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5 Tips To Help Your Company Stand Out When Hiring Employees

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Quick preview of what’s coming below — the picture shown here is not how you want your applicants to react when applying for a position with your company!

The labor market is no longer flooded with people looking for any type of job they can find. For employers and HR folks charged with recruiting, the landscape is changing. Posting open jobs and forcing applicants to jump through hoops to simply be considered for those jobs no longer works the way it did in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

A big part of what’s changing is the expectation applicants have about how they should be treated when applying for work with an organization. The ability to apply online is a given at this point, but how can your company look different and have a more positive brand in the hiring marketplace? Below are 5 things any size organization can (and should) do to compete for great talent:

Be honest about your workplace

There’s nothing wrong with emphasizing the strengths of your company or the job you’re trying to fill. At the same time, don’t paint an unrealistic picture. Applicants appreciate honesty and expect that not everything is perfect with any job or company. Promoting transparency from the beginning of the process (day in the life, pay, work hours, etc.) will serve you well.

Make it easy to apply to your company

This is directly opposite of advice you received when the recession hit. Applicant volume was so overwhelming that many organizations intentionally asked for more information upfront in the hiring process to try to cut down the exorbitant number of candidates. As the applicant market has corrected, this no longer makes sense. If you’re still requiring applicants to provide a full application to be considered for openings in your company, now is the right time to reconsider that approach. Things such as shorter applications, multi-step applications, applying with social media profiles (LinkedIn, Indeed), etc, are all things that are very attainable with today’s technology, and all create a more favorable impression with potential job applicants.

Clearly explain your hiring process

This doesn’t need to be any top secret endeavor. Let applicants know upfront what will be involved in your unique process. This ties in with the honesty tip in #1 above. If applicants know what to expect, they’re more motivated to apply and more likely to stay engaged as you go through your cycle. Publish this in your Careers section or make it part of the online employment application process.

Stick to your process

Be sure to follow what you layout to your candidates. Meeting expectations is important, as this will quickly help applicants form an opinion about your organization. Try not to deviate from what you’ve laid out and do everything possible to keep a good pace/momentum to the process. This will keep you top of mind for those better applicant targets and help keep people from dropping out of your funnel.

Communicate with your applicants

Nothing kills momentum or great impressions like failure to follow up. Ask any job seeker their number one complaint and it’s almost assuredly the lack of response after a resume or application is submitted. Don’t fail to capitalize on the time and effort (and dollars) spent to get good applicants into your cycle. Keep them informed about next steps and timing for those. You’ll stand out relative to other potential employers and establish goodwill with your applicants.

There are more specific strategies for any of these core items listed above. These are simply big-picture ideas to use when framing out or revamping your hiring process.

To learn more about ExactHire’s applicant tracking and onboarding software products, please visit our resources section or contact us today.

Image credit: Zelda was Kicking my Butt xd by Ashley Sturgis (contact)

Teaching Company Culture to a Newly Hired Employee

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I am not the newest member of the ExactHire team, but I still remember my first day well! Being the new kid on the block can be a little intimidating, especially at a small company. So, ease the fears of your new hires by teaching company culture from the start. You know…the informal, generally accepted ways of doing things in your company that the employee won’t necessarily read about in the employee handbook.

Times Have Changed in the Workplace

In most cases, workplaces are much more flexible and relaxed places to be than in decades past. If this is the case with your office, make sure the new hire is aware of dress code, lunch policy and other activities/tasks on which flexibility is given. This is true for companies that are still very traditional, as well. Think about how uncomfortable a new employee would feel coming to work way overdressed (or way too casual) on the first day of work. Let him/her know the expectations right away…especially since new employees may be hesitant to ask these types of questions directly when first beginning work at a new organization.

Part of the Family

If you utilized pre-employment testing during the hiring process, than you should already know a lot about what makes your employee “tick” and why he/she is well-suited for the role he/she has accepted. Keep that in mind when acclimating him/her to the new work environment and co-workers. If your company has any social media pages, make sure to invite the new employee to optionally view or participate in these pages. LinkedIn will provide a sense of the company’s industry presence or overall market view. Pages like Facebook, will allow the employee to see some of the fun activities your company has to offer (examples could include office parties or working retreats that the employees attend together).

