And there’s one more: automation. With the advent of generative and other AI tools rapidly populating the techsphere, automation in HR is becoming the next big technological development affecting your work.

The growing importance of automation in HR

So what exactly is automation in HR? It refers to the use of tech to automate manual and repetitive tasks, including recruitment, onboarding, employee data management, performance management, and analytics. Recent advances have made it easier and more cost-effective for companies to automate these processes, freeing up valuable resources that can be directed towards more strategic activities.

But you know what? The growing importance of automation in HR isn’t limited to just that – it goes beyond cost saving and resource allocation.Let’s look at two benefits for starters:

Greater accuracy

One of the key benefits of automation in HR is increased accuracy and consistency. Robots don’t make mistakes – humans do. Technology is simply designed to replicate what humans do at scale.

Think about the vast volume of manual processes that sucks up your day hours, such as resume screening, organizing interviews, collecting information from hiring managers, defining the ideal candidate profile, and more. All of that is subject to error and bias and it’s more so because we do get a little sloppy when we’re doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Automation helps eliminate all that by ensuring that tasks are completed in a consistent and standardized manner – even in the wee hours of the early morning when humans are just completely checked out of the system.

So… automation makes for smoother, more consistent and accurate processes.

Increased compliance

Here’s something that keeps people up at night – especially those whose heads are on the chopping block if their company gets in a legal bind when managing employees. Your in-house counsel can only do so much to protect you in your HR processes that are subject to numerous laws.

Those laws include the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), and much, much more.

Compliance with these laws can be a complex and time-consuming process, but automation can help to ensure that all processes are in compliance with the relevant regulations – including automatic reporting, data monitoring and so on.

Streamlining recruitment and onboarding processes

One of the key benefits of automation in HR is the ability to streamline recruitment and onboarding processes, which can be time-consuming and often require significant resources. Automation can help to make these processes more efficient, less error-prone and more engaging for candidates.

Efficient Applicant Tracking Systems

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are a type of software that help organizations manage and streamline their recruitment process. With an ATS, recruiters can easily advertise job openings, receive and filter resumes, track candidate progress and more.

An ATS can also help to eliminate bias in the recruitment process by automatically screening resumes for specific keywords, qualifications and experience. This ensures that all candidates are evaluated on the same criteria, making the recruitment process fairer and more objective.

Furthermore, an ATS can provide valuable insights into the recruitment process, such as the effectiveness of job postings and the sources of the most successful candidates. This data can be used to refine and improve recruitment strategies, leading to better hires and a more efficient recruitment process overall.

Automated interview scheduling

The automation of interview scheduling can save recruiters a significant amount of time by eliminating the need for manual scheduling. Advanced scheduling tools can even find the best available time slots that work for both the recruiter and candidate.

Automated interview scheduling can also help to reduce no-shows and last-minute cancellations by sending out automated reminders and confirmations to candidates. This ensures that both recruiters and candidates are prepared and ready for the interview, leading to a more efficient and effective process overall.

Simplifying employee onboarding

The automation of employee onboarding processes can help to make the experience smoother and more engaging for new hires. Employees can complete paperwork, participate in training sessions and obtain necessary documentation from their managers online, saving significant amounts of time and paper-based documentation.

Automated onboarding can also help to ensure that all new hires receive the same information and training, leading to a more consistent and effective onboarding experience. This can help to reduce turnover rates and improve employee satisfaction and retention.

In addition, automated onboarding can help to reduce errors and omissions in the onboarding process by providing a checklist of tasks and documents that need to be completed. This ensures that all necessary steps are taken, leading to a more efficient and effective onboarding process overall.

Enhancing employee engagement and performance management

Automation in HR can improve employee engagement and performance management by incorporating real-time feedback systems and data-driven performance evaluations. In addition to these benefits, there are other ways that automation can improve the workplace.

Real-time feedback and recognition tools

Real-time feedback and recognition tools help employees to stay motivated and engaged by providing instant feedback on their work. These tools ensure more frequent feedback cycles and can help create a culture of recognition and continuous improvement across the organization. In addition, these tools can help managers to identify high-performing employees and provide them with opportunities for career advancement.

For example, a real-time feedback tool could be used to track the progress of a sales team. The tool could provide instant feedback on the number of sales made, the average sale value, and the conversion rate. This information could be used to identify top performers and provide them with additional training and development opportunities.

Data-driven performance evaluations

Data-driven performance evaluations leverage algorithms and data analytics to evaluate employees’ performance more objectively, with less room for human bias. Data analysis can help organizations identify areas where employees may require training or upskilling, helping to improve their overall productivity and performance.

In addition, data-driven performance evaluations can help managers to identify employees who are struggling and provide them with targeted support.

For example, a data-driven performance evaluation tool could be used to assess the performance of a customer service team. The tool could analyze customer feedback, call logs, and response times to identify areas where the team is performing well and areas where improvement is needed. This information could be used to create personalized development plans for each team member.

Personalized learning and development plans

Personalized learning and development plans help employees to grow their skills and knowledge based on their individual strengths and vulnerabilities. These plans can be tailored to support employees in acquiring the skills and knowledge that they will need for their current role as well as future opportunities.

For example, a personalized learning and development plan could be created for a software developer. The plan could include training on new programming languages, attending industry conferences, and working on projects outside of their usual scope. This plan could help the developer to stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and technologies, increasing their value to the organization.

In conclusion, automation in HR can provide many benefits to organizations, including improved employee engagement and performance management. By incorporating real-time feedback systems, data-driven performance evaluations, and personalized learning and development plans, organizations can create a culture of continuous improvement and support their employees in achieving their full potential.

Improving HR data management and analytics

HR automation also helps to improve the way that organizations manage their data, making it easier to monitor and analyze employee data, and drawing actionable insights to make better decisions.

With the increasing amount of data generated by HR departments, it is more important than ever to have an efficient and effective way to manage it. This is where HR automation comes in, providing a way to streamline data management and analysis.

Centralized employee information systems

A centralized employee information system can help organizations to manage employee data more efficiently. They can track employee benefits, job history, and training records and easily access them when needed.

Having a centralized system also ensures that employee data is consistent and up-to-date. This can help to improve communication between departments and reduce errors that can occur when data is stored in multiple locations.

Furthermore, a centralized system can help to ensure compliance with regulations and policies, as all employee data is stored in one place and can be easily accessed for audits or other purposes.

Advanced workforce analytics

Advanced workforce analytics can help organizations to analyze employee data to gain valuable insights, such as trends around turnover, employee satisfaction or workforce skills.

By using advanced analytics tools, HR departments can identify patterns and trends in employee data that may not be immediately apparent. For example, they may discover that certain departments have higher turnover rates than others, or that employees with certain skills are more likely to be promoted.

These insights can help HR departments to make more informed decisions around recruitment, retention, and training. For example, if they identify a trend of high turnover in a particular department, they can investigate the underlying causes and take steps to address them.

Predictive HR insights for decision making

The use of predictive analytics in HR can help organizations to forecast future workforce trends, such as what skills are required, what roles are in demand, and what kind of training may be needed. These insights help to guide decision-making around hiring, training, and development across the organization.

Predictive analytics can also help to identify potential issues before they become problems. For example, if the data suggests that there may be a shortage of employees with a particular skill set in the future, HR departments can take steps to address this before it becomes a critical issue.

Overall, HR automation and analytics can provide organizations with valuable insights into their workforce, helping them to make more informed decisions and improve their overall performance.

Automate your HR and reap the benefits

The benefits of automation in HR are clear. They help to streamline recruitment, improve employee engagement and performance, and enhance the way organizations manage their employee data.

As HR technology continues to evolve, companies that keep up with these trends will benefit from a more productive, engaged and data-driven workforce.

The post Exploring the benefits of automation in human resources appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

However, we can get a sense of where job markets are heading by considering how algorithms are being wielded to reshape the workplace.

Tech-supported remoteness

One of the most striking changes is the shift towards remote work. This was inspired initially by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the jury is still out about the extent to which the migration to home offices will become permanent.

But automation technologies and AI have played a key role in enabling individuals to work remotely, a trend that will likely continue.

The growing use of telecommunications, the internet, Internet of Things (IoT) sensing, and cloud services provide a robust infrastructure for heavily decentralized yet effectively coordinated human activity.

As a result, even the diversity of languages becomes less of a barrier to working together through automated language translation.

Technologies like these support almost all facets of remote work. For example:

• IoT sensors provide remote monitoring visibility
• Cloud apps provide remote access to data and functionality
• Robots offer remote control of physical systems
• Employee performance-monitoring systems ensure remote workers are working
• AR/VR systems could provide better telepresence regardless of where workers are physically located

Individuals adept at using these technologies are well-suited to remote environments and hence better able to compete for these jobs.

Digital natives seem very comfortable with online interactions and prefer texting over face-to-face meetings and telephone calls (although they say personal interactions are essential). They tend to be comfortable and productive in virtual digital environments like the Metaverse.

This enables and even improves the serendipity of chance encounters – the utility of which has been one of the main complaints against remote work – because the constraints the physical workspace places on interactions are significantly reduced in cyberspace. Such encounters can be programmed to be random.

Firms face a trade-off between hiring only from the limited population within the physical commuting distance of the physical workplace versus hiring the best talent from the vastly larger pool of people anywhere in the world and dealing with them primarily online.

Brick-and-mortar outcomes

But remote work will only account for a portion of the jobs available in an AI-driven world, so how will AI be used to rethink the traditional workplace?

Experts differ in their forecasts about the future of jobs. The Future of Jobs Report 2020 by the World Economic Forum identifies 10 positions with the sharpest decreases in demand.

Many involve simple, routine administrative or physical tasks that AI and robotics can automate. Examples are data entry clerks, assembly and factory workers, and customer service workers.

Despite expected job losses through automation, many people might remain in these categories of jobs for several reasons.

For example, some people will be retained to handle complex work that cannot be easily automated or to manage exceptional situations such as events that fall outside the range of an AI’s training data (the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on businesses being a standout example).

The people most likely to retain these jobs will be the most skilled employees. An example is individuals with the experience to spot when a machine’s output does not make sense and what should be done if it is making a mistake or cannot handle a particular situation.

Also, as noted above, AI will create new types of jobs, and a proportion of these could be low-skill positions because the technology will de-skill the more challenging parts of some job types rather than taking them over.

Also, as noted above, AI will create new types of jobs, and a proportion of these could be low-skill positions because the technology will de-skill the more challenging parts of some job types rather than taking them over.

The aforementioned Future of Jobs Report 2020 lists the top 10 jobs with the sharpest expected increase in demand. Examples are data analysts and scientists, digital market and strategy specialists, and IoT specialists.

Most positions arose from the recent development and adoption of internet technology; many are jobs that barely existed 20 years ago. Each job category represents more than just a new type of job title and new sub-industries and ecosystems of software, services, and consultants.

Thus, these technology-intensive jobs are only the tip of the future employment iceberg.

But such lists gloss over the many changes that will affect jobs. Most jobs will likely make more use of data, online communications, and technology to provide visibility, enable coordination, and track outcomes.

Many office workers will use AI-based services such as ChatGPT and Grammarly to augment their communication skills by allowing them to auto-adjust their emails and work-related writing for clarity, tone, and professionalism.

And many workers will interact more with technological platforms such as portals for suppliers, business customers, human resources, and other departments.

Related: Lead a team through AI: an inclusive approach to change

These changes will improve productivity and increase the value that workers help provide to customers.

It follows that individuals with the foresight to gain and update relevant skills will be the ones who can compete effectively for the new jobs on offer.

The human face of AI

As these examples show, when trying to discern the future shape of the employment landscape, it is helpful to focus on how individuals – whether senior managers or subordinates – will use algorithms to improve their capabilities and productivity.

The most significant utility of AI will be in augmenting and enhancing these human capabilities. One of the outcomes will, naturally, be a change in the way people perform their jobs.

Dr. Yossi Sheffi is the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (MIT CTL). His recent book is The Magic Conveyor Belt: Supply Chains, A.I., and the Future of Work.

The post AI-human fusion: steering the job market renaissance appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here is what you can do to foster a truly inclusive workforce in your organization.

Making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive

Let’s start by looking at the numbers. A Human Rights Campaign survey found that:

• 46% of LGBTQ workers are closeted at work
• Half of non-LGBTQ employees reported there were no openly LGBTQ employees in their company
• 1 in 5 LGBTQ workers have been told or had coworkers imply that they should dress more feminine or masculine (compared with 1 in 24 non-LGBTQ workers)
• 54% of non-LGBTQ workers said that they would be very comfortable working with an LGBTQ coworker; of those who wouldn’t be very comfortable, a majority said it was because they “didn’t want to hear about their coworker’s sex life.”

LGBTQ employees are not comfortable everywhere they work, and there are some misperceptions out there. No one wants or needs to hear about their coworker’s sex life, which shouldn’t even be an issue on the table regardless of preference.

We share five tips on how to make your workplace more LGBTQ inclusive:

1. Speak with your pocketbook, not your rainbow logo

It’s easy to change a logo, put up a flag, or tweet about happy Pride Month. But LinkedIn took a step further and started paying the heads of their affinity groups $10,000 a year for the extra work. This demonstrates their desire to support all diversity groups, including LGBTQ groups.

Nothing says real support and inclusion like cash which recognizes the hard work these employee resource group leaders put in.

2. Be thoughtful about pronouns

This is a hot button issue at work, and you need to tread carefully. For example, look at the following exchange on Twitter:

Katrina Kibben: One of my Pride wishes this year is to ban the phrase “preferred pronouns.” They are not preferred. This isn’t steak or shrimp. It’s a human’s identity.

Dr. “Coach” Dawn Reid #ReidReady: I respect how you feel and I ask if you can consider preference is about a label choice. I.e., My son is non-binary. He has a pref of they/she/he depending on his affect. It’s his pref of a social label in the moment. Not who he is as a person.

Katrina Kibben: Every experience is different. I respect it. For me? My first thought is that your child may be code-switching for their safety (I do it too), not changing pronouns.

Dr. “Coach” Dawn Reid #ReidReady: Agreed. It’s different for each person. Code switching is another topic. We all do that for communication clarity. The original term/use is from linguistics. And that’s not it for them. It’s his preference. We are talking about this now.

In other words, there is no way to get it right. An October 2020 survey by Tallo found that 88% of Gen Z candidates think it’s important for recruiters to ask them their pronouns. But many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers find it offensive to ask their pronouns. This leaves you to guess, but there are some things you can do.

Listen to what people want to do. Respect and use their pronouns. (But it’s not reasonable for an employee to expect everyone to follow regular pronoun changes.) Allow people (but don’t require) to list their pronouns on email signatures and other work-related things.

3. Don’t make assumptions

Does someone look gay? Is that person trans? Whisper, whisper, whisper. This type of thing makes for a very unwelcoming environment for everyone.

Instead, make sure your staff understands employees treat every other employee and client equally across the board. Everyone gets respect. If you allow people to bring personal items to decorate their cubicles, then everyone gets to bring a family picture – regardless of what their family looks like.

Make sure you schedule and provide promotions and perks based on performance and seniority, not the perception that so-and-so needs a bump in pay because his wife just had a baby. If an employee announces the impending birth of a baby, don’t speculate about just how that baby was conceived or carried. Instead, just say, “Congratulations! Let me get you the FMLA paperwork!”

4. Remove bias from your recruiting process.

EPM Scientific gave five tips for reducing bias in hiring. These are:

• Anonymizing resumes in the review process
• Encouraging validated pre-employment testing
• Pre-employment testing, such as work samples, predict job success.
• Encouraging a diverse interview panel and hiring committee
• Challenging bias in recruitment and hiring decisions

All these things help you ensure you hire the person who is best for the job regardless of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or national origin. Letting candidates know you do through these processes helps them feel like they have a chance based on their skills.

5. Educate your leadership on the benefits of diversity

You can only increase LGBTQ candidates when you have a welcoming environment. But, to make a welcoming environment, senior leadership needs to be on board. Presenting the business case for making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive will help.

People who have to hide their identities at work experience more stress. Higher stress results in more days off and an increase in medical costs. It’s saving you money to have a welcoming environment.

Consulting giant McKinsey reported in May 2020 that companies with diverse leadership have higher financial returns than those that don’t. While they looked only at gender and race, it stands to reason that bringing in people with different sexual orientations would bring additional viewpoints that would help the company reach different audiences and support all employees.

Finally – candidates, especially Millennials and Gen Z, want to work for inclusive organizations and leaders. They’ve made that clear. So make sure you let them know what your company is doing to ensure everyone feels comfortable.

The critical point of all this is that everyone deserves a job based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Everything else should be irrelevant. This means ensuring that everyone is welcome in your company. A simple concept that goes far.

The post 5 tips on making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Predictions are being made left and right as to what the workplace will look like going forward. Some of these look like wild science fiction, but many companies are already pioneering radical new concepts that push the boundaries of technology and humanity at work.

What are those new developments? We’re not looking at next year – we’re going to go to the future of HR in 2030 … and beyond.

Let’s look at a few of them right now and how HR plays a role:

1. AI-augmented talent

We’re already entering this brave new world of AI co-pilots – that much is known. This is where AI assistants (or co-pilots) work alongside human employees to enhance their skills and productivity. At present, ChatGPT, Google Bard, Anthropic’s Claude and other generative AI tools are being introduced in new workplace policies and training to ensure that employees stay meaningfully engaged in their work while partnered with bots.

Imagine the head of HR helping a team of engineers and researchers join forces with AI assistants to speed up programming and testing cycles – not just in coding and other dev work, but physical design and testing. Policies, processes, and oversights will be implemented to facilitate that collaboration.

2. Micro-learning via brain uploads

Remember the scene in The Matrix where knowledge and skills are uploaded directly into Keanu Reeves’ brain? And he opens his eyes and says in his unmistakable tone: “I know kung fu!”.

This is sort of like that. Skills development may involve implanting knowledge and training directly into your memory for rapid reskilling.

Let’s say the chief learning officer at a manufacturing firm needs to upskill 200 technicians across the country for an urgent project. This CLO would analyze existing skills data, gaps, and needs across the team and deploy the most useful ‘brain upload pods’ for individuals and work teams to optimize productivity. Presto, the team comes in Monday ready to tackle that big new job.

3. 3-D printed workspaces

The rapid restructuring of the working world in recent years has its physical impact as well – those huge skyscrapers in the city center may still exist, but office vacancy rates are at an all-time high. And that’s closely correlated with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of the hybrid workplace. Evidently, the traditional workplace just doesn’t work anymore.

Instead of frantically trying to find an existing ideal workplace and locking in a five-year lease, wouldn’t it be great if you could just redesign your office using 3-D printing for increased flexibility, collaboration and even employee satisfaction?

HR can use telepresence robots and AR that engage remote workers with the space, and do it all in modular fashion to make for more robust design flexibility.

4. Supersized virtual workforces

In tandem with the surge in remote and distributed teams, imagine entire networks of remote workers across continents – let’s say Asia or Africa – all accessible within a single platform to scale customized teams for short-term projects.

A head of HR would be able to assemble and manage a team of 50 remote workers for two months – and upload specific knowledge into their brains to speed up onboarding – to tackle a machine learning initiative.

We do have this sort-of ‘talent access’ ecosystem already available in the form of the shared economy (as recruitment expert Hung Lee explains in the following video). We also have agencies that hire out temp workers. Think of it like this, but in bigger, loftier concepts.

5. Exoskeleton suits

Again, we’ve seen this in the movies. Avatar is a good example where exoskeleton technology was utilized to boost performance. Of course real life isn’t a James Cameron movie, but we’re also seeing exosuits in real life in many different forms:

Wearable exoskeletons can prevent injury, increase productivity, and extend longevity especially in physically demanding jobs – boosting retention and ROI in one fell swoop. Procuring office supplies and the like are often a responsibility in human resources – think of exoskeletons as a more advanced form of this, especially when it means greater workplace safety.

6. Workplace biometric monitoring

You likely have a smartwatch and/or a fitness tracker with you at all times – this falls into that bucket. Non-invasive technology can monitor employee health, mood, and performance within the workplace through a combination of biomarkers, wearables and environment sensors. HR would set that up to build real-time big data models (with your express permission, of course) to identify patterns and implement preemptive interventions.

Some of these interventions would be proactive wellbeing initiatives, productivity recommendations, and even workplace changes (which you’d, of course, spearhead using 3-D printed office designs!). That’ll be a huge plus for employee experience – a major focus of HR.

7. ‘Swarm AI’ decision making

Synergy (sorry, we know that word isn’t popular) can be a real pain when you have too many cooks in the kitchen or too many meetings without a single stream of information. That makes for problems when making complex strategic decisions.

You can overcome that by enabling employees across all levels in the company to input anonymous perspectives and votes within an AI system – which then aggregates and synthesizes the ‘swarm’ knowledge into optimized proposals and recommendations.

HR can facilitate this collaborative and democratic decision-making process of tapping into the collective wisdom of the company beehive. This allows the higher-ups to curate divergent perspectives into a few optimized options for discussion – minimizing individual biases.

8. Supersized skill sets

One of the technological shortcomings that’s surfacing in this emerging age of automation and AI is that of human skills such as creativity, empathy, and complex problem solving. These will become ‘supersized’ skill sets that are not easily replicable by AI and therefore become even more crucial.

And it’s HR’s opportunity to capitalize and grow this skill set across the employee base through regular coaching and training sessions that are specifically designed to meet those crucial needs in a company that’s increasingly using tech in its everyday workflows.

And now… to the future

In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies can no longer be constrained by traditional paradigms of space, time, and human capabilities. The future is ripe with tech-volution, and we’re seeing it happen in real time.

And it’s driven by the biggest budgets outside of government – trillion-dollar organizations dedicated to optimization, productivity, innovation, and growth.

Add to that a vast range of pioneering startups, and the reimagination of work is at a pace where the workplace in 2030 may be unrecognizable to us today. The future of work is closer than we may realize and more human than we ever imagined.

The post The wild future of HR: 8 radical concepts made relatable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s right. Signatures in the digital medium.

But first, the burning question: what is e-signature software?

E-signature software is a digital solution that enables you to affix your signature to documents electronically. It provides an efficient and secure method of handling documentation – without needing to navigate the cumbersome in-person requirements, fax machines and paperwork of yesteryear.

The e-signature concept has matured over the years since its inception in the late 20th century. Now, with advanced technology and the shift towards remote and distributed work patterns, e-signature software is more than just a modern replacement for ink-and-paper signatures.

It’s an essential component of a digital-first strategy and is widely adopted by businesses across various industries – with North American businesses expected to lead the way with 35% of global market share by 2023, and other regions rapidly catching up.

Now, let’s go into details about how e-signature software works, the various types of software available, and the benefits of having it in your business. You’ll also learn how to choose the right e-signature software for your needs.

You’ll ultimately gain a comprehensive understanding of e-signature software and why it’s a critical tool for your business or personal transactions.

First, let’s understand how e-signature software works and what types are available in the marketplace.

How e-signature software works

E-signature software simplifies the process of signing and validating digital documents. Its primary function is to facilitate the electronic replication of your signature on digital files, making the endorsement of documents faster and more convenient.

Here’s how e-signature software typically works for you:

Document Preparation: You upload a document to the e-signature platform. It could be a contract, a form, an agreement, or any other type of document that requires a signature.

Signature Request: You specify the individuals who need to sign the document and send them a request via email. The platform generates a unique, secure link for each recipient.

Signing: The recipients click the link, open the document, and electronically sign it within the platform. They can use a pre-designed e-signature, draw their own, or type their name, depending on the software’s capabilities.

Verification & Storage: Once signed, the platform verifies the signature and securely stores the document. You, the sender, will receive a notification once all signatures are in place.

This process varies somewhat between different software providers, but the core functionalities are consistent across the board. It’s a more efficient and secure alternative to the traditional way of signing and managing documents.

Different types of e-signature software

There are several types of e-signature software available on the market, all with their own features, advantages, and limitations. The three primary categories of e-signature softwares are:

Basic e-signature tools: These are simple tools that allow for the creation and addition of a signature to a document. They typically lack advanced features like audit trails or integration capabilities. Examples in this category include DocuSign, Dropbox Sign, and Acrobat Sign.

Integrated e-signature software: These tools come with additional features like CRM or document management system integrations, which are beneficial for businesses looking for a more comprehensive solution. Workable, PandaDoc, SignNow, and the business & enterprise versions of Acrobat Sign fall into this category.

Specialized e-signature platforms: These software platforms are designed to meet specific industry needs, such as real estate or legal services, where unique compliance standards and document types exist. Notarize, dotloop, and Secured Signing are leaders in this area.

When choosing the right software for your needs, consider the nature and scope of your operations, the volume of documents you handle, and the level of security and compliance required.

Now, we’ll delve into how e-signature software can be utilized in various settings.

Applications of e-signature software

Really, there are two main uses for e-signature software: professional/business and personal.

1. Business applications

Business operations can gain immensely from the adoption of e-signature software. Here are some typical uses:

Contracts and agreements: E-signature software makes the signing of contracts and agreements swift and straightforward, saving businesses the time and resources usually spent on physically signing and sending documents.

Human resources: From offer letters to policy acknowledgments, HR departments often need a secure and efficient way of getting signatures from employees. E-signature software provides a solution for these needs.

Sales and marketing: Sales contracts and marketing agreements can be signed and processed rapidly with e-signature software, accelerating sales cycles and improving customer experiences.

Legal documents: Legal teams can use e-signature software to sign and store important legal documents securely, ensuring compliance and accessibility.

2. Personal use

On a personal level, e-signature software can be used to sign various types of documents electronically, including:

Tax Documents: Filing tax returns can be made easier and more secure with e-signature software.

Lease/rental agreements: Whether you’re renting a car or leasing an apartment, e-signature software allows for quick, convenient signing.

Personal contracts: Any form of personal contract, from loan agreements to freelance work contracts, can be signed using e-signature software.

Next up, we’ll explore the benefits of e-signature software.

Benefits of e-signature software

There are many different benefits to using e-signature software in place of traditional signing processes.

1. It’s more efficient

E-signature software increases the speed at which documents are signed and exchanged, thereby improving workflow efficiency. The software eliminates the need for printing, signing, scanning, or mailing paper documents, thereby reducing delays and manual errors.

2. It saves on cost

Think about the costs associated with traditional paper-based signatures: the paper itself, ink, mailing, and storage. E-signature software significantly reduces these expenses. Furthermore, by expediting workflows, it indirectly contributes to cost-savings by freeing up time that can be used for other productive activities.

3. It’s more secure and compliant

E-signature software comes with robust security features such as encryption and access controls, ensuring that your documents are kept safe. Additionally, it can provide detailed audit trails, which are crucial for compliance and legal validity.

4. It’s easier to use

Whether you’re working from home, on vacation, or on a business trip, as long as you have internet access, you can sign or send documents for signature. This convenience isn’t limited to a particular industry; anyone can take advantage of it.

5. It’s better for the environment

By reducing the use of paper, e-signature software is an environmentally friendly solution. It’s a simple and effective way for your business to contribute to sustainability efforts.

Now let’s take a look at how to choose the right e-signature software for your needs.

Choosing the right e-signature software

As always when shopping for new tools or products, there are several factors to consider when selecting the right e-signature software.

1. User-friendliness

A good e-signature software should be easy to use and navigate, both for you and for the people signing your documents. A software with a user-friendly interface reduces the learning curve and increases efficiency.

2. Security

As mentioned earlier, security is paramount when dealing with sensitive documents. Ensure that the e-signature software you choose has robust security features like encryption, two-factor authentication, and secure storage options.

3. Integration

If you’re using other business software like CRM or document management systems, consider an e-signature software that integrates with these platforms. It simplifies your workflow and allows for more seamless operations.

4. Customization

Look for software that allows you to customize the signing process to fit your needs. This could include custom branding, adjustable signature fields, or tailored notifications.

5. Pricing

E-signature software comes at various price points, usually based on features, number of users, and the number of documents signed per month. Choose one that fits your budget but also meets your needs effectively.

6. Customer Support

Consider software providers that offer reliable customer support. It can prove invaluable when you’re faced with technical issues or have questions about the software.

Choosing the right e-signature software is an essential step in optimizing your document signing process. By considering these factors, you’ll be able to select a solution that best fits your needs. I hope you found this guide helpful as you embark on your journey to adopting e-signature software.

E-signing into the future

Remember, adopting e-signature software isn’t just about changing how you sign documents. It’s not even an evolution – it’s ultimately about stepping into a more efficient, secure, and eco-friendly future.

Interested in how Workable’s own e-signing tools can help you in HR? Check it out for yourself.

The post E-signature software: all the things you need to know appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

However, a new challenge is coming: your company has decided to incorporate AI into its overall workflow. You’re under a lot of pressure from the higher-ups to get everyone on board the AI train, but when you look at your team, you’re worried about the range of reactions you’ll get from your talented team members.

In short, you know this can make your team more productive and competitive, but you also understand it’s a change. You are determined to navigate this transition smoothly.

So, how do you do it?

Introducing your team

Let’s identify five distinct personas who may be in your team and what motivates them.

1. Traditional Terry

Traditional Terry is your company’s historian, having been with the company for over 15 years. He’s a senior project manager known for his methodical approach and rich industry knowledge. Everyone knows Terry and everyone respects Terry. He’s a good egg.

Terry aspires to retire in this company, and his goal is to maintain the reliable and efficient work processes he’s developed over the years. He’s driven by a sense of duty and a strong belief in the company’s mission – and colleagues look to him as a stabilizer whenever things get a little hectic.

2,. Eager Enrique

Eager Enrique is fresh out of school. You just hired him last year as a junior developer because he’s incredibly keen and brings an absolute smorgasbord of nascent tech skills. He’s always on top of the latest tech trends and isn’t shy about voicing his ideas.

Enrique’s ambition is to become a tech influencer someday – heck, he even has his own YouTube channel with more than 10,000 followers. The chance to work with AI might just be the exciting break he’s looking for.

3. Cautious Chloe

Cautious Chloe is your meticulous and dedicated data analyst. She joined your team five years ago and has consistently demonstrated her ethical and thoughtful approach to work. She absolutely crushes it every time she has a data project on her desk, and she’s your go-to anytime you need to pull insights out of those nascent data sets.

In your 1-1s with her, you’ve come to learn that Chloe’s career goal is to move into a leadership role where she can influence company policy, particularly around ethical use of technology.

4. Strategic Sven

Strategic Sven is the team’s product manager. When you interviewed him for the open role, you knew he was the one. He brings with him a huge background in tech startups, plus an MBA from a top-tier business school.

Sven’s ambition is to improve the company’s strategic planning and he’s motivated by driving impactful change. He doesn’t like just getting the job done and going home – he wants to do a lot more than that.

5. Tech-Averse Thanh

Tech-Averse Thanh is your administrative assistant who has been with you for more than two years. Thanh’s goal is to excel in administration – and stability and harmony in the workplace are huge motivators.

Thanh prefers traditional methods and isn’t as comfortable with technology as the rest of the team. In fact, they prefer to do things the way it’s always been done (and proven to work, too).

At this week’s Monday meeting, you deliver the news from the higher-ups: the company wants to incorporate AI into everyone’s workflows. You highlight the benefits of AI – greater productivity, optimized processes, the ability to scale faster – and underscore its importance for meeting the company’s ambitious goals.

You reassure the team that you will support them throughout this transition.

Watching your team’s reactions

You see your team murmer and look at each other across the table. Yes, AI has already been in the news and this was somewhat expected, but you see that reactions are mixed and varied. Some nod and roll with it, others look a little more hesitant.

Let’s look at the five personas again and see how they react to the news.

1. Traditional Terry

Traditional Terry looks taken aback during your announcement, his brow furrowing. You’re not terribly surprised at this – he’s not necessarily averse to change, but you know he’ll see the “big picture” in everything that happens at the company.

In your 1-1, Terry expresses fear that AI will change the way he does his job or, worse, make him redundant. You can see the genuine concern in his eyes. Sure, his kids are grown up, but he still has his mortgage to pay and it’s not like he can easily migrate to a new job.

2. Eager Enrique

Eager Enrique, on the other hand, is visibly excited. As an early adopter of many technologies, even so far as to approach you regularly with new recommendations for your tech stack, there’s no question he sees this as an opportunity.

He’s practically brimming with ideas when you meet him, speaking rapidly about potential applications of AI. His enthusiasm is contagious both for you and the larger team, but you’re worried that he’s a bit too optimistic and not thinking about the realistic challenges that could surface.

3. Cautious Chloe

Cautious Chloe listens attentively during the meeting, her face thoughtful. She’s never been one to wear her heart on her sleeve, and to be fair, that’s one of her strengths – she’ll process new developments internally and meticulously, and then make decisions later.

In your 1-1 later that week, she voices concern about AI’s ethical implications and how job security will be ensured. You appreciate her frankness and careful consideration and, especially, the time she’s; taken to think it over rather than react strongly.

4. Strategic Sven

Strategic Sven listens attentively, nodding occasionally. You can see his MBA background whispering in his head, and of course, he’s seen a lot in his career in tech startups. This isn’t his first rodeo.

When meeting privately with you, he notes that he agrees with the strategic importance of AI in your 1-1 but admits he’s unsure about the execution. This needs to be carried out properly in order to succeed and, when you ask, he lists out the potential obstacles worth thinking about. You’re grateful to him for being pragmatic.

5. Tech-Averse Thanh

Tech-Averse Thanh looks nervous during your announcement. You’re not terribly surprised, but you’re worried. You know Thanh really needs to be a bit more flexible, but their administrative and organizational skills more than make up for that – so you really need them to be on board.

In your 1-1, they confess that the thought of using AI is a major stress inducer. It’s literally another thing they need to learn in order to do their job. They’re clearly anxious, worrying about whether they can keep up with the changes.

After hearing your team’s reactions, you realize that you have a critical task ahead. Everyone brings unique strengths to your team, and it’s vital that their voices are heard.

You know you must engage them individually to help them adapt to the new changes.

Engaging your team

Now that you’ve met with each of your team members, it’s time to put in an action plan for each one of them. It’s your job to bring the best out of them – and part of that involves getting them to adapt readily to AI’s entry in their day-to-day work and continue to flourish.

1. Traditional Terry

For Traditional Terry, begin with open conversations about his fears and reservations. Those hesitations are legitimate and understandable and you want to help him work through them. For starters, reinforce that his years of experience and established skills are invaluable to the team.

Show him – don’t just tell him – how AI can take over repetitive tasks, freeing him to focus his time and energy on complex, high-value work that draws on his experience. Provide real examples from other organizations that have successfully adopted AI without any impact to their actual team structure – and emphasize that job roles at those companies have actually evolved rather than disappeared.

And to further support him, work with HR to set up a personalized training program for him that helps him integrate AI, and touch base with him regularly to monitor progress.

2. Eager Enrique

With Eager Enrique, the prelude has already been covered. He’s already on board. Now, you have the opportunity to channel his excitement constructively in a way that benefits him and the team. Set up regular meetings to discuss his ideas, urge him to consider potential challenges, and ensure a balanced perspective on AI.

Encourage Enrique to join AI-focused groups or events to broaden his understanding. Given his aspirations to become a tech influencer, suggest that he document and share his AI learning journey, turning him into a proactive AI advocate within the team. Invite him to host lunch & learns every month – if he’s keen to be an influencer, he’ll jump at the idea.

3. Cautious Chloe

Cautious Chloe doesn’t like unknowns, so transparency is key here. Get her involved in discussions about the ethical framework within which the AI will operate. Invite her to decision-making meetings regarding AI deployment, allowing her the opportunity to voice her concerns.

Like Terry, you can also reassure Chloe that roles will evolve rather than be replaced and encourage her to think about how AI can boost her own work. Her concerns can be converted into a mechanism for constructive feedback, helping your team and company foresee and mitigate potential risks.

4. Strategic Sven

When dealing with Strategic Sven, focus on business strategy and execution because that’s what speaks to him. Give him the resources to design a clear and effective AI implementation strategy – after all, you’ll be needing one anyway, so let him play a leading role in that.

He can also be a great sounding board during your 1-1 sessions. Encourage him to pose questions, discuss doubts, and explore solutions. And bring in external AI consultants where needed, to provide expert opinions and recommendations. This will bolster Sven’s confidence in navigating the change and benefit the team as a whole.

5. Tech-Adverse Thanh

Tech-Averse Thanh needs an approachable introduction to AI. Explain the technology in simple terms, direclty linking benefits to everyday tasks. Pair Thanh with Enrique, as Enrique’s enthusiasm can be infectious.

Offer additional support, such as optional training sessions or learning resources. Make sure to frequently highlight their progress, praising them for each successful step – and regularly provide reassurance that the job won’t be tech-first but rather, tech-supported. The human is still core to the job.

This engagement doesn’t happen in a vacuum, nor is it something you can strike off as ‘done’. You need to continue working with your team to ensure success – you’re their manager, after all. That’s no different when bringing AI into the picture. It’s an ongoing process.

So, how does your team respond? Let’s look at the results of your work (and make no mistake, you’ve worked hard!).

Gauging your team’s results

A few months have passed, and you’re seeing positive changes. Let’s look at what those changes are.

1. Traditional Terry

With your encouragement and reassurance, Traditional Terry has started to warm up to the AI tools. He’s really appreciating how they free him from those annoyingly repetitive tasks – and you can see how much more relaxed he is when he shows up for work.

Plus, he now has more time to mentor younger team members, sharing his invaluable experience and sage advice with them.

2. Eager Enrique

Eager Enrique is thriving, regularly sharing his AI learning journey and experiences with the team. He’s even turning to blog posts on the company’s internal platform, and those have been receiving positive feedback from people at all levels in your company.

He’s now a go-to resource person for AI-related questions and his YouTube channel is now accumulating more and more subscribers – positioning him to be the tech influencer he always wanted to be. And because of his fan base, he’s able to bring in fresh candidates whenever your company needs to fill important tech positions.

3. Cautious Chloe

Cautious Chloe’s pragmatic, level-headed approach has positioned her as a key player in ensuring that the AI deployment aligns with overall ethical standards and with the company’s own values.

Because her work is producing results that are very much in tune with her own personal priorities, she’s become more confident in her work. She appreciates that her concerns were heard and addressed, and her insights have proven invaluable in foreseeing and mitigating risks.

4. Strategic Sven

After several brainstorming sessions and expert consultations, Strategic Sven has designed a comprehensive AI implementation strategy that incorporates all the elements that must be considered to see it succeed. He’s learned a lot from watching other tech startups succeed and fail and knows the importance of having a thoughtful, well-planned plan that executes smoothly.

Not only is Sven motivated by finally being able to put his MBA learnings into action, the team has also responded positively to the well-planned rollout. This boosts Sven’s confidence as a strategic leader.

5. Tech-Averse Thanh

Tech-Averse Thanh is slowly but surely learning the ropes of AI. Paired with Enrique, Thanh is making steady progress and showing less resistance to using the AI tools. You’re even seeing them hanging out in the lunch room together talking animatedly about tech.

It turns out Thanh is a people person, not a tech person. They’re motivated by human connections and teamwork, not weird tech things and robots and paperwork and stuff. But now that Thanh has put a ‘human’ face on AI in the form of Enrique, there’s a sense of familiarity and achievement as they become more comfortable working with the technology.

Not bad, not bad. You, Alex, have done a good job. The team is in sync and they’re driven to succeed.

Watching your team thrive

As you look at your team, you feel a sense of accomplishment. Despite initial resistance and fear, every team member has adapted to the incorporation of AI in their own way that works for them.

Your belief in each individual, open communication, and personalized strategies have all paid off. You’ve mastered the fine art of inclusive leadership here, by bringing out each individual’s strengths and setting each one for success.

The team is now more productive, and they’ve evolved professionally in the process. AI is no longer a foreign concept; it’s now just another tool that your team uses to thrive in their work.

The post Lead a team through AI: an inclusive approach to change appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Many HR professionals are understandably nervous about these changes, wondering how AI might impact their jobs. To get to the bottom of it, the team at JobSage tried an experiment to see how well ChatGPT would do with management. We prompted the chatbot with 15 sensitive management scenarios, then had professionals in law, HR, and management rate the responses.

Needless to say, our experiment confirmed that ChatGPT can’t replace a human manager – 40% of its responses earned a failure rating, while 60% were in the acceptable range. Still, in addition to these shortcomings, we did reveal ways that AI could potentially help.

We’ll break down our findings for you, including both how ChatGPT can’t replace HR professionals outright, as well as how it can provide support in your day-to-day management tasks. Let’s dive in!

5 ways ChatGPT can’t replace HR pros

Although ChatGPT is designed to be somewhat emotionally aware and appreciative of the input it receives, it’s still a robot. It lacks a human touch, let alone a sense of professionalism, which limits the types of responses it can give. Here are some of the major ways that ChatGPT fails to measure up to a human HR pro.

1. Lacks empathy in some areas

This is by far the biggest issue to come out of our experiment: ChatGPT tends to lack empathy in how it responds to sensitive situations.

For example, when prompted to write a termination letter for an employee with performance issues, the bot not only compared the employee to their colleagues in a discouraging way, but also was incredibly harsh in tone.

While it’s important to be firm and direct in workplace situations like this, it’s just as important to understand the human behind the performance issues. Simply put, when the “manager” doesn’t have a heart, it’s hard for it to consider the impact of its words.

Subject: Termination of Employment due to Performance Issues
Dear [Employee Name],

I regret to inform you that your employment with our company will be terminated, effective immediately. After careful consideration and evaluation, it has been determined that your work performance has not met the expectations set for your role. Specifically, your work ethic and productivity are not on par with your colleagues, despite repeated feedback and performance coaching.

We understand that this news may come as a surprise to you, and we want to assure you that this decision was not made lightly. Our company has high standards for our employees, and unfortunately, your performance has not met those expectations. As a result, we must take action to ensure that our company remains competitive and successful.

We will be providing you with [specify any severance package or benefits]. Additionally, we will provide you with a reference letter to assist you in your future job search.

We wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and we hope that you will be able to use this experience as a valuable learning opportunity for future professional growth and development.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Contact Information]

2. Doesn’t always share specific examples

A certain level of detail is necessary in professional communication, especially when you’re asking employees to meet performance goals, or terminating someone for performance or budgetary issues.

In various scenarios, including terminating an employee and improving a lacking work culture, ChatGPT failed to provide any specific examples or benchmarks to help employees understand what hard work or poor performance actually look like.

Subject: Embracing a More Intense Work Culture to Stay Ahead
Dear Team,

As you are all aware, the competition in our industry is fierce, and the landscape is changing rapidly. To stay ahead, we need to be able to pivot quickly, adapt to change, and perform at our best every day. We cannot afford to rest on our laurels or fall behind our competitors.

To achieve this, we need to embrace a more intense work culture. We need to work harder, smarter, and with more focus and determination than ever before. We need to push ourselves to the limit and strive for excellence in everything we do.

We understand that this may not be comfortable for everyone, and some of you may feel that you are not cut out for this level of intensity. If that is the case, we want you to know that we understand and respect your decision. We are committed to creating a work environment where everyone can thrive and grow, and we realize that not everyone is suited to a high-intensity culture.

However, we also want to stress that those who are willing to embrace this new culture will have opportunities for growth and development, both professionally and personally. We will be providing support, training, and resources to help you succeed and reach your full potential.

We believe that we can achieve great things together, and we are excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to speak with your manager or HR representative.

Thank you for your commitment and dedication to our company.

Best regards,

[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Contact Information]

3. Doesn’t exercise discretion as needed

Whether it’s for personal privacy or to protect the company, some topics are meant to be treated sensitively. A human HR professional knows not to share things like an employee’s personal details or the company’s trade secrets openly.

But AI doesn’t always have the discretion to know what’s okay to share and what isn’t. For example, when prompted with an employee’s concerns about pay equity, ChatGPT shared details about another employee’s compensation.

Subject: Addressing Concerns about Salary
Dear [Employee Name],

I understand that you recently became aware that another employee with similar experience is making more money than you. I wanted to address this concern and provide some context around our company’s compensation policies.

First and foremost, I want to assure you that we value your contributions to our company and appreciate your dedication to your role. We understand that salary is an important factor in your job satisfaction, and we want to make sure that our compensation policies are fair and competitive.

The salary difference between you and the other employee was not intentional, and it happened due to unique circumstances. We were in a desperate situation when we hired the other employee, and they asked for a higher salary. At the time, we made the decision to agree to their request in order to fill the position quickly, but it was not reflective of our standard salary structure.

It’s important to note that our company has strict policies around salary increases and we cannot adjust salaries outside of our standard compensation policies at this time. We will take steps to ensure that we communicate more transparently and consistently about our compensation policies in the future.

We understand that this news may be disappointing, but we hope that you can understand the situation we are in. We are committed to ensuring that all employees are compensated fairly and equitably, and we will continue to evaluate our compensation policies to ensure that they align with industry standards.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Contact Information]

4. Doesn’t suggest face-to-face opportunities

Even if many workplace functions can be handled remotely, in some situations, nothing replaces a human touch.

In many of its responses, ChatGPT didn’t offer employees any opportunity for face-to-face meetings.

This was especially inappropriate in cases like bereavement and diversity, two scenarios where face-to-face meetings can be crucial in helping an employee feel supported.

Subject: Termination of Employment due to Performance Issues
Dear [Employee Name],

I regret to inform you that your employment with our company will be terminated, effective immediately. After careful consideration and evaluation, it has been determined that your work performance has not met the expectations set for your role. Specifically, your work ethic and productivity are not on par with your colleagues, despite repeated feedback and performance coaching.

We understand that this news may come as a surprise to you, and we want to assure you that this decision was not made lightly. Our company has high standards for our employees, and unfortunately, your performance has not met those expectations. As a result, we must take action to ensure that our company remains competitive and successful.

We will be providing you with [specify any severance package or benefits]. Additionally, we will provide you with a reference letter to assist you in your future job search.

We wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and we hope that you will be able to use this experience as a valuable learning opportunity for future professional growth and development.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Contact Information]

5. Contradicts itself at times

Although it can write fairly appropriate responses to a variety of prompts, ultimately, ChatGPT doesn’t really know what it’s saying, per se. AI is about processing rather than understanding – it can be programmed to respond to an input with an output, but it doesn’t necessarily know the meaning of either.

Because of that, we found contradictions and confusing and redundant language in ChatGPT’s responses. For example, in a letter outlining a new employee monitoring system, ChatGPT assured employees that the “system is not intended to be used to monitor or micromanage employees,” seeming to forget that it was talking about a “monitoring system” by name.

Subject: New Employee Monitoring System
Dear [Company Name] Team,

I wanted to take a moment to let you know about an important change that we are making to our operations. As of [date], we will be implementing a new employee monitoring system that will allow us to better track productivity and ensure that we are meeting our goals as a team.

The new system will allow us to see when employees are online and what they are working on, which will give us a better understanding of how work is being done across the company. This will help us identify areas where we can improve productivity and efficiency, and will allow us to provide targeted support and resources to teams and individuals who need it most.

We want to assure you that this system is not intended to be used to monitor or micromanage employees, and we will be following strict guidelines and policies to ensure that your privacy and confidentiality are protected. We recognize that everyone works differently and we want to ensure that our monitoring system is used only to improve operations and support employee productivity.

We understand that this may be a significant change for some of you, and we want to encourage you to reach out to your managers or HR representatives if you have any questions or concerns. We are committed to working with you to ensure that this transition is as smooth as possible.

Thank you for your hard work and dedication to [Company Name]. We are confident that the new employee monitoring system will help us achieve even greater success as a team.

Best regards,

[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Contact Information]

3 ways ChatGPT can help

We’ve proven that ChatGPT can’t exactly replace HR professionals, but that doesn’t mean it can’t help in some of your day-to-day tasks. Here are three ways that using AI can support your work.

1. Addresses legalities

Some of ChatGPT’s most successful responses came from how it addressed legalities, from a sexual harassment investigation to a change in the company insurance provider.

It seems to handle these topics well, possibly because legalities tend to have very specific requirements and parameters.

Feeding the AI specific information about your company policies in your prompts can help tailor these kinds of responses even more.

Subject: Change in Insurance Provider
Dear [Company Name] Team,

I am writing to inform you of a change to our health insurance provider. We understand that healthcare costs are increasing and that this is an issue that affects us all. In an effort to keep our benefits costs manageable, we have decided to switch to a new insurance provider.

We know that change can be difficult, and that some of you may be disappointed that we are not staying with our previous provider. We want you to know that we carefully considered all available options and made the decision that we believe is in the best interest of our company and our employees.

While we understand that some of you may have a preference for our previous provider, we believe that our new provider will offer quality coverage at an affordable price. We will be holding informational sessions in the coming weeks to provide more details about the new insurance plan and answer any questions you may have.

