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How to Effortlessly Use Texting to Hire Hourly Workers

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You only have to look at your smartphone’s weekly screen time report to know that the amount of time we spend accessing our phones is increasing at a relentless pace. Whether our pervasive mobile usage troubles or encourages you, it is undeniable. In fact, according to research done by Hitwise, the average device split for searches was 72% for mobile and 28% for desktop in 2017.

In consideration of the amount of time people spend doing web searches on phones, naturally we’re in a climate where employers must adapt and leverage mobile communication in their hiring process–particularly while unemployment is at an epic low.

Today, the name of the hiring game is speed, and this is painfully realized in industries that employ a large number of hourly, non-exempt workers. The reality of those employers is that if they hesitate to respond quickly, the competitor across the street has already paid their would-be new hire for their first shift.

Signs that you’re not effectively using a text recruiting strategy

We can and should all continuously experiment with and tweak our hiring processes. The hiring landscape changes so quickly that constant attention is required. However, there are telltale signs that help identify when your organization has a more significant mobile communication problem.

Phone ghosting

I was initially surprised a couple of years ago when I heard that many employers of hourly workers, in particular, struggled to get candidates to respond to phone invitations for an initial interview. If your recruiters are frequently encountering full voice mail boxes when reaching out to schedule a conversation; or they discover that a candidate doesn’t even have voice mail set up, then it’s time to try something other than a phone call.

Candidate shelf-life

It’s not uncommon for employers who rely on large numbers of hourly workers to empower the managers and assistant managers of various store locations to screen candidates and invite them to proceed in the hiring process. Because hiring is just one of myriad operational responsibilities for these managers, they don’t always respond to candidates as quickly as may be necessary in this job market.

This failure in prompt candidate engagement all too often sinks a retail location’s recruiting efforts before the ship even leaves port. Or, maybe a manager is in such tremendous need of candidates that he recognizes this deficiency and immediately calls or emails new applicants. However, because many hourly workers tend to fill positions that aren’t necessarily accompanied by a desktop computer or an office landline, their tendency is to communicate via text rather than voice mail or email.

If a job seeker doesn’t recognize a general manager’s incoming phone number, chances are she’ll avoid taking the call–meanwhile, if she has applied to multiple hourly positions, a savvy competitor is grabbing her attention and her time via text before she checks her inbox.

Standardizing communication and respecting candidate privacy

In the absence of a strong hiring software platform that allows managers to contact job candidates via text message, many managers of hourly workers will resort to their own smartphone to contact applicants to connect for an interview.

This is commonplace; however, it isn’t in the best interest of the employer. In many cases, these applicants were not prompted to opt-in to receiving text messages during the job application process–why would they if the applicant tracking system didn’t support text messaging?

Not only is this a privacy concern as it does not allow job candidates to formally opt-out of text messages once they are initiated, but practically speaking, candidates won’t necessarily be on the lookout for text communication from your organization.

Arguably, they will probably quickly adapt given that texting is second nature to many of them, but your organization is missing an opportunity to set expectations about the hiring process and endear itself to candidates…candidates who are in hot demand.

Moreover, when general managers take texting candidates into their own hands outside of an ATS, there is no guarantee of adequate communication documentation with the job applicant. By utilizing applicant tracking software that includes in-application texting functionality, an employer is ensuring that multiple users of the system have access to review communication between candidates.

After all, in this highly competitive recruiting landscape, recruiters have full plates and may be called to work on different job requisitions if a co-worker is on vacation, on leave, etc. What you don’t want is for only one person in your organization to have access to candidate conversations–that’s a significant obstacle for a scaling company.

Why is mobile recruiting an opportunity for hourly jobs in particular?

Hourly workers are often the front-line defense (or offense) for your organization. They are the individuals who are most likely to interact directly with your customers. And, unfortunately, they are often in the positions with the highest turnover–whether that is related to the nature of the job, the typical lower pay (relative to exempt positions), and/or the lack of benefits (at least in the case of part-time hourly employees). In a job market flooded with open positions, candidates will leave for a few cents more per hour.

