Are Electronic Signatures Valid?

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Because our employee onboarding software utilizes electronic signatures, we are quite frequently asked “are electronic signatures valid?” The short answer is…yes.

Requirements for Valid Electronic Signatures

However, for this to hold true, there are conditions that have to be met. These were established with the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) of 2000. While you may wish to consult your Labor & Employment attorney for more details, I’ve listed below the core requirements that must be met for an electronic signature to be valid:

  • The person signing the document must be allowed to view the completed document before being asked to provide his/her signature — this is to prevent any potential fraud in these types of transactions.
  • The signature must be unique and verifiable — whatever device or software tool is being used to capture this must be able to record how the signature was entered, when (time & date), and how it is tied to that individual (password, IP address, etc.).
  • The document may not be altered after the signature is affixed — as with the first point above, this is designed to make sure agreements can’t be changed after a person has signed them.
  • The signature must capture the consent and understanding of the person providing it — this may be accomplished a number of ways, but is designed to make sure any “fine print” is made clear and obvious to any parties involved in the electronic signature process.

These guidelines are based on the federal ESIGN Act (referenced above), and apply to interstate commerce. However, there are states that will occasionally designate certain documents as not eligible for electronic signature recognition. While this doesn’t happen frequently, you should certainly check with your organization’s attorney before moving ahead with any service/solution that utilizes this process.

That exception notwithstanding, most any new hire documents are certainly eligible for e-signature. This includes files like I-9’s, W4’s, direct deposit forms, company policies and procedures, employee handbook acknowledgments, etc.

Selecting an Onboarding Software Vendor

Because this is a newer type of offering for most HR software providers, when going through the process of selecting a partner, please be sure to confirm that the vendor’s electronic signature process will pass muster, if challenged. The benefits of onboarding software are compelling, but you want to be sure you partner with a provider who understands and can explain how their tool complies with these protocols.

If you’d like to learn more about ExactHire and how our paperless onboarding software can benefit your organization, please visit our resources section or contact us today.

How Do You Assess Employees On The Job?

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Well, this blog about assessing employees hits home as I just had my one-year work anniversary with ExactHire. I love my job, by the way, and wish everyone could enjoy coming to work as much as I do! (I am not kissing up because I have already had my annual review!) But, it brings up a good question that affects all employers regardless of size of company or industry…how do you assess employees?

There are multiple traits that can be reviewed to assess your employees:

Quantitative Measurements – these should be the most obvious characteristics to review

  • Performance Objectives – These could be set by management as goals for the employee or for the overall organization. Examples might include sales goals of a specific dollar amount, obtaining a set number of new accounts/clients or safety goals in a production facility.
  • Cost Effective – The employee’s productivity during his/her time at work vs. the cost to have him/her there. This can be a simple measurement for some types of jobs, like in the manufacturing industry where it is easy to count output of units produced, but it may be more complicated to compute in other industries such as consulting or healthcare.
  • Absenteeism or Timeliness – Here is an easy one – most companies have some type of system in place to keep track of tardiness or absenteeism of their employees. Make sure that your employees are not abusing the system.

Personal Behavior – how the employee conducts himself/herself on a daily basis

  • Works well with team – This is important to all jobs but is much more imperative to certain positions or industries. Depending on the nature of the business, if an employee is not a team player, that can make a work situation miserable for many people.
  • Creativity – Again, this one can depend on the position, but overall, reviews how well the person handles change, problem solving and other situations that require the employee to “think outside the box.”
  • Follows policies – Whether in management or low man on the totem pole, this one says a lot about people. Is your employee a strict follower of the policies or is he/she a “rule breaker”? Review how this can affect his/her performance and the performance of others.

Appraisals – evaluations done by various people anytime of the year for various reasons

  • Self – Asks the employee to look at himself/herself to review how he/she thinks he/she is performing at current position.
  • Manager – This is the most standard evaluation given…what does the boss think of the employee? This is important but is far more useful when combined with other evaluations.
  • Peer – This one can be tricky but is equally important. Peers often have a lot of insight into the employee’s overall productivity.
  • 360 Degree – All of the above! ExactHire offers a “360 degree survey” that takes into account all of these appraisal types to produce an overall summary or performance picture of the employee. These are very useful for a company to use for an annual snapshot of the team dynamics as a whole, as well.

