Do Niche Job Boards Really Work?

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

Online Job boards are a mixed blessing. They promise access to thousands of great candidates. And while they certainly deliver oodles of resumes, they sometimes fall short on “great.” If you’re like many hiring managers, you may wonder if you want to continue casting such a wide net when results are so disappointing.

Before you give up on your list of job boards entirely, give niche job boards a chance. Niche job boards in 2022 offer a way to target candidates with the specialized background you’re looking for, without luring the duds. Niche job boards do work, as long as you’re using the right one for your hard-to-fill positions.

Types of Job Boards

Everyone knows about the behemoths. Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor and other big sites usually top the list of places to search for jobs. But Indeed has 16 million job postings, with almost ten new jobs added each second. With job seekers and job postings numbering in the millions, making a connection on the big sites can be tough.

Just like you, candidates are frustrated with top job boards. Their keyword searches net junk job ads. And just like you, they’re left sifting through the mess to find the right match.

Niche job boards offer a solution to the grievances on both sides of the interview table. They do the work of narrowing the talent pool to only candidates who share a particular quality. Because niche job boards cater to a smaller audience of job seekers, your job ad has a better chance of attracting more qualified resumes.

The candidates may all be members of the same industry organization or graduates of the same university. When you advertise on a niche job board, you can be reasonably assured that nearly every job seeker has at least some of the qualities you’re looking for. You can also write a more targeted job description using jargon or industry certifications.

How to Choose the Best Niche Job Board Software

Many hiring managers steer clear of niche job boards simply because there are so many. With thousands of niche job board software sites, it may feel safer to stick with routine job sites. But you can post to smaller job boards confidently when you follow these tips.

Assess your top employees and find out which associations they’re likely to belong to.
Look for niche job boards that offer a sense of community and industry-related news and information. The best niche job sites offer more than job ads.
Try the job board from the candidate’s perspective. Applicants won’t waste their time with shoddy sites. Search for jobs using common keywords, scan the job ads to make sure they’re current and click the apply buttons to make sure the niche job site is usable.
Look for niche job boards that rank well in a Google search using terms your candidates will likely use.
Look for niche job boards that reach beyond their IP addresses. With thousands of job sites, niche job boards need to actively market themselves and extend their reach beyond chance encounters with candidates. Look for a site that hosts virtual job fairs, advertises on larger sites or has a strong social media presence.
Look to local organizations to advertise your job openings. Your local chamber of commerce or small business association may have a jobs site to target local applicants.
Post your job openings on university or college websites for both current students and alumni. Graduates often keep in touch with their university’s news. Posting to university websites can help you find quality passive candidates.

Niche Jobs vs Niche Job Boards

Most companies hire for a variety of positions, and what works for one job ad may not work when a different job opening comes along. So how do you determine where to spend your recruiting dollars for your targeted job posts?

It’s still worthwhile to post your open roles to free job board software sites. You can save time and ditch your little black password book when you use an applicant tracking system. ExactHire’s ATS allows you to post your job openings to multiple sites with a single click.

Your openings for niche jobs in demand, such as IT professionals, work well for smaller niche job boards. These specialized postings are easily lost on the mega sites when applicants perform a job search by industry niche. When looking for a particular skill set, look for job boards for specific industries.

Sometimes you’re looking for qualities beyond the typical niche jobs meaning. Proactively hiring veterans is one niche jobs example that works well with targeted job boards. There are also job boards that can help you reach your diversity goals by targeting marginalized groups.

Some types of positions work well for the larger job sites. Entry-level positions or positions that have crossover appeal will attract more candidates on the bigger job sites. You can avoid too many junk resumes by writing a job description that appeals to your ideal candidate.

No matter where you advertise your job openings, an ATS can help you zero-in on the best job boards that work well for your needs. ExactHire’s ATS includes analytical insights on job board performance. You can see on one screen how each job posting performs across multiple sites. As you gather performance data over time, you can avoid spending your limited recruiting budget on sites that don’t work.

Niche Job Boards Do Work

As job openings increase, so do recruiters’ options for advertising their open positions. There simply isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to finding the best applicants. But you also don’t have to resort to haphazardly posting your job ads and simply hoping for the best.

ExactHire’s applicant tracking system can help you decipher the best job posting strategy for your company. You can quickly post to multiple sites, including niche job boards. Then you can track how each site performs.

You can finally uncover which niche job boards and large job sites provide the best return on your recruiting investment. Schedule a demo today.

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

Remote Work Culture and Engagement

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

Whether you cultivate it or not, your company has a culture. From employee retention to product quality, having a positive company culture will increase employee engagement and improve your company’s results.

VIDEO: Remote Work Culture

TRANSCRIPT: Remote Work Culture

Whether you cultivate it or not your company has a culture. From employee retention to product quality, having a positive company culture will increase employee engagement and improve your company’s results.

This was complicated even when all your employees were under one roof, but the explosion of a remote workforce has made this more complicated as we’ve tried to figure out how to establish and maintain a company culture in a remote work environment.

What is Work Culture?

Culture is how we do things around here, and engagement is the performance aspect of culture. So engagement is important because it goes up when culture aligns with how employees measure what is successful for them.

Why is a culture that encourages employee engagement important?

Well, Gallup found the companies that had better employee engagement had higher metrics in the following areas. Engaged workforces experienced:

81% less absenteeism
41% fewer quality defects
10% boost in customer loyalty
18% increase in productivity
23% increase in profitability

Work cultures today need to be friendly, family-oriented, caring, and supportive. Engaging your workers and making them feel valued is really key to developing a strong company culture for your remote workforce, but as we’ve learned with other leadership strategies: what we’re going to have to do to be successful with the remote for workforce is very different than the methods we’ve used with in-office teams. So here’s some information that might help…

4 Characteristics of High Engagement Work Culture

There are four key characteristics of workplace cultures that increase engagement.

