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How to Make Social Media Work for Your Recruiting Process

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These days, social media is about the best way for job seekers to see what’s out there and for hiring managers to find job seekers. Leveraging the community that social media sites provide can be an extremely effective way to source talent.

However, there are some things to remember. You have to understand the site is merely a platform. Simply being on the site will not generate results. You’ll have to make full use of the tools, network, and in some cases, paid features to be successful.

What works well?

  • First, complete all registration steps and requested information.
  • Note that full profiles with content, posts and updates will land at the top of search results.
  • Everyday interaction on social media will be required to stay “current” as well.
  • Don’t make your social media presence all about you.
  • Engage with others in non-job seeking or non-recruiting ways, too.

What doesn’t work?

  • Hiring managers can’t just post jobs and wait for the applicants to come to them. The “post and pray” method doesn’t work on even the best social media sites. You’ll have to identify keywords and run searches that target your ideal candidate. Leverage the communication features of the site to reach out and follow-up.
  • Job seekers have to go a step further and interact with and reach out to potential hiring managers. Merely setting up a profile, uploading a resume and sitting back hoping recruiters will come to them will get them nowhere.

Take a personal approach, after all we are talking about social networking.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is by far the best place for prospective white collar job seekers and recruiters. With some basic search knowledge, job seekers can identify individuals who may be the decision makers for hiring at desired locations. This allows them the ability to better customize their outreach to employers during the job application process, as well as use their network to ask for introductions to a specific individual in a position to influence the hiring decision.

They can also get the scoop on what’s available by following individuals, companies and groups. Savvy job seekers will look beyond the job postings and pay attention to what companies are posting. They shouldn’t request to connect with someone only to turn around and ask that person about a job. This tactic can be very annoying to anyone who has been on the receiving end of those connection requests before. If job seekers want to cold contact, they are better off calling the hiring manager as long as the job postings don’t advise against this approach.

As a hiring manager, you can attract individuals by leveraging your own social media profile, connections and company pages to promote openings. The same aforementioned basic search knowledge can be used to identify potential candidates. Pay attention to profile updates, promotions and those who are publishing to give you an indication of top performers.

Facebook

Although not known to be a professional networking and social media venue, Facebook does have its own advantages. Job seekers can follow their favorite companies and brands, all of whom are posting not only consumer content, but company updates and job listings. Job seekers who want to work for their favorite brands pay attention to them on Facebook.

Hiring managers, you can hire your biggest company fans by paying attention to who interacts with your company’s page. If you hire people who are already fans of your products or services they are more likely to be valuable brand ambassadors and have a passion for what they are doing within your business.

The Muse

Relatively new to the social media career site beat, The Muse is a neat site with many tools for job seekers including career advice and career development tips. Companies who are active on The Muse will have direct access to job seekers, especially those with a focus on professional and career development. You can even leverage your hiring and recruiting expertise and apply to be a career counselor.

Job seekers will enjoy themed content relating to professional development and career growth. Astute hiring managers can look to provide content and coaching while interacting with job seekers.

Business Journals

Local business journals are always on the pulse of the local marketplace. They also frequently announce promotions, “people on the move,” new businesses, new offices and many other pieces of job seeking intelligence. If you’re sourcing applicants, following the social media profiles of business journals (as well as their actual online publications) is an excellent way to identify key players and top performers…not to mention keep an eye on the latest news about the labor market.

Job seekers who follow business journals will gain insight on companies that are actively growing, hiring and promoting. They can put these companies on their short list, then flip over to LinkedIn and try to identify the decision makers.

Write [on Social Media]

This works equally well for job seekers and hiring managers. Hiring managers want to hire smart people and job seekers want to work for smart people. Make your own social media content plan and calendar. Utilize Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your recruitment brand, your company and your knowledge and expertise. Don’t forget to regularly share your job listings on social media with relevant hashtags, too. You can streamline this process using an applicant tracking system with social recruiting features. As you build a following, you will begin to attract candidates because you’ll bring positive, relevant attention to you and your company.

For job seekers, staying current on social media will help them maintain a digital portfolio and resume. For best results, they should keep it focused to their specialty and post frequently–it’s free advertising. Hiring managers are sure to be looking at job candidates’ social media profiles, so it is in the best of interest of job seekers to make sure it is not only professional but full of quality content.

 

There are many other social media platforms out there to investigate. Ultimately you’ll want to find a platform that aligns with your industry and the applicants with which you want to associate. You need to go to where your candidates are and that may even include following your competitors’ social media pages, too.