Employers can use assessments to reevaluate employees at any time, measuring their cognitive and behavioral traits. If you have any concerns regarding a new hire, keep in mind that the use of employee assessments can help retain talent. In the long run, you will be able to find a good fit for your company as well as for the job at hand. The right person for the job will be more productive and stay engaged in his/her work…creating a positive atmosphere for everyone.

Image Credit: By Employeeperformance (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

7 Ways Human Resources Can Use Application Management Software

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When you purchase software, it’s always nice to learn everything about what the software can do right away. However, we all know this is not always a realistic possibility depending on the extent of available features. Sometimes, you have to “grow” into the application. With ExactHire’s applicant application management software we are occasionally asked for ideas on other ways this employment application software can be used. Here are the highlights:

As An External Employment Application

Let’s start with the most traditional and primary use of the ATS – an external application to invite applicants to apply to open positions.

As An Internal Application For Interoffice Transfers

The ATS can also be used for existing employees that want to transfer to another position within the company. You can create an internal employment application and post jobs exclusively to your internal job board. If you would like to, you can also post the jobs to both job boards – internal & external. The advantage of a separate internal application is that you can ask your internal applicants different questions and allow the application to be shorter. For internal applicants you may want to know how long they’ve been in their current positions or if they have been on a performance plan in the last six months.

Additional Applications For Volunteer Management, Internships, Executive Candidates, etc.

If your regular external application won’t meet the needs of all your external applicants, you can have separate applications attached to job postings focused on volunteer opportunities, internships and/or executive positions. These applications may either ask different questions than your regular external application; or, they may just need to be shorter in order to engage these audiences of individuals to apply.

Build An Applicant Pool Over Time

You can also post jobs for future opportunities at your company. Adding screening questions that ask what type of job one would seek and/or why the applicant is interested in your company is a good way to help you review those applications. This helps you to have a reservoir of applicants for when you’re ready to begin an active search down the road.

Record The Applicants’ Movement And Notes

In addition to simply collecting applications, the ATS is really wonderful to help record where applicants are in the process for you and your team. First interview, second interview, etc. This work flow record keeping ability comes in handy when you have more than one person touching applicant records. Notes, in addition to statuses, can be recorded…including the author of the note.

Applicant Reporting

All of the recordkeeping comes in handy when it’s time to access reporting options in the system. If you are subject to Affirmative Action Reporting or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reporting, the software can help simplify that process. Some reports come standard with the software, and others can be built in the reports section. Even if you are not required to do compliance reporting for governmental purposes, chances are your financial department will want to see efficiency reporting to justify your recruitment spending…all of which can be pulled from the software, as well.

Requisition Management To Approve Positions

Requisition management is another feature available for use within the ATS. Requiring approval on potential positions is often a critical piece of the hiring process. After all, budgets are critical in successful businesses and if you’re hiring someone, it’s good to know if you have the budget, as well as management approval, for such activities.

There are many other benefits applicant tracking software can bring to your organization. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us. It never hurts to ask the question!

Image credit: Number 7 by Eric Gravengaard (contact)

5 Reasons Why Companies Need Human Resources

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I was talking with a friend yesterday who does “life coaching,” and she asked a great question … “Why do you like your job so much?” My answer was simple…ExactHire is a small company so everyone here has to wear many different “hats” and no day is ever the same. We have fun together and work as a team!

The more I thought about it, I was struck by the ironic fact that we work in the Human Resources (HR) industry but don’t have a specific Human Resources department or even an HR manager. Every company needs to practice HR-related activities, but that does not mean each organization is required to have a designated person or department for this function; it really just depends on the size of the company. At ExactHire, since we are a small business, we split the standard human resources duties among several staff members, and also utilize a professional employment organization (PEO).

Regardless of the size of your company, it is imperative that you consider how the following HR-related responsibilities are being handled for your business. That way, you can be confident that the employment brand you are presenting to individuals is positive.

