organizations. And that usually kind of revolves around, for those who aren’t already very large…how do I know if I’m large enough; or, how do I know when the time is right for me to need an applicant tracking tool?

And so today is really just designed to give you some helpful things to keep in mind or some considerations so that you’ve got some warning signs to consider as to when might the time be right for your particular company. So, the obvious one is if you are doing more hiring. And there is no set benchmark, there is no set number of hires. If you hire more than this or fewer than that, it is or isn’t right for you. More often what I find is that it’s relative. It’s relative to what we’ve done before, it’s relative to what we’ve done up to this point, and so for everyone there seems to be this line of demarcation that once we cross that, this becomes a lot more problematic than it has been prior.

So as you continue to grow and you have more openings out there, that is almost always going to be a surefire way to help you kind of keep that in mind. Secondly, if you are seeing instances where candidates are applying, and you’re finding yourself kind of scratching your head and saying I think I’ve heard of this person before. Or, I think we considered them before. Or, other people are looking at the resume and saying “oh, we’ve talked to this person prior.” That’s almost always a good sign if you don’t have a ready way to keep track of that, and if you think about an Excel spreadsheet, Microsoft Outlook folders, or worse yet even just a stack of resumes you might be keeping in a file folder somewhere…that becomes really difficult to cross reference when you have more than a handful of those in there. So again, that’s almost always a good way to know that if that’s happening with more frequency, that means you probably have more openings, you’re getting more candidates. It might be time to look for a more effective way to keep track of those folks.

This is one of those things that comes up a lot…this need to involve hiring managers. So, when you find yourself at a point where it’s becoming more cumbersome to let hiring managers weigh in on certain candidates, it’s becoming more difficult to track and log what their feedback is…who we interviewed, who did we not, why do we not want to interview them or why do we want to interview them…again, that’s typically where Outlook spreadsheets, Excel spreadsheets, Outlook subfolders I should say…those types of things become very difficult to share bits and pieces of with hiring managers who are only focused on a certain opening. So, in other words if I have three openings and I only want Manager One to see this list of candidates, Excel and Microsoft Outlook folders aren’t really designed to do that in a very efficient way.

So again, as you’re finding yourself getting to that point, others are getting involved, and you want their input…almost always going to be something that will tip your hand that it might be time to look at a solution like ours. And then finally if your applicants are hearing crickets. And again, just by way of notice, that is a cricket. The idea here as much as we make light of it is that can be problematic at two different levels…so certainly it can be problematic if you have good candidates and you want to move them along in the process but you’re not getting to them quickly enough. Those folks, if they don’t hear a response very quickly, they’re likely moving on to the next opportunity. And you certainly don’t want to lose access to them. So that’s what we mean on the one side of the fence when we talk about them hearing crickets.

On the other side of the fence though, are the people that you are clearly not moving forward with. When you don’t have an automated tool like an applicant tracking software piece available, it becomes very difficult to keep applicants up to date with where they are and communicate with them effectively. And so even though you may not be worried about them as a potential hire, you don’t want to give those folks incentive to speak poorly of you out in the employment marketplace. Certainly we all have a brand to our potential customers, but that branding also extends over to the employment side of things. So, whether you are talking about your better applicants or your not so good applicants, having a ready way of keeping them apprised of where they are, what the next steps are, and where they fall in that process…is going to be very critical to making sure that you maintain a good presence in the employment brand space out there, and avoid giving people incentive to speak poorly about you to others. So again, hopefully this has been a nice help just to give you a few quick indicators. These aren’t the only ones by any means, and they may not be the exact ones for you…but certainly something to keep in mind as you continue to grow and your business gets to points where you might be considering something like this.

For more information about how ExactHire’s HireCentric applicant tracking system, please visit our resources section.

Employee Referrals – Use Technology to Help Track and Reward

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There’s a lot of talk in our market these days about where recruiting is headed. Many experts feel that we are on the cusp of some significant changes in the next few years. Less reliance on traditional job boards, heavier use of social media and allowing applicants to leverage mobile technology are some of the more consistent topics of change that I see on a regular basis.

Whether you see these trends affecting your organization or not, there is a recruiting strategy that is worth considering — employee referrals. This is nothing new. In fact, employers and their staff members responsible for hiring have been trying to find ways to consistently tap this market for years.

Employee Referral Program Benefits

There are several benefits to using employee referrals for sourcing applicants:

  • Better applicants — good people tend to know and refer other good people
  • Passive applicants — this approach reaches people who may not yet be actively looking for work and would never see your opening on your career site or a job board
  • Lower cost — even if you pay employees for referrals, it is widely acknowledged that this cost is far lower than the typical costs born through standard recruiting techniques
  • Better potential for cultural fit — your current employees understand your organization’s culture and are in the best position to help answer questions about the organization from those applicants they refer

Here’s more good news…technological advances are continuing to help make this employee referral process better for both employers and their employees. Social media on its own allows employees to make others in their networks aware of job openings in their organization. However, some of the more progressive applicant tracking software (ATS) tools in the market make this even easier for employees. Employees may click and share openings through their social channels without any copying/pasting. This makes the overall program more sustainable and successful.

To learn more about social referral tools available within HireCentric ATS, please schedule a live demo with ExactHire.

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Hiring Solutions and Technology for Auto Dealers

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With the automotive industry rebound in recent years, we’ve had the opportunity to customize our applicant tracking system technology for auto dealers around the country. In doing so, it dawned on me that there are some common reasons many of these automotive groups are looking for help with their hiring process:

  1. Turnover — With the improved economy, turnover figures are trending back to pre-recession levels. Salespeople, automotive techs and customer service representatives are the main positions where dealers experience turnover.
  2. Demographics — A high percentage of the applicant pool for auto dealers are job seekers who are very tech savvy. These applicants are used to doing things online and expect potential employers to follow suit.
  3. Limited resources — Managers in most dealerships are busier than ever with their day-to-day jobs. This means they don’t have a lot of excess time to review resumes and try to decide which applicants are qualified for their openings. These managers are looking for ways to automate as much as possible.
  4. Cost — Dealers are seeing margins squeezed like everyone else. This means they want technology solutions with low upfront costs, low ongoing costs, and no long-term contracts.

While not unique to auto dealers, these core reasons certainly seem to resonate in this industry. In particular, these issues are magnified for those dealers who happen to have multiple locations — a more common occurrence than years ago.

Popular Applicant Tracking Features for Car Dealers

Below are some of the features to which our clients have gravitated when using our HireCentric applicant tracking software (ATS):

  • Branded career portal to match the rest of your corporate web presence
  • Flexible employment application setup to gather what’s important to a particular dealer’s needs — this includes the ability to break the application into more than one step, if desired
  • See multiple applications for an individual tied to a central applicant profile — especially helpful for “serial” applicants
  • Track all notes, email correspondence and internal feedback for each applicant in a single database
  • Reach out to previous good applicants when positions open up unexpectedly
  • Communicate with groups of applicants simultaneously to keep them informed of progress in filling a position — this protects your brand for applicants who may also be existing or potential customers
  • Easily see what the “pipeline” looks like for any given position or group of positions

Using applicant tracking software isn’t right for every automotive dealer. However, if any of the features mentioned above resonate as potential options for your organization (automotive industry or not), please contact ExactHire to discuss whether this type of solution is functionally and economically viable for your group.

Use our pricing calculator for HireCentric ATS.

Image credit: Honest John’s Used Car Lot, Los Angeles CA, 1947 by Alden Jewell (contact)