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!

Image credit: DAY 255 (TEXT ADDED) by WEST MIDLANDS POLICE (contact)

Kathleen McCoy-Anderson – Client Success Manager

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Kathleen Anderson joined ExactHire in May 2017 and currently serves as Client Success Manager. She is assisting our clients with our software applications as well as implementations. Kathleen holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from Purdue University. Prior to working for ExactHire, she spent over 5 years working for Firestone Building Products as a Project Coordinator with the SAP Implementation Project Team and as a National Account Coordinator. Before joining Firestone, Kathy was an HR Manager for REM-Indiana.

While not at work you can usually find Kathleen spending time with her family, friends and dog! As a family, they enjoy spending time outdoors, riding bikes, hiking and playing basketball. They love concerts and traveling whenever possible!

Which Recruitment Metrics Are Right For You – Time to Fill?

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Would you say that you are proud of the efficiency with which your company approaches the hiring process? Do you get excited about the opportunity to welcome new teammates onboard; or…you can admit it…does it make you cringe just a little bit thinking about how long it will take to get everything ready, round up all the interviewers to be involved and pore through all the applications? It all comes down to Time to Fill. In this second installment of my series about determining which HR KPIs work for your company, we’ll examine this telling metric.

In my previous blog about Cost per Hire, I indicated that there is generally a direct relationship between CPH and Time to Fill…in particular, as it relates to the cost of your staff members’ time to be involved in a drawn out hiring process. Take too much time to hire and the business could suffer due to lower productivity, and rush through the process and risk hiring the wrong candidate which will just negatively impact your turnover metric down the road.

How critical time to fill is relative to other HR metrics for your organization only you can determine, but consider this: just because you are a small or medium-sized organization doesn’t mean that you should get by with fewer steps in a shorter hiring process. Small companies can’t afford to “wing it” as it really can take the whole village to hire and onboard a new employee. Any size company can be diligent in making the many steps involved in the recruiting process turnkey; however.

Where Do You Spend Your Time to Hire?

If you’re like me, you manage by what you measure. And when I’m trying to lose a few pounds you can bet I’m recording my calories on my FitBit app…or if our household wants to save up for the next remodeling project, we’re entering our daily expenses into a spreadsheet. Even if I choose to indulge myself every once in awhile, overall by watching my behavior I change it for the better. Having the data in front of me helps me more intimately consider cause and effect. The same is true for the hiring process. Its easy to let a day turn into days and days into weeks when you are progressing through various milestones such as applicant review and interview scheduling without really monitoring your timeframe closely. That can easily translate into disengaged applicants that pursue other companies…and its a vicious cycle, your process then becomes even longer.

A Well-Oiled Time to Fill Machine

So, in the spirit of hiring introspection, let’s look at some basic hiring process stages and ideas for making them thorough, yet as time sensitive as possible.

Job description development

    • Have up to date job templates for frequently hired positions in place and then use them as a base from which to create more specific job listings
    • Use the job listing as an opportunity to set clear expectations about role requirements so that certain candidates self-select out of the process if its clear it won’t be the right fit
    • Create a Job Success Factors page to accompany the job description to paint a more vivid picture about a day in the life of this position

Post jobs to external boards & social media

Review applications and resumes

  • Set aside blocks of time throughout your week dedicated to application review so it doesn’t fall by the wayside
  • Use filters attached to job-specific screening questions to quickly view only applicants that meet basic qualifications
  • Have a comprehensive list of applicant status codes or dispositions already in place so that its easy to assign and continuously update applicants’ place in the hiring process

Conduct pre-screens

Applicant correspondence

Prepare notes & feedback

  • Use a form or otherwise standardize the manner in which you present candidate information to others – people will get used to quickly looking in certain places for certain information
  • Highlight applicants who are the best prospects to hiring managers by sharing their electronic records – keep it timely by requesting others’ response by a certain date/time in your notes or subject line

Pre-employment testing & assessment

Schedule coordination for in-house interviews

  • Request access to the calendars of others involved in the hiring process internally so that you may quickly see when they are/aren’t available
  • At the onset of the hiring process, reserve blocks of time on potential interviewers’ calendars in advance so that you know you can count on them tentatively being available during those times (even if it is a few weeks out)
  • Utilize video conferencing tools (i.e. basic ones could include Skype, Google Hangouts or GoToMeeting to name just a few) to schedule interviews earlier than they might be otherwise if the candidate were to have to travel to your office

Collect hiring manager feedback

Candidate communication – yays & nays

  • Engage applicants by proactively communicating to them about their status in your selection process
  • This can be done quickly by using email templates that include personalization strings (to populate the first name of the person and the position to which he/she applied, for example) and the ability to update applicant records in mass groupings within an ATS