Photo Credit: Maialisa

Think Before You Hire! 10 Common Mistakes Made in Rushing the Recruitment Process

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Hiring is one of the most critical tasks and challenges an organization faces. Yet, unfortunately, too many approach it as transactional or don’t allocate the proper attention, priority and resources towards it. Even with a gainfully employed talent acquisition staff, the struggle to keep up with today’s hiring needs promotes a rushed approach to the recruitment process.

When you rush through the hiring process, you make mistakes and miss critical steps. You may be in such a hurry, you hire “good enough.” This will ultimately become a problem. If you want a top performing team you can’t settle for good enough. Fortunately there are some common mistakes you can avoid if you are aware of them and slow down enough to address them.

1 – Failure to Clearly Define the Role

Rushing a hiring decision and overlooking a few critical steps can lead to a host of problems. One of the most critical steps is ensuring a clearly defined role description that contains essential functions, skills required to do the job, competencies required to be successful, and in some cases the environmental factors. Namely, the hiring decision is not based on the use of objective data such as a clearly defined role description. In the absence of clearly defined roles and responsibilities, candidate selection is left up to opinion and extremely subjective decision making.

2 – No Interviewing Plan

Failing to plan for making any business decision is not good. Failing to plan your interviews and questions will almost guarantee an ultimately adverse outcome to your hiring decisions. When you fail to plan your interview, you end up just having a conversation. Then your decision is based on whether or not you enjoyed the conversation.

3 – Asking “Yes” and “No” Questions

Typically this is a result of not having an interviewing plan as well as an untrained interviewer. Avoid, at all costs, asking questions that elicit a yes or no answer. It doesn’t tell you anything about the candidate and he/she will almost always give you the answer you want to hear. This is where a planned process will call for behavioral based interview questions.

4 – Asking Leading Questions

In an interview, you will naturally draw a 50% conclusion by the time your first handshake is over. Right, wrong or indifferent, it happens. If that initial conclusion is positive, you will want to see one succeed in the interview. Without knowing it you will actually help the candidate answer the questions correctly. In doing so, your subconscious will take over and you’ll begin to lead him/her to the answer you’re seeking. A savvy candidate will pick up on it and give you the answer you want. Thus, you completely missed an opportunity to objectively assess the candidate.

5 – Not Involving Others

Hiring is a team sport. As such, you’re bound to make mistakes if you go at it alone. You will miss things others will see. Not engaging a candidate’s potential peers in the interview could be costly. Not only do you want to verify the candidate has the right skill set, but also will fit with the rest of the team.

6 – Falling Victim to Interview Fatigue

Interview fatigue can easily take its toll if you cram too many interview sessions into a short span of time. This can cause you to only vividly remember the first and last candidates you interview. In fact, when coaching job seekers, most are told to seek the first or last interviews of the day.

7 – Ignoring Red Flags

This is one of the most common hiring errors out there. You’ll hear and see little things during the process of interviews that will make you take pause. They will stick in your head and you’ll try to push them to the back. They concern you, but you rationalize it and figure it won’t be a problem. Then the day comes and you say, “Well…I knew that when I hired him.” These are the red flags you noticed in the process.

Always remember this. A candidate is on his BEST behavior during the hiring process. If you notice red flags then, multiply it by 10 and that’s what you’ll eventually get. Don’t rationalize red flags. They will inevitably become a problem.

8 – Avoiding an Analysis of Facts

Similar to ignoring red flags, this hiring foul will cause you a headache later. Remember, interviewees are (should) be on their best behavior in an interview. They should be prepared and ready for what you may ask them. They will seem like a rock star during that hour conversation. However, don’t forget the facts. Does their past performance align with your needs? After all, it is the best predictor of future behavior.

9 – “I Can Teach Them That”

Although this may be true, you must understand what you are signing yourself up for. Do you really have time to teach them the basic skills they need to qualify for the job? If your company does not have a great training and development program to support this, odds are it won’t happen. You can probably get away with teaching them the nice-to-have skills, but don’t think you’ll be able to teach them the core critical skills. Note, this is different than teaching them the job or teaching them how to use the resources and tools to do the job. You’ll have to teach anyone you hire how the job is performed at your company. You just want to avoid having to teach them the core skills needed to perform the job.