Warm Relationships: People like to work with people, most of us do–this is very tough to do in a remote workforce environment and people can easily get isolated, so it’s on you as a leader to promote teamwork and encourage collaboration.
Honesty: Engaged workers have honest interactions with their co-workers and their leaders, so you need to create an environment where honesty is encouraged. One of the best ways to do this as a leader is to be honest yourself and exemplify that. Your workers will notice and they’ll do the same.
Shared Accountability: Engagement goes up when team members share accountability. Everyone wins or loses together.
Alignment on Shared Goals: make sure that everyone’s contributions and objectives are in alignment with the company’s mission and purpose.

Implementing these strategies can be complicated if you need help let us know.

ExactHire provides hiring software and strategy to help employers adapt to job market changes and succeed in hiring. Learn how our software and team of strategists can help you hire and onboard a remote workforce.

What Is Your Onboarding Data Telling You?

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

An effective onboarding process can have a positive impact on nearly every aspect of your business, from improving retention and engagement to strengthening your company’s culture and employer brand. But to create a stellar onboarding process, you need to understand where you’re currently falling short. That’s where your onboarding data comes in.

Data and KPIs will help you identify ways you can improve your onboarding process. Over time, you can see how your onboarding improvements contribute to your company’s success. In this article, we’ll show you why onboarding data is important, the most important onboarding data you need to track, and ways you can improve your onboarding process.

New Hire Onboarding Statistics

Half of new hires leave in the first 18 months of employment, according to onboarding statistics by SHRM. And that turnover is expensive. SHRM onboarding statistics in 2022 also say filling that empty chair costs up to nine months of that position’s salary. Yet many new hires leave before the company ever sees a return on their recruiting investment.

According to statistics, the importance of onboarding is the key to guiding new hires through those potentially sticky first months of employment, when they must merge their enthusiasm for their new role with its realities. Onboarding is also the company’s opportunity to deliver on the employee value proposition (EVP) they promoted during the recruitment process.

In fact, not delivering on promises is the fastest growing cause of voluntary turnover. According to The Work Institute’s 2020 Retention Report, the percentage of those who cited disappointment with a job’s characteristics as a reason for leaving more than doubled since 2013.

Good onboarding can prevent all of the preventable reasons for turnover cited in the Retention Report. Yet most companies do a bad job of onboarding according to statistics. According to onboarding statistics by Gallup, only 12% of employees think their company hits onboarding out of the park. That means 88% of companies need to improve their onboarding process.

Important Employee Onboarding Data

Your company can improve its onboarding process by collecting and analyzing onboarding data. But which data, exactly, can help you improve your onboarding process?

How to Measure Employee Turnover

Turnover measures how many people leave your company over a given period, usually annually. Measure turnover by dividing the number of employees leaving by the number of employees at the start of the given time period. Compare your results with the national average for your industry or region using the annual total separations compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

You can also break down your turnover measurements further by separating voluntary from involuntary turnover or by focusing on new hire turnover.

How to Measure Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is one of the most important predictors of company growth and can be improved significantly with an effective onboarding process. You can measure employee engagement by conducting a company-wide survey based on Gallup’s Employee Engagement Survey.

You can use the results of your employee engagement survey to make focused improvements to your onboarding process. Then, by conducting the survey periodically, you’ll know if your onboarding process is improving employee engagement.

How to Measure Time to Productivity

Time to productivity is more difficult to measure but essential to improving your onboarding process.

First, develop measurable, time-bound KPIs for the new position. These KPIs are tasks which you expect the new hire to accomplish independently within a predetermined time.

Then, divide the number of days it should take the new hire to accomplish the tasks independently by the number of days it actually takes the new hire to achieve the KPI.

For example, perhaps you expect Susan to operate the telephone switchboard independently after 5 days of training. If Susan masters the switchboard within 3 days, then her rating for time to productivity is 1.66, or 166% of the goal KPI.

Employee Onboarding Experience

You can use your onboarding data to know the effectiveness of your onboarding process and to identify areas of improvement. But what makes a great onboarding process?

A great onboarding process emphasizes the employee, rather than paperwork and processes. It’s an onboarding concept in HR by which you focus on providing the new hire with the 4 Cs.

Compliance: These are the basics and include paperwork, policies, and rules. While your safety and harassment policies are crucial, it’s the other four Cs that will help you improve employee retention.
Clarification: A great onboarding process provides the new hire with clarity regarding her role and responsibilities.
Culture: Forbes says, “a strong company culture is the best retention strategy.” Your company’s culture reflects the values from which decisions are made. Including culture in your onboarding process ensures new hires align themselves with the company’s values.
Connection: To understand how important connection at work is, you only need to take a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. After our physical needs are met, a “feeling of belonging” becomes the most important ingredient to happiness. The best onboarding processes recognize the new hire’s need for belonging and use creative solutions to foster connectedness.

Best Onboarding Practices

Your onboarding data may have revealed shortcomings in one or more of the 4 Cs of onboarding. The following best onboarding practices for new employees will help you improve every aspect of your onboarding process.

Improve Compliance

Use an applicant tracking system and onboarding software to digitize your data and forms. Companies with the best onboarding practices in 2021 take full advantage of technology. When applicants and new employees fill out their information with the software, the data can be automatically transferred to a variety of HR forms and files.
Create online training modules and assessments to ensure new hires understand important policies and rules in the employee handbook.

Improve Clarification

Document every position’s duties and responsibilities.
Using this document, create a comprehensive training timeline.
Assign a stakeholder who will be responsible for each item in the training timeline.
Provide opportunities for new hires to ask questions.
Schedule periodic check-ins to ensure the new hire stays on track.

Improve Culture

Create a training that introduces your new hire to the company’s history, values and mission.
Connect your new hire’s role to the company’s larger purpose.
Recognize your new hire’s accomplishments.
Communicate frequently with your new hire and provide frequent feedback.