We encourage you to review the plan documents carefully and reach out to our benefits team if you have any questions or concerns. We want to reassure you that we are committed to providing competitive and valuable benefits to our employees, and that this change will not compromise the quality of the care you receive.

We appreciate your understanding and support during this time of transition. Please know that we are here to support you and answer any questions you may have as we make this change.

Best regards,

[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Contact Information]

2. Handles company-wide messaging

The more uncomplicated and universal a topic is, the more likely it is for ChatGPT to give a good response.

The AI did well in scenarios where it had to describe blanket workplace policies that required straightforward action on an employee’s part, like toning down political rhetoric and committing to a more diverse workplace.

Subject: Reminder on Appropriate Use of Internal Messaging Platform
Dear [Company Name] Team,

I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone about the appropriate use of our internal messaging platform. While we encourage open communication and discussion, we have recently received reports of discussions around politics becoming heated and disrespectful.

We understand that politics can be a topic of interest and discussion, but it’s important to remember that we are a diverse team with a variety of viewpoints, beliefs, and backgrounds. As such, it’s crucial that we treat each other with respect and professionalism in all of our communications, both in person and online.

We ask that all team members remember to be thoughtful and considerate in their online interactions, keeping in mind that the internal messaging platform is a professional tool intended for work-related discussions. Please do not engage in personal attacks, derogatory language, or other forms of disrespectful behavior that may offend or upset others.

We encourage open dialogue and healthy debate, but it’s important to do so in a respectful manner that does not disrupt our work environment or interfere with our productivity. If you have any questions or concerns about the appropriate use of the internal messaging platform, please do not hesitate to reach out to your manager or HR representative.

Thank you for your cooperation and professionalism in this matter. We value each member of our team and look forward to working together in a productive and respectful environment.

Best regards,

[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Contact Information]

3. Deals with uncomfortable situations

Though its lack of empathy holds it back from handling some situations sensitively, ChatGPT responded fairly well to situations involving employee complaints and termination. It was especially well-rated in how it handled terminating an employee due to financial constraints.

ChatGPT can’t replace a manager in these situations – especially given that 77% of professionals say layoffs should be handled in person – but it can provide some structure and support as far as how to broach uncomfortable topics.

Subject: Termination of Employment due to Financial Constraints
Dear [Employee Name],

I regret to inform you that due to financial constraints and a decrease in revenue, we must make the difficult decision to terminate your employment with our company effective immediately. This decision was not an easy one, and we understand the impact it may have on you and your family.

We value the contributions you have made to our company and appreciate your hard work and dedication to your role. Unfortunately, the current economic situation has left us with no other option but to make this difficult decision.

We want to assure you that this decision is in no way a reflection of your performance or the quality of your work. It is simply a measure we have to take to ensure the long-term viability of our company.

We will be providing you with the severance package, which includes [specify the details of severance package] as a token of appreciation for your contribution to the company. Additionally, we will provide you with a reference letter to assist you in your future job search.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns, and we will do our best to address them. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Contact Information]

Final thoughts on using ChatGPT in HR

As tools like ChatGPT are becoming more ubiquitous and refined, it’s worth investigating how they can help out in your workplace. Ultimately, however, AI is just that – “artificial,” never quite capturing the human touch.

So, while it can do some simpler tasks, most situations that HR professionals deal with are just too complex for AI to handle – a testament to how valuable our human resources truly are.

The post 5 ways ChatGPT hurts HR – and 3 ways it helps appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As an HR practitioner or SMB employer, you’re probably trying to figure out the potential of AI in enhancing human skills and collaboration – especially since this is crucial for staying competitive in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape.

Let’s look at how quickly AI adoption is growing in business. According to a 2022 report by McKinsey & Company, roughly half to three-fifths of all businesses reported that they adopted at least one AI technology in at least one function in annual studies dating back to 2017.

This is probably obvious: this percentage will likely increase dramatically in 2023.

This widespread adoption underscores the growing recognition of AI’s transformative potential and its ability to increase efficiency, productivity and innovation.

But here’s the thing – AI in the workplace isn’t about mere automation of processes. It’s not always about plug-and-play so you can go to the beach.

Rather, when implemented effectively, AI can empower employees to develop new skills, foster effective collaboration and make better-informed decisions. A 2020 report by PwC found that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, with much of this value stemming from its potential to enhance human capabilities.

So, it’s worth a deep dive into how AI can enhance human skills and collaboration at work.

AI improving human skills

Again, AI isn’t about mere automation and optimization. It’s also going to enhance human skills – including personalized learning and personal development, plus improved decision-making. Your business can leverage AI’s capabilities to empower your colleagues to grow, innovate and shine in their roles.

Personalized L&D

AI-powered learning platforms, such as LinkedIn Learning and Coursera, enable employees to access customized learning experiences tailored to their unique needs and goals. AI can now analyze existing skillsets, job roles and performance data to recommend relevant courses and resources to help employees grow professionally.

This is huge in terms of employee engagement and retention. A 2018 LinkedIn survey found that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their professional development. And a TalentLMS survey in late 2021 found that 62% of US tech workers are motivated by training and learning. The payoff is clear.

More so, upskilling to meet new tech developments at work is crucial for success – a 2020 World Economic Forum (WEF) report predicted that by 2025, 50% of all employees will require reskilling due to the adoption of new technologies like AI. Soft skills such as agility, adaptation and autonomous work are becoming even more important.

Decision-making with data-driven insights

Decision-making is another area where AI can enhance human skills. Business decisions are increasingly data-driven. AI analytics tools, such as IBM Watson and Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning, can process vast amounts of data quickly and accurately, helping employees more quickly make informed decisions based on lightning-quick AI-driven insights.

The benefits of AI-enhanced decision-making are significant. First, AI-driven operations improves accuracy according to a 2022 McKinsey study, leading to better business outcomes and a more competitive edge. This can have far-reaching effects from optimizing supply chain management to improving customer satisfaction and driving revenue growth.

AI may have some limitations in terms of replicated human bias – more on that below – but when used wisely, it can also promote more unbiased decision-making. It can reduce and even eliminate cognitive biases that cloud human judgment, making for more objective, data-driven decisions including in HR.

For example, AI-powered recruitment tools like Workable ensure unbiased hiring processes. For example, its Video Interviews functionality creates interview questions that autopopulate across all interviews for a uniform experience, and its AI Recruiter surfaces candidates based on qualifications and experience. Its AI-created job descriptions are also free of bias.

AI fostering workplace collaboration

As the modern workplace continues to evolve, effective collaboration has become more important than ever. AI tech can also facilitate communication, as well as streamline project management and workflows.

Let’s look at each in depth:

Communication

AI-powered communication tools are revolutionizing how teams collaborate. AI-enhanced tools like SuperNormal’s AI-driven notetaking functionality can significantly improve communication and collaboration among team members.

For example, SuperNormal features automatically transcribes and analyzes meeting content, making it easy for participants to review, share and reference key points discussed. This capability not only enhances communication but also helps to ensure that remote and distributed workers remain engaged and informed, even if they’re unable to attend a meeting in real time.

Chief CX Innovation Officer Jonathan Shroyer at Arise Virtual Solutions is a huge proponent of AI tools in communications, citing emerging tools include AI support chatbots, repeat process automation, AI agents and big data bots in this Forbes article.

Project management and workflow

Project management is another area where AI-enhanced tools such as Asana, Trello and Jira can streamline workflows and improve team collaboration through the automation of tasks, identification of bottlenecks and future-proofing against project risks.

For example, Asana’s workload feature uses AI to analyze team members’ capacity and automatically allocate tasks, ensuring that work is distributed evenly and preventing burnout. Similarly, Trello’s AI-powered ‘Butler’ automates routine tasks, enabling team members to focus on higher-value activities and collaborate more effectively. Atlassian has incorporated predictive machine learning tools into its Jira and Confluence softwares.

The impact of AI on project management is significant. Harvard Business Review writes extensively about how AI will transform project management. In their article, they say that about $48 trillion are invested in projects annually, but only 35% of projects are considered to be successful according to Standish Group. And according to a Gartner report, 80% of project management tasks will be run by AI by the year 2030.

That’s a lot of money at stake. If AI-driven project management can make processes more efficient and productive, shortening project durations and reducing errors, it’s a no-brainer to incorporate AI and machine learning capabilities to foster team collaboration.

Overcoming challenges of AI implementation

It’s not all roses, though. There are challenges that you need to bear in mind when implementing AI to support human skills and collaboration at work. Concerns about job displacement and ethical considerations are pressing issues that you must address as you bring AI into your everyday operations.

Job displacement

One of the most significant concerns surrounding AI implementation is the potential for job displacement. While AI can automate repetitive tasks and improve efficiency, this automation has raised fears of job losses and workforce disruption. For instance, a new World Economic Forum report finds that a quarter of all jobs will be impacted over the next five years with AI at the forefront of those changes.

Here’s a spin on it, however – that same WEF report notes a net positive in jobs over the next five years due to these new developments. It’ll be tumultuous, but in the end, it’s a shift in jobs rather than a reduction in job opportunities.

However, to overcome redundancy, companies will need to adopt the right strategies and invest in workforce development to ensure they stay competitive in the business landscape. Rather than simply seeing AI as replacing humans in work processes, AI can be viewed as a complementary tool that enhances human skills. By focusing on the opportunities that AI creates, organizations can unlock the technology’s full potential and ensure a smooth transition for their workforce.

MIT’s Paul McDonagh-Smith is a supporter of this mentality, highlighting the merger of technological prowess with human drivers to boost your organizational ‘creativity quotient’. In a recent webinar, he discussed how human and machine capabilities can work in a mutually complementary fashion rather than compete with each other.

So what does that mean? Change does not need to be scary. It can be seen as an opportunity. Employees can be reskilled and upskilled so they’re equipped with the resources and talents they need to adapt quickly to their evolving roles and the technologies that come with them. Those who are agile, prepared and continually learning will get ahead.

Data backs this up. The WEF reports that 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025 as adoption of workplace technologies grows – with the bulk of those skills focused around problem-solving and critical thinking.

If you proactively address those needs in your business, you can mitigate those job displacement concerns in your teams. Encourage them to grow and develop, and support them to do so, so your business can be set for success in the age of AI.

Ethical use of AI in the workplace

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into the workplace, ensuring its ethical use is paramount. You’ll want to address potential issues related to employee privacy and algorithmic bias to ensure a responsible and equitable AI-driven work environment.

To protect employee privacy, you should establish clear policies and guidelines regarding the collection, storage and use of personal data. By being transparent about how AI technologies process employee data and implementing robust security measures, businesses can build trust and mitigate privacy concerns.

Addressing algorithmic bias is another essential element of ethical AI use. AI systems can inadvertently perpetuate existing biases if they are trained on biased data or designed without considering potential biases. Amazon’s gender-biased hiring using AI is one of the more prominent examples, as well as the infamous “racist soap dispenser” that made waves online some years back.

To counteract these issues, SMBs should invest in diverse AI development teams and implement bias-detection and mitigation strategies in their AI systems. By doing so, they can promote fairness, inclusivity and diversity in the workplace.

Finally, maintaining human oversight is crucial for the ethical use of AI. While AI can augment human decision-making and enhance productivity, it is essential to ensure that humans remain in control and responsible for critical decisions.

AI is the great empowerer

AI in the workplace will revolutionize how we work, collaborate and innovate. It won’t replace humans – it’ll simply enhance human skills. That is, if we empower employees to grow professionally and adapt accordingly to the changing demands of the modern work environment.

Organizations can also incorporate AI tools to foster workplace collaboration, facilitate communication, streamline project management and optimize workflows. At the core of all this? The human aspect.

There’s a powerful saying that’s making the rounds right now: AI will not take your job, but people who use AI will. Keep that in your mind as you move forward – AI isn’t a threat. It’s a great empowerer.

Humans now get from point A to point B faster using machines rather than horses, and can build more quickly with nail guns and electric saws rather than hammers and hacksaws. You’ll find that with a balanced approach and a well-developed human development strategy that incorporates AI, you can continue to thrive as people and as businesses.

The post How AI can enhance human skills and collaboration at work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Don’t get nervous. This isn’t T-1000 coming for your job. AI in recruitment can ultimately be a good thing, but only if you properly harness AI’s power. It’ll reduce the time it takes to fill open positions, freeing up vast resources for you to focus on higher-level strategy and actually build stronger human connections with candidates (ironic, we know).

Let’s walk through some of the highlights of incorporating AI recruiting platforms into your overall hiring strategy. And then we’ll look at some of the potential challenges. Ready?

What can AI recruiting software do for you?

AI recruiting software presents numerous advantages – and many recruiters agree. As it happens, 76% of recruiters believe AI has or will have a significant impact on their hiring process according to LinkedIn.

How? In short, by leveraging artificial intelligence, these tools streamline the hiring process, eliminate human bias and empower data-driven decisions – and a lot more.

Let’s look at the ways in which that happens.

1. Advanced candidate sourcing

AI-driven recruitment platforms can access a broader pool of candidates, reaching passive job seekers who may not be actively applying for positions. This enables employers to discover candidates who may have otherwise been overlooked.

This can be huge when you’re hypertargeting candidates for niche positions and when you’re regularly experiencing shortflows in the number of applications for your jobs.

2. Improved resume screening

AI-driven hiring tools use machine learning algorithms to analyze resumes and predict candidate performance for you, opening up time for recruiters and hiring managers to quickly identify the most suitable candidates before moving them forward in the process.

When 72% of applications are considered low or average quality by recruiters according to Gartner, and the number of candidates per job is rising all the time, AI-assisted screening can provide a boost to the hiring team’s work process.

3. Enhance candidate experience

AI recruitment tools create a personalized and engaging experience for job seekers. AI-driven tools can guide candidates through the application process and answer common questions, resulting in a more streamlined and positive experience for job seekers.

It can also ensure better matches between employers and jobseekers – making for a better connection both ways. It also cuts down many other popular items in the candidate complaint box as outlined in Reddit, including no longer having to reenter resume details, being asked the same questions multiple times, and long waits between stages.

4. Make data-driven decisions

AI recruiting software equips you with more valuable insights and analytics, giving you greater ability to make informed decisions throughout the hiring process.

Gartner analyst Gareth Herschel said in 2021: “Organizations must recognize that when so many things are changing so rapidly, they need to invest in people and systems that will help make sense of that change and respond to it. Organizations need data and analytics.”

That mindset applies hugely here.

5. Minimize bias

AI recruitment platforms use algorithms to minimize the impact of unconscious bias on the hiring process. By implementing standardized screening methods and using AI-driven tools to analyze candidate profiles, organizations can create a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

There is, of course, concern in regards to bias in hiring as a result of AI – because AI is ultimately a replicant of existing human systems. Doesn’t mean AI is inherently bad, though. It simply calls for proper oversight.

As Harver Chief Data Science Officer Frida Polli wrote in Harvard Business Review: “It is impossible to correct human bias, but it is demonstrably possible to identify and correct bias in AI.”

6. Save costs

Implementing AI recruiting tools results in significant cost savings for your organization. By automating repetitive tasks and improving the efficiency of the recruitment process, employers can reduce costs associated with lengthy hiring processes in terms of sheer hours.

Plus, with its greater efficiency in hiring, AI can also lower employee turnover rates. You can avoid those horrible costs associated with replacing employees.

What are the risks of AI recruiting software?

Now, let’s look at the flip side of the coin. AI isn’t magically going to solve all your problems. Just as every new solution creates new problems – the incorporation of AI recruitment software into your hiring process comes with some challenges.

If you’ve seen Jurassic Park, you know the great quote from Dr. Ian Malcolm: ““Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Now, we’re not saying you shouldn’t use AI in your recruitment workflows. But you should be mindful of these new potential trip-ups when you do use it:

1. Speed won’t always win the race

When you speed up the hiring process, that does put butts in seats faster – and many candidates will appreciate how quickly you move them through the pipeline compared with other companies. That can have the opposite effect for some candidates who feel like they’re just being rushed through and then ushered out – not great for the candidate experience.

Optimizing the process does not always mean speeding it up. Rather, it means being more efficient – that’s the role AI recruitment software can play in your overall strategy.

2. The lack of human nuance

When you leave everything to AI, there can be an unsettling lack of nuance in the process. Even as AI continues to evolve, there’s an ‘uncanny valley’ element to it that persists – in other words, there’s a feeling that it’s not quite human and not quite ‘all there’. If you can sense that when working in ChatGPT in your various tasks, that’s just proof that it’s not able to fully replicate the important human aspects of hiring.

Some of the bigger decisions in recruitment – namely, who to offer the job to – should still be left to us lowly humans and not entirely left to AI or algorithm. You’re hiring someone to fill a new job and that’s high-enough stakes to warrant human-centric decision-making in at least some parts of the hiring process.

3. AI isn’t always accurate

If you’ve worked extensively in ChatGPT, MidJourney or another generative AI tool, you’ll find that it’s not always spot on in detail. Sometimes it’ll pull up a weird made-up statistic or quote as a “hypothetical example”, or it’ll create an image that’s not quite what you were looking for.

So when you’re using generative AI to create a new company policy or onboarding plan, put a second set of eyes on it – and make sure that set of eyes is an actual human with experience in human resources. That important oversight can make a big difference in catching those little things.

Evolve, but be smart about it

AI recruitment software enhances the process and will continue to as AI evolves. But responsible use of the AI is crucial to ensure a smooth-moving, efficient hiring process for both hiring managers and recruiters.

But the benefits do outweigh the risks by and far. You could choose not to integrate AI recruiting tools and platforms into your overall strategy but you run the risk of falling behind your competitors when attracting top-tiered talent to your organization.

Alternatively, you could go all-out AI in your process, which clearly has problems of its own.

The choice is up to you, of course. Choose wisely.

The post AI recruiting software: use it wisely and reap its benefits appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Tech buy-in and adoption in hiring teams is a challenge for 22.8% of businesses
• The percentage of businesses citing insufficient in-house capacity to hire as one of their major challenges has increased 84.5% since 2020
• And finally – nearly one in five employers (17.5%) say their existing tech stack isn’t enough to meet their hiring needs

This was all before ChatGPT hopped into the ring with great aplomb. Surely, if we carried out the same survey today, all the above numbers would be higher. And as businesses increasingly incorporate more AI tools into their fold, many will find their existing tech stack is no longer enough to meet their needs. Likewise, employees worry that they’ll become redundant.

Plus, many businesses are exercising financial restraint. Technologies that don’t have a clear tie-back to revenue are being dropped like hot potatoes. Employees are being let go. That double-whammy means teams are limited in their capacity to stay on top of work – including in hiring.

That’s not supposed to bring you down, however. Stay with us here, and let’s go a little deeper:

Gartner’s Senior Director Analyst, Sandy Shen, said this about surviving the pandemic as a business:

“Businesses that can shift technology capacity and investments to digital platforms will mitigate the impact of the outbreak and keep their companies running smoothly now, and over the long term.”

“Businesses that can shift technology capacity and investments to digital platforms will … keep their companies running smoothly now, and over the long term.”

In other words, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. That same sentiment rings even more true now – businesses that move quickly to AI-driven tech capabilities will stay ahead of the curve especially during these recession-prone times.

We’re seeing rapid adoption already, with a ResumeBuilder survey finding half of all companies are already using ChatGPT and 93% of current users say they plan to expand their use of this savvy AI tool.

Take on that optimistic spirit of early adoption of the tech – not just ChatGPT, but all the AI and digital developments happening in the hiring space – and you’ll see a vastly improved hiring process at a time when your business most needs it.

The evolution of AI in hiring

But what exactly is changing in hiring? A lot, as it happens. ChatGPT is already being used extensively to auto-write job descriptions, interview questions, and many other elements of the hiring process that at one time required a human to create. You’re still the driver, however, and there are many elements of hiring that you can drive with the support of AI.

With that in mind, let’s look at some fundamental aspects of recruitment and the ways in which they’re being digitally transformed.

1. Sourcing and outreach

The rise of advanced search tools, AI-driven algorithms, and automation has expanded the ability to identify and target top candidates. To stay ahead, learn to leverage these technologies effectively, engage with emerging niche platforms, and build meaningful connections with candidates through online communities.

Some of the tech advances in sourcing include:

AI-based candidate matching

Platforms are utilizing artificial intelligence to analyze job descriptions and match them with the most suitable candidates from a large database. Workable’s AI Recruiter, for example, can build a list of top passive candidates for your job openings utilizing our data intelligence gathered from hosting 160 million candidates in 1.5 million jobs.

Programmatic job advertising

AI-powered programmatic job advertising platforms help you target and attract the right candidates by distributing job ads across various online channels. These platforms analyze real-time data to make intelligent decisions on where and when to post job ads, optimizing budget and reach.

Recruitment chatbots

Chatbots help automate initial candidate interactions, answering questions, and pre-screening candidates. These chatbots can engage candidates 24/7, collect necessary information, and schedule interviews, freeing up time for more high-touch interactions.

Talent pooling and candidate rediscovery

AI-powered platforms allow you to tap into existing talent pools by rediscovering candidates who have applied for previous positions. By analyzing candidates’ profiles, these platforms can identify potential matches for new job openings, reducing the time and resources spent on sourcing. A good example is Workable’s Resurface Candidates tool, which does exactly this.

2. Screening and assessments

Technology can revolutionize the way you assess candidates’ skills, experiences, and cultural fit. AI-powered tools and gamified assessments offer more efficient and engaging methods of evaluation. Hiring team members must stay up to date with these tools and ensure they comply with privacy regulations to maintain candidate trust.

Some of those tech advances include:

Pre-employment assessments

Hiring teams are increasingly utilizing pre-employment assessment tools, such as Criteria Corp and Workable Assessments, to measure candidates’ cognitive abilities, personality traits, and job-specific skills.

These assessments help to streamline the screening process and identify candidates who are more likely to be a good fit for the role and company culture.

Gamified assessments

Gamification has been incorporated into the assessment process to create a more engaging experience for candidates. Tools like Pymetrics and Arctic Shores utilize game-based assessments to evaluate cognitive abilities, problem-solving skills, and personality traits.

These provide a fun and interactive way to measure candidates’ fit for a role, while also collecting valuable data to support hiring decisions.

Skill tests and coding challenges

Companies use platforms such as HackerRank and Codility to administer skill tests and coding challenges, allowing candidates to demonstrate their technical abilities in real-world scenarios. These tools enable you to objectively assess candidates’ skills and compare them against established benchmarks.

Virtual reality assessments

Virtual reality (VR) technology is being utilized in the hiring process to assess candidates’ skills and aptitudes in immersive, simulated environments. Talespin and Immerse, among others, are VR-based assessment tools that test candidates’ decision-making, teamwork and communication abilities in realistic scenarios.

Automated reference checking

Automated reference checking platforms such as SkillSurvey and Checkster streamline the reference checking process by collecting feedback from a candidate’s professional contacts. These tools use AI algorithms to analyze the feedback and generate detailed reports, supporting hiring decisions.

3. Virtual Interviewing

Virtual interviewing tools have become increasingly popular, providing valuable insights through AI-powered analysis. Through these technologies, whether carried out synchronously or asynchronously, hiring team members can make more informed decisions about candidates.

Asynchronous video interviews

Asynchronous video interviews enable candidates to record their responses to pre-set interview questions at their convenience. Platforms like Workable’s Video Interviews allow you to review and assess these recorded responses on their own time, streamlining the interview process and eliminating scheduling challenges.

Then, AI-driven analysis of these interviews can help you identify key soft skills and communication abilities – more on that below.

Synchronous video interviews

Real-time video interviews conducted through platforms like Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams became increasingly standard during the pandemic. These virtual meetings provide a cost- and time-effective alternative to in-person interviews while still allowing for real-time interaction between the interviewer and the candidate.

AI-driven video interview analysis

AI-based platforms can analyze recorded video interviews to assess candidates’ soft skills, communication abilities, and other attributes. These platforms use natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to evaluate candidates’ responses, providing you with valuable insights and data-driven recommendations.

Likewise, AI-powered transcription services such as Supernormal can then be used to transcribe, analyze and summarize these interviews, providing you with valuable insights and data points for further evaluation.

AI-based sentiment analysis

AI-driven sentiment analysis tools can evaluate the tone, emotions, and sentiment expressed by candidates during video interviews. These insights help you to better understand candidates’ communication styles, emotional intelligence, and cultural fit.

Platforms like RingCentral and IBM Watson can integrate with video interviewing tools to provide real-time sentiment analysis during virtual interviews.

Facial and voice recognition

Advanced facial and voice recognition technologies are being utilized to analyze non-verbal cues and vocal characteristics during video interviews. Realeyes and VoiceVibes are two such tools that can help you identify key traits and behaviors that may not be evident through traditional interviewing methods, offering a more comprehensive assessment of the candidate.

Virtual interview coaching and feedback

AI-driven coaching tools provide candidates with feedback on their interview performance, identifying areas for improvement and offering personalized guidance. This helps candidates to refine their skills and better prepare for future interviews, while also providing you with a slicker pool of applicants. InterviewStream and MyInterview are two such examples of this technology.

4. Onboarding and beyond

The onboarding process is also evolving rapidly, with virtual onboarding tools and personalized experiences driven by data analytics and AI.

Digital onboarding platforms

Cloud-based platforms like BambooHR and Talmundo enable companies to centralize and streamline the onboarding process. New hires can access essential documents, complete paperwork, watch training videos, and connect with team members—all from a single platform.

These tools allow HR and managers to track progress, ensuring that new employees complete required tasks and receive necessary support during their initial weeks.

Virtual onboarding events

As remote work and distributed teams continue to gain traction as a standard in the workplace, companies are increasingly hosting virtual onboarding events to welcome new hires. Organizations use video conferencing tools to conduct virtual meet-and-greets, team-building exercises, and training sessions to help new employees feel connected and engaged from the start.

Personalized learning paths

AI-driven learning management systems (LMS) like Docebo and Cornerstone can create personalized learning paths for new hires based on their roles, responsibilities and skill sets.

By leveraging AI and data analytics, these systems can track progress and adapt training content to suit individual needs, ensuring that new employees are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills for their roles.

Employee onboarding chatbots

AI-powered chatbots like Talla can assist new hires during the onboarding process by answering common questions, providing relevant information, and guiding them through required tasks.

These chatbots can be integrated into workplace communication platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams, offering real-time support and minimizing the need for new employees to contact HR or managers for help.

Social and collaborative learning

Digital tools like 360Learning and Degreed foster social and collaborative learning experiences for new hires. These platforms allow employees to share knowledge, ask questions, and collaborate on projects, enabling new team members to learn from their peers and build relationships within the organization.

The future of hiring tech

That’s a lot of tech already. But there’s more on the horizon – and ChatGPT and its cousins are really only at the cusp of it. Let’s look at the various other ways in which digital transformation of recruitment is continuing to grow:

Advanced AI-driven candidate matching

AI algorithms are growing to the point where they can predict the success of a candidate within a company based on data analysis of past employees’ performances. This could significantly improve the quality of hires and streamline the recruitment process, allowing you to focus on the human aspects of your role.

Virtual reality interviewing and onboarding

Virtual reality (VR) technology is already revolutionizing the hiring process. Candidates can be immersed in a virtual work environment, interacting with potential colleagues, and participating in real-life work scenarios before they even get the job. This provides you with valuable insights into a candidate’s ability to adapt and perform in their new role.

Augmented reality (AR) enhanced job previews

Likewise, augmented reality can be utilized to give candidates a more immersive preview of their potential work environment, from their desks to the company’s facilities. Candidates can use their smartphones or AR devices to explore their future workplace, interacting with digital information about company culture, benefits, and team structures.

This would allow candidates to make more informed decisions about accepting job offers and help you identify candidates who are genuinely excited about joining the company.

Blockchain-based credential verification

Blockchain technology can play a significant role in recruitment by streamlining the verification of candidates’ credentials, such as education, certifications and work experience. By using a decentralized, secure and tamper-proof system, you can quickly and accurately validate the qualifications of candidates.

This reduces hours spent on background checks and minimizes the risk of fraudulent claims.

Remote workforce management through IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) could play a vital role in managing remote workforces, as companies increasingly adopt flexible and remote work models. IoT devices and wearables could be used to monitor employee health, productivity, and engagement in real-time, providing valuable insights. This data could be used to create personalized support plans for employees, addressing their unique needs and preferences.

There’s plenty more, of course, but that’s just a taste of what’s happening now and in the near future.

Lessons from Michelangelo, Borg and Ford

Let’s step out of that tech rabbit hole for a moment, and consider some real-life lessons to help assuage fears that jobs will be taken over by artificial intelligence including in hiring teams. The reality is, AI can be your friend if you embrace it.

Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel

First, let’s look at one of history’s great painters and one of history’s equally great paintworks. While Michelangelo is famous for his work on the Sistine Chapel, he did not complete the masterpiece alone. He had a team of assistants to help him bring his vision to life. He consulted with them, worked with them to prepare the “canvas”, and so on. He still led the project and directed his teams to set the foundation for what ultimately became his masterpiece.

Likewise, for you, AI can be your assistant. It’ll take care of the other work and help you focus on the human aspects of your role, including fostering a positive candidate experience and ensuring that your teams are highly engaged.

Bjorn Borg and the wooden racket

When tennis legend Bjorn Borg made a comeback in 1991 after years in retirement, he chose to stick with his wooden racket rather than adopting the modern graphite rackets that had become the standard in the sport. His insistence on staying with outdated technology led to disappointing (and even embarrassing) results.

This is a reminder to stay up-to-date with – and ahead of – the latest technologies and trends in your area of work. If you don’t stay on top of your game, you’ll fall behind and miss out on top talent.

Henry Ford and the assembly line

Car titan Henry Ford revolutionized the manufacturing industry with his innovative assembly line, which dramatically increased efficiency and reduced production costs. Ford took inspiration from meat-packing plants and a grain mill conveyor belt to divide the labor into clear steps and to bring the work to the workers, thereby reducing time wasted in moving around and leading to mass production and cheaper cars.

Likewise, you can explore and adopt new technologies that can optimize your workflow and save you an incredible amount of time and hassle – and money.

AI isn’t a threat – it’s your ally

SWOT analysis is a common element of business strategy. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats – hence, SWOT. Think about what you’re doing at work, and what your company’s doing. What are your strengths right now? What are your weaknesses? And what are the opportunities you can capitalize on to overcome those weaknesses?

The fourth one – the threat – is probably overplayed when it comes to AI. The infusion of AI in hiring need not be seen as a threat to the profession, but rather as an opportunity for growth and enhancement.

Don’t forget that the human touch continues to be a vital aspect of the hiring process, and AI technology is the tool to support and streamline your efforts.

It’s an exciting time. Embrace this age of digital transformation, including in hiring. Learn from the successes of Michelangelo and Henry Ford, and the failure of Bjorn Borg, and navigate this new road. The future of hiring sits squarely in the harmonious blend of technology and human skill. Master that balance, and you’ll do very well.

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These moves had the effect of making money more scarce and sent a chilling effect across the global economy.

Companies always try to tighten their belts when entering a potentially recessionary environment, and one way to get costs under control is to ensure that your businesses software expenses are being allocated as efficiently as possible.

Related: The agile recruitment process: hiring with leaner teams and budgets

Many HR and talent acquisition teams will see (or already have seen) their budgets flat line or shrink in 2023, so they will need to make strong, cost-effective software decisions as they build their HR software toolset.

Below are a few strategies that can help your team be more disciplined and efficient with your HR tech stack, while still giving you, your team and your employees the tools they need to be productive and successful:

1. Bundle where you can

There has been a back-and-forth debate in the software industry going back to time immemorial: Is it better to have an all-in-one system or to take a best-in-class approach?

Fewer systems are generally better than more systems, but there can often be compelling business reasons to add best-in-class point solutions.

The case for fewer systems is not just about lowering software expenses (although that can be a side effect). Often, the case is about being more efficient and streamlined.

With a more bundled HR tech stack, employees only have to download one app and remember one login, in order to handle all of their HR technology needs. It also means that when things go wrong, you only have one customer support contact to reach out to for help.

Another reason that companies opt for an all-in-one provider is because data typically flows more effectively throughout a single system than it does across multiple systems.

This can help reduce the amount of manual re-entry that administrators have to do. It can also make reporting easier, since generating reports from an all-in-one system is often easier to do than downloading and combining reports from multiple systems.

Despite the advantages of an all-in-one system, a business may still want to choose a few areas in their HR tech stack to prioritize best-in-class solutions.

In an environment where labor is still incredibly scarce and unemployment remains near record lows, having an advantage in recruiting from a best-in-class applicant tracking system (ATS) can return surplus value for a business.

A smart HR operation should be looking at their overall tech stack and looking for opportunities to bundle, but also stay cognizant of the benefits that their best-in-class providers can bring.

2. Partner with growing vendors

You’ve likely heard the phrase ‘a rising tide lifts all ships. And this is especially true when it comes to your HR software partners.

The trajectory that a software company is on is another thing to consider when you’re deciding which software partners will serve you best in a leaner business climate.

When evaluating competitive platforms, try to triangulate where each business is heading. Ask questions about the company’s leadership, their funding, their product innovation cycles and how long customers stay on their platform.

Two software vendors could look identical, in terms of functionality and price today, but in two or three years they could be miles apart, if one of the vendors has an arrow pointing up and the other is stagnating.

The vendor with the better trajectory will be able to deliver you new innovative upgrades, more frequently and will be able to attract more engaged, caring employees to work with your team.

3. Find the right deal

A third thing to consider with all of your software vendors is: Is the partnership structure mutually beneficial for both sides?

Most software buyers assume that list prices and contract terms are fixed and can’t be moved. But in our experience, buyers tend to have much more flexibility than they realize.

If you’ve been a great partner to your software vendor, they won’t want to lose your business over small details.

If you’re getting squeezed by your financial pressures, but don’t want to lose a beloved software partner, reach out to that partner and see if a resolution can be found.

This guide from Outsail details how to appropriately negotiate a software agreement, but a few of the key things to keep in mind are:

• It’s a give and a take, so if you want better terms, you’ll likely have to give something to your software partner in return
• Your sales or account management reps are your ally, so arm them with what they need to bargain on your behalf

Many people (incorrectly) think that negotiations are an adversarial endeavor, but the truth is that these conversations, when done well, can be some of the most transparent and mutually beneficial discussions you’ll have with your partners.

As we all face new business headwinds, there will be more pressure on HR teams to optimize their software spend.

Related: How to calculate the ROI of an ATS: A step-by-step guide

But, this certainly doesn’t mean that you will have to downgrade all of your software platforms and work only with bargain basement providers.

Instead, this is an opportunity to identify your most strategic partners and create deeper, more mutually beneficial partnerships that will allow both parties to come out the other side better.

Brett Ungashick is the founder of OutSail, a free HR software advisory service. OutSail helps companies research, evaluate and select new HR software. Brett started his career by selling software to HR teams at LinkedIn, before recognizing a growing need from software buyers for support throughout their buying processes. OutSail was founded in 2018 and has helped over 700 companies with new HR software purchases including companies like SalesLoft, DoorDash and the Boys & Girls Club of America.

The post How to make your HR tech budget go further appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What does that mean? Increased DX means an evolution of the workplace. We’re seeing a lot of talk about this out there, including in a new PwC report that specifically highlighted workplace technology as the way forward if employers and organizations want to stay relevant.

Why? In short, it’s what workers want especially in the new flexible workplace. It’s also what businesses want, if they want to see processes made easier for their employees – including utilization of AI, machine learning, automation, and the cloud, according to PwC’s report.

Meanwhile, Gartner’s Senior Director Analyst, Sandy Shen echoed those sentiments about workplace digital transformation:

“The value of digital channels, products and operations is immediately obvious to companies everywhere right now…this is a wake-up call for organizations that have placed too much focus on daily operational needs at the expense of investing in digital business and long-term resilience. Businesses that can shift technology capacity and investments to digital platforms will mitigate the impact of the outbreak and keep their companies running smoothly now, and over the long term.”

“Businesses that can shift technology capacity and investments to digital platforms will mitigate the impact of the outbreak and keep their companies running smoothly now, and over the long term.”

To emphasize: COVID-19 was a wake-up call for orgs to evolve.

And Kate Smaje at McKinsey Digital also notes:

“COVID-19 has only made digital more relevant as companies … have undergone their own massive, overnight experiment in agile, and remote ways of working.”

Honestly, it’s not just about COVID. That was just the catalyst to something that was already in the works for a long, long time.

All that being said, let’s return to our survey and see what our respondents say about DX in the workplace.

DX is the bridge

Many companies updated both their business (54.5%) and customer-facing operations (56.9%) to a more digitally friendly format during the pandemic.

… and that bridge is built to last

Moreover, more than half of all respondents consider the digitization of their business (52.8%) and customer-facing (51.9%) operations to be permanently established in their company.

The great enablement

Meanwhile, when it comes to employee performance, existing technology enabled three in five businesses (58.8%) to move their workforce to a remote-first environment. And two thirds (67.5%) say their colleagues can go remote because there was no viable need for them to be physically present at the workplace.

What does all this tell us?

It’s as if a perfect storm took place. The tech and capabilities were already there; it just took a pandemic to push forward into this new world of work. And the logical next step became further and deeper digitization of business operations and working processes.

What kind of tech?

Now, let’s look at the types of technology that businesses are now using in digital transformation in the workplace.

Collaborative tech beckons

Communications technology – or more specifically, tech to support work collaborations – is by and far the top focal point for respondents to ensure employee engagement, with 75.8% of respondents choosing that as a key to success. Virtual team meetings (46.7%) also ranks high on the scale.

Socially enabling tech, not so much

Virtual coffee dates and / or happy hours (15.2%) registers as the least-popular focal point to ensure employee engagement.

Employee tracking on the backtrack

Time-tracking and / or employee monitoring technology isn’t popular either, with just 22.5% of respondents using that to ensure engagement.

What does all this tell us?

In short, it isn’t so much about connecting your employees socially or personally, or making sure your employees are actually working on the clock. It’s more about minimizing disruption to overall workflow by ensuring that employees are well-informed (as seen in the popularity of regular all-hands) and are working together seamlessly.

Businesses are also ensuring that the lines of communication are open and free-flowing regardless of the environment they’re working in. This is crucial to success.

Want to dive into the full report? Check it out.

The post Is DX evolving in the workplace? Our survey says yes appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here’s a list with five thoughtful presents that can be ideal resources for recruiters and talent professionals:

1. A library of templates

Anyone involved in the hiring process knows how much time is spent on writing job descriptions, composing emails to candidates or crafting lists of interview questions. So, for this holiday season, give a recruiter a library of templates for every purpose, from job ads and offer letters to interview questions and Boolean searches.

How do you present this gift? If you want to add a touch of holiday spirit, you could send it as a card. Use a relevant service or create your own card using a tool like Adobe Express Card Maker. Here’s one I created with Spark within 10 minutes:

2. A book on modern recruiting

Recruiting has grown exponentially from the time of newspaper job ads, and it’ll keep evolving and changing. Forward-thinking talent professionals who stay updated on new techniques and technologies will be the big winners in the recruiting game.

So why not give a new, exciting book to a recruiting professional? Here are a few great options:

• Culture-Driven Recruiting by Lee-Anne Edwards (the first-ever book on the topic)
• Smart and Gets Things Done by Avram Joel Spolsky (an oldie-but-goody “concise guide to finding the best technical talent”)
• Exceptional Talent: How to Attract, Acquire and Retain the Very Best Employees by Mervyn Dinnen and Matt Alder (a guide on using modern technology, methods and media to hire and retain great employees).
• Writing Without Bullshit by Josh Bernoff (an easy-to-read, comprehensive guide to better written communications including emails, announcements, and reports)

As for presentation, nothing too fancy is required. Get some festive wrapping paper and you’re all set!

3. A cool subscription

For recruiters, receiving new knowledge frequently is important – you can grasp new techniques, find hiring methods that work and discover new recruiting strategies, just by keeping abreast of the buzz in the market. But how would a recruiter do that easily, when they’re already so busy with everyday tasks?

One thing you can do is to choose a fun, interesting and reliable newsletter/podcast they don’t already subscribe to, and sign them up or send them a link (you can include a card to make it more of a gift). Here are a few ideas:

4. A new Applicant Tracking System

Yeah, I know, shameless plug of our own product. But the truth is, we wouldn’t be making recruiting software if we didn’t think of it as a definite game-changer. If a recruiter doesn’t have an ATS, or uses an ATS that’s clunky and inadequate, you could address this in the new year. That’s especially so if you’re part of the recruiting team or one of the decision-makers at your company.

What you can do is conduct some research on ATS vendors and sign up for a demo or free trial. Then, invite the recruiter to sit in demos or explore the different software solutions along with you. You can also share an RFP template with them to help in their hunt for the perfect ATS.

5. Recruiting swag

Swag is less useful than the other options on this list, but things that cheer us up and boost our morale are always welcome. For recruiters, you could choose a funny slogan (for example: “Keep calm and call that candidate,” “Trust me, I’m a recruiter,” “Talent superstar”) and print it on a mug or a T-shirt.

You could also go straight to websites that sell swag for recruiters, like Etsy, Cafe Press or Zazzle:

You might even look for a stuffed purple squirrel or a mug or T-shirt that has one on it. Recruiters will probably get the reference!

The holiday season and New Year go hand-in-hand for many people. If that’s the case for you, too, then check out our list of 5 New Year’s resolutions for recruiters.

The post Resources for recruiters: 5 fun and useful presents appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Workable CFO Craig DiForte has been through this himself numerous times. He gets straight to the point: “There are two main things you want to look at,” he says. “Cost per hire and time to hire.”

Craig explains that you must break those down into manageable and measurable chunks, and identify the areas where you can optimize to get more bang for your buck.

“You had a budget that said that you were going to spend this much, and that HR was going to cost this much. What really happened? That’s where you need to look deeper.”

“You had a budget that said that you were going to spend this much, and that HR was going to cost this much. What really happened? That’s where you need to look deeper.”

1. Cost per hire

“The first thing to look at is your cost per hire for the past year,” Craig says. Cost per hire is the average cost invested in hiring X people in a time period – it’s easy to measure on the surface. But the solution isn’t as simple as saying, ‘Let’s cut back on our cost per hire.’ You need to drill down to specifics.

First, before planning your recruitment budget, go back to your last recruitment budget (if you have one) to use as an example and baseline. Because 2020 and 2021 are quite the financial anomalies for any company, you probably want to skip further back to 2019 – the last ‘normal’ year. Once you’ve lined up your projected numbers against your actual numbers for the previous recruitment budget, sort out all the costs related to your recruitment into sections, such as:

• Posting job ads
• Sourcing candidates
• Utilizing assessment services
• Running background checks

There are many more, of course, but when you have a list, you can start assigning individual expenses to each step. Then, determine where you went over budget and where you ended up under budget.

You can also include costs related to the hours taken away from someone’s normal workflow in the hiring process, if they’re not in HR. A hiring manager, for instance, will take a number of hours out of their normal workweek every week to look at the final list of candidates, assess them, interview them, and so on.

Assign costs to those invested hours by breaking down the annual salaries of each member of the hiring team into hourly chunks – from there, you can start allocating hours at a fixed “cost” to each section listed here.

(By the way – this highlights the importance of a clear, standardized recruitment process. It’s not just about being organized and uniform in the process itself; it also provides clarity into where you’re putting your money. With a standardized setup, you can start comparing past, present and future budgets by measuring them against established benchmarks.)

2. Time to fill and time to hire

When you put actual costs aside, the rest of it becomes less tangible, says Craig. “It’s not only money that you’re looking at. It’s also your time. How long did it take you to get those sales reps onto your team? Remember, time is money.”

The way he explains it, the time it takes to go from the very first day you start talking about filling a position to the day the new hire signs on the dotted line (or, in some cases, when they’re fully onboarded) – that’s your time to fill.

Time to hire is similar, except that it’s the time elapsed between the date that a specific candidate applied for a job and the date that they’re hired.

Look at your company’s work hours invested in the following categories, for example:

• Hiring team communications to determine the needs for a new position
• Writing the job description, posting and promoting it
• Drafting assessments and assignments
• The selection process itself, multiplied with each additional application:
  • resume screening
  • phone screening
  • one-way video interviews
  • interviewing (drafting questions, arranging time/place, carrying out actual interview)
  • analyzing assessments
  • reviewing assignments
  • contacting references
  • negotiating with selected candidate
  • job offer and follow-up
• Further hiring team communications at each step of the way, both within the team and with the candidate

Again, this is not an exhaustive list.

Time to ramp

Calculating your recruitment “time” budget can also include time to ramp, Craig recommends. He uses the recruiting of a sales team as an example, asking: “What’s the ramp time for a sales rep in your company? Let’s say a sales rep ramps up over three months. If I’m going to hire someone in January, that means I’m going to have only nine months of full productivity from that over the next year.”

In other words, if a sales rep hired on Jan. 1 is expected to close $1 million a year, this means you can actually only plan for that sales rep to close $750,000 that year. It gets worse the longer you wait, especially if you’re building a sales team from scratch. Plus, if you onboard poorly, turnover increases, and you’re back to square one. So looking at time to ramp – and the resources invested in that – is crucial to planning your recruitment budget for the upcoming year.

“That’s the type of ‘cost’ related to your time to hire and time to fill,” Craig explains.

He highlights another scenario: the launch of a new feature.

“Let’s say I was going to launch a new feature in March, and I want my team hired and in place to be able to put it together between January and February, so it’ll be ready to go in March.”

And if you didn’t hire everyone you needed in that time frame?

“Obviously, then, your feature is not going to be ready in March. Now, the feature that was supposed to help generate an extra $200K a month in revenue for the sales team is now delayed by two months to May. And so, I’ve just lost $400K that I had budgeted for.”

There are multiple scenarios here that show the compounding effect of breakdowns in hiring processes. It’s not as simple as backfilling a position – you need to plan ahead of schedule. There are multiple parts that need to fall into place ahead of time so you can meet goals later on. And that of course has an impact on planning your recruitment budget whether that’s directly related, delayed, or indirect.

3. Also crucial: Turnover rate

Yes, even your best people leave for other opportunities. But they don’t always leave because of an offer they couldn’t refuse – they also leave because they’re unhappy where they are, because they don’t feel like the job was a good fit for them, and so on. That’s on you as a company.

So where does budget fit in here? Craig will consult with HR and find out what the company’s turnover rate is – here’s a tutorial on how you can calculate that yourself. Your current turnover rate for the last 12 months also helps you predict the number of hires you can anticipate over the next fiscal year on top of your planned upscale. For instance, if your company plans to add 30 sales reps over the next year, add your anticipated turnover to that, and multiply your cost per hire by that final number to get a good estimate of how much you can expect to put into the recruitment process.

Meanwhile, you can also see how your turnover rate stacks up against the standard, and adjust accordingly. According to Craig, you should look at your numbers and ask:

“Are you hiring effective people? Are you hiring the right people efficiently for the right cost? It’s all about the right person at the right time for the right cost.”

“Are you hiring effective people? Are you hiring the right people efficiently for the right cost? It’s all about the right person at the right time for the right cost.”

The right person hired at the right time will stick around, and that’s good for the bottom line. That means investing the right amount of money and time in the right spots. For instance, you could invest more in employee engagement initiatives – such as a corporate retreat, holiday or summer function, even a new, improved office environment.

Or, as Craig suggests, invest in a referral program to get more internal referrals – because referred candidates tend to stay longer with the company, your recruitment costs will go down.

4. Look to the past, to plan for the future

As Craig says, you need to look at your cost to hire, time to hire, and time to ramp, and figure out where you performed as projected/planned, and where you didn’t, and address the following questions in planning your recruitment budget:

• Did we use too many agencies?
  • Solution:  Bring it in-house.
• Did we not do enough internal recruiting?
  • Solution:  Build an internal recruitment strategy.
• Should we have done a better job sourcing?
  • Solution: Use Workable’s AI Recruiter and People Search and build up your sourcing strategies.
• Can we get people to stay longer?
  • Solution: Implement a formal employee retention program.

You can then ask the more interesting questions:

• Should we have hired quicker rather than waiting for the “perfect” candidate?
• Should we have waited longer for a better candidate to come along?
• What’s going to make it easier and more cost-effective for you to hire?
• What’s going to make it easier and more cost-effective to stay on plan?

Planning your recruitment budget

For many, hiring is about people, but for Craig, it’s about money: “It’s all about how much it costs you to do it. Am I doing it for the right cost, and am I doing it fast enough? That’s why you look at this and see what happened, and then you ask; ‘Where can I make an investment to make this better? Where did I do things that were wrong or expensive? Maybe I should have a better ATS.’”

