Payroll Providers, Distinguish Yourselves!

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For independent payroll providers it’s sometimes hard to stand out. Resources are limited and the expenses associated with advertising and expanding new services are prohibitive. For newly minted businesses, it might be all they can do just to get operations up and running efficiently. Meanwhile, very large and established providers (a.k.a. mega providers) are throwing big money into advertising and services in order to expand their market share. What’s a small, independent payroll provider to do?

Option 1: Invest In Marketing, Smartly

While the majority of advertising channels are too expensive for a small provider to consider, some digital marketing channels are nearly free. Great results can be achieved through the use of social media, search engine marketing, and email. But while these channels are free, they are also very competitive and that is why “free” becomes “nearly free.”

Being heard above the noise is no easy task, and so social networks, search engines, and even email platforms offer premium solutions to amplify an organization’s marketing efforts. Examples for each of these include:

  • Display ads (search)
  • Sponsored/promoted posts (social)
  • Targeting/segmentation/automation (email)

Individually, the solutions can be fairly affordable, but investing in premium solutions across multiple digital channels will quickly add up. So, again, the largest providers with more resources to invest will have an advantage over the independent providers.

Option 2: Invest In Your Services

Established independent payroll providers may be seeing their market share slowly recede each year. And unless their clients are going out of business or bringing services in-house, it’s likely that another provider has wooed them with ancillary HR services or software. So while it may have once been feasible for independent payroll providers to survive with the same technology and service offerings, today it’s a different story.

Small- to medium-sized business need more services and they don’t want to juggle dozens of vendors to get it–they want their current providers to offer more. The good news is that with today’s explosive growth and evolution of HR technology, independent payroll providers have an advantage over the mega payroll providers: their size and flexibility.

Envision a speed boat making a sharp turn; now, imagine a oil tanker changing course. As an independent payroll provider, you want to think “speed boat”. A speed boat cannot carry as many passengers as the tanker, but it can quickly change direction and get its people to their desired destination faster–and usually with a smile on their face.

Many mega payroll providers, seeking greater margins, opt to build their own HR software or utilize enterprise solutions for all clients–a one size fits all approach. This might work for some SMBs, but more often, the smaller organizations find the solutions to be a poor fit. Even when these solutions do work somewhat adequately, the technology is updated slowly and with little input or influence from the end-users at smaller organizations. The result is that many SMB clients are saddled with a poor solution that fails to meet their needs, and any improvements to the software are slow in coming.  This is “oil tanker.”

But by seeking partnerships with established, customer-centric HR software providers,  independent payroll providers can quickly offer their clients more of what they need without the overhead of expensive software or the headaches of an enterprise-level customer service department. Clients will enjoy the same efficient and responsive customer service with their HR software provider as they do with their payroll provider, which means that as a client’s needs change, the providers can act quickly to meet them. That is “speed boat.”

Distinguishing Yourself

Although a handful of mega payroll providers control between 50%-75% of the entire market, the remainder is hotly contested by other independent payroll providers. And perhaps it’s this competition that is your organization’s more immediate threat. This begs the question, then: are you distinguishable from the next independent provider?

Regardless of whether you believe that your market share is threatened by mega providers, the threat posed by other independent payroll providers when they partner with HR software companies will only increase in the coming years. Can your organization stand by while other providers are striking partnerships with HR software providers? Or is your organization content to watch your market share slowly slip away as more and more clients realize that they can get more value and better services from another provider?

For payroll providers who wish to distinguish themselves among the crowded field of competition–and to do it without losing any more market share–it is imperative that they start considering a partnership with an HR software provider now. To help, ExactHire has produced a free guide, How to Partner with an HR Software Provider, that walks decision makers through a step-by-step process for approaching, deciding on, and establishing a partnership with an HR software provider.

Now you have access to the information and tools you need to bring more value to your clients.

Your choice: will you be an “oil tanker” or a “speed boat?”

 

For nearly a decade, ExactHire has provided hiring solutions for hundreds of clients across North America and beyond. If your organization is interested in partnering with an innovative, customer-centric HR software provider, please contact us today.

HR Software Provider Partnership Guide

Feature Image Credit: apples-stand out by Flazingo (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)

ExactHire Named a Nominee for 2016 TechPoint Mira Awards

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It was a big year for the ExactHire team in 2015, full of many exciting developments including the addition of brand new positions and a steady stream of product enhancements. The positive momentum is continuing as we’re thrilled to announce that the Indiana technology growth initiative, TechPoint, has named ExactHire a nominee in the Innovation of the Year category for the 2016 Mira Awards.

In its 17th year, the Mira Awards annual program honors “The Best of Tech in Indiana” each year. This season, 98 nominees in 14 award categories were selected from 168 applications by an independent judging panel comprised of 40 subject matter experts who evaluated and ranked the applications.