Know Your Company History

It is helpful to teach the new employee about the background of the company, as well as the industry in which it participates. Knowing how the company started and what major milestones have been reached, paints a clearer picture of why the company is what it is today. Some businesses have traditions they keep in place to remind them of humble roots at the start of the company or even just reminders of the original owners. The new employee will more likely feel more in tune with the overall culture of the company as a result of knowing these facts.

By proactively instilling a sense of your organization’s culture with new employees, you are further helping to make the employee onboarding process a pleasant and informative experience. In the long run, employees who engage more quickly are generally more likely to be productive sooner and stay employed with your company longer.

Technology can augment your company’s employment brand which is certainly a key component of the organizational culture. For more information about ExactHire and how we can help, visit our resources section or contact us today.

Image credit: Say Geese by Vinoth Chandar (contact)

3 Tips to Engage Your Applicants During the Hiring Process

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Any decent recruiter knows that it is critical to have an active pool from which to source candidates for jobs, but that doesn’t just mean a large number of any past job applicants. A truly good applicant pool includes applicants that are interested in future positions with your organization and have the qualifications required. Here is an overview of three tips to engage your applicants throughout the recruiting and selection process.

Have relevant and diverse content on your careers site

Maintaining a company careers site with current and RELEVANT job-related and company-culture inspired content will help attract top talent. Your website or career page may be your first impression with the applicant…so make sure it’s a positive and informative experience! This effort shows potential future employees that you are serious about your industry and your team, and it can provide compelling information to elusive passive job seekers who are just dipping their toe into the pool and contemplating job transition.

Moreover, feature this information in various forms and locations:

Acknowledge applicants’ efforts to apply for jobs on your site

Once the candidate has applied to the job, make sure he/she receives some confirmation of his/her formal interest in the company. Making this communication more personalized will help the candidate stay intrigued…think of it as a call to action. Invite the candidate to follow your company via Twitter or LinkedIn in the correspondence text, itself. By doing so, you can start to expose glimpses of your company culture early in the relationship and the right applicants will more likely stay interested in your company throughout the process, as a result.

Make the first meeting unforgettable

Most of the time, the first meeting between a candidate and an organization’s recruiting representative is an interview, so try to find ways to make this experience more positive and remarkable…not just a stiff meeting at an office in a conference room. Set clear expectations about what to expect from the rest of the interviewing process and then be accountable to following through with promises in order to bolster your organization’s credibility and employment brand.

When interviewing top talent for hard-to-fill positions, meetings could take place at a nice coffee shop. This would put the candidate at ease and also make the experience stand out in his/her mind. After all, when courting A players for critical positions, as a recruiter, you are competing against others that want this applicant at their organization, as well.

Finally, thank all applicants for their time…while not a radical idea, this is sometimes overlooked since normally it is the applicant thanking the hiring manager. These types of small details will leave a lasting and positive impression with your candidates.

As a recruiter, part of your job is to “sell” the position to the potential employee and make sure that each candidate is truly interested in the job. Keeping candidates engaged throughout the hiring process will help to ensure your top contenders accept a job offer, start off engaged and succeed at your organization.

For information on how ExactHire’s hiring software solutions can aid your efforts to engage applicants, please contact us today.

Image credit: engaged by Pia Kristine (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)

Improve Your Hiring Process: Communicate With Applicants

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How often is your recruiting department fielding unsolicited calls from applicants that are inquiring about the status of their application with your company? Too frequently? Well, its time to proactively communicate with your candidates so they don’t even feel the urge to pick up the phone or shoot off that next email inquiry.

In the fourth installment of this “Improve Your Hiring Process” series, I talked about managing your pipeline of applicants effectively. A major component of that is keeping your applicants informed as they travel through your selection process. Otherwise, you will likely find yourself fielding numerous phone calls and/or emails from applicants wanting to know if they’re still being considered, what are the next steps from here, etc.

Similarly, this also ties in with the idea of protecting your brand — both your employment brand and your business/consumer brand. You don’t want to give people the ability to take shots at your organization. But if they feel their resume/application goes into a “black hole” or if they hear back a month after their interview (or not at all) that they’re no longer being considered for your position, you’re feeding the most common frustration of applicants. That complaint? Not hearing from you!

Keep Applicants Informed of Recruitment Progress

Now, if you fill 3 positions per year and only receive 5-10 resumes/applications per position, you likely don’t have this problem. You can keep your applicants up to date pretty easily with email and/or an occasional phone call. At the same time, if this is your situation, you probably lost interest in this topic long ago!

