Which bears the question: how do businesses recognize Juneteenth in a way that shows substantive support both now and in the future? And more importantly – it’s not just for the actual holiday itelf. Consider this a primer on how to ensure a truly inclusive working environment throughout the year and to recognize the day going forward.

Let’s start from the beginning:

What is Juneteenth?

A portmanteau of the words “June” and “Nineteenth”, Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce the abolishment of slavery in the state under President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Also called Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day and Emancipation Day, Juneteenth is regularly celebrated across the United States but until Biden’s announcement was only a paid holiday in eight states including Massachusetts, New York, and Washington.

Five ways for employers to offer substantive support

While it’s important for employers to recognize this federal holiday, it’s also critical to strike the right tone considering the day’s historical significance and gravitas. Striking the right balance between celebratory and serious is essential.

With that in mind, here are five ways for employers to effectively show their support:

1. Offer paid time off

While employers aren’t obligated to offer time off — or holiday premium pay if staff work on federal holidays — this is the gold standard of support. If this isn’t logistically possible given the short time between the presidential announcement and the holiday itself, consider adding an extra day’s paid leave to staff accounts for them to use later this year, and subsequently recognizing Juneteenth as a paid holiday every year thereafter.

This is the approach taken by Workable. According to a recent email from CEO Nikos Moraitakis to US-based employees, “Workable will honor Juneteenth in 2021 by adding 1 bonus day to employee time-off balances. Going forward, Juneteenth will be observed following the federal holiday calendar.”

2. Create corporate events

Another way to show support for Juneteenth is by creating corporate events. These could include in-person information sessions or digital webcasts featuring guest speakers and experts who can help explain the history of Juneteenth, why it matters and how it relates to other U.S. holidays such as the Fourth of July. Here, your best bet is creating a healthy mix of fun events that celebrate the impact of Juneteenth while also paying respect to its more painful legacy.

3. Invest in worthy causes

Investment in causes such as fundraisers, charity drives or memorial races can also highlight the impact of Juneteenth and help corporate team-building efforts. If your company takes this approach, two components are critical: Finding the right cause and ensuring staff buy-in.

Before spending on any support effort, do your research so you understand the backstory of the event, are confident in where donations are going, and are clear about the expectations. Once you find the right cause, encourage staff participation by making it a full-day event during the regular work week that’s focused on both social recognition and socializing, rather than asking staff to show up on their own time.

4. Connect with black-owned businesses

Money talks. And with a host of black-owned businesses operating in every state and city across the United States, companies can show their support for Juneteenth by supporting black businesses owners that are instrumental in their communities.

While it doesn’t matter what product or service your company chooses to support, it does matter that this is an ongoing relationship — if you’re only supporting these businesses in June, expect some backlash.

5. Share staff stories

You can also recognize the federal holiday by highlighting the stories of your own employees and what Juneteenth means to them. Sharing these stories (with permission) across both internal networks and external social media accounts can serve to showcase your support — but must be done with caution. While posting on social media is quick, easy and offers substantive reach, this approach will appear self-serving unless it’s paired with more substantive support efforts.

Ready to show your support for Juneteenth? Just remember the three Rs — relevant, responsible and respectful — and you’re on the right track to highlight this federal holiday.

The post Juneteenth: 5 ways employers can recognize the holiday appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is an alternating four-day workweek?

The idea of a four-day workweek is nothing new, and it’s something some companies have been offering as an option – or even a required schedule – for years. In most cases, this means that the employee works 10-hour days instead of eight, so the standard 40-hour workweek is completed in just four days. That way, instead of two days off per week, the employee gets three.

An alternating four-day workweek is a little different. With this plan, the employee works five days one week, and four the next. The day off could be Friday to allow for a three-day weekend every other week, but that is up to the individual employee and employer. Those additional days off provide the employee with tremendous flexibility to take extra trips, engage in their favorite hobbies, or whatever else they’d like to do with their spare time.

Why an alternating four-day workweek?

When the pandemic hit, we had to transition our team from being in-office to being a fully remote workforce. It was really all hands on deck to help the company come through the pandemic unscathed, and our team hunkered down and helped us figure out how to make our day to day operations more effective as a remote workforce. This meant lots of retooling and new process development … and long hours.

Working remotely can make work-life balance challenging and increase risk of burnout. A recent survey discovered that 69% of remote workers are experiencing burnout symptoms and 59% of remote workers are taking less time off than normal. Another survey stated that burnout at work doubled from March 2020 to April 2020.

Our hypothesis was that implementing this new perk would help prevent burnout, increase employee job satisfaction, and make our team feel more rested and ultimately, more productive, at work.

Our main concerns

My primary concern was ensuring that our clients and customers still had the level of support that they have come to expect from us. At the same time, I didn’t want this effort to make it harder on our support team as a result of any client frustrations or support ticket backlog. It was important to me that we still had adequate coverage for all teams and for all departmental responsibilities.

My secondary concern was making sure that this new schedule wouldn’t prevent anyone from being able to do their job. I didn’t want this alternating schedule to create any unnecessary stress for employees that couldn’t get something done because a key stakeholder was out of the office. But, all of these concerns can be prevented with proper planning.

How it’s been going so far

We piloted this new program from April to June 2021, a full quarter. We then said we would ressas with leadership, and see if this is something we would want to implement for the long term. Once the pilot was nearing the end, we sent a survey around to our team to get their feedback on this new work schedule.

Here are a few key takeaways:

• 100% of employees said that they wanted us to continue offering this benefit
• 93% of employees have said their productivity has improved, while the other 7% said their productivity has been the same
• 85% of employees said they feel more rested and happier at work

Anecdotally speaking, we also had a few key learnings, including;

• It really enabled better habits when it came to time management and meeting scheduling. For example, everyone seems to be more thoughtful about scheduling meetings in general, so as to not waste time.
• Many of the team members use Fridays for “deep work” days, with no meetings or interruptions.
• This has been a great perk to mention to job candidates during the hiring process, and has been a deal breaker for some of our recent hires.

Four-day workweek tips for you

If this is a concept that you are considering for your team, here are a few things to consider and tips for implementation.

1. Try it as a pilot program first

I highly recommend you “try it on” by first implementing it as a pilot or trial program, with a specific start date and end date, to see how your team and customers adapt to this change. This gives you the flexibility of trying it out before having to fully commit. You may learn that it’s great and everything is fine to move forward with it long-term, or you may learn that you need to tweak a few things.

2. Make any special conditions very clear

Ensure everyone is aware of any special conditions or restrictions to this process to set the right expectations. For us, we didn’t require longer hours during the week of their Friday off, but other companies do. So, if there are special conditions, make them very clear from the start.

3. Make the schedule transparent and visible

Meet with your team leads and schedule out everyone’s Friday off in advance. Make sure it’s clear and visible in a shared calendar so everyone is aware of who is and who isn’t “in the office” on a given Friday. This also helps the team think in advance about any vacation days that may overlap or big events or meetings that need planning around.

4. Ensure your leaders lead by example

Leading by example is essential not only because leadership also needs time to recharge, but also because failing to follow through with the process can send mixed messages to employees and could cause anxiety on whether or not they should take the time off.

Matt Buchanan is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Service Direct, a technology company that offers local lead generation solutions for service businesses. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University. He has 15+ years of expertise in local lead generation, sales, search engine marketing, and building and executing growth strategies.

The post Implementing an alternating four-day workweek: how & why appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As industrial/organizational psychologists with years of experience in the military and in corporate hiring and co-editors of the recent book, Military Veteran Employment: A Guide to the Data-Driven Leader, we are here to offer new ideas and suggestions to take your veteran hiring and recruiting to the next level.

First, some good news: research shows that many companies talk about hiring veterans. However, not many companies are putting their words into action when it comes to a research-informed approach to hiring veterans. Even fewer companies are executing programs targeted at veterans – the smaller the company, the less that they are doing.

For example, in a survey of employers by the Edelman global communications firm, only 23% of employers said that they saw veterans as strategic assets for their companies and only a little more than two out of five (43%) said that they are receiving enough veteran applications.

Here are some suggestions to improve your veteran hiring efforts, whether you are just getting started or already have a robust dedicated effort in place.

1. Update your job descriptions
2. Look at vets’ transferable skills
3. Track your hiring pipeline data
4. Learn about the military’s culture, values, and language
5. Capitalize on veterans’ networks
6. Utilize your customer support team
7. Don’t overlook military spouses
8. Focus on retention as well

1. Update your job descriptions

Focus on experiences and competences and avoid listing years in a position or certificates or diplomas as requirements or qualifications for the role. Many veterans may lack academic degrees or formal certificates but have nevertheless gained the relevant experience and skills that you need.

For instance, ask yourself why your job descriptions dictate a master’s degree or six years of experience? Are these critical to the position or do they merely serve as a signal of what you want to see in candidates?

Take the time to re-think who can do the job and break the job down into the absolutely required critical constituent knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies, and then list these in your ads.

Not only will this help with your veteran hiring efforts, but it will benefit your hiring members of other populations that may not have the formal education but do have the right skills.

2. Look at vets’ transferable skills

About half of military members want to leave their military occupation and do something different in the civilian world. The RAND Corporation has conducted extensive research on the transferability of military skills and new ways to connect military occupations with civilian ones.

RAND’s work highlights that employers should not assume that an infantryman is only qualified to be a cop because the prior service member carried guns. Many infantrymen have become successful computer technicians, salespeople, managers, and even comedy writers.

Learn to see past an applicant’s military occupation to their skills and experiences and learn how your company can utilize these in different occupations.

3. Track your hiring pipeline data

Monitor your candidates at every stage to identify where you lose or gain veterans throughout your talent pipeline. Look at the demographic make-up (including veteran status) at each stage of hiring to see if there is a fall-off at a certain stage.

For instance, do you get enough veterans applying? Are your recruiters sourcing veterans? Do you have a sufficient percentage at each step but then their percentage decreases because of the interview?

Find out what your numbers look like so that you can address the area where the shortfall begins.

4. Learn about the military’s culture, values, and language

If you understand the culture, values, and language of the military – and share that knowledge with your business leaders and hiring managers – you’ll more effectively engage your military veterans. Research from the Center for a New American Security shows companies that make the effort to understand and honor the military culture and military family experiences do a better job of recruiting and retaining their veteran employees.

Make sure your recruiters who work with veterans understand the military – and if you have veterans in your company, see if they want to serve as recruiters, brand champions, or want to advise your company on its efforts.

5. Capitalize on veterans’ networks

Word of mouth will be your most effective tool for recruiting and retaining veterans. Veterans have learned to trust comments from other veterans and military members.

A pro-veteran web page or brochure – with flags and pictures of soldiers – will mean nothing to a veteran if they have heard negative comments about your company from current veteran employees. Make sure you deal honestly with veterans, respect the military and its culture, take care of military families, and utilize their skills well.

Also, encourage your current veteran employees to share their experiences with other veterans who might be interested in working for your company. For example, JPMorgan Chase & Co. created a series of videos where existing employees explain how they use their military skills in their jobs. Here’s one of those videos.

https://youtu.be/FEEH9nM65uA

6. Utilize your customer support team

Your reputation as a company can influence your brand as an employer. Create a military-focused customer support team (made up of veterans or military spouses) and train other agents to recognize nuanced military terms and offer extensions on payment or other special treatment for military family customers.

If a military spouse mentions that they may have difficulty paying a bill because of a PCS (in military terms, a permanent change of station or relocation) or because the spouse has been deployed overseas, have the call transferred to your military team. These agents will be able to speak to them in the right ‘language’ with proper contextual understanding and offer extensions or other special handling.

When the military member starts looking for employment, the spouse that received payment extensions or other special handling will have a positive feeling about the company and will recommend them as a good place to work.

Building a positive brand and employee value proposition is important for all companies and even more important when working within the military and veteran communities.

7. Don’t overlook military spouses

Veterans will understand that companies that take care of military families will be good places to consider for their own employment. We also suggest being inclusive of spouses of currently serving members of the military and veterans – often termed “military spouses”.

Military spouses are a well-educated and often under-utilized talent population that frequently relies on tight military community networks to find employment and support due to the demands of a military lifestyle.

Make an effort to hire and retain military spouses by understanding that the gaps in their resumes may be caused by frequent moves for their spouse’s career and that their experience may not be reflected in a traditional resume or standard metrics. And, to help spouses who move frequently with their families, offer remote or distributed work options where possible.

8. Focus on retention as well

Many companies have learned how to hire veterans, but few can successfully retain veterans in their companies. Data from LinkedIn demonstrates that while veterans may have higher turnover than non-veterans during their first year of employment, the rate drops to less than that of non-veterans once they stay for more than a year. In fact, overall, they stay 8.3% longer in their initial place of employment than non-veterans do.

Here are some suggestions to improve retention:

Provide a sense of purpose or mission.

Many veterans self-select into the military because they want to serve something greater than themselves. The need to support a mission doesn’t end when they take the uniform off.

Provide your veteran employees with a new mission or purpose and fulfill this innate need for them. Communicate your company’s mission to your employees so each employee can see their direct “line of sight” to fulfilling that mission. Leadership should not only communicate this vision but help each employee see how they personally drive it as leaders.

Understand that veterans have finely honed “BS” detectors

Be open and transparent with your veteran employees. Don’t try to couch the truth or avoid difficult conversations – especially since veterans are skillful at identifying lack of transparency after their time in the military and will be carrying that over into the civilian world.

Being accustomed to a strong culture of leadership and development, veterans are used to direct feedback, to hearing bad news directly, and adapting quickly to fix the situation.

Provide frequent and regular feedback

Military members do not wait around for an annual performance review. Service members are used to having formal “After Action Reviews” after every operation and informal check-ins or “azimuth checks” regularly. Take care with your veteran employees to provide informal feedback regularly.

A rich well of talent

Veterans are a vastly undertapped resource in our society – and a rich well of skill to fill those important roles in your organization. These ideas will help you ensure your veteran hiring and retention programs will be highly successful. Good luck!

Kristin N. Saboe, Ph.D. is an Army veteran, nationally recognized leader, award-winning psychologist, public speaker, and strategist. While an officer and Research Psychologist in the Army, she deployed to Afghanistan and served as a staff officer at the Pentagon. Her writing, research, and community involvement focuses on veteran and military spouse employment, human performance optimization, leadership, and well-being in both military and civilian settings.

Nathan D. Ainspan, Ph.D., has researched, written, and spoken extensively about military-civilian transitions and veterans’ civilian employment. He is currently the Senior Research Psychologist with the Military-Civilian Transition Office (MCTO) at the Department of Defense. His work focuses on improving civilian employment opportunities for returning service members and the psychosocial benefits that employment provides to wounded warriors and injured veterans.

More reading: How to hire veterans

The post 8 new techniques to hire and retain military veterans appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• 73% of candidates are passively looking
• Recruitment emails have an open rate of 21.14%
• 33% of recipients open emails based on the subject line

Based on these numbers, we can see that passive job seekers need more than uninspiring cold emails to make them check out a new job profile and ultimately, apply for that job.

We’ll go through an eight-step process to give you enough ammunition to turn run-of-the-mill emails into high-converting ones.

1. Create an email copy outline
2. Write compelling subject lines
3. Find the candidate’s info & research their background
4. Personalize your outreach
5. Keep your email brief and on point
6. Include a clear CTA
7. Utilize the power of email signature
8. Establish a follow-up strategy

1. Create an email copy outline

To start off, you need to get your email outline right. Cold emails are by design, notorious for cookie-cutter outlines. And this is where most companies fail to attract the right talent. Your cold emails need to be precise, relevant, and unique. One way to write a good email is to know how not to write it. Take this email for example:

Stack Overflow unearthed this cold email that’s about everything a recruiter shouldn’t send to a cold candidate. It’s not addressed to anyone in particular, it doesn’t show the value the roles provide, it uses a long list of skills as the body, and it ends with a weak CTA. It’s hard to impress job seekers with emails crafted as poorly as this one.

While creating an outline for email, it is important to have fleshed-out answers to these questions:

• Who is this email for?
• What is the purpose/goal of sending the email?
• Do the emails need attachments?
• What writing tone should be used?
• What is the best CTA and where should it be placed?
• How to start/end the emails?

The purpose of the outline is to allow companies to automate and scale recruitment strategies. But it should still leave enough room to improvise the copy depending on context and the information available.

A good example should look like this:

The email quickly hooks the candidate with a relatable experience and goes on to explain all the information relevant to the job. The email body is laser-sharp and ends with a good CTA.

2. Write compelling subject lines

Most people only look at the subject lines of the emails to decide whether to delete or open them. Job seekers are no different.
It’s not uncommon for active and passive job seekers to receive hundreds of recruitment emails each day. The only way they can keep the inbox tidy is by deleting the emails that don’t add value to their lives.

When you’re writing a subject line, put yourself in the recipient’s shoes and see what lines you wouldn’t click at all. Take this line for example:

A surprise career opportunity that’ll change your life. Check right now!

Bombastic, misleading, and long sentences are precisely the things you need to avoid when it comes to writing cold emails. It’s important to spend a good bit of time and effort ironing out the subject line. In general, it has to be short, ideally 4-6 words, punchy, and loaded with value.

Great recruitment subject lines should look more like these:

• UX Writer position open at [company name]
• [Company name] is looking for Product Managers
• Data Engineer position available in Vancouver, CA

Along with perfecting the subject line, you should also write a preheader text that provides more information about the email. A lot of recruiters miss the free space so this should be your opportunity to stand out.

3. Find the candidate’s info & research their background

Research plays a key part in practically every aspect of marketing. Recruitment in 2021 can be made better by infusing marketing elements to cater to the right talent pool.

It’s not just the job seekers who have to find the hiring manager’s email address. Recruiters must also deeply research the candidates and go over the information that might be useful for the job. This can be previous roles and companies, qualifications, and career goals. LinkedIn is where talented professionals discuss jobs, careers, and personal lives. You can make connections and even join LinkedIn groups to see what your ideal candidates are up to. LinkedIn InMails are a great way to warm up cold candidates but the sheer volume of undercooked and spam messages by recruiters often drive professionals off the platform.

LinkedIn, however, is not the only option. Techies are available in GitHub and Stack Overflow, writers are sharing ideas in Medium, designers are using Pinterest and Instagram to showcase their art. Social media channels and even portfolio websites are goldmines of information that you can use in your outreach campaign.

Apart from social media and portfolio websites, there’s another channel for effective communication – emails. But it’s not always easy to find the correct email addresses of candidates. With a tool like Hunter’s Email Finder, recruiters find the right people faster.

But people often change jobs and forget to update their email addresses. They might even stop checking their old inbox. That’s why you also need to verify email addresses to make sure you’re not emailing inactive addresses. An email list full of irrelevant addresses will increase your bounce rate, and drag down your deliverability and reputation score.

4. Personalize your outreach

Now that you have enough information about your targeted candidates, it’s time to put the knowledge into action. Approach your recruitment emails the way you write a cold pitch.

Candidates (and humans in general) love to be seen. Always address them by their name at the start of the email and immediately establish a personal connection to show what’s in it for them.

Email personalization is critical in outreach campaigns. A personalized email template should look like this example from Stack Overflow:

It’s a detailed cold email that gives all the information the recipient needs to make a decision. The friendly tone also goes perfectly with the context and the job profile in the discussion.

There’s proof in the pudding too – Boston-based full stack developer Mark Bates talked about the importance of personal connection when reaching out to tech candidates:

“I want to be talked to directly as a person,” Mark said. “Show me that you know who I am and you know the things that I do. And you can tell me in that initial contact why I would make a huge difference at your company.”

5. Keep your email brief and on point

The previous email is a good example of a personalized copy. Coupled with a solid subject line, it should clock good responses from job seekers. But it’s not just the personal connection that sealed the deal. The email is easy to read, offers only the relevant information, and more importantly, tells the candidate what to do after reading the email.

Depending on their career trajectory and position, job seekers either want enriching opportunities, financial benefits, or both. The email offers all these details.

Workload: I’m hiring another mobile engineer to join us here at PuppyHomeTech.

Salary: We offer better pay than any startup in NY.

Process: Our interview only takes one day. We move quickly and if we decide to make an offer, you’ll receive it in 24 hours.

The sender shouldn’t also drag recruitment emails too long with unrelated information. Job applications are often lengthy. As a result, 60% of job seekers give up filling up applications midway. This pattern is true for cold emails as well. Excess information in recruitment emails makes it hard to find the important parts for busy professionals.

That’s why recruiters should distill it down to a few key points and drive home the importance of the email. You can embed graphics or a video on email banners to showcase company culture and provide a bit more details about the role without cluttering the email body.

6. Include a clear CTA

Take a look at this email:

Dear candidate,

We are [company name], a fast-paced company with global footprints. We’re looking for data analysts and you fit our description. Please click on the link below to fill the form.

About us: We’re [ a bit more details about the company]

If you’re interested in the opportunity, please reply to this email so that we can schedule a call.
Thanks!

[Email Signature]

Apart from being vague, the email also confuses the recipient. When you’re cold-emailing candidates, you must remember that the person doesn’t know you, the company, or the role yet. The email will give all the necessary information for the first time, and the information must flow naturally.

This email has two calls to action. One asking to fill up an online form, the other asking to schedule a call. Contradictory or multiple CTAs are confusing and it shows that you haven’t done your homework. Candidates are less likely to go ahead when the lack of effort is clearly visible from the recruiter’s end.

That’s why it’s important to stick to a single CTA. If you have a separate job board that you want them to apply for, only add that link. If you want them to directly reply to your email, mention only that.

One CTA shows your clarity of thought and helps candidates navigate through the next process.

Especially, look at those last two questions – straight and to the point in a way that makes it easy for the candidate to respond. This recruiting email not only sticks to a clear CTA but also goes ahead a step further to offer more information about the call.

7. Utilize the power of email signature

Email signature in a recruitment email tells a lot in a short space. Including an official signature is important because:

• Email signature offers a name that can be searched online by the candidate to verify legitimacy. It instantly creates reliability and is far better than using an unidentifiable sales rep persona.
• An email signature can be used to link company vision and other details. Candidates can check the links to know more about the role, and company culture.
• A huge number of emails go to the spam folder every day and recruitment emails are also part of it. Including an official email signature is one way to avoid getting flagged for spam by the recipient

A good email signature should look like this:

8. Establish a follow-up strategy

Far too many recruiters miss out on talent after not getting a reply the first time. Professionals are busy and it’s easy to miss an email. Cold emails are not expected to generate a 100% response rate but they can be seen as a part of the warm-up process to fetch a response from the candidate later. Ideally, you’ll want to follow up with 3-4 emails before accepting the fact that the candidate is not interested in the opportunity.

To write compelling follow-up emails, you need to add value, lead with the previous email and keep the copy short.

• A follow-up email that leads with the previous email:

• A follow-up email that’s short:

• And one last follow-up email:

Wrapping up

Most recruitment cold emails are uninspiring and impersonal, which actually gives you the opportunity to stand out and attract ideal candidates with a well-thought-out cold email strategy. By following the 8-step process, you’ll be able to craft cold emails that job seekers love to read and respond to.

Irina Maltseva is Head of Marketing at Hunter. She enjoys working on inbound and product marketing strategies. In her spare time, she entertains her cat Persie and collects airline miles.

The post 8 tips for writing outstanding cold recruitment emails that convert – with templates appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s something you should be concerned about as an employer, so let’s look at why they’re thinking of leaving and what would compel them to stick around. It turns out that skills development, training and overall growth are high up the list of priorities for tech workers.

For instance, in the same survey, 91% want more training opportunities from their current employers.

And it’s not just training. When tech employees are making a career choice, salary and benefits are by and far the most important criteria when deciding who to work for, with 76% picking that as their top decider.

Workable’s Great Discontent survey echoes this sentiment as well, with 63.4% of US workers saying the top reason they’re open to new jobs is because of compensation.

As a tech employer looking to retain your staff, you also want to focus on a career path structure in your company. That’s because two out of five tech workers say the lack of career progression is the main reason they’re leaving their current job.

Three out of five (58%) also tagged skills development as their number-one motivator in choosing a new company. Likewise, three out of five (62%) say that more training and learning as a part of their job will make them more motivated at work.

To quote from the report: “Combined with L&D opportunities being one of the top criteria for selecting a job, the message is clear: training can help slow down the wave of resignations.”

When we’re seeing four million American workers quitting their jobs every month – including in August alone – it’s time for action. Employers need to step up their game with new recruitment strategies to compel their workers to stick around.

But there’s a bright side to all this

Texas A&M professor Dr. Anthony Klotz, who coined the now-famous term “The Great Resignation”, says these insights actually provide an opportunity for employers to get ahead of the problem of turnover.

“While the percentage of individuals thinking about resigning may be high, the good news for organizational leaders is that many of the top reasons that employees provided for wanting to leave are readily addressable,” says Anthony.

He emphasizes that investing in more opportunities for development and career advancement, greater flexibility, and boosting compensation and benefits are all things that can be quickly implemented in one’s own company as significant talent attractors.

And, he adds, keep that two-way street open with your workforce. For example, you can and should use employee surveys to better understand what’s expected of you as an employer.

“There is an opportunity here for companies to talk to their employees about these issues in the wake of the pandemic, and then trial or implement potential solutions.”

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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 we’re also seeing many companies planning to return to an in-office setup – in that same survey, 52.8% of US and 44.7% of UK workers say their companies probably will return to the office when things return to “normal”. And HqO has already done that, back in the spring of 2021.

We joined Chris for a chat about HqO’s own RTO strategy, and we’ve pulled together the main takeaways from that conversation.

Remote work is not be-all and end-all

Despite remote work being one of the top-touted paradigm shifts for 71% of businesses in our 2020 New World of Work report, Chris says that isn’t a universal sentiment among companies or even workers. He suggests that the work-from-home phenomenon may just be an experiment that ultimately proved the value of in-office work in the end.

“There’s a lot of evidence behind work from home being increasingly challenging and not sustainable,” says Chris. He shares two statistics to back this up:

In Oct. 2020, Google found that their engineers produced 30% less code during the pandemic.

Colliers International released a survey of office professionals in early 2020 stating that 23% of respondents say their productivity had declined when working remotely.

He calls those numbers “mind boggling”.

The impact of remote work on trust

“I think most people are productive, don’t get me wrong,” Chris says. But, he does see the need – and appetite – for a shift back to in-office work.

For example, trust in the employee base took a big hit in the remote-work world.

“I’d love for someone to defend the idea that trust and empathy have not been shattered [when] working remote,” Chris says, “especially when all your interactions are either over Google Meet or Zoom or Microsoft Teams.”

And while trusting your employees is essential to success in a remote-work environment, Chris does take a pragmatic approach about the realities of remote work for a business that needs its employees to be available when needed.

“I’ve heard of stories … for some hybrid or remote employees where they’re talking about their colleagues on social media, going to the beach in the summertime, taking half of the workday to golf, heading to bars and restaurants in the early afternoon, all this happening before the workday ends.”

And that can actually hurt the overall morale in a company’s workforce.

“You’re seeing all that empathy and trust just be completely ripped apart. And I think you’ll hear more of those scenarios entering 2022.”

And even a hybrid solution isn’t the perfect solution.

“What’s going to happen when your boss wants to be in the office three to four times a week. Your team is on board with that, but maybe you’ve moved or maybe you’re just not comfortable. And you want to go in one to two days a week. What happens there? I think that’s going to be something that a lot of companies need to think about.”

The impact of remote work on mental health

The trend towards remote work has made it difficult for some companies who want or need their employees to return to on-site work.

Consider the worker backlash Apple experienced when shifting operations back to the office – although the Delta variant meant a delay in their RTO strategy, Apple still plans to return in January 2022.

And there are legit arguments for a return to office. Remote work can lead to burnout, if a June 2020 survey from Monster.com is any indication. That survey found that 69% of workers who were working from home during the pandemic experienced burnout, up 35% from early May 2020.

Of course, there are different factors at play here – the struggle to separate work responsibilities from home responsibilities and working at home with children, for instance. Plus, throughout 2020, there was a lack of options for personal leisure such as attending sporting events, going on trips or eating out, and other pursuits as societies locked down; which of course made life difficult for millions.

The power of camaraderie

While Chris acknowledges that remote and hybrid work are here to stay and there’s always going to be a place for it, there’s one significant common denominator that he’s learned from his role at HqO: the power of connectivity and teamwork between workers when they’re in the same physical space.

“These employees thrive in an office culture,” he explains. “It’s a no-brainer. The energy is so contagious. That’s fueled by probably our let’s-go rallying cry and our values as well. It’s something that we hit on just about every single day here. So that stands for learning excellence, truth, speed, goodness, and ownership.

“You get to be part of that office banter. And I think you saw that a little bit coming in and our employees and being loud a little bit. I think that’s more effective, face-to-face if that’s your manager or somebody that’s underneath you, one of your team, and just be part of that experience.”

Again, the Great Discontent worker survey backs this up – 37.1% of US workers and 47.3% of UK workers both pointed to relationships with colleagues as one of the most important factors that would attract them to a new role.

There’s room for both

HqO isn’t alone in that thinking, Chris adds. There are other companies moving back to the office as well. Unlike Apple’s experience, Chris emphasizes that there’s a lot of support for HqO’s own RTO strategy, as they added two floors to their office space during a time of aggressive growth.

“I’ve actually been really pleasantly surprised with the number of people [interested]. My team engages with that and are desperate to be back in office. … I think that the thing that people miss the most are the people in the office themselves. Bottom line, that’s never going to change.”

While the priority placed on remote work options continues to be high for many potential candidates, Chris finds that there’s no shortage of applicants who specifically want to return to the way things were.

In fact, Chris says that when the expectation was set in March of this year that HqO was going to have an office-first culture, people didn’t leave. In fact, they stayed engaged. If pandemic safety was a concern for an employee, Chris emphasizes that the doors are open for a conversation about that.