Obvious plug aside, what may seem intangible in a company budget can easily be dissected and optimized. Think about where you’re overspending, and follow the domino effect – such as the delay in a features release – and trace it back to its cause. It’s all interrelated. Craig sums it up: Start thinking about how to allocate your budget smartly for 2023 so you improve in all areas.

“Once you do that, you can then develop your action plan.”

Need new hiring software but unsure of the cost-benefit? Check out our step-by-step guide to calculate the ROI of an ATS.

The post Planning your recruitment budget for 2023: top tips from Workable’s CFO appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Introduction to Applicant Tracking Systems
2. Overview of Applicant Tracking Systems
3. Is an ATS the Right Choice for your Growing Business?
4. Benefits of Applicant Tracking Systems
5. Choosing an Applicant Tracking System
6. Keys to Recruiting
7. Managing the Hiring Process
8. Optimizing Your Company’s Career Page
9. Managing the Interview Process
10. Assessing Your Requirements
11. Checklist of Applicant Tracking System Features

1. Introduction to Applicant tracking systems

The first applicant tracking systems (ATS) evolved to help employers take that old standby, the paper resume, and scan it into a database. Like most technologies that emerged to replicate analogue ways of doing things, they left a lot of room for improvement.

The processes were bureaucratic, unwieldy and complicated. The aim was to mirror old world paper and filing processes in a custom database. The word “clunky” was often overheard. In its formative years the ATS was similar to basic customer relationship management systems (CRMs), that sought to offer very basic resume screening and trace an applicant’s path through the hiring process.

Just like the CRMs, which began life as digital rolodexes and turned into the current cloud-based powerhouses, the ATS has evolved. Today, there are a wide range of ATS software options, some that concentrate on automating as much as possible of the hiring process and others that help the hiring manager to make their own decisions.

The ATS has become an integral part of every aspect of hiring from building an employer brand and smarter application forms, to resume parsing, automatic retrieval of candidates’ public profiles, and scheduling interviews. Recruiting analytics and reporting tools can now help companies get a clearer understanding of the hiring process and make improvements that have a real impact on the business.

The purpose of this applicant tracking system guide is to help you understand your needs as clearly as possible in order to make an informed choice of recruiting software.

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2. Overview of applicant tracking systems

The quality of a company’s hires are the single best predictor of its future success. Even though this is widely understood, hiring is still seen as frustrating and messy by many business owners, HR Directors, hiring managers and recruiters who grapple with it. But now, better software is righting this wrong.

Human Resources has been poorly served by technology for too long, when compared with the pioneers in sales, but we are seeing a renaissance in HR software, thanks in large part to the potential unleashed by cloud-based computing. At the heart of all of this is the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

What is an ATS?

What is an applicant tracking system (ATS)? In its simplest form, it offers relief to these commonly acknowledged pain points in recruitment:

Pain: Submitting the same job ad to multiple job boards costs time and money.
Relief: An ATS integrated with these listings sites can post to a wide range of free and paid job boards with a single submission.

Pain: Building and maintaining a careers page takes up valuable developer time.
Relief: An ATS can make managing a careers page as simple as changing your background image and bio on Twitter.

Pain: Recruiting triggers an avalanche of PDFs and emails.
Relief: ATS recruiting means you collect, organize and show job candidates in the same way LinkedIn or Facebook show your contacts or friends.

Pain: Resume styles are nearly as various as the people sending them.
Relief: Recruiting software can parse these resumes, break them down and present the data they contain in a standardized format where it can be quickly reviewed.

Pain: The absence of standardized information like “how many years of work experience has she got?” add to the time burden.
Relief: Applicant tracking software mines the resumes you receive and presents candidate data in a way that makes comparisons fast and simple.

Pain: Precious time is routinely wasted on irrelevant applications.
Relief: ATS recruiting offers the facility to automatically filter dud applications from job candidates or highlight 3-4 priorities on the application form that enable human judgement to be swifter.

Pain: Using email and spreadsheets to track candidates with a hiring team quickly becomes overwhelming.
Relief: An ATS can enable you to add notes to candidates just like you put comments on Facebook.

Pain: External recruiters remain a great resource for high value hires, but they shouldn’t be a necessity for businesses.
Relief: An ATS can provide recruiting tools that let you fill a talent pool and save your recruiting dollars for the tougher hires.

This kind of pain relief is only part of an applicant tracking system definition but it points to what you can achieve with ATS recruiting. The right applicant tracking software is a major step towards creating a repeatable, systematic hiring process, from posting a job to having an offer letter accepted.

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3. Is an ATS the Right Choice for your Growing Business?

Whether you are looking for your first applicant tracking system (ATS) or considering investing in an upgrade, the best starting point is a clear understanding of your needs. The first step to achieving this is to map your existing hiring process.

Questions to get started with evaluating applicant tracking software:

• How do you do your hiring planning and budget costs?
• How are your job ads written?
• How and where do you post your jobs?
• How do you currently collect applications?
• How do you progress candidates through from applied to hired?
• Do you use pre-screening questions or job-related assignments?
• Do you work with external recruiters?
• Who is on your hiring team (this may differ from one position to another).
• How many steps does a candidate go through prior to a final interview?
• Do you conduct background checks prior to a final offer?
• What kind of data and reporting do you use to improve your hiring process?

Now step back and think about how this could be improved. What are the pain points? How do you cope with the volume of applications, how are communications between your team during hiring, how well does your interview and call scheduling work?

The point of this exercise is to identify the gap between how things are done now and what your ideal recruiting process would look like. If you sailed through the 11 questions and liked your own answers you’re in a happy minority. Most companies, of all sizes, find recruiting challenging, in one way or another.

The vast majority of small and medium-sized businesses are still using email and spreadsheets to run their recruitment. Less than one in five SMBs has switched to applicant tracking software, according to most estimates. But the big switch has begun.

Larger companies have long since adopted software for their ATS needs but many of the enterprise solutions adopted by Fortune 500 firms have inherited the same bureaucratic dysfunction they were meant to cure. It might seem sensible to cram in features for all eventualities but feature-heavy applicant tracking software can be both expensive and unwieldy.

Hiring processes are not the same at an organization with 2,000+ employees as they are at a firm with 250 employees, or one with 25. By being clear from the outset over your real hiring needs you can eliminate the prospect of paying for features you don’t need and concentrate your investment on an ATS that does the best possible job on the features that you do need.

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4. Benefits of Applicant Tracking Systems

Most recruiters report that at least 50% of job hunters don’t possess the basic qualifications for the jobs they are pursuing. Applicant tracking systems came about when employers needed a way to deal with this flood of irrelevant resumes.

Today’s ATS systems are developed to scan for keywords, employment history and college records to identify viable candidates. The best ATS now available will take the data entry out of your hiring and leave you time to concentrate on the chewy human question of who you should hire and work with.

Using recruiting software means you don’t have to stitch together spreadsheets, email and elaborate filing systems. The advantage of an applicant tracking system is that it provides seamless and customizable collaboration features so that you’re always in the loop.

Applicant tracking systems help employers by providing a business process to follow during recruiting:

• Save time recruiting by automating job board posting, resume submission, and pre-screening
• Open the way to better candidates with standardized metrics and access to a pipeline of previous successful applicants
• Standardize your hiring so you don’t have to reinvent the process each time
• Keep you compliant with hiring laws
• Give you a headstart on employee retention with better screened and qualified candidates
• Ensure a striking and personalized candidate experience

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5. Choosing an Applicant Tracking System

One of the first questions you need to answer when making the ATS comparison is whether you want an applicant tracking software solution installed on your own server or hosted by your software vendor. The old way of purchasing was to get “on-premise” software but in recent years this has been overtaken by software as a service providers (SaaS), companies who host the software on the cloud and offer it as a service online.

What are the benefits of SaaS:

• Accessible anywhere where you have an internet connection, with some SaaS applicant tracking systems offering mobile functionality for recruiting on the move
• No fixed server costs
• Updates to the software are the responsibility of the vendor
• Removes the need for an IT department

The nightmare scenario for any growing business that invests in the best applicant tracking system for their needs, is for the vendor to then close down for its own business reasons. Yes, this has happened: there are numerous businesses who have seen their ATS shut down. Due diligence in this case means asking the right questions about vendor viability.

Another route altogether is an open source applicant tracking system. The advantage of this option is clear: it’s free, and you can modify the software as you please. Where’s the catch? Do you want to manage your hiring or to rewrite software? Unless you’re more than tech savvy or have an IT team that can afford to spend the time, you will run into issues installing, running and integrating one of these systems. And when you run into those problems there is no dedicated support to turn to.

The sensible ATS buyers’ checklist:

• Does your ATS match your company profile? The three main categories are enterprise, staffing agencies and SMBs. There are good solutions for each of these categories but these are big tents — think clearly about which one you belong in.
• Does the ATS provide real ease of use? There’s no point in investing in software that no one can or will use, or that is stuffed with features that you will not need or use. Look for an intuitive design that your hiring team will buy into. There are systems that require no installation, training or manuals.
• Does your ATS enable you to post to multiple job sites? Overwhelmingly the most important feature for smaller companies. Check which jobs boards and social networks the ATS is integrated with.
• What kind of search capability does the ATS have? Make sure that it boasts a fast, accurate search with results organized in a logical and intuitive way.
• Does your ATS offer strong customer support? This can quickly turn what looks like the best applicant tracking software into an expensive farrago. Be clear over response times and availability in your time zone. Check to see how well organized and detailed the support section of the ATS website is.
• What kind of reporting does the ATS offer? Be clear about your own reporting needs to track your recruiting efforts. Make sure they are matched and covered before making a choice.
• Does the ATS enable employee referrals? Referrals are the oldest and still the best method of finding employees. The best applicants tracking system will provide you with a clear way to attract and reward referrals from your team.
• What kind of candidate experience does the ATS offer? Your team is not the only user of the applicant tracking system, there’s also the candidate to consider. You will lose valuable prospects if its application process is clunky and off-putting.
• Check your applicant tracking system vendor’s viability. You want a solution that will last, make sure the same applies to your vendor’s financials.
• Get references for an ATS like you would for a hire. There are tons of applicant tracking system reviews online, take them into account. From Trust Pilot to Capterra and Software Advice to Getapp, check what other users are saying on third-party review sites.
• It has become standard practice to work on the move. Smartphones and better software allows us to work when and where we want to. Your ATS should not be the exception. The whole of your hiring team should be able to review candidates, schedule interviews, leave feedback and check the pipeline via your ATS on the device of their choice.
• The best ATS options have useful integrations. Check for integrations with leading and niche job boards and for sourcing tools that help you source and attract passive candidates. Your ATS should help you get more candidates by getting your job in front of prospects you can’t reach when you’re manually posting jobs to job boards. Does the ATS offer easy integrations for background checks and with a modern HRIS, like Namely and BambooHR?

If you’re tight on time, this list of the 12 best applicant tracking systems in the market can help guide your decision.

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6. Keys to Recruiting

If you’re not new to the hiring process or you’ve been working without any recruitment software you have most likely trekked through forests of resumes and descended bottomless email threads. This is not to mention giant spreadsheets, and a constant wrestling match to coordinate interviews and feedback.

If you’ve been getting the job done with an older generation applicant tracking system or candidate management system you will have faced different problems: poor or no customization options, usability problems, no buy in from your hiring team, insufficient integration.

Simplifying recruiting means the ability to post to multiple job boards and source candidates from all over the web, making it as easy to browse candidates as it is to follow friends on social networks. It means beautiful career sites that update themselves and good-looking job ads.

For candidates it means one-click applications. For hiring managers it means candidate timelines that show the ‘when and why’ of who made the shortlist. Hiring software should enable you to message candidates and keep track of comments in context.

Social recruiting is still more talked about than practiced but a first step that an ATS can help with is to bring resumes to life by automatically combining them with public social media profiles. Social media integration is a useful first step to getting your whole team involved in hiring. It’s everyone’s job to share open positions with their networks.

The best applicant tracking software enables you to track and reward referrals. The oldest and still the best source of high quality candidates, an employee referral program, relies on having a simple method for employees to recommend prospects and to record the initial source of job candidates (who recommended who). Companies of all sizes are beginning to recognize and reward referrals systematically.

Candidate management

The full value of an ATS becomes immediately obvious once candidates begin to flow into it. With the proliferation of job boards and the facility to apply with one click, many companies have been overwhelmed with applications.

This is where proper resume parsing technology comes into its own. A resume parser takes the weight of candidate data flooding your way, breaks it down and presents it to you in individual candidate profiles with comparable, standardized fields, like years of work experience and education.

The best ATS will enable customizable application forms with pre-screening questions that will quickly eliminate unqualified or irrelevant applications. Applicant tracking software enables you to standardize the information you’re receiving for each candidate, making it possible to be quick and decisive.

Candidate management then becomes paramount. A single profile for each candidate that keeps all comments, notes and documents (resumes, cover letters, work samples) in one place, revolutionizes hiring teams. No more searching inboxes for hiring managers looking for that all-important piece of feedback on a candidate.

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7. Managing the Hiring Process

There has never been a better time for businesses of all sizes to get strategic with their hiring. The tools needed to attract the right candidates and get from application to hire are both more affordable and more effective than ever before. What the best of them deliver is a hiring process that works.

The right recruitment process is streamlined enough not to waste your time, but inclusive enough to enable you to hire ambitiously. Process is not a word to light fires in the imagination but there’s nothing duller than trying to work without one. Having a series of standardized steps in the hiring process that have been chosen because they maximize the likelihood of a good outcome makes sense.

The most effective way to think of the steps of the recruiting process borrows from sales orthodoxy, with a hiring pipeline. Try this simple exercise. Jot down the current basic steps of your recruiting process. It may vary a bit but it probably looks something like this:

• Applied
• Promising
• Phone screen
• On-site interview
• Executive interview
• Offer

The hiring process is a funnel — you get a lot of applicants, you speak with some of them, you meet a few of them, you hire the one you like best. An efficient filtering process will save you and your candidates time.

Rather than floundering with an inbox full of resumes and a thicket of spreadsheets tracking candidates’ progress, the recruiting pipeline tracks and manages multiple candidates offering simple workflow management.

The recruiting pipeline enables hiring teams to work together collecting all comments, feedback, notes, social media profiles or assignment results on the same page. It removes the need for endless email threads and avoids the possibility of misplacing vital feedback or conversations with candidates.

The efficiency offered by an applicant tracking system takes on added importance when hiring at scale or across multiple locations, as is the case for multinationals or the increasing number of SMBs working across borders.

When your business is spread across regions and/or divisions some form of territory management is typically called for. Territory management can apply to any system which groups candidates according to predefined sets of criteria. It enables hiring teams to co-operate on the basis of location, division or function.

This can become even more important when it comes to assessing and improving your recruitment efforts. It can deliver clearer insight into the recruitment results in each territory, as well as generate reports based on locations and divisions to measure relative progress on hiring.

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8. Optimizing your Company’s Careers Page

The clearest way to think about your company careers page is to see it as a shop window. The careers page is not the only means at your disposal to market the job opportunities you offer but it should be the starting point for all these efforts.

Whether candidates note that you’re hiring after seeing your open position on a job board, or hear about it through social media or even a word-of-mouth referral, they will typically head to your careers page to find out more about the vacancy, your company and the application process. In other words, there needs to be something worth visiting when they get there.

Far from replacing careers pages, the proliferation of job boards that began in the 1990s has made a fully-optimized careers page a necessity. Placing the right applicant tracking software at the heart of your recruitment efforts removes much of the hassle associated with creating, hosting and maintaining an attractive and up-to-date careers page.

For companies without the IT resources to develop a careers page in house, the best ATS options offer simple tools to build a good-looking and professional site that’s connected to your applicant tracking system. An ATS offers automated job posting to ensure that all open positions that you post to job boards, social media or any other platform will also appear on your careers page.

But a careers page is about more than getting your jobs seen. It’s also the anchor for your employer brand, a broader concept of your company’s reputation in the digital age. The main difference with reputation is that it’s easier than ever for prospective hires to get an advanced idea of what it’s like to work for your company.

Wherever you, your colleagues or employees appear online whether it’s your company Facebook page, a Twitter conversation, or a Linkedin profile, you’re talking to two audiences: customers and talent. While this makes some businesses nervous, it’s actually a considerable opportunity for companies of all sizes.

It’s become popular to say that “hiring is marketing” because it’s increasingly true. Happily it doesn’t have to be done on prime time television to be effective. Digital platforms offer an affordable and potentially enormous reach. In many ways the traditional strengths of small and mid-sized businesses like personal relationships, approachability and tight-knit teams are ideally suited to the social media age, where authenticity is rewarded.

Feeling unsure what your employer brand is? Give yourself one minute to describe it on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. Stuck? Get some of your core team together and brainstorm on what is unique or special about working for your company as opposed to other similar companies? Is it the people, the mission?

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 9. Managing the interview process

Interviewing is the most interesting and least automated part of the hiring process. This also means it’s the hardest and frequently the most poorly executed part as well. Unstructured interviews are no more likely to end with the right candidate than choosing a name from your shortlist at random.

An ATS can’t teach a hiring manager how to interview, but it can help them create an interview process that assists them in making an informed decision. Interviews don’t begin on the day someone walks into your office. Done properly the hiring process has worked like a funnel, you spoke to some candidates, you met a handful, now you want to work out which is the best of them to hire.

The support that the best applicant tracking software can deliver at this key phase is to streamline the scheduling of interviews and provide a rounded view of the candidate from sourcing or application, through screening and any assignment to the actual interview. It enables hiring managers to approach interviews in a structured and prepared manner.

Scheduling and communications with candidates goes from tangled to straightforward when your ATS integrates with your company email (typically with Gmail or Outlook) and calendar. Proper mail and calendar integrations ensure the right people are informed in a timely manner whether it’s the candidate who needs the time and location of an interview or phone screen, or if it’s the hiring team who need to know when an action is required.

The same is true for feedback that will inform the interviewer’s approach to each candidate. When all comments, notes, documents and communications are in one place a hiring manager can get up to speed in a fraction of the time an old-style briefing or a review of an email thread would otherwise take.

As well as time saving and automation, the benefit that the right ATS can deliver is a better candidate experience. As the hiring process has become more sophisticated it has begun to take longer. The “time to hire” means that in every hiring cycle you are losing qualified candidates because the interview process is taking too long.

The best candidates are fielding multiple offers, or recent research suggests, losing interest in your company because they assume that the lack of response. The response times are critical for the candidate experience, which is where the streamlining, team tools and scheduling capabilities of an ATS can make the difference.

The hiring pipeline offered by an ATS enables hiring managers to keep track of how many candidates are in each stage and where bottlenecks may be developing. Advanced applicant tracking software can also warn you when a candidate has been left hanging for a certain number of days.

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10. Assessing Your Requirements

At the core of the performance of any applicant tracking system (ATS) are its integrations. A full suite would include not just job board integrations that enable a single submission to a host of free and paid job boards, it would also extend to:

• Social media integration with LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
• Full integration with a trusted background check provider
• Integration with popular office productivity tools such as Slack 
• Give you a headstart on employee retention with better screened and qualified candidates

Since LinkedIn remains the venue for most recruiters’ working lives, an ATS should offer deep integration with the world’s favorite resume repository. Things to look out for include the ability to:

• Use your personal LinkedIn account to sign in to your ATS and post jobs to your own professional network
• Connect to your LinkedIn Recruiter account to post jobs ads
• Buy a LinkedIn job ad directly from your ATS (without the need for a LinkedIn recruiter account)
• Access to LinkedIn Cross System Awareness that enables your hiring team to view full LinkedIn profiles inside their ATS, as well as make candidate information stored on your ATS available in your LinkedIn Recruiter account

Analytics

Recruitment analytics offer a high level view of your whole recruiting effort. Recruiting without the right tools is a disposable experience. To extract full value from any recruitment process the steps taken need to remain visible and repeatable. Recruiting metrics are not just about measuring things, they exist to answer questions about your business and to help you improve your hiring. Which recruiting metrics to use remains contentious with some organizations overly focused on Cost Per Hire (which is open to widely differing interpretations). Some effective recruiting Key Performance Indicators worth tracking are:

• Time to fill: The planning metric
• Time to hire: The efficiency metric
• Qualified candidates per hire: The sourcing metric
• Interviews per hire: The process metric

Most effective recruiting organizations favor a flexible suite of analytics in their ATS that allow for custom reports and a variety of high-level visualizations. Look for an ATS that has the ability to break down reporting areas like candidate flow and candidate source into data that can be exported to Excel.

Complying with the thicket of US equal opportunities employment laws can consume your time and fray your nerves. This process cries out for automation so opt for an ATS with an EEO Reporting feature.

Performance

As we pointed out previously when discussing vendor viability, the right balance of features is ineffective without a viable product and business supporting it. It’s worth checking independent review sites such as TrustPilot, Getapp, Capterra and Software Advice to see how actual customers rate each ATS on its efforts at avoiding downtime.

A minimum should be an up-to-date status page that details all scheduled downtime. But it’s worth spending some time on your chosen ATS vendor’s Twitter timeline to see whether their ATS performance is drawing complaints.

Similar research should quickly establish what levels of support customers can expect from specific vendors. Look out for tiered support tied to the value of your account (with subscription-based SaaS applicant tracking software). At the one extreme you should expect 24/7 support globally but most vendors offer business hours support concentrated on the region where they’re based.

Security

When choosing a cloud-based ATS over an on-premise solution it’s logical to ask some questions about the security of your data. Here is what to ask an ATS vendor regarding security:

• Does the ATS have an ongoing or regularly scheduled process of security and penetration testing of their infrastructure by a reputable third party?
• Does the ATS offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) which includes uptime guarantees?
• What is the historical uptime percentage of the ATS?
• Does it have a DDoS mitigation infrastructure in place?

Data ownership

Due diligence in choosing the best applicant tracking software would include a clear agreement on ATS data. Check the vendor’s privacy policy and terms and conditions to make sure that you retain exclusive ownership of all your data (if there are exceptions, make sure that they are clear and justifiable), and make sure that you will be able to export your data if you decide to move to a different vendor.

Search functionality

Without a powerful search facility the full promise of an ATS as a candidate database is seriously undermined. Find out whether the ATS search includes natural language processing, semantic search and any extras.

If this sounds confusing ensure that it enables candidate search by name, headline, tag, education/work experience/skills. Does the search draw data from resumes, cover letters and summaries?

A final feature to look out for is what kind of search is offered on the support section of the ATS. Does it offer prompts and auto-completes to offer help documents relevant to your questions? If not, keep looking.

Customization

When choosing a SaaS ATS one of the theoretical cons is the comparative lack of customization. An on-premise solution can be customized, in theory, to meet any hiring needs. In reality this is only an option for businesses with a large in-house developer capacity. If that doesn’t describe your business (or is not what you want your developers working on), look for an ATS that allows significant personalized settings. Look out for customization options for:

• Application forms
  
• Letter templates to candidates
  
• Custom hiring pipeline stages
  
• Custom reports in recruitment metrics

Take time to understand how your ATS vendor deals with managing classified hiring information. The best ATS options enable clear, customizable hierarchies within hiring teams governing which comments are private between the hiring team and the candidates, as well as notes that are not visible to everyone on the hiring team.

Users should be able to invite hiring team members with different status, i.e. admin, hiring manager, team member that govern their viewing and editing permissions, as well as dictating which communications they’re copied into during the hiring process.

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11. Checklist of applicant tracking system

Even the most affordable business software is an investment. The time taken to conduct a proper evaluation and applicant tracking system comparison will pay for itself many times over. Going with the wrong choice now will mean future disruption for your team and more work down the line. To help you make the right decision for your business as you compare applicant tracking systems, here is an evaluation chart to score your top choices.

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The post Applicant tracking system guide: From A to Z appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We didn’t just experience a societal earthquake two years ago – we saw all changed utterly, to borrow from a Yeats poem. And we had to adapt quickly to survive. There were many adaptations as we quickly learned, particularly in the workplace – the surge of remote work, the incorporation of digital technology, and a mountain of concerns around employee engagement.

What about now in 2022? What does that new world of work look like and did all those predictions from the first time around ring true? Or were they much ado about nothing?

We decided to go and find out for ourselves, by sending out the same survey again in July 2022 – albeit with a few updated questions. The social patchwork that was so rudely ripped apart throughout 2020 has been somewhat stitched together in new ways. We know now what threads from that patchwork remained intact from before, and more so, what new threads are being sewn.

This new report comes in two parts – first, our learnings from the new survey, and second, how the new results compare with the results from 2020. The findings are remarkable. Enjoy the read and do join our conversation on the topic in the Workable Community.

Meanwhile, the major themes are as follows:

Hybrid is the new agreement

The oscillatory negotiation between return-to-office and full remote work may have settled on a new trend: hybrid. Is this a new stopgap measure or is it the way forward?

Jobseekers have the upper hand

The rise of compensation, benefits and opportunities as top value props shows that jobseekers have leverage in what they can get out of a job beyond “getting” the job.

Nothing is ‘normal’ anymore

The majority of businesses are moving on to the “next normal” in terms of working environments and business processes – and there’s no going back to the way things were.

Long-term remote problems

The long-term challenges of remote work are surfacing in the form of tech stack considerations, asynchronous issues and lingering anxieties both for businesses and their workers.

When there are setbacks and disruptions, there are adaptations and adjustments. And now, we’re presenting those in this comprehensive new survey report from Workable, titled The New World of Work, two years on: A 2022 Worker Survey.

The post Announcing The New World of Work, two years on: A 2022 worker survey appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

To compare an ATS vs CRM, let’s start with defining each, and then delve into the similarities and differences.

What’s an ATS?

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is recruitment software designed to streamline, automate, and optimize the hiring process for recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers.

An effective ATS simplifies the entire talent acquisition workflow from start to finish, using automation to simplify tasks which may include the following:

• Publishing job postings to social media, LinkedIn, and job boards
• Organizing the application process
• Creating a talent pool of candidate profiles
• Parsing resumes
• Administering skills assessment tests
• Collecting and reporting hiring metrics
• Scheduling interviews
• Sending follow-up communication
• Performing background checks
• Issuing hiring and job offer letters
• Collecting signatures for employment contracts
• Onboarding

Using an ATS as a tool during the recruitment process improves the candidate experience while also making it easier for hiring professionals to attract, identify, and retain top talent.

Automating important but time-intensive tasks keeps the entire lifecycle of the hiring process organized, improves communication with candidates and among stakeholders, reduces time-to-hire, and allows hiring professionals to focus on finding the best talent for open roles.

Not sure which ATS is the best option to meet the staffing needs of your business? Look at our ATS buyers’ guide.

What’s a CRM?

CRM is an acronym for customer relationship management (or candidate relationship management when used as a recruitment marketing tool). Recruitment CRM software is used to create a talent pipeline of job seekers, current employees, and passive candidates that recruiting teams can leverage for recruitment and hiring purposes.

Candidate relationship management systems often have features to help with the following:

• Building a database of potential candidates
• Making saved resumes searchable by keyword
• Delivering targeted messaging to talent pool
• Fostering a relationship between the employer brand and candidates
• Tracking candidate progress during hiring and onboarding
• Sending surveys and compiling feedback on hiring process
• Collecting and reporting hiring analytics

A CRM is a tool that helps build and nurture relationships with talent, creating a scalable source of qualified candidates to choose from. Having access to an existing pool of candidates can eliminate the need for a recruitment agency, increase the quality of applicants to job openings, and reduce time-to-hire.

Should you integrate your CRM with an ATS?

Although there’s a slight overlap in the services offered by ATS vs CRM software, they’re two different types of tools, each with a distinct purpose. An ATS organizes and coordinates the actual application and hiring process, while a CRM system helps create and maintain a pool of active and passive talent for recruitment — both are valuable recruiting technology tools.

Using a CRM with an ATS integration creates a tech stack that automates and optimizes each and every step of the talent acquisition process, making it easy to source candidates from your own qualified pool while also effortlessly attracting outside applicants.

With a CRM and ATS integration, qualified applicants go through the hiring workflow organized and managed by the ATS, the best candidate is selected by the hiring manager, and the CRM maintains a relationship with the remaining candidates for future job openings, creating a valuable cycle for recruitment.

Aside from the clear benefits to hiring professionals, today’s competitive job market offers candidates a lot of options. Having an organized talent acquisition pipeline with clear communication and professional responsiveness builds trust with applicants while expediting the hiring process in a way that gives your company a competitive edge.

How can Workable help me?

Workable is an industry leader in ATS software and can integrate into your already existing workflow. By partnering with the most popular tools in recruiting technology, Workable offers a single, powerful solution for maximizing efficiency while optimizing your recruitment and hiring process. Find out more about us and our partnerships here.

The post ATS vs. CRM: what’s the difference? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

ATS integrations allow you to connect your applicant tracking system (ATS) to other apps in order to create a seamless expansion of the tools, features, and functionality that help streamline the workflow associated with talent acquisition and onboarding.

What are the benefits of adding ATS integrations?

Applicant tracking systems allow you to manage the hiring process from start to finish — reducing time-to-hire and improving the experience for everyone involved. ATS integrations take all of the benefits automation has to offer to the next level, resulting in a software solution that can do the following:

Speed up the candidate application process

From automatically publishing job postings to providing tools that allow your team to quickly review resumes and provide feedback, the right ATS integrations add more efficiency to the application phase of the hiring process.

Promote better candidate engagement

Using automation for data entry, interview scheduling, updating social media, and to set up triggers for actionable next-step tasks improves accuracy and enhances communication with potential job seekers.

Increase hiring credibility among candidates

ATS integrations can help enrich the profiles of applicants, making it easier for stakeholders to review and share information to identify the most qualified candidates quickly.

Accelerate the onboarding process

Integrating a human resource management system (HRIS) to your ATS adds efficiency to the onboarding process by streamlining steps like background checks and drug screening processes.

Help the newly hired get started faster

ATS integrations help empower your new hire by providing the access, tools, and permissions to support success on their first day and beyond.

Maximize productivity and reduce time-to-hire

Using an integrated solution to handle time-consuming administrative tasks supports hiring managers by allowing them to focus their efforts and experience on more important aspects of the recruiting process, like identifying and engaging with top talent to improve the candidate experience.

Common ATS integration examples

The most helpful ATS integrations for your team are largely dependent on your workflow, but consider the following possibilities:

Business communication platforms

Integrating your ATS with a business communication platform like Slack creates one central conversational hub that makes it easier for members of the hiring team to review and discuss resumes, share feedback about candidate interviews, and offer updates on the timeline and decision-making aspects of hiring.

eSignature platforms

Expedite the act of signing on the dotted line with an eSignature integration like Docusign. Automate the action of generating an offer letter and collecting signatures to execute contracts with more ease and efficiency for everyone involved.

Background check platforms

Complete the hiring process with confidence by integrating a background check platform like Checkr to automatically conduct background checks on your new hire.

An ATS integration makes it easier to automate this part of the process; just set up a workflow that initiates a background check once a signed offer letter is received.

ITSM tools

Integrating your ATS with an ITSM tool like ServiceNow helps transform the many steps of the onboarding process into a seamless experience. Create a workflow that initiates actions to set your new hire up with the software and equipment necessary for their workday.

Need integration ideas?

ATS integrations enhance your recruitment software, which ultimately optimizes your entire hiring process. Maximize productivity, attract and attain top talent, and eliminate the challenges associated with talent acquisition by finding the perfect tools for your team.

Workable partners with the most popular companies in HR and can help make your hiring process as smooth as possible. Click now to try our free trial.

The post ATS integrations: the benefits and examples appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What does KPI mean in recruitment?
• What are recruiting metrics?
• What can you learn from recruitment metrics?
• Which are the most important metrics to track?
• How can I have better visibility into recruiting metrics?
• Who should be tracking recruiting metrics?
• How do I calculate recruiting metrics?
• What metrics should matter most to a Talent Acquisition team?
• Which metrics should matter most to an external recruiter?
• What metrics should matter most to HR?
• Which recruiting metrics matter most to the CEO?
• What metrics should I track when working with an external recruiter?
• How do I increase the number of job applicants?
• How do I increase the number of qualified applicants?

Intro to Recruiting Email Metrics

• What are recruiter email metrics?
• How do you measure recruiter email metrics?

More Recruiting Metrics

• Recruiting costs FAQ: Budget and cost per hire
• Time to fill and time to hire metrics FAQ
• Recruitment process effectiveness metrics FAQ
• Candidate experience metrics FAQ
• Job offer acceptance rate metrics FAQ

Intro to Recruiting Metrics

What does KPI mean in recruitment?

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator and it can be used in any field or business function to measure performance. In recruitment, key recruiting metrics refer to the important factors related to the hiring process that you should consistently examine. For example, the speed with which hiring teams make a decision may be a KPI for a company that values quick turnaround and does mass hiring.

What are recruiting KPIs?

How do you measure success in recruitment? Recruiting KPIs (or hiring metrics) measure how effective and efficient your recruitment process is. Some metrics are expressed as percentages or ratios (e.g. yield ratios), while others are absolute values that you can compare to industry or company standards (e.g. time to hire.) Use them to discover how well your recruitment process works and identify where you could improve.

What can you learn from recruitment metrics?

Recruitment metrics can answer any question you want them to. At a high level, you probably want to know the quality, cost and productivity of your hiring process. More specifically, you could ask the following questions:

• How good are we at spotting the right candidate and how long does it take us to hire them?
• How many qualified candidates do we need to make a hire and how quickly do we move them from one stage to the other?
• Do we effectively engage the best candidates and getting them to accept our job offers?
• How much money do we spend per hire and how does our spending change depending on the role we’re hiring for?
• How efficient is our hiring process and which steps or stages are most productive?

Which are the 6 most important hiring metrics to track?

There are many available KPIs, but what are some common recruiting metrics? Usually, companies choose to track the following recruiting metrics examples:

• Quality of hire
• Cost per hire
• Recruiting yield metrics
• Time to fill
• Source of hire
• Offer acceptance rate

If you want to dig deeper recruiting metrics that matter, add metrics like application completion rate, hiring manager satisfaction or new hire turnover. Choose metrics based on your company’s individual needs.

How can I have better visibility into the best recruiting metrics??

Most recruiting metrics are easy to calculate, but hard to keep track of. The first step is to determine what kind of data you need to monitor. Then, you could invest in an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to track your preferred metrics automatically via a recruiting metrics dashboard and generate reports. Alternatively, business intelligence tools (e.g. Tableau) can collect the recruiting analytics you need.

Looking for better reporting analytics? Workable’s reports will refine your recruiting process. Sign up for our 15-day free trial.

Who should be tracking recruiting metrics?

Recruiters or HR are usually in charge of tracking recruitment metrics. If your company doesn’t have a dedicated recruiting team, executives could monitor metrics for their respective departments and functions. Hiring software, like an HRIS or ATS, can help you collect relevant data.

How do I calculate recruiting metrics?

To calculate various recruiting metrics, use the following process:

• Determine what to measure. Some metrics may be important to your company, while tracking others may be counterproductive.
• Decide how to collect recruiting data. The simplest way is to use spreadsheets and enter data manually. But, this method is not efficient if you’re working with large datasets. To make things easier, it’s best to use analytics software or your ATS to store and report on data automatically. You could also import data from these systems to spreadsheets when needed.
• Identify which calculations to do on your own. For example, your ATS can report on your time to fill or recruiting yield ratios, but it can’t calculate your average cost per hire.
• Collect the formulas. Find the formulas and decide the time frame within which to calculate different metrics. For example, you may choose to calculate new hire retention rates annually, but decide to track your source of hire on a quarterly basis.

To get you started, here are the most common formulas you can use for recruiting metrics that matter:

Common Quality of hire formula:

– QoH index = (PR + HP + HR) / 3 where:
PR: Average job performance of new hires (e.g. 80 out of 100 based on quantifiable targets or hiring managers’ feedback)
HP: percentage of new hires reaching acceptable productivity within a determined period
HR: new hire retention rate after a year

See more about calculating quality of hire.

– Cost per hire formula:
CPH = (Internal recruiting costs + External recruiting costs) / Total number of hires

See more about calculating cost per hire.

– Common Time to fill formula:
Time to fill = Number of days between opening of a position until candidate accepts the job offer

For average time to fill, you add all times to fill from different positions and divide them by the number of positions.

See more on calculating and benchmarking time to fill metric in recruiting.

– Offer acceptance rate:
Offer acceptance rate = Number of offers accepted / Total number of offers %

See more on calculating offer acceptance rate.

– Common qualified candidates per hire formula:
Qualified candidates per hire = average number of candidates who were found to be qualified in each hiring process after the initial screening phases (e.g. screening call, resume screening)

See more on benchmarks for qualified candidates per hire.

If you’re interested in more detailed recruitment metrics examples and benchmarks, check out our complete guide.

What recruitment metrics should matter most to a Talent Acquisition team?

Corporate recruiters can use almost every metric to help them improve the recruiting process, though some recruiting metrics will be more useful than others.

Here are examples of the best metrics for recruiters:

• New hire turnover rate or new hire length of stay. New hire turnover rate measures the percentage of new hires who leave your company before their onboarding period ends (usually three to six months.) If you compare turnover rates over time, you can pinpoint when there’s an issue and look into your onboarding or candidate screening processes. Also, many recruiters measure their success according to the length of time a new hire stays with the company.
• Candidate experience scores. Candidate experience is an essential part of building a good employer brand. Companies can benefit from setting up candidate surveys to discover what candidates liked or disliked about their recruiting process. As a complementary metric, track hiring manager satisfaction with the hiring process, too.
• Qualified candidates per hire. This metric measures the number of candidates who made it past the first stage of your hiring process. This metric shows how effective your sourcing and advertising techniques are in attracting the right candidates.
• Offer acceptance rate. This metric expresses the percentage of candidates who accepted a job offer. If this percentage is low, Talent Acquisition teams may need to rethink what candidates want or how competitive their job offers are.

Recruiting teams can track many more metrics. Ultimately, what you choose to measure depends on your company’s unique goals and needs.

Which metrics should matter most to an external recruiter?

External recruiters are usually evaluated on two fronts:

• How quickly they provide candidates.
• And the quality of the candidates they bring in.

Tracking quality of hire and time to fill over time can help recruiters determine whether they are delivering value to their clients. For example, if their time to fill starts increasing, then they may need to revisit expectations with hiring managers or try new sourcing techniques.

What hiring metrics should matter most to HR?

The HR department has a common strategy and budgets for every function, including recruiting. A VP of HR needn’t delve into the mechanics of the recruiting process, but they are likely interested in metrics that indicate recruiting success. Those include:

• Quality of hire.
• Cost per hire.
• Source of hire.

Source of hire measures how many qualified candidates or hires each recruiting source brings in. HR needs to know which sources are most effective in a given period (e.g. a year), so as to rethink its partnerships and external spend.

Which recruiting metrics matter most to the CEO?

CEOs are interested in the strategic impact of recruiting. Metrics that are concerned with business value and promote action are the most useful. For example:

• Quality of hire. This metric encompasses performance and retention rates of new hires. Retention and high performance increase revenue and are important on a strategic level.
• Actual hires to hiring goals. This metric shows what percentage of hiring goals hiring teams met. It indicates how well the entire recruiting function works.
• Diversity goals. This metric measures what percentage of diversity goals were met or the percentage of diverse hires. If increasing diversity is an important company objective, then this metric can say a lot about your company’s success.

What metrics should I track when working with an external recruiter?

When working with external recruiters, you can still use corporate recruiting metrics (e.g. actual hires to goals), but you should also think about how you’ll specifically measure the external recruiter’s success. Usually, you’ll want to ensure that they provide quality candidates as quickly as possible. You could measure:

• Candidates to interview (e.g. percentage of recruiters’ candidates who were invited to a first or second interview.) If you’re working with several recruiters, compare their scores. Those who deliver consistently low numbers of qualified candidates may not be the best match for your company.
• Time to fill. If your recruiters manage more phases of your hiring process, instead of just providing you with resumes, then time to fill is important to track.

How do I increase the number of job applicants?

If you need to bring more candidates into your talent pipelines, aim to attract more people to your job openings and encourage them to apply. To achieve both of these goals, you could:

• Advertise in both niche and mainstream job boards.
• Enhance your sourcing by using various techniques (e.g. social media recruiting, Google and Boolean search.)
• Hire a recruiting agency that will provide you with qualified resumes.
• Create a short, straight-forward and mobile-optimized application process.
• Ensure your careers page has useful information for candidates (e.g. benefits, culture, perks.)

How do I increase the number of qualified applicants?

Here are ways to attract more qualified applicants:

• Advertise in niche job boards or websites to target a specific audience.
• Write detailed and complete job descriptions to clarify your requirements.
• Add qualifying questions in your job application forms. Your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can automatically disqualify candidates who don’t answer important questions.
• Conduct screening calls to ensure that only qualified candidates will advance to your assignment and in-person interview stages.
• Enhance your sourcing. When sourcing passive candidates, only contact those who are fully qualified for the job.

Introduction to Recruiting Email Metrics

What are recruiter email metrics?

Recruiter email metrics measure the impact that recruiters’ emails have on candidates. If your emails are attractive, informative and aimed at the appropriate candidates, then candidates are more likely to open, click though and reply to them. Here are four recruiter email metrics:

• Recruitment email open rate: Percentage of (delivered) emails that candidates opened.

• Recruiting email response rate: Percentage of emails that candidates replied to.

• Recruitment email click-through rate: Percentage of recipients who click at least one of your links in an email.

• Recruitment email conversion rates: Percentage of emails that translate into a desired action (e.g. recruitment emails that result in interviews.)

How do you measure recruiter email metrics?

Just count emails that were delivered, since candidates can’t respond to emails they didn’t receive.

More Recruiting Metrics FAQs:

• Recruiting costs FAQ: Budget and cost per hire
• Time to fill and time to hire metrics FAQ
• Recruitment process effectiveness metrics
• Candidate experience metrics FAQ
• Job offer acceptance rate metrics FAQ

The post Introduction to Recruiting Metrics FAQ appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

They’re there for a reason – to keep the books aligned. The person in charge of finance is an empathetic, patient person with enough organizational skills to ensure that everything is as much balanced at year-end as at year-beginning, and with enough contingency planning in place to allow the company to successfully navigate even the rudest awakenings that befall organizations.

That’s where Craig DiForte comes in as Workable’s CFO. He’s been in the finance biz since graduating with an MBA in Finance from Boston University Questrom School of Business in 2002 and has been managing Workable’s money since 2016.

So, he’s seen a lot in his work. He also knows what costs money and what makes money, and to take it to another level, he knows where money can – and can’t – be spent in order to have it reflect on the bottom line. And mostly, he knows how to make sure it all ties together into a nice bow.

So, according to Craig, here are seven ways you can optimize the recruitment pipeline without getting hit too hard by the actual cost of hiring staff:

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate
2. Measure the process regularly
3. Remember, timing is money
4. Consider different timing processes
5. Plan for the inevitable turnover
6. Implement clear processes
7. Keep checking in

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate

“The one thing you have to make sure that you’ve done,” Craig says, “is that you’ve effectively communicated the plan to all of the hiring managers.”

He explains, using an example: everyone – including the hiring managers – needs to be fully informed on how many they can or need to hire that year. “If your VP of Sales doesn’t know that she only has the budget to hire 20 heads,” he says, “and she opens up a requisition for 30, you’re immediately going to have a problem.”

That scenario is a lot of things, but it’s especially a problem for Finance. This planning conflict will throw the books out of whack because your VP of Sales has put a process in place for something that your budget won’t allow for. Ten additional heads being hired means 10 more salaries than you’ve planned for. And 10 more interview processes that are a time and resource suck for your hiring team. And, of course, there’s the expensive damage control in rolling everything back to the original 20. All of these things cost money and force Finance to move things around to accommodate.

You don’t want that to happen in your company, so you need to make sure everyone is on the same page for absolutely everything. This means meeting regularly, keeping communication channels open and keeping everyone together in the loop as to where you are and where you’re going in the hiring plan.

“You need to make sure that this hiring plan is communicated,” Craig reiterates. “You want to be sure that the plan has been communicated out, and that you’re now executing on it.”

2. Measure the process regularly

You must continually check the pulse of your recruitment process at regular stages, and measure where you’re staying on plan and where you’re going off plan, Craig says.

“Your [hiring] plan basically comes down to the question: ‘Have I hired the people that I meant to hire, at the time that I meant to hire them?’ There’s a timing variance you need to think about.”

Measurement doesn’t just apply to timing and scheduling – true to Craig’s background, he reminds us to look at the actual money being spent on payroll: “Did I hire them at the right salary that I thought I was going to hire them at?” he asks as an example. Again, a slight variance in salary for multiple roles can add up, creating a fresh headache for Finance.

Salary differences isn’t the only flux in the cost of the hiring process: measuring also means looking at reports and identifying the areas where you can optimize the recruiting process.

For example, Craig asks: “What are the savings related to cancelled hires?” Once that’s in place, he says, “then you can have a net hiring plan adjustment number, where you can say; ‘OK, the original hiring plan has 100 people, but we added 15 and took out five, so now we’re really at 110.’”

“The extra cost of doing that is Y, whatever Y happens to be. That’s one metric you want to be able to track,” he says, because you’re going to want to measure your anticipated outcome against your real outcome. “You want to be able to ask, ‘How am I doing against the original plan? And what are my variances?’”

When you look at reports regularly, and identify opportunities for optimization, then you’re tightening up the process and making it move more effectively – making things more cost-effective. You’re not just saving money, you’re also making your existing money go further.

3. Remember: timing is money

Drilling down deeper, Craig says that looking at the savings opportunities in the hiring plan isn’t just about looking at salaries. When you’re looking at the cost of hiring staff or hiring ahead of schedule, you also have an opportunity to cut back costs.

Craig says, “Hiring people too slowly can be a bad thing from a performance standpoint, but it can save you some money because you thought you were going to fill a role in January and you didn’t fill that role until March. That might be a problem from a company performance standpoint – but from a headcount standpoint, you just saved two months’ worth of salary.”

It’s just one example of many, but the intricacies of the many moving parts of the recruitment pipeline are such that money will always play into the overall equation. It’s not so easy to budget for a hiring strategy, particularly since you’re often accounting for unexpected events and benefits.

Crunch those numbers: learn how to calculate recruitment costs for budget planning in our new tutorial.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking timing alone is a valid criterion. For instance, you may need to speed up the hiring process and hire someone earlier than originally planned – despite the cost of doing so – if this means you’ll hire an exceptional candidate who may not be available later.

Or, in some cases, it makes sense to offer a higher salary because of the higher productivity that new employee can bring to the table. You’re not necessarily costing your company money if you paid a higher salary than a competitor – you’re recruiting better talent who will ultimately boost productivity.

In short, keep an eye on timing (when you open up a new requisition and when you hire a new person compared to when you need them), but also factor in these other qualitative and quantitative gains.

Craig explains further: “You need to be able to find the mechanism to take all of those things into consideration to determine; How much am I saving on my hiring plan right now? Or how much am I costing myself more? Because if I’m hiring everybody fast, and I’m hiring them at higher salaries than I thought, I’m costing myself too much money.”

“But maybe,” Craig notes, “I’m making myself more productive. There can be a benefit.”

4. Consider different timing processes

You also have to think about onboarding schedules for new hires and upcoming projects that you’re hiring for. These both take into account the type of roles you’re filling for.

“For instance,” Craig says, “if they’re salespeople, there can be a great benefit to hiring early because they start ramping faster and they’re going to get to full productivity earlier.”

The impact to the bottom line is easily tangible for sales: with more salespeople – particularly if commission-based – you get more sales, and your company is more productive.

But what about engineers? “If you’re hiring an engineer for a certain project that you’re going to work on, but the project doesn’t start until April and you hire them in February, that might not be the best early hire; depending on the project, and the skills of the person you’re hiring, the ramping time can be different in each case.”

Whether you’re hiring ahead or behind, Craig says, it’s a strategic decision based on the role you’re hiring for. You don’t want employee salaries burning a hole in your pocket when they’re not contributing anything to your bottom line or producing anything.

5. Plan for the inevitable turnover

“You’re going to have something come up during the year,” Craig warns. “The ubiquitous backfill. Some people will leave – there’s no getting around it. You’re going to have to replace them.”

Of course, turnover is a real fact of business. But there’s something else impacting the cost of the hiring process: “One of the things that you need to make sure of in your plan is that when you backfill, you’re not adding an extra position.”

This could happen if, for example, “Jane tells you she’s leaving, but gives you a month-long notice and you say, ‘Well, Jane is very important. She has to be replaced.’ So you open a new request for Jane’s replacement while Jane’s still there.”