The more common scenario is that you have dozens (or hundreds) of applicants per position and multiple positions open at any given time. In this scenario, you have three options for keeping your applicants informed:

  1. Ignore the issue because branding isn’t applicable to your situation.
  2. Keep your applicants organized in a spreadsheet and utilize Outlook or Gmail templates to correspond with those applicants as you move them to different steps in your recruiting process. This is pretty involved and requires a good deal of effort, but it can be done.
  3. Use an applicant tracking software tool to automate this process for you.

This happens to be a pretty big sweet spot for quality applicant tracking system tools. Because you now have all of your applicants in a single spot, including where they are in your process at any given moment, the chore of logging that data is taken care of for you. From there, a good tool of this sort will allow you to automate mass emails in a one-to-one format to applicants as they move through your hiring process. You save time, applicants are kept posted as to where things stand, and you dramatically cut down the phone calls and emails asking for updates — everyone wins.

Next up is the final installment in this series — Bringing Objectivity to Your Hiring Decision.

Image Credit: By Einar Faanes (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

5 Ways to Use Video in Your Recruiting & Hiring Process

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Looking for ways to spice up your company’s recruiting brand? Check out this quick list of five ways to use videos in your recruiting and interviewing processes. Then, start converting more of your career site visitors into actual applicants, and eventually, new and engaged employees.

1 – Highlight Videos on Your Company’s Careers Portal

Use Video to Promote CityThis may be the most obvious and already widely used idea; however, it just might be one of the most effective for engaging your site visitors to stay on your pages longer. A wide variety of subject areas can be covered on the branded careers portal available through your applicant tracking system (ATS). Videos might focus on the following topics:

  • Testimonials given by current employees about why they enjoy working at the company
  • Highlights from various company events and charitable projects to demonstrate the company culture to potential applicants
  • Informational videos about the city or region in which your business resides – this is particularly helpful if you do a great deal of nationwide searches for candidates and relocate new employees to your area

2 – Make Your Confirmation Emails Memorable & Informational

These days it can be very difficult for even medium-sized businesses to personally respond to each individual that submits an employment application. As a result, its quite common for organizations to use their ATS to set up auto-generated email responses whenever a new application is received. These are critical as they confirm to the applicant that his/her submission was successful, and they can greatly reduce the number of phone calls received by applicants who want to check on the status of their application. However, even though personalization strings can be used in these email templates, how exciting is email text for the applicant who is anxious to learn more?
Use Video in Application Confirmations
In your email message, why not embed or link to a video that your company has created to explain the steps involved in the hiring process:

  • In the intro, thank the applicant for his/her interest in your company.
  • Explain how long it might take to process all applications for the position and when responses are generally sent to inform applicants of next steps.
  • Describe the different interview phases that are usually involved in the hiring process – including time intervals between each phase as well as who is generally involved from the company.

Not only will applicants be impressed that you have created a video for this step, but they will come away from the experience with more information about what to expect — without additional effort from your recruiting staff.

3 – Embed Video in Job Descriptions in Your Applicant Tracking System

When adding a new job listing to your ATS, embed code from your video hosting website to feature relevant videos from right within your job description. In this scenario, videos focusing on your office or field environment, and/or interviews with other employees in the same position or department would be well received. ExactHire applicant tracking system even has a designated field allowing video embed code to be pasted in when adding a new job description.

R+L Truckload & Global Logistics in Fort Myers, Florida, is a big believer in incorporating video into the organization’s job listings. Many different employees have roles in the videos it has produced. Here’s how one of its videos appears within the ATS on a recent job description:
Use Video in Job Descriptions | ExactHire
And, check out their video:

4 – Insert Safety Videos Into Employment Application & Survey Applicants

Embed Safety Video on ApplicationsIf certain positions available in your organization require heeding important safety procedures or following certain protocols, then consider the benefits associated with embedding a video for applicants to watch during their employment application submission. This can be a powerful way of better qualifying your applicants for a position that normally attracts a high volume of application submissions – especially if many of the submissions have traditionally been from people who aren’t qualified or truly engaged in the role.