Flex work is the way to go

Plus, he adds, office-first doesn’t mean being in the office five days a week. Rather, it’s about worker flexibility – which needs to be given no matter what.

“There’s going to be some things that come up. If it’s a doctor’s appointment or the unplanned parts of life – stay home, do your work. I’d probably take it a step further and say, ‘Hey, if you know, you’re super busy and you just have that heads down work to do,’ you can take that day to stay home and actually do it. Cut back that commute time, whatever it is, and go back into the office the next day.”

There’s also flexibility in terms of work schedules – again highlighted in our Great Discontent worker survey as a significantly higher priority than remote work. That’s the reality at HqO as well.

“There’s some days that, maybe you want to come in a little bit early, so you can take off at four or maybe you’re coming in at 9:30, 10 o’clock depending on what you do and you’re leaving the office at 6, 6:30 at night.

“So there’s that degree of flexibility, but I’d say the core hours, where it’s just what everybody’s here, is that nine to five block.”

The Great Resignation and its impact

Chris is pragmatic about the reality that remote work certainly has its appeal and that the great talent shuffle is very real. He acknowledges Texas A&M professor Anthony Klotz’ prediction of the Great Resignation and that the transition to a post-pandemic workplace means many workers will prefer to leave their jobs than go back to the way things were.

However, he adds, there’s a new problem for companies who want to remain remote. He shares a story about one HqO partner in Boston about how that company’s employees are regularly being poached by companies in San Francisco, New York, Austin and Seattle.

“So now,” Chris says, “you have Boston companies that have shifted to remote that are now competing with other cities, which is just like, ‘Man, how much more complicated can this get’?”

RTO is a big differentiator

So, for in-office companies like HqO, there’s an opportunity in the unique employee value proposition of in-office work. The in-office strategy is actually a specific attractor for some talent, says Chris. He adds that HqO’s hiring teams are actively looking to recruit people who do want to work in the office.

“I’m listening for people that want to be challenged and make that significant connection there,” Chris explains about HqO’s own hiring strategy, emphasizing the importance of being proactive and innovative in recruitment marketing.

“I think, if we’re going to go out there and we’re going to attract some of these folks that want to be an office, we have to direct message folks,” Chris says.

“Again, so many people are hiring right now. You need to give your company a chance to stand out, really spark that curiosity from somebody.”

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Quit rates are through the roof, and weirdly enough, it’s not translating into a larger and more active candidate pool for employers – rather, it’s the opposite. Workers appear to be dropping out of the system, and they’re not all ready to move to a new job. Data from the Workable network confirms this as well.

Employers are taking a hit from all this. At best, they’re making do with leaner teams; at worst, they’re shutting down entirely because of this unique talent shortage.

It’s becoming more challenging to retain talent, and harder to attract candidates to new roles. As leaders in the hiring space, we’re very cognizant of this, and we want to help you overcome these challenges. So, instead of theorizing and speculating and predicting and analyzing, we decided to ask 1,250 workers in the US and UK to find out what they want and value in a job.

Out of the many insights in the Great Discontent survey, we have four main takeaways for you:

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. Again, this is especially so for women.

Our survey also finds that three quarters of workers may be ready to bolt at any given time. This signals a potential disconnect in the system. It’s a tough situation for employers, and this may require a fresh look at your talent attraction and retention strategy.

These are strange, historic, exciting times, and it’s clear the rules of the game are changing for employers. We don’t have all the answers – those will come later in hindsight. But the conversation is always worth adding to. We think you’ll find useful insights here as we venture into the new world of work and post-pandemic environment.

Without further ado, check out our reports:

• The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (US)
• The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (UK)

Have insights, concerns, criticisms, swear words, accolades, or anything else? We’d love to hear them. Please send them to our content team at content@workable.com and we’ll be sure to address each and every one of them.

Yours in sustainability,

Nikos Moraitakis
CEO, Workable

The post Announcing the Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey 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.

• 44% of employees now have serious concerns about their physical, mental, and social health
• 80% of employees believe their employers have a responsibility to address their health and wellbeing, especially during COVID-19 – up from 73% pre-pandemic

Another study from the beginning of 2021 charted a 50% rise in depression and a 60% drop in focus among all ages in the workplace.

More recently, ​​a new survey of 2,800 workers from global staffing firm Robert Half showed more than four in 10 employees (44%) say they are more burned out on the job today compared to a year ago. This is up from 34% in a similar 2020 poll.

And overall, nearly half of American workers have been suffering from mental health issues since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

When you don’t support employee mental health

Based on these numbers alone, it’s clear why employee mental health is top of mind for companies as they try to acclimate to a totally new work world that, for most companies, will include some remote work. What happens, then, when companies don’t pay attention to employee mental health? What are the tangible repercussions of employee burnout?

A recent Gallup study on employee burnout shows that employees who say they very often or always experience burnout at work are:

• 63% more likely to take a sick day
• 23% more likely to visit the emergency room
• 2.6x as likely to be actively seeking a different job
• 13% less confident in their performance

Burnout and depression also overlap, which means ignoring employee burnout in your organization can lead to even more complex mental health challenges – not to mention the major impact it can have on overall productivity.

4 tips to support mental health remotely

1. Take a collective pause
2. Address meeting fatigue
3. Let employees self-direct their mental wellness
4. The four-day workweek

What can companies do about all of this? First, recognize that being supportive of your employees’ mental health is not just about burnout prevention, but fostering a supportive workplace that addresses your employees’ wellness needs no matter where they are.

To do that, here are four effective approaches companies around the world are taking to care for employees’ mental health:

1. Take a collective pause

Prior to the pandemic, 55% of American workers didn’t use up all of their paid vacation time – and even when they did, they often took their work with them. One of the main reasons employees typically hesitate to take time off is because they struggle to find the “right” time and worry their boss will judge them.

It’s only gotten worse after the pandemic. As a result of long-term remote work, employees are logging in more hours and facing bigger workloads, meanwhile putting off vacation because there’s nowhere to go and they feel like they can’t justify it.

Give them a break

A remedy for that, which more and more companies are starting to turn to after more than a year and a half at home, is company-wide days off for mental health.

LinkedIn made headlines in giving its 15,900 full-time employees a paid week off in April to help them combat burnout and encourage them to unplug and recharge. Hubspot and Hootsuite recently did the same. And if a week feels too long, companies including SAP, Cisco, Google, and Thomson Reuters opted for a company-wide mental health day.

What’s powerful about this tactic is that it shows that your company cares enough about employees’ health to dedicate a period of rest specifically for that purpose, even if that means losing those hours of productivity.

The benefits go beyond those actual days off as well. Because your company is the one proactively initiating the time off, it removes the added stress that individual employees feel when working up the effort and energy to ask for any amount of time off themselves. Also, the fact that everyone is out of office at the same time means employees don’t have to feel like they’re leaving their work to someone else – something that 41% of employees feel guilty about when taking PTO.

2. Address meeting fatigue

The average employee attends 62 meetings per month, which adds up to about a fifth of their work hours in meetings. Not only are they getting less of their work done, but – in an age of Zoom calls and remote work – this amounts to an additional energy drain. This leads to lack of motivation, lack of control, and lack of satisfaction from their work achievements; all signs and symptoms of mental health burnout.

One answer for mitigating this mentally taxing meeting fatigue is to institute no-meeting days. Ideally, offer it on the same day every week so employees can enjoy it regularly.

Banish meetings regularly

While companies who implement no-meeting days most often go for a “No-Meeting Monday”, like Uber implemented twice throughout the summer, it can be done on any day. Asana has “No Meeting Wednesdays” and Wilderness has “Deep Work Wednesdays (DWW).”

This simple shift in meeting expectations for all employees, for just one day per week, allows everyone to maintain their focus, concentration, and productivity, rather than having exhausting video calls constantly interrupting and derailing their workflow.

3. Let employees self-direct their mental wellness

Most companies recognize that offering some vacation days doesn’t, on its own, alleviate burnout and so they look to other ways to offer meaningful mental wellness support to their employees. The most popular programs that have filled this need include virtual wellness classes, subscriptions to mental health apps like Headspace and Calm, and online therapy sessions from select providers.

What’s great about these options, for employers at least, is that it “checks the box” of mental wellness support and employees from anywhere can benefit from them. With remote work potentially lasting for another two years, that’s certainly a huge plus. But what isn’t ideal is that it’s also just a catch-all solution – these don’t cover the wide spectrum of individual mental wellness needs employees have, as everyone’s own mental health journey is personal and unique.

Give your employees the power

That’s where empowering your employees to self-direct their mental wellness might be the perfect answer, which is what many companies make possible by offering a wellness stipend.

With a wellness stipend, employees from any place, background, and mental condition can choose what mental health support personally means to them, and in turn the company covers the expense through reimbursement. As the employer, you decide how much the stipend is, what it covers, and how often to renew the benefit – on a per-employee basis, you’ll often find companies offering anywhere from $25-$100 per month, or $200-$1,000 quarterly or yearly.

A wellness stipend allows your employees to go beyond the mediation app or therapist you selected and instead invest in something that actually suits their own mental health needs. Depending on what your company designates as an eligible expense, this can include:

• Sessions with a therapist or counselor (not restricted to any specific providers)
• Subscription to a fitness app of their choosing
• Weight loss membership plan
• Prescription medication
• Health monitoring devices
• Vacation expenses
• Yoga gear or classes
• Hiking gear
• Meal delivery
• Home cleaning services
• Backup childcare

Letting employees personalize their own mental health support with a stipend also happens to align with creating a better and more inclusive employee experience – something that’s key to surviving the Great Resignation and becoming a company that others admire.

Some of the most successful companies today offer wellness stipends. Both Basecamp and Salesforce offer their employees $100 per month to support their wellness, and companies like Facebook, Zoom and Webflow also offer their own wellness reimbursement programs.

4. The four-day workweek

While doing things like giving employees more time off and reducing their overall meeting load are great practices to support employees’ mental health, those strategies represent a small drop in comparison to the 90,000 hours the average person will spend at work in their lifetimes. They feel even less impactful when the working environment employees return to feels like a never-ending cycle of long hours and too much work.

Related: Learn from a company that implemented an alternating four-day workweek for a three-month trial period – and what the results were. 

That’s what the four-day workweek addresses – reducing employee stress and promoting work-life balance by making life less about work. It’s a concept that came about well before the pandemic, with some countries giving it a test run back in 2018. It’s now picking up increased interest as employee mental health concerns continue to grow and remote work encourages us all to rethink old workplace traditions.

Alleviate the pressure

The idea is that with an additional day off every week, employees now get more time to regularly cultivate and care for their home and personal lives, where they previously struggled to squeeze into their daily routines or neglected altogether. When the home front is regularly maintained, employees are less stressed, more focused, and able to accomplish as much work (or more) in four days as they do in five.

Consider Parkinson’s Law, an old adage about personal productivity that “work will expand to fill the time allotted for its completion.” In other words, a quick task will take longer to complete because there’s ‘more time’ to complete it. This means that reducing the workweek to 32 hours wouldn’t actually mean less work output in a week’s time, but rather, employees are given a narrower frame of time within which to organize their work more efficiently.

The four-day workweek today is more than just a test concept and has become a legitimate option for companies, and countries, who want to make a significant improvement in employee mental health. It’s the norm in Iceland, after their experiments throughout 2015-2019 were overwhelmingly successful by improving employee well-being and productivity. In early 2020 Finland contemplated moving to a four-day workweek, and more recently this year, countries like Canada, Spain and Japan have warmed to the idea too. Most recently, Scotland joined the experiment in early September.

Your employees need your support

As the workplace continues to shift in the coming months (and years, even) in the face of remote and hybrid work, your employees will be the ones bearing the brunt of the stress and uncertainty. This will do a number on their mental health no matter how resilient they are.

By actively listening for and alleviating the biggest stressors in your employees’ lives, you can get ahead of the potential problems of burnout and mental health, and distinguish yourself as a supportive, progressive employer that people will want to work for. That will be a powerful attractor in these times when employers are struggling to find ideal candidates.

The post How to take care of your remote employees’ mental health appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

While no sector has been spared the impact of this rapidly evolving resignation trend, a new survey from HR technology disruptor Hibob makes it clear that one market segment is bearing the weight more than others: that of mid-sized companies. The survey of 1,000 full-time US workers working remotely since the onset of the pandemic has insights that mid-sized businesses must pay attention to.

With 71% of mid-size company staff now open to the prospect of freelancing and prioritizing flexibility as a critical benefit, how can mid-sized companies manage employee expectations, reduce the risk of resignation and evolve their recruiting strategies to compensate?

Let’s dive in.

By the numbers: what’s the problem?

According to the survey, 44% of mid-sized company employees either quit or were laid off by their employers over the last 12 months. What’s more, 65% of those still employed at mid-sized businesses thought about leaving their jobs — compared to only 59% of those at smaller firms.

Even more telling? While between 36%-40% of employees at smaller and larger firms said they were likely to quit their jobs in the next year, a much-higher 56% of mid-sized workers said they are “likely or very likely” to make the move. That’s a warning bell, if any, for mid-sized businesses who need to stay competitive.

When it comes to what’s making them so willing to move on, 45% said they wanted better benefits and 55% pointed to a better work/life balance. In fact, 56% of survey respondents said they would quit if their employer didn’t offer flexible hours and location options, and 66% felt that going back to the office would negatively impact their success — compared to both smaller and larger firms, mid-sized employees said they were the most productive when working from home.

Put simply? Resignations are on the rise, and mid-sized businesses are disproportionally feeling the burden.

Why the numbers: where’s the disconnect?

The Great Resignation is a catchy term, but it describes the outcome rather than the root cause. Advisory firm Gallup offers another option: “The Great Discontent”, suggesting that lack of employee engagement is driving them away from current companies and into the arms of their competitors.

We’ve got another perspective: The Great Disconnect. While discontent with current teams, management structures or existing benefit packages provides some of the impetus for this rapid resignation trend, there’s a bigger problem — disconnect between what companies are willing to offer and what staff really want.

The biggest issue is a flip-flop on flexibility: 71% of staff at mid-sized companies say their HR teams have backpedaled on flexible work policies, while the numbers drop to 60% for enterprises and just over 50% for smaller firms. What’s more, a full third of mid-sized workers are worried that leveraging flexible work options will be frowned upon and ultimately hurt their career progression.

Compensation challenges are also emerging. As noted above, 71% of mid-sized employees are open to the idea of freelancing – a side gig, if you will – and 28% have already taken a second job, while just 11% of their large enterprise counterparts have done the same.

Hibob CEO Ronni Zehavi makes it clear: “As resignation rates remain high, recruiters, company leaders, and HR decision-makers must re-evaluate and understand what employees are really looking for today.”

What to do now — and what to do next

So what does all this mean for mid-sized companies? It’s time for new recruitment and retention strategies.

Let’s start with what to do right now: If you’ve walked back any flexible work policies, turn around and walk the other way. As noted by NPR, skilled workers are in demand: If they’re being pushed back into long commutes and overtime at the office, they have no trouble getting multiple offers that offer better work-life balance.

Next, consider current benefit structures and their impact on staff satisfaction. Salary plays a role here but it’s not the only component: Employees are also looking for financial wellness programs to help them better manage money, more paid time off to spend with friends and family, and improved mental and physical health supports.

Moving forward, mid-sized companies must also recognize the reality of resignations: despite best efforts, some staff will move on to new opportunities. To reduce the impact of these resignations, companies need a new approach to recruiting that leverages technology to identify, evaluate and hire candidates ASAP.

With talented employees now in demand across industries and market verticals, there’s no time for traditional hiring processes that take weeks or months: companies need to position themselves as the right choice for prospective staff that feel disconnected at their current jobs and are looking for a better fit.

Act now to stay relevant

Bottom line? The Great Resignation has arrived, and it’s disproportionately impacting mid-sized businesses. The numbers make it clear: Discontent and disconnect are driving staff separations. Managing this new reality means fostering flexibility, bolstering benefits and integrating technology to reduce total turnover, boost satisfaction and offer a new home for workers making the switch.

Workers are clearly not afraid to make a move – you, as an employer, must take the necessary steps outlined above so you can reap the benefits of increased applications to your job openings rather than higher numbers of emails giving you a two-week notice.

The post The Great Discontent – mid-sized businesses especially take note appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And the Great Discontent survey carried out by Workable in June 2021 points to the disparity in current working situation between the genders, with those identifying as female far more likely to be not working (26% vs. 15.3%) or working part-time (17.7% vs. 8.6%) than males in the United States.

The World Economic Forum also reported similar data:

What does that say about how our workplaces are doing in supporting working mothers?

We’ll let TopResume’s report answer that:

“Women have had to navigate the stress and time-management challenges of taking on the role of teacher and child-care provider while attempting to work or find work during quarantine. All of these factors together have led to what economists are calling the world’s first ‘she-cession’ – a women-led economic downturn.”

To gain further insight, we sat down with TopResume’s career expert Amanda Augustine – herself a working mom – for a conversation about this. Clearly, employers need to up their game if they want to be part of changing things for the better.

The plight of the working mother

The mother of a five-year-old boy with special needs, Amanda’s own personal and professional load is further stressed by the fact that she has a husband who works long hours as an essential worker. And, she says, women feel they have to take all that on – more so than men.

“I think for the working mother in general, we’ve grown up hearing, ‘You can do anything’, and we’ve somehow translated that over time into ‘You should do everything,’” says Amanda. “And there’s a lot of extra responsibility and weight and stress we put on ourselves.”

And that commitment to a full-time workload also ate into Amanda’s daily schedule. Before the pandemic, she commuted into New York City for work three times a week, translating into three hours of commuting each day. This meant less time with her son all around.

“I only saw my son for two hours a day on the weekdays. I was gone well before he was awake. And I came home, picked him up from daycare and I got two hours before he had to be in bed.”

The sacrifice and the stigma

Work has long been an unmovable pillar around which we mold other parts of our lives. It’s created a situation where working mothers worry that if they make concessions in the workplace – such as arriving late or leaving early because they need to drop off or pick up their kids at school or the daycare, it impacts their career arc.

“[Those] suddenly become issues where they have to be navigated around fears that you’re not going to be put up for the promotion, or you’re not going to get the raise,” Amanda explains.

“And because whether, you know, whether [working mothers think] correctly or not, they’re going to assume that it’s either not feasible or that they’re concerned that other priorities will take over, which is just… it’s unfair.”

There’s also a proximity bias in the workplace that makes things even more difficult for working mothers forced to make amends in their schedule to accommodate demands on the home front.

“There’s this false assumption by managers that the people they see working in the office are more productive than the ones that they don’t see.”

It’s not COVID’s fault

These problems facing working mothers aren’t rooted in the pandemic. Rather, the pandemic simply exposed – and exacerbated – the problems that have long existed in the system.

“Many of us were already underwater before the pandemic and the pandemic was that last straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Amanda. “It pushed on all those little cracks and just made them that, that more obvious.”

That’s why working mothers are leaving the workforce in droves – if they can – because they’ve given up on the possibility of a much-needed balance between work and home life.

“Women aren’t going to just show up and sacrifice everything,” says Amanda, emphasizing that this is a situation faced by fathers as well.

“For some people, it’s a re-evaluation of their priorities. Many are assuming that they’re not going to find a job that’s going to allow them to still keep some of these things [remote work, etc.] that were actually the silver linings of the pandemic.”

That 69% statistic points to this new reality.

“What’s happening now is that people are [saying], ‘Do we really need that income? Can we get by without it? I’m going to hold out until there’s something that really makes sense and is a good fit. I’m not rushing back to the workplace, because I want to see what happens.’”

It’s a crisis, but it’s an opportunity

We’re already seeing a recruitment crisis – as indicated by the staggering numbers of job openings, higher than the number of unemployed, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This exodus of working mothers presents an added challenge for recruiters already facing depleted talent pools.

“[Many] recruiters I hear from and talk to are just saying, ‘We can’t fill these positions. We can’t get people in the door what’s going on here.’”

And it’s not that these are not good opportunities. These are “white collar, corporate, good paying jobs”, Amanda adds.

“A good portion of your normal labor force or, you know, is not looking right now. And so you’re missing out on a lot of that.”

But there’s good news. They’ll come back – if the conditions are right.

“Many of them would probably come back [if] they’d be able to still bring in that money or do what they love, but in a more balanced fashion where they don’t feel as though they’re slightly underperforming in every aspect of their lives.”

That’s where greater support of working mothers is needed in the workplace. Forcing your employees to find a balance between work and home actually hurts at both ends. Something always has to give.

“If you’re feeling really great as a mom, you feel like you’re probably not the star employee that day. And if you’re really rocking it at work, chances are, you’re not feeling like you’re getting a gold star from your kids that day.

“And you know, it’d be nice if that wasn’t necessarily the feeling all the time.”

The need for flexible schedules

So how do you build an environment that supports working mothers? Obviously not every company can do everything – but you can start by looking at the things you can do that don’t drastically impact your bottom line. The first objective is to build up your support system that you can offer to a potential employee. Have a strategy that enables mothers to thrive in every area – both at home and at work.

One way to do that is introduce greater flexibility in work – a lesson we all learned from the pandemic, as shown in our New World of Work survey report in August 2020 which found that 71.1% of respondents see remote work and distributed teams as one of the biggest paradigm shifts coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amanda agrees.

“More jobs are becoming location agnostic. This giant work-from-home experiment has been successful for a lot of organizations,” she explains.

“There are a lot of employees that I know of while they were still working, moved across the country, just decided they’re like, ‘You know what? I don’t want this cost of living. And if I can work anywhere, I’m going to do it.’ A lot of people are relocating.”

She points to her own company as an example.

“That’s why we’re not really going back to one central office. [It’s] because they saw it worked and they started hiring people all across the country.”

Another thing Amanda’s employer is doing right in supporting working mothers is leaving the responsibility of scheduling to employees.

“Are you getting your work done? Then we don’t care when you’re logging in and logging out. Are you there when you need to be for a meeting? Great. As long as you’re producing, no one cares.

“If you have to run out in the middle of the day to grab your kid or, you know, take them to the appointment or pick them up from daycare, as long as you’re getting your work done and you’re on when you need to be on for the very important meetings, nobody’s going to look twice and think there’s anything wrong.”

Employers can step up their game

And that’s a mindset which needs to be adopted by employers if they want to attract – and retain – workers. That’s especially when it comes to working mothers, who benefit more from this than other professionals.

“Working mothers [see this] more as a necessity or a requirement as opposed to an extra benefit.”

You can step up your policies supporting working mothers if you’re looking to attract them to your company, especially if you don’t have the luxury of moving to a permanently remote or flexible working system.

Amanda suggests looking at your maternity leave policy, and looking at other ways you can help ease the demand that a working parent faces.

“Are you providing either stipends for daycare or are you providing onsite daycare or services? Do you have a service that you keep on retainer that your employees can call if they need help securing a last-minute babysitter because someone’s ill or something like that? Those services do exist.”

Be leaders by example

While these and other programs and policies are a great first step for employers, it’s not enough, says Amanda. It also comes down to the mentality of your organization – and from the very top.

“It also has to come through in your communication. [Are you] a company that truly values and embraces and supports the working parent or various different lifestyles and is able to adapt?”

Personal experience plays a factor as well, she adds, recalling an anecdote from a friend who expressed that she couldn’t wait for her CEO and his wife to have a kid because “he doesn’t get it today”.

Instead, get ahead of that situation, with executive leadership setting the tone for a truly inclusive working environment.

Amanda described an experience before our interview where she was in a meeting with one of her own executives.

“She was sitting on her patio and she goes, ‘This may be my only moment of vitamin D all day, because I don’t know when my son gets home from daycare, if it’s going to be an outside or inside day’.”

That was a strong message from leadership. The result was that Amanda – and likely her other colleagues – now felt empowered to be able to do the same.

“I would have never considered that before, until I saw somebody a couple of rungs up for me doing it and it being perfectly OK, and not making a big deal about it.”

So pay attention, managers, directors, and executives.

“If you’re going to offer those benefits to your team, take them. If you’re encouraging them to take time off, you have to take a few days off too.”

This is a wakeup call – will you answer?

“There were a lot of awful things that came [in the pandemic], but I have to say for me, there were some definite silver linings. It has a lot to do with getting a better sense of what is a healthy work-life balance and what I want. But […] for many people out there, I think it’s a wakeup call.”

You can answer that call by updating your policies and employee management strategy to accommodate and support working mothers, and you’ll find that you attract the very best candidates to your company.

“It would be really nice if, if we could change that narrative and put systems in place that helped to support a new narrative out there,” Amanda says.

Don’t wait for others to set the standard – you can lead the charge. Be part of the solution.

Amanda Augustine is a well-recognized expert in career advancement, ranging from developing one’s professional brand to acing that next interview. She’s the resident career expert for TopResume, the world’s largest resume-writing service, as well as a certified professional resume writer (CPRW) and certified professional career coach (CPCC).

The post Supporting working mothers: it’s now time for a new narrative appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That means you need to focus on recruitment and retention strategies that actually work. Flip that and focus first on retention and then on recruitment. If you can retain your employees, that reduces the work you have to do to recruit new ones.

And remember that good recruitment also means fewer problems with retention. Getting the right people into the right jobs impacts your retention in a way that a specialized program never can.

Here are five ideas that will work.

1. Hire for potential, not experience

“You must have a college degree and five years of experience in X.” These types of requirements are standard in job postings, but researchers found that for many jobs, employees will still need to learn 10 additional skills within the next 18 months.

In other words, even if your new hire meets all the job requirements today, that means 10 new skills needed as they settle into their new role.

If you are insistent that every candidate has every skill, you may end up with a very short list of candidates – and hiring someone whose skills may be obsolete in a month anyway. You should look for people who have a solid – and versatile – foundation and the ability and desire to learn new things.

Keep this in mind for a recruitment and retention strategy as well. Often, companies don’t want to promote from within because they want someone in the position that can ‘hit the ground running’.

This strategy denies reality because the position will change anyway. Retain your best employees by promoting them into stretch roles.

2. Stop outsourcing your recruiting

Peter Capelli, a professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business, reports that up to 40% of companies use outsourced recruiters. While that sometimes makes sense, he points out that these companies often outsource themselves – to the Philippines or India, for instance. These contract recruiters scour LinkedIn and focus on using keywords.

Companies often reward these recruiters with higher bonuses if they can get a candidate to take a lower salary. That sounds cost-effective, but in today’s high-turnover environment, saving your business $5,000 today may result in an additional $50,000 in turnover costs next year, if not more. As far as recruitment and retention strategies go, this one isn’t very effective in the long term.

Keep your recruiting close to your company, and you’ll be more likely to find candidates that are fit for the long term in your company and not just those with the matching keywords.

3. Study your results – and act on them

While this may not seem like a recruiting or retention technique, it will lead you to correct your processes. Capelli, again, points out that very few companies do detailed tracking on recruiting and retention.

“Imagine,” Capelli says, “if the CEO asked how an advertising campaign had gone, and the response was ‘We have a good idea how long it took to roll out and what it cost, but we haven’t looked to see whether we’re selling more.’”

You won’t improve your retention or recruiting if you don’t know what works and what fails. You need to keep data on these things.

4. Keep an eye on your competitors

The Fight for $15 campaign has been very successful, and many people refuse to work for less, even though the federal minimum wage remains at less than half of that. You may think that your salaries are at the proper market rate because they were last year and you could hire just fine. But, it’s 2021, there’s a labor shortage all around, and your candidates can walk across the street and get a job at a fast-food restaurant for $12 or more per hour.

Remember, your hiring and retention competitors are not only the people who make and sell similar products and services. They are also anyone who hires people similar to your employees. Every business needs an accountant and a customer service person. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you don’t need to pay attention.

In addition to salary, people are looking for flexibility. Whether it’s working from home, a hybrid situation, or shifts that fit their lives, other businesses offer those. If you want to keep your employees and hire new ones, you need to keep up.

5. Start asking your employees questions

Do you know what makes your current employees happy? Do you know what makes them miserable? If you can’t, you may find your retention numbers struggling.

Margaret Rogers, vice president at Pariveda Solutions, says that while companies invest in training and development, they often do so without consulting the employees.

You need to know what your employees want and need before you develop your programs. A few questions she recommends when conducting employee surveys are:

• What parts of your job are most interesting and rewarding?
• What areas are you finding most challenging right now?
• What are you doing to reach short- and long-term career goals?
• Are there any other projects, committees, or additional responsibilities you would like to be a part of?
• Is there anything else you’re curious about that you haven’t been able to explore yet?

Knowing the answers to these questions helps you to tailor your training and development opportunities to not only what will benefit the company but what will benefit your employees. You won’t retain people who don’t see growth potential, so make sure you know what they want and figure out how to help them get it.

If you aren’t thinking about recruiting and retention strategies now, you need to be. Otherwise, the great resignation will hit your business, and other companies will snatch up your best people. Don’t let that happen to you.

The post 5 recruitment and retention strategies that actually work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s start with why: The workforce was not immune to the migration patterns of the pandemic. Affording everyone the time to re-examine anything, from a life’s purpose to a day-to-day routine, the lockdown was a time of mass decision-making.

The ‘Great Resignation’ then earned its name as professionals across all industries shed their pre-pandemic roles. Increased turnover became one of an employer’s many costs. But in a normal economy, one worker’s loss would be another worker’s gain – roles would fill about as quickly as they’re given up. Now, employers have made it clear: there’s a disconnect between the post-COVID candidate and the roles at hand.

A look at the numbers

Talent and employers are passing each other like two ships in the night. This past March, US employers added a seasonally adjusted 916,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate reached a new pandemic low of 6%. Still, recruitment campaigns are flopping, candidates are in short supply, and professionals continue to change paths across virtually all sectors.