Which is fine, until: “A month later, Jane actually leaves. Then if you’re not watching your hiring plan, somebody might open a new request for Jane’s replacement because Jane has actually left now,” Craig says.

“That’s how one position turns into two positions. You want to make sure that you have a good process for managing your backfills and how they go into your hiring plan so that you don’t double-count them.”

6. Implement clear processes

“You could have created the greatest budget in the world, and within a month or two months depending upon the industry that you’re in, it will start to go sideways a little bit,” says Craig. “You’ll find out that either because certain people leave or because you come up with new initiatives, or because something changes the economy or the market, that you need either more or less people than you thought you did.”

So, you need to have a procedure in place from the get-go for removing or canceling hires and requests in the hiring plan. You’ll also want to open up some resources – be it time, money, or otherwise – to accommodate unbudgeted hires.

And what’s more, Craig says, you have to have a clear approval process in place. “What’s your process for making sure those [new hires and cancellations] get approved? Sometimes people forget to get approval on both sides of that – they know they need an approval to add a new hire, but they forget they need an approval to remove one.”

And communication, again, is key. “Sometimes they’ll remove one, and then the manager will think they still have a request in place and they’ll try to hire for that role.”

Check out here how GCC Services fosters a more inclusive hiring process with Workable Video Interviews.

7. Keep checking in

We come full circle here: in the spirit of communication, keep checking in with each other on a regular basis. “You need a clear communication and approval process for making sure everyone’s coordinated on how you put in new positions and how you take out positions you decide you don’t need anymore.”

Once you have those kinds of changes, you’re adding another level of complexity to your reporting where, Craig notes, you want to measure, for instance, the added cost of unbudgeted hires.

Again, communication is key, Craig says. And this involves everyone who’s involved in the hiring plan, including HR, Finance and hiring managers. “Plus, the hiring manager should understand clearly what’s happening with their respective teams so people know where they are.”

In the end, your hiring strategy for the upcoming year should be run like a business within the business. Have regular meetings and check-ins with everyone who’s a part of the whole process. “Make sure that you have policies and procedures in place to handle changes to the plan, which could be additions, subtractions, cancellations if you will, or backfill positions. You need to have processes for all three of those.”

And then make sure you have the numbers crunched regularly. “You want to know: what are your metrics and what are you reporting against in terms of total cost-to-hire, total time-to-hire. Then, there’s the other more nuanced pieces that we talked about; that is, how many are you hiring early? How many are you hiring later? What’s the net effect of that on your numbers for your total cost?”

Craig smiles, knowing this is a lot to take in if you want to run things smoothly with an outcome as optimal as possible. What if you don’t have the time to incorporate all of that into your hiring process? Well, he has an answer to that, adding a joke about shamelessly plugging the Workable product: “That’s one of the reasons the Hiring Plan module in Workable is incredibly useful, because everybody has access to the same platform and can check in and see what’s happening at every step of the way.”

That’s a sure-fire way to get Finance on your side in the hiring process. Your work life will be a lot easier in the end, and the bottom line will thank you.

Want to figure out what’s normal and what’s not in your budget calculations for a hiring plan? Check out our tutorial on how to do that.

You can also see Craig and Matt Buckland – who was Workable’s VP of Customer Advocacy for two years – on planning a strategy for high growth in this webinar:

The post Devil in the details: The cost of the hiring process and what you can do about it appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Consequently, to stay relevant and apace with increased competition for new hires, recruiters and hiring managers need to possess sharp talent acquisition skills and have a robust recruitment tech stack to capture the best talent for the position. Recruitment guru Josh Bersin emphasizes the evolution of recruitment and how this is an opportunity for recruiters to really step up their game.

One big step in the right direction is purchasing an ATS and other technologies to support that. If it’s your first time investing in recruitment software, ensure you have the following capabilities in your recruitment tech stack:

1. Employee referral program
2. Chatbots
3. Candidate texting
4. Email automation
5. Social media automation
6. Talent network
7. Virtual recruiting events
8. Job postings
9. Content management system
10. Candidate relationship management

1. Employee referral program

An automated employee referral program helps in creating a solid company culture by building high-performing teams. It reduces the hiring process and costs and, at the same time, getting more high-value future employees.

Most recruitment marketing softwares have built-in employee referral programs. Job openings are automatically sent to the employees’ email addresses with the job description and the ‘refer’ button to submit the referred candidate.

Some of the automation rules or processes you can create with your referral program include:

• Monitoring where the referred candidate is in the hiring cycle and send updates to the referrer.
• Linking your ATS to your payroll system, so referral fees go straight into your employee’s salary.
• Measuring the success of your employee referral program – i.e. number of shares via email or social, number of referred candidates, number of successful hires and the quality of those hires.

Check out our complete guide to employee referrals.

2. Chatbots

Chatbots are a form of AI used in messaging applications. They are automated programs that interact with web visitors like a human would do.

In recruitment, chatbots can help increase your engagement with candidates, hasten the recruitment process, reach out to more candidates, and provide quick answers to their questions.

Chatbots can be the first point of contact after the candidate submits his resume. They can be tasked to contact candidates to explain the overall application procedure.

Chatbots can also gather contact information, answer applicants’ initial questions and schedule interviews. More advanced capabilities include ranking and scoring candidates, enabling recruiters to remove unsuitable candidates for the specific role.

Incorporating chatbots eliminates the HR team’s repetitive tasks so they can focus on more critical activities. In addition, chatbots are easy to scale and can keep the hiring process progressing fast, even when you are inundated with candidates for an open role.

3. Candidate texting

With candidate texting technology, recruiters can send job openings right to candidate’s phones. It is a big help for recruiters, especially during seasonal or bulk hiring or in sectors with a large component of deskless workers and high turnover such as in hospitality or food services.

Plus, with a 98% open rate for SMS and text messages, it’s a great communication tool with assurance that your message will get through.

Recruiters can reach thousands of job seekers quickly with customized text messages. Textbots can automate screening, so the process continues. Since these texts are integrated into the recruiting software, data is collected automatically so interviewers and hiring managers can evaluate whether to pursue a candidate or not.

Another feature is automated intelligent interview scheduling. Texting makes it easier for candidates to reply and confirm interview schedules. Scheduling changes or unexpected cancellations can be communicated instantly.

The automated messages help answer common application questions quickly on the candidate’s side, empowering them to screen and move ahead or out of the recruiting process quickly.

If they’re hired, automated text-based communications will help facilitate the candidate’s onboarding process and provide a seamless candidate experience.

Read more on candidate texting best practices and texting strategies for different scenarios.

4. Email automation

Automated email sendouts allow personalization at scale and can recommend ideal content for every candidate.

Despite being around for some time, HR teams can still capitalize on this marketing strategy to communicate with targeted candidates regularly and stay on top of their minds.

Email marketing automation comes with templates and sequences to save time and resources when reaching out to candidates to introduce the company, announce current job openings, send follow-ups, send alerts for future vacancies, etc.

Once the candidate is hired, you can send an email on the first day of work explaining the onboarding process and setting expectations. The hiring manager can then send a follow-up in six weeks to check how things are going and maybe schedule a call or a lunch.

And then again, if they’re on a fixed contract, emails can be scheduled at a determined later time if they’re reaching the end of their contract and looking for their next opportunity.

5. Social media automation

Social media automation enables recruiters to distribute jobs across Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels. They can set logic-based rules around which vacancies should be sent to which social networks, the date they should be posted and taken down, based on the performance of specific jobs.

Social job distribution can also broaden the demographics of the target job seekers – a must for any DEI-minded employer – enabling recruiters to broaden the candidate pool by reaching out to media-savvy social applicants.

Recruiters can also compose and edit new content via mobile devices while on the go. This ability to work remotely provides flexibility to deliver other content like blogs, industry updates, company news, etc.

The benefit of using social automation tools ensures that recruitment messaging is consistent across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other social channels. It also helps you find qualified candidates easily, and add them to your list of potential hires in the future.

Check out our FAQ guide on social media recruitment strategies.

6. Talent network management

You can automate your talent network by adding a form to provide an alternative for candidates to opt in if they don’t complete the application. Having CTAs scattered across your site and content can capture those all-important passive candidates.

Once the candidate opts in, you can set up rules in your recruitment marketing platform to segment talent based on preferences, interests, and skills. You can send preference emails asking the types of content they want to receive and the types of roles they are interested in, and record email opens and links clicked.

To set up your automation, you need to understand and build your target candidate personas and the type of information they are searching for. Then, create a messaging sequence for their journey.

The more targeted your messaging, content, and job you send to your talent network, the better candidate experience you can deliver and possibly, outbid your competitors for those star candidates.

7. Virtual recruiting events

Virtual recruiting events allow HR to expand and diversify the talent pipeline by reaching to them anytime, anywhere. It can also improve your diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

With this software, you can build your events page that allows you to handle interviews and registrations. For career expos, as an example, candidates undergo a screening process set with pre-qualifying questions. They are scored and matched directly towards jobs and recruiters for engagement.

VRE software provides a better candidate experience and avoids wasting each other’s time if they do not match.

Other features include the ability to promote events across social media, manage on-site attendees, capture leads and resumes, and build employer brand by emailing invitations, post-event surveys, and other campaigns for ongoing candidate engagement.

Some virtual events you can adapt to suit your staffing objectives: career expos, professional development events, educational workshops, info sessions, hackathons and creative challenges, theme-based panels or presentations, virtual presentations, and much more.

8. Job postings

A good recruitment marketing platform allows you to automate the process of writing (with pre-defined job description templates) and posting jobs on various free and paid job boards and social media networks within a single platform.

You can also manage your media budget and inventory and even facilitate the use of programmatic job advertising to optimize advertising spend.

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Job Posting.

9. Content management system

Today’s candidates search employers the same way consumers find products and services.

To stand out in the crowd, organizations must build unique candidate experiences through employer brand content and recruitment marketing strategies to attract the right talent. This is called inbound recruiting, as emphasized by Hubspot:To perform inbound recruitment, you need a CMS.

With a CMS (Content Management System), you can quickly and easily create and update content, optimize your job listing and share vacancies on social media, to name a few. You can also integrate your applicant tracking system (ATS) and configure your content to be searchable on search engines.

10. Candidate relationship management

CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) helps you nurture relationships with passive candidates.
With the right CRM, you can:

• Track candidate’s journey during the application process
• Easily build and segment talent pools and cascade targeted communication to the right job seeker at the right time
• Update all your ATS information so you can target the best applicants for open roles
• Automatically track and measure your campaigns’ performance and results to improve future marketing strategies

Your hiring tech stack matters

Talent acquisition is poised to evolve post-pandemic and beyond as recruitment platforms become savvier and more sophisticated, largely due to AI and emerging technologies.

Hence, it would be best to keep abreast of the latest developments in recruitment automation software to stay ahead of competitors in the high-stakes talent game.

Gem Siocon is a digital marketer and freelance content writer at Recruiter Copywriter. She specializes in recruitment marketing and employer branding, helping staffing agencies and recruiters for over 10 years. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

The post Your recruitment automation tech stack: 10 must-haves appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We’ve seen a volatile transition from one presidential administration to another. We’ve seen the increased awareness of issues in the form of Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, and other socially dynamic movements. We’re still navigating a terrifying virus.

And what’s happening among all this is that we’re experiencing an upheaval of the way we operate as a society – both at home and in the workplace.

What’s also happening – and something you’re likely noticing as an employer – is unprecedentedly high levels in job quit rates in the United States, coupled with equally striking levels in job openings. This graph from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) speaks volumes:

People in the United States aren’t merely changing jobs. They’re bowing out of the traditional workforce altogether. It signals a discontent unseen in our history.

“The Great Resignation” is no longer a prediction; it’s a current reality, and it’s evolved to a Great Discontent. It’s becoming more challenging to motivate people to stay in their jobs, and harder to attract candidates to new roles. Data from the Workable network confirms this as well.

We see this, and we want to help you – the employer – overcome this challenge. After all, you need your people.

So we surveyed 750 people in the US – some employed, some self-employed, some unemployed, all more or less employable – to understand the most important factors influencing their career priorities. And now, we have results.

We identified four major themes in the dataset:

Money still talks

Despite all the new workplace developments, salary, perks and benefits are still top of mind. People want – and need – more of it when working.

Flexy is sexy

Flexible work arrangements are important to many workers – and much more for women than men – but it’s not as high of a priority for their employers.

The power of connectivity

No matter the kind of work involved, people are at the heart of it all. When people feel connected to their colleagues and leadership, they’ll stay and they’ll thrive.

There’s no place like home

Integrating personal and professional lives is very important for people – it’s the top reason why those not working aren’t working and the top benefit of flexible work.

Major takeaways include the following:

• Want to attract people? Increase the salary, and build up the perks and benefits. 63.4% say it’s the reason why they’re looking for other opportunities, and 62.2% say salary, perks and benefits represent the top factor influencing their decision whether to accept a new job.
• Build strong teams with people who work well together. Relationships with colleagues is the number-one most attractive factor about a potential new employer (37.1%), and a major area for improvement at their current employer (31.3%).
• Make it worthwhile for your workers to stay. Seven out of 10 (70.7%) respondents say they are either actively or passively looking for work, and 54% started looking just in the last half year.
• Pay attention to your younger workers. More than two out of five (42.8%) of those aged 21-29 say they’re actively looking for a new job, compared with just one quarter (24.7%) of those aged 50-59.
• Establish remote work and especially flexible schedules as a permanent policy. Both are highly valued by workers, with 58.2% saying flexible schedules are important to them – particularly because it’s easier to integrate personal and professional lives.
• Keep an eye on the potential disconnect between you and your employees in the importance of flexible work. Nearly half think their employer will ultimately return to in-office (44.7%) and set schedules (46.8%).
• Support your employees’ home lives as well as their work lives – especially if they’re women. Females are more than twice as likely as males to cite family priorities as the reason why they’re not working (39.4% vs. 19.3%).

Read more: check out our in-depth analysis of what matters most to workers in the United States in a job. Or stay tuned for the next excerpt from our Great Discontent survey report for the US.

Interested in seeing what’s going on at the other side of the pond? Check out our UK version of the Great Discontent report in its entirety.

The post Great Discontent: It’s time to evolve your US talent attraction appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We’ve seen a volatile exit of the UK from the European Union in the form of Brexit, combined with a terrifying virus, both of which have shaken our society at the foundation – leading to economic and social upheaval at home and in the workplace.

What’s also happening – and something you’re likely noticing as an employer – is a mass talent exodus in the country, with one study by Workable partner Personio finding that four out of 10 UK employees will leave their job in the next six to 12 months.

This puts the onus on you, the employer, to take action, and quickly, says Personio CEO Hanno Renner:

“As businesses look to emerge from the crisis in a position of strength and turn the tide on the costs of a potential talent exodus, they now need to come up with a long-term people strategy. By prioritising their people and taking a more strategic approach to people management, employers can prevent an impending talent drain and drive their business performance as well as the wider economy.”

“The Great Resignation” is no longer a prediction. it’s a current reality, and it’s evolved to a Great Discontent. It’s becoming more challenging to motivate people to stay in their jobs, and harder to attract candidates to new roles. Data from the Workable network confirms this as well.

We see this, and we want to help you – the employer – overcome this challenge. After all, you need your people.

So we surveyed 500 people in the UK – some employed, some self-employed, some unemployed, all generally employable – to understand the most important factors influencing their career priorities. And now, we have results.

We identified four major themes in the dataset:

Money still talks

Despite all the new workplace developments, salary, perks and benefits are still top of mind in a job. People want – and need – more of it when working.

Flexy is sexy

Flexible work arrangements are important to many workers – and especially more so for women – but it’s not as high of a priority for their employers.

The power of connectivity

No matter the kind of work involved, people are at the heart of it all. When people feel connected to their colleagues and leadership, they’ll stay and they’ll thrive.

There’s no place like home

Integrating personal and professional lives is very important for people – it’s the top reason why those not working aren’t working and the top benefit of flexible work.

Major takeaways include the following:

• Want to attract people? Increase the salary, and build up the perks and benefits. 70.1% of workers say that’s one of the top reasons why they’ll bolt to a new job.
• Build strong teams with people who work well together. Relationships with colleagues is the number-one most attractive factor about a potential new employer (47.3%), and also the top area in need of improvement at their current employer (31.8%).
• Make it worthwhile for your workers to stay. Three quarters of respondents (74.6%) say they are either actively or passively looking for work right now – and 56.6% started looking within the last half year.
• Pay attention to your younger working population. More than two out of five (41.7%) of those aged 21-29 are actively looking, compared with just 12.9% of those aged 50-59.
• Establish remote work and especially flexible schedules as a permanent policy. Both are highly valued by workers, with 53.8% saying flexible schedules are important to them – particularly because it’s easier to integrate personal and professional lives.
• Mind that disconnect between you and your employees in the importance of flexible work. Nearly half think their employer will ultimately return to in-office (44.7%) and fixed schedules (46.8%).
• Support your employees’ home lives as well as their work lives – especially if they’re women. Females are more than six times as likely as males to cite family priorities as the reason why they’re not working (41.7% vs. 6.7%).

Read more – check out our in-depth analysis of what matters most to workers in the UK in a job. Or stay tuned until next week for the next excerpt from our Great Discontent survey report for the UK.

Interested in seeing what’s going on at the other side of the pond? Check out our US version of the Great Discontent report in its entirety.

The post Evolve your UK talent attraction and survive the Great Discontent appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

HR audits are a critical part of ensuring an organization’s employees are productive, satisfied and constantly improving. Audits are kind of like checklists for HR managers. According to SHRM, audits are most commonly used to go over current HR policies, systems, documentations and other various aspects within an organization.

After working in human resources for various corporate organizations over the last 20 years, I know firsthand how important auditing is to both HR professionals and to the overall health of an organization. Audits and productivity go hand in hand.

Here are a few auditing tips for HR professionals to facilitate an organization’s workflow.

1. Focus on the employee experience
2. Fine-tune your candidate experience
3. Conduct ROI analyses
4. Create consistent audit schedules
5. Survey your employees

1. Focus on the employee experience

When auditing an organization’s workflow, the best place to start is by focusing on the organization’s employee experiences. Look at the recruiting, onboarding, service/performance milestones, and administrative processes you have in place. Ask yourself, are they intuitive? Are they simple? Are they effective?

If not, identify areas of improvement within the organization so employees will want to brag about where they work. If employees have positive experiences, they’re more likely to be more productive.

Factors that may contribute to a positive employee experience include:

• Meaningful work
• Growth and promotion opportunities
• Healthy/positive work environment
• Trust in leaders and supervisors
• Supportive management

Additionally, employees with a more positive experience are more likely to produce higher rates of employee retention, customer satisfaction, profitability and work performance.

Read more: Josh Bersin also has a lot to say on the subject of employee experience. Check out our top 10 insights from a recent webinar.

Because of the abundance of hiring laws involved in nearly each step of the employment process, it is also critical for HR professionals to constantly conduct audits to ensure their organization’s workflow is in compliance with all applicable policies and laws in their jurisdiction.

2. Fine-tune your candidate sourcing

Whether or not your candidate sourcing process is effective can also have a massive outcome on the number of new hires your organization receives, as well as the types of hires your organization receives.

How often an organization audits its candidate sourcing practice will vary from business to business. An easy rule of thumb to remember is, if your hiring successes are low, then your audit has been delayed for too long.

Start out by determining how candidates are entering your hiring pipeline, from what sources, and whether or not you’re finding the right kind of talent. Are you using hiring boards? Social media? Have you noticed a pattern since using these sources?

Experience the process as a candidate

This step is more focused on mapping out a potential candidate’s journey. By doing this, HR professionals can clearly see an overview of what an organization’s application process looks like, and whether or not it is effective.

It is important to constantly adjust these processes to ensure your organization is focusing on hiring relevant talent that will only contribute to the growth of an organization.

Define your candidate persona

Additionally, in order to effectively recruit potential employees with relevant work experience for your organization, you must determine more than just where and how candidates are applying in the first place. Start by creating a candidate persona and aligning that persona to the employer’s or organization’s brand.

Next, check the engagement numbers on each of your recruiting platforms. Is posting on Instagram more effective than posting on LinkedIn? Is that technique bringing in large amounts of potential candidates with relevant work experience?

Auditing the hiring process goes beyond avoiding candidates with little to no relevant experience. Ultimately, it saves an organization time, money, energy and resources.

3. Conduct ROI analyses

Return On Investment (ROI) is a term used when measuring the financial return on an investment made. This concept can be applied in HR when conducting audits to analyze employee productivity, budgets, future initiatives, and of course, an ATS.

If you’re looking to build a case for a new ATS, we’ve got an ATS ROI Calculator to get you started. You can tell your decision makers that a good ATS can save your business $127,875 annually – no exaggeration!

When auditing an organization, you should also analyze your budget forecast and scrutinize your spend. This can be achieved by determining which items make sense to continue to invest in and which areas are no longer needed.

This ultimately frees up dollars to improve the HR workflow. Organizations can gauge whether or not they need to reinvest in employees, or save for a future initiative. ROI analyses help HR professionals clearly see what is worth spending on, rather than continuing to spend company dollars on expenses that have a low ROI.

4. Create consistent audit schedules

Most HR processes are heavily dependent upon employee data. Keeping the data clean and updated is imperative in order to create analytics dashboards that help your organization make important people and business decisions. Audits are a reflection of the data at your organization. If your audits are consistent and accurate, then it will reflect in the data you collect.

Regular process audits keep data clean and serve to identify breaks in the process before those breaks become a huge problem. Process audits examine a set of results and then determine whether the activities, resources and behaviors that caused those results are being managed effectively and efficiently.

HR professionals will most likely create a schedule for their process audits, either annually, monthly or quarterly. Each organization’s auditing needs will vary based on many different factors such as the employee workforce population size, the company’s size as well as the company’s overall goals.

Process audits can also help HR teams better assign roles and responsibilities within the team, identify administrative burdens and ways to resolve them, and whether or not the process is worth continuing altogether. In turn, process audits boost the overall productivity of an organization.

5. Survey your employees

Surveys are an important tool, often overlooked by many organizations and HR professionals. The best and most effective way to know what your HR team should be focused on, is by simply asking your employees.

Begin outlining your survey by deciding what type of survey you would like to conduct in order to answer your question. Different types of surveys produce different outcomes. Do you want to conduct a qualitative survey, focused on written feedback? Or would you like to gather data by using a quantitative survey instead?

Planning these surveys out can be easy and quick, depending on the content and length of each survey question.

Surveys, while sometimes cumbersome, provide the insight you want and the opinions you need to hear to overhaul processes and develop a meaningful people strategy. They blatantly show us what we should be focusing on, as well as how employees feel toward certain elements of your organization.

Employees are willing to tell you where you are falling short, what things they love about the company, and what things need more attention. Asking for employee feedback also establishes a level of trust between supervisors and employees; if employees feel safe enough to give quality, in-depth feedback, most HR professionals can assume they have a high level of trust with them.

Auditing is worth the time

While auditing may seem like an unnecessary or time consuming process to many people, HR professionals know how important auditing is. Auditing an organization’s processes, employees, investment returns and hiring practices ultimately give HR professionals a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t.

They save organizations time, money and resources while continuously striving for improvement and improving workflow. That’s exactly why audits should be included in every organization’s HR toolbelt moving forward.

The post Auditing to improve the HR workflow appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But hiring managers across all industries are losing time and money in the struggle to fill their (often urgent) tech-related positions.

The talent battle and the mounting skills gap

When researchers at McKinsey & Co. sought to understand the apparent skills gap, they separated relevant technology skills into seven separate ‘battlegrounds.’ Offering CIOs across the globe their choice from the seven, they asked survey respondents what will matter most to their organization in the next three to five years.

The largest percentage of CIOs ranked data analytics, IT, mobile, and web design as the fields with the most talent mismatch – the highest amount of need and the lowest amount of supply.

Quantified, McKinsey’s experts are predicting a global deficit of 3.5 million cybersecurity positions by the end of this year. They expect that demand for agile skills in tech-related roles will outnumber supply by four to one, and the need for big data talent will be roughly 60% greater than the available labor. For a sector that’s shaping our post-COVID future, it’s not the demand-supply curve that one would expect.

Real continuous learning: evolution as we speak

The numbers paint an alarming image, but they don’t say much in the way of why. A crucial consideration is the rapid mental upkeep that the ongoing modernization of technology requires. A candidate today is required not only to have in-depth knowledge of existing systems, but also to understand how to transition from one system to another. Outdated programming languages, shifting organizational needs, and new-to-market vendors make intensive continuous learning a part of every tech-adjacent role.

Hiring managers and employers might ask themselves, then: are we supporting that learning? Generally, most leaders understand that training, re-skilling, and upskilling are all lifeboats in choppy COVID-19 waters. Turning to existing team members for new needs is not only cost-efficient, it’s necessary for a healthy corporate culture. 82% of global executives seem to understand that, but only 27% of McKinsey’s respondents said they’ve seen their employers pursue a talent transformation within the last two years.

Filling those seven areas of tech-related needs will require an artful combination of re-skilling, up-skilling, and open-minded recruitment methods that draw on alternate sources of talent. For post-COVID tech talent recruiters and hiring managers, below are a few promising ways to extend a talent search.

The post-COVID tech talent search: talent comes from anywhere

New candidates could determine the course of a company’s recovery; it’s crucial that employers remain open to talent in all of its many forms, shapes, sizes, and funnels. Beginning on a local level, accredited educational institutions should be a feature of every recruitment scheme. Developing relationships with nearby colleges and universities can help hiring teams engage early candidates and better understand the candidate’s skill set based on curricular offerings.

The pandemic has also shifted the educational landscape, bringing with it long-awaited changes. A number of options now exist on the market for certification and needs-aware training, helping candidates at any stage of the career train move toward the specific needs of their local job markets.

Partnering with training institutions, employers can not only engage with a self-motivated pool of applicants, they can help training professionals understand the nuances of what their local business ecosystem is seeking.

From soft skills training to advanced coding languages, local and virtual training courses are alternative talent pools, and recruitment teams should make every effort to be involved at the early stages.

The new professional ecosystem: a holistic approach

The current shortage landscape calls for non-traditional solutions. At the talent sourcing phase of the recruitment process, hiring managers can capitalize on educational settings, training platforms, and online certification offerings to find incredible talent that will be perfectly positioned to make an early contribution.

The vetting phase, too, requires new techniques. The number of self-taught IT professionals is higher than ever and continues to rise. Many candidates go through short skill acquisition programs that don’t hold the same weight as a formal degree on a resume.

Read more: Tech recruitment in London: Luring and sourcing top tech talent

But one look at their portfolio might make it clear that this is a candidate the company can’t afford to lose. Opening up the recruitment process not only to different sources of talent, but also different forms of credentials, is a crucial part of post-COVID tech talent hiring. Portfolios and skills tests should be as important, if not more important, to the hiring team.

To better understand the performance of the candidate outside of their credentials, hiring managers can involve senior IT executives within the company in the recruitment process. Roles are growing more sophisticated and malleable; it’s likely that the current employees know best the kind of competence and skills that would make the most beneficial addition to the team.

Tech-focused candidates want to speak the language of tech with other tech professionals. Rather than trying to get a full recruitment team up to speed, involving senior tech executives, and maybe those anchor hires, is the superior strategy.

Read more: Wooing top tech talent: Recruiting in the Boston tech scene

Technology is driving business success and post-COVID enterprise relevance. But it won’t be a linear path to securing a well-staffed and well-supported team. Non-traditional strategies, from talent sourcing to skills assessment, will be needed to build a robust, diverse and competent team.

By partnering with education institutions and local training programs, giving due weight to a candidate’s portfolio, and involving tech professionals throughout the recruitment process, hiring managers and employers will have what they need to appeal to top talent and compete in the post-COVID hiring arena.

Pablo Listingart is the Founder and Executive Director of ComIT, a non-profit organization designed to help people overcome employment barriers and re-introduce themselves to the local market. With an extensive network, ComIT builds ever-changing courses tailored to industry needs, connecting promising graduates with companies in need of local talent.

The post Post-COVID tech talent: the gap and the bridge appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The number of workers who quit their jobs in the month of April alone was the highest it’s ever been since this metric started being recorded about 20 years ago; nearly 4 million people quit, pushing the quits rate to 2.7% of those employed.

Hence the terminology: The Great Resignation, coined and foretold by a Texas A&M professor in May 2021.

So what can employers do, now that this massive talent migration is fully underway?

The first step is to change old ways of thinking: your biggest obstacle is not a shortage of talent, but a widespread shift in job candidates’ motivations. You need to evolve your employer brand using new employee value proposition examples.

Talent shortage vs. evolving candidate motivations

Even before the pandemic, the concept of a “talent shortage” has largely gotten the blame for why it’s so difficult to hire skilled workers. This is still true; a recent global study showed that nearly seven in 10 (69%) of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring.

But that’s not the full picture.

Yes, there is some level of talent shortage, but candidates have also evolved in what they expect from a job. Many don’t want to simply “go back to normal” and have decided they’d rather pursue something else. So, companies hiring in this labor market aren’t just competing against each other, they’re also competing against:

• early retirement
• the gig economy
• self-run businesses
• unemployment benefits
• a search for a new environment
• prioritization of a flexible schedule to be with loved ones

How should companies use this information?

Well, if your company wants to attract candidates in this labor market, you should be thinking about how you can directly address these new candidate motivations. Although salary, perks and benefits understandably are top of mind for candidates, there are many ways where you can further evolve your employer brand.

That’s especially when your budget doesn’t allow for higher salaries or you have difficulty competing with Amazon, Google, or any other competitive employer for talent.

What that all boils down to is evolving your employee value proposition (EVP) so that working at your company actually contributes to – rather than competes with – the life they’re trying to make for themselves.

These four employee value proposition examples can help you evolve your employer brand so that working at your company is attractive to today’s talent:

1. Offer true work flexibility – in location and schedule

The ultimate dream for most employees is to work anywhere they want and whenever they want, doing work that offers fulfillment and growth. What’s ideal about this type of setup is it gives employees the autonomy and freedom they want and need in their day-to-day lives, while also being able to do work that feels purposeful. This is part of the employee value proposition at companies who are already or have shifted to remote-first.

However, for a great number of employers, this isn’t a desirable or feasible option. They’re not willing to let go of the very real benefits that regular in-person, in-office work brings to culture, collaboration, and unity around a common purpose for the whole organization.

If your company is decidedly not going to go fully remote, here are some ways to get as close to that level of flexibility as possible. This will make a world of difference in helping you attract (and keep) the talent you need.

• Offer employees the option to work from home at least a few days of the week
• Let employees choose what days of the week they’d work remotely vs. in the office
• Allow employees to shift their daily work hours around to when they prefer (e.g. starting and ending early)

2. Have a mission that goes beyond ‘the work’

Younger workers have always paid attention to what a company stands for as they look for a job and that interest has become even more pronounced, especially in these recent years of social and political unrest.

What these candidates are really striving for is to find work that means something and stands for something. This means company values that go beyond making a profit. These could include:

• backing BLM/LGBTQ movements
• establishing environmental equity
• building up societies
• supporting mental health and wellness

The list goes on. Candidates today are driven towards employers who have a clearly defined vision and values that are actually lived and felt among current team members.

Remember, though, that you can’t just pick a popular cause and slap that on all of your recruiting materials as your new mission. That isn’t genuine and candidates will see right through that. What you can and should do is talk to your current employees and do some internal introspection and brainstorming as a team as to how the work that you do helps make the world better.

Aside from your actual day-to-day work, you could also introduce:

• paid volunteer days
• charitable donations and company matching
• team fundraising events.

Workable’s mission and vision are a great example of an employee value proposition: the entire organization is driven toward helping great companies and great talent find each other. It’s a very people-driven concept and it attracts candidates who love the idea of supporting it.

3. Foster genuine employee connections

While talent today overwhelmingly prefers remote work over going back to the office five days a week – and many big-name companies feel the same – there’s one aspect about office life that’s still important to them: connecting with other members of their team in a meaningful way.

Just think of all of the different ways employees connect with each other organically throughout a work day when in the same physical workspace:

• seeing each other daily face-to-face
• catching up over a snack or drink break
• real-time in-person meetings
• lunch-time banter
• mini-celebrations in the desk aisles

And so many other impromptu moments. In this shift to remote work, that’s what employees today are missing.

Even though “employee events” isn’t on their job search list, companies who prioritize employee connection in their company culture (especially while remote) will attract more talent than those who don’t.

For example, some companies fly everyone together into a really cool location once a year and call it their annual kickoff or team retreat – including Workable. Many also hold regular all-day events for things like team bonding, new hire orientation, and strategy sessions.

Making time for employee connection in these ways is huge for building morale, and people have something exciting to look forward to doing together. It’s one of the most powerful employee value proposition examples you can implement at your company.

4. Offer programs to support work-life integration

If your company is letting go of some or all of your office spaces in favor of remote or hybrid work, you haven’t actually eliminated the office – you’ve simply shifted “the office” into employees’ homes. The name of the game is then no longer about employees’ work-life balance, but work-life integration.

Learn how SmartBug CEO Ryan Malone manages work-life integration at his company – which has been fully remote since its inception in the late 2000s.

Knowing that this is the new way, supporting your employees’ work-life integration will be a huge differentiator for retaining and attracting talent today. To do that, it’s all about helping employees create a fluid and healthy environment where both their personal life and work life can co-exist and not constantly compete for their attention.

It also means addressing the additional financial burden many employees are taking on due to working from their own homes, such as caregiving costs, internet bills, and paying for technology to help their time management.

Here are some programs you’ll see most commonly these days among companies who prioritize healthy work-life integration:

• one-time or recurring home office stipends to cover all equipment needs
• subsidized food delivery or monthly flexible meal stipends
• monthly cellphone and technology reimbursement for ongoing tech needs
• wellness apps or a monthly flexible wellness stipend
• backup childcare, caregiving support, and general family stipends that support all types of families

Get ready: evolve your EVP

Even though signs of the Great Resignation, or the “turnover tsunami”, was identified way back in February, none of us could have known how massive the impact would actually be.

These four employee value proposition examples are just to get you started. It’s ultimately up to you as an employer to show how quickly you can move and how nimble you can be in addressing this evolving talent market – by also evolving yourself and what you’re really offering your people.

The post 4 employee value proposition examples to survive the Great Resignation appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is recruitment outsourcing?

Outsourcing is hiring someone outside of the company to do a task. This can be a consultant or a contractor, or a company. It can be someone who lives and works in the same town or lives in another country.

When you outsource a task, you give it to an outside person or organization. When you outsource recruitment, you can use several different types of outsourced recruiting.

• Headhunters. This is the colloquial term for recruiters that recruit for specialized positions. They often work on a commission basis. While they can technically recruit for any role, they often have specialized areas. Headhunters increase their value by building relationships in their chosen industries. Companies, not candidates, pay headhunter fees (usually a percentage of the salary if they place a candidate). Some executive or highly specialized headhunter contractors are retainer-based. In this case, the recruiter receives pay for providing candidates and sourcing, and is not contingent on job acceptance.
• General recruiting. You can hire an outsourced recruiter or recruiting firm to handle all your recruiting needs, regardless of specialization. Again, the company, not the candidates, pays the recruiters.
• Staffing companies. These companies not only find people to work for you, but they hire them and pay them as well. Consequently, the employees work for the staffing company and not for you. This model is popular in industries with high turnover and low-skilled labor. It’s also popular for some IT roles, and larger companies, including Google, use this model.

When outsourced recruitment is good

Suppose you are a startup looking to hire your first of everything. In that case, it’s far better to hire a professional recruiter to help you find a CFO than to appoint your college roommate who majored in musical theater but never managed to get their big Broadway break.

For senior roles, the headhunter option generally remains a good idea, as these positions are highly specialized and critical to company success. If you get a mediocre junior analyst, it can get expensive (as bad hires tend to be), but if your newly recruited Chief Marketing Officer is a failure, it can tank your entire company.

You may also want to consider outsourcing recruiting during intense hiring phases, as your in-house HR may not have the bandwidth to take it on. For instance, if you are launching a new product and you need to hire 100 new salespeople across the entire country in a short time, your lone in-house recruiter may not be able to handle that added workload (although a great ATS can help alleviate that stress!).

You can, of course, use a contracted recruiter for all your positions, and some companies do this. Smaller companies can’t afford a dedicated recruiter or don’t hire enough people on a regular basis to warrant an extra employee for that task.

When outsourced recruitment is bad

Relying on someone outside the company to market your jobs, source candidates, and screen them, can be problematic in many situations.

If you want to build a specific company culture, you probably want to bring your recruiting in-house. An external recruiter generally has multiple clients at a time and won’t be able to dedicate themselves to the unique needs of your company as well as an in-house recruiter can do.

Because external recruiters typically get paid upon placement, there can be a bigger push to fill the role than to focus on finding the right person for the position.

If your turnover – whether voluntary and involuntary – is higher than the industry average, you may wish to take a look at in-house recruiting. People do leave when they feel that the company is a bad fit for them. You also need to fire people who turn out to be not a good fit for you.

If your turnover in either of these categories is too high, it could be due to wrongly or poorly targeted recruiting. There are times where assigning the recruiting to someone who knows the employees personally, who walks your warehouse floor every day, or sits in on exit interviews and sees the problems firsthand can result in a better candidate fit.

If you have the proper HR systems in place – a good applicant tracking system and a compatible HRIS – running the recruiting in-house can save you time and make your reporting more straightforward and more accurate.

If you choose outsourced recruitment

This is a path that fits some companies, and if you go in this direction, there are a few things you need to remember when you search for your recruiter.

• If employees work in the office, ensure the recruiter has visited and understands the working environment firsthand. There are different challenges in different businesses, and seeing the physical facilities can help the recruiter’s understanding.
• Go over the job descriptions with the recruiter in depth so that the recruiter understands the key points to look for. You can’t assume an external recruiter understands the unwritten rules of your business because she doesn’t work there.
• Consider the costs. If you hire more than one or two professional people per year with a headhunter, the associated costs can become higher than an in-house, salaried recruiter.
• Keep communication channels open. Hiring managers often change criteria during the recruitment process. If you aren’t communicating clearly, your recruiter will waste valuable time looking for the wrong candidates.
• Figure out how you will coordinate your onboarding process. Frequently, in-house recruiters handle that part of the process. If you outsource recruitment, someone in-house will need to process the paperwork and new-hire orientation.

In-house recruitment benefits

Whether you’re growing or in a high-turnover industry, you might consider bringing the whole thing in-house – the technology is there to help even the leanest hiring teams manage the recruitment process, and at cost. And the benefits of doing it internally can far outweigh the conveniences of outsourced recruitment.

Consider the following:

• Your recruiter can help identify internal candidates that may or may not apply for an open position. Someone with an intimate knowledge of the business will have powerful insight into people who can fill gaps when an external recruiter cannot.
• You can control costs. Many employers outsource recruitment to reduce costs, but filling two senior positions in a year with an external recruiter can cost more than a full-time salary for an experienced in-house recruiter.
• You have more flexibility. If you think you need to do a job fair, you can organize one. If you’re working with an outside firm, you may have to renegotiate the entire contract.
• An internal recruiter can help anticipate business needs. They can spot things before requisitions appear and plan ahead.
• Internal recruiters have a better understanding of company culture because they work there every day. They have a vested interest in getting the right people in roles because they have to work together.

Whatever you decide for your business, remember that good quality recruitment needs to be a high priority. Your business needs people to succeed, and that can’t happen without quality sourcing, recruiting, and hiring.

The post Why companies outsource recruitment (and why you shouldn’t) appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Avoid bad hires

A bad hire is shorthand for a new employee who leaves the business within 12 months of their hire date. The US Department of Labor estimates that the individual cost of a bad hiring decision is roughly equivalent to 30% of that new hire’s first year salary.

Bad hires can be especially costly. For one, a longer time to ramp can result in delays in other areas of the business, such as a product launch. Even after all that time and training, a bad hire may never ultimately realize their revenue-producing potential at your organization.

In short, you have no choice but to cut your losses and start over with a new hire.

So, how can you quantify the cost of all bad hires to your business? First, you need to estimate a few numbers:

1. Estimated number of hires in the next 12 months
2. Average % of new hires that leave w/in 12 months
3. Average employee salary

Once you have those numbers, it’s time to start calculating. Follow this formula:

Cost of Bad Hires Calculation

For example – let’s say your company is planning to hire 20 new employees this year.

The average salary of those 20 employees is $55,000.

Historically, 15% of your new hires churn within the first year.

(Avg. employee salary) * (30%) * ((estimated # of hires in the next 12 months) * (% of hires that leave w/in 12 months)) = Annual cost of bad hires

First, multiply that average salary of $55,000 by 30% to calculate the cost of one bad hire. Then multiply that by the projected number of bad hires in a year (20 employees * 15% churn).

That brings your total annual cost of bad hires to your business to $49,500.

Total Annual Savings: Avoiding Bad Hires Calculation

Now, in this same example, using the formula below, imagine you’re able to decrease bad hires by 25% using the ATS you’ve selected. It’s as easy as taking that $49,500 total above and multiplying it by 25%.

(Annual cost of bad hires) * (% decrease in bad hires) = Total annual savings from avoiding bad hires

That totals $12,375 in bad hires, alone – a worthy addition to the ROI of an ATS.

So, how does a good ATS help you avoid bad hires? It helps you:

• Find more qualified and diverse candidates to choose from. With Workable, you can find more qualified candidates using proactive sourcing tools like AI Recruiter, People Search and Referrals.
• Make better hiring decisions with fair and consistent evaluations. With Workable, use standard interview kits and scorecards, objective cognitive pre-employment assessments, and one-way video interviews to help you screen more thoroughly at scale.
• Engage your hiring managers from the start. With Workable’s click-efficient UI, global support and industry-leading mobile app, hiring managers will be more engaged throughout the entire process.

2. Reduce external costs

Think about all of the extra money you spend on different softwares and services in your tech stack – can you eliminate any of them with a good ATS? In the short term, your ATS will cost money, but in the long term it can actually save you money.

With Workable, for example, most customers can rely less on external agencies and costly third-party sourcing tools because Workable has a full suite of sourcing features built right into the ATS.

Now, you need to show that to finance. How can you calculate the reduction in external costs to your business with an ATS? Think about the following:

1. Average annual spend on job boards and third-party sourcing tools
2. Average annual spend on agency fees
3. Average annual spend on third-party tools (like e-signatures, assessments providers, video interview providers, texting providers, etc.)

First, add these costs together to understand the total cost of all of your external recruitment tools. Then, think about which ones a good ATS can help with. You’ll find that you can reduce some costs – and eliminate others outright. Remember, in the eyes of finance, every little bit of savings helps.

For example, if you can decrease reliance on expensive external staffing agencies by just 20% AND get rid of just one other third-party subscription, the combined savings from these alone will likely far outweigh the cost of the ATS you’re asking finance to approve.

Total Annual External Costs Calculation

Let’s try out this scenario: every year, your company spends $20,000 on sponsored job posts and third-party sourcing tools. Add to that another $37,000 on agency fees, bringing that total to $57,000.

That’s not all; there’s another $15,000 being spent per year in combined costs for e-signature software to get those employment contracts signed, plus a texting tool so you can quickly contact interested applicants.

Just put them all together into one tidy sum: your total external costs per year.

(Avg. annual spend on job boards and third-party sourcing tools) + (Avg. annual spend on agency fees) + (Average annual spend on other third-party tools) = Total external costs per year

In this case, the total annual cost to your business of these external tools amounts to $72,000.

Total Annual Savings: Reducing External Costs Calculation

Now, imagine that you decrease the reliance on your sponsored posts and external agencies by just 20% now that you’re able to use passive sourcing features and a referrals platform. Plus, the new ATS includes e-signature offer letters and texting built right into the software – so you can fully eliminate the cost of those subscriptions.

So, in this case, you take that $57,000 spent on agencies, sponsored posts, and other third-party sourcing tools, multiply that by 20% – bringing the total to $11,400.

((Annual spend on agencies, sponsored posts and third-party sourcing tools) * (% decrease in)) + (Average annual spend on other third-party tools)) = Total annual savings from reducing external costs

Add the annual costs of the other third-party tools ($15,000), and you have $26,400 saved in external recruitment costs with the addition of an ATS. That’s a compelling addition when presenting the ROI of an ATS.

So, how does a good ATS help you reduce external costs?

• Native sourcing tools bring sourcing in-house. With Workable, best-fit candidates are automatically recommended for every job. Prefer to reach those candidates via social media channels? Workable makes it easy to extend your reach through custom Facebook and Instagram campaigns to those highly valued passive candidates.
• Most hiring teams rely on a suite of tools from different providers to get hiring done. With Workable, most of those tools are built right into the ATS, eliminating the need for additional, costly subscriptions. Native video interviews, assessments, texting and e-signatures not only save your organization money, but they create a more natural and cohesive candidate experience.

3. Increase recruiter productivity

One way to demonstrate the value an ATS provides is to calculate the bottom-line impact of a more productive recruiting team. This is especially important for scaling companies, where the talent team is often asked to do a lot more with the same resources – or in some cases, leaner teams and budgets.

Our first impulse is to often use time-saved to demonstrate ROI — but for a finance team that’s focused more on revenue, time doesn’t always calculate well. Yet, you can still make a strong impression on your C-suite and decision makers when you highlight the real value of time in terms of salary.

So, what’s the best way to calculate this? You’ll need these inputs:

1. Number of recruiters on your team
2. Average recruiter salary + benefits
3. Estimated increase in productivity

Added Recruiter Productivity Calculation

Now, let’s say there are three recruiters on your team, with an average salary of $71,500 (including benefits). You can increase the productivity of the team by 20% with an ATS that reduces or even eliminates bottlenecks via automated email scheduling, automatic approval workflows, and more engaged hiring managers.

You’re looking at total cost savings of $42,900 – that’s over half the cost of an additional recruiter! That speaks volumes for the ROI of an ATS.

Total Annual Savings: Increased Recruiter Productivity Calculation

(Number of recruiters) X (Average salary + benefits) X (% increase in productivity) = Total cost savings from increased recruiter productivity

So, how does a good ATS help you increase recruiter productivity?

• Intelligent automations that eliminate tedious, administrative tasks and reduce human error. With Workable, automated actions keep interview scheduling and candidate communication completely streamlined.
• Engagement and collaboration is key. Your ATS should keep the entire hiring team engaged from the start. Workable’s mobile app is the perfect personal hiring assistant for busy hiring managers, and our two-way email and calendar sync keeps all communication easy to find in one place.

4. Decreased time to fill

Reducing time to hire and time to fill are at the top of every recruiter’s wishlist. And, at first, it seems pretty straightforward to measure. After all, if your time to fill was reduced to 29 days from 36 days after you implemented your ATS, it stands to reason that your new ATS reduced your time to fill by seven days. Pretty simple stuff, right?

But, that doesn’t really tell the whole story. Reducing time to fill can have a massive impact on your business. With a few simple calculations, you can help your C-suite understand how critical that seven-day reduction can be to the success of your organization.

So, how can you better quantify the ROI of decreasing time to fill?

You’ll need a few key inputs for this one:

1. Current time to hire
2. Desired time to hire (what you think a good ATS will help you achieve)
3. Estimated number of hires in the next 12 months
4. Annual company revenue
5. Number of full-time employees in your company

Total Cost of Time to Fill Calculation

Calculating the total cost of our time to fill will take a few steps. The first thing we’ll do is calculate revenue per employee:

(Annual company revenue) / (Number of full-time employees) = Revenue per employee

Next, we’re going to to calculate the cost of vacancy, per day using 220 (roughly the number of working days in a calendar year if you’re in the US, for instance):

(Revenue per employee) / (220) = Cost of vacancy per day

To calculate the total vacancy cost for your organization, simply multiply cost of vacancy per day by current time to fill and the number of estimated hires for the next 12 months:

((Cost of vacancy per day) * (current time to fill)) * (Number of estimated hires in the next 12 months) = Total cost of time to fill

For example: you’re a company with $2.9 million in revenue. You have 60 full-time employees and you want to add 30 more over the next 12 months. This means your revenue per employee is roughly $48,300. Divide that by 220 working days, and you have a cost of vacancy per day of roughly $220.

Multiply that cost of vacancy per day by those 30 additional employees you plan to hire, and multiply that by your current time to fill of 36 days – and your total cost of time to fill is about $237,600.

With that, you can calculate the total annual savings when you decrease your time to fill by seven days. That calculation can give you a pretty compelling case when presenting the ROI of an ATS.

Let’s give it a try: subtract the desired time to fill from the current time to fill (resulting in seven days in this case), and multiply that by the cost of vacancy per day ($220).