A short video might discuss certain steps that are followed as a regular part of the job. In the application, ask applicants to watch the video and then answer a series of short questions about the video. Serious applicants who want to work for your organization will watch the video and then answer the questions correctly. Candidates who are just applying for anything and everything will hit the video speed bump and think twice about taking the time to finish. For those candidates who do answer the questions, utilize scoring and/or disqualification filters in your ATS to rank applicants based on the number of questions they answered correctly.

5 – Video Resources for Long Distance Interviewing

There are times when it isn’t practical or cost-effective to interview candidates in person. Luckily, a number of affordable (and in some cases free) tools are available to enable organizations to video conference with applicants. Companies that conduct nationwide searches for specific positions can especially benefit from the modern convenience of interviewing applicants on-screen. Applications such as Skype, Google Hangouts, FaceTime, and GoToMeeting are just a few that can meet this need.

Take it a step further and record the video interview to make it available to other managers who are unable to participate in the interviewing process. Or, reference the recorded session to remind yourself of interviewee answers when you are comparing final candidates and near making an offer.

Image Credit: Indianapolis at Night by Rob Annis

 

Improve Your Hiring Process: Protect Employment Brand

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The importance of branding is often overlooked when talking about efficiency and technology in the hiring process. There’s definitely a parallel here with my last blog about comparing apples to apples in the hiring process, where I covered the importance of data in both day-to-day business and in recruiting. The same concept applies to branding. Organizations (both large and small) are very conscious of branding themselves to customers and partners. This same focus should be spent on branding to potential employees, i.e. applicants, as well.

As a quick aside, taking this philosophy to heart is especially critical to organizations whose applicants are (or may be) clients. Retail providers, hospitality, restaurants, financial institutions, etc. are just some of the industries where this applies.

Easy Peasy Employment Branding

There are some very simple steps to take in terms of employment branding. Below are the key ones I stress to our clients:

  • Make your career site welcoming and informative (maybe go for a different look than this blog’s photo!) — use the same look and feel as the rest of your overall website. Be sure to share information that will help applicants see the benefits of working in your organization. Make it clear how they can find your openings and apply for those positions.
  • Make it easy for applicants to apply for multiple jobs — either at the same time or over a period of time. Avoid forcing them to start from scratch for each job.
  • Leverage social media so that applicants can “follow” you and be kept abreast of new jobs as you post them. Statistics overwhelmingly confirm that hoping applicants will return to your site on their own to seek new openings isn’t a great answer.
  • Take advantage of social media relationships that exist within your current employee ranks. While it’s important to allow applicants to stay connected with you, engaging your current employees’ social contacts can drive more “passive” applicants to your site. In turn, these folks may choose to follow you or share your jobs with others. Either way, you’re improving brand recognition and expanding reach — all at no hard dollar cost to you.
  • Confirm with applicants that you’ve received their application submission and let them know what to expect from there. If an applicant tracking software tool is in place, this should be very easy to do. If not, develop an email template that may be used for this purpose.
  • Be timely with feedback to applicants about where they are in your process. Again, if you use an applicant tracking system, this should be pretty easy. In our solution, for instance, you can actually do this for groups of applicants at a time vs. each one individually. If you’re managing candidates in your email folders or in spreadsheets, this may still be done with email templates.
  • When a position is filled, take the time to reach out personally to those finalists not selected. Ideally, do this by phone. First off, it’s the right thing to do. Just as importantly, leaving these finalists with a positive impression keeps the door open if other opportunities arise down the road.

Be sure to tune in for my next blog in this series about managing your candidate pipeline effectively.

Previous blogs in Improve Your Hiring Process series include:
Improve Your Hiring Process: Thin the Herd
Improve Your Hiring Process: Compare Apples to Apples

Image credit: Welcome by alborzshawn (contact)

Make Your Hiring Process Friendly for Applicants

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I’ve read a number of articles over the past few months about how impersonal and cumbersome the hiring process is for most employers. Given the space we operate in, we pay particular attention to those comments, as those same comments may apply to our clients and their applicants.
The underlying issues for these opinions appear to stem from two things:

  1. Applicants not hearing back from employers after they’ve submitted an application or resume
  2. Employers making the application submittal process more difficult than it needs to be

Keep in mind — these are viewpoints shared by applicants…not by me.