Conversely, LinkedIn data shows that professionals in the United States added over 110,000 volunteer activities to their profiles monthly since the inception of the pandemic. That’s a near 250% increase since 2017.

And the boom of ESG-focused investing has come from retail investors as much as it’s come from institutional activity; new investors are showing a large interest in green bonds, and 56% of households with more than $100,000 to invest are showing an overwhelming preference for impact investments.

These numbers quantify an important COVID change: purpose-driven living has become a full-time occupation. Professionals want ESG values represented and upheld across all segments of their life, including and especially the team with whom they focus their working talent.

A tight ESG labor market

Before the pandemic, BlackRock reported that many of their high-profile investors planned to double their allocations into sustainable products over the next five years. A subsequent report announced that one-fifth of those investors felt the pandemic had accelerated their plans to do so.

That early influx of capital led to a job boom in the ESG space, attracting the market’s best talent.

Already, the wave of behavioral change is evident across industries. Companies are under pressure to adopt new standards and regulations for ESG operations and sustainable investing in order to source investment capital and satisfy stakeholders. ESG is the new workplace normal, and will soon be a standard workforce strategy rather than basic value proposition.

Re-imagining the post-COVID EVP

Employers need new tactics to differentiate their employee value proposition (or EVP for short). Introducing tangible ESG as a workforce strategy is an important place to begin. The large-scale purpose and impact of the company is important. But the day-to-day initiatives, policies, and campaigns are important places in which employees feel those social values reflected.

Consider the actions of industry giants throughout the pandemic:

• Apple increased their matching gift donations to a 2:1 ratio, surpassing $15 million in the early months to support COVID-response efforts on a local and global scale
• Facebook committed to matching $10 million in charitable gifts by the public, in addition to their existing policy for employees and retirees
• Google upped their match cap to a significant $20,000 per employee.

The scale of these actions reflects the size of these corporations, but small and mid-sized businesses can instill the same corporate practices with the same effect. Regardless of magnitude, these decisions made by industry giants reflect what they’ve noticed among their employee culture: social involvement and purpose-driven impact is an important part of employee satisfaction, competitive recruitment, and top talent retention.

Hilton: A case study in workplace happiness

At the end of 2020, Fortune released its list of the 100 best companies to work for based on self-reported workplace happiness of employees. The top 25 companies are similar to 2019, with a few exceptions, including Hilton. A newcomer to the top 25, Hilton climbed all the way to #1. Let’s consider their pandemic response.

Notably, Hilton partnered with American Express to donate one million hotel room nights across the U.S. for frontline workers. In addition, the company made a $1 million contribution to the World Central Kitchen, providing healthy, fresh meals for healthcare providers.

Their Hilton Effect Foundation Grants provided an additional $1 million in community response efforts. Meanwhile, their success in cutting their environmental footprint in half and doubling their social impact investments worldwide led them to be named the global industry leader in sustainability for the second year in a row.

It is the case that the Hilton team was able to impart a significantly positive impact on many communities throughout COVID-19. But it’s also the case that those social initiatives occupied a large part of the company mission, meaning that those goals were a constant part of an employee’s day-to-day responsibilities.

The sequential earning of both titles, ’global leader in sustainability’ and ‘best place to work,’ is no coincidence. But it is perhaps the day-to-day experience of striving for environmental and social impact, rather than the final culmination of the effort, that makes the Hilton work experience so fulfilling. In terms of ESG as a workforce strategy, it’s a model to look up to.

It’s about good intentions

Again, it’s not the scale of the initiative, but the intention behind it: purposeful ESG as a workforce strategy needs to be top of mind to attract and keep the best performing talent in the industry. Offering the time or financial resources that allow employees to volunteer in their own communities is another way for small or medium size businesses to achieve the same effect.

Similarly, smaller sized corporations can create social-oriented projects that allow each team member to contribute their expertise toward community impact. For example:

• Pay a web designer to create an order platform for a local food bank
• Offer senior executives days off to mentor younger professionals in the field
• Work in a standard donation amount into an employee’s salary to go toward the organization of their choosing

These are other ways to bring ESG aims closer to the day-to-day operations.

Post-COVID recruitment needs to center on similar questions. What opportunities are we providing for employees to bring their social awareness, environmental commitment, and global concerns into the workplace? The lines between home and work have blurred. With them, the demarcation between work purpose and life purpose has faded.

Employers that can offer a work culture that’s fulfilling, purpose-driven, and ESG-oriented will see their efforts rewarded in the prospective candidates and existing employees alike, and the post-COVID workplace will change for the better the way all real change takes place – from the ground up.

Tara Milburn is the Founder and CEO of Ethical Swag, a sustainable branding company that makes it easy for HR professionals to offer personalized promotional products that they can stand behind. Certified as a B-Corporation, Ethical Swag has been audited to the highest global standard for sustainability.

The post ESG as a workforce strategy: post-COVID attraction and retention 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.

Jump straight into the podcast or check out the transcription here.

As a practiced expert in global talent management, Tony had a lot to say. Here are the top takeaways from our conversation:

Make the commitment, then make it work

Virgin mogul Richard Branson once said: ”If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”

Tony would agree when it applies to the global talent market.

“My first tip here is to really focus on what’s really important, which is finding the best talent no matter where they are,” he says. “And worry later about these obstacles or these barriers that prevent you from hiring that talent.

Why? Because it makes sense

And forget whether your services are global or local. It makes a lot of sense to hire globally, because your talent market is much broader.

“If you were to say a startup in San Francisco or a startup in London, and you want to hire locally, what are the chances [that] the best talent will be in a 20-mile radius from your office? It’s like 0.1%,” Tony says.

“So how can you explain statistically that this is a good strategy for talent acquisition, where over 99% of the great talent is elsewhere?”

He points to hubs of engineering in areas such as Eastern Europe and Latin America that have a much higher representation of highly talented developers who specialize in specific coding languages – all of which presents an opportunity for smart companies who tap into the global hiring market.

Talent distribution aside, Tony points to other benefits:

1) Local connectivity makes better EX

There are huge benefits in the new reality of living where we work and working where we live – especially for the employee.

Tony shares his own example.

“Now my identity is work but it’s also family. I spend more time with my children, with my partner,” he says of his work-life integration. “It’s my community as well.”

He talks about an elderly neighbor in the small French village where he lives and works. “He can’t walk very well. And his chimney broke in the middle of the winter and he needed somebody to take him to the store, buy something to come and fix the chimney. So he called me at 2 in the afternoon, and I had a 45-minute gap in my schedule.

“So I was able to go and bring him to the store and build it. And I felt more connected to him.”

And what does that mean for the new working environment?

“If I was in the office,” Tony explains, ”I would have missed that opportunity to help him out. And so I feel much more connected to my local community. So that’s good news for the world. And that’s good news for people.”

And when employees feel more connected to their families and communities even when on the job, they’ll be happier. That speaks volumes for overall employee engagement (EX) and experience.

2) Remote can outperform office

Tony says that, if executed properly, a remote-work environment can actually be more productive and engaged than the alternative.

“For instance, a virtual environment requires you to share leadership more, so essentially because everybody is in different locations and the leader cannot do everything like they used to do in the office, then suddenly you have an opportunity for other leaders to come in and fill that gap. So it becomes a great place to grow leaders faster in the business.”

It’s not just about collective leadership. Remote also fosters a more equitable and democratic working environment that brings the best out of people.

“The best ideas win,” Tony says. ”[W]hen you used to work in an office and you go to a meeting room and usually the loudest person in the room monopolizes the discussion, but you have maybe this introverted, brilliant person on the side [and] they’re not sharing their ideas.”

And now, working online across locations, there’s a more collaborative spirit via a shared document where everyone is able to bring something to the proverbial table, and have a conversation, Tony says.

“The role of the leader is really to be aware of these superpowers and create an environment that actually facilitates and fosters these benefits.”

3) There are social and environmental benefits

There’s an added intangible that can speak volumes for your employer brand: the social impact that your organization has as a remote-first organization.

“If you remove the barriers to cross-border employment and enable companies to really tap into the global talent pool, you can reduce brain drain, which is really one of the major impacts of wealth distribution issues in the world.”

There’s also an environmental impact as well.

“Think about it; every year, we’re pouring the equivalent of four New York Cities in terms of concrete on planet Earth. And in many cities, it’s not a more livable condition.”

He notes the example of Delhi, where workers lose an average of seven hours of life expectancy due to the air pollution.

“I think the pandemic enabled us to realize that actually we are past that tipping point of sustainability of cities. And, I hope that the world will reverse that trend now that actually it’s not a necessity to be in the office to get the job done, at least for knowledge workers.”

Global talent market best practices

Convinced? Tony now has some best practices for you when executing on a global talent market strategy.

1) Ensure equal opportunity and experience

When you have a distributed team, you need to align your company success with your employee success, Tony says. This ties into employee experience, which can differ across locations.

Tony shares the example of a contact center in India that worked night shifts to accommodate the US market.

“There’s something we don’t really talk about … this lifestyle disparity when it comes to working from anywhere. [A]s a leader of an organization, my recommendation is to create an environment and a culture that gives everybody an equal opportunity, no matter where they are.”

Balance out the opportunities

Also, when hiring for more senior positions in tech, you’ll also find that talent is more concentrated to specific locations. For example, Tony says, senior talent has been focused in the Western world in the last 30 years.

And that can lead to further imbalances when it comes to opportunity within a company.

“[It’s important] that you think about how you develop the younger talent that come from emerging economies and giving them the opportunity to grow with your company and with the opportunity,” Tony says, “so we can start building the next generation of tech leaders from all over the world and not necessarily focused or centered around certain technology hubs in the world, such as the Silicon Valley, or London, or China.”

This also applies to the overall nature of remote work, where it comes naturally to some and more of a challenge to others – again a recipe for imbalance and unequal experiences across teams.

“There are certain trainings [where] you can upskill your talent force on remote work. You can teach your team how to behave, how to be productive, how to take care of themselves so that they don’t burn out.”

Focus on the results

To ensure equal opportunity and growth across locations, Tony also recommends shifting to a results-driven model.

“We’ve seen companies that have this obsession with output rather than input. Essentially we don’t care how [many] hours you put in to get the job done, as long as you have clear goals and you’re delivering on your goals,” he says.

“That goes a long way to create a culture where there’s a high degree of trust in order for anybody, anywhere they are, to grow in and develop in your company.”

2) Establish a strong company culture

The reality of working across locations – and especially, across cultures – is that there will be some inconsistencies as colleagues of different backgrounds collaborate on projects. There are ways around that, however – and the first big takeaway from Tony is that a strong company culture is essential if you want to overcome these challenges.

In short – the collective vision can be very powerful. But, Tony says, it doesn’t happen on its own.

“My experience having led two companies in the last 10, 12 years is that [there] are people from all over the world. Company culture definitely trumps country culture. … But you have to manage it. It’s not like by default this is going to happen.

“So you need to really be clear about how you create a strong company culture that actually is stronger than in local cultural specificities.”

Learn how Belgium-based startup ProxyClick built a great company culture that unifies and inspires its employees.

3) Standardize and prescribe a virtual working system

Working in a remote working environment means you need to actively build trust among colleagues. In a physical workplace, Tony says, trust grows naturally, but in a virtual environment, you have to work at it.

He shares the example of working with his product team. Syncing in real time is needed to align on ideas around product development, but an equally strong element of building a strong virtual work culture is in carrying out the actual work as a team.

“[At Oyster], we call them ‘tools and the rules’,” says Tony, adding that while you can get away with lack of clarity if you’re working together in the same office, that’s not the case when working across time zones, cultures and backgrounds.

“You have to be very prescriptive of how you work together. What tools do you use? When do you use them? What different meetings do you have?” Tony says.

And this system can’t be dictated top-down. It needs to be mutually built across the team.

“And you, as a team manager, have to be the best remote worker in your team to show the example for your team that this is something that everybody needs to buy into, and it gets reinforced.”

4) Know how job attractors differ across cultures

Building a strong employer brand is essential to candidate attraction, of course. But that becomes a unique challenge when sourcing and attracting talent in different locations.

Tony agrees, sharing a hypothetical example of a person named Mary in Nigeria, who has the option to work at a local bank for a contract and the best benefits in the area.

“You want to be able to match that, you want to be able to understand what ‘good’ looks like in country X, and then extend a generous offer to that employee,” Tony says.

He adds the value of job security for someone like Mary.

“That goes to first hiring them as a full-time employee rather than a contractor, so that you can reduce their anxiety and provide them with the ability of having a stable job and a stable income. And then supplement that with whatever local benefits Mary expects to see from a top employer in that country.”

Benefits will be different as well

Tony then talks about other countries that put more weight on certain benefits, such as the United States where health insurance is an absolute must-have. In France, on the other hand, the expectation is more about restaurant vouchers, with health insurance more complementary rather than a core benefit.

In other countries still, health benefits are a non-issue because of a universal health care system.

There are also other elements at play in a global talent market, Tony says.

“[Maybe] there is a fear of cultural differences. Maybe people in that country think differently than people in that country. There are administrative and legal and tax challenges that companies have to go through. […] So every country is different and you have to navigate that.”

Adapt and thrive in the global talent market

“The war on talent is going distributed,” Tony says. “The companies that have thought about how to enable a strong culture, how to enable a distributed workforce to grow and develop – they are the ones that are going to attract the best and the brightest talents in the world. And there’s no going back on this.”

Employees have that expectation as well, and Tony says employers need to pay close attention to that.

“Employees are asking for an extra degree of freedom, which is location. [They] want to be able to live wherever they want to live,” he says.

“That’s hard for companies to manage if they want to go back to an office-only culture, because talent will go to wherever they have more freedom and that’s assuming equal pay and equal benefits.”

Tony adds that 1.5 billion knowledge workers will be entering the workforce in the next 10 years. He says this is the biggest labor democratic shift since the Industrial Revolution.

“We have that opportunity now as a world to rethink what work is and make it more sustainable and more focused on bringing that opportunity to people no matter where they are.”

Ultimately, the global talent market is about people and quality of life.

“We want to have a future where people have a choice in where they want to live. And they don’t necessarily have to live in the city. It becomes a choice if they decide to want to live in a city, but if they decide not to, they shouldn’t be forced to be living in a crowded space. And that’s the world that we want to portray [at Oyster].”

The post The global talent market: the new land of opportunity is anywhere 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.

• What is Upwork?
• How much does it cost to post a job on Upwork?
• Upwork job posting reviews
• How to post your job on Upwork
• Posting to Upwork using Workable
• Frequently asked questions about Upwork

What is Upwork?

Upwork is a platform that pairs freelancers with employers searching for assistance on projects that vary by time commitment, industry, and skill level. Employers post job listings with an in-depth description of their project and the type of freelancer they’re looking for. Upwork provides a matching service that automatically suggests qualified freelancers for your project.

Freelancers can also send bids or proposals for your project. Either way, you end up with a selection of qualified freelancers who are interested in working with you.

How much does it cost to post a job on Upwork?

Upwork has both free and paid plans for employers, depending on your needs. The ‘free’ plan still involves small fees to Upwork for administration, but it won’t cost you anything to list your jobs. Their paid plan, starting at $49.99/month, gives you all the benefits of the free plan but with advanced Upwork support, and more opportunities to connect directly with freelancers. If you’re a larger company looking for a bulk posting plan, you can contact Upwork for a custom pricing plan.

Upwork job posting reviews

Upwork reviews are generally positive. Because Upwork connects freelancers with companies, reviews come from both freelancers and their clients. Each of these groups has a different perspective on the pros and cons of Upwork.

Positive reviews say that Upwork helped them find great freelancers to help them complete their projects. Freelancers say that Upwork connects them with clients and helps them make a living. For freelancers just starting out, Upwork offers the advantage of holding payment in escrow, so that they don’t fall victim to scammers or phony clients. The sheer number of companies looking for freelancers on Upwork is also an advantage.

Negative reviews say that Upwork customer service can be poor. For freelancers, Upwork generally offers bottom-of-the-barrel pay and for that reason, many highly qualified freelancers choose not to work on the site. This means that quality of work may be lacking for companies hiring on Upwork— as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Upwork also charges fees, and many freelancers are turned off by having to share a cut of their revenue.

How to post your job on Upwork

Join Upwork as an employer

To post a job on Upwork, you first need to create an employer profile. Use your professional email address to create an account and fill out relevant information about your organization.

Share details about your job or project

Click ‘create a new job listing’ and fill out the form with information about the job you’re hiring for. Keep in mind that these details will be shared publicly, so be honest about your project and share any relevant information that your future freelancer should know.

Once you’ve filled out the basics of the job listing, you’ll want to select a category and set requirements for experience, resume, and other criteria.

Post or save your job

Review the information for accuracy and style. When you’re satisfied with your job listing, you can post it or save the draft for later.

Posting to Upwork using Workable

To save the hassle of posting to Upwork manually using the steps above, we recommend that you use Workable for your recruiting needs. Workable integrates seamlessly with job boards across the web to make posting as simple as the click of a button. After Workable posts your listing across a number of job boards of your choice, it aggregates candidate responses to your posts and presents them to you in an easy, searchable database that helps you instantly find the most qualified candidates. You can post a job to Upwork using an assigned job shortlink which allows you to track the numbers from Workable.

Don’t bother with posting on job boards one at a time. Try Workable today and see how our software can save your recruitment team time and money.

Frequently asked questions about Upwork

I’m looking for a full-time employee. Can I hire candidates on Upwork?

Unless you’re looking for a full-time contract employee for only a short, predetermined period of time or to complete a specific project with clear milestones, Upwork is not a good fit. It is a job board for freelancers, which means that candidates on Upwork will be looking for short-term or part-time projects. If you are looking for a full-time, permanent employee, try checking out a different job board like Indeed or ZipRecruiter.

Is Upwork legitimate?

Yes, Upwork is a legitimate site for freelancers and companies looking to work with contractors. They take steps to vet freelancers and companies, and can hold payment in escrow until the project is completed. That being said, as we discussed, some users do have complaints about Upwork customer service and how those complaints are resolved.

Is Upwork free?

Yes, you can post jobs or look for work on Upwork for free. Upwork does charge fees, which some users are opposed to.

Is Upwork international or limited to U.S. freelancers only?

Upwork is an international site, so freelancers from around the world are permitted to search for and accept work through the portal. If you prefer domestic freelancers only for language or time zone reasons, Upwork does offer you the option to specify U.S.- only candidates in your job listing.

Now you’re all set to post your job on Upwork! If you are overwhelmed by your options, contact us today to learn more about how Workable can streamline your recruiting process with Upwork and many other job boards.

Want to know more about posting jobs? Take a deep dive with our Ultimate Guide to Job Posting.

The post How to post a job on Upwork appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What is Trovit?
• How much does it cost to post a job on Trovit?
• Trovit job posting reviews
• How to post your job on Trovit
• Posting to Trovit using Workable
• Frequently asked questions about Trovit

What is Trovit?

Trovit is a job board aggregator, which means that instead of hosting original job listings, it collects job listings from many other websites and presents them together in a large, international database. Because of the sheer number of job boards Trovit pulls from, Trovit jobs can number more than 200 million at any given time. Job seekers can use Trovit to search across a number of job boards simultaneously.

How much does it cost to post a job on Trovit?

Because it is a job aggregator rather than a job board, employers cannot post jobs directly on Trovit. If you want your ad to appear in a Trovit job search, make sure you post it on a compatible job board or manually connect your company’s job board to Trovit’s database.

Trovit job posting reviews

Unlike some other job boards, Trovit is best suited for job seekers rather than recruiters or other HR staff. For this reason, reviews tend to focus on the user experience for job candidates.

On the positive side, Trovit has the advantage of size, housing millions of jobs for candidates to search through. It’s also an international site, so users can sort jobs by their country of origin or where they’d like to work. Positive reviews say Trovit helped them find a job.

On the negative side, many users report spam listings and scammers on Trovit. Because of Trovit’s sheer size and the fact that listings are hosted on other job boards, it can be a challenge for it to verify every single job listing that appears on its site. If you’re a job seeker using Trovit, it’s a good idea to use internet safety best practices and stay skeptical of any job that seems too good to be true.

How to post your job on Trovit

As we’ve discussed, there is no way to post a job directly on Trovit. However, there are still a few steps you can take if you want your job listing to appear in Trovit job searches.

Post your job on a compatible job board

Jobs listed on Trovit are pulled from many different job boards. If you’d like your listing to appear on Trovit, you can post it on an eligible job board such as ZipRecruiter or Jobleads. Trovit recommends searching on their website to see which job boards promote jobs in your area of interest, so that you can get a better idea of where exactly to post your listing.

Sync your native job portal with Trovit

If your organization has its own feed of job listings, you can arrange for your feed to sync with Trovit and automatically post new jobs to their site. Just follow the instructions on their Partners page. You can also use this option to promote certain jobs.

Posting to Trovit using Workable

The easiest and most effective way to make sure your job posting appears on Trovit is to use Workable. Workable allows your organization to post the same job across multiple free and paid job boards simultaneously. Posting your job with Workable saves time and maximizes candidate exposure, increasing the chances that the best candidate will come across your job listing.

Even better, Workable collects and sorts candidate responses from many websites and presents them to you in one user-friendly, searchable database. There’s no easier way to find the most qualified candidates.

If you’d like to learn more about how Workable can simplify your recruitment process, click here.

Frequently asked questions about Trovit

Is Trovit free to use?

Trovit is free for anyone searching for jobs. For organizations looking to post jobs on Trovit, costs may be incurred from posting on a compatible job board or while advertising, but you don’t technically have to pay in order for your job to appear on Trovit.

Is Trovit legitimate?

Yes, Trovit is a legitimate website and not a scam. That being said, watch out for fishy job listings or anyone looking for your personal information. Trovit monitors jobs posted on its site and you can report any ad or posting that looks suspicious.

I live outside the U.S. Can I find a job on Trovit?

Yes. Trovit is an international job board aggregator. On Trovit’s home page, you can refine your search to your country.

How do I find a job on Trovit?

Use Trovit’s search features to look for job titles you think you’d be qualified for, or browse by category or region.

Now you’ve got everything you need to post your job on Trovit! If you prefer a simpler way of sharing your job to job boards across the internet, contact us for a Workable demo.

Want to know more about posting jobs? Take a deep dive with our Ultimate Guide to Job Posting.

The post How to post jobs on Trovit appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What is CareerBuilder?
• How much does it cost to post a job on CareerBuilder?
• CareerBuilder job posting reviews
• How to post your job on CareerBuilder
• Posting to CareerBuilder using Workable
• Frequently asked questions about CareerBuilder

What is CareerBuilder?

CareerBuilder is a website devoted to connecting candidates with their perfect job. For job seekers, CareerBuilder offers access to one of the largest job boards online, as well as visibility to recruiters looking for new talent. The site is also home to a number of useful resources for job applicants, such as a salary comparison tool and other reference materials. For recruiters and companies, CareerBuilder is a source of millions of qualified candidates actively seeking employment.

How much does it cost to post a job on CareerBuilder?

CareerBuilders job posting pricing is available on a number of different payment plans. You can pay per job, which is the priciest option. Your first job will cost you $375; each additional job will be $250. If you’re posting more jobs or want a more affordable plan, CareerBuilders also offers monthly and annual plans that are more cost effective.

CareerBuilder job posting reviews

As is true with any large job board, candidates and recruiters have mixed opinions. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using CareerBuilders to post a job or find a job.

On the positive side, reviewers say that CareerBuilders has lots of active jobs posted on the site. Some share that they’ve successfully found a job on the site, or that it is useful for helping them find qualified candidates.

On the flip side, some reviewers take issue with the way their personal contact information and data is treated once they share it with the site. Some candidates received spam emails or phone calls. As is the case with many other job boards, reviewers say that a portion of the jobs on the website are fake.

How to post your job on CareerBuilder

Navigate to their For Employers section

Once you click on For Employers in the upper right, go to Post a Job. This will take you to a page that lays out the details of their pricing and terms.

Choose a pricing plan

Though they do offer a free demo, CareerBuilder does not have a free trial for employers. In order to post your job, you’ll have to choose a pricing plan. Prices range from cost per job listing to a monthly or annual fee. Once you pay, you’ll have access to empty job listings for you to fill out and post.

Post your job

Fill out all the applicable information and submit your job. Now you’re ready to receive applications from qualified candidates!

Posting to CareerBuilder using Workable

If you are a recruiter or HR team member looking to post jobs across many different job boards, the prospect of going through and posting on each one individually is overwhelming. With Workable, you can save your time and energy by using our seamless CareerBuilders integration.

Workable can post your job simultaneously across up to 200 of the major job boards with no hassle. Once you start receiving responses to your job listing, Workable can sort and prioritize your candidates, freeing up valuable time for what really matters.

Frequently asked questions about CareerBuilder

Can I post my job on CareerBuilder?

Yes. CareerBuilder is not a job board aggregator, but a unique job board where employers pay to post their jobs listings.

How do I find a job on CareerBuilder?

There are multiple ways to find a job on CareerBuilder! You can search by job title and location. You can also upload your resume and allow recruiters to connect with you or contact you directly.

Is CareerBuilder a scam?

No, CareerBuilder is not a scam, although some reviewers have noted that they have received unwanted emails and phone calls after posting their information publicly on CareerBuilder. This is a risk with any job site where you make that contact information public. You can protect yourself by using a Google Voice phone number and/or a dedicated email address.

Now that you have the information you need, you’re ready to post your job on CareerBuilder and get hiring! If you’d like to learn more about how you can simplify your hiring process with Workable, click here.

Want to know more about posting jobs? Take a deep dive with our Ultimate Guide to Job Posting.

The post How to post a job on CareerBuilder appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What is Dice.com?
• How much does it cost to post a job on Dice.com?
• Dice.com job posting reviews
• How to post your job on Dice.com
• Posting to Dice.com using Workable
• Frequently asked questions about Dice.com

What is Dice.com?

Dice.com is a job board and networking site for professionals in the tech industry. It hosts over nine million active profiles for tech professionals in the United States. For tech workers, Dice provides networking opportunities and a rich, up-to-date job board. For recruiters and companies, Dice offers access to a searchable database of tech talent.

How much does it cost to post a job on Dice.com?

Dice.com has a tiered pricing structure for employers looking to post jobs on its site. The more jobs you post, the less you pay per post. One job will cost you $395, two jobs $325 each, three jobs $305 each, and so on. They also offer special pricing for those looking to post in high volumes.

Dice.com job posting reviews

Dice.com has a reputation for being one of the best tech-specific job board and recruitment sites out there.

Positive reviews say that Dice job postings attract qualified candidates and simplify the recruiting process. Reviewers like how customizable the search features are on Dice.

Negative reviews say that the site can be buggy and difficult to use. Some find that Dice contains fake candidate listings, or incorrect candidate contact information. There’s also the price point, which makes Dice cost prohibitive for some employers.

How to post your job on Dice.com

Dice job postings can be a bit tricky to get uploaded to the site. Here’s what you need to do to list your job there.

Navigate to the employer portal

You’ll need to log in with your employer information; if you don’t have this info yet, you’ll need to sign up. Once you’re logged in, click Jobs and then Post a Job.

Fill out job posting information

Fill out the Dice job posting form with specific information about the position, such as title, salary, education experience, and so on. After you fill out this information, you can also link your recruiter profile to the job posting so candidates can contact you.

Post your job listing

Once you’ve shared information about the job and specified how candidates can apply, you’ll want to make your listing public. You can click Post as Active or save the listing as a draft to come back to later. If you haven’t pre-purchased any job credits, you’ll have to do so before posting your job.

Posting to Dice.com using Workable

Posting your job listing directly to Dice.com can be time-consuming and complicated! Workable makes things simple with an easy-to-use Dice integration. Workable works seamlessly with over 200 job boards, including Dice, to push your job listing out to all the relevant boards. Once you start receiving responses, Workable collects and organizes candidate profiles from many sources into one searchable database, even pulling out the top candidates for you.

If you’d like to learn more about how Workable can simplify your hiring process, click here.

Frequently asked questions about Dice.com

How can I find a job on Dice.com?

If you’re a job seeker, you can look at open positions on the Job Search tab. Be sure to check out their career development resources as well.

I’m not in tech. Can I still find a job on Dice.com?

Dice job postings are specific to folks in the technology industry. If you’re looking for a job in a field other than tech, you’ll want to check out a general job board like Indeed.

I’m a recruiter. Can I find tech talent on Dice.com?

Yes! You can search the Dice database for relevant individuals, but in order to do so you’ll need an official employer account.

Do Dice job postings come from other job boards?

Only if they are cross-posted by the employer. Dice is not a job board aggregator.

Now you’re all set to post your job or find suitable candidates on Dice.com. If you want to learn more about how Workable can improve your recruitment process, click here.

Want to know more about posting jobs? Take a deep dive with our Ultimate Guide to Job Posting.

The post How to create a job posting on Dice.com appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What is Juju.com?
• How much does it cost to post a job on Juju.com?
• Juju.com job posting reviews
• How to post your job on Juju.com
• Posting to Juju.com using Workable
• Frequently asked questions about Juju.com

What is Juju.com?

Juju.com is a job aggregator that collects job postings from many other job sites and presents them to site visitors as an easy, searchable database. Unlike some other job posting aggregators, the main source of Juju’s web traffic comes by referral rather than direct search. Juju receives traffic from thousands of job candidates each month.

How much does it cost to post a job on Juju.com?

You don’t have to pay to post your job on Juju. Juju jobs are job listings which are automatically pulled from other job boards like Monster and Indeed. As long as you list your job on another common job board, free or paid, your job posting should appear in searches on Juju.com

That being said, if you want to be certain that your job will show up to candidates searching on Juju, you have the option of paying to advertise your job to job seekers.