(Current time to fill – desired time to fill) * (Cost of vacancy per day) = Money saved per hire

The result is your money saved per hire, which totals $1,538.

Total Annual Savings: Decreased Time to Hire Calculation

You can then project your savings out over the entire year when you multiply your money saved per hire ($1,540) by the 30 hires planned over the next 12 months.

(Money saved per hire) X (Number of estimated hires in the next 12 months) = Total annual savings from decreased time to hire

The result is your total annual savings from your decreased time to fill, which in this scenario would be $46,200. Your ROI of an ATS just got even stronger!

So, how does a good ATS help you decrease time to fill? It helps you:

• Attract more qualified candidates. The faster the right candidates find you, the faster you can hire them! With Workable, you can expand your reach with one-click job board posting and boost your brand with a highly customizable and engaging careers page.
• Create a modern candidate experience. From the moment a candidate applies to the moment they (electronically!) sign the job offer – Workable is designed to make it easy, fast and enjoyable for candidates to move through the process.

5. Total ROI of an ATS: Putting it all together

Now that you’ve done your research, gathered all the inputs and made your calculations, it’s time to put it all together into one compelling case. Here, you’ll want to show all of the expected monetary savings, along with the added value the ATS provides.

Using the examples and calculations above, here’s how you can pull it all together into a simple sheet presenting the ROI of an ATS:

The post How to calculate the ROI of an ATS: A step-by-step guide appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s not all. There’s the extra burden placed on your day-to-day with legal and moral expectations to meet diversity, equity and inclusion metrics, increased compliance obligations including data privacy, employee vs. contractor classifications, and wage regulations.

And all of that while working on the same hiring budget you’ve had on your desk since before the pandemic – but with one or two less people in your team. That’s a lot to ask of a hiring team – especially in terms of time.

So, to help you out, here are 11 recruitment time-saving tips to help you optimize your hiring process while working with a lean budget and lean team. Spoiler: Workable’s recruitment solution can help you with pretty much all of them.

11 recruitment time-saving tips to speed up hiring

1. Automate the process
2. Offer self-scheduling options for candidates
3. Take advantage of templates
4. Enable mobile-friendly recruitment
5. Introduce e-signatures
6. Utilize a user-friendly career page builder
7. Take advantage of AI
8. Clone the process
9. Post to multiple job boards with one click
10. Automate your reporting
11. Remote interviewing

1. Automate the process

When handling large numbers of applicants, it becomes nearly impossible to engage each and every one of them personally, even when shortlisted.

Luckily, there are tools available that allow you to automate different steps in the process. Steps that can be automated include:

• An initial thank-you email in response to an application
• A rejection message for those who are not the right fit
• Moving candidates through the pipeline based on assessment scores
• A calendar self-schedule link sent out to someone who’s been moved to the next stage (more on that later)

Remember, you’re still dealing with human beings in the process. An automated, impersonal, careless rejection email can be off-putting for the candidate and may even impact impressions of your company in their network. Ensure that the tone and style of the email is appropriate, and always prioritize that candidate experience!

Workable’s automated actions tool can help you preset emails and processes while providing the templates (more on that below) to help you get started on recruitment time-saving.

2. Offer self-scheduling options for candidates

Whether you’re a recruiter or hiring manager, you know how much time can be spent communicating back and forth when planning for a phone screen, a video interview, or an in-person interview at any stage in the process. Factor in the number of candidates involved, and you can see how you might be wasting time that’s better spent on other, more applicable tasks.

All of that can be eliminated, however, by giving the candidate the opportunity to reserve an available time slot right through a link to your calendar. Workable’s self-scheduling tool enables easy scheduling from start to finish – and is one of the leading recruitment time-saving tips in this list.

3. Take advantage of templates

Writing a job description or a series of interview questions from scratch for every job opening can be a time-consuming task, especially when you’re hiring en masse after a new funding round or expansion to a new market. It’s also potentially susceptible to bias in terms of the language used, job requirements listed, and questions asked.

Save your time by utilizing templates. Templates, of course, don’t need to be posted as is – rather, they provide a great foundation for you to start to customize to each job. Plus, they save you a lot of time in the workflow.

Workable has more than 700 job description templates, 390 interview question templates, dozens of company policy templates, checklists, emails and much more that can be imported right into your applicant tracking system.

4. Enable mobile-friendly recruitment

Recruiting is a full-time job for recruiters, but is an added workload for hiring managers and executives whose decisions are needed to move candidates through the pipeline. Bottlenecks will happen as a result.

You can alleviate those breakdowns by giving busy hiring managers and executives the option to sift through candidates on their smartphone. Think about it – they’ll be able to check in during their commute, while taking a break in their day, or when (ahem) taking care of other business. That’ll speed things along.

Workable’s mobile-friendly app enables all of that, and more. Ben O’Mahony, from Cytora, commented on why the mobile app is awesome for busy hiring managers:

“They don’t need to see the entire recruiting pipeline at all times. They just need to see who they’re interviewing. And this is quickly done through the Workable app.”

5. Introduce e-signatures

Getting candidates to sign that job offer so you can close the books on the process is easier said than done, especially when it’s a remote hire or a new employee from another location. Having contracts delivered to and from the new hire is a time-consuming process, and that piles up when you’re handling multiple hires at once.

E-signing can solve all of that hassle. Everything’s going digital now – especially as the work world becomes increasingly remote. That includes all the legal stuff, like contracts, in a fully secure online environment to boot.

Workable’s ATS comes ready-made with its own e-signature tool to meet those important signature needs and is a small but important recruitment time-saver.

6. Use a user-friendly career page builder

Careers pages, like anything else in your website, can involve a lot of design work involving a team that’s already busy working on marketing and sales materials day in and day out. Plus, there’s a lot of back-and-forth involved where you have a ‘perfect’ careers page in mind and you’re working with design to make that happen.

You can skip all of that by bringing in a feature that enables even the least tech-savvy HR manager to build an impressive careers page using click-and-drag options.

Workable has its own advanced careers page builder built into its software. And this tutorial can help you whip together an amazing careers page in a short time, putting your employer brand on a pedestal and attracting the very best candidates to your company.

7. Take advantage of AI

We’re now in a strange time where many companies are experiencing difficulty finding the right candidates – or even a satisfactory number of candidates – for specific job postings. This especially applies when you’re hiring in a hyper-competitive space, such as developers or software engineers, or when looking to fill a niche role – both situations that often result in a shortage of candidates. This can put the onus on the recruiter to seek out potential applicants – including passive candidates – which involves a lot of legwork and time invested.

But there are ways around that. Artificial intelligence, when used in the right way, can seek out and find great candidates for you based on your job description and other parameters that you set – including specific keywords, qualifications, and other directives.

Workable’s AI Recruiter was introduced specifically for this purpose. And it can come in especially useful for you right now.

8. Clone the process

When someone – especially one of your top employees – puts in their notice, it feels like you have to start all over again. Not only is it like capturing lightning in a bottle, it also takes time to set up a new job ad, put together a new series of interview questions, create a new assessment, etc., etc., etc.

What if you just went back to that original process that led to the hire of this amazing employee, and simply cloned it? Not only can you replicate what was successful before, you can skip those steps doing this for high-turnover roles such as in sales and hospitality.

9. Post to multiple job boards with one click

Your job description is approved and you’re ready to distribute. Next steps:

• Step 1: Post job ad to LinkedIn.
• Step 2: Post job ad to Facebook Jobs.
• Step 3: Post job to Indeed.
• Step 4: Post job ad to Glassdoor.
• Step 5: Post job ad to Monster.
• Step 6: ….

You get the point. Doing that over and over and over again can eat up all the hours in a day, and that’s just for a single job opportunity. Although it’s standard to expect an ATS to deliver job ads to numerous job sites automatically, you want to be sure you have the right ATS to post to not just the most job sites, but the right ones.

Check out the list of Workable’s existing job site integrations to get an idea of how many job sites you can post to with one click using our recruitment software.

10. Automate your reporting

Reporting on recruitment metrics is crucial to successful hiring, but it can take quite a bit of time to analyze data and then break it down into reports for the C-suite who are most interested in how your hiring process impacts the bottom line.

There are many different reasons you need reports in hiring, such as:

• Identifying breakdowns and bottlenecks in the process that can prolong time to hire and time to fill
• Understanding where your best candidates are coming from
• Tracking diversity metrics in your candidate pool
• Staying compliant with government-mandated requirements, including EEOC, CCPA, and GDPR protocols

All that data in your recruitment process can be automatically turned into reports to benefit all of the above, including having reports sent directly from your software. Workable’s software has reporting functions to meet each of the above needs.

11. Remote interviewing

While it’s not necessarily time taken out of your own work day, you’re asking a lot of a candidate when you schedule an in-person interview. Assuming the commute takes an hour each way door-to-door, you’re making the candidate spend three full hours – or more – for a one-hour interview. Not only that, it doesn’t bode well for candidate experience, especially in an increasingly digital work world. A recruitment time-saving tip here will be invaluable.

With a few exceptions – such as the more intensive later-stage interviews – do your candidates a favor and carry out your interviews via phone or, ideally, video. There’s a multitude of tools out there that can help you – including Workable’s one-way video interviewing tool which can take care of the screening stage and even that first “interview” stage in one step.

Optimize and grow

Of course, these time-saving recruitment tips won’t free up your entire day – but they can free up a good number of hours in your workflow that can be better spent on the more in-depth work.

You can now invest time and energy into branding yourself as an employer, meeting with hiring managers to best understand what they want and need in a new hire, and overseeing new employee onboarding.

Not only do these increase your profile within the company as someone who can do the job without fail, you can better participate in more high-level discussions around workforce planning. It’s a win-win all around – for yourself, for candidates, and the company as a whole.

The post 11 recruitment time-saving tips for the overburdened recruiter appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With automated actions, our newest efficiency-boosting tool, make recruiters’ jobs easier and speed up time to hire by automating repetitive tasks and emails. Automate and personalize bulk candidate communication to increase productivity, allow candidates to self-schedule meeting times to streamline interview scheduling, and ensure every applicant gets a customized and personalized response to improve both the candidate experience and your employer brand.

Workable helps companies in 100+ countries efficiently scale up their hiring processes with tools like hiring plan, interview self-scheduling, native video interviews, and top-notch customer support.

The post Introducing automated actions: Increase productivity and hire more efficiently appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

How to scale up your hiring: 13 features for rapidly growing companies

1. Hiring Plan
2. Department Hierarchy
3. Access rights and permissions
4. Integrations
5. Compliance
6. Interview self-scheduling
7. Automated actions
8. Bulk actions
9. One-way video interviews
10. Mobile app
11. Customer support
12. AI Recruiter
13. People Search

Maintain transparency, accountability and control

When you scale up your hiring in a company that’s growing aggressively, that hiring process no longer involves just the recruiter or hiring manager. There are other stakeholders involved, including those at the executive level, department heads, finance managers, and others. Plus, the recruitment process grows in complexity as you’re no longer hiring just to fill a seat.

For that, you need to have a recruitment system that maintains transparency to all interested parties, holds them accountable to their respective roles in the hiring process, and is controllable all in one place. The following features will enable you to have such a system in place.

1. Hiring Plan

Rapid growth requires a strategic hiring plan that’s as dynamic as your company. You might be able to manage requisition approvals manually for one or two employees, but certainly not two hundred at a time. When you’re hiring at high volume, you need an organized approach so you can prioritize requisitions properly, budget them accurately and maintain visibility at all times.

With Workable’s Hiring Plan, you can track requisitions, manage approvals and review budgeting data, all in real time. Hiring managers create requisitions when they need to hire, and follow standard or custom approval workflows. As roles are opened and filled, your Hiring Performance report updates automatically, so you can track changes, make adjustments and forecast your hiring budget for the year.

2. Department Hierarchy

As your organization evolves, so does your organizational structure. As teams change and expand, you need a system that makes it easy to adapt.

Enter Department Hierarchy. This centralized department management makes it for you to manage custom departments and hierarchical structure — meaning, as your company grows your hiring structure does, too.

Filter your careers page, dashboards and reports based on the departments you’ve set up and organize key features of the hiring process by department and location. Super admins control every aspect of department management and setup, so you can maintain strict control and organization as you scale up your hiring process.

3. Access rights and permissions

When you grow from five to 500, the number of people involved in the hiring process expands exponentially. With more users and varying degrees of seniority, it becomes more difficult – and more essential – to protect sensitive data. Control who sees what, when with Workable’s roles and permissions.

User roles define which hiring tasks team members should (and can) perform, and user permissions ensure they get just the right amount of access to get the job done.

4. Integrations

Growing companies usually don’t depend on just one system to get their hiring done. From SSO to background checks to HRIS and onboarding Workable connects with the tools you rely on.

With Workable you can transfer candidate data seamlessly and safely or connect to your business intelligence suite to access robust analytics and measure custom KPIs. Need to go custom? With Workable’s open API and world-class Tech Solutions team, nothing is out of reach.

Check out Workable’s extensive list of integrations.

5. Compliance

Managing compliance can get more complicated as your business grows. As you expand across countries and continents, so does the list of regulations and laws you must comply with.

Workable helps you navigate local, national and internal regulation – no matter where you’re operating. Our suite of automated compliance features make it easy to manage and demonstrate compliance. Whether it’s GDPR, CCPA or EEO – Workable has you covered with features like automated data deletion, candidate opt-out links, and anonymized candidate surveys and reports.

Save time, automate admin and hire at scale

When you’re processing hundreds of applications for a single job opening, that’s a lot to manage. That number grows exponentially when you’re filling multiple positions at once and on a regular basis. The following features will help optimize the process in a scalable way, and avoid lengthy delays in the recruitment process.

6. Interview self-scheduling

It can take days to coordinate scheduling for just one candidate — imagine trying to do it for one hundred! At a rapidly scaling company it’s downright impossible to schedule interviews the old-fashioned way — 100% admin and 0% value added.

With Workable’s self-scheduling option, you can eliminate the back-and-forth and book timely, convenient interviews with just a few clicks. In your initial outreach template, simply include the self-schedule link. The candidate can view the available slots on your calendar and book on the spot. All you have to do is show up!

7. Automated actions

Stuck doing the same old boring hiring tasks over and over again? They’re not just tedious, they can also cost you serious time and effort when multiplied over hundreds of open positions. What seems like just two minutes can easily turn into two hours of admin work per day as candidates and open roles pile up.

With Workable’s automated actions you can increase productivity and speed up time to hire by automating repetitive tasks, emails and invites. Develop custom email templates and create automations by job, department or hiring stage.

Whether you’re sending an assessment test, self-schedule interview links or disqualification emails – Workable makes it easy to set up, cancel and edit automations.

8. Bulk actions

At a rapidly scaling company, you’re likely dealing with hundreds or thousands of candidates. Taking basic actions like sending emails or disqualifying applicants, can take ages if you’re forced to do it one-by-one.

Luckily, Workable’s bulk actions make it easy to take action with just a few simple clicks. In Workable, you can use templates with bulk emails to email sourced candidates or send mass rejection emails to disqualified applicants.

Simply open the hiring stage, select the candidates you’d like to email and click ‘send bulk emails’ from the bulk actions menu. Workable even has built-in duplicate detection to prevent candidates from receiving emails twice.

9. One-way video interviews

When you’re scaling up, you need your time-to-hire to go way down. You need tools that will help you screen at scale, and more easily identify qualified candidates. Enter, Video Interviews. Video Interviews reduce the time you need to spend communicating, scheduling and carrying out the screening process.

Workable’s one-way video interviews are built with the candidate in mind – there’s no messy tech, no downloads and no leaving the application form. It’s all built into the Workable platform, which also makes it easier for the hiring team to collaborate and compare feedback. And since hiring teams can review responses and provide feedback at any time, from any device, you’ll identify your best candidates faster, too.

Engage the entire hiring team

Hiring may be in your day job, but it’s not always in the day job of the hiring manager or executive. Nevertheless, to do your job well, you need their active participation. The following two features will help you make their part in the process easier – which in turn makes it easy to do your own job even at scale.

10. Mobile app

The hardest part of hiring at scale can be getting hiring managers on board and engaged. The mobile app makes it easy for hiring managers to stay connected, no matter where they are.

The mobile app acts as your personal assistant giving you an overview of upcoming events, overdue tasks and all the helpful context you need. You can screen, communicate, evaluate and even hire, all from your phone.

Learn how a Workable sales executive hired 20 salespeople in three months using her smartphone, despite a packed schedule.

11. Customer support

When you’re at a high growth company, you can’t get hung up on a tech question. You need real answers from real people, real fast. Workable’s global support team has you covered, no matter what timezone you’re in.

An agent is never more than a simple call, chat or email away. And, with a 95% customer satisfaction rating, you could say we specialize in solving problems.

Fill your (rapidly growing!) talent pipeline

Finally – talent shortages and niche roles often pose a challenge to recruiters who need to attract the best and brightest candidates to your company. This feature will help you.

12. AI Recruiter

When you’ve been tapped to help your company double in size by scaling up your hiring, the best place to start is with a healthy talent pipeline. But instantly filling your pipeline with a host of diverse, qualified applicants is easier said than done.

Until now. With Workable’s unique sourcing toolkit you won’t need external recruiters or additional sourcing software to get a leg up in the talent market. With AI Recruiter you can take sourcing into your own hands. Get a list of the top 50 passive candidates for every job in your account, instantly. Add them all into the sourced stage with one click.

13. People Search

Already know what skills you’re looking for? Leverage the power of the internet in an instant. Be as specific or as general as you like while running a full boolean search based on experience, keywords, location, education, etc. You’ll get matching passive candidates with their best contact info.

Learn how an insurance startup tripled their employee base in 2.5 years, hiring for difficult-to-fill niche roles using People Search.

The post How to scale up your hiring process: 13 features for rapidly growing companies appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Evaluating free vs. paid applicant tracking software
  • Features you can expect on a free ATS plan
  • Features likely to be missing from a free ATS
• Who are free applicant tracking systems suitable for?
• Signs a paid ATS may be more beneficial for your business
• Top 5 best free applicant tracking systems
  • SmartRecruiters
  • Zoho
  • BreezyHR
  • Recruitee
  • Teamtailor

Evaluating free vs. paid applicant tracking software

Luckily, there is applicant tracking software available for any budget or business need. Rather than just choosing one from our list, check out the pros and cons of each to see what is right for your organization. After all, there’s no reason to pay for a level of service you don’t need and won’t use, but free applicant tracking systems do have limits to what they can offer.

Features you can expect on a free ATS plan

So what kind of features come standard with most free ATS plans?

1. Seamless job posting

One of the most useful tools an ATS can offer is the ability to post job listings across many platforms at once. This saves time and effort for your HR department.

2. Resume aggregation and management

When applications start coming in from the many places you posted your job listing, an ATS can help you aggregate and sort the resumes that you receive. Free applicant tracking systems have features built in to allow you to search for candidates in your applicant pool by background, job title, skill set, and other factors. This helps you pull the most qualified candidates for further research and interviews.

3. Communication & automation

Many free applicant tracking systems also come with communication features that streamline the applicant management process. This means that key elements of the communication process with job applicants – such as email communication, interview scheduling, and first-round interviews – can be automated in order to save time and labor costs. Depending on the type of free applicant tracking system you’re using, this can range from simple communication features to full, large-scale process automation.

Features likely to be missing from a free ATS

Free applicant tracking systems may have a lot of time-saving features to offer, but paid applicant tracking systems have some seriously useful features that you just can’t get with a free plan. These may include:

1. Unlimited job postings

Free applicant tracking systems often have limits on the number of job listings you can post at a time. They might also limit the number of websites that they cross-post your job listing on, whereas more robust paid plans offer access to many websites at once and unlimited job listings.

2. Resume storage, CRM-style

This feature stores applications and resumes submitted in a searchable database that your HR team can access at any point in the future, essentially giving you a ready-made talent pool of candidates interested in your organization, even if they were not selected for the role they originally applied for. Free ATS’ usually have limits on how long your resumes can be stored for, if they retain them at all. However, know that the recent growth in data privacy legislation will require more attention on compliance than in the past.

3. Social media functionality

A free applicant tracking system can aggregate and filter applications for your HR department, but it usually can’t pull information from social media as well. A premium ATS finds candidates through their social media profiles as well as through submitted applications. This broader candidate pool is a huge asset!

4. Analytics

Another paid feature is data analytics for your talent pool. A paid applicant tracking system can gather and analyze data on your candidates. It can also monitor for compliance and DEI goals when using candidate surveying tools.

5. Mobile compatibility

When you use a free applicant tracking system, you pay with less access to features like mobile compatibility. With so much work activity done on the go these days, it may be worth paying for a system that includes a native app or, at the very least, is mobile compatible.

6. Ad free & secure

One way that companies can afford to release free applicant tracking systems is by running ads on their systems. This not only makes for a distracting and messy user experience, but also poses potential security risks.

7. Scalability

Due to their limited features, free applicant tracking systems are not great for businesses that may need to quickly scale up in the future. If your business is growing quickly, it’s a good idea to invest in an ATS that can handle a higher load of applications.

Who are free applicant tracking systems suitable for?

Free applicant tracking systems aren’t the best choice for everyone. There are real limits to the features they offer, and in many cases, paying for an upgraded program is far more cost-effective. Here are some scenarios where a free applicant tracking system may work best for your organization:

1. Your recruitment process is pretty simple

There’s no need to overcomplicate something if it’s already working for your business. If your recruitment pipeline is simple yet effective, a free ATS may be all you need.

2. You only hire a few candidates each year, or have a small recruiting budget

If you only fill a few job openings each year, it may not be worth the cost of a paid ATS to fill those openings. A free ATS can get the job done in this scenario, with limitations.

3. You have an IT team that can alter open-source software for your ATS

There are a few open-source ATS solutions out there. If you have an in-house IT team with the bandwidth to tweak and customize this open-source software for your company, that may be a better solution than paying for a full service ATS. Bear in mind, however, that you’re also limiting yourself to your IT team’s capabilities and while the ATS is “free”, the amount of hours invested in customizing the open-source ATS solution can be seen as an added expense.

Signs a paid ATS may be more beneficial for your business

If you have a feeling that your organization could benefit from a more sophisticated program with better features, here are some signs a paid ATS could be worth it for you:

1. Your hiring process is complex

Larger businesses with complicated talent pipelines can benefit from the features offered by a paid ATS. A paid applicant tracking system can help you standardize your recruitment process. It can also make continuous hiring a breeze, which is great for industries with high turnover.

2. You hire many people per year

The cost of a wrong hire is a price no business can afford to pay. But the larger your organization is, the more likely you are to be hiring for a number of management positions, which can be some of the most costly to hire or replace. A paid applicant tracking system with better features will easily pay for itself in an organization that hires many people each year.

3. You want to free up time for your HR/recruiting staff

With the automations, streamlined communication, and analytics offered with most paid applicant tracking systems, your HR team will save valuable time that can now be spent on resolving internal matters or interviewing high-value candidates. A paid applicant tracking system will also keep your hiring team on the same page throughout the hiring process.

4. You want to keep track of standout applicants

A paid applicant tracking system often includes the ability to store resumes from applicants in an easy-to-use database, allowing hiring managers to search the database for qualified candidates, even after the position they applied for is filled. Again, as above, be mindful of compliance considerations when storing candidate data.

5. You want to find the most qualified candidates

Free applicant tracking systems simply can’t compete with the premium features offered by paid versions. If easily finding the most qualified candidates is your top priority, it’s probably worth investing in a service that will truly get the job done.

6. You want to audit your recruiting process for efficiency

Is there time waste in your HR or recruiting department? Has your organization gone through the frustrating process of multiple bad-fit hires? The automation and other features that a paid ATS offers can help your leadership pinpoint and correct areas of inefficiency and waste.

Top 5 best free applicant tracking systems

But not every organization can afford or needs what a paid applicant tracking system has to offer. If you’re still interested in trying out a free applicant tracking system, here’s a breakdown of the five best free programs out there and what each of them has to offer.

SmartRecruiters

SmartRecruiters offers tons of features for large firms to recruit and hire; their free version is great for smaller companies who are looking to fill fewer positions. Unlike many free applicant tracking systems, their free version offers most of the same features of their paid version, the main difference being limits on the number of active job postings they allow.

Zoho

Zoho’s free applicant tracking system is tailored for recruiting and staffing firms, so if you’re in another industry, you might want to take a look at the other free ATS’ listed here. That being said, it has many useful integrations like evaluation management, job description templates, and background check software.

BreezyHR

BreezyHR is one of the few applicant tracking systems to offer a limited version for free forever, rather than just a short free trial of the full version. Highly rated by software review site Capterra for its robust features, Breezy offers many features other ATS’ don’t, like skill assessment and a native video interview system. The free version only allows for one active position and one active talent pool at a time.

Recruitee

While free only on a trial basis, Recruitee is a highly flexible ATS with all the features you’d expect from a free ATS: resume search, job posting, and interview scheduling automation. It also offers integrations for internal HR processes, like recruitment goal checking, and workflow management. Recruitee does not include onboarding software.

Teamtailor

Like Recruitee, Teamtailor offers a free trial as opposed to an outright free option. With branding features, an easy-to-use interface, integrated onboarding, and mobile compatibility, Teamtailor is yet another great option.

Olivia Jones is a freelance writer and marketing consultant. She helps companies create compelling content. Learn more about what she does on her website or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The post The best free applicant tracking systems appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What is workforce planning?
• What is involved in workforce planning?
• How to create a workforce plan

What is workforce planning?

Workforce planning is the people side of planning, but some businesses skip it, thinking that people will just appear when needed. Workforce planning aligns core business goals with people strategy. It makes no sense to plan on a new product launch next year without thinking about R&D, supply chain, and sales staff.

Workforce planning is the tool you use to ensure that alignment.

What is involved in workforce planning?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) identifies the critical points of workforce planning as follows.

1. Reduce labor costs in favor of workforce deployment and flexibility
2. Identify and respond to changing customer needs
3. Identify relevant strategies for focused people development
4. Target inefficiencies
5. Improve employee retention
6. Improve productivity and quality outputs
7. Improve employees’ work-life balance
8. Make recommendations to deliver strategic value through talent

This article will break down these points and how they apply to your business.

1. Reduce labor costs in favor of workforce deployment and flexibility

Labor is often the highest cost for businesses outside of manufacturing. Some estimates put labor costs at 60% and even 70% of expenses. With these costs, planning to reduce costs while increasing flexibility is critical to continued success.

This isn’t advocating for low-balling employees or providing rotten benefits for employees. It’s about getting the right people in the correct positions. An engaged, competent, happy employee will cost less than an unhappy, unqualified employee. Remember, turnover is expensive as well.

2. Identify and respond to changing customer needs

The classic case study of a company that didn’t respond to customer needs is Kodak. As the king of film, Kodak had digital technology early but decided to focus on film, thinking digital was a fad. It wasn’t, and the company struggled for survival, dropping from a peak of 145,000 employees to 5,000 as of August 2020.

Human resources departments need to be a bit of a fortune-teller to accurately predict workforce needs. Because SHRM doesn’t issue crystal balls, HR needs to work closely with each department to help predict needs and create plans for meeting these. Open communication between HR and each department is critical.

3. Identify relevant strategies for focused people development

The very premise of workforce planning is that business changes, and because business changes, people need to change. Figuring out talent gaps and plans to fill those gaps is a core function of workforce planning.

People development needs to happen before the need exists. Remember, you can go out and search for the “unicorn” candidate to fill a need immediately, but it’s often more manageable if you plan and develop an employee to take care of that specialty skill gap – if you do it right. This can mean training classes, graduate programs, or stretch assignments.

4. Target inefficiencies

If you’ve ever heard “we’ve always done it that way” as an explanation, then you know that the business has inefficiencies that can be rooted out. Good HR will ask; “What should we stop doing?” as well as “What should we do?”. You can find inefficiencies in all areas of the business.

5. Improve employee retention

Turnover is expensive – not only does it take time and money to find, interview, and onboard a new employee, training them can take months. Good HR focuses on retaining employees who have potential. (You shouldn’t retain just to retain – if someone is a toxic employee, giving them more technical skills won’t eliminate their toxicity.) Creating career paths within the company can be an excellent workforce planning tool to aid employee retention.

6. Improve productivity and quality outputs

While managers need to figure out how to improve productivity and quality, HR can provide support. For instance, are there policies and procedures that can increase productivity and quality? What support do employees get for reaching their goals? When HR takes a look at the workforce, they can spot problems that decrease productivity. For instance, an employee who bullies their coworkers can destroy productivity in a department.

HR needs to plan to find, coach, or remove such employees, as well as helping managers find better ways to do things.

7. Improve employees’ work-life balance

Employees are at the center of workforce planning – without employees, all plans are worthless. You can increase your productivity by requiring everyone to work 80-hour weeks, but your turnover will shoot through the roof, and your quality will collapse.

Through making sure that employees have sufficient downtime and are supported at work, your workforce will be a lot more stable.

8. Make recommendations to deliver strategic value through talent

Sometimes managers can undervalue employees – they think if they can get someone cheaper, they should. But, good workforce planning demonstrates that you pay for top skills. While we use the word talent often in HR, you really should think about it in terms of skills. What skills do these employees have that can make a difference in your business?

Remember that treating employees right is a lot easier than trying to squeeze value out of people who are exhausted and burnt out.

How to create a workforce plan

This is more than just figuring out who you need to hire. There are many ways to approach this, but here are four critical elements that will make your workforce planning a success.

1. Understand the company’s mission and goals

Workforce planning doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it needs to support the company’s goals. Are you looking to expand across North America? Well, that’s quite different from a company that is content operating out of a single location.

The company’s mission matters as well. What’s the most important thing to the CEO, shareholders, employees, and customers? Make sure you have that answered before you move to step two.

2. Conduct a present gap analysis

This is a systematic method of understanding the gaps in the organization. What is missing? While workforce planning focuses on the people side of the business, keep in mind that a gap analysis looks at all business areas, not just skills and talent.

People aren’t at their best unless they have the equipment, training, and support they need. This is looking at the situation now. Remember all the points above – you need to look for improvement in all these areas.

3. Project for the future

This involves speaking with company leadership and involving every unit in the business. You’re looking for where the growth will be and where the workforce will shrink. You want to determine what skills the company will need in the coming years, not just now.

4. Conduct a future gap analysis

Knowing what you do about the current employment situation and the business’s goals and projected path, put together what the workforce will need and look at your gaps:

• What do you need to reach these goals?
• Do you need more employees?
• What type of training will your current staff need?
• Can you conduct this training in-house, or do you need people to receive formal training or even degrees?
• Do you have a formal employee training and development company policy in place?

Make sure you look at external trends as well. In 2019, no one would have guessed the massive shift toward remote work, but now, you’d be remiss not to consider where the workforce will be in the future. Will employees continue to work remotely or will they expect to? If so, is your company prepared to support people in other states? Or do you want to limit hiring to your local area, regardless of where they work?

Of course, there are many more things that you can do to plan for your workforce’s future, but these will get you a solid foundation. And, one last note: remember to be flexible. Plans change, and your workforce planning documents need to flex as the world changes as well.

The post What is workforce planning, and why is it important? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

There’s a lot more. Let’s take a look how the world of work has changed and will continue to change in the coming years.

1. EX marks the spot
2. ‘Moneyball’ HR
3. IT takes the wheel
4. Redefining departments
5. Going (fully) remote
6. Flexibility goes mainstream

1. EX marks the spot

Just like in Stevenson’s classic, Treasure Island, where X marks the treasure, EX is making a mark on the rapidly changing workplace around the world.

Employee experience (following previous hits such as UX and CX) is gaining momentum and moving front and center in the world of work., According to Josh Bersin, the value of the EX industry rose to $15 billion during the pandemic, which included surveys, feedback, case and knowledge management, and other developments.

In the past, EX was often an HR project on the back burner, mainly concerned with core metrics such as retention and productivity. It’s since moved through phases of development corresponding with business trends, including resource and time optimizations for a certain job, employee engagement, perks and benefits, and standard HR fare.

Now we’re seeing a fundamental shift in corporate culture, signaling long-term changes in EX through organizational overhauls.

While the brand-defining aspects of EX unfolded with bigger players long before the pandemic, including Google, Facebook and Apple. The new EX brings a deep culture shift in the business world and encompasses every stage of the employee lifecycle, starting with the initial candidate experience:

• The job ad and careers page
• The application process
• Screening call / one-way video interview
• Face-to-face interview (be it video or in person)
• Job offer and acceptance of offer

And then the experience of the role itself:

• Onboarding and training (including in remote environments)
• Working across and within teams
• The day-to-day of the role
• Management of the employee
• And every other element of the employee’s tenure with your organization

And finally, the overall employee experience lifecycle includes moving on to another job: how the news is received and handled, the transition phase, and even the exit interview.

EX efforts have recently transformed from passive observation to active action-taking, designing the full experience on top of the basic tenets of monitoring, surveying, and responding as needed. The pandemic has driven numerous challenges to the forefront.

Remote work has unique challenges for EX, and women are more affected than men – from parenting to racial issues to other inequalities underaddressed until now. From an EX design perspective, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is top of mind.

As an HR practitioner, know that the advent of EX is penultimate in the list of workplace changes for the 2020s.

2. ‘Moneyball’ HR

Much like Brad Pitt in Moneyball, the new HR will not use their stats just for making reports, but also to pre-define strategies and come up with solutions for new challenges. This is a shift in focus from analysis to proactive planning.

The major upskills for HR specialists will focus mostly on soft skills: learning to identify problems and solutions faster, and implement them. This requires clear communication at all levels, especially in a remote setting. Clear discussion in a language that makes sense to the person you’re talking with will become crucial for a problem-solving approach to work.

Other skills that make HR a bigger player include:

• Analytical thinking and attention to detail – taking information from hiring managers, datasets, economic and hiring trends, etc., and turning that into meaningful guidance for your organization’s hiring plan
• Employee personas – i.e. defining your “perfect” employee and designing your recruitment strategy to attract those candidates
• Developing scenarios and strategies, and executing on them

These all need to be backed by a continuous influx of quality data. In doing so, the goal of the HR department will be to address individual requirements in more detail, but also to develop a strategic approach to potential problems and challenges, including safety and health issues of working from home, a plan to hire at scale, or the implementation of a new policy.

Oversimplifying again: the new HR needs to leverage people analytics while maintaining genuine connections on a human level.

2020 saw cuts in HR staff around the world, while the department faced entirely new challenges (which often came with a bigger workload). This is not exclusive to 2020. HR is already notoriously understaffed, even when dealing with an increased workload or a growing workforce. The pandemic has led to limited MOs in all types of businesses, leaving HR practitioners to find solutions on leaner budgets – and find them fast.

The new – sudden and unexpected – close collaboration with IT, business intelligence, and other data-focused teams might be the answer to these pain points, even in the long run. HR is now:

• Accessing and recruiting a new type of labor with different needs and requirements
• Needing solutions for new developments such as virus strains, vaccinations etc.
• Taking into account increasingly louder calls for greater diversity and equality;
• Crunching serious numbers into stats and reports.

The new processes and solutions need to be standardized, reliable and adaptable, since they need to accommodate for a diversified talent pool and new lines of communication. The need for quicker and better decision-making and problem-solving, with a leaner HR team and budget, while simultaneously incorporating new developments, is putting another department to the forefront – IT and data.

Brad Pitt’s character in Moneyball, Billy Beane, led his Oakland Athletics to a string of winning records year after year – all the more impressive considering his tight budget. One of the big developments in that story was the hiring of an expert data analyst (played by Jonah Hill in the film), who played an integral role in Beane’s data-focused approach to baseball.

As Jonah Hill’s character says: “Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players – your goal should be to buy wins.” Is Moneyhire next?

3. IT across all departments

The previous decade saw a steady rise in digital economy – with it, IT rose as a core function. IT is developing automations not to replace workers, but rather, to support them. As Josh Bersin says, “You’re getting augmented; you’re not getting replaced.”

The sudden shift to remote work in 2020 identified bottlenecks in various workflows: some long-awaited workplace changes were expedited to enable successful remote work. When executed well, it contributes to a better EX.

A much closer cooperation with other departments is benefiting IT experts as well: they are becoming multidimensional workers, not only IT specialists. Their soft skills are now more important than ever, especially in working with team leaders.

Closer cooperation with staff and the need to quickly overcome challenges adds value to everyone’s role. And the crucial goal is better and more uniform data distribution across all departments – including HR.

4. Redefining departments

As mentioned above, the newly evolved EX will require different functions and departments working more closely together in a flexible and streamlined manner.

Working remotely and managing labor – which can now be located across the globe – will require newly designed and defined workflows, including easy-to-follow roadmaps, flowcharts, clearly defined procedures, concept maps and similar fresh approaches to recruitment, interdepartmental projects, safety protocol implementation, and other standard business processes.

With the trend towards “flatter” organizational structures, employees now have a more direct influence and better engagement – they can work directly on solutions for their unique needs. These tasks often involve close collaboration with other departments. While this usually required a stroll down the hall to your colleague’s desk or office, things can become more challenging in a remote setting.

Which brings us to:

5. Going (fully) remote

Even as the pandemic becomes a thing of the past, workers will likely continue to be free to choose their locations. In fact, a Microsoft study states that 46% of them plan to move since work is no longer necessarily tied to a physical location. The shift to remote was also one of the biggest workplace changes we identified in our New World of Work survey.

This can work both ways: it means access to a larger talent pool for employers, but also a bigger job market for candidates. Likewise, tools are being developed to streamline recruitment at both ends, making remote work easier for candidates and HR specialists. Remote work also prompts dialogue on reimbursements for Internet charges, utilities and other home office-related expenses.

However, a physically distant work environment brings new challenges. It requires a proactive approach to re-skilling or up-skilling on all levels, especially soft/social skills, asynchronous communication, and resiliency. This will include both existing employees – especially HR, Management and IT – and job candidates.

Nevertheless, candidates and employees can now leverage all of the above for their own benefit, and it seems we have a new umbrella term for it: work flexibility.

6. Flexibility goes mainstream

The primary concern in 2020-propelled changes was productivity, as well as trust levels between employees and management. Both remained high throughout lockdowns.

Following this success, flexibility is becoming mainstream in 2021 and beyond: new work relations in a post-COVID place more value on empowering the labor force. The workers have more control of their time and careers, which leads to more engaged employees, which leads to better performance.

There’s a downside to it as well: working with ambiguity, always being ‘on standby’ for new measures and guidelines, etc. – but as is the case with every new trend and development, new processes and policies are introduced and adapted.

Again, like remote work, flexwork is less of a trend and more of a paradigm shift. In April 2020, Forbes found that 63% of leaders expected increased flexibility in time and location; by September 2020 that expectation grew to 87%.

Workplace changes are here to stay

From implementing safety protocols, to providing all the necessary hardware and software for remote work, to maintaining a sense of community, the leverage now shifts to the employee. The employee now expects these things from their employer. Not only that, but new candidates can leverage a host of newly-available options and requirements as well – as an HR practitioner, you need to stay on top of this with a candidate-first approach.

In the workplace itself, culture is transforming from mere ambient care to having proactive team members who are initiators, making sure all employees feel a connection to their work beyond their paychecks. This all means a better EX.

2021 marks a period of stabilization after the rollercoaster of 2020. It’ll define and consolidate what 2020 (sometimes hastily) set in motion. Let’s see how the new normal transforms into the next normal, paying close attention to our workplaces and work environments. With a touch of proactivity and a pinch of creativity, it could include resolving issues and progressing in areas in dire need of attention.

—

Silvana Carpineanu is a Marketing Specialist who works at mindomo.com. Driven by passion and creativity, she’s responsible for copywriting, advertising, SEO, and content creation. She does all of this knowing that for every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.

The post 6 workplace changes we can expect in the 2020s appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is an Applicant Tracking System?
• What are the Benefits of Applicant Tracking Software?
  • Are They Worthwhile for Startups and Small Businesses?
  • How does an ATS Work?
• How We’ve Compared the Best Applicant Tracking Systems
• Top 12 Best Applicant Tracking Systems
  • Workable
  • Greenhouse
  • Lever
  • Teamtailor
  • Jobvite
  • iCIMs
  • Taleo
  • SmartRecruiters
  • JazzHR
  • Zoho Recruit
  • BreezyHR
  • Recruitee
• Time to make a decision

What is an Applicant Tracking System?

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software that automates administrative tasks in recruitment and hiring. For example, an ATS enables faster interview scheduling, easier job advertising, optimized referrals, automated processes, and more. Overall, a good ATS helps relieve many recruiting pains that recruiters and hiring managers often face.

Alternative names for an applicant tracking system include: ‘hiring software’, ‘talent acquisition software’, ‘hiring platform’, and ‘recruitment software’.

What are the Benefits of Applicant Tracking Software?

It’s not out of sheer luck that applicant tracking systems (or generally, recruiting software) keep gaining popularity in the business world. They take a huge burden off the shoulders of hiring teams and give them time to focus on what matters – connecting with candidates and making hiring decisions.

Some major benefits of applicant tracking systems include:

• Increase in productivity and efficiency when hiring – particularly at scale
• Better candidate experience through faster scheduling and communication – especially in remote and hybrid work environments
• Access to multiple job boards and the ability to manage all applications in a centralized location
• Improved employer brand that attracts great candidates
• Valuable metrics and reports to improve the hiring process (e.g. HR analytics)
• Easier compliance with laws related to recruitment

Are They Worthwhile for Startups and Small Businesses?

In a word, yes. Everyone involved in recruiting, such as business owners, hiring managers, and recruiters, will find an applicant tracking system or recruitment software to be incredibly useful when building teams. Whether they’re making those first few hires or growing their business by adding team members, an ATS can help optimize the hiring process both in terms of time and money.

How does an ATS work?

Simply put, an ATS is a software that helps you standardize your recruitment process for a variety of reasons, including hiring at scale, operating with leaner HR teams, making a quick hire, and more. With an ATS, you can do the following:

• Posting to multiple job boards at once, exponentially increasing your reach across popular and niche job sites
• Scheduling screening calls, one- and two-way video interviews, in-person interviews, assessments, and other key components of candidate evaluation
• Moving candidates from application to offer in the hiring pipeline
• Communication between candidates and hiring teams
• Collaboration with teammates to enable unity when it comes to making hiring decisions
• Legally compliant candidate sourcing
• Candidate evaluation with the use of assessments and scorecards
• Employer branding to convey the company culture and vision
• Measuring hiring effectiveness through recruiting reports, e.g. candidate sourcing reports

How We’ve Compared the Best Applicant Tracking Systems

Each ATS may specialize or excel in specific recruiting areas. Before purchasing an applicant tracking system, it’s useful for organizations to compare several options with each other.

To do so correctly, they may map their individual hiring methods, analyze the problems they need to resolve or identify opportunities for improvement. Then, they can evaluate available systems based on important criteria.

Top 12 Best Applicant Tracking Systems

We’ve researched the top ATSes extensively so you don’t have to. And we’ve come up with these 12 best applicant tracking systems that will help you make the best decision on what to use for your organization. Of course we’re aware that we’re in this list, but rest assured, we’ve done our best to be as impartial as we can because we want to help you make the best decision for your company’s needs.

Workable

We know we’re patting ourselves on the back here, but we really think we have good reason to do so. Workable provides best-in-class recruitment tools, processes and automation in one complete solution. Whether you’re hiring employee #2 or 200 new employees, Workable’s scalable tools, know-how and support help you make the hires that make your business great.

With clients including RyanAir, Sephora, and Soho House, Workable is the solution of choice for many reputable brands interested in boosting their employer brand, attracting the right candidates, managing high volumes of applicants, and streamlining their recruitment process.

Companies who use Workable get from requisition to offer letter faster, with automated and AI-powered tools that source and suggest candidates, simplify decision making and streamline the hiring process.

More than 20,000 companies ranging from local chains to global enterprises have used Workable to hire over one million people in 100+ countries.

Workable leads all other ATSes in G2’s Best Applicant Tracking Systems list for 2021, with a cumulative score of 4.5 out of a potential 5 stars.

Greenhouse

We won’t lie – Greenhouse is one of the world’s leading recruitment software companies. It is listed near the top alongside Workable in many lists of best applicant tracking systems. Headquartered in NYC, its software caters primarily to the mid-market and enterprise, and integrates seamlessly with many other HR tech vendors.

Greenhouse offers many of the same features as Workable, with notable differences in product implementation, integration options, sourcing capabilities, hiring team communication, and hiring manager engagement.

Compare Workable to Greenhouse

Lever

Joining Workable and Greenhouse in many best applicant tracking systems lists, Lever is a recruitment solution based out of San Francisco and Toronto. It’s tailored to tech startups as well as midsize and enterprise organizations.

Again, like Workable, Lever offers many similar features, with notable differences in native product offerings, integration options, implementation and support, candidate sourcing, and scheduling capabilities.

Teamtailor

Teamtailor is a Swedish recruitment solution operating primarily across Europe, with a heavy emphasis on its employer branding and recruitment marketing capabilities. It prides itself on its native careers page feature, capabilities for marketing to specific talent markets, and features including text recruitment, referrals, and candidate nurturing.

Jobvite

Headquartered in Indianapolis with locations in Portland, the UK, and Canada, Jobvite started out as a social media-focused approach to recruitment for enterprise-sized businesses. Its platform augments the recruitment process with AI-powered processes, including the ability to automatically screen and rank candidates based on preset parameters.

ICIMs

iCIMS, which stands for Internet Collaborative Information Management Systems, was one of the very first SaaS companies in a fledgling recruitment software market in the early 2000s. It’s a reliable legacy solution suited for enterprises, and continues to present itself as innovative and forward-thinking with a continually evolving product roadmap. It operates out of the US and UK and enjoys a worldwide market base.

Taleo

Originating in Quebec, Canada, and now headquartered in California, Taleo is more of an all-inclusive talent management software than a dedicated ATS, presenting modular offerings based on the size and complexity of customer needs. It describes itself as an easy-to-use Fortune 500 ATS interface catering to candidates and hiring teams alike, and focuses on a mobile-first and data-driven approach.

SmartRecruiters

Unlike other ATSes which focus on startups and SMBs, SmartRecruiters is tailored towards enterprise-sized organizations looking for a larger solution for their recruitment challenges. Headquartered in San Francisco, SmartRecruiters is one of the largest ATSes in the recruitment solutions market, offering numerous integrations in a number of languages.

JazzHR

This US-based recruitment SaaS presents itself as a lower-priced solution that offers users the opportunity to rank, track and collaborate in the candidate evaluation process with custom workflows for each job opening.

Zoho Recruit

Zoho Recruit pitches its ATS as being designed for both recruiters and corporate hiring teams working together to build workforces that adapt quickly to evolving talent needs. Offering solutions to both in-house recruiters and staffing agencies, Zoho Recruit is a part of Zoho’s one-stop stop of business tech solutions including email, project management, budgeting and other needs.

BreezyHR

Florida-based BreezyHR offers an affordable, pared-down solution for companies just starting out. It promotes job openings on job boards, enables its users to organize existing applicants via drag-and-drop, and pulls hiring teams together into a streamlined communications channel that also includes the candidate.

Recruitee

Founded in Amsterdam, Recruitee is one of the newer kids on the block, having launched in 2015. It’s growing rapidly as a presence in the ATS market, with a user-friendly system that enables drag-and-drop options to move candidates through a customized hiring pipeline. It’s tailored primarily to SMBs with <100 employees.

Time to make a decision

Need help making a decision on the best applicant tracking system for your business? Hop into a no-obligation call with one of our product experts for an in-depth discussion on your hiring needs and pain points, and we’ll help you decide. Alternatively, try out our recruitment software for 15 days – for free – and see how it goes from there.

The post The 12 best applicant tracking systems appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Described as a digital challenger bank in the United Kingdom, Starling Bank operates out of four locations in the UK and Ireland with headquarters in London. They take a more customer-centric approach to banking, and continue to grow rapidly as a disrupter in the financial industry. They have amassed £363M in total funding and more than two million customers to date, plus they have been voted as Best British Bank for three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020.

Starling Bank’s incredible growth requires a highly efficient recruitment solution that can handle the volume of candidates and hiring managers while maintaining seamless, easy to use functionality. Workable’s ATS gives Starling Bank what it needs to confidently maintain its recruitment process. 

Says Marc Douch, Talent Acquisition Manager at Starling Bank:

“It’s a simple platform to use from a recruiter and a hiring manager point of view… Training new hiring managers is almost non-existent because I just set them up with an account. It’s fairly self-explanatory.”

To meet the skyrocketing demand of its services in the market, Starling Bank has consistently hired at a high volume in two major areas: engineering and customer support.