You see this happen in positions like

  • hosts and servers at your local restaurant,
  • cashiers at your retail store,
  • LPNs at your healthcare facility,
  • service techs at your automotive dealership, and
  • direct support professionals (DSPs) for nonprofits.

People who fill these types of positions tend to be on the go (i.e. not doing a desk job) and may have more than one part-time job at a time. They don’t get into email or voice mail as frequently (if at all), and so they need fewer barriers to communication when it comes to job consideration, as well as long-term engagement with an employer.

Considering that over 58% of America’s working population fills hourly positions (BLS, 2017), there’s real opportunity to leverage texting to be the first to attract and engage hourly job candidates. I’m offering the following steps to help you position your organization as an earlier adopter of the mobile recruiting revolution.

6 steps to successfully use texting to hire hourly workers

1 – Create communication efficiency

Use pre-built text message templates within your applicant tracking system. Create and label them for different stages in the selection process for hourly workers. This saves store managers time when they need to hire three new retail associates–“yesterday!”

2 – Model the right texting behavior

Train your hiring managers on appropriate texting etiquette for your recruiting process. Does the language they use and the tone they convey support your overall employment brand? Additionally, make sure they understand how text messages will show up to the job candidate.

An easy way to accomplish this is to test the messaging feature from within a sample job application. Then, take a screenshot of how it appears to a recipient on your phone and share it with managers. This step will help them understand from what number(s) messages may originate, whether the sender’s name, job title and/or organization name are referenced, and how much of the message will appear on the preview screen before being cut off.

3 – Lightning fast speed

Use text to reply promptly to candidates once they’ve responded to your initial outreach. Don’t make the mistake of resting on your laurels once you have native texting functionality and take your sweet time to reply–jump on message responses!

Remember: texting affords job candidates fewer communication barriers to entry, so they expect organizations to respond quickly, too.

4 – Strategically plan text content

You should absolutely use text to reach all types of job candidates to screen and schedule interviews. However, text messages also present an opportunity–when used thoughtfully and selectively–to reach candidates who are on the fence about joining your organization.

Consider the potential impact of a personalized message sharing a link to a positive article about your company. Or, the likelihood that a hired candidate will end up ghosting you during the pre-boarding phase if you regularly connect with him to prepare him for his first shift.

5 – Flip the script on thank you notes

Use text messages to thank a job candidate for her time and preparation after you conduct an interview. That’s right–once upon a time, we expected job candidates to thank recruiters and hiring managers for their time in order to help them secure an offer–but times are changing!

Thank you notes are still an amazing gesture on the part of a job candidate, but they are no longer a mainstay for job offer consideration in today’s job market given the sorry state of many employers’ candidate pipelines.

Today is about sourcing, not screening. Break through the clutter by proactively thanking candidates with a simple text message and humanize your hiring process.

6 – Hiring process visualization

When candidates know what to expect from the hiring process it

  • helps them visualize how they see themselves interacting with your organization,
  • may allow them to more adequately prepare, and
  • it makes it easier for them to say “yes” when you make the job offer.

You can use text to quickly outline the various hiring process steps at the onset of the recruiting process. Think of this step as reducing friction for distracted job seekers who probably have many options before them. If you can grease their understanding runway regarding your job opportunity–and you can do so quickly–you’ll be the employer who is poaching job candidates from competitors across the street.

Mobile recruiting facilitated by text message communication is here to stay. Armed with the steps outlined above, you’re on the way to engaging the job seekers in your hourly job candidate pipeline and positively impacting your employer’s bottom line.

ExactHire Hiring Software | Text Recruiting

4 Guidelines for Optimal Job Application Conversion Rates

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We live in an age of distraction and it’s wreaking havoc on your talent applicant sourcing process. Despite your efforts to write engaging job descriptions, post them far and wide and publicize your amazing corporate culture, your click-to-apply ratio is dismal. So what gives?

While the aforementioned items are undoubtedly important factors in the talent acquisition game, another critical component is the length of your job application. The likelihood that you’ll make your very next priority about researching your ideal application length will depend on the supply and demand for job categories in your local market. However, know that the very best candidates always have options, so even in a seller’s…ahem…employer’s market, top talent still won’t fill out your 50-question job application.