Improve Connection

Assign a long-term employee to act as a buddy to your new hire. The buddy should help the new hire learn the unspoken rules of the company and be available for questions.
Introduce your new hire throughout the company. Introductions within the team should be more personable. Introductions to the larger company can be made via a posting on the company’s intranet or other common area.
Send your new hire to work a day in different departments. Doing so will enhance relationships as well as dismantle silos.

Employee Onboarding Checklist

An employee onboarding checklist is a great way to make sure you don’t forget anything when onboarding new hires. The checklist can include everything in the onboarding process throughout the first year.

You can use employee onboarding data and software to create custom checklists for each position. Stakeholders can update the checklist within the software as the new hire completes the onboarding process.

You can also download ExactHire’s “The Essential Onboarding Checklist.” We’ve created a comprehensive new employee onboarding guide pdf to get new hires up and running. Our checklist is an onboarding strategy divided by time frame and category and breaks down everything you need to do within the new hire’s first year.

Sample Onboarding Plan

A sample onboarding plan for new employees can solve a host of business problems. Everything from high turnover to low engagement and poor productivity can be turned around by a great onboarding plan. But to craft that plan, you need to measure key onboarding data. When you measure the most important KPIs of onboarding, including onboarding experience surveys, you can begin to create a plan that will ultimately improve business outcomes.

The improvements you make should address the 4 Cs of onboarding: compliance, clarification, culture and connection. The onboarding tips for new employees we’ve listed are a great start to revamping your onboarding process. You can further improve your onboarding for new employees for maximizing success when you download our checklist.

Using onboarding software can automate many of your onboarding action items. By having a centralized place that tracks onboarding efforts, stakeholders will always know the next steps and you’ll always know the status of a new hire’s onboarding process.

If you’re ready to learn more about how onboarding software can improve your business, contact ExactHire today.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Is Hybrid Work the Future of Work?

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

If you haven’t heard, Apple workers threatened to quit if they’re forced back to the office three days a week. Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that one Google executive, when speaking of the hybrid schedule currently in place, said (allegedly), “We’ll get everyone back to the office eventually. I just don’t want to pick that fight now.”

Perhaps you agree with the Google exec’s sentiment. Yet, the reality remains your employees likely have a similar mindset as Apple’s. It remains to be seen who will win the tech talent’s tug-of-war. But one thing is certain about the future of work: hybrid work will be central to the conversation.

And that’s regardless of whether you decide hybrid work is the future of work at your company.

Work Trends

Gallup’s money is on the tech workers when it comes to the future of work after Covid.

After conducting a hybrid work survey, Gallup predicts “hybrid work schedules will become the norm for most offices.” Currently, about 80% of employees whose jobs can be done remotely are working a fully remote or hybrid schedule, according to a February 2022 Gallup study. According to Gallup’s predictions for the future of work, hybrid work schedules will be adopted by 53% of remote-capable jobs.

hybrid work schedules will be adopted by 53% of remote-capable jobs.

Hybrid Work Challenges

Many companies are understandably resistant to allowing their employees to work remotely indefinitely. These companies cite future of work topics such as loss of culture, decreasing innovation, and an inability to directly supervise employees as reasons for putting the kibosh on employees’ demands to continue working remotely. As a result, many companies adopt a hybrid work schedule because it seems like a compromise.

With a hybrid work from home schedule, companies require employees to come to the office part of the time, usually two or three days a week, and allow employees to work from home on other days. The general thinking is that hybrid work is the best of both worlds. Employees can enjoy a better work-life balance and companies can maintain control over important business standards.

But hybrid work comes with its own minefield of challenges.

Hybrid Work Can Be Costly

When you sent them home in 2020, you may have noticed that some of your employees were consistently having internet or technical issues. Their faces froze during Zoom calls, or their files didn’t transfer as quickly. It became apparent that running a home office came with expenses. Companies with a hybrid work model may have stepped in by subsidizing for faster internet service, more data on cell plans, or basic ergonomic gear. As you bring employees back into the office with a hybrid work model in 2022, you’ll bear the cost for yet another workspace.

Hybrid Work May Nullify the Perk Employees Want Most

Parents, especially, cited the most important reason they love working from home: flexibility. Remote work allows employees to pick their kids up from school or take them to a doctor’s appointment. Except for very young children, many kids don’t require a babysitter as long as mom or dad are in the next room.

Requiring parents to come into the office two or three days a week at set hours nullifies the perks associated with flexibility. Many daycare options don’t price a la carte style and force parents to pay even for days kids aren’t there.

Hybrid Work May Increase Proximity Bias

Proximity bias is the unconscious favoritism leaders show to employees whom they see frequently. As a result, employees who work at home even part of the week may miss out on advancement opportunities. Since women and people of color are more likely to prefer working at home due to family obligations, hybrid work model examples may undo the gains companies have made on diversity.

Hybrid Work Model Tips

Left unchecked, these hybrid work model pros and cons can jeopardize productivity, not to mention your company’s bottom-line. You may be tempted to just throw in the towel on anything other than having your employees back in the office full-time. Be aware, though, that Gallup anticipates that only 23% of remote-capable jobs will be fully on-site. And with only 9% of the workers preferring to work fully on-site, you stand to lose talent to competition that can overcome the challenges of hybrid work.

The following tips can help you crush the challenges that might have you second-guessing hybrid work.

Redefine and Reduce Your Office Space

Don’t force workers into the office to do tasks they can easily do at home. Instead, create purpose and meaning for time spent in the cubicle. Better yet, dismantle the cubicle. Create common areas where employees can work that encourage collaboration.

Make Time for Connections

A feeling of belonging is one of the key indicators for employee engagement. Since employees are spending more worktime at home, carve time in the office for connection. Encourage employees to share their challenges and their wins.

Recognize the Savings of Hybrid Work

Sure, hybrid work creates costs you didn’t have before. But it also creates savings. Global Workplace Analytics estimates that companies save $11,000 per hybrid employee per year. These savings come from increased productivity, lower real estate costs, and lower employee turnover.