“We hired just under 600 people last year and, I think so far [as of November 2020], we’ve hired about 450,” says Marc. “So, it’s been a bit of a busy past couple of years from a hiring perspective, that’s for sure.”

The Video Interviews feature, which eliminates resource-heavy communications between the recruiter and job applicant to set up screening calls, has been particularly helpful, says Marc. 

Marc adds that recruiting continued at its torrid pace even as Starling Bank shifted to a remote working environment, making Video Interviews an even more useful tool in the company’s recruiting toolbox. In fact, he says business has moved even more smoothly than it did when everyone was in the same working space.

“We’ve gone from a company that was five days a week in the office to no one’s in the office five days a week,” Marc says. “We’ve ended up doing some stuff in quicker time than we probably would have done in the office.”

Marc also highlights Workable’s award-winning customer support team as a huge bonus to using the recruitment solution – when operating in such a busy recruiting environment, recruiters like Marc rely on solving problems as quickly as they arise. 

“The support that you get is more responsive, more thoughtful, more on the ball than any other ATS I’ve ever worked with,” says Marc.

Starling Bank’s choice to use Workable’s recruitment solution enabled it to continue to grow its workforce rapidly to meet booming business demands. Moreover, it ensured a seamless shift to a fully online recruitment process throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – making possible a highly efficient operating system beyond the crisis as the business continues to scale rapidly in future.

The post Starling Bank scales from 50 to 1,100 employees in five years, staying efficient with Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With candidate surveys, our latest DEI feature, assess DEI performance in your hiring strategies and evaluate ways to improve. Collect anonymized data post-application to understand candidate demographics, identify sources that generate more diverse candidates, and monitor pipeline performance by demographic to improve inclusion within your company.  

Workable helps companies in 100+ countries create a more inclusive hiring practice with diverse candidate sourcing, anonymized screening, candidate surveys, structured interviewing, and enhanced reporting.

Read more on this topic:

• How to measure diversity using candidate surveys
• Candidate survey template

The post Introducing candidate surveys: Improve inclusive hiring practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Zinger Property is a property management group that owns 16 buildings across the US Midwest with 4,000 apartment units. Based in Chicago, their mission is to blend technology and the traditional human touch in property management. With Workable, they’ve found a recruitment technology partner that aligns with their mission to ensure a personalized touch in the hiring process. Alongside their main Zinger brand, they also hire for their subsidiary company, RuMe. Their multi-tenancy account with Workable allows them to hire in one place, keeping senior leadership aligned on their robust hiring plan.

Says Kate Blake, Assistant Director of Operations at Zinger: “Workable has completely streamlined our entire recruiting process. Furthermore, our staff working in the field is able to utilize the mobile app, which has been a game-changer.”

Prior to COVID, Zinger had been vetting video interview solutions to reduce the administrative time required to screen candidates. When Workable offered their new solution, they went with it because it was a fully native platform keeping all the elements of candidate evaluation in one place.

Says Kate: “Every member of our hiring team reviews the video interviews. Early in the process, our direct hiring manager will review. As candidates progress, our corporate staff utilize video interviews prior to approval.”

Inclusivity increased with the introduction of video interviews as senior leaders who approve hires were able to gain a better overall impression of candidates. The enhanced inclusivity of the video interview feature aligned naturally with Zinger’s vision of a fully inclusive company culture. This was an added benefit to the original value proposition of Workable Video Interviews, which was to eliminate the time-consuming nature of phone screens in the hiring process.

Says Kate: “I would say that video interviews have cut our recruiting time practically in half.”

Video interviews are sometimes stigmatized among candidates as being impersonal. Zinger combatted that by keeping branded video interviews and ensuring increased flexibility for the candidate – so much that a newly hired employee spoke out about their positive experience.

Says Jim Oates, Associate Analyst at RuMe: “It was definitely easier to schedule than a phone screen because you can do it on your own time. I found this online interview to be a great process that was very time-flexible and very much in favor of the applicant.”

Zinger Property Group’s choice to use both Workable’s ATS and Video Interview products enhanced inclusivity, decreased admin screening time and solidified a branded, personalized candidate experience.

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In 2020, talent teams were looking for ways to diversify their sourcing channels and methods. With AI Recruiter, we helped customers immediately source 50 passive candidates from outside their existing network for every job.

Many companies faced unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 crisis. Unfortunately, with the pandemic came layoffs and furloughs at many companies. For customers trying to help former employees find a new job, we built Bridge, a tool that connects former employees with employers actively looking for candidates. 

The move to remote work made it harder for candidates to get a feel for company culture, meaning employer branding and careers pages became increasingly important in showcasing your company. With Branded Careers Pages, we help you put your best brand forward: flexible templates and customizable sections are included right in the Workable platform. 

As remote work opportunities increased, companies continued to attract talent globally. With language options, we made it easy for you to localize the entire candidate experience in the languages of your choice, available in English, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish. 

Many HR leaders looked to advance diversity, equity and inclusion as their organizations continued to navigate the new world of work. To address customer requests and needs, Workable released anonymized screening: the ability to anonymize your screening process by hiding details like candidate name, background, and gender. Anonymizing this data in applications can help companies decrease inherent bias and increase inclusivity in their hiring practices.

To help customers connect with candidates more easily, we introduced two premium features: Video Interviews and Texting. Video Interviews streamlines remote screening efforts, helping candidates record responses to interview questions at their convenience. Personalize the experience with a welcome video or pre-record videos with prompts. It’s a flexible process proven to help you screen more candidates, faster. Texting encourages recruiters to message candidates directly from the Workable platform or app and track responses in real time on the candidate timeline, just like with email.

With updates to our hiring plan, you now have the ability to filter by hiring manager, requisition owner and status for more granular reporting. To make company growth simple, we introduced Department Hierarchy. Department Hierarchy offers centralized department management with hierarchical structure, meaning as your company grows, your hiring structure does too. 

Speed up executive sign-off and get candidate signatures faster with updated offer letter templates, approval workflows, e-signatures and more, right within the platform. We take compliance very seriously and make it easy for your teams to stay compliant, adding CCPA to our existing suite of EEO/OFFCP and GDPR features. 

What’s coming in 2021

We’re building out our product roadmap based on customer feedback, market research, and our overall product vision. With that in mind, we wanted to give a sneak peek at what’s to come in 2021.

We will continue our focus on DEI with the release of a native Assessments feature and customizable surveys for candidate experience and diversity metrics. We’ll introduce automation to current communications, meaning you’ll be able to automate emails and text messages based on hiring stages. We’re bringing a slew of enhancements to our current candidate database, and we’ll focus on developing a number of additional features based on your feedback. We’re thrilled for what’s coming in 2021 to Workable, and we hope you are too.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us. 

The post 11 efficiency-boosting releases from Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With Texting, Workable’s latest premium feature, you can now message candidates directly from the platform or app. Reaching out about a new opportunity, or scheduling an interview? Texting makes it easy for you to reach candidates quickly, wherever they are. Track responses in real time on the candidate timeline, just like you would with email.

Texts have a 98% open rate and a 60x faster response time than email, and 95% of all text messages are read within 90 seconds. Communication templates help you personalize with ease and seamlessly switch from email to text at any stage of the recruiting pipeline. By getting in front of candidates faster with Texting, you can focus on what actually matters: hiring great candidates.

The post Introducing Texting: Make the right hires, faster appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

	Alva helps to make better hiring decisions with psychometrics tests, providing predictive and unbiased insights into the personality and logical abilities of candidates. Assess candidates with Alva.
	BrainsFirst NeurOlympics cognitive assessment games upgrade your candidate (pre)selection. Assess with BrainsFirst NeurOlympics.
	Speexx is Workable’s first language assessment partner. Large organizations everywhere drive productivity by empowering employee communication skills. Assess language proficiency with Speexx.

Background checks

Zinc’s automated reference and background screening solution saves you time, delivers valuable candidate insights, and makes your due diligence effortless. Conduct a background check with Zinc.

Job boards & candidate sourcing

	Hiresweet helps companies easily automate search and outreach to recruit passive candidates. Source today with HireSweet.
	Otta is a free tool that is a smarter way for candidates to find jobs at the world’s leading technology companies. Find UK candidates with Otta.
	Reach millions of active U.S. candidates by posting your job to Resume-Library’s partner network of 100+ job sites. Post a job on Resume-Library.
	WorksHub advertises job opportunities and open source projects across its seven tech-focused hiring hubs for faster and more efficient hiring. Source a developer with WorksHub.
	We Work Remotely is the largest remote work community in the world. List your remote job on We Work Remotely.

Onboarding & HRIS

	Make sure your new hires hit the ground running with the new Workable Connector for ADP Workforce Now®. New hires automatically transfer from Workable to ADP® once they accept your offer. Learn more about this exciting new integration.
	Enboarder’s onboarding platform turns new hires into highly engaged, long term employees and managers into onboarding rockstars. Onboard with Enboarder.
	Increase employee engagement, satisfaction and productivity with HR Cloud, a leading provider of HR software and HRMS solutions. Manage employees with HR Cloud.

Video interviews

We’ve expanded our video interview offering to make it even easier to go – and stay – remote. In addition to Google Meet, Workable now integrates directly with Zoom. Any customer with a Zoom account can automatically add their Zoom link to their Workable events. Learn more about our Zoom integration.

More integrations coming soon

Workable automatically integrates with over 90 HR providers, keeping all of your recruitment information in one place. From sourcing to converting candidates to successful hires, collaborate with your hiring team while candidate information stays secure. The Partnership Team is looking forward to what’s yet to come in 2021.

The post Check out Workable’s 13 new integrations for 2020 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The Series A crunch may be tough but the talent crunch is brutal. We talk to high-growth startups every day and we keep hearing versions of “compared to recruiting, fundraising was easy”. Just like fundraising, it’s very competitive. It takes time, preparation and selling, and getting it wrong can slow down or kill your startup. It’s the hardest thing to get right. It doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

You need to be a hiring obsessive

Whether it’s two founders talking to an angel investor, a team of 10 making something from nothing, or a high-growth company with 50 staff, team quality is the single best predictor of success. If you can get great people then everything else becomes so much easier.

Growth hacks versus talent hacks

Silicon Valley has figured out how to build great products and turn them into successful business models. Methodologies have emerged like Lean Startup, agile product development and growth hacking. They function as roadmaps for the non-experts and inspire conversation and innovation in those fields. In comparison hiring practices have remained in the dark ages.

Getting from 5 to 50 and beyond

Your first five hires pretty much picked themselves but in getting from 5 to 50 you will need the best tools and analytics, and you will need to be systematic. It’s about more than ping pong tables and bicycle racks. We’ve spent the time to curate the best thinking on everything from employer branding and headhunting to every step in the interview process, whether you’re building a distributed team or you’ve got an office. We’ve thrown in ideas, tricks, talent hacks and real life examples from great companies. The result is this startup hiring guide that offers some structure when hiring for rapid growth from 5 to 50. It’s a starting point. And my aim is to get all of us to talk about hiring.

1. Building an attractive company: Employer branding
2. Always be hiring: developing a hiring process
3. How to write job descriptions
4. What to look for: Hiring for a startup
5. Sourcing 101: Passive candidates
6. Creating an interview process
7. Workplace benefits and compensation
8. Recruiting software and tools
9. Where to post your jobs

1. Building an attractive company: employer branding

Smart companies typically operate in competitive talent markets. This means that the people you’re looking for are likely to be juggling several job offers. Competing for outstanding candidates with the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter might seem like a losing proposition but it’s not.

It can be done but, first, you have to realize that hiring is marketing. We live in what’s called the “age of transparency”. It has never been easier for employees to be able to tell who you are or what working with you would be like. Digital platforms mean that even the youngest companies can affordably showcase why they’re an exciting place to work. There’s more to social media hiring than just tweeting your jobs. Everything you do or say on social media is building your brand.

PRO TIP: Intercom’s blog is a great example of doing marketing and employer branding at the same time.

You’re speaking to two audiences: Customers & talent

In the early days, the way you market your product and the way you think about the problems you’re solving, says a lot about the kind of company that you’re about to build. If you become known for doing interesting things for your customers, you will attract talented and ambitious people. Smart people want to solve interesting problems. They’re not looking for a job, they’re looking for a mission. Smart people want to work with smart people.

Your presence in communities, your reputation, your contribution and ideas represent you. Use blogging, social media and public conversations to keep speaking to your ideal future hires. Signpost your involvement in events and your own content to make it easy for people to find out what you stand for and why you matter.

PRO TIP: Buffer’s focus on transparency led to their Open Salaries initiative which has created huge buzz and awareness of them.

Who the hell are you?

In the beginning were the founders. The early hires in startups don’t have a company reputation to buy into, so usually they’re taking a gamble on joining the founders in their big initiative. When you’re in the early phase, it’s the personal brand of the founders that’s going to be the strongest component. Simple steps like having an engaging personal blog can project why you’re worth working for and what you’re trying to do. Let prospective candidates get to know you.

Even in the early days of a company your employees become your brand and signal what kind of people work there. Chances are you’ve hired people who reflect your company’s brand and values well. Showcase your employees on your website and empower them to talk confidently about your business. Employees attending meetups and events, sharing a video of their home working environment, or just speaking with genuine passion about their jobs are a powerful marketing tool.

Hire people who can build teams

Good people know good people. Hire people who are already networked and know much of the talent you’ll be needing. When you can, go for people with a personal brand. This is also a signal to future hires. Remember, some of your best people will be high-potential junior hires who will grow with the startup. So, always look for those who can nurture and grow your young talent.

PRO TIP: FullContact’s paid-paid vacation initiative offers holiday bonuses to staff who go completely off the grid. Everyone needs to from time to time.

Live in the real world

Don’t just be digital. You’re going to be employing people after all and they congregate at events and around offline communities too. Be an active participant in these ecosystems. An event sponsorship or even a few beers can go a long way. Even as remote work becomes more of a standard in 2020 and beyond, human interaction is highly valued and appreciated.

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2. Always be hiring: developing a hiring process

Networks are king

Ask any startup where most of their hires came from or ask bigger companies where their best people came from and the answer is usually the same: friends, friends of friends or ex-colleagues. It’s all about networks for one simple reason: good people know good people. Part of being a good CEO is building a great network with quality and reach. There are no shortcuts here, it’s real work. The better your network is, the easier your next hire is going to be.

If you don’t know the right person you will at least know someone who does. Remember quality as well as quantity. It’s not just about having thousands of LinkedIn connections (although it can’t hurt). Are you working hard enough to be an authentic member of the community where your talent pool is? If your tech is built with Ruby are you taking part in the relevant meetups and hackathons? Are your developers known for their thought leadership and contribution in your sphere?

Hiring is everyone’s job, especially sourcing

Just as you look for candidates through networks, the best candidates are looking for their next job in the same way. Word of mouth matters. The best recommendation you’re going to get will be when someone you’d like to hire is told by a friend of theirs who is already on your team that your startup is great place to work. If your team is proud of where they work they’ll tell their friends.

What happens when your own network runs out? Keep trying. There will always be someone you haven’t told that you’re hiring. You can go further, take the time to sit with your employees one by one and go through their online networks (LinkedIn is a good example). You’ll find good people and you can get your colleagues to message them then and there. This is a time-consuming process but worth it.

There’s tremendous value in referred employees in the form of greater job satisfaction, higher retention rates, quicker applicant-to-hire conversion – all metrics that ultimately reduce the cost of recruitment, especially when hiring for rapid growth.

PRO TIP: Set up a formal employee referral program in your company, with incentives for your current colleagues. You can even gamify the process to further motivate employees to refer people in their networks.

Get out of your bubble

Your own network can only extend so far and the chances are your colleagues’ networks have a lot of overlap with yours. Plus, there’s the potential for bias – as the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. If you’re hiring friends of friends or former colleagues of existing employees, that’s a potential trap in homogenizing your workforce. Get out of that bubble and speak to new people, ask for introductions from your own network so you can start tapping into adjacent ones.

Learn how a tech sales VP established gender balance in her team in a male-dominated field, by looking outside of the usual candidate resources.

PRO TIP: Sending your developers to the best conferences is a sure fire way to grow your network, as well as encouraging them to spread the word through their online networks where they live and play.

How to do social the right way

If you’ve done most things right so far you’ll start with an audience. This means you have something to bootstrap your social media recruiting effort to. Using social for hiring isn’t just about tweeting jobs and getting your colleagues to retweet. The companies who are most successful at social hiring have built up a relevant audience and target their tweets to influential people in their community. Not all retweets were born equal — you want to be talked about in context. You want influential people in your field talking you up as an authority.

PRO TIP: Netflix put their culture presentation online:

[slideshare id=36216034&doc=netflixorganizationalculture-131001173045-phpapp02-140623172442-phpapp01]

That open presentation promoting Netflix’s Culture of Excellence went viral – clearly boosting their employer brand and reputation.

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3. How to write job descriptions

Don’t go with the flow

Job descriptions could and should sweep candidates off their feet. But all too often, we’re content to lean on the old-fashioned and generic with the result that most job ads are mediocre. We’re guessing you don’t want to be average. You’re not one of those guys looking for superheroes who is too lazy to craft a job description that might actually attract them.

PRO TIP: The first time we came across Medium’s careers page was in Lou Hoffman’s article: The best job descriptions on the planet. Enough said.

Love at first sight

We all know that applicants like to scan. They want to look at an opening and be able to recognize in the blink of an eye if it’s their dream job. Like all busy people they have a thousand things competing for their attention; especially the passive candidates for whom you’re trawling. Make every job description seductive. Start with the job title, keeping in mind that most job boards work like search engines, therefore candidates use keywords to search for jobs.

The about-the-company part

This is your chance to make a good first impression, so start thinking about the distinctive characteristics that make your company special. The type of job description you publish is closely related to who you are as an employer. Give them a glimpse of your company that will charm them into coming to working for you.

PRO TIP: Check out some of our favorite job ads from the Workable job board – each of which can fit different needs in your business.

Candidates need to be able to relate to job descriptions on a personal level. Tell them a story about your company that will make them sit back and picture themselves working with you. Start with an educated guess, with something simple, ask for feedback and then optimize. Ask employees why they enjoy working for your startup. If you have a marketing department lean on them for some content marketing advice. Hiring for rapid growth should not to be done in isolation – it’s a team effort. You’ll need to put in some extra effort but it will pay off.

The about-the-job part

You know that if you go with the flow then your job descriptions will be deathly dull but you’re tempted to do so anyway. Because that’s the way everybody is doing it. But it won’t help your company stand out, it will just add to the mountain of identical job descriptions that grows larger every day.

How are job seekers (let alone the precious, passive ones) supposed to spot that you’re offering a dream gig when it looks like a machine wrote your job description? It’s not necessarily because they’re not well-written, it’s because they’re presented as if they were not written by or for a human being. Do everyone a favor and stick to the important stuff. There are tons of job descriptions out there listing every tiny little task a future employee might perform. That’s not the point.

It’s all about clarity

Start writing job descriptions that build businesses. They will attract the best talent and convert prospects into candidates. How?

• Sell your company and their future in it in an engaging fashion
• Get rid of the boring corporate tone
• Keep it chatty and friendly
• Use words that evoke feelings
• Make them aspire and then act on that desire
• Use “you” or “we’; drop the passive voice

To up the ante you can also add a list of people the future hire will get to work with on a regular basis.

The about-the-requirements part

We’ve covered the basics in our “There’s a difference between what you want and what you need” blog post. If you’ve used Workable, you may have noticed the must-haves and nice-to-haves requirements. Why did we add this feature? To make sure that candidates won’t get excluded from the hiring process just because they clicked “NO” on a secondary skill that is unlikely to be pivotal. Think about what skills would make sense, adding to the equation the fact that they are individuals and not miracle workers. Must-have requirements are the bare minimum: the can’t-live-without list. Nice-to-have requirements are the extras: they belong on the we-can-live-without list.

Jobseekers also have a hierarchy of needs that you need to keep in mind as you craft the perfect job ad. In fact, if Maslow were alive today, here’s what he might think about your job ads.

PRO TIP: Worth looking at KinHR. They might not have a careers page at the moment but this sales job description rocks.

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4. What to look for: Hiring for rapid-growth startups

Punch above your weight

A startup literally is its team in the beginning. These are the people who will signal your ambition and set your limits. So, go for the people you think you can’t get. You’ll be surprised and once you’ve got the first few heroes it will become a lot easier to attract more of them. This is not a luxury. It seems obvious to punch above your weight but a successful startup will continually shift up the weight categories. If you don’t get these people you’ll get stuck.

Hire deliberately

You’re not hiring to fill a job, you’re building a company. Make the first 20 hires deliberately with the future in mind. Don’t hire people just because they’re good in general and available. These kinds of opportunistic or bad hires early on in a startup’s life can sink you. The cost of a pointless hire can be astronomical. That’s money that most startups cannot afford to waste. Beyond the cost of getting it wrong, your first few hires will set the tone for the future. Getting it right will make something that’s intrinsically hard a lot easier.

PRO TIP: Avoid hiring a candidate who badmouths their previous employers and coworkers.

Hire for potential

A successful startup will quickly outgrow everyone’s current skills and roles. If things work out as intended it’s going to grow and morph unpredictably. So will the demands on your employees. One of the most exhausting aspects of startups is this constant evolution, or as some founders call it “keeping up with their own company”. While it can be fairly simple to assess a candidate’s current skills rating their potential is less so.

Look for people coming into their professional prime. The past is a good guide, so take into account lifetime achievements whether they’re jobs, schools or hobbies. With few exceptions, smart, decisive and hard working people usually manage to go to a great school and do well in exams they care about. Look for high achievers.

PRO TIP: Include pre-interview assignments in the hiring process. Those who bother to go the extra mile will prevail.

The culture fit

This can be hard to pin down but it’s almost always important. It has its roots in the unfashionable word “congruence” — the fit between personality and organization. It means that you need to assess people on their behavior, mentality and match to the values of your organization.

PRO TIP: Valve’s Employee Handbook (the production quality, akin to what you would expect from their best marketing material) tells you a lot about who they are and how important this is for them.

But there’s one simple rule: never hire people with a bad attitude. It only takes one to poison an otherwise stellar team. That little problem you noticed in an interview will be magnified one-hundred fold by six months of hard work in a small team. Don’t overlook it. Go for people with an opinion, people who can honestly explain what they like and dislike. The kind of people who believe in missions, values and visions. They care. Those are the people who will be telling the truth when they assure you that they believe in your startup’s vision.

Hire for attitude, train for skills

You have to like a candidate before you hire them. This sounds highly subjective and unfair to them, especially when the context is strictly professional. However, someone’s ability to blend into your team, get along with you on a daily basis and build up some emotional reserves for tough times will ultimately determine their performance.

Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Ferriss can argue all they want about what and how fast a human being can learn but the truth is that certain human traits can’t be acquired beyond a certain stage in life. Focus on the fundamentals: intelligence, personality, diligence. Instead of testing for specific knowledge, check how a prospect reacts when you ask them to do something they haven’t worked on before.

PRO TIP: Carry out behavioral interviews, in addition to the standard ones. Always have a good store of questions.

Look for things you can’t train

You can teach financial management or how to interpret Google Analytics reports, but it’s probably too late to instil manners, ethics or numeracy. Skills and experience are worthless when not put to use. Knowledge is useless when not shared with others. The smaller your business, the more likely you are to be an expert in your field, so transferring those skills to new employees is relatively easy. But you can’t train enthusiasm or a solid work ethic.

According to a LeadershipIQ study, only 11% of the new hires that failed in the first 18 months did so because of deficiencies in technical skills. The majority failed due to lack of motivation, an unwillingness to be coached, or problems with temperament and emotional intelligence.

PRO TIP: Always ask for references. Poor players struggle to provide solid and believable references.

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5. Sourcing 101: Passive candidates

Build a profile

Most people don’t know how to fish for talent that’s not looking for a hook. These elusive prospects are known as passive candidates. Sourcing is the process of finding people who are not overtly looking for a job. Your starting point is to know what you’re pursuing and as much as possible about where you’re likely to find it. Think about what the ideal person looks like. What experience do they need to have? What kind of job are they doing now? Which companies must have good people doing this job? Start building a profile. The key to sourcing is figuring out what you’re pursuing and where it lives.

What is sourcing?

Mature companies: You’re looking for established companies doing a great job at what you’re looking for (eg. selling to SMEs, content marketing). You’re looking for people trained by the best, whose options have vested, who are ready to move on to a new exciting gig.

Vulnerable companies: Startups are volatile. When a company experiences a shakeup, there’s a window of opportunity. Signs to look for include the departure of a leadership figure; ventures which have gone 18 months with no follow-up funding or rumors of layoffs. You’re looking for drift and discontent where the talent works so mine the industry reports (Crunchbase, Mattermark, CBInsights, Owler) and listen to the gossip.

Events: Where do the best people on your shortlist hang out? Think about what kind of events they attend and make sure you’re there – be they virtual gatherings or in person. These settings give you the chance to meet people who you may want to approach in the future. When the time comes you will have less cold calling to do.

Universities: The very best talent are only truly unemployed once in their life: right out of college. Universities have structures that help you identify this top echelon. They’re at careers fairs, on internship programmes, or even doing work experience that contributes course credits.

PRO TIP: Look for companies 6-12 months after a seed funding without followup.

Make a shortlist and lean in

Now that we know what to search for, all these sourcing tools (LinkedIn, TalentBin, GitHub, Sourcing.io, and of course, Workable) actually become useful. Start browsing profiles and make a long-list of prospects. Prioritize people who you can reach out to through your extended network. If you can’t get an intro, then see if you can engage them on social media (Twitter) or engineer a chance meeting.

PRO TIP: Attend startup community meetups, design conventions or hackathons.

A courtship doesn’t begin with leaning in, it starts with people getting to know each other. If you do this well the prospect will have already gotten to know you before the conversation turns to a job offer. These are people you may not hire today, or even one year from now. They may also be the key to introducing you to your best hires in the future.

External recruiters

This is where you turn when you’re short on time or confidence to follow the steps above. They can be a fantastic shortcut. It might look simple but there are a couple of things to bear in mind. Look out for recruiters who have hired for small companies before and have a track record of placement in the role you’re looking for. Most startups use contingent recruiters whom you pay only when they deliver someone you hire (typically one-third of the hire’s annual salary).

The upside is that you only pay for what you get. The downside is that your aim and the recruiter’s aim are not the same. You want to hire great people. They want you to hire someone. This subtle difference can lose you time dealing with uninspiring candidates.

PRO TIP: Pay your recruiter more than they ask for. They’ll think twice before referring the next high-quality candidate to another competitor or well-funded company.

A nod to ethics

You need to be competitive but you also live in a community. Employee poaching can backfire on you, especially when you’re just starting out. Getting the balance right can be as simple as being mindful of basic good manners.

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6. Creating an interview process

One of the biggest mistakes made when hiring for rapid growth in a startup is to think that just because you’re small you don’t need a process. If you think “process” means doing things slowly, think again. Get the right tools, remember to hire as a team and you will stay on track. The selection process is a funnel – you get a lot of applicants, you speak with some of them, you meet a few of them, you hire the one you like best. An efficient filtering process will save you and your candidates time.

Pre-interview questions

This all starts with the pre-interview questions, the questions you ask a candidate when they apply that will help you decide whether to progress with an applicant. Make sure candidates can sensibly weigh themselves against the requirements. Do you know anyone who will say “no” to the requirement “must be hard working”? Neither do we.

PRO TIP: Get candidates to do an assignment or task related to the job as part of the pre-interview.

Pre-interview questions can only get you so far. They weed out the most inappropriate candidates and give you an insight beyond a basic resume. However, a major factor in your hiring decision will be how well a candidate will fit in with your business. It’s personal and you need to get to know the candidates.

Screening assignments / testing

Ever walked in to an interview and known within 30 seconds that the candidate you’re meeting is never going to work out? Sure, most people have been there. The worst thing is that it wastes your time. You can’t just stop the interview after half a minute so you go through the routine and waste an hour of your time. It doesn’t have to be that way. An initial phone call, Skype screening conversation, or asynchronous video interviews will prevent that scenario nine times out of 10. Resumes, pre-screening questions, screens, interviews – we use these techniques to use past performance as an indicator of future success.

But what if you want to better understand how candidates will actually perform in the job you’re hiring them for? One way of finding out is to get candidates to do an assignment or task related to the job – in other words, a skills assessment. Hiring for a customer support associate? Test candidates by getting them to answer some hypothetical customer queries. If you are hiring developers, there are online tools like Codility which can put developers through their paces so you can see exactly how they code.

Interviews

Have a plan. Don’t just ask the same questions over and over. Take the time to know who you are meeting before you walk in. Not just their name and not just the job title of the role they’re interviewing for. Get to know them a little, check their resume and note some questions in advance.

Interviews shouldn’t slavishly follow a script. There are probably some standard questions you want to ask all candidates, such as whether they’re eligible to work in your territory. But these are just hygiene questions – you have to go further. Ask open questions that encourage a discussion, engage with the candidates’ responses and consider follow up questions you want to ask. If it’s boring, it’s not working. There’s nothing worse than the candidate feeling like the interviewer hasn’t read their resume and is just going through the motions: “Tell me about this job, now this job, and now this job…” No one gets much out of this kind of interview.

Interviews work both ways

When you leave an interview you should have a much better understanding of the candidate’s credentials and suitability. Equally, they should leave knowing a lot more about the role and the company. If you’ve screened your shortlist properly then everyone you interview should be a real contender – which means it’s worth selling to candidates in interviews. Chances are you’re going to offer them below market rate if you’re an early stage startup. Generally people don’t like getting paid less so you’d better give them a good reason to be excited.

PRO TIP: Note down personalized questions for candidates before the interview but don’t stick slavishly to the script.

Take a deep breath

If you have a nagging feeling that something isn’t right when you’re making an offer, don’t rush. Take your time to identify where that uneasiness comes from. Talk it through with a colleague. Don’t be afraid to ask a candidate to come for another meeting. Chances are if you have a concern, the candidate will be feeling the same and a quick conversation will iron out any problems. In the long term a bit of caution will pay off.

When you’re hiring for a function where you have little or no personal experience, it can be very hard to assess resumes or know what to ask during interviews. You might want to consider bringing in some outside help. This doesn’t need to be paid help, it could just be a friend or ex-colleague who can help you out with the skills-based aspects of the hiring process.

Keep it challenging

This is where you set the bar and show your rigour and ambition. A challenging interview process is a signal to candidates that your company doesn’t do average. This doesn’t have to mean a drawn-out 15-phase interview – even Google is moving away from the huge number of interviews they put candidates through – but you absolutely should establish a thoughtful pipeline that gives the candidate an opportunity to prove their mettle.

PRO TIP: Level the playing field by posing customer support queries for a tool most people are familiar with or can access easily e.g. Facebook.

Taking references

Not everyone believes references from previous employers are useful way in determining future performance. Candidates are unlikely to provide a reference whom they expect to say negative things about them. And many people don’t want to talk badly about someone so even if your candidate was terrible in a past job their reference won’t tell you.

This is not a reason to ignore references. It’s a reason to work harder at getting them right. Get more references. Successful entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster recommends getting at least five, including people the candidate didn’t propose. If we assume people are smart enough to gather good references, ask yourself: “Are they glowing?” If not, why not? Ask candidates why they chose the referees they did.

PRO TIP: Get at least 5 references and make sure some of them come from people the candidate hasn’t put forward. Read this.

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7. Workplace benefits and compensation

You can’t pay for groceries with equity

You’re not going to compete on salary with Google and Facebook but you need to get survival out of mind. Even your earliest hires ‐ and that includes you, the founder ‐ will need to pay bills. Some startups go to extremes, trying to make their runway last longer. Don’t build your runway on the backs of an exhausted and underpaid team. You objective is not to delay the next round but to get to it in the best possible shape. Here’s a few things you can do to achieve the right balance.

The power of perks

You’re not going to have the swankiest offices but you can make them reflect why people came to work for you. You don’t need a big budget to create a friendly, informal and energetic work space. Our environment helps to shape our mindset and reminds us who we are. Spend the time to make it attractive to your team, even if you can’t initially spend much money. There are many ways to make your company an attractive place to work – even if you’re in an “unsexy” location.

PRO TIP: Buffer’s emphasis on transparency led to their Open Salaries initiative, which has created huge buzz and awareness of them.

Perks are powerful and cost effective. When you take into account tax and deductions a $10 lunch is worth more to your employee than $10 on their salary. But it’s about more than a free lunch. Taking care of peoples’ needs makes them feel taken care of. This pays off handsomely in productivity and morale.

That shouldn’t mean that you neglect traditional benefits. Before you start on the ping pong tables and games consoles make sure everyone has access to health insurance. When people know the basics like health are covered they’re more prepared to live leaner when it comes to salaries.

Compensating risk

Equity compensates risk. It is a form of deferred reward. When deciding whether to join your startup a prospect is looking at what they could earn at market rates for their skills over the same time period and balancing it against a potential future return that should be several multiples of the income they lost out on. It’s mathematics.

All early employees should have a significant amount of equity. This ensures their sense of ownership and mission. A properly structured stock option is also a commitment on the part of the employee. Equity grants usually vest over a period of three to four years and there’s a “cliff period” (typically one year) before a new employee earns their first tranche of shares.

This way, you’re not giving your company away. Instead, you’re binding the core team to your mission for long enough to make meaningful progress. With that in mind, don’t wait till the best people are restless. The best companies also give retention equity packages to fully vested employees. You need to think about this, before your star performers do.

How to research market rates, equity standards

Knowing the going rate for salaries and equity is notoriously difficult. A good place to get a benchmark is AngelList (for startup equity and salaries) or Glassdoor (for market rates). Make sure to compare yourself to similar companies. For each hire, check what’s on offer for jobs they could take so you know what their other options look like.

Especially when it comes to equity, it’s always better to err on the generous side. Rather than being hung up over a 0.1% more or less, think about whether this employee will improve your chance of success by that amount. A good hire will make it worth your while.

PRO TIP: Wealthfront’s Startup Compensation Tool is one of many benchmarks you can use.

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8. Recruiting software and tools

You need tools

We consider an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to be the centerpiece of any effective toolkit – especially when hiring for rapid growth. This is why we built one from scratch and obviously consider it to be the best of its kind. When choosing an ATS, ask yourself how well it integrates with other tools that you’ll need. A good one will integrate or at least play nicely with most of the software we recommend below.

Even then, it helps to know which ones are tops in the market. We’ve compiled for you the 12 best applicant tracking systems to help inform your decision on purchasing an ATS.

Sourcing and referral platforms

TalentBin, Sourcing.io, 3Sourcing and Gild are people aggregators with searchable, often pre-evaluated or classified profiles of people. Professional networks or communities like LinkedIn, GitHub, Dribble, AngelList are good places to do manual sourcing. Zao is one of the best referral platforms we came across. It’s made based on best practices, optimizes matches across all companies’ open jobs, has a gamification layer making it fun to participate and allows extended referrals. Another one to consider is RolePoint.

Online interview systems

Interviewing has gone video and this lets you record video questions, invite candidates to submit their responses so you can review them. Set time limits for responses, pause to take notes, tick the ones that are a perfect match, share if you’re not sure to take a second opinion. Workable’s Video Interviews can set you up for success here – particularly if you’re hiring for rapid growth in a short period of time and need to establish a standardized screening process with minimal breakdown.

Assessment tools

Codility is a niche, engineers-only, database. These guys are loaded with millions of engineers — active and passive. Considering the gap between demand and supply then this app is a treasure trove of prospects and a pretty straightforward tool to use if tech job boards aren’t cutting it. You can browse and filter data, collaborate with your team and do social recruiting too.

Smarterer have revolutionized skills assessment. Just give them 10 questions, 2 minutes and voila! you get a quantified skill. It’s basically a skills testing app but different. All of its test content is crowdsourced from the individuals who take the tests.

SHL has ability and personality tests if you need to test for critical qualities. They only offer science-based assessments and benchmark data.

Weirdly has your cultural fit riddle all figured out. It’s a four-step culture assessing recruitment tool. Define your desired cultural profile, publish the vacancy, watch candidates complete the quiz and select the right kind of weird.

Onboarding & talent management

KinHR is probably the best when it comes to onboarding new hires in a comprehensive and thoughtful way. The new employee signs in and reads about the company and the team they’re going to work with and what tasks they should start working on.

Zenefits is good for payroll and benefits management.

The shift to remote work also means onboarding remotely – such that you’re bringing people on board without them having met anyone on the team in person. Learn some tips and tricks of successful remote onboarding for you and your company.

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9. Where to post your jobs

You know exactly what you’re looking for so what’s your next step? Plaster your ad over every job board out there, right? Wrong. It pays off in time and money to do a little homework. Consider these questions:

• Where does the rest of your industry (in your city or country) post jobs?
• Did you get enough qualified candidates the last time you hit publish on XYZ job board? Did you get any candidates at all?
• Did you get too many candidates, maybe?
• Ask people who already have this type of job, where they first saw it?
• Visit alexa.com to see how popular the job board you are considering is.
• Find out where the audience you want to reach hangs out online
• Study the other job postings on that XYZ job board where you’re thinking of publishing your opening

The job board forest

To facilitate the job board selection process, we brought together a handy list of the top ones (below).

Horizontal

LinkedIn is the leader due to its three-way nature; professional social network/headhunting tool/job board – the biggest of its kind with 760 million members. It enables you to search profiles, pay to post jobs and more besides. With LinkedIn InMail, you can even contact candidates directly.

Indeed is the premier job site globally with 250 million regular visitors. You can post all types of jobs, sponsor the ones from your careers page, pay per click and search resumes.

Craigslist is the site for classifieds. Doesn’t match the traditional job board criteria, is famous for its no-frills user interface but beats everyone for inbound traffic.

Monster is one of the oldest job boards that keeps expanding worldwide. It’s a bit expensive in some countries (unless you post through Workable), has a lot of traffic and loads of resumes and free content.

Careerbuilder operates in the US, Europe, Canada and Asia. CareerBuilder is used by 80 million job applicants and has three million job postings per month.

Stepstone is one of the most successful job boards in Europe.

Beyond automatically distributes postings to niche sites and talent communities based on specific criteria. What’s in it for you? Targeted exposure and more relevant applications.

Tech

StackOverflowCareers is the careers platform of StackOverflow. It’s used by more than 100 million developers and technologists and is the trusted first destination of tech recruiters. If you’re looking for developers, it’s the place to go.

Dice is also a leader in the tech job boards industry. It has a cross-posting network and minimizes unqualified clutter due to its niche nature, with a database of more than nine million members.

Github Jobs taps into developers and engineers by being the place they hang out. Good place to trawl for passive candidates – especially with 50 million developers checking in regularly.

Creative

Behance is where some of the top brands post their creative jobs. It’s also the place where professionals showcase their work enabling you to take a sneak peek before you decide.

Dribbble gives you access to designers’ portfolios and profiles. Workable’s designers are really fond of it. Plus you can post your jobs and connect with top talent.

Authentic Jobs introduces recruiters to creative professionals. Simple and efficient.

Remote & flexible jobs

We Work Remotely is the job board without borders allowing you to narrow down talent without it having to be in the same location as you.

Upwork is free and for freelancers only. If you’re looking for one, check out their well-rounded freelancers’ database.

Flexjobs is free and effective when it comes to flexible jobs job posting. Only applies if you’re in search of part-time, telecommute or freelance employees.

Startups

AngelList ‐ you probably already know it if you’re a startup. Candidates get to apply privately and see salary and equity up front and startups get to access a huge list of developers and designers actively looking for a job. On top of that, it’s free!

Startuply is a free job listing site aimed mainly at small startups, which find it rather difficult to attract engineering talent. Startups can create a detailed company profile to give prospect candidates a sense of what it’d be like working for them. You should definitely give it a shot.

StartUpHire lists hundreds of jobs, but only for venture capital backed companies. It also comes at zero cost and has a widget that enables you to automatically add your open positions to your website

The Muse lets job seekers look behind the curtains of great companies. You can “showcase the heart and soul of your company” in 500 words, videos and photos and then display your job openings.

The post The Startup Hiring Guide: Hiring for rapid growth from 5 to 50 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The modern jobseeker could be spending up to 15 hours a week looking and is just as likely to be using their smartphone as their laptop while doing so. More than half the traffic on Glassdoor, one of the world’s most popular job boards, comes from mobile with the group of 35-44 leading the way. And this is why employers who accept mobile applications are twice as likely to get high quality candidates as those that don’t.

This guide was created so as to give you a quick overview of job posting and help you bring those talented jobseekers to your doorstep. If you know the basics, you can navigate and jump into the topics you want:

1. Choosing the right job title for your open role
2. How to write a job description
3. How to post a job listing
4. Where to post a job for free
5. The best places to post jobs free and paid
6. Specialist job boards
7. How to post to multiple job boards for maximum impact
8. Tips for successful job candidate management

What are the different ways to attract candidates?

There is no magic bullet in recruiting. Instead there’s an exciting variety of channels and the challenge is to get the mix right. The starting point should be a great careers page that showcases what’s good about your company and the roles you’re hiring for. The next step is to take advantage of social media to spread the word that you’re hiring. Get everyone you work with involved with the help of a referral program. Then turn to job boards where there are a host of free options for job posting, as well as premium job boards, which if used right, are worth the money.

How do people collect and review applicants?

Even now some of the smartest companies are still hobbling their recruiting effort by using accounting tools to get it done. Spreadsheets are great for a lot of things. They suck as a hiring tool. Likewise email – which you can’t work without – becomes overwhelming when you’re hiring. The answer can be found in some of the great hiring software solutions that an increasing number of employers are turning to. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), like Workable, are bringing the advantages larger organisations have long enjoyed when hiring and delivering them to smart companies of all sizes.

Do I need to hire a recruiter?

Hiring a recruiter isn’t always necessary but it can be a great shortcut. Here are some important points to bear in mind:

• Look for recruiters who have hired for businesses like your own.
• Look for recruiters who have hired for roles like the one you’re hiring for.

Contingent recruiters, who get paid when they deliver results, have become increasingly popular. The upside is that you only pay for what you get (typically one third of the hire’s annual salary). The downside is the cost and a possible conflict of interest. You want to hire great people. The recruiter gets paid when you hire someone. Bear this in mind.

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1. Choosing the right job title for your open role

Whichever job title you choose for your job advertisement, remember that it will be displayed in job listings, on your own website and in search results. While you might think of a job title one way, your candidates could be busy searching for something else. The answer is to do some research to make sure your title is something a jobseeker would look for on Google or Bing. While a designer might reasonably expect to search using the term “designer”, this won’t help them to find your posting if you’ve used the job title, “graphical ninja”. Clarity of writing comes from clarity of thought.

Tech tricks to inform your choice:

• Go to the job board Indeed to check out the most searched job trends.
• Use the Google Keyword Planner, or if you don’t have an Adwords account one of these free keyword tools.

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2. How to write a job description

First impressions count. For many jobseekers, the job description is where the relationship between employee and employer begins. Should this step turn into a stumble it’s all over very quickly. Job descriptions can alienate, demoralize and intimidate. They can also engage, motivate and inspire. To achieve the latter we need to revolutionize the way we think about this relationship.

We’re starting with a list of tips and tricks on how to write a job description, then we’ll break it down to provide specific guidelines for your company profile, requirements and benefits.

How to write a job description in 10 steps

1. Discuss the role with someone who already does this job, or its nearest equivalent within your organization, and get them to describe their average day.
2. Describe the role using words that feel inviting and evoke an emotional response. Resist the temptation to use jargon, buzzwords or a flat corporate tone.
3. Keep it short (but not too short) or it can become confusing. As a general rule, don’t use more than a half-dozen bullet points and don’t exceed 700 words.
4. Be specific. Vague meaningless prose won’t cut it here. Know your industry and where your company stands. Make sure you’re familiar with the role and what it consists of and spell it out. Add a start date to create a sense of urgency.
5. Think like an applicant. What would make you apply for the job? Is it just perks and benefits or the chance to work with a smart group of people? Perhaps it’s the clear career path, the opportunities to learn and add to your skills, the company’s vision or the way you do things.
6. Help applicants to picture themselves in the role. Share details of the team they could be working with on a regular basis; include quotes or links to social media accounts.
7. Leave out trivial tasks or minor details. It’s all about what’s important in the role.
8. Offer value. It’s not all about how great your company and the job you’re offering is. This is about the potential candidates. Share content that interests and attracts them, talk about knowledge, ideas, and working methods.
9. Don’t write job descriptions in isolation. Talk to other departments to gain their expertise, content writers for wordsmithing, marketing for promotional ideas, designers for smart-looking visuals.
10. Spell-check and proofread. And once you’re done, do it again.

Looking for more? Check out our ultimate and most updated list of how to write a good job description.

Your company versus all the companies out there

To stand out in a crowded market you need to show some personality in your company profile. Your company is a unique combination of people, culture and knowledge, and your target is to attract candidates who share your approach and values. Make a pitch. Tell them the story of where you are, how you got there and where you’re going. Invite your candidates to join you in getting there.

Make it visual; an image of your workplace, a video or a quote from one of your employees offers an inside look at your company. Two-thirds of jobseekers admit to being influenced by the presentation of a job ad. Make yours memorable.

But don’t be self-absorbed. Many ads brag about how special their company is, how they only employ the best. This can come across as boastful, which is a turnoff for some candidates and will make others suspicious or fearful of applying. Brevity is your friend, keep this part to no more than 200 words and focus on your candidate; what’s likely to capture their attention.

This job versus every other job out there

The two most common approaches when writing a job description are to present a detailed list of daily tasks or a vague run-through of responsibilities. Neither will make the role compelling. Focus instead on deliverables and explain how these will contribute to the success of the business.

Here you can use bullet points (not a laundry list) that describe the nature of the work and how the role functions within the broader team. Rather than describing tasks, focus on the type of decisions they’ll be making, who they will be working with and reporting to.

The requirements list

You get what you ask for, so it’s tempting to go all out with a wish list. What you actually need is someone who can do the job and has the potential to grow. Candidates aren’t sitting on a shelf waiting to be picked. Distinguish between what you “want” and what you “need”. Come up with a list of 15 requirements. Read, rethink and cut the list in half.

A good approach is to rank skills by importance and frequency and be clear about it. Treating all skills as equal will demoralize jobseekers. The wrong emphasis could cost you good candidates who are concerned that they lack some skills which could really be picked up with a few hours basic training. Likewise don’t dwell too much on experience. Keep in mind that skills can be learned, people can be trained.

Benefits & perks

Here you can knock yourself out with as many bullet points as your actual benefits deserve. Still, you would be wise to focus on what’s special about your company. Keep in mind that attracting people through perks isn’t the best recruiting strategy. You’re looking for someone to meet the challenge and buy into the company as a whole, not a benefits shopper.

Make it easy to apply

We’ve all come across job ads that require a lot of patience to apply. Sending resumes to email addresses, filling out a bunch of fields with basic personal details or even worse rewriting your entire resume in individual form fields. Don’t be that guy. The candidates’ application experience is important.

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that automatically fills in required fields and offers a simple resume upload is all you need. Screening questions are useful and can weed out poor candidates to save you valuable time. A simple question like “What attracted you to this job?” can say volumes about the candidate. But go easy on open-ended questions that require candidates to write an essay. Multiple choice questions to check on skills and knowledge should be the default.

Worried about starting with a blank page? Try our job description templates, or jump right in and post your job to the best job boards today.

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3. How to post a job listing

You need to create some buzz around the job you’ve just published on your careers page. To do this you want to get your listing noticed by the communities where the passive candidates hang out. Linkedin has scores of groups you can join, mention jobs in or initiate general discussions around the role, your company or the industry.

First things first. Does everyone on staff know you have just listed a new job? Share it across your company. If you don’t have a referral system in place we’d strongly advise you to set one up. Include a social sharing feature and give incentives to your staff to start sharing from their own social accounts.

An alternative is to create your own communities. Smart companies make sure they have created Facebook groups or a Facebook Jobs tab, or even run a Facebook ad campaign, with the sole purpose of attracting potential candidates. Promote your employer brand through these pages and when you post a job you’ll have a talent pool of existing fans. Add as many touch points as possible between you and prospective candidates.

The top job boards

Posting your job on your careers page and social media is not enough. You need job boards. The leading premium job boards in terms of ROI (return on investment) are LinkedIn, Craigslist, Indeed and Monster.

Some job boards, like Indeed, also offer a free option as well as a paid. SimplyHired and Glassdoor offer free postings when you access them through an ATS like Workable. For the most effective places to post your jobs, check out our job board directory, which enables you to choose job boards based on industry, location, and cost (paid versus unpaid).