Extend conditional offer of employment

  • Again, have a template for the language you typically use in offer letters/packages ready to go in an existing template
  • Give the candidate a clear deadline for responding
  • Explain the process of collecting information necessary to conduct background/reference checks, etc. in advance to the candidate should he/she accept

Conduct background and/or reference checks

  • Utilize a web-based form for collecting information necessary to run checks…embed the URL address for the secure form into a template in your ATS and quickly invite applicants right from the applicant record
  • Alternatively, check if your provider has a web services integration with your background check and/or reference check resource

Coordinate onboarding logistics with staff

  • Create an email distribution list of all the employees in your organization who should be involved in the onboarding of a new employee – that way, a quick message and/or checklist can be initiated with these people when the time is right simply by emailing one address
  • Incorporate employee onboarding software into your process so that, based on the division to which the new employee is hired, the appropriate staff members are automatically prompted of onboarding process and receive notification when new hire paperwork forms must be approved and/or electronically countersigned

Finalize start date details with new hire

  • Communicate with new hire to confirm start date and if onboarding software is in place, go ahead and explain that applicant will be receiving email prompting him/her to login and approve and sign various employment paperwork files

If you aren’t already employing many of these tips in your process, before you start consider documenting your average time to fill. Then, once some additional time-saving measures are put into place and in action over a period of a few months, measure your average time to fill metric again and see to what extent your organization’s efficiency has improved on that front. Share the success with your team and your CFO…as quantitative KPI info like this is exactly what you need to justify the cost/time involved with future process improvements. The ROI is there when you can create a turnkey process based on sound fundamentals.

ExactHire’s hiring software applications help small and medium-sized companies automate and improve the recruiting and onboarding processes. For more information on how our tools can impact your time-to-fill KPI, please visit our resources page or contact us.

Finding Your Niche… Job Board

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Each day, you’re in a fast-paced race against your competitors to try to fill vacant positions with qualified candidates who fit well within your organization. Specialty positions with sought after key skill sets can be especially hard to fill. Job seekers often use job aggregator sites (often called spider boards that pull job listings from many sites) such as Indeed and SimplyHired to search for jobs.

Aggregators are great for companies to use as a tool to find qualified candidates, but sometimes the number of candidates for a particular vacancy can be overwhelming. With this in mind, ExactHire offers a great way for companies to filter candidates leaving you with the candidates that meet the basic requirements you establish so you can move forward with interviewing a select group of qualified job seekers.

Consider Using Niche Job Boards

Aggregators are not the only route to explore when posting jobs. Another route to consider when posting your company’s vacant positions is to find your niche…that is find your niche job board. These types of boards offer a company a way to focus its efforts on finding job seekers who possess a particular type of expertise.

Finding the most qualified candidate for your company depends on a variety of strategies and techniques. Word of mouth among your networks, job aggregators, and niche job boards are starting points to completing the puzzle of hiring the best fitting candidate. Regardless of the job boards you want to use in your company’s hiring efforts, ExactHire can make things easier for you by streamlining the process of posting jobs to external boards; thus, taking the hassle out of this tedious process for your team.

Listed below are a few niche job boards for some key employment areas. As you find your niche, know that the ExactHire team is here to help you. After all, delivering exceptional customer service and support while helping companies maximize their potential is our niche.

To learn more about easily posting jobs within ExactHire applicant tracking software, please visit our resources section or contact ExactHire today.

Image credit: FINDING ONE’S NICHE by Marc Falardeau (contact)

5 Features An Applicant Tracking System Should Have for SMBs

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If you are a small or mid-sized organization (SMB), there are dozens of potential applicant tracking system (ATS) options suitable for your company size available on the market. While price is always important, comparison shopping can be difficult — no two systems are alike.

To help with your decision making process, below are 5 key features that most any SMB will want from an ATS — even if you don’t know it yet!

1 – Branding for Job Portal

Be sure the ATS you select does more than just paste your logo onto an otherwise generic careers page. Instead, find an option that uses your homepage URL address and design/style settings as inspiration for the hosted career portal. Ideally, you should also have the ability to add other pages to your recruiting software portal to showcase information about company benefit plans, history, culture, career paths, etc.

2 – Flexible Employment Application Process for Applicants

Don’t settle for a “one-size-fits-all” online application. You need the ability to get the screening information you want in the manner that will resonate best with your applicants. This should include the ability to have different processes for different types of positions (i.e., hourly vs. salary). You may need a shorter initial process for positions that are highly competitive, while positions that tend to provide you plenty of applicants may be better suited for a more comprehensive process to make sure those applicants are serious about that opening.