It’s an exciting time to be a part of the tech community in Indiana, and we’re honored to be included in the following list of ground-breaking Indiana organizations:

Innovation of the Year

To learn more about the TechPoint Mira Awards and the organizations represented in each category, click here.

Want to bring more efficiency to your recruiting, onboarding & hiring processes? Schedule a demo today.

Schedule Demo

 

Rewrite Your Talent Onboarding Story In 7 Game-Changing Steps

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Once upon a time there was a talented, optimistic marketing professional named Simon. An exciting, fast-growth technology firm was fortunate enough to woo Simon during a flashy interviewing process and he was pleased to accept its offer of employment shortly thereafter. His new position would offer him more responsibility, more pay and a chance to learn some new technologies. Sounds like a storybook ending for Simon, right?

That’s what he thought, too, until he began to experience the firm’s employee onboarding process. While the tech firm had many things going for it, it had a few things to learn when it came to giving its new hires the best opportunity to be successful and productive in their working environment. Let’s see how Simon’s story unfolded and consider what the tech firm might have done differently to make a positive impression on him in the critical early days and months of his employment.

1 – Wait, What’s Pre-Boarding?

Once Simon accepted his offer, he still had to give his current employer a few weeks’ notice before finishing his job there. While his new employer was hiring frequently, and at such a pace that it often had employees start just days after accepting an offer, Simon was an anomaly in that he had some time to kill before his start date. Unfortunately, his new tech firm was radio silent during this period. Simon actually had to proactively reach out to confirm details like start date and arrival time. He wondered if his new company had forgotten about him.

Rewrite the Story: Simon’s new hiring manager could have called or emailed him to welcome him to the fold and prep him with some housekeeping details prior to his first day. This “pre-boarding” scenario (aka the period before official employee onboarding) is also a golden opportunity for an organization to send a welcome kit to a new hire with goodies like a prepared training schedule, visual organizational chart, fun facts about the company and some branded company swag.

A best practice during pre-boarding is to make sure that your company’s existing employees know about the forthcoming start date of your new employee so they can be ready to make him feel at home. This also gives the onboarding process stakeholders a chance to update recurring meeting requests and email distribution lists to include the new employee. Otherwise, Simon might feel silly if he was the only one that didn’t know to show up to the monthly corporate meeting.

2 – Learning the Unwritten Rules

Simon was an organized guy and liked to be prepared. During his interview, they told him that they had a relaxed dress code, but he still hadn’t seen any evidence of that and didn’t want to be the only guy in jeans on his first day. So, he showed up in business casual to be safe meanwhile contemplating the extent of the company’s flexibility when it came to the “flexible work schedule.” In addition, he was still in limbo with how daycare arrangements would work for his daughter, too. He would continue to feel a little stressed about that until he could adjust her drop-off and pick-up times to accommodate his new schedule. Of course his nerves weren’t helped when a bunch of his new co-workers asked him why he was so dressed up for his first day.

Rewrite the Story: Starting a new job is stressful enough; don’t make it worse by keeping your new hires guessing. At a minimum send new hires a Q&A sheet of commonly asked company culture-related questions before their first day.

  • Go the extra mile by pairing a new employee with a mentor buddy who can give him the real dish, and
  • assembling an attractive book or website full of pictures of your employees enjoying the unique aspects of your culture (for example, hitting the gong to celebrate a goal achievement or modeling work-appropriate attire).

Better yet, create a video office tour in which you interview employees that answer these burning company culture questions. Give employees like Simon the confidence to know when it’s actually okay to play ping-pong during work hours.

3 – You Mean I Don’t Even Get a Red Stapler?

Once Simon was shown to his working space, it was remarkably bare. While thankfully his laptop was awaiting him, there wasn’t much else other than tedious employment paperwork. His cube neighbor said that the supplies he needed were around, and that he could show him the office cabinet. So, Simon grabbed some sticky notes, a pen and a notepad since he wasn’t sure how much was appropriate to take. Back at his desk, he passed the time waiting for further direction (his boss was in a meeting on the morning of his first day) by investigating a new “twiddle your thumbs” finger workout on his smartphone…or at least he felt like that was what he was doing.

Rewrite the Story: Not having supplies ready on a new hire’s first day is frustrating and makes a poor first impression on a new employee. Stock a new hire’s space with all the essentials…have email setup, browsers downloaded and include a handy guide to applications that will be used on a regular basis. Complete the staging with a thoughtful welcome sign with the employee’s name. To make this setup easy on existing employees, too, have a basic onboarding checklist or template in place that can be quickly customized based on departmental needs. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every new hire.