Keep Applicants in the Loop

Because we specialize in paperless HR solutions (especially applicant tracking software for the purposes of this discussion), addressing the first issue is pretty easy to do. Most any reputable online application software tool will allow you to automate the process of keeping applicants in the loop regarding current job openings. While there are many ways to do this, the end result should typically be the same. That is, applicants know where they stand and what to expect next in the process as it evolves. This protects your employment brand and will more readily ensure that good applicants, while perhaps not hired initially, will continue to follow your job opportunities and apply again for relevant openings.

Simplify Application Process Without Sacrificing Candidate Data

As you look at addressing the second issue, the answer may not be quite so apparent. This is true, even if you’ve used an applicant tracking software tool before. Until recently, there were two polar opposite paths that solutions like ours used to remedy this:

  1. Allow applicants to “parse” information from their resume directly into their online application.
    • Advantage: Time savings for applicants and the potential for a quicker, simpler user experience from their perspective
    • Disadvantage: Frequency of error in terms of information from the resume being pasted into the wrong section of the online application
  1. Require applicants to complete a full online application to be considered for a given position.
    • Advantage: Applicants have the opportunity to try to differentiate themselves with answers to questions on the application unique to that opening
    • Disadvantage: It can take more time than applicants are willing to spend

Then our team came up with a third option — one that more closely resembles the sequence of events in most hiring processes. This unique, two-step application process seems to resonate well with both applicants and employers. Here’s how it works:

  • Once applicants select the position for which they’d like to be considered, they are prompted for some very basic information. While this is customizable by client, the information typically consists of name, address, phone, email, resume upload, and some basic job-specific screening questions. For most applicants, they are able to complete this sequence in less than five minutes.
  • The employer may then use the results of the screening questions to determine which candidates meet the basic requirements of the position.
  • For those who do, the employer may generate an email, with only one click, to invite those qualified applicants back for the next step in the hiring process.
  • Since the applicants who receive this email know they are being considered more seriously for the position, the request is seen as a natural progression in the hiring process.

As you can see, this follows how most organizations hire today. Instead of forcing them (or their applicants) to change anything dramatically, we’re simply using our technology to move them toward a paperless HR environment…without worrying about losing passive applicants who will not take the time to complete a lengthy application at the onset of the selection process.
If you’d like to learn more about our applicant tracking software’s two-step employment application feature, please contact us.

 

Eleven Small Steps to Improve Your Recruitment Brand and Engage Applicants

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Let me start off by saying that this blog is not about high-level recruitment strategy or your master plan for world recruiting domination. This piece is about sweating the small stuff in talent acquisition – specifically, raising the bar on employer recruiting etiquette…dotting all of your i’s and crossing your t’s. Especially, if your organization has been doing alright in getting decent candidates in a reasonable amount of time, but now wants to refocus, shape up and really win the applicants over in order to consistently pick from the cream of the candidate crop.

Try making these little adjustments throughout your selection and hiring processes and see how it impacts your candidates’ perception of your employer recruitment brand:

#11 – Make being responsive to candidates a priority

How often do you fall into the trap of telling a candidate that you will be in touch again no later than the end of the following week…and then it’s really three weeks before you get back to the candidate, or worse yet – never? It would not be acceptable for a candidate to get back to you far later than the date promised, so it should not be okay for you to dally on your end either. While being timely and responsive to candidates seems like it should be automatic; unfortunately, in my experiences this is not the case the majority of the time.

And while life happens and schedules do get pushed, it is completely fine to touch base with the candidate by the promised date just to let him/her know that the process has been delayed and that you will be back in touch by a certain future date – but that you are still interested in his/her candidacy. This is a good time to make sure the candidate is still available despite the new, pushed off deadline, as well.

#10 – Create an FAQ page on your applicant tracking software portal

While this one is certainly going to help support the idea that your employment brand conveys helpfulness and transparency, it is also selfish since it helps to cut down on the number of applicant questions you may receive during the hiring process – and that helps you save time and process employment applications more quickly. You’ve probably already thought of some frequently asked questions that you receive from candidates since you started reading this paragraph, but just in case, here are some ideas (some will be more relevant than others depending on your industry and position types sourced):

  • Do you have both part-time and full-time positions available?
  • Can I apply in person?
  • How long will my application remain in the database? How often should I update it?
  • Do I have to submit a new application each time I apply for a position?
  • How long will it take before I can expect a call to schedule an interview?
  • Do you have internships available?
  • Do you accept applications year-round for certain positions?
  • How many stages are typically involved in your interviewing process?
  • What is your policy on using social media to connect with applicants?
  • Will I receive a confirmation once I submit my application?