Juju.com job posting reviews

Because Juju is a less popular job board, there aren’t too many reviews. Instead, here are some pros and cons of using the site.

On a positive note, Juju receives a good amount of web traffic. It allows users to search through jobs from many different job boards at once, rather than just one. That improves the chances of the right candidate coming across your job.

As for downsides, Juju is still far less popular than large job boards and even some other job post aggregators. Its web interface is dated, and just like any job post aggregator, a certain portion of the jobs listed there may be stale or expired.

How to post your job on Juju.com

As was previously mentioned, it isn’t possible to post your job directly on Juju. If you want your job listing to display there, you have two options.

List your job on another job board

While it’s not completely foolproof, listing your job on another job board is the best way to get your job listed on Juju for free.

Pay to advertise your job on Juju

The more reliable way to get your jobs to appear on relevant searches is to advertise your job on Juju. Sponsored posts on Juju send candidates directly to your company’s career site, and they offer advertisements on a pay-per-click basis, making this a highly scalable option for companies of any size.

Posting to Juju.com using Workable

The best and most efficient way to post your job on Juju is to list it using Workable. The Workable ATS enables you to simultaneously post your job across many different job boards and job aggregators, saving you time and money. When your candidates submit their resumes, our program stores them for you in a searchable smart database that can help you prioritize the most qualified candidates.

Don’t feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of job boards out there, or drown in thousands of resumes for a single position. Contact us today to learn more about how Workable can automate and simplify your hiring process.

Frequently asked questions about Juju.com

Can I post my job on Juju.com?

You can’t post your job directly on Juju.com. The best way to get your job posting to appear on Juju is to post it across the web simultaneously with using Workable.

Is Juju.com a scam?

No, Juju.com is not a scam.

How can I find a job on Juju.com?

Juju.com’s homepage hosts a simple search, where candidates can search by title and location, or filter by more advanced criteria. If you find a job that interests you, click on the relevant search result, and you’ll be directed to the website that hosts that listing, where you can apply.

Why should I promote my job on Juju.com?

As one of the oldest job boards on the internet, Juju has credibility with search engines, and around 800K site visits to date. It remains one of the smaller players in the job aggregator space, but the site does receive regular traffic and click-throughs on job postings and links.

By posting your job to Juju.com using Workable, you access a market of potential candidates that may not be looking elsewhere. With the simplicity of posting your job synchronously across many platforms using Workable, there’s no reason not to put it out there and see how it goes.

Want to know more about posting jobs? Take a deep dive with our Ultimate Guide to Job Posting.

The post How to post jobs on Juju.com appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What is Jooble?
• How much does it cost to post a job on Jooble?
• Jooble job posting reviews
• How to post your job on Jooble
• Posting to Jooble using Workable
• Frequently asked questions about Jooble

What is Jooble?

Jooble is a job-post aggregator that collects job postings from many websites across the web and presents them to you in one searchable web database. For companies that hire primarily international candidates, Jooble’s large percentage of international web visitors is a plus.

How much does it cost to post a job on Jooble?

Because Jooble is primarily a job vacancy aggregator, nearly all of the jobs visible to candidates on the site are taken from other job boards. There is no free option to post jobs directly on Jooble. If you want to be sure your job posting appears on Jooble, you’ll want to manually post the position on another job board, and then pay Jooble to promote your posting in response to certain search keywords.

Jooble doesn’t share information publicly about how much they charge for sponsored search results and email placements, but they do operate on a PPC, or pay-per-click model, similar to much other internet advertising.

Jooble job posting reviews

Reviews of Jooble seem to be mixed. On Trustpilot, where users can submit reviews of websites, Jooble has an average of 3.3 stars, with 51% of respondents rating the site as ‘excellent’ and 44% rating it as ‘bad’.

Positive respondents say that Jooble helps them find qualified job candidates. There don’t seem to be many positive reviews from job seekers themselves, and since they’re the primary users of Jooble, this could be a red flag.

Negative reviewers say that Jooble overwhelms your email inbox with spam, that Jooble allows fraudulent job postings to be listed in its database, and that many of the job listings on the site are old or expired.

How to post your job on Jooble

As we discussed, there is no way to post a job directly on Jooble for free. Here are two other ways you can post your job on Jooble.

Post to another job board

One way to post your job on Jooble is to post it on another common job board like LinkedIn, Indeed, or ZipRecruiter. Jooble should update and start showing your job posting in response to relevant searches on its site.

Sponsor your job post on Jooble

The other way to post on Jooble is to pay to advertise your job on the site or to their newsletter subscribers.

Posting to Jooble using Workable

Instead of hassling with posting to job boards one by one and wondering whether your postings are reaching qualified candidates, simplify your hiring process with Workable. Workable is seamlessly integrated with more than 200 job boards, including Jooble. Workable lets you simultaneously post to multiple job boards so that you can save your time for what matters: quality face time with candidates.

Contact us today to learn more about how Workable can make your hiring process easier and more efficient.

Frequently asked questions about Jooble

Can I post my job directly to Jooble?

No.

How much does it cost to post my job on Jooble?

If you post your job on a free job board that syncs with Jooble, it doesn’t cost anything to list your job posting. Otherwise, you can pay to sponsor your job listing on Jooble on a pay-per-click basis.

Is Jooble a scam?

No, Jooble appears to be legitimate and has significant traffic from job seekers. However, keep in mind that some users have concerns about email spam and stale job listings.

Is there an easier way to post my job on Jooble?

Yes! Workable is an ATS that makes it easy to post your job listing to many job boards simultaneously. Workable also lets you sort resumes from job applicants so that you can quickly find the best person to fill your role.

Now you’ve got everything you need to post your job on Jooble’s job aggregator. If you’d like to simplify your recruiting process and easily find the best candidates, contact our team today to learn more about what Workable has to offer.

Want to know more about posting jobs? Take a deep dive with our Ultimate Guide to Job Posting.

The post How to post jobs on Jooble appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Dragging applicants over the coals

The post tells the story of one jobseeker who graduated into the workforce in 2001 into a standard recruitment process – you apply, you go through a few interviews, you talk awkwardly about salary, and then finally, you get the job offer, all within a few weeks.

But now? In that jobseeker’s own words:

“Interviews upon interviews, frivolous personality quizzes, unscheduled hour-long calls to discuss said quizzes, team/roundtable interviews with a half a dozen people grilling you and throwing you curveballs, creative submissions galore (requiring substantial unpaid work or ‘spec’ work), additional references from each company, drug tests, background checks, etc.”

While they understand that the point is to eliminate risk in taking on a new employee, they add:

“Some sort of risk is involved. You simply have to take a chance on the potential employee. You have to be able to determine if someone is a fit without building a comprehensive profile fit for the CIA.”

Plus, that burden of risk is being shifted to the candidate.

“It seems like it’s getting to the point where companies are seeking to eliminate all risk on their end while dragging applicants over the coals, subjecting them to endless hoops to be jumped through.”

In short: overanalyzing your job applicants will ultimately lead to a poorer candidate experience.

It’s not just one candidate complaint

There were more than 3,500 comments in response to this post. We’ve broken them down into five major candidate complaints, direct from the source:

1. Long game for the short job
2. Poor communications across the board
3. Duplicated efforts when applying
4. Making it unnecessarily weird
5. The job bait and switch

1. Long game for the short job

The gripe: The recruitment process takes much longer than what feels necessary. This is understandable if you’re evaluating candidates for a higher-lever position (director, VP, C-suite), but when you’re hiring for entry-level or relatively rudimentary roles, it can feel excessive, especially when there’s little payoff at the end.

Bkiersta: “My 19yo daughter had 3 interviews over several weeks to be a clerk at a local smoke shop. 3 interviews. 3 weeks to hire. For a $9.75 cashier job. It’s ridiculous!”

NimbyNuke: “I had to interview 3 times for a job [at] Subway like 6 years ago. Gave me immense pleasure to tell them on the last callback that I had already been hired somewhere else that didn’t need 3+ weeks to decide.”

MicrowaveEye: “Yes. Yes. Yes. Some of the things these employers do should be illegal. I recently had an interview process roll on for 8 weeks. They had me do countless long Zoom calls and create difficult portfolios I would normally do for big bucks. I interviewed with people that didn’t know about my job, people who were emailing the entire time I talked, and entry-level people that didn’t even understand my work. In the end, they said I was their top choice but they were going to create two new positions instead of one and wait for a few months because of covid. The nerve of these places.”

Guideinfo: “I recently spent 6. SIX. Siiiiix hours interviewing for a level entry hr position. Three separate interviews. Met the owner. Toured the grounds. Saw the cafeteria options. Was introduced to several different people and departments. I didn’t get the job.”

The lesson to be learned:

Your time to fill metric isn’t just for your own benefit. It also helps you see how much time candidates spend in your pipeline. What you don’t want is for your most prized candidates to self-select out of the process, get hired elsewhere, or complain publicly because you took too long for a decision on their status.

What you can do:

Do a deep audit of your recruitment funnel, using your applicant tracking system’s reporting tools. Look for the bottlenecks in the process where candidates spend most of their time. Identify the  causes for the delays, and correct them.

Try these solutions:

• Improve communications with hiring team members when their input or action is needed to move candidates through the funnel.
• Introduce tools to speed up the process, such as self-scheduling options and email triggers.
• Reassess whether you really need that additional interview or evaluation stage for certain roles.
• Spend more time developing your new employees and less time on hiring the “best” one. Having a great employee isn’t just about finding them; it’s also about developing them.

2. Poor communications across the board

The gripe: Candidates are often left in the dark in the process. While updating every single candidate is a lot to ask, jobseekers still need to decide whether to pursue another opportunity or just to know where they stand. Internal communications within your team are also a common candidate complaint.

ZipZopZoopittyBop: “The thing that blows my mind is that almost zero companies call you back to tell you that you didn’t get the job, even after you’ve interviewed one or multiple times. They seriously don’t give a single [expletive] about you as a person.”

ChairmanJawa: “Also add, not informing the applicant that they weren’t chosen. So you’ve just been waiting for months to hear something only to realize you’ve been ghosted.”

SeaKingDragon: “I had an interview booked for this week, it was a telephone interview but I took the day off work so I could focus on it. The designated time came and went without a word from them, I tried contacting them but have been ignored. I waited all afternoon for nothing and wasted a holiday day but get no apology or even an explanation as to why they stood me up. I’m expected to want to give my all to your company solely out of my own drive to see it succeed (because God forbid I want to work to earn money), yet they can have me chasing my tail and treat me as if my time is meaningless.”

Cjandstuff: “My now ex-wife actually got a job at Best Buy. Goes in for training. No one knew she was supposed to be there. After spending about an hour trying to find out what’s going on, she leaves. A month later the store manager calls her and asks how she likes the job.”

The lesson to be learned:

If you ‘ghost’ candidates when you’re no longer interested in them, if you don’t respond to requests for an update, or if your hiring team doesn’t seem aligned, it sends a message that you’re poorly organized and you don’t treat your people well. Candidates will call that out in their various networks – including Reddit and LinkedIn. This hurts your employer brand, and can lead to other jobseekers deciding not to apply for other roles with your organization.

What you can do:

While personal emails and phone calls for shortlisted candidates is ideal, that’s obviously not feasible for every situation. But ensure that every candidate gets notified whenever an action has been taken on their application.

Try these solutions:

• Set up an automated email system with trigger points.
• Keep your hiring team communications transparent and in a single place.

3. Duplicated efforts when applying

The gripe: Candidates spend hours crafting a solid resume and cover letter, only to have to reenter all their information again via the online application process.

Jim_from_snowy_river: “Do you also forgot the whole input your resume and cover letter and then spend the next hour answering the questions that are already answered on your resume and cover letter.”

Mycatiswatchingyou: “Don’t forget how they ask you for a resume with recommendations and a cover letter, only to have you type ALL of that information into their poorly-crafted online application. And no, don’t type ‘see resume’ because they explicitly say that typing that will get your application thrown out.”

The lesson to be learned:

One of the key aspects of entering candidate information into your ATS is so you have a standardized and scalable system making it easy to compare applications. Fair enough. But when your process requires reentering information that candidates have already shared with you, all you’re doing is handing off the hard work to them. That sets a poor candidate experience from the get-go.

What you can do:

Remember the candidate experience. Their resume has all the needed information already, and they’ve already shared that. Find a way that works for both of you.

Try these solutions:

• Invest in a “smarter” application system that allows resumes to be properly parsed with minimal additional maintenance.
• Add an “Apply with LinkedIn” button so that people can submit their LinkedIn profile as part of their application.
• Introduce a seamless application process that values the candidate’s time as well as the recruiter’s.

4. Making it unnecessarily weird

The gripe: Some parts of the hiring process are uncomfortable for some people, for example, an introvert who’s required to face three interviewers in a single setting.

BenAdaephonDelat: “As an autistic person, I hate the hiring process in IT. I hate the need to bull[expletive] about myself. I hate having to mask in an interview to seem like a ‘team player’. I hate getting asked questions that they don’t want honest answers to. … And even after all that, 9/10 you’re looking at a contract-to-hire position for a company that probably wants you to do 5 jobs for the price of 1, has no flexibility, and no respect for the fact that programmers need different office environments than most other people (especially when 90% of your employees are extroverts and you hire largely introverted developers).”

The lesson to be learned:

Not all jobs require all of the traits or skills that you’d love to see in a candidate. Some jobs, such as the above-mentioned developer roles, may have some collaborative element to them but that’s not the core criteria for success in a position. When you push a candidate through these seemingly unnecessary steps, you’re hurting the candidate experience again.

What you can do:

Go through the job opportunity with a fine-toothed comb. Look at each of the requirements and determine whether they’re really needed or just “nice to have”. And even for the “nice to haves”, think about how much you really need them for the role.

Try these solutions:

• Put your candidate at ease by telling them exactly what they can expect at each stage.
• Communicate openly about the purpose of each stage of the process as it pertains to the job itself.
• Don’t forget that you’re ultimately hiring for a job, not for a personality trait.
• Train your hiring managers on proper evaluation techniques so they’re not focused on areas not necessarily tied to job success.

5. The job bait and switch

The gripe: Candidates go through a lengthy process only to find out at the end that the job isn’t what they applied for, or it was changed at some point.

Belatorius: “It’s the same even for a technical degree. I just graduated for automation technician and I’ve had interviewers lie saying they were looking for maintenance only to turn around and state it was for a operator position. I’m still looking and the amount of experience asked for entry level is insane and often the titles are misleading. Came across several ‘automation technician’ job postings only to have the description describe it as a production gig. It’s a [expletive] storm. Companies bitch about not having enough skilled workers but they don’t want to take the time to train fresh grads for 6 months – 1 year.”

CatelynsCorpse: “My husband was laid off from his job of 14 years (20 years experience total as a graphics designer). Most of the local places that are hiring graphic designers want to pay $12/hr. AND they want you to have a bachelor’s degree. They all use the same personality tests and basic graphic design tests, and they all want you to do work for them (for free) to ‘see what you can do’. Half the time when he does get an interview, he arrives only to find out that WELL… ’I know that the job posting was for a Graphics Design job, but it’s not really a Graphics Design job, per se, it’s more of a Receptionist/Assistant/Salesperson/Assistant Manager job where you’ll have to do Graphics Design stuff from time to time.’”

Deepestbluest: “holy [expletive], I’m experiencing nearly the same thing right now. One particular position I’ve been in the interview process for (going on about a month now) has had me do multiple creative submissions to prove my ‘chops’ and now they’re asking me for something that would require a literal CREW of people and equipment I don’t have. I told them this and they’re like ‘well we’re looking for someone who can do it all’.”

And take another look at MicrowaveEye’s complaint in the first subsection above.

The lesson to be learned:

As above, your candidates are your customers. If you market a job falsely, it’ll antagonize them and hurt your employer brand. Just don’t do it.

What you can do:

Any reasonable candidate will understand that the role may not be the ideal fit for them, but will go ahead anyway because it’s mostly a good fit. They can also work with adjustments in the role based on their own qualifications. That’s fine, but stop the changes there. Also, candidates will respect you more if you set expectations from the get-go even if the job isn’t that clear.

Try these solutions:

• Meet with the hiring team and make sure you’re all aligned on the job description before posting, and stick to it.
• If something has to change, communicate that earnestly with the candidate as early as possible to respect their time and commitment.
• If you’re indeed looking to fill a utility, lower-paid position in your team because you’re a fast-evolving startup, be honest about that in the job ad and even the careers page. Candidates who opt to keep going are the ones you want.

And now, candidate attitudes are changing evolving

These candidate complaints make it clear: jobseekers are fed up. They’re deciding it’s just not worth going through a toxic evaluation process just to get a job.

For instance:

Katieleehaw: “Something has switched in my brain in the past few years, I think from a combination of the changing landscape of our world and also from, for the first time in my almost-40 years, I have been working for an employer that treats me with respect and is the opposite of a toxic environment. If I went to a job interview now, my attitude would be very different than it once was. I used to go in, like most of us, and basically try to politely beg/simper/people-please my way into the job, not because I particularly wanted it, but because I was desperate and they were the gatekeepers. Now I just don’t have time or energy for this [expletive]. I am an extremely capable person who can be a huge asset to any employer – I want to know what they can do FOR ME in exchange for that. Considering starting to interview just to practice this.”

You know what you have to do

We’ll let another Reddit commenter take it home:

WorkingContext: “It’s a good point that you bring up the risk, because it is a risk to hire someone, but if it doesn’t work out you let them go and hire someone new, if they’re worried about how hard it is to hire someone new, maybe rework your hiring process so it’s not that hard haha”.

Let’s repeat that: “Rework your hiring process so it’s not that hard.”

So, how does reworking that process look? Well, shorten that time to fill, for starters. Optimize the process. Keep communications alive and engaged. Make it an inclusive, fair experience for all applicants. And survey your candidates regularly – they are, after all, your target audience. Be sure to establish a baseline by tracking key metrics so you know where to improve.

The end result? Fewer candidate complaints. Impressed candidates who will apply again and tell their friends about it on Reddit and LinkedIn. That’s what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it?

The post 5 candidate complaints on Reddit and what to do about them appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Some companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Slack, Ford, Target, and Citigroup have already planned out and gone full steam ahead on their own version of a hybrid work model that includes both remote and in-office work, but that return-to-work plan is not going to work for every company.

Your return-to-work plan: What’s best?

To even begin to decide on what will work best for your team, you’ll need to ask yourself:

• Has the remote setup been working well for my company?
• Do my employees even want to go back to the office?
• If some do, how do we decide when, how and who goes back?
• And if opinions are split, how do we balance each side and make sure all employees’ preferences are heard and accounted for?

Those are the types of questions we’ll help you sort through.

Here are 6 tips to help you decide whether you should return to the office (if at all), so you can put together the best return-to-work plan for your company:

1. Listen to employee feedback

As challenging as this past year has been for businesses, it has arguably been far more challenging for individual employees since they’ve had to continue being productive despite what’s going on in their new working environment (their home), or how much child and family care coverage they have, and to what level their home office is equipped for remote work. Employees also have no choice but to look to their company leaders for guidance on what to do and how to move forward.

For that reason, you should take your employee feedback into consideration when deciding whether to go fully remote, go back to the office, or start a hybrid work model in your return-to-work strategy.

You can unlock your employee feedback in a few different ways:

• Sending an employee survey
• Having an open forum at an all-hands meeting
• Incorporating feedback exchange during individual 1v1 discussions

A perfect example of a company who has relied on employee feedback for their approach to returning to the office is IBM.

Earlier in 2021, IBM held a “global brainstorm” with the entire company to get real-time feedback about whether employees want to return to work, and how often. In that session that they call a “Jam” – 60% of employees said they wanted to go into the office one to three days a week and 72% said they saw the office as having a vital role for employees to come together and collaborate on projects in the future.

That exact employee feedback helped shape how IBM is approaching its future hybrid work model, which they admit isn’t set in stone and will need to adapt as the global pandemic situation develops differently around the world where their employees are.

An example of what not to do in a return-to-work plan comes from none other than Google.

Before vaccines were even available to most of their employees (CEO Sundar Pichai voiced intentions in early April 2021 about bringing employees back to the office; in L.A., vaccines were only made available to individuals 16 and older in mid-April), Google leadership decisively shared their commitment to return to the office, even while many of their employees don’t want to go back.

Google subsequently publicly backtracked their initial return to work plans in favor of a much more remote-friendly stance after finally listening to their employees’ feedback.

2. Refer to the data

Like with any major business decision, data is your friend. It helps give you an objective perspective of how others are approaching the same decision you’re about to make. Pair that current, relevant data with the employee feedback you’ve been gathering from inside your organization, and you’ll be in a much better position to design a path forward that works for you.

Some key questions to gather data around:

• Which working setup do employees typically prefer: remote, in office, or hybrid?
• How many days a week in the office vs. remote is most desirable?
• How are other company leaders thinking about returning to work?

In a PwC study, more than half (55%) of 1,200 workers surveyed said they prefer working remotely three days a week. Meanwhile, 68% of 133 U.S. executives said workers should be in the office at least three days a week, citing concerns that company culture will not survive a purely remote work model. Likewise, in an Envoy return to the workplace survey, nearly half of respondents (48%) say they’d like to work some days remotely and some days from the office.

Using data can also steer you towards something you hadn’t even thought about, such as the idea of negotiating a compromise with employees who feel strongly one way or another.

In that same Envoy study, 41% of workers said they would be willing to take a job with a lower salary if their company offered a hybrid work model. And a WeWork study revealed that 75% of employees are willing to give up at least one benefit or perk for the freedom to choose their work environment, while 64% would pay up to $300 for access to an office space.

If the operational costs of managing a hybrid work model is something that is holding you back from making a decision on a return-to-work plan, referring to data about different angles of this back-to-the-office challenge can offer alternative solutions to make everyone happy.

3. Assess the impact on your tools & processes

Whatever decision you make regarding going remote, back to the office, or hybrid, remember that your decision doesn’t just impact where your employees work but how they work – by themselves, with each other and with everyone else in their professional lives.

This means you’ll need to think about how your tools and processes would need to adapt to suit your future setup. These are some areas of your return-to-work plan where your tools and processes may change:

• Hiring. Your stance on remote, hybrid or in-office will impact your future recruiting efforts and who you’ll be able to attract. At the very least, your HR team will likely need to rework job descriptions and contracts, not only for new hires but for all your existing employees and contractors.
• Communication. Your employees have already done a lot of adapting to make employee communication work while remote, whether that means setting standard working hours, defining when to use Slack vs. email, or communicating more asynchronously. Whatever your future setup is, this is an area that you’ll need to continue to refine and create norms and standards around.
• Onboarding. Your onboarding process is designed to set your new team members up with everything they need to succeed, so you don’t want to drop the ball on that. Going forward, you’ll need to be clear on: how will employees be onboarded if they are working from home? How much in-person onboarding, if any, is required or expected? What does a remote employee onboarding process look like?
• Technology. Your company may have already provided a work-from-home stipend to employees to ensure they could continue to be productive while working from their homes. Will that be enough support in the long term? If not, what other technology needs will you need to address? Are there equity issues at play? What will these technologies cost?
• Performance evaluations. If employees and their managers rarely or never interact in person, what does that mean for your evaluation, promotion and compensation processes?

4. Consider your goals and vision as a company

How does a decision to go fully remote, hybrid, or back to the office align with your vision and goals as an organization?

This question is a crucial one to think through carefully, because you need to balance your company’s driving beliefs with the practical impact of those decisions on your business and HR processes.

A great example of a company who has managed this well is social media software company Buffer, who ditched their office way back in 2015 and have been a distributed company for years even before the pandemic. Their leadership’s perspective on remote work is well documented, and they were able to align on a remote work model as the right solution for their employees, for reasons including freedom, time zone coverage, productivity and lots more.

Does your team have to reach the same level of consensus as Buffer’s leadership team? Not necessarily. But you’ll always be better off using your company goals as a guide to your decision making than to neglect them.

Also, keep in mind that this step will be easier for some companies than others. Different people in your organization might view your company goals differently, which may prolong your ability to reach an agreement on a return-to-work plan. And if your business’ product or service requires regular, real-time face-to-face interaction with customers and clients, it might mean you can’t get rid of your office altogether even if you’re strongly considering it.

5. Be transparent

If you’re holding off any sort of employee communications about your decision until after that decision has been made, you’re communicating too late. What you’ll essentially be doing is fostering uncertainty among your employees and within your organizational culture, where rumors, gossip and assumptions will thrive.

What will typically follow closely after that is a wide sense of employee unrest and insecurity about your company’s (and their) future, and then a trend of team members starting to look for a job elsewhere where the remote vs. in-office stance is clear.

What happens if even you as a leader are uncertain about the future, and don’t have any information or decisions yet to share with employees? You can still create a communication plan in times of uncertainty, by sharing:

• What decisions you expect to make in the near future
• What your decision making process entails / who is involved
• When and how employees should expect to get updates on that decision

Covering these points of communication in periodic small meetings and one-and-ones will help you understand your individual team members’ most pressing issues. Also, ideally your organization has designated some forum or message board where employees can pose their questions, so that the communication on a return-to-work plan isn’t only flowing top-down.

6. Commit to a decision timeline

Deciding if (and then how) your employees are going back to the office isn’t something you should do lightly. And while, fortunately, nobody is forcing your company to make a decision by a certain date, it’s in your best interest to consider all of your options and pick a direction sooner than later.

Many employees already have their own expectations about what’s going to happen this year: according to a survey of 7,000 professionals on Blind, an anonymous professional network, 67% believe everyone will be back in the office by the end of next year. The other one-third of professionals believe they will be back in the office in the summer of 2021.

Rather than staying stuck in limbo, make your decision – or at least commit to when you will make your decision – to give employees peace of mind and certainty, and also give your HR and operations teams something to build upon.

A well-planned return-to-work plan can reap dividends for your organization in the form of increased employee engagement and mitigation of costly turnover. It’s worth putting some thought into it before rolling it out as a formal policy.

Linda Le Phan leads content for Compt, an employee stipends platform that’s fully customizable to your company’s needs, 100% IRS-compliant, and supports global teams.

The post Remote, hybrid or back to the office? How to decide on the right return-to-work plan for your company appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

So, why learn how to use video in hiring? As Elena Valentine of Skillscout.com says in a conversation with Workable at LinkedIn Live, “It’s how we learn. We are visual learners, and that’s from a biological standpoint. There really is an art and science to why video works. We retain 65% of what we see and hear versus what we read. 80% of our brains are dedicated to processing visuals.”

Not only are we visual animals – we also live in a world where video is king.

“This is a YouTube generation. And if you think that we’re going to YouTube to learn how to braid our hair and get tours of the White House and everything else, we are absolutely going to YouTube [to learn] about jobs, plain and simple.”

Elena points to the pandemic as forcing us “to start to think differently about how we’re showcasing jobs, people, environments. [We’ve] really had to flip it into high gear when it comes to the value of video.”

You can ‘see’ employee testimonial videos

Using video in your hiring process also helps candidates visualize the day-to-day of a job more than a job description ever could.

That’s especially the case with specific roles, Elena says. She recounts SAC Wireless, a client who wanted to show the day-to-day work of their cellphone tower workers – who often operate hundreds of feet up in the air. They were struggling with employees leaving soon after starting.

“[New employees] go up for the first time, realize just how frighteningly scared they were of heights and then quit,“ Elena says, adding that this would happen even after recruiters were clear about that part of the work in interviews.

This meant producing a video depicting exactly what the work would entail, involving the POV of workers from the top of towers in a series of employee testimonial videos.

“This is going to be your world,” Elena says in describing the intended message in the video. “Rest assured we keep it safe. We have a culture of safety and a team that really supports you, but this is the work.”

The result?

“They significantly reduced their turnover because of an entire brand campaign and their video went viral.”

The connectivity of video

While video can’t ever replace the full hiring process, says Elena, it can help enrich the applicant pool you have for a job opening. You’ll have a more invested group of candidates who are actively interested in the specific position and not just slinging resumes at every job opportunity.

This can lessen the time and work involved in sifting through the applications you get for a role, Elena adds.

“Rather than the 500 candidates that you got, a lot of them who may not be a good fit or on the cusp, you’re getting candidates who are saying, ‘I’ve watched this video, I see the challenge, and I’m still willing to apply.’”

How to use video in the hiring process

Great, you’re on board. You’re ready to get crackin’. But making employer branding videos can get complex at times.

So we picked up some lessons from Elena, who’s been doing this for a long time as the CEO of Skillscout. Here are six best practices on how to use video in the hiring process, from her LinkedIn Live session with Workable.

1. Don’t overthink it

First, don’t overthink it. “There’s no wrong or immediate right way to do video. … That’s the thing that people have to get over,” Elena says, quipping about the unrealistic expectations that a recruiter or hiring manager must have a Hollywood-sized budget or possess filmmaking skills to rival Martin Scorsese.

On the contrary, it’s more about finding that important balance between authenticity and brand, Elena says.

“You can actually do this in a way that still is quality, still as authentic, but also reaches a level of consistency that marketing and others would be okay with sharing publicly.”

2. Think about quality over quantity

Although it’s nice to have numerous candidates applying for a job so you have the luxury to choose, that’s the wrong approach, suggests Elena.

“The question should be, ‘Are we getting the right eyeballs on these videos?’” she says. “It has less to do with the metrics of; ‘We’ve had 50,000 people [see this video].’”

Instead, ask yourself: “Did the right 10 people in our application process who are kick-ass engineers see this video? And did they understand exactly what we could offer them?” Elena suggests. That’s where the key differentiator is.