Identify additional employee onboarding best practices like implementing software to automate both the workflow-related checklists for existing employees, as well as the actual paperwork completed by new employees. Instead of taking up two hours of a new hire’s first few days on the job with boring, redundant paperwork, give him a web-based portal to enter that data in about fifteen minutes. Make sure your onboarding process brand matches the sleek corporate brand that people have come to expect from a fast-growth tech firm.

4 – Be More Innovative Than Lunch

Simon was pleased to learn that he wouldn’t have to figure out lunch on his first day. His manager, as well as some other members of his department, did take him out to a nice restaurant to get to know him better. There’s nothing wrong with lunch as long as that’s not all you do to learn about new hires.

Rewrite the Story: Use your organization’s industry, resources and/or culture to create a unique experience for your new employees. For example, a technology firm might have a space for all employees to share their favorite mobile app along with comments about why each app was selected. A design firm with graphic artists on staff might choose to commemorate the arrival of newer employees by adding their caricature to a wall of fame after 90 days. An organization of travel buffs could have a giant world map and invite new employees to mark the exotic places to which they have traveled with pushpins. Be imaginative and discover each employee’s passion.

5 – My Brain is Only So Spongy

Once his first few days had passed, Simon had to admit that his training schedule did become quite rigorous…full of people to meet all day everyday. He was hustled from one office to another, desperately trying to absorb all the information he heard like the latest chamois cloth mop from QVC. Alas, cramming isn’t generally effective; however, sometimes employers still feel compelled to fill all the gaps in the first few week’s of an employee’s training schedule. While the firm did gain some points for doing its best to expose Simon to a number of areas in the hopes that he’d be more productive sooner, they should have allowed some time for his early foundational knowledge to soak in and then solidify.

Rewrite the Story: Consider a shortened training schedule for the early days of a new hire’s employment. By empowering an individual to train and shadow with others for just part of the day, you enable him to take the rest of the day to reflect and absorb the information gleaned. He can form questions, review the most recent lessons and be better prepared to be a true participant in the rest of his training activities. Incorporate gamification elements into the training and orientation phase by creating company- and/or department-specific quizzes to assess the employee’s learning while also providing entertaining education.

6 – That’s the End?

A month into his employment experience, Simon was starting to feel like a member of the team. Especially when he was thrown into the training mix for three newer hires that were starting the coming week. That’s right, Simon’s fifteen minutes of new hire fame were already up. And while it’s not a bad idea to help new hires hit the ground running by involving them in improving the onboarding process for future hires, you also don’t want to let your hair down too early with your newer employees. The firm was riding on its own cultural coat tails too aggressively. Keeping employees for the long-term requires a learning and development culture that doesn’t end after a new employee’s first three weeks on the job.

Rewrite the Story: Chart an onboarding course for the long haul and remember that the good stuff happens at milestones you intentionally plan for new hires along their entire employment journey…whether it is three weeks or one year into employment. Beyond new hire paperwork and software login credentials, build in triggers for activities like

  • more advanced learning “courses” once initial onboarding prerequisites are met,
  • exposure to other departments to better learn how one’s own job impacts others,
  • individual assessment in order to uncover opportunities for synergy between the newer employee, his hiring manager and/or other department members,
  • succession planning conversations, and
  • personal achievement recognition at notable anniversary dates.

7 – Get What You Expect

Being organized and self-motivated, Simon already had his own ideas about what he wanted to accomplish in his career with the tech firm. He certainly knew his own job responsibilities and had a vague idea of the potential career path available; however, he was foggy on his firm’s expectations when it came to targeting dates for specific skills mastery and project completions. He was looking forward to really producing now that he had a few months behind him, but he would have appreciated more detail about what success had meant for other top performers in the past.

Rewrite the Story: Having a culture of performance management doesn’t mean forcing a performance review every 90 days, or perhaps ever. But, it does mean having candid, personalized conversations with employees about their passions, developmental goals and the organization’s expectations for achievement. Create a job success factors document for all positions so that new and existing employees alike have a benchmark for comparing their own performance to the model for success for their role. Include details about initial job priorities, expected time frames for project completion and resources available from the organization to support the employee. Then, work with employees to align their strengths and passions with opportunities for increasing responsibility and rewards. Providing a map to success will set employees up to have a true sense of accomplishment once they’ve reached important job milestones.

Where Will Simon’s Story Take Him?

Is your organization guilty of any of the onboarding oversights that befell Simon in his new position? If so, take action now so that when your newer employees get a recruiter InMail message after seven months on the job they politely decline the chance to learn more about the next exciting, fast-growth tech firm.

This blog originally appeared on elementthree.com/blog.

Image credit: Swoosh Goes Swish by slgckgc (contact)

Stressed Out HR

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A funny thing happens when you get busy. You get stressed. Now, some people handle stress better than others, but to some degree stress affects a change on everyone. You begin to lose focus on the unimportant things or, at least, the not immediately important things. This is hardwired in all of us, and it can be really useful for, say, a race car driver or a mountain climber. Those guys and gals need to be focused on the extreme activities in front of them and not much else.