10 – “Maybe They Will Change”

In a rushed hiring situation, you will tend to overlook potential issues that you’ve identified in the hiring process. Due to time constraints, desperation, or whatever else the scenario may be, you may be tempted to assume they will change a behavior or environmental clash. If you’re concerned about it, and think they will change it, think again.

 

Staying disciplined to a sound recruitment process, avoiding too much subjectivity and focusing on a candidate’s verifiable qualifications will help you avoid these common mistakes and attain better ratios of hiring success.

 

For some advanced tools to help you avoid hiring mistakes during the recruitment process, check out ExactHire’s employee assessments.

Contact ExactHire

Recruiting Ninjas: 5 Ways to Build a Niche Network

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Sales and recruiting have a lot in common and I think just about any recruiter out there would agree with that. Given this similarity in function, you can imagine the path to success for both is likely similar. All good salespeople and recruiters know that networking is the key to any long term success.

Successful networking involves repetitive and constant effort. All plants will eventually die if you don’t water them. Just like sales, all recruiting networks will eventually dry up if you don’t nurture them. As a recruiter you most likely already have a technology solution to let you manage job openings and applicants. If not, you need to get one! An applicant tracking system like HireCentric ATS from ExactHire is what you need to track and manage all your leads and applicants resulting from your networking efforts.

Recruiting is a “results-based” endeavor. Meaning, placements and hires are what matter. However, all recruiters know there is a significant amount of activity that goes into it. Since you don’t have unlimited time, you need to make sure your activities are focused on what will get you results and what will help you build your network.

Building a successful network requires focusing and fine tuning your efforts. In order to focus your network efforts you need to pick a niche. If you are hiring software developers, your networking efforts need to focus on those groups, activities and associations. Focus on the following five activities to build your niche network, be more efficient, and reduce your time-to-hire.

Niche Job Boards

Focusing your efforts is critical to getting the best return on your [time] investment. Job boards can take some getting used to and none of them are real easy to post openings on or search for candidates. So how do you make your use of job boards effective? There are a few steps you can take.

First, find a job board that is very specific to the target market for which you are hiring. Do your research on the volume of jobs posted.  If it has a resume database, evaluate the number of resumes it contains. Do some searches for your target candidates. How many are in the system, when were their resumes last updated? These are questions to ask when evaluating the system.

Hint, hint! If you’re an agency recruiter or independent recruiter, look at the companies that are posting jobs on these boards. These are potential leads and you can clearly identify their needs. Use it to your advantage.

Attend Niche Professional Organizations

Building a network must involve–you guessed it–networking. Forget about recruiter networking groups. After all, you aren’t hiring recruiters. Identify networking groups that are associated with your target market. If you are seeking candidates, focus on groups and associations in which they would be involved and attend those events. If you are seeking clients, focus on groups and associations to which those hiring managers [decision makers] would belong.

Hint: Most of those groups will have both potential candidates and clients as members.

Speak at Niche Events

Speaking is always a great way to network with many people at once. It’s also one of the toughest areas to break into and you usually need a network to get started in speaking. That being said, many professional organizations are always looking for speakers at events. As long as you’re competent and you know the material you are presenting, speaking is the best way to get branded an “expert.”

Tailor your message to your audience. You have a captive audience for networking so take advantage of it. This is more than an elevator pitch, it’s a full commercial. Continue the conversation with those who come up to speak with you afterwards. If you’re speaking to potential clients, this is great exposure to your services.

Give Career Advice

Since you are a recruiter you should, by default, be an expert in career advice. Since you live and breathe job placement everyday, you have unique insight into what employers seek, how they make decisions, what candidates want, etc. Share this knowledge and information with both potential clients and candidates.

You should use a variety of mediums to share your knowledge such as blogging, writing articles and short books, speaking (as mentioned above) and volunteering at career centers and workshops. These are all fantastic ways to build your network. Focus your advice on interviewing, resume writing and job searching. You’ll also have the side benefit of getting first glance at potential candidates before they even apply to other jobs.

Know Your Stuff

A recruiter who is competent and credible in the industry in which they recruit will achieve greater levels of success than his peers. Some of the most successful recruiters have actually practiced the trade for which they source candidates. Being able to talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk will not only help you win instant respect from clients, but also from candidates.

Now demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. Seek out any opportunity to write for blogs, submit articles, etc. Sign up for opportunities to be an expert source or reference for different publications at the site Help A Reporter Out (HARO). Brand yourself and your social media presence as an expert in the fields for which you recruit. Actually take the time to learn the jobs of those you are recruiting. Know what goes into their daily activities. Know the good and the bad. Understand the typical struggles. Most importantly know why your candidates typically look for new opportunities.