Add a page to your applicant tracking software (ATS) site for your own company’s frequently asked questions (FAQs) in the recruiting process.

#9 – Create a careers blog for your company

Kick number nine on the list up a notch by having a regular blog devoted to all things related to careers at your company. Invite your recruiters and hiring managers to periodically contribute content that would be helpful for your applicants and encourage applicants to subscribe to your careers blog RSS feed so they get the latest updates. You could accomplish this by inviting past applicants to subscribe to the blog by posting it in your status updates on various social media sites or embedding its URL into an email message sent out of your recruiting software portal. Here are some ideas for relevant topics:

  • As you create job success factor summaries (spoiler alert – see #2 on the list below), post them to the blog and encourage subscribers to ask questions about positions
  • Invite current employees to blog about what they like about their role and encourage them to be candid about what’s challenging in the job, as well
  • Blog about upcoming job fairs where your company will have a booth
  • Embed videos of company cultural events in the blog (corporate challenges, holiday pitch-ins, trade show exhibits, etc.)
  • Offer tips on how to best prepare to interview and/or where to find out the latest and greatest about your organization’s milestones

#8 – Be truly prepared to interview your candidates

Magnifying glass on applicantThe best potential hires will take time to research your organization before their first interview, and often, before they even apply to a position. As a recruiter, you can always tell who did their homework based on the answers to your questions or comments they make in the interview. Don’t disappoint your interviewees by failing to return the favor of preparing to interview them, as well. Your best applicants may quickly disengage from the process when recruiters have to fumble around during the phone interview and take time to read the candidate’s resume and application to get up to speed because the recruiter failed to do so before the interview began.

#7 – Get a little more personal with your rejections (breaking up is hard to do)

Given the volume of recruiting you may do for your organization, it is very possibly not in the cards for you to send a custom, individualized rejection letter or email to every single applicant who does not make the cut. However, hiring technology at least affords you the opportunity to send mass emails using custom email templates. Instead of having one generic “no thank you” email template that is sent to every applicant that is declined, you may at least have a few different rejection email templates. Here are some simple solutions to being a little less generic:

  • Have different templates for the different stages at which someone is removed from the process (i.e. decline after initial phone screen, decline after 1st in-house, decline after final round of candidates, etc.)
  • A template that lets them down easily and encourages them to apply again in the future vs. one that specifically omits mention of encouragement to apply for future positions
  • A template that discloses that the reason one was not selected is because the position was put on hold or filled internally (at least the candidate then knows that you didn’t reject due to qualifications or experience…but rather because the employer’s plans changed)

#6 – Impress your finalists and keep them close even if they aren’t selected

Help finalists network elsewhereChances are, if you are following the other recommendations in this list, you will start to see even better candidates – especially in the final stage of your selection process for various positions. This is a great situation, but it will make the final decision harder since you’ll be choosing from among “A players.” Make a lasting impression on the final interviewees who aren’t selected by offering to not only stay connected with them (i.e. via LinkedIn, Twitter, automated job alerts, etc.), but also to encourage them to use you as a networking resource to help them get their foot in the door at other organizations.

Obviously, this really only makes sense if these candidates aren’t a fit for any other positions you may have open in the near future – you wouldn’t want to willingly compete with other employers for these applicants. Candidates are bound to have a positive impression of your organization (despite being declined) if you are sincerely interested in helping them find the right job fit elsewhere. The best part about this plan is that they will likely tell their other contacts about your company going the extra mile…and those contacts might be your next dream applicants for tomorrow’s openings.

#5 – Don’t underestimate the power of pictures and video

This isn’t the most innovative item on the list, but despite that, it is often not played up as much as it could be on employers’ careers sites. While you may at least have a company LinkedIn and Facebook page by now, are you keeping it up to date with engaging pictures and video streams of employees loving their work? Here are some quick ideas:

  • Embed pictures within the actual job listings on your recruiting software site. If your Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application supports HTML when uploading job listings, then you may insert images.
  • Include pictures of current employees with testimonials about working for your organization. Better yet, embed videos on your careers site (possibly your Careers Blog a la item #8) with employees talking about what to expect when working at your company. Have your videos available on a company YouTube channel, as well.
  • Include a link to a picture map of your office location when using email templates to invite applicants to schedule in-house interviews.