The proof is in the numbers, and it’s pretty staggering on both desktop and mobile devices. Check out this statistic from a study referenced in an ERE post:

“For every 100 candidates who click through from a job advertisement to a recruitment portal on a desktop device, an average of 8 will complete a job application. For mobile click-throughs, the completion figure is just 1.5 percent.”

I was curious about how the same numbers would stack up across all of our own HireCentric applicant tracking software client job portals. During the last six months, our own click-to-apply ratios for site visitors who make up the referral traffic category* are listed below.

  • desktop – 9.23%
  • mobile – 4.96%
  • tablet – 3.34%

*Referral traffic category visitor = visitor referred to a client’s HireCentric ATS portal from a link on another site like a client’s corporate website or an external job board.

While our ratios come out slightly more favorable than those referenced in the study, it’s still pretty disheartening to think about the fact that out of 100 job seekers referred to your careers portal, only three to nine of them will actually finish the application process, depending on their device. So how can you improve your own job site’s click-through numbers?

Ditch Traditional Job Application Length Thinking

Start to ask yourself the tough questions about what you really need to know from applicants at the onset of the hiring process. Then, dump traditional thoughts like these:

Employer thinks: “I want my application to be long enough that I won’t get overwhelmed with unqualified applicants.”

High potential job seeker thinks: “This is taking too long…I won’t be applying here now…or ever.”

While there is some logic to making your process long enough to be a speed bump to candidates that are just looking to claim their next unemployment check, if it’s too lengthy you run the risk of disengaging the best potential applicants from finishing your application now…or anytime in the future.

Employer thinks: If someone wants to work here badly enough, they’ll jump through whatever question “hoops” we present.

High potential job seeker thinks: If the employer cared enough about its employment brand, they’d only ask the deal-breaker questions early, and save the other stuff until later.

Evaluate your own application process to determine what works best for your organization and job market. And, remember to consider how the applicant might feel while completing your employment application. Use the following sections as a checklist to help make adjustments…and know that what works for one job category may not be ideal for another.

 

Mobilization

Make it easy to apply from a mobile device

The statistics don’t lie–the conversion rate for job seekers viewing your site from a mobile device are even worse than from a desktop. Smaller screens make lengthier applications appear even more intimidating and stop potential applicants in their tracks. Implement these enhancements to improve your odds for success.

  • Mobile-friendly jobs site – make sure your careers portal is developed with responsive web design so that your employment application automatically adjusts to the size of the screen on which it is viewed.
  • Mobile apply integrations – Look for an applicant tracking system that integrates with well-established sites from which candidates may pull application information.
    • Apply with LinkedIn – can your candidates authorize their own LinkedIn profile to populate some of the fields of your application?
    • Indeed Apply – Is your application set up in such a way (including responsive web design) that Indeed can empower job seekers to use their Indeed profile to push application info to your ATS? The key to making this setup work is collecting only basic information in the first step of the application process (e.g. applicant source, resume and job screening questions, for example).
  • Dropbox/Google Drive – Candidates can’t necessarily upload a resume file to your jobs site from their phone/tablet. Mobile job seekers will count on your system to allow them to pull their resume files from a cloud-based file storage site like Dropbox or Google Drive.

 

Segmentation

Do not put the cart before the horse

Do you really need to have a candidate’s references in the first step of the hiring process? After all, only a tiny percentage of all of your candidates will have those come into play at the end of the selection process. And, you don’t really need the full employment and/or education histories right away if you get a resume up front.

Look for an ATS provider that offers employment application options such as the two-step application. This feature allows you to ask only the absolute need-to-know-now questions of applicants in the very beginning of the recruiting process. Then, once applicants are pre-screened and a few top candidates are identified, you can always ask those top candidates (who are now more motivated to respond having been identified) for more robust applicant information in the second step of the application.