Explore Software and Cloud Computing Options

If you’re adopting hybrid or remote work for the long-term, it’s time to rethink your IT solutions. Software and cloud computing options can bring your distanced workforce together more seamlessly. They may also eliminate the need for pricey internet with high data limits. A cloud service can house your large files, reducing the need to transfer data and increasing security.

Be Flexible with Hybrid Work

Be creative with hybrid work schedules. Some parents may prefer putting in shorter hours over four days instead of three if doing so allows them to pick their kids up from school. Employees who live farther from the office may prefer to come in two days a week. Be open to allowing employees to mold a schedule that works for them, within reason.

Be Proactive About Employee Recognition

Succumbing to proximity bias is lazy managing. By now, the pandemic and the switch to remote work should have reorientated your leadership to a better style of employee recognition. Your leadership team should be focusing on output rather than comforting, yet hollow, markers such as coming in early or staying late. And being proactive about employee recognition will help employees know you see their efforts, even when they’re working at home.

Hybrid Work Culture

The above tips still don’t address the elephant in the room and the reason most tech CEOs shun remote and hybrid work. The tech giants ushered in the age of corporate culture with their massive complexes and their mod maxims to “don’t be evil.” And while slides and free sushi are questionable benefits, the founders of the digital age were on to something. A strong company culture is profitable.

So how can you have a strong hybrid work culture while answering your employees’ demands for work-life balance?

That’s a trick question because, in fact, it contains part of the answer. By going through all the trouble of adopting a hybrid or remote workplace, you’re demonstrating your commitment to your employees. That, in itself, increases your employees’ commitment to your company. And that mutual commitment strengthens your company’s culture.

But there’re other things you can do to improve your company’s culture in a hybrid work setting. Rethinking what culture in the workplace can be a good start.

An article in Harvard Business Review says this about company culture, “If work is something you do, and not a place you come to, then maybe it’s about time we got rid of the notion that culture sits within the four walls of the office.”

In a way, recognizing that culture isn’t about place helps us define culture better. Suddenly, sushi and slides seem even sillier as the crux of culture comes into focus.

According to Brooke Weddle of McKinsey & Company, culture is “a common set of behaviors, plus the underlying mindsets that shape how people work and interact day to day.”

It’s interesting to note that “place” doesn’t figure into Weddle’s definition of culture. That distinction is even more important as leaders and employees alike grapple with the aftermath of the pandemic. Because whether your workers are in the office or at home, all of us have changed. Covid has made people more purpose driven. There is simply no going back to a pre-pandemic perspective or culture.

Tips to Strengthen Hybrid Workplace Culture

Encourage employees to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. That doesn’t mean employees are driving your business strategy. It means encouraging employees to take ownership and pride in their roles. Encourage independent initiative and creative problem-solving where appropriate.
Involve your employees in the development of your hybrid work model. You may be sold on the swanky new messaging software. But your employees may find it more cumbersome than email or a phone call.
Find opportunities for connection. And leave no stone unturned. Water cooler chats before meetings, bring your pet to the Zoom call, and in-person events will improve your employees’ sense of belonging.
Encourage boundaries. There’s one hybrid work culture con that can create stress for employees. With the office always a few steps away, some employees may start working too much. Create trainings and policies that encourage employees to step away from their home office.

The Future of Hybrid Work Is Here

The trailblazing tech giants may have heralded in the information age and the sanctity of corporate culture. But they may be behind the times if they insist on bringing their employees back to the office. Of course, only time will tell.

For now, we know employees prefer working from home at least part of the time. We also know that many of the challenges that may make you hesitant to embrace the future of a hybrid workplace can be overcome. Most importantly, adopting a hybrid work policy can bring your company’s values into focus. And with that clearer perspective, you can create a stronger culture post-pandemic.

Rather than returning to the way you did things in 2019, use the lessons of these past two-plus years to create a stronger culture that embraces your employees’ shifting priorities.

If you’re wondering how you can recruit in 2022, watch our webinar Post-Pandemic Hiring: Align Recruiting to the New Normal.

Photo by Surface on Unsplash

5 Signs You Need to Automate Your Hiring Process

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

Has your hiring process grown unmanageable? Evolving technology, burgeoning job sites, a shrinking labor pool and the widening skills gap are just a few of the reasons hiring is a lot tougher than it used to be.

If you’re receiving resumes in your email or logging into each job board individually, you’re spending even more time hiring candidates. And, as if hiring wasn’t a towering task already, not hiring effectively can have damaging effects down the road.

If hiring the right candidate has ballooned into an HR headache, streamlining your hiring process may help. In this article, we’ve compiled 5 signs you need to automate your hiring process.

You Don’t Know Your Recruitment Metrics

Understanding your recruitment data is the first step to taming your hiring process. The best applicant tracking systems can help you easily access the most important metrics. Below are some common recruitment metrics you should know:

Time-to-hire is calculated by counting the number of days between a candidate applying for your position and accepting the job. Learn how effective the changes you make to the hiring process really are by benchmarking this number.
Cost-per-hire is the sum of external and internal hiring costs divided by the number of new hires in the same time frame. Your cost per hire may be more useful if you calculate it for type of positions, e.g., you expect to spend more to hire a mid-level manager than you would an entry-level employee.
New hire turnover rate is the percentage at which new employees leave within a given period of time–you can decide what qualifies as “new” based on your organization, but many consider it to be under one year. By looking at how frequently new hires leave and why, you can uncover ways to improve both your hiring and onboarding processes.
Retention rate is the percentage of employees staying with the company over a given time period. Calculate retention rate by dividing the number of employees remaining in the company or department by the total number of employees present at the beginning of the time period being measured.
Job application completion rate can tell you how often job seekers complete your application, and it can reveal whether changes need to be made to your online job application. Reducing the number of abandoned applications (or your applicant drop-off rate) will improve your hiring success.