But what about your average Joe or Jane in the Human Resources Department? How does stress and this narrowing of focus impact them?

Human Resources Cutting Corners

Recruiting for talent is stressful, especially in today’s job market. To succeed in finding and hiring the best for your organization, you have to raise awareness and garner excitement around your open position first. This means you must write a compelling job description that attracts top talent and hopefully references an awesome work culture. You also need to cast your nets wide by posting jobs on social media, utilizing niche job boards, and leveraging the power of job aggregators. Then you have to review and organize applications and communicate with hiring managers and applicants. This might be manageable with one or two open positions, but what if you’re hiring for several jobs? And what if you’re an HR Department of One? Hello stress!

Stress begins to seep into your workflow the moment work volume exceeds your work capacity. This is precisely when “immediately unimportant” items or tasks get dropped.

Now, some might say that high work volume is “a good problem to have” and “job security,” and that “desperate times” (high work volume), “call for desperate measures” (cutting corners/dropping items). But this mentality and approach can sabotage an organization’s talent management efforts because it masquerades as a solution, while not addressing an inconvenient truth: a well-planned, efficient hiring process does not contain any unimportant items or tasks–everything is important.

But say your organization doesn’t have a well-planned, efficient hiring process. Suppose it, instead, places its faith in an HR professional with a keen sense of what’s important and timely for an effective, high-quality hiring process. Well, stress has a funny way of dulling the senses, and when an organization relies on the “keen senses” of HR to reach its talent goals, it’s setting itself up for failure. Because while cutting corners may be a byproduct of high work volume at first, eventually those cut corners will become an established part of the process.

Unintended Behavior Modification

Ever seen a dog exploring the boundaries of a newly installed electric fence? You know, those invisible ones. I haven’t (because I find a real fence to be kinder), but from what I hear, the dog will approach the boundary and receive a shock. Eventually, after getting zapped enough times, the dog learns not to approach the boundary for fear of being shocked.

When our HR professional drops items or tasks in the face of “too much volume, not enough capacity,” he is modifying his behavior to overcome stress just like the dog. Overtime, the HR professional will learn to drop items and tasks before he reaches capacity, so as to avoid the stress. This leads to a drop in recruiting/hiring quality because the dropped items are often things like:

  • Posting jobs to social media with frequency (“But, one tweet is enough, right?”)
  • Writing a remarkable job description (“But, all the vital information is there…they get the idea.”)
  • Consistent, timely, and appropriate follow up with applicants (“But, it’s not immediately important.”)
  • Projecting a friendly and welcoming demeanor to job applicants (“But, I’m too stressed to be kind!”)
  • Proactively communicating with colleagues to keep everyone on the same page ( “Sorry, I meant to tell you sooner. I just have a lot on my plate.”)

Taking care of the above distinguishes an organization in the eyes of top talent (the excuses…are just that, excuses). Neglecting the above is not professional, and it hurts the hiring process. So does that mean 60-hour work weeks for our HR Department of One? No.

Getting Resourceful

If the dog in our story above wants to chase a squirrel beyond its limits and avoid the shock of the electric fence, running into the fence more often is not going to help. The shock (stress) will only increase. But suppose that dog climbed up on the the patio table adjacent to the invisible fence and jumped over it? It avoids the shock and can now have a chance at that squirrel.

Our HR Department of One can likewise chase top talent (purple squirrels even) by being resourceful when faced with stress caused by high work volumes. Rather than viewing work capacity as static and immovable, they can explore ways to increase capacity and enhance quality in hiring. HR technology accomplishes both. By automating many of the time-consuming tasks that are vital to high quality recruiting and hiring processes, HR can be free to focus on the things that distinguish their organizations in the job market.

 

ExactHire provides hiring and employee onboarding solutions to assist organizations in attracting, hiring, and retaining talent. To learn more about how you can leverage our SaaS solutions to optimize your talent management efforts, contact us today!

Feature Image Credit: stressed by rick (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)

Liza Galliher | Business Development

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Liza joined ExactHire in August 2016 as our Business Development Specialist after several years of sales experience at a technology firm in Washington, DC. Liza serves as our main point of contact for our clients who are in need of our software solutions for their organizations.

Previously, Liza worked at WeddingWire Inc. in a similar consultant role, and even more recently she worked as a Behavioral Clinician at Meridian Health Services utilizing her educational background in psychology. She holds a B.A. in psychology from DePauw University.

Liza also serves as a member of the national women’s philanthropic organization of Psi Iota Xi, and is a member of their Alpha Chapter. Her favorite pastime is spending quality family time with her husband and young daughter. Liza also enjoys reading, cooking, interior design, spending time outside, and traveling when possible.