Additionally, limit the number of essay questions in your application, and instead opt for multiple choice questions to facilitate informative, quick answers that don’t lengthen the time it takes to complete an application, but at the same time, do allow your staff to use answers to automatically score and/or disqualify applicants. In fact, the aforementioned study found that the length of time it takes one to complete an application is an even bigger driver of applicant drop-off than the number of questions asked.

 

Customization

Identify the information you need in each job category

Help job candidates help you. That is, customize their application experience to be hyper-specific to the information you need early on to assess their potential qualifications for a position. For example, if you are sourcing applicants for an exempt position, then don’t make them answer an application question that asks whether they are willing to work overtime…as that would only be applicable to non-exempt job candidates. This can be accommodated either through job screening question groups customized for each of your job categories; or, via multiple application layouts for different hiring needs (e.g. executive-level, different geographic locations, etc.) that are set up by a trusted applicant tracking software provider.

Think about other potential considerations to ease the candidate experience. Do your graphic designer job applicants have a designated place on the application to reference their online portfolio? Does the application associated with the recent college graduates’ hiring track allow candidates to link to a copy of their student transcript?

 

Communication

Paint a clear picture of the path to employment

Many effective writing styles preview a piece of content’s focus before getting into meaty topics. In a sense, you’ve got to tell readers what you’re going to tell them before you tell it. Redundant or not, a lot of people like to know what they are getting themselves into to determine if it’s worth their time in the first place. Job seekers are no different.

Create content that illustrates not just your employer’s application process, but the entire hiring process including interviews, background/reference checks, the offer letter and employee onboarding activities. Here are some communication strategies:

  • Job description length – If you want more qualified candidates to apply, then you generally need to describe the position in more words than found in one short paragraph. However, your job listing should not be a novel either. Look to recruiting metrics available in an in-app ATS dashboard to help you start to diagnose which of your job listings are performing best when it comes to organic search results…this could be a partial clue into which of these descriptions have a more optimal, keyword-savvy, length.
  • Career-focused content – Include pages within your jobs site that share Q&A narratives about what candidates can expect from the hiring process. Incorporate video and images as often as possible as it makes it easier and more entertaining for job seekers to process the information presented.
  • Clear application instructions – Take another look at the actual directions listed at the start and end of your application process. Do they set expectations that additional information may be collected later, if applicable? Could they be lengthened (or shortened) to be more effective?

By heeding these guidelines for converting more job applications, your organization can make strides toward improving your hiring efficiency.

What’s Your Recruiting Personality? [QUIZ]

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Looking to get into the recruiting profession? Or, maybe you’re already a seasoned pro but just want to better identify your true recruiting strengths? Whatever the case, take ExactHire’s “What’s Your Recruiting Personality?” Quiz to identify your talent acquisition sweet spot.

From recruiting analytics and compliance reporting to social media and screening, this entertaining yet informative quiz will use your answers to ten short multiple choice questions to point you in the direction of your most prominent recruitment personality type.

Whether you’re happy managing metrics, driven by social shares or energized by candidate conversations…there’s a recruitment role that speaks to your passion. No matter which personality type you call your own, one thing is certain across all personalities…the recruitment field is always evolving and challenging professionals to adapt their sourcing styles.

This is especially true when it comes to navigating the mobile recruiting space. As a result, the ExactHire team has included examples of mobile recruiting software features especially well-suited for each recruiter type in each persona description.

What are you waiting for? Take the quiz and then share the results with your friends!

Mobile Social Recruitment Best Practices

Image Credit: Any Questions? by Matthias Ripp (contact)

5 Steps to Better Job Description Click-Through Rates

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In most organizations, marketers don’t own the task of writing job descriptions for new opportunities available within their organization. This responsibility generally belongs to people in human resources or recruiting.

And even if those folks have marketers review a draft before it posts (at least for marketing positions, that is), many times the urgency of the request prevents anyone from worrying about fine-tuning the job listing’s content. However, skipping this crucial step can make it even harder for you to fill that position quickly because the job description isn’t converting as many applicants as it could.

Fortunately, taking a little time up front to create a job description editorial checklist can make refining just-in-time job requests a piece of cake in the future. Here are five ways to garner better job description click through rates for your company’s opportunities.