A hiring process overrun with manual processes is difficult to measure. Automating your hiring process can help you track its effectiveness.

You Need to Reduce Your Time-to-Hire

Time-to-hire varies widely across industries. According to DHI Group, hiring in the health services takes 49 days, while construction industry’s time-to-hire is the shortest at about 12 days. Whether your time-to-hire is longer than your industry’s average, or you just want to shorten it to avoid lost productivity, automating your hiring process can help fill those empty chairs more quickly.

Here are some ways applicant tracking systems can reduce your company’s time-to-hire:

Automate time-consuming tasks. Logging into multiple job sites individually to post the same job is slow work. And it takes even longer if you push tedious tasks like this to the bottom of your list. Post your job opening with a click of a button to multiple sites at once.
Adopt mobile recruiting. You can speed up the application process for your candidates by adopting mobile recruiting methods. A mobile-friendly application brings the candidate to you more quickly. And text messaging avoids voicemail delays. You can further simplify the recruiting process by inviting applicants to apply with their phone number or by using a QR code on print or other display media.
Use programmatic job advertising. Don’t wait for top talent to come to you. Use programmatic job advertising to put your job ad on the same sites your top candidates visit.

You Need to Hire Better Quality Candidates

Your recent new hires have been disappointing. They seemed qualified, but six months on the job and they still seem lost in the software. They interviewed so well, but after their first run-in with a customer, you can see they’re lacking soft skills. Whatever it was that made you hire them turned out to just be a mirage.

Automating your hiring process with an applicant tracking system can help you make better hiring decisions. Here are a few ways automation can help:

See the best candidates first. An applicant tracking system can use your application and the candidate’s resume to rank applicants. The most qualified applicants will go to the top of your list.
Create deal-breaker questions on your application. Willing to work weekends? Certification updated? Reliable transportation? Whatever the dealbreaker, start screening for it right away. An applicant tracking system can automatically filter out candidates with dealbreaker traits.
Use assessment tools. Peel away the polished interview skills and test the resume claims with assessment tools. From people skills to software proficiency, assessment tools can uncover a candidate’s real traits.

You Hire for a High-Turnover Industry

Some industries just have high turnover. Hospitality and retail are notorious for their low retention rates. For some job seekers, these jobs may be seen as steppingstones to higher paying jobs. Even after improving your employer brand and doing what you can to increase engagement, the nature of these jobs means you’re always hiring.

You can make your hiring process more efficient and still have time for other, pressing HR responsibilities by automating these hiring tasks:

Use message templates. Write messages once and send them automatically to applicants. The ATS will fill in the applicant’s name and other details to personalize the message. Save time by letting the ATS automatically send interview requests, rejection letters, and receipt of application confirmations.
Conduct initial interviews by text. An applicant tracking system can make interviewing by text easier and safer. Interviewing by text saves time. And by using an ATS, hiring managers don’t need to use their personal cell numbers, and the text conversation is automatically documented and saved.
Schedule interviews more easily. Sometimes, there’s a bit of back and forth when it comes to interview scheduling. You can automate the interview scheduling process with an applicant tracking system. The system will integrate with your calendar. You can send the candidate multiple choices for interview times. If the candidate needs to reschedule, he can just click on a link in the confirmation email.

Increasing HR Responsibilities Leave Less Time for Manual Processes

Once upon a time, human resource professionals spent most of their time hiring, managing benefits, and increasing workplace safety. Not anymore. Today, companies understand that employees are their most important asset. They know that having a healthy company culture, strong employer brand, and highly engaged employees increases their bottom-line.

Of course, these workplace values make working in human resources more exciting and more rewarding than ever. But the work of developing those workplace assets falls on human resources. If increasing HR responsibilities are leaving you little time to make high quality hiring decisions, then automating your hiring process may help.

There are probably a dozen reasons the hiring process has become unmanageable. If the increasing chaos of the recruitment process leaves you little time for calculating recruitment metrics, much less time to improve them, an applicant tracking system can improve your results. Automating recruitment tasks will leave you time for finding creative solutions to your pressing HR issues.

Are you interested in learning how automating your hiring process with applicant tracking software can improve your recruitment outcomes? Contact ExactHire today.

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

Avoid HR Headaches with these 25 Tips

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

The expectations business leaders place upon their human resource departments are increasing. Years ago, the role of HR centered around filing employee paperwork, navigating benefits, and a range of activities meant to avoid compliance fines and lawsuits. Of course, human resource professionals came into their roles with a higher calling: cultivating the company’s human capital, its employees.

The times have caught up with the nobler side of human resources. Even the most profit-focused executive understands the high cost of low retention. And much of the business sector embraces concepts like culture and employer brand after witnessing the tech industry wield them successfully. As a result, business leaders expect much more from their human resource professionals.

Throw in COVID and the ever-increasing labyrinth of laws and regulations, and any HR professional may start measuring their dedication in aspirin. But you needn’t suffer migraines to chase your HR calling. We’ve identified 5 common causes of HR headaches and compiled a list of 25 HR tips to avoid these issues.

Eliminate Workplace Discrimination, Promote Diversity

Elevate your training beyond a blurb in the handbook. Create a comprehensive anti-discrimination training plan using how-to videos and assessments to ensure understanding.
Create additional, in-depth training programs for managers. When a potential HR discrimination issue arises, it will likely be brought to the attention of one of your managers first. Make sure they know how to handle discrimination situations to avoid making the company vulnerable to further legal action.
Address the anti-discrimination HR issues unique to remote workers. Virtual meetings are a fact of work life, whether employees are in the office or at home. Likewise, in the absence of physical proximity, employees rely on email and other forms of communications more often than ever. Make sure your anti-discrimination policies take into consideration the increasingly virtual nature of work.
Avoid claims of hiring discrimination by using applicant tracking software (ATS) to thoroughly log hiring decisions. Keeping an electronic record of interviews, impressions and the reasons behind your hiring decision will protect you in the event of legal action resulting from a hiring decision.
Create a diversity plan in your hiring process. Remove excessive educational or other onerous job requirements. Advertise your job openings to marginalized groups.