3. Think about the ‘recruitment funnel’

A core tenet of sales and marketing strategy is the “funnel” It’s described in so many different ways. Ultimately, you can think about it in three stages. First is“top of funnel”, the moment where your audience becomes aware of you. Further down is “middle of funnel”; where your audience now knows you and wants to get a little deeper into the specifics. Finally, there’s “bottom of funnel”; in other words, the stage where your audience makes a decision based on what they’ve learned.

Workable’s EMEA VP Rob Long describes it as a “pragmatic recruitment framework”, in which he takes a page from the pragmatic marketing framework.

Elena speaks a lot about that in understanding how to use video in the hiring process. “You can build a series of videos to engage the varying levels of interests that a candidate has in the role or in your company. At the very top of the funnel is that introductory video.”

She explains: “We are just here to create a level of brand awareness and interest. Maybe this is a company that does really great stuff, but no one’s ever heard of them before.”

Once the candidate is interested, you can get right into the details of the job itself.

“When we’re on the job post, which is, ‘All right, I’m a shoe designer, and at this point I’m looking to understand, do I want to be a shoe designer at Nike or do I want to be a shoe designer at Adidas?’”

That’s where employee testimonial videos can come in incredibly useful, she adds.

“There’s some pretty specific stories of, ‘All right, now that I’m getting an understanding of the culture, what is it really like to work in these specific roles at these specific companies?’”

4. Be specific – and keep it short

No one likes a long, rambling video that doesn’t properly inform the candidate on what they want or need to know. This especially holds true when you’re looking to engage busy candidates applying for several jobs in a single day.

That’s why, when understanding how to use video in the hiring process, you must keep your videos concrete and tight.

“[You] want to think about the role itself,” says Elena. “Who are the folks that they might be working with or that department? The second is going to be show, not tell, which clearly the medium of video allows us to do that.”

Elena reminds us that it’s important to keep it contained.

“About 90 seconds is typically the sweet spot, especially given social media and the ways people are able to peruse.”

5. Be honest – warts and all

There’s a reality about work that can’t be ignored – sometimes, it does suck.

“We cannot put lipstick on a pig,” says Elena. “This has to be a balance both of what the opportunity is and also what the challenges are going to be, because candidates are going to smell a stock video, a stock photo, a stock feeling and emotion from a mile away.”

It’s tempting to gloss over the negatives, but candidates will appreciate honesty.

“They recognize that our jobs aren’t perfect, and if you could be the first one to tell that to them and they don’t have to find that out on the first day of the job or the first 90 days on the job, even better. They will respect you more for it.”

Elena explains that this is top of mind for her and Skillscout, especially when it comes to younger candidates.

“This isn’t just about showing the sunshines and rainbows of a role. We all know that there are sucky parts of all jobs and we need to be about as upfront about that as possible when it comes to this.”

There’s a practical aspect to it too – enriching the talent pool with candidates who really do want the role.

“We want to give candidates an opportunity to self-screen in or self-screen out. And it’s perfectly okay if a candidate is going to self screen out as result of this, because we’re not here to waste their time. We’re also not here to waste ours.”

Workable’s CEO Nikos Moraitakis himself follows this code on describing life at Workable: “It involves doing a lot of things that you would rather not be doing, but down the line, there may be something in it that may improve the way a lot of people work.”

Read more about why it pays to be authentic in your recruitment marketing strategy.

6. Good questions mean great answers

Your videos will ultimately feature your current employees, and you want them to share some of the more interesting aspects of their work. That means you’re interviewing them – and when you do that, don’t just ask them to describe their day at work. Throw some interesting questions at your employees that they will be excited to answer.

For instance, ask them to describe the surprises they had when they first started at the job, says Elena.

Elena suggests a few other questions you can ask:

• “What is it about your work that you’re most proud of?”
• “What is it about your work that people would be surprised to know about?”
• “What makes you stay? What makes you come back every day?”

And her personal favorite: “What makes your heart sing?”

“It really gets fascinating from a layperson’s point of view to say, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize that this much effort, et cetera, goes into creating this one piece of cereal,’” says Elena.

Video attracts the real-life stars

Video really is another tool in your recruitment marketing playbook. Learning how to use video in the hiring process – including in the careers page, the video interview, and even outright employer brand promotion – can really show off the job and the work environment in action in ways that static words on a screen or paper can never do.

And it’s about keeping up with the times, adds Elena.

“In today’s day and age, the way that we communicate our culture, our brand, the way that we get people interested in our role and the right people interested in our company is through video.”

The post How to use video in the hiring process: 6 tips from an expert appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With those metrics on hand, you now have a baseline of concrete numbers to start from, allowing you to track your DEI progress and establish clear goals.

Table of contents:

• How to measure diversity: Best practices
• Gender, sex, and sexual orientation questions
• Race and ethnicity questions
• Religion questions
• Disability and impairment questions
• Socio-economic questions

Multiverse Senior Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Manager Siobhan Randall ties this back to crucial business elements, including candidate attraction and employer branding:

When building a sustainable DEI strategy, Siobhan asks: “Is inclusion really embedded within our employee value proposition? Are people from underrepresented backgrounds going to want to work at the company?”

“How can we make ourselves look and feel like a place that anyone would want to work at, especially individuals from underrepresented backgrounds? We’re definitely doing that reflection on our brand.”

Siobhan continues, pointing out the real value of anonymously surveying your candidates as part of your overall employee engagement metrics:

“From the point of application, each stage of the recruitment process and then, once hired, we’re looking at outcomes like progression and retention.”

How to measure diversity: Best practices

We fully understand that surveying your candidates on personal characteristics can be socially and legally sensitive. Importantly, the information you’re collecting is not related to specific jobs – nor should it be. It’s only for the purpose of furthering your DEI strategy.

There are three best practices to think about here: candidate communication, survey standardization, and the language of the survey itself.

Communicate clearly

First, it’s important to know how to measure diversity in a respectable, transparent and anonymous manner, and communicate that in such a way that puts your candidates at ease.

There are three aspects to include in your messaging to candidates:

• State the purpose: Openly communicate the purpose of the survey, so the candidate understands why you’re doing it.
• Ensure anonymity: Clarify that the survey is strictly anonymous. The data you’re collecting cannot be tied to individual candidates in any way.
• Make it optional: Make the survey strictly optional, and clearly state that this will not affect the status of their job application – or the job itself – in any way.

A paragraph to include at the start of your survey might look like:

“Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a crucial and permanent part of our business strategy. To help us ensure a fully diverse, equitable and inclusive working environment, we invite you to fill out this voluntary survey so we can track and further our DEI efforts. The information shared here is strictly optional, and cannot and will not affect your job application in any way. It’s also 100% anonymous, and is not linked to your name, identity, or application.”

Establish standards and goals

Second, it’s crucial to establish a standard across surveys so you have a reliable dataset for your own company’s benefit.

Once you’ve established that standard on how to measure diversity in your candidates, you can now:

• Compare numbers in each pipeline stage from the top of the recruitment funnel (i.e. initial job applications) through to the bottom of funnel (final candidate pool and final hires).
• Look at advancement metrics and identify any inconsistencies in promotions and advancement based on different characteristics.
• Identify gaps in benefits, perks, policies, and other elements of employment so that every employee has fair and equal access to all of the above, ensuring that everyone feels valued and included as a member of your organization.

Be thoughtful about survey language

If you’re concerned or uncomfortable about what language you should (or shouldn’t) be using in a survey, that’s OK. You’re not alone. You’re essentially asking people about very personal elements of their identity, including and not limited to:

• Gender
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Religion
• Disability
• Socio-economic status

With all of this in mind, we now share tips and resources from experts on how to measure diversity with a thoughtful, inclusive and respectful survey. You can also freely copy our own candidate survey template here for your use.

How to measure diversity: Survey questions

Let’s go through five major category groups, one by one:

1. Gender, sex, and sexual orientation questions

Gender, sex, and sexual orientation are not interchangeable terms or identities. They are three separate categories, and not to be conflated one with another, even if there are potential overlaps. Ask about each separately.

Gender

Due to the complex nature of gender, it’s best to include as many terms as possible. Vanderbilt University’s example is excellent:

Vanderbilt also reminds us of the importance of asking for transgender identity as a separate question:

“Because a respondent’s gender may align with more than one of the listed identities (for example, someone may identify as a transgender woman), it is recommended that you either ask whether a respondent identifies as transgender in a separate question or include both ‘cisgender’ and ‘transgender’ in the listed gender identity options.”

Vanderbilt also shares this great list of definitions for your perusal.

Sex

When asking about someone’s sex assigned at birth, the American University’s Center for Diversity & Inclusion recommends using male, female, intersex, prefer not to say, and an option for the respondent to enter their own response:

Sexual orientation

When asking about sexual orientation, you should again offer a full list of options. The Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals has recommended best practices on what to ask in a college application that you can also use in your own survey:

The Williams Institute School of Law has a comprehensive rundown of the terms you can include as available answers when asking about gender, sex, and sexual orientation. It’s also an all-around great resource for best practices in sex and gender-related surveying.

2. Race and ethnicity questions

When thinking about how to measure diversity, you should know that race and ethnicity are also not interchangeable. According to LiveScience.com, “race is often perceived as something that’s inherent in our biology, and therefore inherited across generations. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is typically understood as something we acquire, or self-ascribe, based on factors like where we live or the culture we share with others.”

Even then, ethnicity itself can be a socially charged topic. Statistics Canada points to the ever-evolving properties of ethnicity due to immigration trends, intermarriage, and blending of origins. As a result, StatsCan recommends three new categories: origin or ancestry, race and identity. The concept of ‘identity’ is to give respondents a choice to choose the group they most identify with – for instance, whether one is Italian, Canadian, or Italian-Canadian.

The U.S. Census Bureau, on the other hand, considered removing “race” and “origin” from questions altogether, calling them ambiguous for many American respondents. Instead, they proposed simply asking people to select from categories that best described them (bearing in mind this was in 2015):

Note that these are just guidelines – not rules. You can, within reason, ask about race and ethnicity – provided you give the respondent comprehensive options to choose from.

Race

For race-related questions, consider this conversation on race options in the US Census, from research group Versta. Versta also proposed their own example:

If you’re interested in seeing what questions and answers were asked in the 2020 U.S. Census, they are outlined here.

Ethnicity

Despite the above discussion around ethnicity, it’s still widely used in surveys around the world.

For ethnicity-based questions, consult this rundown of different ethnicities in the UK government’s census style guide, which shows the different examples of survey options for different parts of the country.

The UK government also shares four examples of how respondents are asked about their ethnicity, including this sample that shows 18 different answer options across five main categories:

Diversity Australia’s own list differs slightly:

Table 1 in this report from the University of Wisconsin’s Office of International Research also offers a good breakdown of the potential answers you can include in survey questions around race and ethnicity.

Sara Clayton wrote this in-depth article on the UX design behind the race and ethnicity question in surveys – it’s worth the read to gain a better understanding of the thinking process behind how to measure diversity in a survey.

3. Religion questions

Since holidays are often linked with religious observances, knowing the faith representation of your workforce only assists diversity efforts, but also helps when planning the work holiday calendar for the upcoming year. This can ensure an equal and inclusive experience for all backgrounds in your workforce.

As with other questions, you need to take care when asking religion-related questions, according to a paper from the University of London:

“The term ‘religion’ may refer to a set of personal beliefs, an affiliation with an institution, a shared cultural identity, or participation in services or ceremonies. Survey questions about religion may tap into all of these dimensions, and if it is not clear what a particular question is asking, the interpretation of the responses becomes very difficult.”

The Pew Research Group also shared wording on religion surveys from different areas around the world – which will give you an excellent launchpoint on how to measure diversity of faith among your candidates.

Baylor University in Texas shared the complete questionnaires from all five waves of their Baylor Religion Surveys – and this is likewise an incredibly comprehensive list. Take a look at the school’s 2017 national study, which not only asks which religious family one most closely identifies with, but also:

• the level of religiosity or spirituality the respondent considers themselves to be
• the frequency in which the respondent attends services at a place of worship.

Finally, the Pew Research Group offers a comprehensive list of FAQs on its own research into religious representation in the United States, including details on:

• identity versus belief
• subgroups of religions
• race and religion
• religion and politics (i.e. “evangelical” becoming a political label as well as religious)

4. Disability and impairment questions

Allowing the respondent the option to share their impairment or disability can help you ensure the workplace is fully accessible and free of challenges, a crucial part of equality and inclusion in your DEI workplace strategy.

Again, as above, impairment and disability are not always considered to be overlapping. According to a report from the Learning and Skills Development Agency:

“Some disabled people prefer to be called ‘people with disabilities’ because they want to be regarded as people first. Others prefer the term ‘disabled people’, arguing that in the social model of disability, the experiences of impairment and disability are separate.”

Plus, according to the report:

• Impairment is the “physical, mental or sensory characteristic, feature or attribute that affects the function of an individual’s mind or body.”
• Disability is “the loss or limitation of opportunities to take part in society on an equal level due to social, attitudinal and environmental barriers”.

Disabilities and impairment can limit an applicant’s capabilities in the following three ways, according to Disabled World:

• Body structure and function (and impairment thereof)
• Activity (and activity restrictions)
• Participation (and participation restrictions)

Disabled World also notes the many different disability types that limit a person’s:

• Vision
• Hearing
• Thinking
• Learning
• Movement
• Mental health
• Remembering
• Communicating
• Social relationships

It also states that disabilities and impairments can be invisible – in other words, hidden.

The United States Census Bureau breaks down disabilities into the following six categories:

• Hearing difficulty: deaf or having serious difficulty hearing
• Vision difficulty: blind or having serious difficulty seeing, even when wearing glasses
• Cognitive difficulty: Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, having difficulty remembering, concentrating, or making decisions
• Ambulatory difficulty: Having serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs
• Self-care difficulty: Having difficulty bathing or dressing
• Independent living difficulty: Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, having difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping

The LSDA also shares a few examples in its report linked above on how to ask about disabilities, for instance:

If you need to talk with a candidate or new hire about what accommodations may be needed, Mobility International USA has great resources on how to have that conversation in a respectful and inclusive manner.

5. Socio-economic questions

Biases related to socio-economic status exist as well, even to the point where a degree from one school may not be as sufficient as that same degree from another school, even if both degrees offer the same qualifications. The only difference is that one degree is cheaper or ‘less reputable’ than the other.

There are also factors in one’s upbringing that potentially affect their interactions with others even if they’re fully qualified for a position. Home-borne accents, for example, which are often unfairly associated with intelligence or social status, can play a role in one’s perceived suitability for a role.

Another limiting factor is that an applicant may not have the same access to professional and personal networks that can give them good references for a job or a referral to a position otherwise not accessible.

Yes, class bias exists widely. And you can take those biases out of the recruitment process. But rather than asking questions about someone’s social or economic backgrounds as the UK’s Civil Service has done in good faith, that information may already be readily available in an applicant’s CV or resume.

The American Psychological Association offers a standard of measurements you can use to track the socio-economic status of your applicants as they move through the funnel. Three of them are relevant here: education, income, and occupation (in other words, professional background).

Siobhan at Multiverse pointed to guidance from the Sutton Trust in tracking socio-economic status. The Sutton Trust’s employer’s guide on social mobility in the workplace has good insights on socio-economic bias and how to overcome those.

You can use surveys to measure diversity

Finally, take a few minutes and read Sarai Rosenberg’s excellent breakdown on candidate surveying best practices. From this, you’ll gain good insights on how to measure diversity in your candidates, and moreover, how to go about it respectfully. Also, check out our candidate survey template for your own use.

This is a lot, we know. But in the end, consider the intention of carrying out candidate surveys. Surveying your candidates helps you track your progress in diversity, equity and inclusion, and helps you identify gaps in your process.

For instance, if you find that the percentage of a certain characteristic in your final hires in 2021 is significantly less than in your initial talent pool, or the representation of those advancing in your company does not reflect the representation within your total workforce, you now have starting points of where you can improve.

After all, if respondents in our DEI survey overwhelmingly selected “Demographics across entire company” when asked how they measure DEI progress (53.4% of all respondents), that necessitates a tool to track those demographics. Surveying your candidates is one way to get ahead and gain ground in your DEI strategy.

The post How to measure diversity in your candidates using surveys appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Video interviews are booming

Video interviews – even pre-recorded video interviews – are now a standard element in the overall recruitment process, and will continue to be so post-pandemic. According to Workable’s New World of Work study, 56.5% of businesses plan to make remote permanent for at least some of their workforce going forward. Only 6.2% of businesses plan to do nothing in general.

This means even more digitization of the recruitment process, and one aspect of that is video interview technology.

Even before COVID-19 introduced itself to our world, video interviews were used by 70% of the employers in the list of Talent Board’s Candidate Experience award winners. Time to hire is now shorter as a result of pre-recorded video interviews, and it’s cheaper too in terms of travel and time commitments both for the candidate and the recruiter.

The benefits of pre-recorded video interviews

The benefits of pre-recorded video interviews for employers and candidates are multifold. It’s a fantastic tool for evaluating candidates at a deeper level, especially for remote jobs in roles that directly engage with customers and prospects.

Recruiters can now enjoy the following benefits of video interviews:

1. Gain better insight into soft skills and “personality” of the candidate
2. Assess ability to work remotely – as video is a core component of remote work
3. Save time by not having to coordinate interviews or screening calls – especially across different time zones
4. Establish a more uniform process – making for a more equitable experience
5. Share pre-recorded interviews with your team –  in a traditional interview, only those physically present would be able to provide feedback

There are benefits for the candidate experience as well:

1. Candidates have the opportunity to present themselves more naturally than in a stressful 30-minute live interview – depending on the role, of course
2. Candidates can prepare for and complete video interviews at their convenience
3. Candidates are no longer expected to travel or commute for that first interaction with the company
4. Candidates can pause their interviews and pick up where they left off

To convince the budget holders in your team of the value of pre-recorded video interview tech, there are significant benefits to the bottom line as well:

1. Shorten your time to hire by eliminating a step in the selection process and combining the screening and interview stages. When 66% of candidates move on after two weeks of not hearing from an employer, shortening the time to hire becomes crucial in reducing the risk of losing top candidates – especially in high-volume hiring periods.
2. Reduce the hours invested in the hiring process. The number of work hours invested in communicating, scheduling, and carrying out the screening process can be costly, so reducing that means you can do more recruiting with less resource commitment. And with self-scheduling options, you’re eliminating time-consuming back-and-forth communication to find a time that’s right for both of you.
3. Lower your cost per hire by improving the quality of your hires, saving your money in the future through lower employee turnover and higher engagement. Also, with fewer work hours invested by the hiring team, the recruitment process becomes more optimized and you’re doing more with less.

Budget holders aren’t as interested in the day-to-day process – they’re more impressed with risk reduction and lower costs. So emphasize the above when presenting your case to those stakeholders.

There’s another impact, a negative one if you don’t implement it properly: your employer brand. Candidates have often griped that pre-recorded video interviews are just further automation of the recruitment process and can hurt the candidate experience. It sends a signal to candidates that they’re no longer humans – they’re just nuts and bolts in a larger machine. Not a good look for you or your brand.

However, it doesn’t need to be this way. Here are four tried-and-true ways that you can use pre-recorded video interviews to their greatest benefit and make a strong, positive impression on candidates.

Pre-recorded video interview best practices

Simply plugging video interviews into your current workflow won’t be enough. If you do, that’s where your employer brand will take a hit, because you are automating the process in the wrong way. To get around that, you want to personalize it as much as you can while at the same time utilizing video interviews to their fullest benefit as outlined above.

Here are four ways in which you can utilize video interviews to really boost your cred as an awesome employer:

1. Add an introductory video

Include a recording of yourself at the very beginning to help the candidate understand and appreciate the context in which you’re conducting video interviews. In this recording, you can:

• Introduce yourself as the recruiter or hiring manager
• Talk about the role a little bit – and what you’re looking for
• Explain why you’re doing video interviews instead of a live phone screening
• Talk about how a candidate can best prepare for this step
• Thank the candidate for taking part in this very important part of the process
• Set expectations – for example, turnaround time, next steps, etc.
• Use a friendly tone to put the candidate at ease

2. Tutor the candidate

Some candidates will not be 100% well-versed on pre-recorded video interviews. For some, it may be their very first time doing so. You can share a tutorial – such as this one – to help candidates prepare. You can share these tips as well:

• Equipment that they’ll need, and supported browsers
• A demonstration or practice question if available
• Find a quiet place free from distractions with a professional background

3. Include video questions

Instead of simply adding boilerplate questions to the video interview in writing and sending those on to the candidate, have the hiring manager record themselves asking the questions one by one.

This more personalized approach reassures candidates when they can see who they’re responding to, and helps them prepare a solid, thoughtful answer. All the better for you to gain more insight into candidates.

4. Incorporate other elements via links

Pre-recorded video interviews do not necessarily have to be in a basic Q&A format. You can liven things up by adding elements in different formats, customizing fonts and styles, etc. Examples also include:

• Embedding a YouTube video and asking the candidate to record their honest reaction to it
• Including a PDF (i.e. a sales sheet, a product page, a piece of marketing collateral) and asking the candidate what they would do to improve on it

It’s not about what you use – it’s how you present it

When you think about Nike, it’s not about the shoes. It’s about Michael Jordan, “Just Do It”, and other powerful messaging and positioning. Red Bull’s similar – they’re not just an energy drink company. They’re about extreme sports and healthy, fun living.

If Nike just said, “Here’s a pair of shoes”, and if Red Bull said, “Folks, here’s an energy drink”, would you be so interested? Probably not.

Think about it in the same way when adding pre-recorded video interviews to your recruitment workflow. Candidates won’t respond well if you just said, “Here’s a video interview, get ‘er done and get back to me!” But they’ll respond if you add the extra stuff.

Personalize the video interview experience with introductory videos and pre-recorded questions, include tutorials to help the candidate present their best selves, and make it an all-around interesting and immersive experience for the candidate.

That’s a part of recruitment marketing, and the resulting positive candidate experience can be great for your employer brand – and help you hire the very best talent for your team.

Want to learn more? Check out our other content on video interviews:

• The video interview: top tips for employers
• Zinger Property enhances their inclusive hiring process with Workable Video Interviews
• Video Interviews: Designing for and with end users in mind

The post Pre-recorded video interviews: 4 best practices for success 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.

You’re also surfing online, consuming interesting stuff, and at one point, you’re looking at a company’s website and thinking, “These folks look pretty cool. I like what they’re doing. I wonder if they’re in the market for someone like me.”

So that’s when you gravitate to their careers page. It’s one thing to want to work at a company because you like their product or service, or they specialize in your area of expertise, but it’s another thing to want to work at a company because they seem like an amazing place to work and they feel like an amazing fit for you.

Careers page best practices for your employer brand

As an HR professional and employer, that’s why you need to double down on your careers page best practices. Here are seven core elements you need to think about when building a careers page that will attract the attention of even the most seasoned (and jaded) jobseekers:

1. Add employee testimonials

When you shop online, do you look at the reviews before making a purchasing decision? Have you ever bought something or watched a movie/TV show because a friend or family recommended it? The answer to both is likely “yes”.

The same thinking applies for your careers page. Candidates often read up on company reviews on Glassdoor or Indeed when thinking about applying for a job. If you include a few friendly employee testimonials in your careers page, it’ll make an impact on their impression of you.

Workable’s own careers page has several high-quality testimonials from employees who have worked at Workable for years. They’re outlined nicely in our first example of careers page best practices.

Screenshot: https://apply.workable.com/careers/

2. Put your “About Us” at the very top

You want candidates who want to work for you. One way of motivating them is telling them up front who you are and what you’re all about. An aspiring programmer looking to play a role in disrupting the existing framework of their industry won’t necessarily apply for a developer job at a traditional financial institution, but will jump through hoops for an opportunity in a cool fintech startup.

Likewise, a seasoned programmer looking for more stability and predictability in their working environment will be more interested in a role at a legacy organization with tried-and-true workflow systems.

Don’t make your candidates look for that information. Put it right in front of them, right on the page itself, and right at the very top.

GetResponse does exactly this, with two short, punchy paragraphs above the fold detailing who they are and what they do, in just 65 words. Sixty-five words! That gives the candidate all they need to know to make a quick decision on whether to apply for a role with this marketing SaaS company.

Screenshot: https://apply.workable.com/getresponse/

3. Add your company’s mission, vision and values

A widely-publicized Glassdoor survey in 2019 found that a company’s mission and culture are valued more than compensation for many candidates. Plus, the vast majority of jobseekers take mission and culture into account when applying for a job.

As the lines between work and home continue to blur after the paradigm-shifting events of 2020, it’s become more important than ever for candidates that their prospective employer’s vision and values align with their own. So, including your company’s mission, vision and values in your careers page will not only help candidates decide if you’re the right fit for them, but also attract candidates who are personally motivated to play an active role in your overall mission.

That can be a powerful differentiator beyond the elements of candidate attraction such as salary, benefits, work flexibility, and other standard perks.

Soho House & Co.’s careers page includes their mission and values with special emphasis on what they describe as the “guiding principles” that drive them. By listing five simple, yet powerful, values – curiosity, inclusivity, connection, passion, respect – they make it clear who they are, the kind of team that they are, and what they’re committed to as an organization.

Screenshot: https://careers.sohohouse.com/

4. Include details about benefits and perks

Yes, benefits and perks are powerful attractors for candidates when applying for a job. Candidates want to know what they’re getting out of the job on top of the standard salary. There are numerous kinds of benefits, including insurance, paid time off, work flexibility and location, bonuses and awards, training programs, and even company getaways and free lunches.

Be sure to include a breakdown of the important benefits and perks your company offers that set you apart from the next employer. Again, Workable does this in its own careers page.

Screenshot: http://careers.workable.com

5. Add photo and video elements

Candidates can be skeptical about what you’re telling them – and they have every right to be. You’re marketing to them, after all. To get around that initial skepticism, add a touch of authenticity with photos and videos in your page.

These can be straight-up employee testimonials, a statement from the CEO, a day in the life of one team in your company, or a demonstration of your product or service in action. Anything that can give the candidate a visual dive into what it would be like to work for you.

Every company is comprised of individuals working together – photos, videos and any other visual element can be powerful tools to convey that personality to your candidates.

TrueLayer does this masterfully. The fintech organization balances out the very professional photos with organic images. Scrolling down, you run across themes important to candidates – in this case, how the company operates in this COVID-19 environment, and images of teams not only working, but interacting socially.

They’ve also supplemented that with links to design and engineering principles as written by their own employees – offering added insight into what kind of people work there and how they approach the work. Check out the fifth of our seven careers page best practices in action:

Screenshot: https://apply.workable.com/truelayer/

Meanwhile, investment software startup Stockbit embeds this video on their careers page near the bottom, which makes for a more immersive experience.

6. Keep a consistent brand and message

You’ve heard of marketing. How about recruitment marketing? A core element of that is maintaining a consistent brand and message anywhere your audience interacts with your company – in this case, your candidates. That includes your application setup, your interview and scheduling processes, and of course, your careers page.

In fact, your careers page is a core element of candidate attraction. It’s one of the first things a candidate looks at when they come to your site. If your careers page is clunky, has conflicting messages or is inconsistent overall, you need to fix that.

Your brand and message is not just in the language. It’s also in the visual elements – are you using brand colors in your careers page? Is your logo prominently featured? Are the headlines short and snappy and, again, in your company’s official font and colors? Is the text itself tight and concise and informative?

All of those are important. You are marketing yourself as an employer to candidates.

Again, Soho House & Co. presents a great example of a careers page that’s consistent in brand and tone throughout.

7. Ensure a high-quality, eye-catching design

Take two companies’ careers pages, both with all of the above information neatly laid out in front of you. Both companies are also exactly the same in every other way – in their product and service, their location, their benefits and perks, and so on.

The only difference? One company has listed all their information in dry sans-serif font, heavy on the text which makes candidates’ eyes dry out as they read. The other company has eye-catching design that will make an impression even on tired jobseekers, and is designed to guide attention to the important parts in a way that feels natural to the candidate.

Stockbit’s careers page is eye-catching and very scrollable. They’ve taken all of the above careers page best practices and assembled it all into an appealing layout that’s easy on the eye and gives the candidate a quick overview of the company they’re about to apply to.

Careers page best practices for the win

Having an advanced careers page with thoughtful design, digestible information, visual elements, employee testimonials and mission, vision & values is a core element of your overall recruitment marketing strategy. It’s not just about putting your best brand forward – you’re also doing your candidates a favor by making it easier for them to learn about who you are. That level of candidate attraction speaks volumes for your employer brand.

Want to see more great examples? Check out these 10 great careers page examples, and why we love them.

The post 7 careers page best practices to boost your employer brand appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Table of Contents

1. Candidate experience

• On sidestepping “Where do you see yourself in X years?”
• On recruiting passive candidates

2. Lean recruiting

• On start-up recruiting without benefits and perks
• On sourcing diverse talent on a tight budget

3. DEI in the recruitment process

• On supporting DEI in hiring
• On the efficacy of Workable’s anonymized screening tool
• On hiring diverse candidates for a school district

4. Competing for talent

• On compensation in different markets
• On finding top talent when you’re not the ideal

5. And one more for the road… on hiring after COVID

Following are some exchanges from that Q&A session (with names of guests removed to preserve privacy):

1. Candidate experience

On sidestepping “Where do you see yourself in X years?”

Guest:
What is the best question to ask potential employees about retention in the office?

Melissa:
Hi, thank you for your question! To clarify, are you asking how to respond about retention at your company if the answer is not positive?

Guest:
Yes, we have a lot of longevity in our office. I have worked there for over 20 years. It takes about a year just to learn the job. I wanted to think beyond the “where do you see yourself in 5 years”. I know there are some gray areas to avoid, but any advice would be great!