 

Building a niche network will not only help focus your precious time and efforts on the activities that will actually generate better results for your recruiting efforts, but it will also brand you as a career expert in your area. When you are a defined expert, people will seek you out. In recruiting this means not only will candidates seek you out, but clients will as well.

Want to leverage your recruiting network? See how ExactHire’s Applicant Tracking System can quickly get your postings to the niche job boards you need.

Contact ExactHire

 

Photo Credit: OpenClipart-Vectors

5 Recruitment Tools That Give You the Advantage

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The competition for talent requires organizations and their armies of recruiters to maintain a competitive advantage and a sharp edge when it comes to their recruiting and hiring practices. The modern day recruiter must be proactive, responsive, open-minded, and a little bit competitive. An applicant in your pipeline has also applied to other places so it’s imperative you’re on your game.

There are a number of things that can give an organization and its recruiters a competitive advantage in the gladiatorial arena of today’s hiring environment. Whether you face lack of applicants or lack of qualified applicants makes no difference. The fact is, the best applicants aren’t just dropping on your door-step.

An ace recruiter realizes that speed to hire without jeopardizing the process or quality is critical to winning the recruiting war. You have to be able to attract the best active job seekers to apply and make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Likewise, as a recruiter, you need to be able to sort through those applicants efficiently and recognize the best fit quickly.

Fundamentals of an Advantageous Process

There are some basic considerations when establishing a process aimed at giving you the upper-hand in hiring active candidates. The combination of speed, information requirements, accessibility and recruiter decision making all come into play.

Reducing the complexity of applications is probably one of the most critical aspects of the process. Allowing for a “quick app” collecting the minimum information needed for you as a recruiter to make a “call / no-call” decision is about all you need initially. Making your application mobile friendly is a good first step in this process as it forces you to abbreviate the information you are requesting.

Many times an application process is bogged down with irrelevant and excessive information. This can be a turnoff for some candidates and they may leave the process. There’s nothing more frustrating for an applicant than spending a lot of time on a resume, uploading it to your ATS, only to find out you want them to fill out a digital application as well. Limit the information you need to collect from them to the essential information you need for a “call / no-call.” decision. You will get more applicants!

Mobile friendly application processes will place your opportunities in the hands of more people, literally. If they they can apply with a few taps of the screen and a little bit of initial information (e.g. via Indeed or LinkedIn), you are sure to gain the attention of more people. This also means you can’t purely rely on the artificial intelligence of most applicant tracking systems. AI features are great at flagging applicants, but a human decision is still required.

Gain a Competitive Advantage with These Five Functions

Be sure that the applicant tracking system you select provides for these five key functions, which when leveraged properly, will grant you an extreme competitive advantage.  A system like ExactHire’s HireCentric ATS will provide all these features and more giving you a robust platform with the functionality you need to compete in the recruiting space.

User Interface

As mentioned earlier, the less painful you can make an application process the better. A mobile application is a must and an abbreviated process is critical. You don’t want to lose applicants before they’ve even completed the application. Take a hard look at your ATS of choice. Is it just an infinite amount of text fields requiring manual data entry?

A fast application should provide for the critical information necessary for you to make a “call / no-call” decision. This may include name, phone number, email, current position and brief summary, and any “knock-out” questions you may have. Caveat – make sure knock-out questions are actually relevant and matter.

Social Recruiting

It goes without saying that integration with social media sites is a must for every recruiter. A modern and effective ATS needs to interact and leverage social media. You should be able to push jobs to and share jobs on social media sites. As well as allow current employees to do the same. This allows a more active approach to recruiting rather than relying on the “post-and-pray” method.

Applicant Management

Your applicant tracking system is the heart and sole of your hiring process. If you’re fortunate enough to get high double-digit or even triple-digit applicant counts, you will need an efficient method for keeping them organized.  Top line features allow for the integration of applicant assessments and questionnaires. Your information gathering process should rely on who the applicant is and what they are capable of more so than a labored list of previous jobs, duties and functions. Assessments and questionnaires will provide you with an interactive look at who you’re considering for employment.