Avoid Wage and Hour HR Issues

Take advantage of the training modules in your onboarding software to educate workers about expectations regarding working during off hours. Clarify that they are not allowed to work beyond their scheduled hours without approval, and tell them to approach HR if they feel their manager is pressuring them to perform unpaid work during their off-hours.
Know the wage and hour laws in each state where remote workers or contractors reside. For example, California updated its employment laws regarding the classification of independent contractors. Even one remote worker in a state may make your company liable for franchise taxes or a different standard of workers’ compensation insurance.
Require employees to sign-off on any changes to their time worked or their paycheck. Sometimes payroll mistakes will happen. When they do, provide documentation explaining the error and require the employee to sign it before corrections are implemented.
When hiring, the role should be clearly designated as being exempt or nonexempt. Be consistent with your job descriptions and training for jobs. Utilize your ATS and onboarding software to help keep track of the details. Don’t recreate the wheel every time the chair is empty.
Classify bonuses correctly for nonexempt employees. The overtime rate for your nonexempt employees is “one and one-half times the regular rate at which they are employed.” When you give nonexempt employees bonuses, that bonus amount most likely needs to be calculated into their “regular rate” for overtime calculation.

Avoid HR issues and Turnover by being Proactive

Use your onboarding software to create employee training plans for each position. Rather than relying on the same onboarding process for every new hire, tailor your onboarding plan for each position. Include training modules as well as peer training.
Create a career development plan for employees. 65% of employees expect their employers to provide resources for continued learning. You can increase engagement and reduce turnover by supporting your employees’ career development goals.
Create a mentorship program. Pair current leaders with your star employees to form a mentorship program. Upskilling your current workforce is less costly and more effective than hiring new employees. Current employees who show potential but lack training already understand the company, its culture and its mission.
Consider sponsoring employees for paid certifications and workshops.
Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach by conducting a performance analysis to pinpoint the source of performance issues. Employee surveys, accident reports, customer feedback and other tools can help you determine if the problem is specific to an employee, a manager or the entire team. They can also help you uncover company-wide inefficiencies that contribute to performance issues.

Avoid Employee Conflict

Encourage inter-departmental communication early. During your onboarding process, assign new hires to work in different departments for a day. They’ll learn how their role affects the company, and they’ll form working relationships with their colleagues.
Respect personality differences and adjust for employee strengths. Often, a perceived weakness is masking a corresponding strength. An introvert struggling in a team setting may excel if given the opportunity to work independently. Use personality tests and strength-based assessments to ensure everyone can thrive in their role.
Foster team relationships with company-sponsored events. Whether it’s a company-wide baseball game or a smaller outing to a comedy club with the team, give employees a chance to get to know their colleagues beyond their work role.
Incorporate relationship-building and social needs into your onboarding process. Get new hires off to a great start by encouraging workplace friendships. Ask your new hire to write a short biography, including information such as hobbies or pets. Post this biography in a prominent place on the company intranet. Assign a peer buddy to each new hire to help them learn the company’s culture and unwritten rules, and schedule lunches with team members.
Reexamine your incentive and rewards program. Make sure to revise employee incentives that may encourage too much competition and create conflict.

Improve Your HR Recruitment Results

Use an ATS to automate repetitive tasks such as posting to multiple job sites, texting candidates and tracking progress. By doing so, you’ll have more time for creating a strategy that improves your hiring process.
Harness the power of data. Your ATS can tell you important information, such as your time-to-hire ratio, drop off rate, how long it takes applicants to complete an application and more. You can use your ATS to find out where you can make improvements in your process.
Implement an employee referral program. Employee referrals result in more new hires than any other method. And they tend to stay with the company longer.
Use a team approach to make better hiring decisions and avoid unconscious bias.
Make it easy to attract top talent by developing your employer brand.

Take the Headache Out of Human Resources

The causes behind the most common HR issues are increasingly complex. Discrimination, once confined to the office, can now happen across great distances. And greater social awareness is bringing a wider range of claims to the courts. Wage and hour laws, always notoriously complex, can be downright perplexing when it comes to remote workers.

Training has become a key expectation from top talent. Employee conflict, which affects your productivity and culture, is even more damaging in the tight post-Covid labor market. There are a lot of factors that support the current labor shortage and the Great Resignation phenomenon we are experiencing. Unfortunately, neither are going to change in the near term.

Without a doubt, a career in human resources can be a wild ride. On the one hand, you’ve got a pile of new laws and regulations to decipher and an executive team demanding more metrics. On the other hand, you get to help people reach their potential and assist them when they need support along their work journey. If you want to reclaim part of your workday and throw away your aspirin bottle, I suggest you work with companies that are truly interested in partnering with you and your success versus just selling you software.

If you are ready for real help from real people, check out our applicant tracking system and onboarding software. Contact us today to find out more.

Photo by Vinicius “amnx” Amano on Unsplash

Hiring with QR Codes

in Workforce Management/by Nancy Meyer, SHRM-CP

If you’ve been dining out or picking up food to go, it’s likely you have seen or used a QR code to access your menu or even pay a bill. Want to share feedback on an experience? Often, the participant will access a QR code to provide input on a topic. What are QR codes you might ask?

What is a QR Code?

Invented in 1994, QR (Quick Response) codes are matrix barcode readable optic labels…or more simply, those black line patterned squares we see on receipts, papers, billboards and a multitude of other areas. (Even Super Bowl commercials for that matter!) Upon scanning a QR code with a mobile device, a designated webpage will open in the viewer’s browser.

QR codes are not new, but they are a bit newer to mainstream use. They provide contactless convenience to communicate essential information to the reader via a mobile device. Those nifty square shapes of lines are rising in popularity due to our increasing need for mobile communication, especially since the onset of the pandemic.