Download ExactHire Company Culture E-book

Recruiting New Employees

At some point, every business needs to recruit new employees…whether due to growth or turnover. An effective recruiting process is key to an organization’s ability to grow and succeed. After all, how can you take on new projects / clients without more employees? In your business, who seeks out job applicants and screens them? You may have a designated recruiter in HR; or, individual departmental hiring managers may handle this duty for their respective areas. Applicant tracking systems (ATS software) can make the process of sourcing and screening job applicants streamlined and paperless, but someone in your business, preferably with an HR background, still needs to champion the recruitment function at your company.

Administering Employment Paperwork

I know…employment paperwork = BORING! But without it, your employees (and you!) wouldn’t get paid, taxes wouldn’t be properly recorded and benefits would not be available to your staff. Don’t forget about worker’s compensation and unemployment – those items require lots of time and paperwork, too! Also, HR should help to keep your business in compliance with federal and state laws. Many small companies can be overwhelmed with these compliance-related tasks, but it is still necessary to perform these responsibilities. Consider a paperless employee onboarding software solution, to make hiring new employees much easier on everyone involved.

Training & Employee Development

When a new employee is hired, who leads the orientation session(s) in your company? Normally, it’s the head of the employee’s department and/or the HR manager. Without HR, new employees might fail to learn critical company policies, and might fall short of feeling truly assimilated into the organization’s culture. Human resources professionals often head up other training programs such as health and safety programs for employees; as well as, sexual harassment or performance management training, too.

Compensation & Benefits Administration

When first accepting an offer with a company, some of the initial questions asked by new employees include “What is the pay?” and “What are the benefits?” HR typically handles all types of employee benefits, from insurance to 401k to educating employees about a flexible spending account. Medical, dental, vision, life, disability…the list of insurance types alone can get very long. Your human resources department coordinates these policies with the broker/provider and on behalf of the employee. HR business partners also manage benefit open enrollment for employees. When you have an issue with insurance, or a change in deductions for a flex account, or want to increase your 401K contribution, you will likely always seek out your HR guru first. Make sure your business has a “guru” resource.

Employee Relations & Evaluating Performance

Lastly, but certainly, not least – HR is usually tasked with championing a consistent and helpful performance evaluation process for employees. This is a big one! If policies are not being followed, the HR manager, in conjunction with hiring managers/department heads, has to step in and correct the situation…whether it’s a safety issue; or, perhaps an employee not showing up to work on time.

This wheelhouse also includes how well an employee is performing his/her function. Maybe the manager thought an employee would be a good fit for a position but it is not working out as expected. Could that employee thrive elsewhere in the company? Using an employee assessment recommended by HR, the organization may be able to help find the right fit for the department among other candidates; or, a new place for the existing employee. Performance evaluation also serves as a mechanism to review progress, and then effectively and sufficiently reward those that are doing a great job for a business.

As you can tell, there are MANY important duties that human resources performs in any company, of any size. Individuals tasked with these types of duties play the role of cheerleader for the employee, and also serve as the middleman between management and the employee. If you are not sure what you can do to improve your employment brand, ExactHire offers several web-based software tools to streamline HR-related tasks…making them easier and more efficient. Contact us today for more information or visit our resources section.

Image credit: Question mark made of puzzle pieces by Horia Varlan (contact)

Top 5 Considerations For Understanding Employee Assessments

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Employee assessments have been around for decades. Organizations use them for hiring, team-building, conflict resolution and succession planning. While there are many legitimate options for these tools in the marketplace, there are many more that either aren’t very reliable or, worse yet, aren’t legal to use in certain situations. I get asked about these a lot, so it seems to make sense to help frame out some of the key things to consider if you’re currently using (or plan to use) assessments in your organization.

For my purposes here, I’m going to focus on behavior/personality assessments. That’s because these are the types of assessments whose accuracy and applicability are typically most difficult for people to confirm.

The Big Five Personality Traits

Most of these assessments are ultimately based on the “Big Five” personality traits. To make it easier to remember, you can use the acronym “OCEAN”:

  • O = Openness (degree to which someone is open to a variety of experiences)
  • C = Conscientiousness (willing to work, self-discipline)
  • E = Extraversion (importance of social stimulation)
  • A = Agreeableness (cooperative vs. antagonistic)
  • N = Neuroticism (need for stability)

Beyond these Big Five, most assessments now have created varying numbers of sub-scales to look into these various traits in more detail. Regardless of how they might be configured, having this basic working knowledge can help you to make sure a given assessment has at least the beginnings of being legitimate. Now, let’s look at five items that can help you be even more discerning in your evaluation:

Ipsative vs. Normative

Ipsative assessments are forced choice tools that provide a measurement of a person’s relative strengths in various categories. These types of tools tend to be used more in post-hire activities, as they don’t compare a person to others.