Melissa: 
Assessing staying power can be hard to navigate, I would focus on sharing your company’s lengthy ramp time and the need for time commitment that employees need to invest in order to make an impact. For the right candidates, this transparency and approach will resonate.

However, we also have to recognize that workforce behaviors have evolved when it comes to tenure and the average time in a role is around 4.5 years and those aged between 24-34, it’s around 3 years, so employers have to adjust in order to maximize the impact employees can make in that timeframe.

Guest:
Great advice!! thank you so much!!!!

Melissa:
My pleasure!

On recruiting passive candidates

Guest:
Could you provide advice on best practices when it comes to sourcing passive candidates?

Melissa:
Hi again, of course! RESILIENCE. Candidates are cautious to leave jobs right now so don’t get offended if you don’t get responses to your reach out.

Personalization is key, show that you have a good understanding of their background and why you think making a move into your organization would be worthwhile. Projecting warmth and enthusiasm goes a long way and sharing as much about your company and why it’s a stellar place to work.

It’s difficult but you also have to do this as succinctly as possible. And don’t be afraid to use multiple methods of reaching out, direct email, LinkedIn or even a call.

Keith:
Think of it in terms of recruitment marketing. You are marketing yourself as an employer. You want to show your value as an employer to the candidate. Usually, it’s the other way around, in that candidates are trying to market themselves to you.

Show your value as an employer, in terms of what that candidate can gain from making such a move. As Melissa says, passive candidates aren’t just going to jump ship. You’re asking them to take a risk. You want to show them that you’re worth that risk.

Guest:
Thank you so much you two! I really appreciate it! I often do get discouraged when I don’t get a reply back. I will consider trying different approaches and watching which one works and have really been looking into recruitment marketing.

2. Lean recruiting

On start-up recruiting without benefits and perks

Guest:
What is the best way to recruit people into a start up that currently has no formal benefits and very few perks. It’s hard in the world of free lunch and a games room!

Keith:
Oh yeah, that is always tough. You’re in a very competitive space already. Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis offered some great insights around that theme in an interview a few years ago:

To your point about free lunches and games rooms, he offered this: “No one ever came to work because of the ping pong tables. Even less so, stayed for them.”

He does have a point. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about benefits and perks – you can communicate the value of the work itself, which can be unique and interesting in so many ways compared with other startups.

You may also find this to be a good resource.

Melissa:
Hi! You have to capitalize on the things a startup does offer – a chance to be part of building and shaping structure, tech tools, teams and culture! Post your jobs in places that might draw in candidates that are inspired by that type of opportunity – AngelList, VentureFizz and Built In to name a few. At this stage of your growth, count on referrals too, they’ll have a better sense of what they’re walking into.

On sourcing diverse talent on a tight budget

Guest:
What are some strategies for sourcing diverse candidates when the organization doesn’t have the budget to invest in diverse platforms?

Melissa:
Hi … thanks for your question! To me, it’s about posting in multiple places to source from as many diverse job boards/candidate pools as possible. There are organizations who also focus and partner with companies to support diverse hiring. Also, using technology like anonymized screening will help.

Training hiring managers to identify biases is a crucial starting point when interviewing in order to to avoid unintentionally disqualifying candidates. Getting commitment from the hiring team will sometimes take longer than you wish, so patience is required.

Just so I can try to help further, what are the diverse platforms you’re referring to?

If you’d like to do some reading on the topic, here’s a great resource for you (and definitely, watch the video!).

Guest:
Melissa, thank you for the advice. This is very helpful. Currently we have looked in areas like Dice or POCIT. And I have been told we do not have a budget to post on paid platforms at the moment. Current postings are those provided via our current ATS. Thank you again for sharing this resource.

3. DEI in the recruitment process

On supporting DEI in hiring

Guest:
There are some new recruitment products, touting support of DE&I with this process, that is championing for even more increased “blind” selection criteria to go beyond hiding names, home addresses, school names, etc. which have been known to elicit hidden biases to not utilizing Zoom or video interviews to further cut down on unconscious biases from creeping into this process – ie. voice, dialect, dress, hairstyle, etc.

So these products are focused on the employer asking work-based questions for the candidate to submit in writing. Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this new burgeoning recruitment strategy to further support DE&I efforts?

Melissa:
Hi … thank you for your question! This is a tough one, but definitely a good one. While there is research available that shows the positive impact of anonymized screening, it needs to be part of a wider DEI initiative to have an impact.

For example: According to a study completed by Harvard Business Review, “Before any anonymization, men outperformed women by about 5%. After just the removal of the names, that number dropped to less than 3%. When the applications were fully anonymized, women outperformed men by 1%.”

However, even if this method does improve your diverse hiring metrics, it does not guarantee the organization’s culture is inclusive. Anonymized screening is one piece of the puzzle – it’s a tool companies can utilize to meet their goals – but so much more needs to happen as well.

On the efficacy of Workable’s anonymized screening tool

Guest:
I also noted that you have anonymized the Workable ATS, could you please let me know to what extent this has reduced unconscious bias and how, in cases where the content of the CV or application either countries where one has worked, college or university can give an indication of nationality

Melissa:
Hi, great question! This article has a few screenshots that can help you visualize what our Anonymized Screening tool does. As you can see, college & country are considered identifying information, so these would be blocked out.

According to a study completed by Harvard Business Review, “Before any anonymization, men outperformed women by about 5%. After just the removal of the names, that number dropped to less than 3%. When the applications were fully anonymized, women outperformed men by 1%.”

Guest:
Great feedback, that’s good analytics. I noted that some panel members try as much as possible to have women in the shortlist and sometimes this can be at the expense of men.

This happened last time, I pointed this out to the team and they thought, it’s good to have an all-women shortlist. The results were anything but; we did go back to the longlist and selected the next group which was a mix and the second round was much better and men did better compared to the first group.

On hiring diverse candidates for a school district

Guest:
Hi! As a recruiter for a school district, my biggest challenge is to recruit diverse candidates for all positions. What suggestions or ideas do you have on how to do this?

Keith:
Hi – great question. We talk a lot about this in Workable’s own content. First things first, you want to diversify that initial candidate pool. In that, you’ll need to think about where you’re actually posting your job ads and where you’re announcing opportunities at your school district. The more diverse your outreach, the wider range of candidates you’ll attract, so to speak.

Another thing to think about is the overall messaging of your school district. An overt statement that shows you value diversity, equity and inclusion can do a lot in terms of candidate attraction.

If you’d like to do some reading on the topic, here’s a great resource for you.

If the challenge is about making a case for it with stakeholders, then this may be helpful.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question!

I agree with Keith, you want to increase posting in multiple places to source from as many diverse job boards/candidate pools as possible. There are also many organizations focusing and partnering with companies in support of diverse hiring. Also, you’ll find using technology like anonymized screening will be helpful.

On the hiring manager side, training them to identify biases when interviewing to avoid unintentionally disqualifying candidates will get the ball rolling. When it comes to commitment from the hiring team, it will sometimes take longer than you wish, so patience is required.

4. Competing for talent

On compensation in different markets

Guest:
I recently joined a fully distributed company with employees all over the country. When it comes to hiring cross-country and compensation, what philosophy do you think makes the most sense? Different compensation for different markets? Same compensation regardless of market, which can mean you’re priced out of the most expensive markets?

What’s your advice when coming up with compensation recommendations knowing how much markets can vary?

Keith:
Hi! This is obviously a tough one, because there’s no “right” answer. It’s been debated widely, especially as more companies move to remote-first operations during the pandemic. There’s a great discussion from Forbes on it – highlighting Reddit and Zillow as companies that opted to pay the same regardless of location, and Facebook at the other end, preferring to pay based on location.

And if you wanted to go down the rabbit hole on the topic of distributed teams, we do have some great reading for you. First, an interview with SmartBug CEO Ryan Malone, whose company was fully remote way back before it was cool.

And another, on the topic of hiring in different countries.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question. Definitely a hot topic right now. But really, it comes down to your company’s compensation philosophy. Do you want to lead the pack on comp or stay conservative or middle of the road?

It’s unrealistic to expect a company of a certain size and revenue located in one geography to compete with the likes of large enterprises in NY and San Fran.

So the best advice I can give is, make a fair and realistic budget for roles based on comparative comp data, budget approval and cast your net far and wide in your candidate search. You’ll soon get a pretty good picture from candidate feedback if any comp adjustments need to be reconsidered from there.

And sometimes, you have to accept, this is how much a role is going to cost to fill, and you gotta pay if that’s the position your company needs.

Guest:
Yeah, it’s interesting. We’re a small 30-person series A company so our resources are very different than many of the companies frequently mentioned in regards to this topic. I think the biggest challenge has been helping my hiring managers realize that our budget for a role is X.

We might find someone great in an expensive market, but there’s only so much flexibility we have in regards to compensation.

I think they are struggling to understand that there’s always going to be great talent out there that we simply can’t afford–and I know that’s not unique to just my company.

Melissa:
The way I look at it is, if budget is non-negotiable, then time and patience is required to advertise and source for this needle in a haystack. The other, less ideal option, a re-assessment of the job might be required and understand that you might have to get someone who checks 70% of the boxes or a more junior profile.

As much as we’d like to move mountains for our hiring teams, we’re also not miracle workers.

On finding top talent when you’re not the ideal

Guest:
Melissa, thank you for your time and expertise. I am at a small, regional, rural public university in the PNW and we are challenged finding qualified IT faculty to hire. Suggestions?

Our comp structure is “average”, benefits are very good, and livability is superb (if you don’t need a city to live in). Thanks again.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question! Happy to help as best I can. IT / tech talent can notoriously be difficult to find. Do you find you’re not getting enough quality candidates to fill the pipeline? Or, are you getting candidates, but they fall off during the hiring process?

Guest:
Unfortunately – both. Lean applicant pool and quick bailouts when offers to our best candidates come in ahead of us. We cannot sponsor H1B visas and that portion of the labor market appears to be the applicants most available.

Melissa:
This is a tough one. Advertising and promoting those stellar benefits is key and the livability, it will help make your position stand out. Thank you for clarifying, if it’s a lack of qualified candidates, focusing your sourcing efforts on passive candidates at other educational institutions would be where I’d start first.

Keith:
Hi! Seconding Melissa’s comment that IT/tech talent is tough to find. We have written a lot about that in our website. You’ll probably find these articles particularly helpful, especially if you’re finding that talent attraction is a challenge:

• Office in an ‘unsexy’ area? Use these 5 talent attraction strategies
• Hiring tech workers when you’re not on their A-list

Guest:
Super! Thanks for the tips and online resources. We will move ahead optimistically!

Keith:
De nada! If you search “tech talent” in our site, you’ll find plenty of other helpful stuff as well.

Guest:
Thank you again. Your online availability is just great…

Melissa:
Our pleasure!

5. And one more for the road…

On hiring after COVID

Guest:
Any recruiting recommendations for hiring pre & post COVID?

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question!

In the past year, we opened our scope to other states offering greater flexibility on location, resulting in a larger pool of candidates. We’ve also focused on a higher utilization of video interviews. As we’re working remotely and will likely continue for the foreseeable future, that comfort with technology and video communication is key.

We’ve also been looking at our scorecards and how we assess candidates to evaluate autonomy and greater emphasis on communication skills. We’ve found by doing these activities, we’ve had greater success in securing hires that do well under our new ways of working.

Keith:
Melissa basically answered it… but thought you’d be interested to know that we surveyed our employees on the kinds of skills that are needed in a remote work world, with some great results.

We also sat down with a CEO of a company that has been fully remote for nearly a decade. He had some great tips on how to identify ideal candidates for that kind of environment.

Have more questions for us?

We are always here to support recruiters and HR professionals in doing what they do best. If you have any more questions that you wish you had the answer to, don’t hesitate to email us at content@workable.com with “Recruiting Q&A” in the subject headline. We’ll assemble your questions and have Melissa answer them for you in a future article!

The post Recruiting Q&As from Bamboo HR’s Employee Experience Week appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Check out our biggest product updates this quarter in a quick, 5-minute video. 

Product releases

Candidate surveys: Measure your brand reputation or gain a better understanding of candidate demographics with candidate surveys. Tailor questions to meet your company’s needs, help teams identify areas of improvement and report on results. Candidate surveys will be gradually rolled out to all Core, Growth and Premier plans over the next few weeks.

Branded careers pages: Updated formatting and branding options make it even easier for you to create a beautifully branded careers page.

• Customize your favicon
• Rich text formatting
• Background image placement
• Logo size configuration

Video Interviews: Workable now supports the option to include your own welcome video and video questions to help you personalize the candidate experience.

Advanced referrals: More customizable options are now available for advanced referrals. 

• Notifications: adjust default email settings for referral users 
• Limit jobs in the portal to internal applications or referrals only
• Add custom questions for referral submission

Hiring plan: You can now edit and update custom requisition fields, add new options, and disable existing options in your hiring plan.

Mobile app: We’ve made it even easier for you to track jobs and candidates, right on your phone. Our newly redesigned home screen helps you find the info you need, fast. Download through the App Store or on Google Play.

The post 6 Workable product releases to boost your brand appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Jump to the full infographic – or download it for yourself here. For a deep dive, check out our full report on DEI at work.

We found eight major highlights for you on how UK&I compares with non-UK&I when it comes to DEI at work. Here they are:

1. 2020 was a bigger influence on DEI awareness

The growth of personal interest in DEI in 2020 was higher for UK&I than for other respondents, with 33% of UK&I respondents saying DEI became more important this year compared with 22% of non-UK&I responses. The opposite was true for respondents who answered that it always has been important to them, with 58% of UK&I respondents and 71% of non-UK&I saying it has always been important to them.

2. The will is stronger – but what’s the way?

UK&I respondents are more likely to say they’re interested but just don’t know how to go about it. When asked about the current state of DEI in their company, 15.5% of UK&I say they’re interested but don’t know where to start, compared with just 9% of non-UK&I.

When it comes to top challenges in meeting DEI targets in recruiting and hiring, 11.5% of UK&I respondents said they didn’t know how to do it, compared with just 2.4% of non-UK&I respondents. We saw similar differences when it comes to challenges in meeting overall DEI targets, with 17.3% of UK&I vs. 10.6% of non-UK&I saying they don’t know how to do it.

3. Progress? Not so much here

UK&I respondents are much more pessimistic in how they perceive DEI progress in their own company. Close to half (44.2%) of UK&I respondents said they don’t feel like their company is making meaningful progress in DEI, compared with one quarter (25.2%) of non-UK&I respondents.

4. A more prominent voice and ownership

UK&I respondents are more involved in sparking the conversation on DEI – and they’re also in charge of it now. Same goes for HR. A full 69.2% of UK&I respondents said they themselves were directly involved in that initial conversation, compared with 48.6% of non-UK&I.

Even more (76.9% vs. 60.4%) said they are tasked with executing on DEI initiatives in their work, and 25% vs. 15.8% said HR had initiated that conversation in their business.

5. It is the way – and it’s good business sense too

The moral imperative for DEI is stronger in UK&I, and so is the business case. External influences and brand reputation? Not so much. We learned that 57.7% of UK&I respondents said DEI is the right thing to do, compared with exactly half of non-UK&I respondents – and more cited the business benefits as a motivator (30.8% vs. 21%).

When it comes to social expectations (13.5% vs. 20%), company/brand reputation (13.5% vs. 21.6%), and current events and trends (5.8% vs. 14%), UK&I respondents are less likely to choose those as factors in DEI motivation.

6. Total diversity > leadership diversity

For UK&I respondents, leadership diversity is much less important – it’s more about overall company representation. Equal opportunity? Much, much less than others.

A full three quarters of UK&I (75%) picked “diversity throughout entire company” compared with 64% of non-UK&I, and fewer UK&I respondents (21.2% vs. 25.3%) picked “diversity at executive level” as a priority area in their DEI strategy.

Strikingly, when it comes to measurable DEI data points, just 11.5% of UK&I chose that as a target metric for progress compared with 24.6% of non-UK&I, and just 5% vs. 31.2% chose “promotion / advancement” as a metric. The latter is interesting, as it’s an indicator of equal opportunity in a company.

7. Talent availability is an even bigger challenge

In recruiting and hiring for DEI, the available talent pool is one of the top limiters for UK&I respondents. UK&I respondents said the talent pool in their industry (34.6%) and in their location (21.2%) were major limiters, compared with 11.5% and 8.8% of non-UK&I respondents respectively.

8. Not as much buy-in at the top – but does it matter?

Executives aren’t as interested, say UK&I respondents. But that’s fine, because the responsibility for DEI falls on everyone – or no one. One quarter of UK&I respondents cite executive buy-in as a major challenge to DEI targets, compared with 18% of non-UK&I.

And far more of UK&I (51.7% vs. 37.6%) say everyone should be responsible – and far less (13.8% vs. 27.3%) say executives / management should be responsible.

What do you think? Let’s have a conversation about this, as we’re all learning together. Ping us on LinkedIn or email us at content@workable.com.

Source for all data: All roads lead to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the workplace. But which one do you take?, published by Workable in January 2021

The post DEI in the UK and Ireland: How is it different from other countries? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Join our expert, Stefan Nerinckx, Partner, Head HR-law department Fieldfisher Brussels & Professor, Employment Law University College Brussels, for Part 1 and 2 of “Breaking down Brexit”.

Part 1 was recorded in Dec 2020 before the Brexit split took full effect. Watch Part 2 below for a brief recap of Part 1 and a current update.

The post Breaking down Brexit appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

These days, the line between work life and home life is increasingly blurred by the shift to remote work and an intense social and political environment worldwide (Black Lives Matter, Brexit, the pandemic itself) that ultimately spill over into the workplace, impacting engagement and productivity.

You, as an employer and HR practitioner, need to help your employees. Why? Well, for one, they expect this from you. 75% of Gen Z and half of Millennial employees have left work for mental health reasons according to one study – and turnover is expensive. Untreated mental health costs the US economy $200 billion, according to another study. And untreated depression costs employers an average of $9,450 per employee per year, says a third.

An informal Workable poll on LinkedIn in November 2020 found that 62% of employees say their company doesn’t offer mental health support as part of its benefits:

Finally – the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report highlights workplace wellbeing as a leading priority in workplace transformation according to employees. That stands in stark contrast to executives, who listed that as only the second-to-last priority in a list of outcomes. The report states: “executives who deprioritize wellbeing as a goal of work transformation are missing a huge opportunity.”

So, as a business, you’re not only morally obliged to support your employees through this deep dark winter – it also makes business sense to do so.

Seven tips for workplace mental health

So, we’re sharing seven insights from the SMB and HR communities to help you and your employees get through this long, difficult winter before the days become brighter and vaccinations start to roll out to more and more people going into 2021. Here they are, all with the end goal of maintaining and even boosting your workplace mental health:

1. Establish an open-door policy

Because mental health can be a sensitive topic – and stigmatized in many cases – many employees are afraid to approach their managers or even human resources to seek support. In fact, one study found that 50% of employees feel “very uncomfortable” discussing mental health with a current or prospective employer, compared with 10% who said the same about discussing it with a friend or family member.

This means you need to open the door for your employees and help them feel comfortable stepping forward with their problem, says Stephen Light, a certified stress management coach and co-owner of Colorado-based Nolah Mattress:

“Ideally, employees should have no apprehensions in sharing their problems with managers and supervisors, primarily if it affects their work performance.”

He found that not only did it help in terms of work performance – it also boosted company morale.

“We noticed that not only did the open-door policy improve the overall mental health of reorganization, but it also developed the relationships of managers and their subordinates. Through their one-on-one conversations, employees’ trust in their managers grew, which established a connection beyond the leader-follow set-up.”

Rick Hoskins, founder of air filter company Filter King in Alabama, also has an open-door strategy in his workplace mental health policy, and that applies to all leaders and managers in his organization as part of a formal setup.

“This means that employees are welcome to come to talk at any point, professionally or personally, without judgement or fear of losing their job,” says Rick.

Note: Download our workplace mental health policy template and customize to your specifications. 

2. Train your managers and employees

To have a truly successful workplace mental health policy, you need to create a holistically supportive work environment in which employees can thrive. That means training and empowering your employees so they’re best set for success.

Matt Bertram, CEO of EWR Digital, makes sure this happens in his Houston-based SEO marketing agency.

“We started a wellness support strategy in September. The aim of our strategy is to empower our employees to take better care of themselves and become more resilient.”

He also took aims to ensure managers followed suit.

“Our managers have been directed to openly show empathy and vulnerability towards our employees. We regularly ask our employees how they are. We find out how they are taking care of their mental health and encourage everyone to share what’s working for them.”

3. Don’t just talk the talk – walk the walk

Making a statement for workplace mental health is noble, but in many cases, it’s not enough; that’s simply performative action as opposed to proactive action, according to Inclucive and Allyship founder and DEI consultant Chikere Igbokwe. You need to step up and implement procedures and activities that your employees can willingly participate in.

One way of doing so is establishing a physically healthy work environment as well as a mentally healthy one. Uphold the spirit of the Latin phrase: Mens sana in corpore sano, loosely translated to English as: “A healthy body means a healthy mind”. While physical health of course is not the sole means of maintaining mental health, it’s helpful and actionable, and creating a work environment that promotes this can be hugely beneficial.

Matt speaks to this as well: “Our employees are directed to prioritize their health and family. We allow for flexibility at work to allow employees to balance work activities with home and wellness responsibilities. Healthy habits like exercise, sleep, nutrition, meditation, and time with loved ones are encouraged.”

There’s more you can do in addition to promoting and enabling healthy habits. CEO Aylon Steinhart’s San Francisco-based vegan ice cream company Eclipse Foods introduced tech tools as part of its mental health policy:

“We have recently added wellness apps such as Headspace to our benefits package to give our employees more tools they may need to get through these tough times.”

Those still working in the office – and those about to return as we head out of the pandemic – can provide healthier, cheaper snacking options in the kitchen. Ethan Taub, CEO of an “online mall” for financial services, Goalry.com, did this in his office in Newport Beach, California:

“One simple practice which I think helps the mental and physical wellbeing is introducing free fruit stations within the office. It helps with snacking but the vitamins have a positive impact on the mind, therefore making your workers more productive whilst helping them with their health.”

When his company went virtual, he took it to another level:

“As things have been more difficult this year, our staff have actually been receiving free fruit hampers directly to their front door on a weekly basis. It helps us to stay in touch with one another but also look after our mental and physical well being through these little gift baskets.“

4. Encourage camaraderie and collaboration

When the days get shorter and shorter and the weather outside gets worse and worse – particularly in northern climes – people will spend more time indoors. Stay-at-home advisories and lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, plus numerous days working out of the home with little to no socialization can take its toll on workplace mental health.

When there isn’t a space for organic interaction between colleagues, you’ll need to step up and establish that environment – even virtually – to keep that spirit alive.

Aylon has taken the steps to make sure that camaraderie and collaboration continue to thrive despite working entirely online:

“From daily team check-ins to weekly virtual happy hours, it’s important that our employees see one another not just as coworkers but as real people who are going through this pandemic with one another,” Aylon says. “We are each other’s support system in these unparalleled times.”

Matt at EWR Digital also points to the collective company goal – including its deeper meaning – as a key to keeping employees motivated.

“We strengthen our group connections by cultivating a shared sense of purpose. Employees are helped to find meaning in their work and understand the importance of their individual contributions. This can make them feel more valued as a part of our team and stave of feelings of isolation or loneliness.”

5. Encourage a positive-thinking environment

The benefits of positive thinking are well documented in science: it helps maintain a strong immune system, reduces anxiety levels, and encourages healthier lifestyles and relationships both at home and in the workplace.

Part of positive thinking comes from within, via new habits such as daily statements of gratification, turning an “impossible” situation into a new and welcome challenge, and even simply smiling more and thinking positively about oneself. But another part of it comes from external sources – people feel more positive if they are appreciated by others.

Ted Sun, the president and CIO of Transcontinental University in Ohio, launched a strategy on empowerment at his school in early November and helped other executives implement the same in their workplace mental health strategy throughout.

“The basis of the strategy is to ensure that people are seen, heard, and feel like they have control,” says Ted. “We’ve implemented this into various systems including performance management systems, motivation systems, and learning systems.”

“Especially as we approached the end of the year, performance management has to be empowering. Hope for a brighter future has to be part of the conversation in the annual reviews.”

Ted adds that this isn’t an individual job – it needs to be a collective effort throughout the company.

“This powerful emotion also has to be in the daily language of all managers within the motivation systems. To do this, managers are getting additional development to master this (part of emotional intelligence development). In the learning systems, employees are getting additional skills to get a sense of control for their future.”

6. Hire a Happiness Coach

When you’re handling a company-wide workplace mental health initiative, someone needs to own that process whether as the leader of a team or as a dedicated director. Brexit Project Managers are commonplace in the United Kingdom, whereas jobs focused on diversity and inclusion are surging, especially in 2020. So why not hire someone to be in charge of increasing workplace morale at your company?

That’s what Rick did in hiring a Happiness Coach when his team shifted to remote work.

“This is a company-wide dedicated employee happiness and wellness coach that was hired from within the current team. […] She is the most empathic of all the staff. Her role is to meet up with the different team members on a regular basis and be available for them to speak with her about their private issues. She conducts 360° surveys so applicable changes can be made in the day-to-day management.”

The benefits of having this in the company led to a much stronger understanding of employee needs and workplace mental health priorities, Rick found:

“Because of this, we were able to understand that people would prefer flexible working hours, and four-day working weeks. This was in the height of the pandemic and completely understandable.”

And of course, once you have that information on hand, you need to carry out on that promise of equipping your employees with what they need in order to do their job well.

7. Track the progress

As in any business, establishing a tracking mechanism is crucial to success when launching a new initiative – be it DEI, a new product release, or expansion into new markets. The executives in your business will of course be interested in the wellbeing of your staff, but if they can have documentation in their hands that point to the real value of what you’re doing, then that’s even better.

This means you need to track your progress in workplace mental health and report on it in a very tangible way.

Ted makes sure to have a tracking mechanism in place as part of the mental health initiative in his workplace.

“All people have emotional intelligence data as we’ve focused on developing the EQ of all staff,” he says. “We regularly track the EQ development with various development activities. Optimism is also another metric we use to ensure people are engaged in a positive way contributing to the ideal outcomes.”

Ted also uses metrics to ensure that people follow through on the promise:

“We have systems in place to hold people accountable to learning and growing their EQ in addition to other intelligences like analytical and systems thinking.”

Rick found that tracking and reporting can be as simple as having a regular cadence in the strategy:

“Having a fixed meeting every six weeks with the Happiness Coach obliges the quieter employees to speak, who often have the best ideas and most hidden emotions. There are others then who are more than happy to have a type of Agony Aunt to vent to.”

A mutually supportive work environment

There is no clear-cut prescription to maintaining workplace mental health throughout the wintertime, particularly during a devastating pandemic and social unrest. However, simply implementing a few of the tips listed above can have a positive impact on your business and on your employees and colleagues, as Matt at EWR Digital found:

“We have an uplift in employee engagement following the implementation of our [wellness support] strategy. This has translated to an increase in productivity across all our projects.”

Rick pointed to a mixture of tangible and intangible benefits to actively supporting employees during 2020:

“I can’t tell you for sure if productivity rose because people had flexible hours, because they were at home, because we have a Happiness Coach, or because of all of the above.

“What I can share with you is that deadlines are being met with ease and there is less of a sense of stress during meetings. We completed year-end goals in August and are able to project higher goals for 2021.”

At the core of it all is this: your employees and your colleagues are human beings, each of whom are experiencing 2020 in different and unique ways. What you can do for them is establish an environment where they can feel safe and supported in the workplace – you want them to want to come to work every day and be their best selves.

Headspace’s 2020 Mental Health Trends report finds that companies and their leaders need to develop a better understanding of their employees’ needs, one of which is more evidence-based mental health tools resources as part of overall support in the workplace. The above-listed tips will be a good first step in getting through the deep dark winter – and beyond.

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The response from candidates and customers alike was overwhelmingly positive but we also heard from customers who wanted more customizable careers pages and options, like: 

1. More branding: Branding options were still limited in the 2019 release. Having only one branding color was challenging for organizations that featured two or three colors in their brand; moreover, typography configuration was a common request, to make the marketing and careers sites more consistent.
2. More content: The available content options were limited: you could add text, images, and videos. Hiring teams found it difficult to compete with custom careers sites’ content-rich sections with testimonials, maps, benefits, and more. 
3. Tracking performance: Τo improve your careers site, you must be able to track how it performs – ideally with your existing web analytics tools. Customers with dedicated recruitment marketing teams were missing a way to measure, analyze, and improve their careers site.
4. Customized URL hosting: For many customers, hosting the careers site under their own custom domain, like jobs.acme.com, instead of the generic apply.workable.com, was a common request to ensure a more consistent candidate experience. 

These challenges led some customers to look for other options to build the careers pages they envisioned. This meant either outsourcing the project to agencies – a long and expensive process – or requesting help from their own engineering and design resources, teams who usually have other high-priority projects to deliver.

Advanced careers pages

Understanding these needs, we designed the next version of our careers pages, enabling recruiting teams to build, update, and improve their careers site without breaking the bank. While maintaining a seamless candidate experience, we shifted our focus to the recruitment marketing team – enabling them to build advanced careers pages within Workable.

Through an intuitive user interface the user can set up the branding (colors and typography) of the careers site, add content components, such as testimonials, office locations on a map, and benefits, and publish with a single click; it is essentially a full-blown website builder tailored to fit a recruitment marketer’s needs.

In terms of product research at Workable, we’re lucky to be able to use our own product as a customer – thus, customer feedback is readily available. Our creative and recruiting teams user tested the product while building our own careers site. This way we had solid qualitative evidence to identify and prioritize the features and the usability improvements, instead of relying on our biases and assumptions. We then continued in short cycles of feedback and development with an open beta program: a group of engaged customers tried our new site builder and elaborated on their experience. Each piece of feedback was evaluated to guide our product development efforts in the way that is most meaningful to our customers.