No matter the industry, there are ways to incorporate the use of QR codes. Let’s talk about the area where we, HR Professionals, may need extra support now–recruiting and hiring.

Hiring with QR Codes

Companies are short staffed and desperately seeking interested, qualified applicants to fill their job openings. How can a company promote its brand and fantastic job opportunities with limited time and space? By hiring with QR codes!

Hiring with QR codes–or using them in your recruitment process–can be the catalyst that amplifies your applicant volume. An employer using QR codes can quickly disseminate valuable content to job seekers, reaching audiences that it might not have connected with otherwise. Plus, they present your organization as modern and tech savvy–which helps your employer brand.

How and Where to Use QR Codes for Hiring

Not sure how or where to use a QR code for hiring? Here are some helpful strategies and tips to incorporate QR codes into your recruiting and hiring processes.

Print Media – Printing flyers for distribution or posting in high-traffic areas? If so, then add a QR code so viewers can scan to learn more about your job listings. Motivate job seekers to apply by providing instant information!
Signage – Look around, and you’ll see a large number of signs exclaiming “Now Hiring!” Competition is fierce, so include a QR code on your signage to standout and compete with other companies that are vying for the same job seekers. Interested job seekers who are not ready to walk inside and apply can scan the QR code to access your company’s job info. They then can choose to apply immediately or at their convenience.
Business Cards – While networking face to face has been altered due to COVID-19, it still exists. Employees with personal business cards can add QR codes. If your organization prints general recruitment cards, add a QR code linked to your company’s “Career Opportunities” webpage.
Workroom posters and flyers – Just like using print media for an external audience, workroom flyers are a great way to target an often overlooked talent pool–current employees. Current employees offer knowledge of company culture and goals–and can often jump the “new hire learning curve”. Post flyers with QR codes in break rooms to promote vacancies and show your company’s commitment to internal growth.
Transportation – Take your message wherever you go by adding a QR code to your company vehicle via car wraps. It’s company mobility with a mobile message.
Receipts – Hospitality, service, and retail industry leaders, in particular, take note. The next time a receipt is provided to your customers, make sure a QR code to your job openings is included at the bottom. Your loyal customers might become your best employees!

Better Hiring with QR Codes

QR codes provide a tremendous amount of data with a quick, simple scan. This helps employers track the effectiveness of recruitment marketing strategies, like print and other display content. And it simplifies the application process by giving job seekers the power to conveniently apply on mobile devices, giving them a way to “apply on the fly”.

QR codes communicate directly to audiences–safely, quickly and thoroughly. As HR professionals, we seek to make the applicant experience impactful, timely, and accessible. Hiring with QR codes helps you achieve this and much more!

ExactHire ATS makes it easy for employers to deploy QR Codes in the hiring process, contact us today to learn more.

6 Signs Your Onboarding Process Needs Improvement

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

How’s your employee onboarding process? Many companies are eager for their new hires to be off and running in their new roles. After all, that empty chair costs the company money in terms of lost productivity and hiring costs. It takes, on average, 42 days to find a new employee. And hiring a new employee costs $4,000, on average.

But if you think the work of hiring new employees ends with their first day, you’re missing an opportunity to improve every aspect of your business. Onboarding new employees effectively improves employee engagement, increases the new hire’s productivity, and contributes to a positive company culture that creates a cohesive team.

Revamping your onboarding process can solve a surprising number of seemingly unrelated problems. This article touches upon 6 signs your onboarding process needs improvement.

Your New Hire Time-to-Productivity Exceeds Six Months

One survey found that new hires take a year or longer to be fully productive at 30% of companies. And while those companies wait for new hire’s to become productive, their colleagues get overburdened with filling in the productivity gaps.

In reality, a comprehensive onboarding process can bring most new hire’s up to speed within three months, or six months for mid-level positions. Creating an onboarding process checklist that includes training modules and digital access to important documents will help new hires learn vital information independently.

You’ll always know how far new hire’s have progressed in their training. And coworkers won’t be saddled with training the basics in addition to their own responsibilities.

You See New Hires Leaving Before Their First-Year Anniversary

If you’re losing a significant number of new hires before their first-year anniversary, you need a better onboarding process.

The Work Institute’s 2020 Retention Report found that nearly 40% of new hire’s left the company within their first year. Of those, 2 out of 3 leave within the first six months. The reasons these new hires leave vary, but include work environment, well-being, career development and other reasons that can be avoided with a thoughtful onboarding process.

A welcoming onboarding process that takes into account the new hire’s needs and career goals will help stem the tide of exiting employees. Include items on your onboarding checklist that insert the new hire into your company’s fabric. Make one of those items a goal-setting session, where the new hire can express their professional aspirations and explore ways your company can support them. After setting meaningful goals, there should be a mutually agreed upon plan to check in at regular intervals. In this way, the new hire can see how the company is invested in their development.

Your Employee Engagement Survey Reveals Unhappy Workers

Having an engaged workforce improves several business outcomes, including customer ratings, product quality and safety measures. Overall, engagement makes your company more profitable.

Engagement is almost always connected with an employer meeting a new hire’s expectations. Your employee onboarding process, along with your hiring process, is critical to setting expectations for new hires. And so it’s not only important to provide a welcoming, fun, and comfortable experience, it’s important provide the new hire with honest, realistic expectations of what success looks like in their role.

When you create an onboarding checklist and training schedule tailored to each position, you help new hires know exactly what is expected of them. Additionally, things like making sure that new hires have all their equipment on day one, or asking for their feedback on their onboarding experience, will set the stage for a highly engaged, long-term employee.

Need more proof of how employee onboarding impacts employee engagement? Gallup developed a survey with 12 “yes” or “no” questions to measure engagement. All 12 areas of engagement could be directly linked to onboarding and the new hire’s early employment experience.