Normative assessments measure a person’s characteristics against confirmed patterns of normality — the population at large. Due to this, these types of tools tend to be used more for hiring.

Validity

Validity defines what characteristics an assessment is measuring and then determines if that assessment is truly measuring those characteristics. In other words, does it do what it’s supposed to do? There are a host of ways to validate assessments, but asking a provider for their validity studies is an excellent way to gauge how well the solution is put together.

Reliability

Reliability defines how dependably (or “reliably”) an assessment measures certain characteristics. This is usually gauged by how consistent the results are for groups of people who take the same assessment multiple times. Typically, you’ll want to work with an assessment that has a reliability score of .80 or better. As with validity referenced above, reliability figures are typically included in most assessment providers’ validation studies.

Distortion

One of the primary concerns for many people considering assessments for their organization is how easily others may be able to manipulate results. For any tool you’re considering, be sure that it has a way to detect this. Often called distortion or candidness, most quality tools will be able to flag those who have provided answers that are inconsistent.

Benchmarking

To help assessments really enable you to better understand what key traits are common in your high (or low) performers, it’s important to be able to benchmark existing performers within your organization. This usually includes looking at both ends of the performance spectrum. Being able to use results of real people performing certain functions within your culture and work atmosphere allows you to zero in on those particular traits/characteristics that are difference-makers for you.

Assessments, when used appropriately, can be significant predictors of success. They can also help you handle conflicts, promote from within and ensure current staff are in the best positions possible. I hope these core items help you choose the best options for you and your organization.

For more information on employee assessments available through ExactHire, please contact us today. 

Image credit: Pinky & the Brain by JD Hancock (contact)

5 Easy Enhancements to Make to Your Company’s Careers Portal

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When was the last time you took a good look at your organization’s recruitment site through the eyes of a potential applicant? I’m talking about just the career-related content you feature on your branded applicant tracking software portal. You can’t remember? Well, whether you don’t recall or perhaps just need a gentle nudge to revisit the candidate experience side of your ATS software, in this blog I’ll outline five simple adjustments to make to the content you feature to entice individuals to apply to job listings on your company page.

While we may work in the HR/recruiting realm and therefore be intimately familiar with the inner workings of our recruiting software, all too often our familiarity may be too focused on the administrative side of an applicant tracking system. And even though much care was undoubtedly given to the intricacies of your employment application and career-related content during your implementation process with an ATS vendor, odds are it’s not something you regularly consider now that you are actively using the tool. Give the following ideas some thought periodically and then make adjustments to keep your career site visitors engaged.

1 – Make the Transition from Corporate Web Site to Career Site Seamless

Careers Redirect Link to ATSIf your organization utilizes an applicant tracking system, then you have the option of easily controlling the presentation of employment-related information on your external ATS site, rather than waiting on your corporate site’s webmaster to make changes to company site pages on your behalf. Some organizations will opt to host career information on the company site and then just list job openings on the ATS site; while others will simply have an “Employment Opportunities” link on the company site that points straight to the ATS site where all employment information is housed.

Regardless of the approach your business takes, just make sure that it doesn’t take your company site visitors too many clicks to get to your job descriptions and application on the applicant tracking software site. Also, since your job listings will live on the ATS site, make sure that you don’t duplicate your efforts by having the descriptions available on your company site, too. Not only would this be confusing for your applicants, but it also could potentially hurt your job listings’ rankings in search results since your two different sites would be competing for the same traffic in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

I recommend keeping things simple by having a redirect link on your corporate site that says something like “Careers,” “Employment” or “Job Opportunities,” and that points to the URL for your applicant tracking system’s external welcome page.