As of December 10, 2020, advanced careers pages are available on Workable’s Core, Growth and Premier annual plans and the first customers’ careers sites are already live. According to our early product metrics, hiring teams now need less than a week to design, build and publish their careers site for the first time! And, on average, they create a first draft to iterate on in less than an hour. These times are just a fraction of what a custom careers site project (outsourced or internal) usually takes, and a positive sign of what’s to come. We’re excited to see what our customers accomplish with these enhanced employer branding tools. If you’d like to use our advanced careers page builder to efficiently – and cost effectively – reach more and better candidates, get in touch.

The post Introducing Advanced Careers Pages: Showcase your brand 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.

The transferable skills that traditional media professionals possess are being recognised by a wider variety of industries. A journalist brings editing, writing and research skills, and a sense for what’s newsworthy, as well as experience with digital communications. These smart, versatile, deadline-driven employees will improve your content, mentor your colleagues, and in some cases, boost your brand’s visibility.

Here are some things to keep in mind when hiring a candidate with media experience:

1. Search in the right places
2. Battle for the best
3. Proof of skills
4. Ideology checkpoint
5. Case study: HubSpot

1. Search in the right places

When you’re searching to recruit talent with media experience, you should place your ads in niche job boards, not only Indeed or Glassdoor. Social media is another place where you can find the ideal fit for the role. It’s also common for people with media experience to host their own blogs or vlogs, so keep an eye open for that too.

Here you can find a list of job boards where you can post your job ad:

• JournalismJobs.com
  Journalismjobs.com is one of the oldest job boards, founded back in 1998, and has over 2,5 million page views per month.
• JournalismCrossing
  Journalism Crossing is a searchable database including more than 2 million job postings worldwide.
• Mediabistro
  Mediabistro is another option, especially if your searching for media and content professionals.

2. Battle for the best

Corporate newsrooms provide top talent with the opportunity to continue to produce quality written work while enjoying the benefits of a corporate job.

The arrangement is mutually beneficial, as corporations then gain the substantial skills and added oomph of a recognized journalist’s personal brand. There are fierce bidding wars for candidates who have proved their worth in their new environs. “We were not the only people offering Dan [Lyons] a job. I can tell you that for sure,” said Mike Volpe, former CMO of Hubspot. “When we get further along in the process of hiring more journalists, I do expect there to be competition.”

To beat the battle for talent, make sure your company has competitive benefits and compensation and highlight them in the job description.

3. Proof of skills

Recruiters who target journalists agree that it isn’t enough to review a writer’s work samples. It’s not unusual for even an experienced and high-ranking journalist’s work to undergo heavy edits prior to publication. For best results, recruiters must assign short writing, editing, and proofreading tests with a deadline appropriate to what candidates would experience on the job.

Pro Tip: Ask references what your candidates’ first draft copy is like.

4. Ideology checkpoint

If you’re interviewing a media professional for a position in advertising, marketing, or PR, it is important to discern their ability to adapt to a different mindset. Many journalists believe that newsgathering should be completely separate from other communications fields. To these candidates, reporting means serving the general public by delving for the truth and keeping companies and governmental bodies in check.

Make it clear that they can still create compelling, delightful, and valuable work–but that this work must now align with commercial goals. If your company needs a ghostwriter, ask them if they’re okay with not seeing their name in lights. If you sense that they feel they’re leaving the “sacred” for the “secular”, ask them to explain why they are doing so and why they would be happy with this job in the long haul.

5. Case study: HubSpot

HubSpot has turned content marketing into big business. They were among the first companies to evangelize a now popular practice of attracting customers with content that predicts and addresses their needs. They help other businesses do the same with their software product, a platform that streamlines and automates the content development and promotion process.

HubSpot leads by example. Their commitment to producing high quality, well-researched, and thoughtful content is reflected in their hiring. They modeled their content team after the media newsroom, with a few tweaks. Their core team members are:

• CMO/Publisher – Responsible for aligning content production with business goals.
• Editor-In-Chief – Responsible for overseeing all things editorial.
• Writer – Responsible for producing content and contributing content ideas.
• Copy Editor – Responsible for correcting errors, checking for libel, proofreading.

HubSpot hires people who understand how their work supports the overall business goals of their company. HubSpot recruits highly adaptable, creative people with a track record of pitching fresh ideas and creating new initiatives. Hiring managers at HubSpot will want to see work samples and independent projects such as a blog. If budget is a concern for your company, HubSpot’s brand journalism guide suggests hiring recent graduates from journalism and communications programs, or even interns from local universities.

HubSpot’s commitment to company culture supports their efforts to attract great talent. Their Company Code, the blueprint that shapes their culture, is available online for all to see and is a respected example of employer branding.

The post How to master recruitment in media 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.

In this webinar, we’re sitting down with Lissa Khan, Recruitment Manager at Weetabix. She’ll break down how to use your careers page to attract talent and put your brand into the spotlight. You’ll also get an early sneak peek into Workable’s new Advanced Careers Pages.

In just 45-minutes, you’ll learn:
– The most important elements of a careers page
– Creative ways to engage and attract talent on your site
– Top features in Workable’s Advanced Careers Pages

The post Advanced Careers Pages: Talent Attraction Made Easy appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Workable’s own data finds that in 2020 to date, there was an average of 94 total candidates for every single job – with 26 of those being moved to the “promising” stage. That’s 26 candidates who need to be screened – 26 for each job opportunity that opens at your organization, which can become a lot of work, especially if you’re scaling rapidly with multiple hires as a result of a new funding round or a new market penetration.

Great for your organization, but for you and the hiring team, that is a lot of work. You’re spending many hours communicating with each and every candidate, lining them up against your ever-busy calendar for screening calls, dealing with delayed responses, back-and-forth communication, and ultimately the actual call with them.

This whole process is clunky and expensive in terms of hours taken from other duties. So how do you try and solve that? Technology and automation, of course. And there’s one piece of technology out there that’s growing in popularity: the asynchronous video interview – or AVI for short. You prepare the questions beforehand, send them out en masse to candidates, and within days, your inbox is filled with a clean set of responses that you and your hiring team can review on your own time. It’s a match made in heaven, right?

The upside of asynchronous video interviews

First, let’s look at the upside of AVIs. There are clear benefits, according to HR consultant Laura Handrick in New York City – they make it easier to identify the soft skills that can’t otherwise be discovered via a standard screening process in a large candidate pool.

“For popular jobs, like COVID Compliance Officer in TV/Film, the number of applicants who believed they were qualified was overwhelming,” says Laura, who currently works with Choosing Therapy, an online mental health therapy resource website. “To pare down the group of qualified applicants, it was important to discern their professionalism, demeanor and experience working with celebrities in a way that gave each candidate a fair shot at selling themselves for the job.”

Jennifer Roquemore, co-founder of Resume Writing Services, was also looking for a solution to the cumbersome screening process.

“As a growing resume service, we are constantly trying to hire new resume writers to join our team,” says Jennifer. “One of the main challenges we faced was finding a quick and efficient way of adequately screening all the applications we were getting from the various online job sites we were posting our openings on. In particular, we felt like we were doing a poor job at screening candidates because we were unable to evaluate their speaking ability and interview skills, which are quintessential assets to have as a resume writer.”

She found that asynchronous video interviews helped hugely.

“To resolve this issue, we turned to one-way video interviewing which allowed us to see first hand the communication skills and general soft skills of the applicants who were applying to us. Using this method, we were able to make a far more informed decision as to whether the applicant was up to par with our standards and expectations, which made the hiring process a whole lot easier.”

Ed Spicer, the CEO of Pest Strategies, a resource website for information and services on pest control, found AVI tech to be immensely useful as well, even from the candidate’s perspective.

“While one-way video interviews aren’t every applicant’s cup of tea, people who are currently working at another job or have a busy schedule tend to love the freedom of being able to record at any time. […] If an applicant prefers to wait for a one-on-one phone or live video interview instead, we’re happy to schedule for the next available time. This way, we can accommodate everyone.”

Ed also finds more benefits down the road.

“Once the one-way video applicants get squared away, it becomes easier to schedule the reduced slate of remaining applicants who want a live interview. It’s an efficient system and works well for us.”

And now… the downside

What makes your work easier isn’t necessarily easier for the candidate. Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes for a moment: After many months of bleak job hunting during the economic downturn in the midst of a stay-at-home order by your local authorities, you get an email in your inbox! The people at XYZ company would like to learn more about you.

Excited, you click the link in the email, expecting to set up a call with a recruiter or hiring manager. Instead, the link takes you to a webpage asking you to record yourself responding to various questions.

That can be a tad discouraging. Check out these choice comments from a comment thread on Indeed:

“If you ever encounter the digital interview, you are going to laugh. Someone on the other end has a remote in hand and can ‘interview surf’ much like you channel surf the TV stations at home. Hope you are devilishly good looking and have an engaging personality or click … on to the next one. LOL!”

“I just want them to scan our foreheads now and get this over with. It reminds me of the old sci fi movie Gattaca where 100 years in the future, your station in life will be determined by a drop of blood.”

Leading HR guru Liz Ryan offered her own perspective in a scathing tweet:

Q. I was scheduled for a video interview. I expected a Skype interview but no – it was a one-way video interview. I signed off. I don’t want the job. What new insult is this?

A. Companies that use one-way video interviews don’t deserve your talents. That’s an easy goodbye!

— Liz Ryan (@humanworkplace) January 7, 2019

You may even lose out on top candidates in the process, as one person wrote to Liz:

“I declined to take the interview. I don’t want to work for a company that would stick me in front of a piece of software and ask me to talk into my microphone. If they don’t have time to talk with me live, they can hire somebody else.”

In short, you’re losing out on the best candidates in the market if you take what’s sometimes viewed as an assembly-line approach to recruitment.

Daniel Carter has taken on AVIs to optimize the recruitment process for Zippy Electric, an all-in-one resource for electric riders. He, however, empathizes with candidates in the process.

“With the new VI technology, although it is much faster, there is also the problem of it being rather impersonal and rushed,” Daniel says. “I guess I’m siding with the candidates here. The unwanted feeling of corporate slavery feels more prominent than ever especially when you take away the human aspect of things, especially from something as preliminary as a job interview.”

The human disconnect

A study from the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University in Ontario found a significant disconnect in video interviews that wasn’t there in face-to-face interviews. Study author Willi Wiesner puts it aptly:

“Video conferencing places technological barriers between applicants and interviewers. Employers and applicants should work to reduce the barriers that arise through video conferencing and improve the interpersonal aspects of the interview process.”

But if the big kids on the block (i.e. Google, Twitter, Apple, CVS, etc.) are using it, it may well be something you need to incorporate into your hiring process, and somehow overcome the challenges inherent.

5 tips to overcome the AVI stigma

So we picked up five valuable tips that can help you ensure a top-notch candidate experience – and preserve your employer brand and reputation in the process.

1. Show them you’re on their side

First of all, your candidates are human. Simply throwing a video interview invitation into their inbox won’t reassure them. You need to maintain a two-way communication stream in other ways, and explain how AVIs can benefit the candidate as much as it does you.

In Smooth Waters CEO and Founder Jacob Pinkham, whose company focuses on water sports and safety, thinks video technology in recruitment gives candidates a huge opportunity to present their best selves – and it never hurts to tell them that.

“A resume is often boring and personalities are difficult to shine through. Now, it is very easy for someone to record a short video to showcase not only their experience and skills, but their personality.”

Daniel at Zippy Electrics takes the time to help candidates warm up with a few friendly set-up questions.

“What I’ve been doing is I’ve been trying to ask candidates casual and mundane questions before beginning the interview,” Daniel says. “Usually, it’s something about a specific show I’m watching or something about current events. Anything to let them know that I’m there with them.”

It helps to include pre-recorded questions of your own in the interview, especially as the person who ultimately makes the hiring decision, says Jonathan Frey, the CMO of Cincinnati-headquartered Urban Bikes Direct, an online retailer for electric bikes, scooters and skateboards.

“To make the process as respectful and inviting as possible, I record my own video to introduce myself and ask my questions.”

You can also share a quick tutorial for candidates on how they can excel in this part of the process.

This will show the candidate that you value them as people, and will go a long way in establishing your reputation as an employer.

2. Clarify the process

One of the big pushbacks against AVIs is that candidates feel they’re just being thrown onto the assembly line without any insight into why this is happening or where they stand in the process. Help them feel more comfortable by walking them through this part of the evaluation – including details on what candidates can expect before, during, and after.

Jacob likes to explain to the candidate why he’s turning to asynchronous video interviews in the hiring process in the first place.

*In the application process, I clearly define how the video is only to understand the candidate better, to give them the opportunity to truly represent themselves,” says Jacob. “It doesn’t end either with the video. I only request videos of those who I am planning to interview. In fact, it enables the interview to run smoother because I, in the interview, am able to adapt the flow of conversation to suit the candidate.”

Laura at Choosing Therapy highlights the importance of clarifying the process as part of establishing a diverse, equitable and inclusive experience for the candidate:

“To give everyone a fair shot, it’s crucial to provide instructions that are crystal-clear and leave no room for interpretation. That means we provide the job description. We provide the timeframe and expectations and we explain the criteria required to move to the next phase in the interview process. We try to prevent any confusion as we hope to recruit as diverse a work-team as possible and don’t want to make our recruiting process a barrier to an otherwise top-notch candidate.”

Candidates will be more motivated to participate in asynchronous video interviews when they know how it fits within the bigger picture.

3. Put your own work in

Sometimes asynchronous video interviews can be a boon in that they eliminate those irrelevant nuances that fuel hiring biases – for example, hitting it off because you like the same restaurants – and establish a more uniform screening process with a preset series of questions.

However, it can be a double-edged sword in that you can’t clarify an answer or question with a follow-up comment. That means you have to put thought into creating a series of questions that will help the candidate feel motivated to share a thoughtful and inspiring answer.

Jennifer at Resume Writing Services learned this the hard way:

“One of the reasons we were initially getting awkward responses was because we were asking poorly worded questions. Once we were fully onboard with one-way video interviewing, we came up with more appropriate questions and laid out an interview process that was more accommodating and natural for the interviewer.”

Think of it this way; the time you save in the screening process using one-way video interview technology can be invested in creating a stronger set of questions.

4. Make it a two-way street

As above, a common gripe about asynchronous video interviews is that it is a one-way experience. Candidates don’t get to ask questions of the interviewer and they don’t get an opportunity to inject some extracurricular aspects of themselves into it.

Jerry Han, the Chief Marketing Executive of PrizeRebel has a solution for that, suggesting that the interview can close out with an open-ended section to benefit the candidate:

“Add an optional section where candidates can express themselves and ask questions freely. In this set-up, one-way interviews become a two-way form of communication,” says Jerry.

“Candidates can say things that are not limited to the given questions. Candidates can choose to add vital details they didn’t get to answer because of the question selection. Consequently, they can also ask recruiters questions that show their keen interest in getting hired.”

5. Customize the experience

While a standardized process is crucial to identifying top candidates for a position, that doesn’t mean you can’t customize the experience based on a set of criteria.

In fact, personalizing the experience goes a long way in making a more positive candidate experience, says Jonathan at Urban Bikes Direct. He likes to individually tailor his asynchronous video interviews based on a pre-interview.

“Whenever possible, I record multiple video introductions for different kinds of applicants. Then I ask applicants to take a fun, Buzzfeed-style quiz – something like ‘Which Golden Girl Are You?’ That way, I can serve up a custom one-way video interview designed just for the Betty Whites or Bea Arthurs out there, as the case may be.”

Jonathan, who manages a fully distributed team out of his NYC office, also likes to have a little fun with the technology to help loosen up the candidate and get better responses:

“I recommend injecting the applicant’s name into the video interview in an unexpected way. A tongue-in-cheek approach often gets a good response. For example, you can poke fun at the very nature of one-way video interviewing by leaving silent spots in your pre-recorded video where the applicant’s name can be dubbed in by a robotic voice.”

You’re all in this together

One-way video interviews really aren’t to blame for a candidate’s negative perspective or experience. The responsibility falls on you, the recruiter and the hiring manager, in establishing a smooth, thoughtful process that shows value, empathy and appreciation for a candidate’s own position in the world of job hunting. Put in the good work, and the good workers will follow.

The post Candidates don’t like asynchronous video interviews: How can you fix that? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we’re turning to culture and employer brand leaders to tell us how. They’ll show us how to reboot your employer brand from the inside out. And bring your questions, you’ll have plenty of time to ask the experts.

In just sixty minutes, this webinar will help you:

• Build the foundation of a thriving modern culture
• Measure success and adapt over the first 6 months to a year
• Showcase your work culture and attract great talent

The post How to reboot your employer brand appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

First off, Eftychia stresses that a careers page is a critical part of the overall recruiting marketing strategy of a company. The vast majority of candidates will end up in your careers page during their job application journey.

“The second thing after seeing an open role in a board or another platform is to click to go to the company’s website and look for all the details of the company,” Eftychia says. “After this, they might go to Glassdoor, but overall, the most common step is to visit the careers page.”

Candidates don’t only apply to jobs but to companies, too. They want to know what a company’s values, vision and culture are before expressing their interest for a role. They want to visualize themselves working for you and imagine what their daily work life would be like.

That’s why Eftychia recommends making your careers page as inclusive and transparent as you can, sharing details on the company and the hiring process in an engaging way.

“You want to make the candidates excited,” Eftychia says. “You want them to really like the company.”

What should a careers page include to stand out?

As Eftychia reminds us, a careers page has a huge influence on a candidate’s motivation to apply for a job at your company. Think of it as prime real estate when promoting your company as a potential employer. So, you need to think carefully about what you need to include in a careers page that makes it unique and memorable for a prospective job applicant.

Eftychia recommends three main elements of a careers page that can make it really shine:

1. Share video testimonials

Posting videos with employee testimonials help you interact with prospects indirectly and show them who you really are:

”I would include in the careers page videos from employees talking about what they are doing, talking about their teams and why they like being in this company,” Eftychia says.

Eftychia is a strong believer that videos from executives in a careers page can make a good impression on candidates. No one can describe the company’s vision better than the company’s own leaders. It also makes the company feel more accessible on a personal level. She explains:

“I really like watching CEOs or CTOs being so close to the candidate and letting them know why it’s nice to work in their company or what their vision was when they started this company. It’s not so regular to see videos from executives as they are typically very busy for this, but I would like to see them on the careers page.”

2. Highlight company culture

Eftychia suggested introducing elements of fun activities that take place in the company to highlight the full workplace spirit to potential candidates:

“I would make it [the careers page] colorful and vivid and I would try to transfer the spirit of the company. I would also include activities from employees, even outside work. Like playing soccer, doing a team bonding activity or just having fun.”

For companies that have recently transitioned from shared physical workplaces to remote, Eftychia highlights that it’s worth sharing why they did so and what the future holds for the business to avoid confusion from the candidates’ side.

3. Describe perks and benefits

Efychia also adds that providing clear information about your company in your careers page, like details on the hiring process or company benefits, can also reduce pre-screening time; this could improve your time to hire metrics.

Do you need to share any additional or specific information when your company operates remotely? Eftychia suggests tailoring the careers pages’ content accordingly:

“You can have videos from employees while they are working from home or talking about the experience of remote working – [and] maybe even videos from the People team explaining the policies and benefits that the company has when it comes to remote working.”

How can Workable help? Workable Advanced Careers Pages

People teams usually collaborate with marketing and design departments to put this page together and deliver the best result. The People team often has to update the careers page quickly, like when a team member has retired or departed and needs to be removed from the careers page or details on benefits need to be updated.

But how efficient is this? Syncing with other departments is both time-consuming and inconvenient in those cases – and this doesn’t come without a cost:

“We need to inform the candidates accordingly because, when we start hiring, people may think that we are kind of imbalanced in what we say in the careers page and what we actually do. So it’s good to change everything really quickly.”

Advanced Careers Pages, Workable’s upcoming product release, solves this very issue. It enables recruiters and People Ops specialists to build and edit the company’s careers page easily without needing to bring in tech or design expertise.

Eftychia, who has used Advanced Career Pagers herself to build Workable’s own careers page, confirms:

“It’s very user-friendly. You can add everything you want and you can easily and quickly modify the careers page as needed. It’s pretty clear and it can be very transparent. Candidates may be able to see all the information they would like, in order to proceed to the next step and to be enthusiastic and motivated to join this company.”

With an enhanced careers page editor and templated sections, you can present all the information and content you want in a meaningful way. Add benefits, photos, videos, social media updates and other interactive elements that will help the candidates get to know you – in addition to your current openings, of course.

This doesn’t mean that collaboration with other teams will be completely off the table – that’s up to you to decide.

“You may need some advice from content or from marketing if you need to have some branded photos,” Eftychia explains. “But if there are design rules in the company about what photos to use or which writing style to prefer, then you can work quite independently.”

Plus, if you normally assign your careers page design to an external partner or agency, Advanced Careers Page will prove to be a cost-effective solution for your business in the long run.

How can you track performance with Workable Advanced Careers Pages?

In order to understand how your careers page performs, you have to analyze page visitors’ behavior and how they convert to candidates. With Advanced Careers Pages, you can have access to Google Analytics and Pixel tracking and understand those patterns in depth.

More specifically, you can track the number of visitors to the careers page and compare that with the number of actual applicants, as well as how they’ve interacted with the page – including which videos they’ve watched and what they clicked on. Those can be strong indicators of which elements are working and which elements need improvement.

But according to Eftychia, low visits and conversion rates do not automatically point to an ineffective careers page – maybe something else is missing.

“It [the analytics tool] can help you see how many candidates are applying but the careers page is not to be blamed if candidates are not applying. [It could be] something bigger. [It could be] the employer branding, or a specific situation. It has to do with many things,” Eftychia explains, adding that there can be numerous other factors affecting a candidate’s motivation to apply.”

To sum up, Eftychia believes that a careers page with creative elements and striking storytelling can bring the right candidates to you. With Workable Advanced Careers Pages, you can build a branded careers page and update it as needed without waiting for marketing updates or external resources to do the job – you can manage and master this project yourself within your People team.

The post Tell your brand story using Workable Advanced Career Pages appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Is remote permanent or temporary for this role?
• Are you planning to reopen the office?
• How do teammates socialize working from distributed areas?

And this is not an uncommon scenario these days. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, loads of businesses have experienced a culture shift. Transition to remote operations, forced layoffs, new health regulations and company policies – all these events have caused changes in company culture in a flash.

As a result, uncertainty levels rose both for candidates and in many cases employees, too. This frustration can be costly on both sides – increased time to hire, less suitable talent, and reduced candidate engagement are among the big risks you may stumble over.

So what can you do to avoid scaring off stellar candidates and bring great talent to your company’s threshold? First step: update your recruitment marketing efforts – how you promote yourself as an employer to attract future candidates. This way, you’ll secure top talent that fits your new work culture.

Top recruitment marketing tips for company culture changes

It may be difficult to get a head start on this; there’s a lot to take into account when revising your recruitment marketing strategy, especially when the rest of your hiring tasks, such as screening and onboarding are still going strong, and the surrounding environment seems to be in eternal flux. Below, we’ve gathered some recruitment marketing ideas to make things easier for you.

1. Revisit your employer brand

What makes you stand out from other companies in the same industry? How has this changed post-pandemic? How do you think the changes in your business will impact your reputation as an employer?

Once you’ve answered these questions, take steps to ensure your employer branding reflects any changes to your culture. Revisiting your candidate-facing content is your first step to success.

Here are some areas you could focus on:

• Mission and vision: If your company has recently changed the way you work, how has that impacted your mission and vision? Do you need to emphasize aspects of your mission more? Have your goals shifted? Candidates should be aware of what your business goals are and how you’ll try to reach them through your new operations and processes.
• Company policies: Whether that’s updating your employee handbook in-depth or adding a remote work policy to your existing library, make sure you have company policies that reflect the current work environment so that everyone is on the same page.
• Benefits: What types of benefits will fit employee needs in the new work environment? Maybe some of your existing perks aren’t useful anymore and you’ll need to revisit them. For example, instead of free lunches, you could offer restaurant coupons or gift cards to employees who work remotely.

How will you communicate all these changes in company culture through your vision and mission with candidates and employees? Start with your storytelling around your brand. Share new values openly and honestly. How? Through your content, of course.

Related: In this article, you’ll find different ways recruiters interacted with candidates during the pandemic based on their company’s hiring status.

2. Update your job ads

Will job requirements for your open roles be the same going forward? Going back to the remote work example, it’s useful to include previous experience or familiarity with telecommuting in the job specification. Plus, adaptability and problem-solving are ideal skills for remote workers that you want to call attention to.

You could also share other valuable information in the job descriptions to put emphasis on specific matters, as Accenture Greece, a management and technology consulting company, did during the COVID-19 crisis:

“The safety and well-being of our candidates and employees remain our priority. Please note tha the recruitment process for opportunities in Accenture Greece will be conducted only via online formatting during the current period” – From Accenture Greece

With this note, not only did they inform candidates about what to expect regarding the interview format but also made clear that employee wellbeing is a top business priority for them.

3. Increase social media presence

Use your social media platforms to showcase your company culture to potential candidates in a more vivid way. If you’ve recently switched to a virtual workplace, encourage your employees to share bits from their remote workstations and post images from team virtual meetings and activities. You could run internal contests to make it more engaging and fun. For instance, you could arrange small prizes to reward employees with highly engaging posts.

Remember to be creative and transparent. There is no need to oversell, just proudly show who you are. You could also show other initiatives that exhibit your culture and values as Salesforce, a CRM software service, did via Twitter:

Now is the time to act – to reimagine the business of business and to ensure that global economic recovery creates a new normal that betters the planet for all.@SuzanneDiBianca shares lessons learned from COVID-19 on fighting the climate crisis: https://t.co/7B3Nw7vQrY pic.twitter.com/ll5O3vsj9z

— Salesforce (@salesforce) August 26, 2020

4. Invest in your careers page

In the talent attraction war, your careers page is your strongest weapon. A neat and clearly structured career site will help you convert ideal candidates into new teammates.

Apart from including your values, open roles and benefits in text, post interactive content to help people understand what your workplace looks like in a more engaging way. Use video testimonials, images or quotes from employees describing a typical working day. Showcase initiatives that reflect your culture and company priorities as Tech will save us, a learning technology start-up, does in their career site:

Plus, if you’ve recently rearranged your benefits scheme, don’t forget to update your careers page with the new perks and clarify what value they can bring to employees’ professional development and wellbeing.

5. Inform your candidates during screening

When interviewing candidates the majority of them want to know what type of company they’re joining first-hand. First tip for interviewers: Share everything you’re proud of – company initiatives, team activities, positive brand stories, but never promise something you can’t offer. When your new hires realize that you described everyday work-life glossier than it really is, turnover will be around the corner – and this will be a real deal-breaker for your company’s productivity and hiring budget.

Also, if you’ve recently moved to remote this also means that you may need to hire people with different or additional skills than you did before. You may need to evaluate roles differently and consider new interview questions like:

• What do you think will be your biggest challenge working as a remote employee?
• How comfortable will you be working with a distributed team?
• Do you like to work autonomously with limited supervision?
• How easily do you adapt to ambiguity in the workplace?

Listen to their answers carefully; if you spot a red flag – for example, a candidate has never worked remotely before and they seem hesitant about it – be as clear as possible to them and set the right expectations.

6. Monitor Glassdoor reviews

Typically, candidates visit Glassdoor to check employee reviews for a possible future employer. In this platform, employees can anonymously share their full experience working for your business, what your culture is all about and be raw about it. Plus, candidates can freely post how satisfied they were during the screening process and their impressions from interviews. And to put it briefly, Glassdoor could become every company’s biggest enemy or foe.

If you’ve recently been through company culture changes that have affected both candidates and employees, monitor the latest Glassdoor reviews and analyze both positive and negative comments. Based on those data points, you can decide what your next moves should be to boost your employer branding and recruitment marketing (e.g. pick a different assessment tool for future candidates).

This isn’t limited to Glassdoor. You will also want to monitor other employer review sites, such as Indeed and Comparably.

A final wise thought

All the above practices seem tangible and easy to apply, but how often should employers and HR leaders run a “culture test” to see where they stand? In a recent webinar, Codility’s CEO Natalia Panowicz shared her insightful take on the matter:

Company culture changes happen organically and at a faster pace than we think. They do not always take place after big events but rather occur dynamically. That’s why we should pay attention to how it evolves over time. If you inspect it methodically and adjust your recruitment marketing in an appropriate way, you’ll communicate it more effectively with talented professionals and make your employer brand accountable to them.

So now you’re one step closer to finding the right talent for your business. Good for you!

The post How to communicate company culture changes: Recruitment marketing tips appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are the biggest problems in remote work?
• How can businesses overcome remote employee engagement issues?
• How can businesses attract candidates in this new world of work?

Understandably, the current climate marked significant upheaval in many forms – economic, health (mental and physical), social, political, and many others. The shift to remote work is just one of those new developments, but a significant one nonetheless. Everyone’s affected – including in the workplace.

Working in a new remote work environment

When asked what they think will be significant challenges in a remote-first environment, 73.2% of respondents highlighted individual employee engagement and motivation. Team-building and morale (54.7%) are next, followed by team collaboration and logistics (41.1%).

What makes remote employee engagement a major concern? Is it that our respondents are worried that if employees cannot physically see each other at work, can’t have lunch together, or work together in the same space, they’ll start tuning out? Maybe.