Paperless Onboarding

The hiring process doesn’t stop once an offer is made. Your onboarding process is the first impression your new employee will receive from your company. Remember, they have nothing invested yet, so a bad first impression could be the difference between a fully accepted offer and a rejected offer. Allowing for e-forms, digital signatures, video tutorials, etc.; will set you apart from the labored and antiquated new hire paperwork.

Analytics and Sourcing

What good is an ATS without the ability to leverage and mine the data that exists? Continuously improving on your process is sure to improve your speed to hire and attract more of the right applicants. Basic information such as time-to-hire, workflow, interviews, hiring yields among others, should be expected. Advanced information that gives you the ability to more precisely target your most successful applicants is what makes a significant difference.

 

The application process is the first impression an applicant gets of your company. Make it a good one. If you keep these fundamentals in mind and choose an applicant tracking system with some key competitive features, you will surely be on your way for winning the war on applicants. Remember, in today’s labor market, you typically need them more than they need you!

 

Want an advantage? Contact ExactHire to learn how our Applicant Tracking System can give you the edge you need.

Contact ExactHire

 

Photo Credit: trainer24

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.

Quickly Snaring Talent For Open Positions

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A snare is a rudimentary tool that was once popularly used to catch small game. To be successful, it requires two conditions to be met:

  1. It’s well built for the intended target.
  2. It has the ideal placement for the intended target.

If either of the above conditions is not met, the chances of catching anything are dramatically decreased. OK, that’s the extent of my snare knowledge as it relates to small game hunting. Oh, and snaring is now widely regarded as inhumane in many parts of the world.

Now that we have a common understanding of the snare and the conditions necessary for its success, let’s look at how small- to medium-sized businesses can take that simple concept and apply it to “snaring” talent.

Build First? Or Place First?

Ahhh a question as old as time! Do we build a set of recruiting tactics first, and then go find the best place to implement it? Or, do we find the best place to recruit talent and then build a set of tactics to attract and hire the best? Which comes first?

For most organizations, I believe the answer is…neither one. Because while considering the set of tactics and where to deploy them are vital parts of developing a recruiting strategy, neither of these can be considered until the target audience is first identified. In other words, you can have the best snare placed in the best location, but by failing to consider your “intended target,” you might end up with a lot of rabbits when what you really wanted were squirrels.

Here are five questions to help identify your target audience–your ideal candidates:

  1. What is the position type? (exempt or nonexempt, executive or associate, internal or customer-facing)
  2. What hard skills/experience/education are required?
  3. What soft skills should be required, preferred, or ideal?
  4. Can the position be full or part-time remote?
  5. What candidate qualities will lead to a work culture fit?

These questions will help you develop ideal “candidate personas” that can drastically narrow down your target audience for specific positions and guide you in developing an overall recruiting strategy. With these candidate personas created, you can now consider placement and tactics.

Placing and Building The Talent Snare

Successfully executing your talent strategy is important.  However, if you are attempting to execute your strategy using a set of tactics or a placement that doesn’t align with your target audience, then you may catch talent, but it won’t always be the talent you want. Here are two key questions to ask when considering placement and tactics.

Optimal placement maximizes the chances that your ideal candidates will see your job posting. This is in contrast to “posting and praying”, where you spend more effort and resources get a few great candidates  in with dozens of mediocre or sub-par applicants.  A helpful guiding question to ask is:

Where are my ideal candidates geographically, demographically, and in real-time as they find and consider my job posting?

In considering recruiting tactics, the behavior of your target audience will inform you of the best approach. This information may be difficult to uncover, but cross-referencing your candidate personas with existing behavioral data of job seekers can help you answer the question:

How are my ideal candidates searching, considering, and applying as they engage with prospective employers?

Snaring Talent For Your Open Positions

The preceding questions may seem simplistic and obvious, but they are often overlooked by today’s hiring organizations. Often times, the vast array of recruiting tools and communication channels available can lead us to believe that our job posts are visible to everyone, everywhere, all the time. However, the truth is that without targeting our strategy to a specific audience, our job posts are at risk of being lost in the noise.

The placement and build of recruiting tactics are important considerations, but they must  be informed by the target audience. A well-crafted “rabbit snare” located on my urban sidewalk may never catch a rabbit; but nor will the best “rabbit snare” laid in a rural stand of trees stands succeed in catching squirrels. Ensure optimal placement and build by first identifying your target audience, and then develop a recruiting strategy that maximizes your success. Happy hunting!

ExactHire offers hiring and employee onboarding software to growing small- to medium-sized businesses that are looking to efficiently attract, hire, and retain exceptional talent for continued growth. To learn more about ExactHire’s HR solutions, please submit a brief contact form.