New Hires Quit, Citing Poor Company Culture

Company culture is another one of those employee experience items that have a big impact on your company’s success. According to this article in MIT Sloan Management Review, employees leaving during the Great Resignation cite a toxic culture as the most common reason.

In today’s job market, new hires will judge company culture fairly quickly and leave if they are unsatisfied–there’s no sense wasting time working for an organization where they feel unappreciated, used, or uncomfortable. The employer will only receive the benefit of the doubt for a short time.

The elements of a toxic culture vary, but they are easily sniffed out early–during the onboarding process. Employees may feel that management is disrespectful. Or they may witness unethical behavior. Essentially, anything that has a negative impact on your employee’s onboarding experience will be seen as proof of a poor company culture.

So onboarding is a golden opportunity to take the reins and steer your new hires and your company culture in a positive direction. Use your onboarding checklist to introduce your company’s mission and values to your new hire. Educate your new employee on your company’s history. And tie your new hire’s role the company’s larger purpose.

You Play Moderator Too Often When Employees Don’t Get Along

Constantly bickering employees are the result of a poor company culture. The whole team suffers when employees don’t get along. The negative energy impacts everyone, engagement plummets, and the drama can escalate to sabotage that hurts a company’s bottom line.

Onboarding employees effectively means introducing employees to their colleagues as well as the company. You can set the foundation for friendly and respectful relationships during the onboarding process. Without a formalized, purposeful onboarding process–one that supports a clearly defined company culture–employees are left to create their own culture, which is a lost opportunity to build trust and respect of leadership.

So it’s critical to effectively introduce a new hire to all areas–and all people–of a company. For example, part of your onboarding process could include sending new hires to work one day in each department. Doing so will help prevent the creation of silos that often lead to misunderstandings, which in turn can develop into organizational disfunction.

Gallup’s research shows that having a best friend at work increases productivity and reduces turnover. So it’s wise to use the onboarding process to help your new hires develop friendships. Doing so will not only increase your team’s harmony, but also improve retention.

You can jumpstart your hire’s new friendships by adding a few simple steps to the onboarding checklist. Assign a workplace buddy to help the new hire acclimate to the unspoken rules of the office. Have the new hire fill out a questionnaire or write a short bio to post on the company’s intranet. Host a monthly lunch to bring new hire’s together.

You Worry About HR Compliance and Risk Management

A regulatory fine costs businesses an average of about $30,000. Much of a company’s regulatory burden is HR related. Failing to maintain employee documentation or thoroughly track hiring decisions can land your company in hot water with a government agency.

Poor record-keeping can also leave you vulnerable to a lawsuit. If an applicant files a discrimination lawsuit, are you confident you’ll be able to find all the documentation surrounding your hiring decision? If your onboarding process checklist doesn’t include important safety trainings, you could be liable for significant damages if an employee injures himself.

Your risks are far greater if your onboarding process doesn’t include digitized paperwork with varying degrees of password protected security. And if the risks of sloppy organization of HR-related paperwork isn’t keeping you up at night, it should.

How to Improve Employee Onboarding

A comprehensive employee onboarding checklist that considers the employee’s needs as well as the company’s will solve a host of HR related issues. Start by analyzing various company-wide problems that develop among employees and teams. Issues such as low engagement and poor workplace culture contribute to poor retention and stunted profits.

Studies show time and time again that creating a workplace culture that contributes to your employees’ overall well-being will improve your company’s success. Higher retention, fewer safety-related incidents, better product quality, and improved innovation are the byproducts of happy employees.

Your onboarding efforts set the stage for your employees’ engagement. The more effort you put into your new hire’s development during that crucial first year, the less you’ll ultimately spend on your hiring efforts.

Take your onboarding to the next level with onboarding software. Doing so, you’ll automate much of the tedious record-keeping associated with hiring. The checklists, training modules and role assignments will keep your onboarding process on track. Most importantly, you’ll free up your time for implementing creative onboarding ideas.

Are you ready to take your onboarding process to the next level? Contact ExactHire today.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Build a Remote Workplace Strategy

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

If you’re a company that can’t address and handle remote working, you need to build remote workplace strategy.

If you’re not, your competition will…and it’s going to hurt you.

VIDEO: Build a Remote Workplace Strategy

TRANSCRIPT: Build a Remote Workplace Strategy

With the onset of COVID, lots of employers were forced to allow employees to work from home. And at first, I don’t think they really liked it very much. They were having trouble finding a decent space to work in their new home–and if there were two people at the house working, they were fighting for the quiet time they needed to handle the zoom call.

But as time wore on, employees started to like it–much to everybody’s surprise, including mine.

But for most industries today, it’s hard to find a person if you’re not offering some type of remote work in your job ads.

Remote Work Employee Perspective

Only 37 percent of employees want to work in an office full-time…37 percent. And about 23 percent are saying that they’d even take a pay cut if you let them work from home or work remotely part of the time because it adds so much to their lives.

From an employee perspective, they reduce their commute time significantly–that could be 20 minutes a day could be a couple hours a day that really adds to to their usable life during the day, and it’s pretty important. They lowered their commuting costs three to five thousand dollars a year, their child care cost probably went down somewhere between 500 and 1400 a month. This was kind of like getting a tax-free raise.

But this isn’t all one-sided.

Remote Work Employer Perspective

The employer is finding that they’re getting more productive employees, their turnover is going down, their absenteeism is going down, their productivity is going up, and they’re actually able to reduce their real estate footprint, which saves them money. And most importantly because remote work is becoming part of the equation, they can increase their geographic horizon from which they can hire–which is really important in a hiring environment like we are today.

The job ads that mention remote work are getting a lot more applicants. So if you’re a company that can’t address and handle remote working, you need to build a remote workplace strategy that works. If you’re not, your competition is, and it’s going to hurt you.

ExactHire provides hiring software and strategy to help employers adapt to job market changes and succeed in hiring. Learn how our software and team of strategists can help you hire and onboard a remote workforce.