3 – Job-Based Screening Questions

This is very different than scanning resumes for keyword matches. These types of questions are created by you and allow you to quickly determine up-front whether applicants meet your basic qualifications. In addition, you should have the ability to automatically apply scoring to various applicant responses, allowing you to see how those applicants rank, relative to one another. These should be questions you develop for your unique jobs and criteria. This ensures you get meaningful information about your applicants.

4 – Manage the Entire Hiring Process

Many less expensive software solutions do a great job of allowing you to gather applicant information and hold it for review. Unfortunately, in many instances, these applications don’t provide much beyond that point. Be sure the hiring software you select will allow you to keep track of referral sources, notes, progress through your unique hiring steps, etc. Otherwise, you may find down the road that you have a lot of candidates in a database, but not much else. Do a little more investigating initially to make sure you can harness all of the things you’ll need to actually have valuable intellectual property going forward.

5 – Help & Support When You Need It

We’ve all seen technology solutions that promise they’re so simple, you’ll never need help. The reality is that is a near impossibility. Good applicant tracking software should be intuitive. No matter how intuitive it may be, however, you will have questions and/or you may find that something doesn’t work the way it should. Ask any potential provider what type of user support is available. Online knowledge bases are very helpful and can address many of the things that you may encounter. At the same time, you should check to make sure that live support is available and isn’t limited to offshore or call center options.

Keep these factors in mind when you consider selecting any type of recruiting or online application software solution. There are certainly other features and benefits that may be needed for your organization, but if these core things are present, you can be confident you’re dealing with a solid and reliable provider.

To learn more about ExactHire’s products, please visit our resources section or contact us today. –

SMB Pre-Employment Screening Guide Ebook

Image credit: 20120605_1362 by Marco Ghitti (contact)

Are Reference Checks Worth Your Time When Hiring Employees?

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The answer is a simple YES! Reference checks are worth your time; just follow these tips to make sure you are using this opportunity to your best advantage and to find the applicant that will be the best fit for your company.

Talk to an immediate supervisor

This seems like an obvious one, but it needs to be on the list! If a candidate is not able to give you a reference of a supervisor this could be cause for concern; it could be a sign that the candidate left previous jobs in unfavorable conditions. Speaking with the supervisor will shed a lot of light on the person’s working style as well as overall personality. You may be able to find out what management style worked best for the candidate as well as how he/she worked with others. It is also a good idea to find out what other strengths and weaknesses the supervisor remembers about the candidate, if he/she is willing to share them.

Ask open ended questions

Try to avoid questions that are “yes” and “no” answers only. Remember, you are trying to find out more about the candidate as a worker and his/her overall behavior. Examples would be… Tell me about the candidate’s management style? What is a strength this candidate showed to management and co-workers? Also, it is important to read beyond just the answers that are given…does the person’s energy while speaking about the candidate seem positive? Does he/she have plenty to say or is he/she struggling to answer the questions?

Find references not on the list

In today’s business world, where networking (especially social media) is prevalent, you might know people in common with the candidate. Check LinkedIn or other professional groups for someone that may have worked at the same company as the candidate. Even if that person is not on the reference list provided by the applicant, it would be beneficial to attempt to gather his/her input on the applicant. However, one important warning is to make sure this is not the only reference with whom you speak. For example, the two individuals may not have worked together closely enough for an accurate reference to be provided by the common third-party person.

Keep it short and sweet

The reference’s time is just as important as yours. Make sure to have a list of questions ready so that the conversation goes smoothly and quickly. Assure the individual that he/she is speaking to you confidentially so that he/she is more at ease throughout the conversation. Start with basic questions, if necessary, and then work up to the more complex questions.

The chosen few only please

Save this step to last…make sure you have narrowed down your applicants to just a few chosen people, if not the final person that will be receiving the conditional offer of employment. Do not spend time doing reference checks for each candidate in the mid-stages of the hiring process. By the end of the interviews and other candidate questioning, you may only have to do reference checks for a few absolute final people. And by then, you may have a good feel for which candidate will be the best fit for your company. This will just be the final piece to complete the hiring puzzle. Whether you decide to check on a small group of people or just the final candidate, make sure you are cognizant of the applicants’ wishes for the confidentiality of their job search. That is, make sure they are okay with you calling any current employer to check references. Not letting the cat out of the bag too early will help to further earn an applicant’s trust in your organization.

Remember, the hiring process is all about finding the best fit for the job. While using our applicant tracking software to gather applicant information and to narrow down your choices, uses these quick tips to make reference checks easy and worth your time. We can automate the process of recording reference check data, too. For more information about our products, please visit our resources section or contact us today.

SMB Pre-Employment Screening Guide Ebook

Image credit: Cabine Telephonique rouge-Red telephone box – London Londres – photo picture image photography by Grand Parc- Bordeaux, France (contact)