#4 – Proactively follow-up with previous applicants in your current pool of candidates

There are many reasons why some people in your current candidate pool (i.e. people who have previously submitted an application to your site) may not be the best fit for your current job opportunities. However, they may be a fit a month, six months, or a year down the road. Don’t expect them to consistently reach out to you in the future, but put timing on your side by:

  • periodically reaching out to them by emailing newsletters or press releases about significant company developments;
  • making sure they are subscribed to your automated job alerts so that they receive notice any time you post a new job;
  • sending your top passive candidates a personal note every so many months to stay in touch

Consider running an applicant referral bonus program so that your previous applicants can earn rewards for referring their friends to other open positions. While the applicants probably wouldn’t refer friends to positions for which they are being considered, odds are there are plenty of other opportunities in other departments that might be a fit for a friend. If their referral is hired, then candidates could receive a small gift card. This program helps you save money and time on recruiting costs, but it also spreads good will among your passive candidates and helps you virally spread the word about your job opportunities to a wider audience.

#3 – Survey your applicants for input on how to improve your recruiting process

Survey your applicants for inputThis one isn’t for the faint of heart as you are opening the floodgates for potential negative comments – but this is all about improving, right? A baby step for this option would be surveying your newly hired employees to find out what they liked/disliked about their recruiting experience.

However, if you really want to find out how to polish your employment brand’s reputation, then you might consider soliciting feedback from applicants who were not selected for positions, as well. Many candidates will not choose to participate since you didn’t select them; however, you may be surprised at the reaction you get from those who wish to remain engaged with your company and are therefore willing to participate. On the other end of the spectrum, if anyone by chance has an awful experience with your recruiting process (i.e. poor expectations set, late interviewers, lack of follow-up, etc.), they may be all too willing to tell you about it. You want this feedback so that you are aware of problems and can enact change – as well as report back on improvements.

If you’d like to offer an incentive for individuals to respond, depending on your industry, you may be able to offer some benefit to those who participate in the survey. For example, a restaurant, convenience store chain or retailer might offer a link to a coupon to applicants who complete the survey.

#2 – REALLY set expectations for candidates with job success factors sheet

Link to Job Success FactorsIs it enough to just create a comprehensive job description for the position noting all of the essential job requirements (with percentage of time spent on each duty allocated), qualifications and even workplace hazards chart? Maybe not. While it is important to have this unabridged version of the job description, as well as the more concise job posting description in circulation, take the opportunity to illustrate to candidates what it looks like to be successful in the role…after six months or a year, for example. What happens during a typical day/week? What will the candidate have accomplished or be working on independently in order for your organization to call him/her an “A Player” or a top 10% hire?

Make this sheet available to all candidates at the point of application by simply linking to it within the body of the job description. That way, truly interested applicants may take the time to download the document and get a better sense for the position, company culture. Applicants with the best potential job fit will become even more engaged and others will simply self-select out of the process after understanding more of the demands of the position. Here’s an example of a success factors description I put together for a position we hired earlier this year.

And #1… Create an up-front-contract about hiring process milestones and then deliver!

You may not always know exactly how many steps each positions’ selection process will have at the onset of initial interviews, but you should at least have a general idea. Stand out from the rest of your employer competitors by being upfront with applicants and bringing a sense of transparency to your hiring process. The best part about this list item is that it’s super easy!

All you have to do is give candidates expectations about how many steps are involved in the hiring process, what they are and how long you expect it to take to proceed through each section of the hiring funnel. And if your process isn’t set in stone, that’s okay, just tell them that’s the case but promise to keep them apprised of any changes to the details of the interviewing process.

Outline this process to candidates during the first interview (often, a phone screen) or even earlier by including it in any emails sent to the candidate to request that an initial interview be scheduled. The good part about speaking to candidates about your interviewing process details is that you can receive their immediate response as to whether or not they anticipate being able to participate in a process that takes the length of time that yours may require. If they can’t, no worries – you haven’t wasted your time or their time by conducting an initial interview. Candidates are more likely to be candid with you if you are candid with them.

Do you have other suggestions on how employers can improve their etiquette during the hiring selection process? Please comment and share your ideas! For more information about how our organization can help you leverage technology to improve your recruitment brand, please contact ExactHire.