In a follow-up question, we asked about the top focal points to ensure remote employee engagement. The responses are predominantly focused on communications and getting synced, with 54.5% of respondents planning more team meetings (virtually) and 52.8% planning to incorporate more communications technologies (chat, video, etc.).

About a third (33.7%) said they plan regular all-hands from top management as one of their top three major focal points going forward. Just 27.8% said they plan remote-work trainings and seminars.

It’s striking that given the overall worries about working remotely, there’s less emphasis placed on upskilling and retraining employees for remote work than there is on connectivity and synchronous work in that same environment.

So, we broke down survey responses to see if there was a difference between remote-work challenges for senior-level management and for those in entry/mid-level positions. Concerns around team collaboration and team building were relatively similar, but we found that productivity is a much bigger concern for senior-level executives (a 15.3-point difference). Individual employee engagement is a greater issue for those in entry/mid-level roles (a 14.5-point difference).

This makes sense. The bottom line (and therefore, productivity) is what keeps senior-level management up at night. Individual employees and managers, on the other hand, are perhaps more concerned about staying motivated in a new, unfamiliar work world. Given that work is often collaborative, it does make sense that increased virtual communications are highlighted as ways to maintain remote employee engagement.

But now that we’re operating in a socially, politically, and economically volatile landscape, there’s more emphasis on engagement than remote-work performance.

A perceived shift in engagement

Employee disengagement is a dominant concern in a post-COVID world for many in our survey – with a full 54.8% including it in their list of top challenges going forward. New logistics (i.e. staggered schedules, virtual meetings, etc.) comes in at a distant second (32.3%).

Respondents who picked “Other” listed lower budgets for financial stability, maintaining company culture, and employee mental health as additional challenges.

We then asked respondents what they felt would become more important or less important in terms of candidate attraction going into the new world of work. They predicted that remote work, flexibility, and work-life balance (81.8%) will become more important in the eyes of candidates than before COVID-19, closely followed job security (79.8%)

Just a third of respondents thought compensation (33.3%) and career opportunity (34.6%) would become more important going forward – although it bears noting that compensation and career opportunity are traditionally high in value, possibly making “more important” a moot point.

Also: these are the opinions of employers and professionals. If one were to ask candidates themselves, the numbers may differ.

A potential insight is that candidates – and employees – will be more concerned about their physical and mental health now more than previously. The ability to determine one’s own hours and workspace is a huge benefit for many in that regard, and can improve remote employee engagement. It’s worth conducting an employee engagement survey to find out what’s at stake in your own business.

“There will be more focus on the person rather than on what the person produces. Companies will start asking why people do what they do before asking them to just do their job.” – Survey respondent

The uncertain economic climate also means job security is predicted to be a huge, huge deal for candidates. Most of our respondents are aware of this going forward – and they’ll need to include assurance of job security in their communications with candidates to attract them.

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 7 to learn more what businesses see in the road ahead 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Remote employee engagement: a new world of work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Albeit pre-COVID, the spirit of that survey still stands. Skills gaps exist, and they continue to exist (here’s how to conduct a skills gap analysis in your own organization). If you’re reading this, it’s likely a challenge in your own company as work environments become more volatile. This calls for greater utility and adaptability in its players. Add to that a shift to a remote-first environment – the suddenness of which means a very steep learning curve in a very, very short time.

For recruiters and HR managers, hiring, onboarding, and yes, training have all shifted to Hangouts and Zoom. Many of our own customers have come to us highlighting this as a major challenge.

So, whether there’s an existing skills gap or a newly surfacing one due to the new working environment, there’s one way to close that chasm: through upskilling and reskilling programs.

So, we joined forces with upskilling and reskilling experts TalentLMS and with Training Journal magazine to look at the current picture of upskilling and reskilling.

The survey’s key findings include:

• 42% of companies stepped up their upskilling and reskilling efforts after the coronavirus outbreak.
• 42% of employees have pursued training on their own after the coronavirus outbreak.
• 68% of companies invest in upskilling and reskilling training to handle changes within the organization and 65% to train employees on new technologies.
• 20% of employees received their training solely online compared with 11% doing it entirely offline. 69.5% of employees received a combination of online and offline training.
• Communication/collaboration (57%), Leadership (54%), Proactive thinking (50%), and Agility/Adaptability/Ability to Pivot (45%) were cited by employers as the most important soft skills lacking in their employees.
• Companies believe that employees are lacking communication/collaboration, leadership, and proactive thinking skills.
• 91% of companies and 81% of employees say upskilling and reskilling training has boosted productivity at work.

First, we asked companies whether they have ever provided their employees with reskilling or upskilling training – 92% of respondents say they, in fact, have.

When we rolled out the survey, the COVID-19 crisis had already started to impact the workplace. Questions around COVID-19 were then included.

Training in the COVID-19 crisis

During the crisis, 43% of employers took the opportunity to build on skill sets:

“In this rapidly disruptive period, employers recognized the need to equip their workforce with new skills – quickly – to maintain productivity,” says Keith MacKenzie, Workable’s Content Strategy Manager.

“For example, the shift to remote work for many companies has led to an urgent need for new soft skills such as the ability to work independently and asynchronously,” Keith adds. “Recruiters and HR managers normally accustomed to in-person hiring, onboarding and training are suddenly needing to develop skills to continue to do all of this, online, in a virtual environment.”

Eleftheria Papatheodorou, Customer Support and Training Director at TalentLMS, highlighted the value of online training:

“In this collective time, companies across industries, no matter their size or needs, moved their training online to keep going,” Eleftheria says. “Not all companies indeed assigned more courses after the coronavirus outbreak, but they definitely will in the future since all their existing offline training is, for the most part, officially online. We’re entering a period where online training is not another solution but the only way to go. Employers like it, employees love it, and it gets you geared up for the unexpected. So what could go wrong?”

However, not all employee expectations were met – 42% of employees said they pursued outside training in addition to their employer’s existing program.

More than a quarter (27%) of employees said they received no upskilling or reskilling training from their employers, and 65% of those pursued training on their own. This shows a clear desire for employees to build themselves up – making upskilling and reskilling programs a powerful tool in a company’s candidate attraction strategy.

So, not only are recruiters, HR and hiring managers looking to develop their skills in a new virtual world of hiring and onboarding, they’re having to develop those skills online. Which brings us to:

Training delivery

A blend of offline and online learning was cited by 69% of employers when asked how they deliver training. However, with a virtual working environment becoming more commonplace in the new world of work, a shift to a more online-friendly training program is likely.

Six in 10 employees also preferred online as opposed to offline training as well. This number likely becomes higher when working in a remote-first environment and employees are reluctant to physically attend training sessions in a group setting.

Soft skills valued higher up the ladder

The survey found that the value of soft skills increased with seniority within the company, with just 40% citing soft skills as the most important for entry-level compared with 81% for executive-level. With hard skills, the numbers skew the opposite way.

What soft skills are coveted, then? The ability to communicate effectively with others, to lead, to think proactively, and to be agile and pivot quickly were cited as major soft skills lacking in employees – with the last one a valuable skill particularly when working in a rapidly shifting work environment during the COVID-19 crisis:

So is it worth the time and effort to build up your staff? Well, three out of four of employers said upskilling and reskilling were a huge boost to company productivity, and 58% saying it benefited their employee retention.

Not only do you want to retain your employees (the costs of not doing so can be an eye-opener), you can double down on the benefit of a program by highlighting this as a perk in your job descriptions. The survey found that 74% of those employees who haven’t received any upskilling and reskilling training would prefer to work for a company that offers upskilling or reskilling opportunities.

In closing, the business case is clear – an upskilling and reskilling program can have a positive impact on your organization’s bottom line in the following ways:

• Higher employee engagement and retention
• Greater productivity
• More attractive employer brand

And, of course, strengthening your incoming and existing employees with new and valuable skills will help close that glaring skills gap highlighted by McKinsey.

End note: Check out a more in-depth analysis of the survey results from Aris Apostolopoulos at TalentLMS, who also contributed to this article.

How we did it

TalentLMS, Training Journal, and Workable surveyed 282 training and hiring managers, C-level executives, and decision-makers in various companies to see why they decided to reskill or upskill their workforce and how beneficial it’s been to business. Then, we reached out to 400 full-time employees in the US between the ages of 18 and 54+ to ask them about their employers’ upskilling and reskilling training initiatives.

The post Survey: Upskilling and reskilling in 2020 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As Ryan’s company grew, he found people’s hesitation about remote work only grew with the size of the company – effectively, the larger you are, the more you must have an office for everyone to work in.

But Ryan has shushed those naysayers. SmartBug, a marketing agency that’s “headquartered” in California with its entire 80-strong workforce all working remotely, is now certified as a Great Place to Work. It’s also been named to the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies for three straight years, as well as the AdWeek 100 Fastest Growing Agencies List.

With the world rapidly – and for many, uncomfortably – moving towards remote work as a permanent solution, it’s good to learn from the experts who’ve already done it and have been doing it for a long time. So we got in touch with Ryan to find out the method behind the madness.

Back in the beginning

As it happens, Ryan’s life as a remote CEO was personally motivated:

“When I was 17, my dad passed away. He worked so hard. He was in aerospace and in quality assurance, so he traveled a lot. But he was always present at 95% of the things that I did. He coached our sports teams and all of these things.”

Ryan wanted to be that kind of a father for his kids. “I didn’t want to be the dad who never saw his kids grow up because I’m always at the office.”

He also had large aspirations being the CEO of SmartBug. He wanted to be able to invest a fair amount of time and energy into that but without taking it away from his family or vice versa.

“If you’re the CEO of a company and you parachute in once a month to make a decision about which you have no information, you have no camaraderie with your team, you’ve never gone to war with any of them – like, nobody wants to work for that person. That’s not a leader in my opinion.”

So – being caught in that career-vs-family dilemma, Ryan opted to choose both.

“At the time, the only way that I could be there for my kids and be there for my company was to be remote – it was the only solution to our problem.”

It’s a two-way street

Ryan wanted to extend that setup to his employees. He believes that if you show employees that you value what they do outside of work by granting them the power to set a work and life cadence that suits them best, the payoff is huge.

Ryan figured he could make that happen with an all-remote model at his company – this way, he could get better talent faster, and as a result, people at his company would work in an agile way in a challenging environment with very smart colleagues.

“At the same time, [you] give them the flexibility and freedom to have a great career and go create memories in their life, which at the end of the day is what matters to us, and that we could do both.”

A work-life integration

But according to Ryan, that doesn’t mean work-life balance. It’s actually work-life integration.

“I think work-life balance assumes that you turn off things at 5 o’clock and there’s some kind of schedule in which work isn’t a big part of your life. Work-life integration is more that you can do both. Let’s assume I want to run a triathlon, and my triathlon team trains at 3 o’clock on Tuesday. In a work-life balance environment when I’m 9 to 5, I wouldn’t be able to participate in that because the expectation is that the company wants you there til 5. Those are business hours.

“In work-life integration, the employee makes a decision to say, ‘You know what, I’m gonna schedule in 3 to 6 p.m. every Tuesday for my training’. In fact, we encourage people to schedule the things that matter in their life first. I pick up my kids every day from the bus at 3, I train for the triathlon, whatever, and then make life decisions after that, knowing that I can do the non-customer facing things outside of business hours. It’s an empowering decision for people.

“That’s integrating your work in your life in such a way that you can win both.”

This requires a special kind of worker who can thrive in this sort of environment.

“We feel like people who are kind of sharp and driven […] we’ll take advantage of that and design their work schedule in such a way that they do the best work at the right time and that they have time for the things that matter at the right time, and there’s so much time in a week that you should be able to do both.”

The realities of the 9-to-5

Although the death of the 9-to-5 schedule is often proclaimed by leading publications including Financial Review and Inc., with arguments to shorten it to as little as five hours a day, the 9-to-5 grind is still a common reality. Since this work tradition dates way back to the days of Ford and his automobile plants, there’s bound to be skepticism.

That’s evident in the clear gap between those who want greater flexibility in many different forms in their work schedules (a staggering 96% of those surveyed) and those who actually have it (less than half that – just 47%). So, what does Ryan say to those companies that insist on staying with the standard?

That kind of pushback, he says, usually comes from someone who’s either unfamiliar or new to remote work. And that applies not only to employers, but employees too:

“In fact, there was an example of someone here who when you talk to them, they’re like, ‘I’m really stressed out with this remote stuff’, and I ask them why. [Their response is]; ‘Well, I just feel like I need to be at my desk all the time in case a client calls’.”

Ryan says he would ask them what it was like when they worked in-house at an office – the response would be that they would leave a voicemail message. If that call was at 4:30, i.e. later in the day and you weren’t able to return that call, then they’d just call the next day. And so on.

Ryan’s point: “What’s the difference so as long as you’re available for your clients and you’re available for your team? Why does the rest of it matter?”

And not being able to see someone physically at their desk is a sign of distrust, he says. “It’s not really just trust – it’s more like an unfounded fear that something’s not getting done.”

Face the fears, and then overcome them

We’re now in an environment that has really pushed many companies to a fully remote workplace. But that doesn’t mean that when we return to “normal” office life, we’ll also all move back into the office. A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey has found that 49% of companies are prepared to go fully remote with roles that can accommodate that.

That makes it even more important to hire great people who can thrive in that new remote environment, says Ryan. You don’t have to worry that they’ll do their job, because you’ll know pretty quickly if they aren’t, by way of feedback from clients or colleagues.

He emphasizes that when you make a hire, you’re sending a message of trust that your new employee will be a valuable asset to your team – so it doesn’t make sense if you want to be able to see them at their desk or keep them to a fixed schedule after they’ve been hired.

At the root of it is an underlying fear of change for many managers and companies, and this current crisis is a catalyst that makes them face that fear. Ryan explains:

“It forces them to realize that what people can do is just as good […] and they’re just as passionate about their work – they just happen to be on a video or they happen to be in their pajamas or their kid might be running in the background, but you [still] hired a passionate person.”

ID your stars from the start

Not everyone’s cut out for remote work, obviously – a Gallup poll finds that 41% of U.S. workers will want to return to the office once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. But that means 59% do want to work remotely as much as they’re permitted to do so by their employer.

Of that 59%, however, there will be some who just don’t operate that well in a remote fashion. When you’re hiring for a remote position, you’ll want to identify the ones who can indeed shine in that environment. That means you’ll need to adapt the way you assess candidates.

But before doing that, Ryan stresses, you can’t let go of the normal job interview process. Out of all the hires he’s made in the history of his company, he’s only met two in person before hiring them. That’s two, out of an 80-strong employee base. The rest were via video – and previously, phone calls, which he called a huge leap of faith.

But that doesn’t mean the hire is made entirely on a hunch. There are strategies you can follow outside of the normal hiring process with the standard interview questions. Otherwise, you may make some bad choices:

“A candidate could put on their game face and say they love remote, and be this dynamic person, and talk to me about autonomy, and how they plan their schedule, but at the end of the day, if they do it for two weeks, they might be, like, ‘I need some friends’.”

How to screen for remote-first workers

How do you recognize those red flags in a candidate before you’ve hired them? First, Ryan looks to where the candidate’s social energy comes from. For instance, if you find that a candidate likes going to work and goes to lunch and happy hour with the same people regularly, then remote work may be viewed as that being taken away from them.

That’s problematic, Ryan says. There are questions you can ask around that – for instance, ask a candidate: “When’s the best time for you to work?” Ryan says if the answer is that they love coming to work early in the morning or staying late, or shutting their door and having no meetings, because they can really get work done, then you know you’ve got someone who would be a good fit for remote.

”[You know] they’ll appreciate it. They gain something. […] It’s like ‘I lose something’ versus ‘I gain a freedom’. We really try to find the people that aren’t going to lose something when they go remote, but are looking for remote as a way to get rid of all the distraction.”

The second thing Ryan looks for is resiliency – the ability to adapt and pivot quickly in a less-structured environment. You don’t have those normal outlets where you can just go down the hall and vent in someone’s office after every minor hiccup. While there are still avenues through which you can help each other through rough patches – remote doesn’t mean isolated, after all – being resilient is still a powerful skill in a remote environment.

“So, we have to find people that have handled some adversity, and our resilient people can understand [that] maybe a client emergency comes up that you need to move stuff around,” says Ryan.

“That resiliency of understanding that, ‘Hey, I’ve got a certain amount of time during the day. My plan is X, but it may be that my plan is Y by noon because something more important came up, and I’m OK with that. I made that bargain in my head that I’m exchanging this for that, and it’s no big deal.”

Someone who’s able to do that, operating in unpredictable and less-structured environments, can really step up at a remote-first company like SmartBug.

Go deeper into the background

Ryan suggests taking a good part of the interview to talk to the candidate to assess their resiliency, even asking outright if they think they’re resilient and to share some examples of their being so. Rather than asking, “Give me an example of when you had a challenging project and what you did about it”, which Ryan thinks isn’t deep enough, he suggests that you open it up and explore the candidate’s background and experiences in a more open-ended way.

“It could be that you worked at a company where you were under-resourced constantly and you had to be scrappy, it could be that you had some situation that required you in your personal life to do something outstanding.”

Ryan says that part of the interview can take up 20 minutes or more because it’s worth it.

“I think that if you fish around for adversity and resiliency and stuff, you find people who have mettle, and mettle, I think, goes a long way in a remote workforce.”

The benefits of remote work

There are actually benefits to remote work that aren’t enjoyed in a traditional office environment, Ryan says – especially as it pertains to office culture and politics.

“In any company, there is sometimes animosity between one employee and another for whatever reason. In a remote company you never see that. You know, one person that’s always in the boss’ office at 3 o’clock and you see them through the window and they’re laughing and having a great time, and everyone’s wondering what’s going on. You just don’t have all that at a remote company.”

Remote work also better avoids other problems that can arise in a normal office environment, including clashing political views, harassment, discrimination, and other potential toxicities in the workplace.

But it’s not just about eliminating the potential negatives – Ryan finds a fully remote working culture opens up some new opportunities to foster a much more positive environment.

“There are some things that from an HR perspective you don’t really have to focus on. You can just focus on some of the positivity of culture if you find the right people.”

Teams get stronger, too, he adds.

“People [try] to help each other, and people [create] tribes of different interests. Those are really strong because that’s what keeps the remote team together.”

Deeper connections in physical separation

There’s a certain irony in finding deeper connections with people you’ve never – or rarely – met in real life. But that’s what’s happening at SmartBug.

“We hear it frequently when people come [to SmartBug] from in-house that they have tighter relationships here than they had when they were in-house. I think it’s because you have a lot of people who want to make connections with people, and they’re able to find their groups.”

Ryan says that’s because departments don’t tend to interact solely with each other in a relatively larger company of 100 or more employees. “They all have their little fiefdom.”

But those departmental separations are erased at SmartBug, and the company proactively ensures that.

“If I’m at a remote company, the common intersection between the two is that we all like reality TV or we’re all coffee aficionados or we’re all basketball fans. And so when we do onboarding, we have everyone do a get-to-know-you call which is just a 20-minute call, like, the rule is you can’t talk about work. And they do it with every employee.

“The purpose of that thing is to let people find their tribes and the other people that are interested and have commonalities, so that when they […] get into our Zoom, they have their groups that they are part of. Now they have multiple tribes that have the same interest, and the commonality is that interest.”

Teamwork makes the dream work

Unlike in the old days, we as a society are well-equipped to take much of our company remote – or even all of it. Ryan Malone freely admits that it’s still a challenge and that SmartBug Media is still trying to perfect their practice. So far, with a clear emphasis on recruiting strong performers who are drawn to this way of work, and having an effective vetting process in place to find these performers, it seems to be working.

Now, with the push to move to remote work as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and a mounting workforce that values flexibility in schedule, Ryan Malone and SmartBug Media don’t just have a head start – they’re already there.

The post Remote work trailblazer: Insights from SmartBug Media’s founder appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

These downturns happened at very different stages of my life, both professionally and personally. While my risk tolerance was certainly higher when I was younger, I still choose to work at start-ups where I need to constantly navigate uncertainty. In the startup world, the path forward is never clear. Far from that, in fact – it’s often winding, unstable, and dimly lit – and never more so than now.

People talk about the ‘new normal’, but what does that even mean? Reality set in very quickly that it is certainly no longer business as usual – for anyone. Customers are panicked, employees are anxious, the markets are ridiculously volatile, we’re working in new and unfamiliar ways, and tomorrow is a big unknown.

Running marketing for a recruitment software company, my job is to try and make sense of all the noise and confusion and blaze some sort of path forward for my business and my team.

Here are six things I’ve done – and continue to do – as a marketing leader to keep the engines running and ensure some sort of continuity and, ideally, progress:

1. Tune in like never before

Throughout a period of uncertainty, get as close as possible to the market(s) you serve. Observe, listen, and consume information from those around you – analysts, consultants, competitors, thought leaders, and other executives. Become knowledgeable about how your industry is being affected, and most importantly, make sure you talk to your customers. Find out how this uncertainty is impacting their business. What are they worried about? What are their contingency plans?

And, likewise, get close to your sales, support, and account management teams. What are they hearing on the front lines? Do they see opportunities that you don’t? Any feedback or signals are helpful to understand how your business may be impacted and to help inform how your team and your business might need to adapt.

2. Be helpful, but stay opportunistic

Put yourself in a position to be helpful to the market and view this as a unique opportunity to actually strengthen your company’s brand. Listen to your customers and see how flexible you can be to support their needs. Provide guidance to your prospects and be there as an advisor, not just someone trying to sell them a product or service. Stay opportunistic – that’s your job, but at the same time, don’t be obnoxious or tone deaf. Timing is everything.

The help and guidance you provide now will strengthen your brand in the mind of your customers and prospects, so adapt your messaging accordingly and make sure it flows through all of your touchpoints with the market – through marketing, sales, customer success, and support.

If you approach the market with the purpose of being helpful, you will likely unearth some short-term opportunities and definitely build goodwill that can pay dividends down the road.

Workable’s own approach

In Workable’s case, we worked quickly to provide useful content to help companies adapt to the urgent shift to remote work. Our content team created WFH policies and templates that could be used by HR departments and other business leaders. We quickly pulled together a webinar with panelists from companies that had the WFH thing down to an art form. They shared powerful advice on how to run remote meetings, how to hire and onboard remotely, and how to maintain team morale.

On the product side, we gave away access to our new Video Interviews feature for free so that companies that needed to interview and hire at scale could do so. We invested in getting companies set up at no cost and even gave away our core technology for free to companies that needed to hire essential workers.

We’ve also launched another free service called Bridge, designed to help companies provide outplacement job support to their laid-off employees.

We’re seeing our customers scrambling for content, guidance, and flexibility in how to conduct business through this trying time. And we’re seeing a healthy response to our own efforts. We can’t solve all of their problems, but we’re genuinely trying to help where we can.

3. Ramp up your internal communications

The amount of information you’re exposed to and the gravity of some of the decisions you and your executive team need to make can be overwhelming. While nobody expects you to have all of the answers, your employees do look to you to provide guidance and make sense of what all of this means for your business and their careers.

Be sure to meet regularly as an executive team and build consensus for how you plan to communicate with employees. Encourage your CEO to share the broader vision with all employees on how your business is doing – and responding – and offer to help shape that messaging where needed. Then be sure to bring that same vision into your team and gather feedback.

You know your employees, so be sure to ask questions about what they’re anxious or uncertain about, and try to provide additional context. It’s better to over-communicate rather than under-communicate. Set up extra touchbases, standups, or 1:1s. Not everyone will need them, but most will appreciate them. Lastly, be hyper-vigilant about projecting a sense of calm and confidence to your teams. Don’t sugarcoat things, but avoid hitting the panic button at all costs.

4. Plan your contingencies

For most startups, financial stability comes down to the company’s cash position and how long it will take to either burn through that cash or achieve cash-flow breakeven. More mature, profitable companies might be more focused on maintaining efficiencies and managing the bottom line. Your marketing budget factors into your company’s financial picture and it’s your job to help your CFO with contingency planning and have a good read on what levers you can pull, if needed. If you’re not currently close to your CEO, now is a good time to get acquainted.

Marketing is typically the first – and often hardest hit – area of a business when it comes to contingencies built to manage the business through uncertainty or a possible recession. It’s one of the only areas of a business where spend can be flexed quickly, especially in areas like paid media and field marketing.

Even if you’ve established your marketing operation as a revenue-producing function, your CFO likely views you as a cost center, and both your CEO and CFO are exploring every possible opportunity to maintain the health and viability of the business.

Prepare to make tough calls

If it’s going to be difficult to generate demand in your market because the pace of business is slowing or coming to a halt, understand that a pullback or a complete pause in your variable marketing spend might be necessary. Beyond program spend, look at your tech stack. What’s mission-critical versus a ‘nice-to-have’ software (more on this below)? Talk to your vendors and renegotiate rates and payment terms – anything that helps reduce costs and preserve cash in the short term.

It’s possible that cutting programs and tech spend might not be enough and that you might be required to look at a reduction in overhead. It’s an uncomfortable proposition, but one that you must get comfortable with as a department head.

The key is to move fast here. Align with your CFO, work through your contingencies, and get scrappy.

If you’re in a less impacted market, it might be possible that increasing investment or activities might be the best possible action, especially if some of your competition is pulling back. This takes us back to point #1: stay alert and read the market. Use the signals to identify where the opportunities are and figure out if there is a way to go after them.

But, be pragmatic. If you have to cut, you have to cut. Spend is a luxury. Use this as an opportunity to refocus the team on what it can organically produce through activities like content creation, enhanced distribution, email marketing, and improved alignment with the rest of the business. This is a time to get nimble and take a bare-bones approach.

5. Prepare for the long haul

You’ve been running fast for a long time now, chasing growth and upside in every nook and cranny. But by now, your processes have become cumbersome, maybe even burdensome. Your tech stack is bloated, redundant, or insufficient. You’ve been patching things together, pushing off projects that never make the high-priority bucket, and saying “we’ll get to that later.”

Guess what? It’s later. If things are slowing in your market, now is that opportunity you’ve always wanted to focus internally and rebuild processes, tighten up your tech stack, streamline your workflows, and create the efficiencies you’ve craved for so long. Think about what the business will look like when things turn around and when your team is running at full speed again.

What will help them run faster and smoother? What analysis have you been meaning to do for months that will shed some insights into bigger, meatier opportunities? What tools have you been wanting to create for the sales team but keep pushing off because of non-stop emergency needs?

Get ahead of the future

Also, think about what the landscape in your market will look when business starts to rebound. Work will be different – how we work, where we work, and how we do business. Jamming a few thousand people into a tall building every day, cramming 10K people into a conference center for an industry event, running field events for your sales team – it all might be a bit different going forward, maybe a bit scaled back. How will you adapt? How will your customers adapt? Start thinking about your future state now and how you’ll need to – or want to – do things differently. Build towards that.

This thinking extends way beyond marketing. Hiring has slowed or come to an abrupt stop for many companies. But, if you’re in HR or talent, or are a hiring manager, you’re likely going to need to hire fast and rebuild some areas when things start to improve. Quality candidates that were previously so hard to find are now in abundance. Job applications will be through the roof and you’ll need to be able to screen and interview at scale without any breakdown in your process. Are you built for that? How can you set yourself up for what looks to be a seismic shift in recruiting and hiring?

Job applications will be through the roof and you’ll need to be able to screen and interview at scale without any breakdown in your process. Are you built for that?
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I’m sure there’s plenty to work on. It just requires a realistic assessment of the situation, some vision for the future, refinement and optimization of processes, and big reprioritization of opportunities.

6. Identify top talent in your team

You need to try new things and operate a bit differently. You might require different skills than you’ve needed before, or it’s possible you’ve had to shrink the team down and you’ve shed some skills that are still a necessity. Here is your chance to flex your existing employees – i.e. challenge them to tackle new initiatives and broaden their skills. See who steps up and finds ways to keep moving things creatively forward in the face of uncertainty.

Look for help from folks in other areas of the business, assuming that luxury exists. When things get tough, the all-stars will step up and your future leaders will shine. In the short term, your operational output will benefit, and in the long term, you’ll have a seasoned and motivated department that can quickly capitalize when the market recovers.

Keep your chin up

Uncertainty is tough, but it’s never the end of the world. There are silver linings in all of this and it’s important to remember that we will rebound – hopefully quickly. ‘This, too, shall pass,’ as the adage goes.

Things might look different on the other side, but that’s not necessarily bad. Those who adapt, keep moving, and stay close to their markets and teams will come out of this one step ahead of the competition. For now, stay safe, stay healthy, and stay engaged.

The post Marketing through uncertainty: 6 tips from a marketing leader appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Current job opportunities
• Job ad templates and interview question kits
• Places where you can post your job ads or look for a new job

Note: We’ll be updating these resources regularly – check back often for additional content. 

1. Current job opportunities

Here are some of the companies that are currently hiring as found in the Workable job board. We’ve included their most recent job ads, but feel free to check the companies’ careers pages (you’ll find the links below) for new job opportunities.

If your company is currently scaling or has urgent hiring needs, reach out to us and we’ll include your company’s details in the following table to help you connect with job seekers.

We’ve also recently launched Bridge, an outplacement solution by Workable, that helps displaced employees find their next job quickly by connecting them with companies that are still hiring. Learn more about our initiative.

2. Templates: Job descriptions and interview questions

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to hire for roles that didn’t previously exist – and they usually need to do that fast. We researched which jobs are in high demand right now by industry and gathered all our relevant job description templates so you can save time when advertising your open roles.

Below are interview questions to prepare yourself – whether you’re an interviewer or a candidate.

3. Job boards

The following pages aggregate current job opportunities – have a look if you’re in search of a new job or post your company’s open roles. If you’re advertising your jobs on traditional, popular job boards (e.g. Indeed and Monster), make sure to include key phrases such as “Hiring now” to attract job seekers.