1. Make Landing Pages Mobile Responsive & Job Board Friendly

Surprise, surprise, right? This goes without saying these days. However, while many organizations have corporate websites that have long been coded with mobile responsive design, the same doesn’t always hold true for the third party job portals they use to manage the job posting and application submission process. In many cases, the landing pages to which your paid and organic search listings point are actually the job description pages of an applicant tracking system (ATS).

Not only does Google reward mobile-friendly applicant tracking solutions, but major job board aggregators like Indeed.com will reward these sites with higher mobile SERP rankings as well. In fact, even if an employer sponsors an ad on Indeed, the ad won’t be placed as high in mobile search results as other sponsored ads that do point to mobile responsive job portals.

In addition, the best job portals have integrations with sites like Indeed and LinkedIn that allow job seekers to auto-populate their employment application with data from their existing profile. It’s clear that application submission CTRs have a greater chance of improving when your job listings are more readily visible and you make it easy for applicants to start the application process.

2. Don’t Write Vanilla Job Titles

Unless of course it’s some kind of French Vanilla premium custard, I suppose. But seriously, if you are looking for a Web Developer, be specific with your job title wording so that you can be found by the candidates that are truly qualified to do your Front End Javascript Developer job, even if you really just call it Web Developer II internally.

For hints, study your competitors’ opportunities for job title variation ideas that might accurately represent your employment need. Just remember that your job title can’t be so long that it will be cut off in SERPs or wrap to too many additional lines when applicants view your position listings page on their smartphone screens.

3. Model Your Snippets Based On Job Seeker Preferences

Depending on whether you host job descriptions on your corporate website or you use a recruiting software application, you may or may not have easy access to write a customized meta description for each job listing page.

In the event that you don’t have that functionality, you must carefully craft the first couple of sentences of your job description body text to include the keywords that will resonate with job seekers.

Above all, consider your labor market as a means to hone in on the type of unique selling proposition you should highlight in the first section. Here are some potential approaches:

  • Skills / Duties – This is the approach I recommend most of the time. Think about the occupation-specific keywords that job seekers are most likely to use to search for your job listing and include them in the first sentence so they show up in the snippet candidates see in SERPs. This will make it more likely that your organic listing will appear higher in results, too. Specifically, restate the job title in the first sentence.
  • Pay – Know that when you include numerical details about compensation in your job listing (even if they are at the bottom of the description) the search snippet may include the dollar amount. Some employers choose to include this information to attract and convert potential applicants who are especially compensation focused (e.g., sales professionals) or because they are paying a higher wage for certain positions relative to other competitors in the market.
  • Availability – If it’s difficult to source applicants for shift work in your area, then your leading keywords should include commentary on the working hours and days of the week required for the right job candidate.
  • Company Brand – If you are an extremely large organization, then you may be able to get away with leading with information about your company in the first paragraph. This would only be a viable approach if your potential job applicants are likely to search the internet based on your organization’s name. This approach is more suitable for sponsored job board ads that you know will have premium real estate, despite a shortage of position-specific keywords in the snippet.

4. Write for Readability First, Then Add Keywords

Instead of forcing a job description to use potentially awkward-sounding long tail keyword phrases, wordsmith a description that is both compelling and informative to applicant personas. Once the initial draft is done, go back and sprinkle in the most important keywords, as well as relevant co-occurring terms. Finally, be mindful of the keyword density for your job description so that the finished product isn’t keyword-stuffed.

5. Use Images & Video

Even though most job board search results point to landing pages that include familiar text elements such as job title, position preview, essential responsibilities and qualifications, that doesn’t mean you can’t break the mold and utilize images and embedded video. Many hiring software platforms will offer job description WYSIWYG editors that support the inclusion of images and video. Just make sure to include keyword-rich alt tags and video transcripts with your visual assets.

By giving potential job candidates a feast for the eyes, as well as more finely-tuned job information, you are more likely to engage them to click through to your landing page and start the application process. Use these five ideas to do exactly that and start converting more job applicants today.

 

This post originally appeared on Relevance.

Image credit: Teclado / Keyboard by Microsiervos (contact)

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)

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