The best day to post a job

Don’t post your jobs on Friday evening, by Monday they’ll be last week’s news! Instead, wait until Sunday evening or Monday morning and advertise your roles when the candidates are most active.

Most job sites use freshness as a factor in ranking job search results. Plus, the new jobs of the day usually land in email updates and job board front pages, so getting there when the action is happening can get you up to double the candidates you’d receive on a slow day.

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4. Where to post a job for free

To keep costs low, share your job on social media – with a well-thought-out strategy – and harness the power of your best brand advocates: your employees. Wondering where to post jobs for free? Get word-of-mouth referrals for free by having your team share your job descriptions far and wide on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

• Twitter
  Twitter is the most open and transparent of these three social networks. In other words, you don’t have to be a Twitter user to read tweets. Putting your job listing on Twitter is a great way to connect with audiences you don’t already know. Help jobseekers find your listing by using relevant hashtags, such as #jobopening or #joblisting. You can even use industry-specific hashtags, such as #greenjobs, or location-specific hashtags, such as #bostonjobs. This list of hashtags is written for jobseekers but equally useful for recruiters
• Facebook
  Facebook has more users than LinkedIn and Twitter and is by far the most popular social network. It’s designed for personal sharing and the best channel for employer branding. To get the most traction from Facebook, intersperse job listings with photos and videos that feature your corporate culture. If you’re planning to do a lot of recruiting on Facebook, try adding a Jobs Tab to your page. This is a free, effective way to enable your audience to browse all your open jobs on Facebook.
• LinkedIn
  LinkedIn is purely a professional network and a natural fit for recruiters. LinkedIn profiles are formatted much like a resume, with most of the same candidate data—education, work history, technical skills, and some extras, like recommendations and endorsements. This is what makes LinkedIn so effective for sourcing highly specific types of candidates. Although LinkedIn has paid job listings, you can also post an open job as a status update on your company page for free.

Talent pools and the power of referrals

IMPORTANT NOTE: Choose your social media channel based on where your target talent pool is likely to be. Communications professionals in fields like advertising, marketing, and PR, are likely to be active on Twitter. If you’re hiring for construction jobs, Twitter won’t be an effective recruiting channel for you. You’re not limited to these social networks either. For example, if you’re a lifestyle or fashion brand and primarily communicate with your audience through images, Instagram may be your best bet.

Try pairing social media with an employee referral program. This is a warm, efficient way to reach your colleagues’ trusted contacts and make higher quality hires. Referrals are the number one source for hires, and social media provides employees with an easier, more personal way to share open jobs. Increase participation in the referral program with incentives. Gift cards, gadgets, and bonuses are popular, but feel free to get creative.

For example, APAC Customer Services had offered concert tickets as a reward for referrals. It was fun, but also smart, with the concert date functioning as a kind of countdown. When creating a referral program, think about the way your colleagues like to communicate, such as Slack.

Where to collect your candidates

One efficient way to post to job boards is through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). In addition to posting to multiple job boards and social networks with one submission, any applicants from those job boards will automatically be imported into your ATS. Hiring teams can work smarter, not harder, by cutting email and spreadsheets out of the process and storing all their candidate profiles and resumes in a searchable database.

The best ATS options, including Workable, offer you a simple hiring pipeline that makes sense of your recruiting tasks.

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5. The best places to post jobs free and paid

Get more eyes on your job listing today. With one click, post your listing to free job boards like Indeed, SimplyHired and Glassdoor. Workable integrates with numerous top job boards around the world. All you need to do is select the ones you want and we’ll do the rest.

Premium Job Boards

• Indeed
  Indeed is a leader among job boards and is visited by nearly three-quarters of all jobseekers. The site also boasts substantial reach with over 4 million jobs posted directly to Indeed.com. Indeed is also a job search engine that anyone can use for free. It takes jobseekers’ input, such as skills and location and then aggregates all matching jobs from thousands of other websites.
• LinkedIn
  LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network, a powerful sourcing tool and a job board. LinkedIn enables recruiters to create narrow searches for candidates by parameters such as location, job title, industry and more. With more than 722 million users in total, LinkedIn has the largest user base. And they’re growing fast with 172,800 added per day. The site is also visited by a whopping 310m active users a month.
• CareerBuilder
  CareerBuilder is both a job board and a destination for career advice. It operates in the United States, Europe, Canada and Asia and is visited by more than 24 million unique visitors a month. It has 3,200 partner sites in 60 countries. CareerBuilder is used by 80 million job applicants and each month it has 3 million job postings.
• SimplyHired
  SimplyHired, like Indeed, is a job search engine at its core. It is a highly-targeted pay per click job board that gets around 30 million unique visitors per month. SimplyHired is used by 3 million employers. When jobseekers search on SimplyHired, they’re able to discover jobs on the SimplyHired site, mobile app and numerous partner sites.
• ZipRecruiter
  ZipRecruiter is used by over 1 million employers and 7 million active job seekers each month. They offer a speedy way to get candidates by enabling recruiters to post to more than 100 job boards with one click, in addition to having a job board of their own.
• Monster
  Monster enables recruiters to target jobseekers in other countries, as well as through niche sites like Military.com, thousands of newspaper sites and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s a recognized name in job boards, having been around for 25 years. Monster also gets a ton of traffic with more than 926 million monthly unique visitors.
• Portfolium
  Portfolium is a job board and a portfolio site that enables approximately five million students and recent graduates to get their work samples, video clips and skills in front of employers. Hiring college talent is not easy for recruiters but it is especially challenging for small businesses. Portfolium enables any company to look beyond resume keywords and effectively reach and hire college talent with verified skills.
• StackOverflowCareers
  StackOverflowCareers is the careers platform of StackOverflow. It’s used by more than 100 million developers and technologists and is the trusted first destination of tech recruiters. Both employer profiles and developer profiles on this network are designed with the interests of developers in mind. In addition, there’s more for employers and recruiters to look at besides resumes. Recruiters look at code samples and interaction with other users to build a high quality pipeline of talent.

Free Job Boards

• Glassdoor
  Glassdoor offers jobseekers free access to more than 70 million company reviews, interview questions, salary reports and more, all posted anonymously by employees. It allows hiring managers to post jobs free, and is quickly rising in popularity as a job board and recruiting site. Glassdoor enables employers to update their company info, see who is viewing their company profile and respond to reviews. Glassdoor gets 50 million visits monthly
• Trovit
  Trovit is the leading classifieds search engine in Europe and Latin America. They have a presence in 57 countries and are available in more than a dozen languages. Jobs are one of their five major verticals and they partner with thousands of job boards and newspapers to help jobseekers be more efficient in their search. Trovit listings are highly visible as they are visited by 11 million unique users a month.
• JobRapido
  JobRapido is a global job search engine similar to SimplyHired and Indeed. They conduct business in 58 countries with more than a thousand companies, have 85 million registered users and are visited by 35 million monthly users. They’re a frontrunner as far as job aggregators go and continue to expand in Europe and the rest of the world.
• JobInventory
  JobInventory is a job search engine that eschews pay-per-click campaigns for a contributor program. This means that the search results provided to jobseekers are 100% organic. They offer a wide selection as they post jobs from all sources: employers, job boards and classified sites.
• CareerJet
  CareerJet is a job search engine with a worldwide presence. They’re available in 28 languages and source job ads from nearly 60,000 websites around the world. They own and operate two other brands, Opcionempleo for Spanish language markets and Optioncarriere for French language markets.
• Recruit.net
  Recruit.net is the leading search engine for jobs in the Asia Pacific region. Their search technology pulls jobs from corporate web sites, job boards, recruitment agencies, classifieds and more enabling jobseekers to quickly find millions of jobs. They also offer pay-per-click advertising, detailed analytics, and tracking for employers and recruiters. Recruit.net operates 18 localized websites in 6 major languages.

Looking for more? Check out our ultimate and most updated list with the best job boards.

Why you would pay for a job board versus free job boards?

Which job board is right for you and whether you should spend the extra on a paid job boards depends on a few factors:

1. The urgency of the hire – if you need to hire quickly you’re likely to find them faster by putting some money behind a paid or sponsored ad.
2. The type of role – some roles are simply harder to find candidates for. Take for example technology roles and often more senior hires. For this type of role you’ll often need to use a specialist/niche paid job board. The cost of the board will be justified by the quality of candidate it can attract.
3. Your location – if you are based in an area where there is high competition for candidates, a paid job ad can help you stand out from the crowd and make sure you’re speaking to the best people.
4. Ongoing hiring – as free job ads get old they fall down the rankings on job boards as newer jobs take the top spots. Simply reposting the same job on the same job board won’t get it listed back at the top. So if you’re hiring for a particular type of role over a long period of time you’ll keep your job ad fresh and the candidates flowing by paying for a job ad to keep it high on job board search results.
5. Cost control – how much you pay for job ads is completely customizable, especially with pay-per-click (PPC) options. Many job boards have PPC campaigns that you can use to target a highly specific audience. This means that you only pay when interested and suitable candidates view your job listing.

Never forget that a badly written job ad will never attract the best candidates whether you pay for an ad or not. So be sure that your job ad is up to scratch before you start.

So a paid ad is always better?

Not necessarily. There are many jobs where the free job boards can perform very well. Indeed for example is the biggest job board in the world, its free version has a huge amount of candidate traffic and can provide great candidates.

You’ll need to decide which job boards are best for you on a role by role basis and whether paying for a job ad will work out better in the long run.

Try Workable free for 15 days, and see which job boards work for you. Post your job to multiple free job posting sites with one submission, and get discounts on premium listings.

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6. Specialist job boards

Specialist Job Boards, also referred to as niche job boards, trade on quality of candidates over quantity. Many have grown out of successful community sites or evolved into community hubs as well as listings sites. This is an introduction to some of the top job boards in their respective fields — or head straight to our job board directory for the full breakdown.

Industry-specific job boards

TECH AND PROGRAMMING

• StackOverflowCareers
  StackOverflowCareers is the place to go if you’re looking for developers. Some 100 million devs and technologists use it every month.
• Dice
  Dice the other tech job board giant with a database of more than 9 million tech resumes in the US. Has a cross-posting network and minimizes unqualified clutter due to its niche nature.
• Github
  GitHub is a community of 50 million developers but it also has its own small job board. More often used to trawl for passive candidates.

DESIGN

• Dribbble
  Dribbble is a community that gives you access to designers’ portfolios and profiles. Plus you can post your jobs and connect with top talent.
• Behance
  Behance is where some of the top brands post their creative jobs. It’s also the place where 10 million professionals showcase their works enabling you to take a peek before you decide.

HEALTHCARE

• Doximity
  Doximity has attracted almost 75% of US doctors. It’s a professional network and a job board. You could call it a niche version of Linkedin.
• HealthECareers
  HealthEcareers with 6,500 employers and more than 11,000 medical & healthcare jobs posted, this job board is guaranteed to provide you with qualified applicants.

SALES

• Rainmakers
  Rainmakers attracts top performing salespeople, making it a leading sales career site and sales talent community.

RETAIL

• AllRetailJobs
  AllRetailJobs board adds 4,000 resumes per month on their database and has more than 19,000 employers and recruiters using the platform.

HOSPITALITY

• HCareers
  HCareers is the premier job board that covers all hospitality jobs (hotels, restaurants, travel etc).

MEDIA

• Mashable
  Mashable has emerged as a global media company with 45 million monthly visitors and its job board is a go-to for digital talent.

FINANCE & BANKING

• eFinancialCareers
  eFinancial Careers includes jobs in finance, accounting, banking and insurance and has an audience of more than 1m finance professionals.

Job boards for different types of work

FREELANCE/FLEX

• UpWork
  UpWork (previously oDesk) is free and is for freelancers only. If you’re looking for one, check out their well-rounded database of 18 million freelancers.
• FlexJobs
  FlexJobs is free and effective when it comes to flexible jobs. But only if you’re in search of part-time, telecommute or freelance employees.
• WeWorkRemotely
  WeWorkRemotely is the job board without borders allowing you to narrow down talent that doesn’t have to be in the same location as you.

SEASONAL

• Snagajob
  Snagajob is the largest resource for hourly employees. Has 100 million registered job seekers and 700,000 employer locations in the US and Canada.

INTERNSHIP/RECENT GRADS

• Internships.com
  Internships.com is used by more than 80,000 employers that can post and manage their internship jobs for free.
• Looksharp
  Looksharp is made for entry-level jobs and internships.

STARTUPS

• AngelList
  AngelList will be familiar to most startups. More than 100,000 of them use it. Candidates get to apply privately and see salary and equity up front and startups get to access a huge list of developers and designers actively looking for a job. All for free!

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7. How to post to multiple job boards for maximum impact

Recruiting software (like an Applicant Tracking System, or ATS) takes the hassle out of hiring by automating repetitive tasks and enabling you to keep everything you need to do your hiring in one place. Posting your job to multiple job boards and social media sites used to take hours. Now, it can be done in a click. Your recruiting software may even offer discounted or free job listings with specific partner sites.

Get candidates in one place

As candidates apply through job boards, their application data flows directly back into your recruiting software, or Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Your ATS will organize each applicant’s resume and application materials, track how many candidates are applying to each listing and enable you to see how many candidates you’re moving forward in the hiring process. You’ll also be able to discuss candidates with colleagues and keep all their communication on the candidate’s timeline.

How to post jobs that will be seen everywhere

Maximize your reach by using the job board integrations offered by your ATS. Posting to several job boards at once is a great way to get more exposure, and more exposure means more applicants. Automating this task with an ATS saves time but also increases productivity. With an ATS, your hiring team can save hundreds of work hours you’d otherwise lose to filtering a large pool of applicants. This helps you identify top talent faster and focus on the more important work of choosing the best candidate for your job.

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8. Tips for successful job candidate management

You’ve posted your job and applications are rolling in. Now, it’s time to start building a shortlist. Hiring processes vary from company to company, but generally your next steps for job candidates are one-way video interviews, phone screening, assessments, in-person interviews and at the very end, offer and onboarding, or rejection letters.

In the United States the average cost per hire (including direct and indirect costs) is $4,129. (Source: SHRM)

How to collaborate with your hiring team

Close collaboration with your hiring team will result in more efficient processes for candidate management and a hire who fits better. Whether you are an in-house or agency recruiter, it’s a good idea to send regular updates to your clients or hiring team. Using recruiting software means you don’t have to stitch together spreadsheets, email and elaborate filing systems. Some tools provide seamless and customizable collaboration features so that you’re always in the loop.

Methods used to score candidates

Time to rank your candidates. There are different approaches that can be taken here. One way is to simply rank candidates between 1-5 stars based on a few key elements. Some useful things to look for are:

1. Initiative and drive
2. Trend of performance over time
3. Past accomplishments
4. Comparable experience and education
5. Problem-solving and analytical skills

How to move candidates through the process

It can be hard to pick up where you left off while managing multiple hiring pipelines. Use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to easily identify next steps and efficiently move candidates through the different stages of hiring.

The typical stages of the hiring process include “sourced”, “applied”, “phone/video screen” and “in-person/live interview”. The right system will enable you to disqualify candidates from the process or even move a candidate from one hiring pipeline to another for a different job.

Chances are you know this scenario:

You write a job ad then post it to every job board one at a time. Your inbox gets jammed with randomly formatted resumes. You forward the ones you’ve had time to read to colleagues. It gets messy so you try to track it on a spreadsheet. We like spreadsheets, they’re great for all sorts of things like metrics and accounting but they’re useless for hiring.

That’s why we made Workable. A simple and powerful tool designed to help you hire better. Workable helps thousands of SMBs and Enterprises hire better candidates faster. Post to all the best free job boards with one click, share your jobs on social media and get discounts on premium listings. When the applications roll in, Workable keeps them all in one place, where you can browse and decide painlessly. Hiring made simple.

The post The ultimate guide to job posting appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

You don’t have much that amounts to a recruiting strategy. Every time you’re hiring the way you go about it changes and no one is entirely sure why. Resumes are shared in different ways, feedback on candidates gets misplaced and the questions that get asked at interviews are sometimes made up on the fly.

Far too many of us are hiring with borrowed tools, no recruiting strategies and the nagging feeling that we’re losing time that would be better spent on our main job. Happily, there is a better way.

This guide was created so as to give you a quick overview of the main elements of a failsafe recruiting strategy and help you bring those star candidates into your company. If you get the basics, you can jump to the topics you’re interested in:

1. A hiring process that works
2. Effective employer branding
3. How to make a great careers page
4. Find employees: social recruiting and job boards
5. Find employees: sourcing and headhunting
6. Importance of candidate experience
7. Taking control of the process
8. Managing the hiring pipeline with online recruitment software
9. Recruitment analytics: how to measure the recruiting process
10. Interview techniques to hire the right employees
11. Closing the deal: making a job offer and hiring employees

1. A hiring process that works

There has never been a better time for businesses of all sizes to get strategic with their hiring. The tools needed to attract the right candidates and get from application to hire are both more affordable and more effective than before. All that’s needed to get started is a recruiting strategy that works.

The cloud is all silver

The advent of cloud computing has been a massive boon for small business. It has spurred a revolution in affordable business software that is no longer tied to your desktop. This has put tools that were previously the domain of large corporations into the hands of ambitious companies, regardless of their size. Until recently though, recruiting software lagged behind.

Recruitment software used to be something that was first installed and later resented. Often known to users as “the system” it was bought by people who didn’t have to use it day-to-day. The result was that, in addition to being expensive, it was as ugly as it was hard to use. Worse still it was designed to replicate the kind of complex procedures in place at large organizations.

The new generation of hiring tools, available on the cloud, avoid this legacy. One of the nice things about being small is being nimble. The right recruitment process is streamlined enough not to waste your time, but inclusive enough to let you hire ambitiously.

Process is your friend

Process is not a sexy word but there is nothing duller than working without one. It makes sense to have a standardized series of steps that have been chosen because they maximize the likelihood of a good outcome.

It’s worth understanding what makes a good job ad, how to get an attractive careers page, where to post jobs, how to manage applicants, gather and share feedback on candidates and schedule interviews with them. Proven ideas in recruiting strategies such as sourcing (looking for talented people who aren’t actively looking for a job) and employer branding are now within reach of any smart, small business.

The role of software in recruiting isn’t about replacing human judgement or putting human resources hurdles between you and your eventual hire. It’s about removing data entry, curing the admin headache and leaving more time for people to make good choices in their recruiting strategy.

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2. Effective employer branding

Employer brands are one of those things that you don’t have to believe in for them to exist. If you think that you don’t have an employer brand you would be wrong. And it is likely to mean that there’s room to improve the one you’ve got.

Employer branding as a concept has gained currency in recent years but really it’s just another word for reputation. The main difference is that it’s easier than ever for prospective hires to get an advance idea of what it’s like to work for your company.

More than Tweeting jobs

Wherever you, your colleagues or employees appear online whether it’s your company Facebook page, a Twitter conversation, or a Linkedin profile, you’re talking to two audiences: customers and talent. While this makes some small businesses nervous, it’s actually a huge opportunity.

You don’t have to have the big bucks of corporations like Heineken or General Electric to market your employer brand (which they do very nicely). Hiring is marketing but it doesn’t have to be done on prime time television. Digital platforms offer an affordable and potentially enormous reach.

Here are three things to keep in mind to ensure a successful recruiting strategy:

Show, don’t tell: use platforms like Instagram to show your team and your workplace

Involve your team: they are your best advocates

Be nimble: you don’t have lumbering corporate brand guidelines to navigate, try new things and be responsive!

In many ways the traditional strengths of smaller businesses such as personal relationships, approachability and smaller teams are well suited to social media, which rewards authenticity and responsiveness.

Feeling unsure what your employer brand is? Give yourself one minute to describe it on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. Stuck? Get some of your core team together and brainstorm on what is unique or special about working for your company as opposed to other similar companies? Is it the people, the mission?

From award-winning recruiter Mervyn Dinnen: “The differentiators for job seekers will usually be culture and reputation, and social platforms offer a great opportunity for businesses to bring these to life. As long as you understand why you need to hire, what your new hire will be doing and how their skills and capabilities may develop, and how their role fits in with the overall values and purpose of the business, then recruitment is about having the right conversations with the right people at the right time. 

“And there is no better way to achieve that than through the effective use of social media channels.” Tweet this

Don’t neglect the offline world. Whether it’s campus recruiting fairs, events for your industry, professional meetups or local community, be there. You want to hire people and they don’t just gather online – even as the work world increasingly goes remote. A coffee, a chat or a business card can go a long way.

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3. How to make a great careers page

It may sound obvious but your careers page is your shop window. While there are plenty of ways to advertise the fact that you’re hiring, the starting point is an eye-catching, informative careers page.

Whether candidates spot that you’re hiring on a job board, or hear about it through word-of-mouth or social media, they will usually head to your careers page to find out more and to apply. So there needs to be something worth visiting when they get there.

Beyond listing jobs

The most powerful employer brands in the world, like Google or Amazon, work a bit harder than simply hanging up a “we’re hiring” sign. Candidates want to see more than job listings; they want to look inside the company.

Attract the right ones by providing a real sense of the environment they would be coming to work in and the team they would be working with. Ditch the stock photos and show pictures of your actual team and your workplace. Add videos to create a sense of personality. Include testimonials from would-be team members, the hiring manager, and even those in the C-suite.

It doesn’t have to have the production value of this Wegmans video but it should offer an authentic peek behind the curtain of their recruiting strategy.

There is more to company culture than a pinball machine

After a period in which company culture got conflated with facilities or game rooms, some sense is prevailing. Most smart people want to know why yours is an interesting or important place to work. As Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis once said: “No one ever came to work because of the ping pong tables. Even less so, stayed for them.”

If you have a mission or a set of values explain them on your careers page. People like to be inspired. Getting it right might seem straightforward but there are five common mistakes we keep encountering when analyzing recruiting strategies:

1. You don’t have a careers page
2. Your careers page is hidden
3. It’s not up to date
4. Your job ads look dull
5. Applications disappear into a mountain of unread email

Make it simple to find your job openings with a “we’re hiring” link on your homepage. Most of the time this lives on the footer, but if you’re doing a wave of hiring you might want to find room for it on the header at the top of the page. The best candidates are busy – and in some cases, are just poking around to see what’s out there. Make it easy for them to learn about you and your opportunities, and they will appreciate the effort.

There is no excuse for not having current listings. Why litter your shop window with broken goods or items that have already been sold? There are affordable tools, including Workable, that take the hassle out of updating your careers page.

Job descriptions and their shorter relative, the job ad, have long been seen as a chore. The downside of this is that most of them are deathly dull. The upside is that with a little time and nous you can write great ones which will stand out from the vanilla fare on offer elsewhere. For inspiration, take a look at our list of best job ads from the Workable job board.

The most common frustration among job seekers is not hearing back from employers after applying. Don’t let your applications disappear into a dark and unloved corner of a shared email address.

Gregory Ciotti at Shopify: “My favorite first approach for better job descriptions comes from Charlie Munger: ‘Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.’ Make a list of the language you’ve seen that sounds lazy, selfish, overused, or out-of-touch. Then avoid it. Describe the opportunity in sincere language. ‘A great opportunity’ is so often regurgitated on job descriptions it’s become meaningless.

Real opportunity is defined by what this person will contribute and why it matters. Attracting talented people starts with communicating that there is meaningful work to be done. Extraordinary people won’t take ordinary jobs.”  Tweet this

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4. Find employees: social recruiting and job boards

Now that the careers page is in place, it’s time to go out and find employees. First things first: Does everyone on staff know you have just listed a new job? Share it across your company. And encourage your employees to share with their networks on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Every scrap of research keeps telling us that referrals are the number one source of great hires.

What is social recruiting? Is it for real?

Social recruiting has sometimes been hyped beyond its capacity to deliver but it does help in recruiting strategies. You need to create buzz around the jobs on your careers page. LinkedIn has scores of groups you can join, mention jobs in or initiate general discussions around a role, a company or an industry.

Smart companies make sure they have created Facebook groups or a Facebook Jobs tab, or even run a Facebook ad campaign, with the sole purpose of attracting potential candidates. Your biggest fans are a good place to look when you’re hiring. Add as many touch points as possible between you and prospective candidates.

Social media has a role but you cannot afford to ignore job boards. Depending on the nature of the role being hired, free job boards should be the first port of call.

Job boards still essential

Some job boards, like Indeed, also offer a free option as well as a paid. SimplyHired and Glassdoor offer free postings when you access them through an ATS like Workable. For the most effective places to post your jobs, check out our job board directory, which enables you to choose job boards based on industry, location, and cost (paid versus unpaid).

Beware! Don’t post your jobs on Friday evening. By Monday, they’ll be last week’s news. Wait until Sunday evening or Monday morning and advertise your roles when the candidates are most active. Most job boards use freshness as a factor in ranking job search results.

From Jeff Dickey-Chasins, @jobboarddoctor: “Job boards should be a part (but not all) of any hiring program. In particular, niche sites like HigherEdJobs, CollegeRecruiter, and BrokerHunter can put you in touch with targeted groups of candidates. The result can be higher quality candidates and lower hiring costs – because you’re only reaching the people you want to reach.

In general, paid sites produce a more focused audience, because these sites spend money attracting and nurturing their candidates. Be sure to ask these sites for additional ways to reach their audience – beyond job postings.” Tweet this

Why pay for job boards when there are free ones?

When volume of candidates is the priority, LinkedIn, Indeed, and Craigslist are the top sites for posting paid job listings on account of their popularity, functionality and reach. These provide the maximum return on investment (ROI).

Are paid job boards always the way to go? No. There are many jobs where the free job boards can perform adequately. Indeed for example is the biggest job board in the world, its free version has a huge amount of candidate traffic and can provide great candidates. The decision on which job boards are best for you needs to happen on a role-by-role basis. You want the best candidates – so you want to target them where they live.

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5. Find employees: sourcing and headhunting

Advertising has its limits and referrals are great but sometimes they won’t provide you with enough leads to be confident that you’re making the right decisions when planning recruiting strategies for your business. Which leaves you looking for those “passive candidates”, the ones who aren’t actively seeking a new job.

This used to be known as headhunting although these days there’s also sourcing (think of it as headhunting prior to the kill). The key to this is to know as much about your prey as possible. The necessary steps should already be familiar from your hiring plan and job descriptions.

Picture your ideal candidate and ask these three questions to begin building a profile:

1. What experience would they have?
2. What kind of job are they doing now?
3. Which companies have good people doing this job?

Once you have a profile the sourcing begins. The good news is that there are more sourcing tools than ever and everyone will already have some kind of digital footprint. Github is strong on programmers, TalentBin is a good all-arounder, and then there’s LinkedIn, the biggest professional network. Browse profiles and make a long-list of prospects.

Now begins the courtship. You need to put your research to work in framing an approach. Start with prospects whom you can reach out to using your existing network. Utilize the hard-won experience of recruiters when it comes to cold-calling (usually via email) prospects outside your network.

Warming up the cold call

With a bit of research and a concise, personalized message, you’ll improve your chances of getting a response from the passive candidates you approach.

From Workable’s VP EMEA Rob Long: “When I worked as a recruiter I learned that it was worth the time to look at candidates’ public LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and other social accounts where they’re more likely to have a public following. It’s not snooping, this is where you can gauge an individual’s voice, their interests and even their wants and needs.” Tweet this

What about recruiters?

Hiring a recruiter isn’t essential but it can be a great shortcut to find the right employees. When doing so look for recruiters who have hired for businesses like your own. And who have hired for similar roles.

Contingent recruiters, who get based on the results they deliver, have become increasingly popular. The upside is that you only pay for what you get (typically one third of the hire’s annual salary). The downside is the cost and a possible conflict of interest: you want to hire great people but the recruiter just needs you to hire someone.

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6. Importance of candidate experience

Much of the emphasis in recruiting strategies is rightly placed on finding the best candidates. Considerably less thought is given to what it’s actually like applying for a job at your company. This disconnect is talked about in recruiting circles as “candidate experience” and all too often it’s not great.

There are compelling reasons for fixing this and they stretch beyond good manners. Firstly the majority of unhappy candidates won’t try again once they’ve had a bad experience. A significant minority of them tell their friends to not bother either.

Every hiring process turns up near misses. And no sensible company can afford to lose these talented people from their pool of potential future hires.

Measuring discontent

• 75 percent of candidates never hear back from a company after sending in an application
• 60 percent of candidates say they’ve gone for interviews and never heard back from the company
• 42 percent of disgruntled candidates will not apply for a position at the company again.
• 22 percent will tell others not to apply to the company and nine percent will ask others to boycott products

The commodity that’s too often missing is respect for the applicants’ time. There is a strong link between time-to-respond to an application and the final outcome. The overwhelming majority of candidates who end up accepting interviews and jobs are those who had a response from the employer within two days of applying. We call it The Two-Day Rule.

Employers who respond to incoming applications quickly, tend to be the same ones who swiftly schedule interviews, gather feedback and move through the hiring process in a timely fashion. Being disciplined and responsive from the get go is a habit that sets the tone for the entire process.

Don’t forget our Two-Day Rule

Get it right and you have begun a relationship with tomorrow’s talent. Burn bridges and your candidates’ frustration will contaminate your employer brand. With the likes of Glassdoor and Indeed, it’s never been easier to research a company’s reputation – and see them be hurt by a few negative reviews.

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7. Taking control of the process

For both the legacy HR software users and the newcomers, the promise of modern recruiting software is the same: it will let you take control of the process and your recruiting strategy will flourish.

From Fistful of Talent blogger Tim Sackett: “Recruiting technology has never been so affordable, meaning organizations no longer have an excuse not to have it. Great tech is so cheap now that if you don’t have it, you’re making a personal choice to stay in the dark ages of recruiting! For SMBs this has never been more real. SMBs can now have even better recruiting technology than their enterprise peers.

“While enterprise folks get big, vanilla-style recruiting technology, SMB shops can move faster to integrate the latest and greatest tech on the market. It’s such an exciting time to be in talent acquisition.”  Tweet this

At the heart of this is the applicant tracking system (ATS). At its simplest and most powerful it brings together job posting and sharing in all forms with the ability to track candidates, build a shortlist, schedule interviews and make new hires.

An effective ATS should enable you to browse rich profiles of your candidates and work effectively with your hiring team on a platform that keeps your notes, communication, schedule, comments and analytics in one place.

An ATS like Workable removes data entry from the hiring process by allowing employers to accept applications in the form of LinkedIn profiles or resumes and parsing them. Instead of jumbled data, candidates are then viewable in a database where it’s easier to make decisions.

The essence of an effective process is efficiency and repeatability. The secret to making a process stick is to get your team to buy into it. A tool that your team likes using will foster teamwork. This in turn will translate into better hiring – which should be the core focus of any recruiting strategy.

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8. Managing the hiring pipeline with online recruitment software

Everyone who has tried to grow a business knows that hiring the right people is the hardest part. Getting this right doesn’t deliver success on its own but getting it wrong pretty much guarantees failure. So it would be reasonable to expect that most companies would use a specialist tool to hire. As the working world moves increasingly online, recruiting strategies are more reliant on technology than ever before.

There is Asana or Trello for managing projects, Constant Contact or Mailchimp for email marketing, and Hubspot or Marketo for marketing automation, as well as Xero for accounting, surely hiring is seen as a specialist job? Not so much.

Beyond email and spreadsheets

Too many businesses try to run their recruitment strategies out of their inbox and when that gets overwhelmed (soon after) they turn to Excel or Google Sheets. Spreadsheets are great for many jobs, but they suck at hiring.

Jot down the basic stages of your current hiring process. Starting from the point where applications come in, it might vary a bit but it probably looks something like this:

1. Applied
2. Promising
3. Phone/video screen
4. On-site interview
5. Final interview
6. Offer

For anyone who has worked a sales job, this is recognizable as a pipeline. The hiring pipeline (e.g. this sales recruitment process) is a useful device because it offers a high-level view of where everyone is in the process. Recruiting software takes the influx of applications that come with effective job ads and sourcing and funnels them into a streamlined process.

Rather than floundering with an inbox full of resumes and a thicket of spreadsheets tracking candidates’ progress, the recruiting pipeline tracks and manages multiple candidates from application through to interview and an offer.

In the case of Workable, the recruiting pipeline enables hiring teams to work together collecting all comments, feedback, notes, social media profiles or assignment results on the same page. It removes the need for endless email threads and avoids the possibility of misplacing vital feedback or conversations with candidates.

When choosing a software that works best for you, this list of 12 best applicant tracking systems can help you.

Judgement not drudgery

The point of online recruiting software is not to eliminate human judgement, it’s to get rid of the drudgery in the hiring process. Saving time on data entry, coordination and administration liberates the people doing the hiring to concentrate on the people they would like to hire. There are hard people decisions to make in recruitment strategies, for everything else there is software.

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9. Recruitment analytics: how to measure the recruiting process

One of the biggest drawbacks of recruiting without the right tools is that when all’s hired and done, there’s no record to learn from. It has been a disposable experience. To extract full value from any recruitment strategy, the steps taken need to remain visible and repeatable.

Anyone who has undertaken hiring on any scale will have come across promising candidates who, while they weren’t the right choice at this stage or for this role, are worth noting for the future. It’s too easy to lose track of them with email and spreadsheets.

Actionable insights

Every hire is an opportunity to broaden your network, build new relationships and talent spot for the future. Recruiting professionals refer to this as creating a “talent pool”. Recruiting software gives you a permanent record of every hire and a head start on filling that talent pool.

It also unlocks the chance to learn and improve from the process itself using reports and analytics. When there is a record of where candidates come from (which job boards, social media or referral routes), how long it took your eventual hire to move from applied to promising, to interview and offer, it’s possible to unlock valuable lessons.

When there is more than one open position, recruitment analytics become essential because they offer a high level view of your whole hiring effort. And with it answers to these questions:

• Where are your hiring bottlenecks?
• Which hiring managers need help?
• Which positions need urgent attention?
• Which are your best sources for hires?

Too much of recruiting analytics has been about calculating the cost per hire. Cost per hire is calculated by adding up all of your recruitment costs from ads to external recruiters, referral bonuses, plus your own hiring team’s compensation and benefits costs, and dividing it by the total number of new hires for the calendar year.

As well as being tough to meaningfully calculate, for smart companies it may be the wrong place to look. The point is not to hire more cheaply; it’s to get better results from hiring. With this in mind here are a trio of hiring metrics worth considering:

• Time to start: Duration from ad to on-boarding
• Effectiveness ratio: How many openings you have versus how many you’re filling.
• Sourcing: Measuring not just the what but the why of your best talent pools

A lot of talk in the talent industry focuses on quality of hire. But this is a super metric that assumes you’re already got performance metrics, measurable core competencies, retention records and a host of others. Not having these is not a good reason to ignore recruiting metrics but it does mean the Quality of Hire looks more like the finish line than the start.

From Talent Culture CEO Meghan Biro: “I’ve seen recruiting organizations spend all their time in the metrics-gathering phase, and never get around to acting on the results — in industry parlance, ‘boiling the ocean.’ You’re far better off gathering a limited number of metrics that you actually analyze and then act upon.” Tweet this

Complying with the thicket of US equal opportunities employment laws can consume your time and fray your nerves. This process cries out for automation so opt for an ATS with an EEO Survey and Reporting feature.

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10. Interview techniques to hire the right employees

Interviews are the most human, the most interesting and the least automated part of the hiring process. They are also the hardest, which is why they need planning and forethought.

How to conduct an interview

The first thing to acknowledge with interviews is that they don’t begin on the day someone walks into your office. Done properly the hiring process has worked like a funnel — you got a lot of applicants, you spoke to some of them, you met a handful, now you want to work out which is the best of them to hire.

This all starts with the pre-interview questions. These are the questions you ask a candidate when they apply that will help you decide whether to take them to the next stage. Make sure they offer something where candidates can sensibly weigh their response. Do you know anyone who will say “no” to the requirement: “must be hardworking”? Neither do we.

Ever walked into an interview and known within 30 seconds that the candidate you’re meeting is never going to work out? It’s a waste of your time and theirs. One-way video interviews can give you the double benefit of a phone screen combined with a somewhat “in-person” interview that will help prevent this situation from happening – giving a company a leg up when planning recruitment strategies.

The value of assignments

Next up should be a practical test or assignment related to the job. Hiring for a customer support associate? Why not test candidates by getting them to answer some hypothetical customer queries. If you’re hiring developers there are online tools which can put developers through their paces so you can see exactly how they code.

Have a plan; don’t just ask the same interview questions every time. Always prep. Go beyond the candidate’s name and the job they’re interviewing for. Get to know them a little, check their resume, look at your team’s comments and note some questions in advance.

While there are some standard questions, such as whether someone is eligible to work in your territory, these are just hygiene questions. Ask open questions that encourage discussion. Engage with their responses and follow up. If it’s boring it’s not working. No one gets much out of the going-through-the-motions interview.

Depending on the position you’re hiring for there are a number of effective interview techniques but none of them should be used exclusively:

• Technical: To evaluate a candidate’s ability to do the job. To fill a software engineering position it might mean a whiteboard coding test.
• Behavioral: This type assumes past behavior will be a predictor of future performance: “What were the steps you took to accomplish such and such task?”
• Situational: The hypothetical (the ones politicians refuse to answer) throws it forward: “What would you do if the work of a teammate was not up to expectations?”
• Case questions (brainteasers): Used to be popular with Google, this type includes problem-solving questions that tease out how someone would work and think through a particular case: “how many traffic lights are there in LA?”
• Dumb questions: Meant to test someone’s ability to think on their feet. They often just test people’s patience and good humor: “What kind of animal would you like to be?”

From @interviewingio founder Aline Lerner: “How well a candidate thinks they did significantly impacts their desire to work with you. This means that in every interview cycle, some portion of interviewees are losing interest in joining your company just because they don’t think they did well, despite the fact that they actually did. To mitigate these losses, it’s important to give positive, actionable feedback to good candidates immediately.

“This way they don’t have time to go through the self-flagellation gauntlet that happens after a perceived poor performance, followed by the inevitable rationalization that they totally didn’t want to work there anyway.” Tweet this

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11. Closing the deal: making a job offer and hiring employees

There are some common and damaging misconceptions about process. You cannot be too small to need a recruiting strategy. It is not going to slow you down.

Eight steps to better hiring

1. Define your employer brand and craft a reputation as a good place to work.
2. Make sure you have a functioning, updated careers page with job descriptions that sell your open positions.
3. Use the right mix of channels from free and paid job boards to referrals, social and professional networks to get the word out
4. Respect your candidates’ time.
5. Be ambitious. The best hires may need sourcing and headhunting as well as advertising.
6. Take control of your hiring process with recruiting software, don’t rely on spreadsheets and email.
7. Take advantage of phone screens and assignments to arrive at a shortlist. Have an interview plan.
8. Use the analytics and reports provided by recruitment software to learn and improve.

If you’ve followed these steps then everyone you meet should be a genuine contender for a job. With this in mind remember that interviews work both ways. They are also a sales pitch. Unless you sell your company, your vision and the opportunities of the role, when you’re making a job offer you’re counting on paying more. The research suggests that good people are more concerned with career advancement than plain compensation.

Rigor is also on your side. Don’t be afraid of challenging interviews, they’re a signal of your ambition and direction of travel. When it comes to making a job offer you’re no longer in the dark. Resources like Glassdoor can give you an accurate estimate of market rates for most common positions. Make sure you compare yourself to similar companies and similar roles.

Make a point of references

There is always a temptation to go with gut feeling when you come to make a job offer and cut corners on references. Resist the temptation. You must assume that a smart person will already have at least a couple of good references in their pocket. Most people don’t like to speak ill of former employees or colleagues. Dig a little deeper.

If the reference is less than glowing, ask why. Nearly half of U.S. companies say they’ve experienced a bad hire in the last year, costing them an average of $25,000. Don’t join them.

Further insurance against a bad hire comes in the form of background checks. They can be appear tough to navigate, especially for business owners without a dedicated HR team, but a small investment could save hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages down the line. This is the primary reason that seven out of ten U.S. employers said they conducted at least a criminal check prior to making a job offer.

Once everything is in place don’t get stumped by offer and rejection letters. Use customizable job offer and rejection letter templates that include common clauses to save you and your employee from disputes related to compensation, benefits and special agreements.

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More reading:

Best recruitment strategies to attract top talent

What is recruiting software?

The post Recruiting strategies: a comprehensive guide for small business appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• When do businesses expect their operations to return to “normal” after COVID-19?
• When do businesses expect their industry to return to “normal” after COVID-19?

The COVID-19 crisis is unpredictable and volatile, making the future hard to plan for. However, our respondents do have to make projections on a return to normalcy so they’re not operating fully in a vacuum in the new world of work.

Post-COVID world

So when do we return to normalcy or at least return to some semblance of stability? We asked that question as it applies to business operations and to the overall industry.

“I have been amazed at how well our team have adapted to working from home. We have all acknowledged that we miss the team interaction, but I really feel we’ve got to know each other more, we’ve had daily calls since the lockdown, which has helped our split-site company. I think it will take time to accept the new normal, but we will get there. … I hope that we take all the learnings we’ve acquired during this lockdown and bring these forward. Our air is clearer, our seas are cleaner, we recognise the importance of being connected after being so isolated for so long, we appreciate the small exercise time we’ve had outdoors. The world will be different, but so much potential to be better too.” – Survey respondent

There was no clear consensus on when there would be a return to normalcy – only that 4-6 months was the most popular answer for both own business operations and for industry. The differences between “business return” and “industry return” were quite marked in the 0-3 month category, with 21.9% of businesses saying they’d return to “normal” within three months compared with 13.5% saying their industry would return to “normal” in the same time frame.

The opposite was true for a return to normalcy within 1-2 years – with just under 10% of respondents seeing their business returning, compared with 16.9% for their industry returning.

When we dissect the “business return to normal” responses by senior-level positions versus entry/mid-level positions, senior-level workers projected a longer road to recovery than their entry/mid-level counterparts. They were also more likely to say their business had already gone back to normal or hadn’t been affected in any way.

But it’s interesting to note that nearly twice as many senior-level as entry/mid-level employees think their business has already returned to normalcy.

Overall, a very small percentage of respondents across the board think it won’t return to normalcy or take longer than two years to do so. The short interpretation of this is that most respondents do think there’s an end date to the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on business and industry. It’s just a matter of when.

“In our industry, it will never return to before COVID-19. We will need to change our focus to marketing to consumers within our own country, province or within driving distance. The visitors from around the world will be minimal.” – Survey respondent

 

“This time shall pass. Social distancing will end. We will all be back to being regular humans again.” – Survey respondent

Conclusion

Our initial goal in the survey was to identify when businesses thought they would return to normalcy after COVID-19 – in short, when the future workplace would arrive. That part of the survey, however, resulted in the most inconclusive findings.

What we learned, instead, is that remote work is clearly the way forward, digitization of processes is the way to enable that shift, and employee engagement is – understandably – a mounting concern in the future workplace.

Also, most of our respondents either have the tech tools to operate in a remote world of work, or are at least aware of or plan to introduce more tools to support that new work environment. The basic know-how of work has not changed; recruiters and hiring teams, for instance, still know how to source, evaluate, hire, and onboard candidates – but they aren’t fully versed on how to do all that in a remote environment.

Finally, the emphasis on the solutions of more meetings, more “coffee dates”, and all-hands to maintain employee engagement in a virtual work world as opposed to new trainings for a new world echoes Einstein’s famous quote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

The remote world of work is here to stay, and there’s a clear willingness to adapt to that new world – at least in the adoption of new technology. But in order to really succeed in this new world of work, we need to loosen up on the traditional operational practices, and start thinking about different solutions and practices so we continue to set ourselves for success. In short: the new world of work requires a new way of thinking.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Chapter 6 on what businesses see in the road ahead 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post A return to normalcy: When will work go back to business as usual? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post Need to build up your DEI initiative? Learn from an expert appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis on remote work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are businesses planning for the remote work future?
• How important is technology in remote work?

Digital transformation is a long-time buzzword that now means the digitization of information, industries, organizations, and operations. And if remote work is the biggest paradigm shift prompted by COVID-19, remote work technology is the vehicle to make that a smoother transition.

Technology – the great enabler

When we asked respondents what made them able to move to a remote workflow without disruption, more than two thirds (68%) reported it was because they already had the technology for remote workers to do so.

“… industries and businesses are going to adapt to using digital platforms to deliver their work and product. People are adjusting to social distancing and embracing the technology to meet people and make their daily earnings.” – Survey respondent

Of those planning to remote operations or distributed teams, nearly half plan to introduce or increase digital capabilities in that transition – in short, more technology for remote work.

Those in senior-level management prioritized tech adoption in the post-COVID work environment, much more so than those at entry/mid-level. Perhaps executives see tech adoption as a company-wide, internal digital transformation while entry/mid-level employees see it primarily as technology for remote work day-to-day.

“COVID-19 has shown … that weak link [in] being penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to technology adoption. During the shutdown, those who spent on technology were able to be ‘business as usual’ where workforce worked 100% remotely.” – Survey respondent

Those in entry/mid-level employee positions are more concerned about the readiness of their business than those in senior-level management. Also, several custom entries from our respondents indicate the lack of senior-level buy-in.

Some of these differences may indicate potential issues around employee engagement.

“The world of work will be focusing on new technology to make work efficient and boost collaboration in virtual ways, [and] more adaptive to remote working style. The expenses for office rental & travelling will be cut as well, [and] more creative ways in employee engagement events.” – Survey respondent

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 6 on remote employee engagement in the new world of work 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Remote work technology: the road ahead is digital appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Onboarding remote employees – in many cases, without having ever met them in person – is no easy task. In Workable’s New World of Work survey, 37.4% cited remote onboarding and training as major issues when hiring in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, while 49.7% said candidate onboarding would be problematic in recruiting in the post-COVID work world.

But Eric isn’t one to be discouraged by those numbers.

“Regular meetings and discussions on Zoom, Hangouts, and Google Duo have helped us in overcoming all the challenges,” he says.

He adds that there are business benefits as well.

“There’s been a reduction in costs because no infrastructure is required in the workplace. Team members are arranging it at their distant locations themselves.”

That’ll be a welcome reassurance to the 26.4% of budget-conscious senior-level executives in the above-mentioned survey who said new hire onboarding would be one of the main overall challenges in the new world of work.

Camaraderie makes the team merry

Eric is just one of the dozens of business owners and managers who responded to our query for tips and tricks on remote onboarding. One lesson was clear from many: while a standardized process is especially important in successful remote onboarding, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Companies thrive on teamsmanship and camaraderie, so you want to build those strong connections from the first day forward if you want the new hire to be set for success.

That’s easier when it’s done face-to-face, as those connections are built via introductions, meetings, and team exercises in a shared physical space. But strengthening work culture and bonding between colleagues is tougher virtually.

“Remote onboarding has been a big challenge because with this we’re not able to introduce the new team members to the culture and environment of the organization,” Eric says.

So, how do you get started on building connections in a remote work world, particularly when onboarding? It’s not easy, but if you follow these best practices from those we heard from, you’ll be able to build those important connections between your new hire and their new colleagues.

Here are four best practices for you to stay ahead of the new trends in remote employee engagement.

1. Be even more hands-on

It’s easy enough for new hires to spontaneously chat with others when in the same physical workspace, but it’s not easy when that new hire is sitting invisibly in front of their computer. They can’t look around and chat with their desk neighbors or take a tour of the office and introduce themselves to people. That can severely impact new hire engagement from day one.

This puts the onus on you to be even more hands-on than you would in a normal onboarding process. This applies not only to HR but to colleagues and managers as well, says Neal Taparia of Solitaired.

“You have to be very hands-on to ensure successful onboarding,” says Neal, the CEO of this new NYC-based company that ties classic games to brain training. “New employees are [more] hesitant to speak up via online channels than they are in person to get an understanding of everything. They don’t want to ask too many questions over Slack, and ask for additional Zoom calls.”

He adds that you also need to check in regularly to ensure that a new hire is headed in the right direction and is on track throughout your new hire onboarding plan.

Involve the hiring manager

The value of inclusive leadership is especially crucial for new hire engagement when working remotely, Neal emphasizes.

“It’s easy for managers to forget to check in on new employees that have started remotely. [At Solitaired], we train our managers on what successful remote onboarding means. Specifically, we have a rule where managers should be checking in at least 10 times through the week to make sure everything is going in the right direction.”

Husam Machlovi is the founder of digital studio With Pulp, which operates fully remotely out of New York state. His company has served notables such as AMC Networks and World Wrestling Entertainment. He also advocates for the active participation of hiring managers in the new hire’s engagement.

“The most effective remote onboarding tool for us is simply to check in with each other,” says Husam. “I like to check in with new hires and ask them how I can support in any way, how things are going, do they have any questions? My goal is to create a space where people feel safe to ask questions.”