Feature Image Credit: White Bunny Up Close and Personal by George Bannister (contact)

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)

Job Board Spotlight: Beyond.com

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The best Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) will integrate with your website via a careers portal, creating a seamless brand experience for job applicants. But to attract a high volume of applicants to your site, it is vital to have an ATS that features automated posts to a wide variety of external job boards. Without this, even the most efficient applicant tracking systems will be useless if job seekers cannot find your job posts.

To help you discover the unique benefits of job boards and communities, ExactHire will seek to spotlight some of the more effective options available to you by frequently reporting on them through our blog.

This month, we selected Beyond.com as the focus of our Job Board Spotlight. We spoke with Danielle Sayre, Strategic Alliance Manager at Beyond.com.

 

Q:With thousands of job boards available, what is your advice for employers seeking to find the best option?

A: A job posting is an advertisement. So evaluate a job board the way you evaluate any advertising opportunity. First of all, is the site appropriate to your brand? Second, how will the board market your jobs? If you have a generalist job, you may want it available for general public. But if you are looking for a specific audience, then you want to make sure that your job ad will be marketed to the most relevant audience.

 

Q:In what industries does Beyond.com specialize?

A: Beyond has over 50 million members who belong to hundreds of niche communities on Beyond. Our largest community is our healthcare community with 6.6 million members. We also have a robust technology community with almost 3 million members, and a growing retail community with 3.7 million members. To view a complete list of our latest member statistics, visit http://www.beyond.com/communities/hiring/.

 

Q:Can you describe the advantages of using niche job sites?

A: Sites with a niche approach are often able to deliver a more relevant pool of candidates. The niche approach attracts unique candidates with an interest in that niche. In addition, sites with a niche philosophy strive to market your job to the most relevant candidates.

 

Q:How can Beyond.com serve as one of the world’s largest job boards, yet also offer the advantages of niche job boards?

A: Beyond is the original niche network. We started as PhillyJobs over 10 years ago, and grew into a network of over a thousand niche sites, including TechCareers and Healthcare Jobsite. We cut our teeth bringing niche and passive candidates to relevant jobs –  and we still do – but today we do it through 500+ talent communities on Beyond.

Because Beyond evolved from a niche network model, we are experts at targeting and do a better job of connecting active and passive job seekers with the right opportunities. We’ve attracted many of our 50+ million members based on their affinity for a specific industry, location or profession, so we know what they’re looking for from day 1. And, we continually gather information about our members to ensure that we’re always delivering the most relevant jobs and content.

 

Q:How many job applicants can I expect to receive per job post? (or other success metric)

A: Number of applicants can vary greatly depending upon the type of job, the job description, the job application process, and other factors. However, it is important to keep in mind that due to the nature of Beyond’s niche approach, we strive to first deliver quality over quantity to the job opportunities on our site.

 

Q:How well does Beyond.com reach passive job seekers?

A: Beyond is the Career Network, and we continue to engage job seekers after they find a new job by providing career and industry content relevant to their career. As a member network, the majority of our activity is from existing members engaging with our email and other communications, rather than from people actively conducting web searches. This means that we reach the person who is perusing our emails to see what jobs might be available, even if they aren’t actively searching for jobs online.

 

Q:In addition to job postings, in what other ways can employers promote open positions with Beyond.com?

A: By posting a job on Beyond, employers are automatically getting a sophisticated marketing engine to promote their jobs. Employer jobs are available for our “Smart Alerts,” which are “learning” alerts that include relevant jobs based upon member activity. Jobs are also included in “Following Alerts,” which are specific alerts sent to members with exact matches for job titles that they are following. And, when a new job is posted we send out an “Instant Alert,” which is an email with just that job sent to a small list of the most relevant candidates in our system.

We also market jobs on Beyond, our niche sites, and throughout the web.

For employers who want additional ways to promote their jobs, Beyond offers targeted email marketing campaigns, text messaging campaigns, career alert sponsorships, and display advertising. Employers can also source our database of over 50 million members.

 

Q:Does Beyond.com integrate with Applicant Tracking Systems? How can ExactHire clients get started?

A: Yes, we integrate with some, but not all, applicant tracking systems. Single 30-day Job Postings can be purchased through ExactHire. To get started, clients can contact Randi Shuck at ExactHire or go to http://www.beyond.com/exacthire.  

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)