2 – Use a Welcome Page With Pictures and Clear Site Navigation

Careers Site Welcome Page PicturesWhether potential applicants are redirected from your main company web page or are referred from job boards or social media sites, it’s important that you have a general welcome page available to provide interested applicants with more information about employment with your organization. People that come to your careers portal after leaving your corporate site will obviously land on your welcome page first; however, those directed from external job boards will land on a specific job description page within your careers site. Nevertheless, before the latter site visitors apply, they may wish to click on your welcome page link in the site navigation and investigate your organization further.

As a result, it is critical to have an engaging and informative page within your ATS site that serves as a welcome to site visitors. It can briefly describe the types of employment opportunities generally available with your company, as well as what you are looking for in the individuals for hire. Be sure and include interesting visuals such as photographs or videos of the people and products or services that make up your organization.

3 – Customize Your Jobs Page With Instructions & Social Media Tools

When applicants take time to peruse your available job listings, it’s important to make the experience pleasant. For example, if you regularly have many jobs open at a time, then make sure your Jobs page offers applicants the ability to filter job listings by criteria such as location, employment type and department. That way applicants can get to relevant information more quickly. Also, if you occasionally do not have any openings listed, make sure there are clear instructions inviting site visitors to return to your careers portal regularly as well as encouraging them to subscribe to your automated job alert notices.
Get Notified of New Jobs | ExactHire
Lastly, if your company manages any social media pages, then include social media “follow” icons to make it easy for potential future employees to engage with your organization on social networks.

4 – Create Page Links That Discuss Your Company Culture, Benefits & Hiring Process FAQs

ATS Career Content Navigation LinksIn the age of information, your potential future hires want to find out about your organization when they first land on your careers portal. Make it easy for them by creating links in your site navigation that take visitors to more information about what its like to work at your company. Those of us in Client Services at ExactHire are always pleased to see clients featuring lots of rich, relevant content on their ATS portal – it goes a long way in driving more people to your site, as well as engages them to be more likely to finish submitting an application. Here are some ideas on content to feature:

  • Describe the culture of your company
  • What to expect from the interview process
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about working at your company
  • Employee benefit information (insurance, vacation, tuition reimbursement, etc.)
  • …And a page devoted to employee testimonials (more on this below)

5 – Feature Employee Testimonials With Pictures, Quotations & Even Video

Use Employee Testimonial Videos | ExactHireWho better to convince job portal visitors to apply than your current employees who love their jobs! If you haven’t already, round up a group of your top talent…particularly, the individuals who truly are employment brand ambassadors for your organization. Once assembled, solicit your team for candid testimonials about why they work at your business. Pose different questions to different people so you have some variety in your responses when you feature their statements on your employment site:

  • What attracted you to this company?
  • What advice do you give to applicants?
  • How do you describe the culture of this organization?
  • What surprised you most about the company once you started here?
  • Where do you see your career going within the company?
  • What does it take to succeed and thrive at our organization?

Then, record video of their enthusiastic answers to the employee testimonial questions and/or feature their picture next to their quotation on your Testimonials page.

Regardless of which career site enhancement techniques you may employ, the bottom line is that its best to regularly take stock of your approach to ensure that your employment brand is putting its best foot forward. Please share your own ideas for boosting the effectiveness of your career-related content in the comments section!

Ready for a more professional, branded careers portal presence for your company? Visit our resources section or contact ExactHire today for more details.

 

Image credit for video thumbnail: R&L Truckload

Header image credit: Starting Blocks at Vacant Starting Line Before Event by tableatny (contact)

How to Write a Job Description Optimized for Job Boards and Internet Search, Tip 5

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Location, location, location! No, I’m not talking about prime land real estate; however, the same old catchphrase can apply to your job listings and job board real estate depending on how well your company’s geographic location aligns with the location of your targeted applicant pool. In this fifth installment of the “How to Write a Job Description Optimized for Job Boards & Internet Search” series, I’ll discuss how strategically using features available within your applicant tracking system can remedy an organization’s ailing efforts to get listings in front of out-of-town applicants.

Skills Gap: Qualified Applicants Don’t Live in Your Neighborhood

Awhile back I was chatting with one of our clients. She works for a company within the automotive industry and frequently needs to hire individuals skilled in trades, such as mechanics and technicians capable of working on large diesel engines. She usually has a number of similar positions open across multiple facilities, but the facilities are not in really large metropolitan areas…rather bigger towns scattered across the Midwest. In particular, one of those larger towns happens to be about thirty minutes from Indianapolis via interstate.