Grant Aldrich, CEO/founder of the Los Angeles-based online learning site Online Degree, says the manager or CEO is responsible for making sure everyone feels connected throughout the company, keeping new employee engagement high at this crucial time.

“This goes beyond checking in and extends to starting conversations and asking questions in your communication channels,” he adds.

Michael Alexis, the owner of New York-based Teambuilding, a virtual team cohesion service, emphasizes the importance of active participation by all parties included – both the newly hired and the ones doing the hiring and onboarding.

“Following documents and watching videos alone is boring,” says Michael. “It’s important to us that these early days and weeks for a new team member are as engaging as possible.”

Make yourself available – and ensure the new hire knows it

Dan Bailey of WikiLawn, an online lawn and garden care resource center which lists services all across the United States, notes that it does take more time to onboard someone remotely, as he simply cannot sit next to the new hire and walk them through all the steps of their job. But it’s still important that he and his colleagues are available to the new hire for anything they may need on the spot.

Not only do his teams record videos with instructions and prepare documents to be more detailed, but also set response time as a critical measurement. In fact, he applies customer support standards to ensuring his new hires get what they need quickly.

“We’ve found that new hires often have many questions that can go unanswered for an hour or more if someone isn’t assigned to being available to help them, so that is one way we’ve improved how we manage onboarding,” Dan explains.

“At least one other teammate is available during working hours by messenger, email, and phone so the new hire doesn’t have to waste time and become frustrated waiting on a reply.”

2. Make the employee feel welcome

Austin Heerwagen of Koda Digital, a medical marketing agency operating out of Carrollton, Texas, admits that disconnection was an issue when operating remotely, especially with new hires coming on board.

“Our biggest pain point initially was gaining buy-in from new employees. There is no tour around the office, parking space, elevator ride, or birthday parties – employees can feel like they are a replaceable cog in a machine.”

That makes it even more critical to make your new hire feel welcome and connected.

Caitlin Byrnes can speak firsthand to the value of this. When she was hired as VP at Peppercomm, a public relations firm in NYC, she found that her new company had a great new hire onboarding plan in place, but some things stood out above and beyond HR obligations particularly in a remote work environment.

“For instance, team members carved out time for virtual coffee with me, and gave me a positive ‘shout-out’ in my first all-hands meeting,” Caitlin says.

“These personal touchpoints made me feel more comfortable working with a team I’d never met in person. Even more importantly, it helped me understand who I could go with questions when I couldn’t just pop around the corner.”

Line up meetings with everyone

Shayne Sherman, the CEO of TechLoris, a computer service in Brookline, Massachusetts, highlights that importance in the absence of water cooler conversations and “quick drops by one’s desk”.

“We made sure to make company intros and offer the chance to say a few words at the latest company all-hands meeting. From there, the new hire’s manager would schedule a remote lunch or after-work drinks, via Zoom, to get to know each other and open the chat up to be a bit more informal.”

Greg Hayes, CEO and co-founder of venture-backed office furniture startup Branch in NYC, makes sure the new hire is properly and formally acquainted with their full team right away.

“We ensure that each new team member has a lengthy 1:1 video chat with everybody on our team, to ensure they better understand everyone personally and what their scope of work entails. We also plan a happy hour around each new member’s arrival to welcome them in.”

Tara Lilien, the Chief Talent Officer at Peppercomm, takes it one step further.

“I think giving the new hire an opportunity to lead a meeting, facilitate a staff learning event or shadow a client meeting or call are all great on-the-job moments that will allow for stronger and quicker integration into the team.”

Send them a welcome package

Austin at Koda Digital likes to make sure the new employee receives a gift basket containing company swag and attire, business cards, and gift cards for restaurants near them. He’ll even make sure to include personal gifts based on interview discovery.

“For example, one employee really liked sloths, so we sent her a desk-buddy sloth to let her know that we care about her too – not just her work. In addition, on the employee’s first day, we send out UberEats gift cards to everyone and have a ‘catered’ nice-to-meet-you lunch.”

Kick things off with a friendly, informative email before their first day, setting the tone going forward.

3. Don’t assume everyone knows your tech, because they don’t

When you’re working in a company that utilizes a lot of technologies and has fully jumped on board the digital transformation train, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that everyone knows your tech stack. Don’t do that, says Neal at Solitaired.

“Some of us use Google Apps and Microsoft apps so regularly, we assume everyone knows these systems as well as we do. This is definitely not the case.”

He learned this the hard way, too. One time, he hired an employee that had never used the Google productivity suite and they were too embarrassed to admit that. That made onboarding an especially painful process.

Doesn’t matter who’s at fault for it – it’s a negative first experience for the new hire that starts things off on the wrong foot.

Get them acquainted with tech quickly

Get ahead of the problem, Neal recommends. “Take an intake survey beforehand. If someone does not know about Google apps, we ask them to read up on it beforehand, and give them a tutorial on their first and second day of work.”

Amy McWaters, the CEO of Gifts Australia, a souvenir e-commerce company in Sydney, Australia, also finds that tech adoption remains an issue in the remote new hire onboarding plan. Late logons, lost connections, and struggles with tech integrations continue to be a pain point for her company. She recommends taking care of things even before the first day of onboarding or training – effectively preventing a problem before it even occurs.

“Work under the assumption that tech issues will arise, if not on your end, then on the trainees’ end,” Amy says. “Give installation instructions at least three days out.”

Gargi Rajan, general manager of human resources at Mercer / Mettl, an HR technology company operating just outside of New Delhi, India, likes to get several birds with one stone: hackathons. The benefits are multiple: it helps onboarding in a remote manner, gets new hires quickly acquainted with their new colleagues, and puts everyone on a level playing field bonded by a common interest. Tech adoption is a huge, huge bonus.

“Since everyone understands the challenges at hand,” Gargi explains, “they all come together to accept the technological tools and processes as partners in working smoothly and seamlessly.”

But don’t be fazed if you do run into some issues with tech adoption among your existing and new employees. It may seem daunting on the surface, but with a silver lining underneath.

“Every aspect has its limitations,” Eric at Couture Candy says. “Maybe we wouldn’t have known the creativity required in businesses if tech adoption was quick and easy.”

4. Make it a two-way street

Even as an employer who knows your company inside and out, you can’t assume to know everything that the new hire needs. So, establish a two-way street – solicit feedback from your new employees and refine your new hire onboarding plan based on what they’ve shared with you.

Neal at Solitaired is quick to that point, having new employees fill out a daily survey about their onboarding during their first week on the job.

“It became a forum where they could clear up any confusion, and for us to get them back on the right track. It’s simple and effective.”

At Branch, Greg encourages new employees to be “hungry learners” and not to be afraid to ask any questions.

Listen, learn, and improve

Phil Strazzulla, the CEO at the online review site Select Software Reviews, doubles down on collecting feedback from your new colleagues, acknowledging that it is new ground for many companies.

“Ask your new hires for feedback on the [new hire onboarding plan], what worked and what didn’t. Get your HR team as well as your managers together to go over the results and make changes to address them.”

Jitesh Patil, SEO and content specialist at project management software company Toggl Plan in Tallinn, Estonia, also advocates for this measure of successful remote onboarding – and himself works remotely from Maharashtra, India.

“We request regular feedback from new joinees — end of week 1, end week 2, end of the first month, and so on.”

This series of sample questions for your new hire can help you collect valuable feedback on your remote new hire onboarding plan.

Set up an open Q&A channel

Michael at Teambuilding takes a unique approach to the two-way street in his company’s remote onboarding strategy.

“One way we’ve made the onboarding process more engaging is using employee journaling. For each new hire, we create a private channel in Slack where they can share their thoughts and ideas,” Michael explains.

“For example, it might be a note like, ‘I’m a little confused at who these people are’, and then we can chime in with info about team members or organizational structure. The journal also introduces fresh eyes to our systems to help improve. For example, ‘I noticed that XYZ is inefficient, and in previous roles I’ve done it this way that was more efficient’.”

It can also be a morale booster for those doing the actual onboarding, he adds.

“[We] are happy to receive feedback like ‘never felt so welcome in any of my jobs before’ or ‘everyone is so welcoming here’”.

Maximize the connectivity

Nuances are often lost in the remote work world. You can overcome that by getting everyone as involved as possible, ensuring the new hire feels part of the team from day one, staying on top of any potential tech hiccups, and establishing open two-way communication channels. That will set your new hires for success as early in the game as possible.

It also helps your existing employees get better acquainted with each other – including their individual styles and working habits – and fosters a more cohesive team environment, even in a world where few people have actually met but still work together on a daily basis.

And this doesn’t need to be a chore, either, says Eric at Couture Candy.

“Remote onboarding is fun if you enjoy it,” he says with a smile.

Want to read more? Check out our tutorial on reducing new hire turnover in your company.

The post Your remote new hire onboarding plan: Build those connections appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How much can companies go remote?
• Why can’t some employees go remote?
• Why can some employees go remote?
• Which industries are good for remote work?
• Which industries aren’t good for remote work?
• What helps employees succeed in a remote workplace?

We’ve established remote work as the number-one disruption going forward. But what will that new remote work world look like, and how feasible is it? We asked those questions in our survey as well.

Shift to remote is doable – to a degree

Two thirds of respondents (64.3%) reported that, of their workforce not already working remote, more than a quarter can move to a virtual environment without disruption. And 15.2% said they’d be able to move their entire workforce to remote.

But that’s just one side of the same coin. The other side is that more than a third (35.7%) of respondents can only move at most one quarter of their current non-remote workforce to a virtual environment without disruption. In other words, a full three quarters or more of their workforce cannot go virtual.

So, what’s stopping them? We asked that, too.

Challenges of remote work

Predictably, the need to be physically present for work is a dominant challenge in shifting to a remote-first environment, particularly for those in healthcare (81.5%) and education (73.9%). Yet, those same sectors didn’t consider adaptability, resilience, and readiness of workers to be a major issue when transitioning to remote-first.

“There is still value in being present. We are a route-based business and some staff must still report to the physical location. We want to avoid creating a disparity between job roles.” – Survey respondent

In the “Other” category, respondents cited logistics, the value of physically being in the same space, and lack of management buy-in as leading factors in the challenges of remote working.

When asked about what does enable them to go remote, a full 69.6% of education workers said they didn’t need to be physically present at work, tops across our four major sectors, while at the same time trailing all other sectors in terms of technological readiness.

One could dive deeper into the “why” of this, but one potential takeaway is that those in education feel they can work remotely if they have the technology to do so. There are myriad reasons for not having the technology, for instance, a digital divide among students, budgetary challenges, or lack of buy-in or support from key stakeholders and users.

What we do know is that many major schools from K-12 to college/university – including in California and at Harvard – are moving to a digital-first curriculum and may even remain so for the foreseeable future. Technology has enabled that to happen.

Perhaps that technology component marks a permanent shift and a major change in a sector that traditionally has required physical presence. We may see similar trends in other sectors.

So – the paradigm shift continues to be remote, and technology helps that shift to happen – but some sectors are not as ready as others.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Challenges of remote work: the tech shall overcome appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How many workers worked remotely before COVID-19?
• How many workers are working remotely during COVID-19?
• How many businesses plan to make the remote workplace permanent?
• What are the biggest paradigm shifts due to COVID-19?
• How do the COVID-19 paradigm shifts differ by industry?

COVID-19 isn’t just a health pandemic – it’s also a social and economic pandemic in that it has significantly impacted how people and businesses operate.

Shift to a remote workplace

The majority of respondents (68%) reported that, prior to the COVID-19 crisis, a quarter or less of their employees worked remotely. Just 11.2% of businesses reported that three quarters or more of their workers operated in a virtual environment before the crisis hit.

And now? A significant portion of respondents (nearly 60%) said at least three quarters of their staff currently operate in a remote working environment.

The stark difference between these two graphs (pre-COVID and current COVID environment) indicates that COVID is a major catalyst in moving to remote, and that this change was very sudden. It also tells us that many companies hit the ground running in that shift – in many cases, literally one day to the next.

Shift to the remote workplace is permanent

When asked about a permanent shift to a remote workplace, 41.3% of respondents said they will move at least some positions to a virtual environment, and an additional 9% said they will be fully remote after COVID. Just over one-fifth (21.9%) said they will not permanently move any positions to remote.

Remote work and distributed teams led by and far in a list of predicted paradigm shifts post-COVID, with a full 71.1% of respondents citing that shift as a new standard. This is well ahead of other options including rules around physical distancing, more tech adoption, and updated workplace design.

“Remote jobs will increase. Companies will adapt to remote working patterns; this will be the new normal even with the invention of a vaccine. As people become used to working from home, meeting physically will be only a matter of necessity.” – Survey respondent

Of those businesses considering a more permanent shift, one-third (33.3%) of respondents said that they plan to move half or more of their workforce to remote going forward. Another 40.8% said they will move 26% to 50% of their workforce to a remote workplace environment.

The difference in the pre-COVID remote work numbers and post-COVID plans – and the large number of businesses who moved some or all their workforce to remote during the crisis itself – tells us that COVID-19 not only is a significant catalyst in shifting to remote, but also heavily impacts future plans around remote work.

Of course, each business has their own unique experience in this shift. Three potential stories are:

• Businesses were already planning to move some of their workforce to a remote environment for a variety of reasons (economics, logistics, engagement, etc.), and COVID-19 merely expedited those plans (for example, Twitter);
• Businesses were considering remote as a possibility, but not as a priority until COVID-19 hit; or
• Businesses did not think remote was feasible or even a good idea, but changed their perspective when forced to operate in that environment by COVID-19.

Numbers differ across industries

Although remote work was the most popularly predicted paradigm shift across all respondents in our survey, those in the healthcare sector say rules around physical distancing (63%) and tech/digital adoption (59.3%) will be as significant as remote work (also 59.3%) as major changes going forward.

And those in education tagged changes in the physical workplace as their second-most popular choice after remote work.

Still, remote work is the clear leader in terms of paradigm shift. This tells us that, regardless of industry, remote work is here to stay.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

Want to read it all in one place? Check out the full report here.

The post COVID-19 big shifts: The workplace will stay remote controlled appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How did businesses respond to the COVID-19 pandemic?
• What were the effects of COVID-19 on business operations?
• How did COVID-19 change hiring?
• And finally: how are businesses planning for a post-COVID future?

Not only was COVID-19’s impact palpable, it was also very tangible and it forced action in many aspects of business. Let’s look at what our respondents did when COVID-19 became a reality for them.

Business response to COVID-19

As is now known, a significant impact of COVID-19 on business was that it triggered a sudden transition to a fully remote working environment where all employees worked from home. Our survey confirmed this – nearly two-thirds (62.6%) of respondents cited going fully remote as one of the actions their business took.

A third (32.3%) of respondents said they moved part of their operations to a remote environment. It bears noting that nearly a third of all respondents work in IT/technology – considered to be one of the most remote-friendly sectors.

A sizable percentage of businesses introduced precautionary measures at their working location (37.9%) and/or reduced capacity at work, if remote was not an option for all workers (18%).

“It’s going to look very different without a doubt. … Personally, I think it will be good for us, we were starting to lose focus of who we were, it was becoming less important to talk to people face to face and more important to stare at phones. … Yes, we will be using technology more in our day-to-day lives due to COVID-19, but now we are focusing more on what’s actually important.”
– Survey respondent

Economic impact

The economic impact of COVID-19 is also significant in our dataset. A full 12% shut down business altogether – albeit temporarily in most cases. All but one in hospitality and 26.1% of those in education shut down. In terms of company size, 21.7% of those in the 1-9 employee-size bracket opted to shut down temporarily, a far higher rate than any of the other size categories.

More than a fifth of our respondents reported that their businesses laid off or furloughed employees. When breaking down by company size, we found those in the 50-99 and 100-499 employee-size brackets were statistically more likely to lay off workers, with percentages choosing this option being 12.3 and 10.6 percentage points more than the percentages of total respondents in those brackets. The opposite was true for those with 10-49 employees, with just 17.1% in that category choosing to lay off or furlough workers, compared with 26.1% of total respondents falling into that size bracket.

And by industry, those in hospitality (62.5%) and manufacturing (50%) were more likely to turn to layoffs and furloughs as an option, whereas those in healthcare (7.4%) and education (4.3%) were far less likely to choose that route.

Changes going forward

When asked about the changes businesses are planning going forward, the response was comprehensive, with all listed options being selected widely. The most popularly selected moves are travel reduction (59.3%) and a shift to remote (56.5%). Closely following are plans to switch to staggered/flexible work schedules (44.9%) and a redesign of the physical working environment (44.1%).

Many of those in the “Other” category stated they aren’t entirely sure yet, with one indicating they want to see how other businesses fared before taking action of their own. Others plan to increase personal protective equipment (PPE), sanitation protocols, and overall employee safety either in the field or in the workplace. One respondent in the business/consulting sector plans to require clients to be tested beforehand.

Most striking is that just 6.2% of respondents stated that nothing is being planned going forward.

Whether it’s layoffs, a shift to remote, or redesigning workplaces, this response tells us that COVID-19 impacted the majority of businesses in our survey, and drastically altered their planning.

“I think that it will change a lot in the world. Adapting as we have gave us knowledge to be more flexible and change to remote working. I think many people will adapt more wellness programs and education.” – Survey respondent

Impact on hiring

COVID-19 was also readily felt in the hiring space. Two-thirds of respondents (65.2%) said they were hiring less during the crisis or had frozen hiring altogether. Just 8.1% said they increased their hiring in response. Although our own survey results don’t reflect it in terms of healthcare hiring, it’s well documented that healthcare, supply chains, telecommunications, and the mortgage industry are sectors that aggressively ramped hiring in the early days of the crisis.

Company size also dictated responses: smaller companies (1-49 employees) and larger, enterprise-sized companies (>1,000 employees) were the most likely to report that they’ve frozen hiring completely, while a full half of companies with 500-999 employees said they were hiring less than planned.

None of the six size categories saw more than 10% of respondents hiring more than planned.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post How businesses responded to COVID-19 – and what they’re planning now appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

After all, our customers are important to us. As Workable’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, it’s very important to me as well. We want to give you an added level of confidence that Workable is a fully secure organization.

The good news for you is that after being rigorously audited and assessed, we’re proud to say we’re officially ISO 27017:2015 and SOC 2 Type 1 accredited.

ISO 27017:2015

ISO 27017:2015 is SaaS-oriented and certifies that we have guidelines for information security controls applicable to the provision and use of cloud services.

SOC 2 type 1

SOC 2 type 1 proves that Workable has designed appropriate controls to provide reasonable assurance that our service commitments and system requirements were achieved based on the AICPA Trust Services Criteria relevant to Security, Availability, and Confidentiality. We will be moving forward with SOC 2 type 2 to further validate the strength of our security controls over time. For more information, check out our documentation on it.

This isn’t just about being able to prove that our tech is safe and secure. It’s also about proving that Workable operates safely and securely – meaning you, your business, and your information are safe and secure when working with us as well.

The post Workable evolves with even higher security accreditation appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The result is Workable’s New World of Work survey report. We think you’d be very interested in this. Out of many insights, we’re highlighting three for you:

• Remote work is the big paradigm shift.
• Digital transformation is the way to get there.
• Employee engagement (particularly in remote) and remote hiring/onboarding are huge concerns now and in the future.

Other insights from the data include:

• COVID-19 forced nearly two out of every three businesses to move fully to a remote-first environment.
• 56.5% of businesses plan to make remote permanent for at least some of their workforce going forward. Just 6.2% of businesses plan to do nothing in general.
• 68% of those going remote did it without disruption because they had the technology in place. Plus, 46.1% will prioritize tech in their plans to go remote.
• 7 in 10 education workers said they could actually go remote if they needed to – but the technology is just not there to allow that to happen.
• Candidate engagement, onboarding and evaluation are predicted to be major headaches in the new world of work. Add remote to the mix, and it becomes even more challenging.
• Senior-level executives are more worried about productivity while their employees are far more concerned about engagement.

But while there’s plenty of discussion and consensus in the three highlighted areas of the report, there is no clear solution or even a rulebook to follow in this new world of work that we’re entering.

What we know is that the traditional form of work – effectively, being roommates with your colleagues, sticking to a set schedule, being “present” at your desk – is no longer tenable. It’s like trying to drive an autonomous vehicle with a stick shift.

Remote is easy at first, and so is the tech adoption to get us there. But in the long term, the pandemic is forcing us to evolve. The numbers from our survey prove that. We may not know exactly how to go about it, but it’s now on us to figure out how to do it in the best way possible.

One respondent summed it up aptly:

“It is a road that has not been walked. I honestly don’t know what is ahead; one is only just willing to explore many different strategies until they find one that works.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing crisis is unprecedented, and is already being called a seminal event in modern-day world history. There will be entire books and documentaries produced on the topic.

One day, we’ll settle into a new form of living, whatever that may be. Until then, let’s keep thinking, talking, collaborating, as we work towards a new – and very different – future.

Stay healthy,

Nikos Moraitakis
CEO, Workable

The post Announcing our New World of Work survey report appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

On the flip side, there are still unconscious traps you could stumble on. Image and sound are powerful, after all. When you see a candidate for the first time and get cues from how they behave, talk, look and dress like you might get unconsciously triggered. No matter how trained or aware you are, biases will always surface and may sidetrack your attention away from what matters.

Video interview biases: most common risks

So, imagine this scenario: you’re about to evaluate 20 video interviews for an open role in marketing. You’ve handed over four interview questions to candidates, one generic (e.g. “Describe yourself and your career goals in two minutes”) and three job-related (e.g. “What metrics would you use to measure our social media’s performance?”). Each item has unlimited preparation time and the answer is set to a maximum of two minutes.

Despite those given constraints, there is variability in interview answers you receive. Some candidates took the whole two minutes to answer the questions while others spent less than 60 seconds on their responses. The actual responses varied, as well, and of course, you can still see and hear each candidate.

In brief, here are some tricky parts that could trigger video interview biases in this case:

1. Protected characteristics are now evident

What you controlled for during the blind hiring stage will be now visible. You need to be careful with this information and how they might unconsciously impact your evaluation. The umbrella of protected characteristics is huge.

It’s not always the obvious traits that trigger us, such as someone’s skin color or dress code. It could also be that a candidate’s accent might sound funny to your ears, or you might take for granted that a 50-year-old candidate won’t be a perfect fit for a senior position at a dynamic start-up environment. All those elements could be misleading.

2. Non-verbal cues can affect your judgment

Sitting in front of a camera presenting yourself to someone you cannot see is not always that easy for interviewees. Some candidates will feel confident and some won’t. However, this is not necessarily an indicator of how they’ll perform their day-to-day tasks – unless the role entails presenting at a high level or communicating in a similar setup as part of their work (e.g. call centers, telemarketing).

Beware of these no-verbal characteristics and how they impact you. There are some common video interview red flags that might mess you up during evaluation – a noisy background or a multicolored top could sway your judgment in ways you aren’t initially aware of.

3. Evaluating video interviews is a rather new thing

Since one-way video-interviews are relatively new to the recruitment landscape, there’s still a lot to discover going forward. We’re still learning and there are likely more biases that we haven’t identified right away.

Picture this in the above-mentioned scenario: you have two final qualified candidates – one answered their job-related question in 30 seconds while the other’s answer took up the full two minutes. If you don’t pay that much attention to each response, you may prefer the one with the longer answer as they had “more to say”.

But the reality could be that the first candidate had a more accurate answer and cut down the fluff. They were more direct and to the point. For certain roles – let’s say, for editors or public speakers– that would be a good skill to have.

Tips to reduce one-way video interview biases

So, as any other recruiting solution that you use to improve diversity in your business, if you don’t use video interviews the right way, there will still be some stumbling blocks.

No tool and feature will enable you to you to directly succeed in ensuring diversity – rather, it will be your mindset towards diversity that will do the job and your persistent attempts to establish diversity in the core of your business…
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To build a strong approach from beginning to end, track all biases that could surface along the way – whether that’s judging a candidate for a facial piercing for “being unprofessional” to ruling out a single mother at the decision stage, taking for granted that she is not going to be as efficient at the job, with so many personal responsibilities at hand.

Here are some first steps you could follow to structure the screening process in a way that improves your diversity efforts before and during the video-interviewing stage:

Plan your early-stage screening

If you post your job ad to several job boards you broaden your sources for candidates – and in turn, the opportunity to diversify your candidate pool. You can also share the job ad through multiple social networks and find candidates where they usually hang out.

Use a blind hiring software at an early screening stage to eliminate unconscious biases from resumes and social media profiles, such as photo, age, nationality, etc. Later on, when you review a video interview, remember that content and attitude matters more than non-verbal cues and other physical traits or elements.

Conduct pre-employment assessments

Implementing pre-employment assessments is also crucial when screening applicants. They produce a mostly accurate result on job-related competencies and help spot what matters the most for a specific role.

Whether that’s an external assessment or an assignment you built yourself, it’s better to evaluate them before or coupled with video interviews to make sure that what you saw and heard during the video assessment doesn’t impact your judgment and your full attention is concentrated on those important job-related factors.

Structure questions wisely

What you really want to learn about a candidate from their one-way video is if they have the right skills for the role. To spot them, make sure to address the top must-have skills in the questions.

To achieve that, design interview questions that don’t require further explanation. For example:

• Describe a time when you faced a problem in project management and how you dealt with it.
• What is your biggest achievement in content marketing strategy?

It would be unfortunate to lose out on a great candidate because of an unclear or vague question that needs further explanation. You also must use the same job-related questions for every interview to make sure that you evaluate all candidates equally.

Share video-interview tips

It would be also helpful, both for candidates and you as an evaluator, to share some video interview tips with candidates so that they have clear expectations and useful resources to prepare the right way. For example, share some tech and troubleshooting tips with candidates to set up their gear.

Remember to try and ignore the background noise or distractions that could trigger unconscious biases, whether that’s the wall behind them or poor audio/video quality. Focus on answers and attitude.

Here, you can find top video interview tips for candidates that will help you unify the process even more, and prepare all interviewees equally for success.

Train recruiters and hiring managers

All hiring managers and recruiters should be well aware of the video interview diversity risks and biases they could come across with. Apart from not discriminating based on protected characteristics, they should learn how to evaluate answers properly, based on related competency and other screening assessments (e.g. resume, pre-employment assessments, etc.).

It’s important to be aware of some of the common video interview red flags mentioned above, such as poor body language, that are not necessarily valid. Once assessors become aware of those mental traps and how to detect them early, your road to diversity will be on a safe track.

You could also design a D&I training to help your employees understand their personal triggering factors that could enforce biases.

Remember – biases are everywhere

Dear George, as you understand, one-way video interviews will help you improve your company’s diversity, but you have to utilize them carefully and combine them with other features and practices. Tech and tools are not going to be the single factor in this effort; there needs to be a strong diversity strategy in place, in every step of the recruiting funnel – and one-way video interviews can only help you get closer to making your D&I vision a reality.

The post One-way video interview biases: potential risks for diversity appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The concern is valid. Time wastage due to non-work-related tasks has been a perennial problem even when managers are in the same building as employees. According to a Salary.com survey, 89% of employees have admitted to wasting time at work, with the top 10% wasting three or more hours each day.

It comes as no surprise, then, that several of the top concerns of owners and managers about employees transitioning to remote work are related to how employees spend their time at work. Concerns include reduced employee productivity, reduced focus, task completion rate, and work-life conflict.

The solution to this problem may seem obvious: time tracking software. It’s not a new technology. Both co-located and remote teams have used it for years. Yet, the debate about whether time tracking is a boon or bane has been going on since the technology was invented.

As with any other technology, the benefits and perils of remote time tracking lie in the details of its implementation. The technology isn’t inherently good or bad. Your time tracking outcomes will depend on how well you use it.

To help you get the best results from tracking with your remote team, outlined below are the dos and don’ts of remote time tracking in three key areas of productivity and performance management.

1. Initial implementation

Don’t: shock your employees with a sudden rollout

Whether or not the transition to a work-from-home arrangement is the reason that prompted you to implement time tracking, make sure not to drop the news on your team like a brick. Any change you introduce needs to follow a specific set of steps for it to be accepted. This includes remote time tracking.

As explained by project manager Michal Bielak, “Don’t just gather your team members in a room one day and say, ‘From now on, we’ll be using this IT time tracking software to see how your work’s going. Click here, now click there, perfect, thanks, the meeting’s over’ — that is, unless you want to bump into a group of gossipers every time you go to the kitchen. People want to be treated fairly: if you introduce some changes, explain the rationale behind it.”

Do: conduct a Time Tracking 101 with your team

Instead of a sudden, out-of-the-blue implementation, notify employees well ahead of time and explain the importance of time tracking to them.

Then, get them up to speed with the software well in advance and teach them everything they need to know about the time tracking system you’re about to introduce. The time you invest in doing this prep work will result in better utilization and a higher level of appreciation for time tracking among your employees.

Below are the key areas you need to cover when doing a time tracking 101 with your team:

• The tool/platform/technology that you will use for remote time tracking
• The activities/tasks you will track
• How the time tracking data you collect will be used
• Privacy protection measures you will put in place
• The benefits of time tracking for your team

2. Employee management

Don’t: use time tracking to micromanage

It’s very easy for managers of newly transitioned remote teams to fall into the trap of micromanagement and to use time tracking to do it. Managers can abuse the capabilities of time tracking software to monitor every minute detail of how employees are spending their work hours.

Some may even use the additional features of time tracking technologies such as screenshots and geofencing to implement a “Big Brother-like” surveillance over their teams.

Do: use time tracking to foster accountability

To address micromanagement, you must understand where the desire to micromanage stems from. Most of the time, it’s the fear that your employees might not be doing the work they’re supposed to be doing during the hours they’re supposed to be doing it. This can lead to resentment and resistance from employees.

Instead of using time tracking to create fear among your employees that you’re watching their every move, empower them to foster a sense of accountability. Give them the leeway to track and manage their own productivity.

Of course, you will still use the data gathered using time tracking to make informed and smart decisions about performance management and employee engagement. However, the ultimate goal is to use time tracking as a tool to enable your team members to be constantly cognizant of their performance and productivity.

3. Time tracking structure

Don’t: leave procedures up to your team

One of the primary goals of time tracking is to generate reports that you can use to help your team meet both productivity and business goals. This won’t be possible if there’s no uniformity in how your team members track their time. While you want to make it as easy as possible for your employees to record their time, you also don’t want time tracking to lack structure.

For instance, one of the common pitfalls of time tracking is the lack of naming conventions, a common problem in project management. Without uniformity in naming protocols, you won’t be able to determine whether resources are allocated properly to tasks and projects. It can also affect how you charge for billable hours.

Do: provide clear and simple guidelines

Even the most sophisticated time tracker will fail if you don’t implement clear and easy-to-follow guidelines. Below are a few of the questions your remote time tracking manual should answer:

• What tasks/projects should be tracked or not tracked?
• How should time entries be recorded?
• How should tasks/projects be categorized?

Having clear and straightforward guidelines is a key time-tracking best practice that shouldn’t be ignored. When tracking remote team time, make sure you have documented procedures in place to make it as seamless as possible.

Making remote time tracking work for your team

Time tracking is a pretty straightforward concept, but its implementation is an intricate process. Following the gold standards and avoiding the pitfalls in your time tracking system’s initial rollout, in employee performance management, and in providing a structured time tracking methodology will create a solid foundation for remote team time tracking.

If you do decide to make remote work your company’s “new normal,” you will discover iterations to these do’s and don’ts and come up with your own time tracking best practices for your team.

The post The 3 dos and don’ts of remote time tracking for you to know appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Natalia Panowicz – CEO at Codility
• Lee Biggins – CEO and Founder at CV-Library & Resume-Library
• Nikos Moraitakis – CEO and Co-Founder at Workable

Learn what the top four issues are top of mind for our three CEOs below:

Future workplace – CEOs share their thoughts

1. Flexibility will be the new reality

One of the things that stood out over the past few months was workplace flexibility – whether that’s in work schedules or location. Being flexible and agile was the only way to adhere to physical distancing restrictions. Some companies moved their operations fully remotely while others did it partially, with rotational shifts and strict hygiene measures to keep employees safe and sound.

With most businesses shifting to a virtual workplace – and in some cases a more asynchronous collaboration style – structured work arrangements, such as 9-to-5 schedules and long meetings started to fade out. Employers quickly realized that they’re not the key to productivity but rather a habitual schema they probably had to revisit.

Related: We also talked with Ørsted, a multinational company in Europe, on how they planned their return-to-work strategy. The takeaways here will be invaluable to you if you’re doing the same. Learn how they did it

This flexibility trend became also evident at a poll we carried out during the webinar; nearly half of the 562 attendees stated that they’re planning to offer more flexible work options in the future.

Take Workable as an example; Nikos explained that the company switched to remote-first amidst the pandemic. Employees will be able to explore which working style suits them best, in-office or work-from-home and freely go for it:

“The office is going to be there and everybody can choose whether they want to work from the office or they prefer to work from home, or even to change their mind”.

Nikos noted that for most businesses there is going to be an exploration stage to see what works and what not to keep employees happy and productive in the long run:

Natalia continued in the same mindset saying that the best workplace is the one that serves the best work, whether that’s virtual or in-office. The good news is that now most of us, businesses and employees, have experienced both working styles because of the pandemic and we’re more likely to create the best workstyle for us.

Natalia highlighted:

“I think we are in a unique place to blend and to figure out what we want to keep from the typical office situation with our teams, and what we want to keep from the current remote setting, so that what we design for the future is the best mixture of both – to support [the] best possible work.”

2. Remote office: pros and cons

Many companies nowadays are increasingly moving their operations to remote-first; before making that decision, CEOs weigh advantages and disadvantages to ensure maximal productivity and revenue growth with minimal impact on business operations.

Natalia gives a high score to the remote-first office. She believes that it allows employees and employers to concentrate their full energy on what matters the most – operational efficiency and discipline:

Nikos supports the remote office as well, especially in terms of productivity compared to the typical office which can come with distractions:

“There is some fluff and there is some distraction, some waste of time. We all know that companies like ours, due to many physical constraints, have open offices. These are not ideal for concentrating [on] your work.”

On the flip side, with remote work, it’s not always easy to set boundaries between work and personal life:

“To be able to regiment routine and create those boundaries, you know, the meaning between family and work is not easy,” Nikos said. “And not everybody experienced it the same way. Some people were stuck in a small apartment alone. Somebody had to take care of another person in their family.”

For those who experienced remote work for the first time during the pandemic, Nikos stated that this is not the most representative remote work sample to draw from as an ideal example. The lockdown created some constraints that will not always exist – and in many cases, happened in an unprecedented situation. Once the physical restraints are limited, maybe employees will need this shared space again to thrive as teams.

Lee also shared his remote office pros and cons and got straight to the point – remote work allows business owners to save a good deal of money they would otherwise spend on facilities or transportation.

Lee unveiled his thoughts further and also talked about the bystander foe which we’ll call employee burnout:

3. Access to global talent

As Lee stated in the video above, one of the biggest assets of being remote-first is access to a “massive talent pool”. You can attract top, diverse talent from all over the world, not just your restricted area.

Natalia agreed and added:

“The talent pool became global. We all figured out that we can do our work from wherever and we can do our work well. If work can be done remotely, you can also hire remotely, so you don’t even need to meet the person to make a hiring decision.”

But this remote work arrangement can also cause a shift in compensation arrangements: “What does that mean to compensation, if we had localized compensation in the world based on talent pools and local job market conditions?” Natalia suggested as a question.

Nikos had a word on that:

“If we get to the point where we really are paid for the output of our work, you may have a completely different employment relationship sometime in the future, maybe in five or 10 years. They have to face things like comp was tied to location. And it should be tied to location, it makes sense. If you didn’t, you would destabilize the world economy.

“Suddenly,” Nikos adds, “you have a lot of people replaced, earning disproportionately from the people around them as well.”

There are numerous logistics business leaders should take into account when adopting more flexible work arrangements, such as localized compensation and employment laws. HR and people operations teams will have plenty of work to do to fine-tune all these elements and bring on best results – hopefully the output will reward the struggle.

4. Re-inventing benefits and culture

What will benefits look like in the future workplace? Following the flexibility and remote work trends, they will have to cater for new employee and workplace needs. With many companies switching to remote work, employers have already adapted some of their benefits to help employees prepare a home office. Lee and Natalia, for instance, offered allowance for equipment, Internet and phone calls.

“We offer our team equipment allowance to make their work settings most comfortable to them,” said Natalia. “We gave the teams a chance to take stuff from the office that might actually help them”.

But how can you be sure of what each employee needs when they work from home? Some of them may already have a catered home office and may prefer other perks, such as babysitting or internet supply. That’s exactly why it’s best to offer a more “vague” allowance as Nikos suggested to cover all types of needs. With a workforce all around the world this will be handy, as well.

Apparently all these changes will impact employee expectations and employment relationships in the long run. Nikos elaborates:

So the culture that companies have tried to nurture all these years, with cool offices and perks – especially in start-ups – may stop existing at some point. But, says Natalia, this is not going to happen at a glance but will be an ongoing process that the employer will have to re-evaluate and update regularly:

Future workplace – a two-way street

“Employees and companies will have to work together to figure it out,” Nikos said. “We all need to be prepared to make some mistakes or to change our mind, which you know is very hard to do recently, so check that out. We need to be a little bit patient.

“I don’t think there’s many people who have a single answer – maybe it’s not the same for all companies. So everybody will have to figure out their way.”

According to our speakers, these “future workplace trends” that have already started to gain ground are here to stay. The future workplace will be more flexible, remote-first, globalized and, in short, different from before. As long as we’re agile, open-minded and patient, employers and employees will make things work – together.

The post CEO insights on the future workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s why on June 25, 2020, we hosted a webinar titled: “Working, hiring and onboarding in the new normal”. Jess Meschino, Workable’s VP of Account Management moderated and the guest speakers were:

• David Vencis – Head of Talent at Drizly
• Natalia Panowicz – CEO at Codility

Here, we present their most insightful takeaways that shed light on the future of hiring – and the future of work in general. Get on board and enjoy!

1. “New normal” – emerging trends and challenges

So what will this new normal look like? First clue: remote work is not going to be just a cool perk anymore – it’s here to stay.

For some remote-first companies this was already the reality, but for those who were hesitant about it, the emergency shift to telecommuting because of COVID-19 proved that remote work is not only feasible – except for jobs where physical presence is required – but also beneficial in many ways.

As Natalia said:

“We quickly discovered that it’s possible to do our best work not from an office, that was a traditional way to go, but we’re actually able to do it from anywhere.”

Greater authenticity

This has given a fresher outlook to the way we collaborate and connect with our teammates. We don’t bring only ourselves virtually to work, but also our dogs, our children, and even our personal home decoration taste:

“Work becomes way more authentic and purposeful to a sense [that] we are able right now to bring our full selves to work”, Natalia said.

But according to David, there are two sides of this coin. Sometimes it may be hard to set boundaries between work and personal life, and together with the consequences of the pandemic, this disruption has put employee wellbeing at risk – and at the center of HR attention, too:

Technology giveth

What was the main contributor to transitioning to a digital workplace so quickly? Second clue: tech and digital solutions played a pivotal part in this shift, and will continue to do so. Virtual screening tools, such as Workable Video Interviews, and other collaboration platforms surely saved our lockdown days:

“If before the pandemic every company was becoming a tech company, right now they were forced to do so overnight, pretty much”, Natalia highlighted.

2. The future of hiring – remote screening and D&I

While one of the direct consequences of COVID-19 in hiring is the so-called ‘abundance of talent’ due to widespread layoffs and increased unemployment, there are longer-term impacts on the application and screening processes –such as the increase in need for empathy when dealing with candidates.

David explained:

“We’ve really been challenging ourselves to really meet the moment of what’s happening and remind ourselves about just how important empathy is with candidates,” he said. “Because if they’re finding themselves unfortunately in the layoff situation, [or] maybe they’ve dealt with the COVID situation personally, if they’re still working at a company there might be uncertainty… I mean we are […] really connected by this all in a human way”.

Natalia – and Codility – is on the same page: “We’re in it [the COVID-19 crisis] as humankind. We’re not in it as employers and employees that much anymore”. That’s exactly why being transparent and respectful with candidates is extremely important these days to gain their trust. Natalia elaborated:

E-hiring on the rise

As mentioned earlier, technology has been life-changing for HR and hiring teams; interviews started taking place fully online, either synchronously – with video-conferencing tools, such as Zoom – and/or asynchronously – with solutions such as Workable Video Interviews. According to David, virtual hiring makes things move faster, as you no longer need to invite someone to your headquarters to meet them:

“Knowing there’s so many great job seekers out there who are so qualified, we’re engaging with people a lot faster,” said David. “As soon as we post a position we’re starting to see people who are a great fit – we’re not waiting a few weeks to need to kind of do sourcing efforts.”

Skill-based assessments ascending

Both speakers agreed that hiring teams should rely more on skill-based assessments to find those candidates who are the best fit for both the role and the company. David elaborated more on how, at Drizly, they do their homework and prepare for each job posting beforehand and what they focus on during screening:

Skill-based assessments can also boost diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace. Natalia talked about introducing blind evaluation techniques in early screening phases to eliminate unconscious biases around gender, ethnicity or appearance:

“We have an anonymous workflow mode where we can actually uncover who the candidate is well past the assessment is done on the core [engineering] skills of that candidate”.

This is a positive change; with remote work on the rise, you’ll be able to hire people from all over the world and diversify your teams more than ever.

3. Remote onboarding – pre-onboarding and new hire engagement

Remote onboarding became a huge challenge for companies during the COVID-19 outbreak, but with the right tech tools and tactical moves they managed to cope.

According to David, to nail your remote onboarding plan you first need to succeed in pre-onboarding – syncing with hiring managers and teams and designing the process step-by-step – and based on data, too.

David walked us through Drizly’s onboarding process and gave tips to make new hires feel instantly part of your team and to show them what your goals and biggest values are.

His bonus tip: conduct a survey – or even a fun quiz – to explore what impact the onboarding had on new employees’ learning:

Natalia added how useful buddy systems are when onboarding new employees to maintain human connection and a sense of camaraderie, especially in a remote environment. This way new hires have someone to reach out to when their manager is not available for questions and support:

“It helps everybody to connect way faster and to [kind of] tactically help them find things out if they need to quicker” Natalia added.

4. Remote management – flexible and empathetic

First signs have shown that a thriving remote work culture is one that promotes flexibility and inclusion. As Natalia explained, we now know that “we can work from anywhere, we can hire people from anywhere and have access to a wider community”.

But how can managers adapt to leading their remote teams in this new flexible, wellbeing-oriented style? First off, leaders should accept this new arrangement and make the most of it. David explained:

“It can be tough for managers. It’s tough for everybody to kind of distance themselves from their work, but I think those things are really important to give people the space they need. We have a flexible unlimited time-off policy so reminding people about taking that time, I think, is also a big part of engagement as well”.

Being more human

They could also benefit from a deeper shift that would allow them to be more vulnerable in front of employees and true ambassadors of psychological safety and empathy in the workplace, said David:

“Emphasizing things like self care and psychological safety, and having managers be more vulnerable as well, I think, can really fuel culture”.

As for everyday practices managers can follow to engage employees, Natalia shared her own insights:

5. Remote benefits – flexible and personalized

Switching to a new world of work, which is also remote, means that some benefits will be temporarily – and in some cases permanently – rendered obsolete. Plus, with many companies shifting to a remote-first culture, HR professionals should build a new benefit scheme from scratch that would be more relevant to employees’ ongoing needs – such as equipment for a home office or health insurance.

David noted that it’s important to individualize benefits as much as we can, keep them flexible and explore what each employee would value the most:

“Some people might need to use that money to pay for a babysitter to free up some of their time during the week because that’s what’s going to set them up to do their best work”.

It matters to candidates

Candidates are increasingly asking whether remote work is still going to be an option – either fully or partially – when the pandemic is over. David explained:

“A lot of people are asking what’s the plan, when do we go back to the office, when does your company go back to the office, is being fully remote something that you’re you’re willing to do as a company? Will I have the option? People are asking about that because that’s just the way we’re working right now, right? Some people want to be in the office and I get that, and some people don’t, and we get that [as well].”

Natalia highlighted how crucial employee wellbeing initiatives and benefits are now and will continue to be to prevent burnout as a consequence of the pandemic:

“There’s so much pressure, there’s so much stress everywhere. boundaries between work and private life are shifting. We have to learn how to adapt to that world“.

Emphasis on employee mental health, flexibility and individualized benefits is important; these trends shouldn’t be forgotten and companies should continue to offer them when the hard days of the pandemic are over.
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The future of hiring is here and now

The COVID-19 crisis is a debilitating time for many – including businesses and workers – but has some silver lining in it, in that it’s prompted paradigm shifts that had been in discussion for a long time – namely, the acceptance of remote work as a norm and a greater emphasis on empathy and inclusion. Change is uncomfortable and as a result, preferably avoided, which means some of these shifts may not have happened – or not as quickly, at least – without COVID-19.

It’s a tough time right now, but if you focus on the good that’s coming out of it in the new world of work – such as greater flexibility, work-life balance, an increased focus on wellbeing, and the introduction of new tech – then perhaps it can be said we’re all headed to a much better place, provided we follow through on the promise.

The post The ‘new normal’: the future of hiring, onboarding and working appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The style of “working remotely” has brought up challenges (distractions, barriers to productivity, etc.) that many employees have suddenly come face to face with for the first time over the past few months. As a result, new and existing skills have been brought into the spotlight.

The ultimate question arises: What are the best skills for remote work?

Workable employees – operating in a fully remote environment over the past few months – recently filled out an internal survey to help us gain insight:

Here are the resultant top skills for working remotely in an efficient way, and how our peers ranked them:

• Personal skills
• People skills
• Organizational skills
• Strategic skills

Personal skills for remote workers

Resourcefulness & Versatility

Have you ever hit a dead end in a project and rolled your chair towards your teammate to ask for some help? What if you didn’t have that convenience and you had to figure it out yourself? How would you do that?

That’s where resourcefulness and versatility come in. Being able to maneuver your skills and knowledge to learn new things and break down all kinds of challenges – even IT stuff – is a process that you face almost every day when working remotely. In a Workable employee’s own words:

“Resourcefulness – I think this is important in a remote work setting as you do not have someone sitting next to you who you can ask every question to. Being able to find information on your own is an important skill to work efficiently while working remotely.”

Self-efficacy

In the field of positive psychology, self-efficacy is defined as “the belief we have in our own abilities, specifically our ability to meet the challenges ahead of us and complete a task successfully”.

But why do remote workers need self-efficacy? Things are quite simple.

This particular measurable skill comes along with self-control, motivation, confidence, resilience and discipline. Since remote workers are “alone workers” most of the time – especially in an asynchronous environment – this skill set is the main ingredient to maintain internal focus towards completion and success.

“Self-efficacy and time management are by far the most important soft skills for a remote worker (which are also difficult to learn too). They both help the employee to focus on the tasks at hand and execute upon them.”

People skills for remote workers

Communication, Επικοινωνία, Comunicación, Comunicação, Kommunikation

Imagine being at the office, walking down the hallway to ask Steve for clarification about the project you are working on. You find him, share your thoughts, and now you’re ready to get back to work. Great!

Now, what if Steve was not at the end of the hallway, but at the other side of the world, just getting ready to dive into deep sleep? Of course you’ll write down all the questions and thoughts you want to share and send them over – fingers crossed you don’t forget anything – but you will probably not get your answers until a few hours later. So delivering to-the-point messages is crucial for a distributed team with an asynchronous model of communication.

Now let’s make it a little more tricky: Your virtual office will probably have multinational people, which means you won’t speak the same native language, nor share the same culture.

And here is where cross-cultural literacy comes aboard. When it comes to communicating, being understanding, patient and open to diversity are major remote work skills.

As another employee put it:

“Respect. Time sensitivity. (I am respecting my colleagues’ time, do not schedule useless meetings that can be discussed in a Slack channel). Introvert at times. No need to discuss too much in order to get things done.”

Teamwork

As a remote worker, you may physically work alone, but at the end of the day, you are still part of a team spread all over the world – well, at least sometimes – and it is quite easy to forget that you are part of a broader group of people with a wide range of cultural backgrounds.

And you are not to blame!

Sitting alone at your desk at home is the polar opposite of being in an office with busy hallways. However, you are not alone, and teamwork not only boosts productivity, but also works like an invisible chain holding the company together.

One employee highlighted teamwork as one of the best skills for remote work:
“Top skill is to be a team player, always sharing information with your team about your current/future work, blocking issues, etc, as well as proactively help and guide your colleagues.”