She has found that if she can get the word out, sometimes skilled individuals who reside on the edge of Indianapolis are willing to drive to her facility for work…after all, it is in the opposite direction of most rush hour traffic. However, it is much more challenging for her to engage qualified applicants that are closer and, perhaps at times, more aware of her job openings. She is definitely experiencing a skills gap in her town when it comes to technical positions.

So naturally, having had some success reaching Indianapolis residents and engaging them to come to her town for work, she wants to continue to get the word out and expand the geographic scope of her applicant pool. However, with so many postings skimmed by job seekers, she needs to do it in such a way that it is still clear that the opportunity is based in her town…and not in the city thirty minutes away. After all, she doesn’t want to waste her time, or even the time of her hiring managers, if a few applicants that don’t realize the position is really in the smaller town (and therefore do NOT want to make the commute) get through the cracks.

Strategic Job Locations & Setting Expectations Clearly

The key to this obstacle is to use your job description to make it clear that your opportunity is based in the town, but also ensure that it appears in the search results for applicants who may not be specifically looking for jobs in that town…but rather in the nearby city. Check with your applicant tracking system provider to see if alternate job locations can be enabled for the job boards to which you push your job ads.

For example, it is important to be upfront about the fact that your position is based in your town on your careers page. You may go so far as to also say as much in the first two sentences of your job listing to be sure that the town name appears in snippets of your posting in search engine and job board results pages.
Setting Location Expectations - Job Listings
Then, when pushing certain job listings to free and paid external job boards, designate the larger nearby metropolitan area as the “job board city” since applicants often do geographic searches on external job boards. After all, many more searches are likely to be done on the city than on the smaller town. And, while some of those applicants will dismiss the small town job opportunity when they note in the first few sentences that it is based in the town a half hour away; others will check it out–as they might reside in an area of the city that is relatively close to the town. Plus, they never would have thought to search for opportunities in that town, specifically. This can be especially compelling when you consider that a city like Indianapolis is so spread out that it can take nearly an hour to go from a suburb on one side to another on the opposite end of the city.
Specify Job Board City | ExactHire

Big City Skills Can Meet Small Town Opportunities

If you ever find yourself in a similar scenario scrambling to entice applicants to come to your quaint out of the way town, consider the approach I’ve outlined here. However, bear in mind the importance of still making it clear to applicants that do view your job description that the position is indeed located in your town…and not the big city. This technique isn’t about bamboozling applicants with the location bait and switch, it’s about harnessing the power of job board geographic searches to put your listing in front of applicants when it might not otherwise have been seen. Then, it is still up to the applicant to consider the merits of the scenic drive.

Skills Gap Highlights Need for Hiring Software in Manufacturing Industry

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If you are in the manufacturing industry then you’ve likely had to make some critical changes to your applicant selection process over the past few years. As a whole, the industry has been surviving rather than thriving, with a skills gap caused by fewer new graduates in technical fields available to meet the needs of positions requiring technical skills. And we all know that technology isn’t going away when it comes to most anything in life…particularly in the manufacturing and production of goods.

Given these existing challenges in the hiring process for manufacturers, its even more important to hire individuals with the right behavioral traits, cognitive abilities and job skills to ensure job fit across your organization. Tools such as applicant tracking systems and pre-employment testing solutions can help to overcome these challenges while also freeing up the time that your human resources department spends on processing paperwork.

Use Tools of the Hiring Trade: Applicant Tracking Software & Employee Assessments

Applicant Tracking Software

Effective applicant tracking software will enable the following activities…

  • Automating the more basic aspects of the candidate screening process:
    • facilitating external job board posting;
    • hosting paperless employment application;
    • automatically scoring and/or flagging candidates based on answers to certain critical job requirement-related questions); and,
  • Moving candidates through the hiring process and reporting on results:
    • allowing easy disposition of applicants’ status in the process;
    • and, robust reporting tools to examine source traffic, time to fill, applicant flow logs, etc.

Employee Assessments

Employee assessments and job skills tests are great solutions for applying a purely objective component to the selection process. However, they should only be used as a complement to the process rather than as the hard and fast rule on whether applicants are considered. In fact, no
cognitive/behavioral assessment tool should account for more than about 25-30% of your hiring decision. Nonetheless, when used properly, these assessments empower hiring managers to sneak a peak at how an individual may be hard-wired in terms of his/her behavior and motivation, as well as assess his/her skills set and cognitive abilities. That’s critical information going into different stages of the interviewing process…as any potential flags or areas of interest can be explored through further questioning.

Build a Qualified Applicant Channel

Of course acquiring the tools to maximize the reach and impact of your hiring process is only part of the equation. You still need to attract top talent and engage them by maintaining a positive employment brand. A great way to reach passive applicants is by utilizing social networks. The right ATS can automate the process of posting new jobs as status updates on your company’s various social media pages. Here are some other suggestions for engaging applicants and honing your recruitment brand:

  1. Be responsive to candidates: Above all, be accountable to what you say you are going to do in terms of getting back with people…i.e. under promise and over deliver.
  2. Make your branded careers page a destination: Don’t just feature a list of jobs on your portal, include other pages with information about company culture, benefits, frequently asked questions about the hiring process, etc.
  3. Incorporate video into your application process: For manufacturers, safety concerns are paramount. Weed out less than serious applicants by embedding a required safety video/quiz into your application process. Then, ask questions on the application that only someone who viewed the video would be able to answer. This will reduce the number of applicants you receive who aren’t serious about your organization.
  4. Take advantage of reporting and analytics information: Identify which of your external ad sources refers the most candidates who actually end up being hired. This exercise helps you to better plan future expenditures of both your time and money to maximize the return on your recruiting budget investment.

This active just-in-time candidate pipeline you’ve now created requires your attention to ensure it’s useful the next time you’re trying to fill positions for your organization. Regularly create and share content that is relevant to your various subsets of applicant groups. Examples of content might include recent news at your company, compensation trends for your industry, recent awards earned by employees or departments and potential hiring plans.

Being attentive to how the evolving manufacturing landscape requires your business to fine tune its recruiting and onboarding efforts will pay dividends in the long run – it is quality assurance for your future placement and succession planning activities.

For more tips on how to improve your recruitment and onboarding processes, please contact ExactHire today or visit our Resources Section.

What Did You Do Today? Avoid New Employee First Day Nothings

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When you were a kid, did your parents ever ask you, “What did you do today?” Typically the answer, “nothing,” would roll off the tongue and away you went doing something else. Or, maybe you now ask your children this same question as you have gotten older.

What if someone asked one of your new hires what they did with your organization on the first day of work? Would the answer be “nothing?” Would that response be justified? If I spent my entire first day filling out forms, being told to read this or that, and setting up my desk I would most likely answer with “nothing” as well.

Use the Pre-Boarding Time Period

So how do you onboard your new employees in such a way that their answer will be far from “nothing?” My advice would be to take advantage of the pre-boarding time frame – that time span from when the new hire signs the offer letter to the point where he/she starts the first day. However, you do have to be cautious not to overwhelm the new hire with so much information that he/she doesn’t have time to get through it all, either.

An easy way to keep the balance is to have the new hire complete much of the new hire paperwork in advance of the first day. Our OnboardCentric employee onboarding software can help with that. The new hire logs into a portal that contains all of your company’s new hire paperwork. The individual completes the forms assigned based on position/department/division. This portal can also contain handbooks and other supplemental information that you want all new hires to review. Depending on how long a new hire normally spends filling out paperwork and reading information on his/her first day, you could free up that entire amount of time.

Warm Fuzzy Feelings for New Employees

If you provide a new hire with any type of uniform or apparel pieces, you could be reminded to gather sizing information via a task reminder in your onboarding software platform and have those garments available upon arrival. Giving the new hire the impression that you have been anxiously anticipating his/her arrival and inclusion as part of your company, can help create the “warm and fuzzy” feelings for the new hire. First impressions can help employees determine if they see themselves as a “lifer” or if your company is a stepping stone. The OnboardCentric portal also helps encourage the assertive hires that your company does truly move at a fast pace, accepts technology, and promotes forward movement.

Free up new hires’ first day so when they report back home, they have something more to say than “nothing.”

If you’d like to schedule a live demo of our employee onboarding software, please contact ExactHire.