Assuming you’re able to attract a decent number of candidates per role, you still have to balance this quantity with identifying and shortlisting the most talented engineers. Otherwise, you’re likely sacrificing an average of $30,000 (not including compensation) for each bad engineering hire.

In this article, we’ll talk about screening and interviewing the software engineering candidates that you do get – quickly and at scale. By the end of it, you’ll be in a better position to build or improve your technical hiring process. This means:

• Clarity – everyone is aligned on the way you screen and hire engineers.
• Speed – faster time to hire so you avoid losing strong applicants during the hiring journey.
• Retention – hiring the right person in the first place can improve employee retention.

To achieve these goals, we’re going to suggest a standard hiring process for you to use and tweak for your organization. We’re also going to present the dos and don’ts for screening and interviewing developers based on CodeInterview’s first-hand expertise based on more than 100,000 engineering interviews per year.

But first, why should you have a separate hiring journey just for engineers?

What’s different about hiring tech talent?

Hiring technical talent is, in many ways, similar to hiring other types of professionals.

You define a role, advertise the job post, evaluate candidates, negotiate an offer and onboard the new employee.

However, there are details in this process that need special attention.

For example, the sourcing channels you use may be developer-focused or you may have to rely on headhunting more than usual due to high demand for talent.

When it comes to screening and interviewing, you will need to take into account criteria such as the specific technologies the role requires. And then, test for them.

You will also need different evaluation tools beyond questionnaires and meetings.

With that in mind, let’s take a detailed look at the key changes you need to introduce when designing and improving your technical hiring process.

1. Prioritize skills over experience and education

Few disciplines move as quickly as software engineering.

New technologies and frameworks emerge all the time and candidates that become complacent may fall behind, despite having many years of experience.

Moreover, the best developers are often self-taught tinkerers with little or no formal education in computer science.

So while a candidate’s professional and academic background is important, you should pay more attention to their skills and thought process demonstrated throughout the hiring journey.

2. Rely on coding tests and portfolios more than CVs

Don’t get me wrong – your screening process is still likely to start with a CV.

However, this is more of a tripwire to make sure irrelevant candidates are filtered out. For example, if you’re hiring for a Senior Ruby on Rails engineer, you should not waste time on candidates that are unfamiliar with this technology.

So in contrast to most other roles, the CV will not be an anchor point for you during further stages like an interview. Rather, it’s going to be projects the candidate has worked on and how they approached them.

Nowadays, you will typically have access to the candidate’s GitHub as a reference to previous projects. You can also send automated coding tests and discuss these during an initial interview.

While some candidates may be better at selling themselves on paper, hard coding skills can’t be faked or exaggerated. For these reasons, you should prioritize objective evaluation methods rather than resumes.

3. Send take-home projects instead of competency interviews

Take-home projects are typically longer (2-4 hour) assignments that dive deeper into a specific skill or technology required for the role.

These assignments are often paid and serve to narrow down your shortlist to just two or three candidates who make it to the final cut. As such, they are well suited as a follow-up to the initial interview.

While you can still have a competency interview, the take-home project can serve as the anchor point for this, discussing their thought process during a solution presentation.

4. Implement a solution presentation

While coding tests and take-home projects are relatively objective measurements of skill, some candidates may be able to bypass the rules by re-taking the test multiple times or getting help from a friend.

This is where a solution presentation is handy – think of it as a chance for the candidate to justify their approach. It’s also a good way to evaluate the candidate’s communication skills.

5. Hold virtual or in-person whiteboard interviews

For senior-level positions that require extensive knowledge of software architecture and design, you will often need to conduct a classic whiteboard interview.

6. Equip yourself with new tools

Hiring developers requires tools beyond online conferencing and email – particularly when hiring tech workers remotely. For example, you’ll need a coding interview tool, technical assessment software and a virtual whiteboard.

7. Adopt a new perspective for technical hires

As you can see, hiring technical talent requires changes to your hiring process and tools.

But there’s one more thing to keep in mind – the competitive landscape, especially if you’re not on the tech workers’ A-list. Because engineers are in such high demand, you need to adopt a perspective around speed and candidate experience to avoid losing candidates to competitors.

In addition, good developers are hard to find so make sure you optimize your sourcing channels and make the most of the applications that you do get from your efforts.

Standard technical hiring process to use

To present the best practices when screening and interviewing developers, we’ll suggest a sample framework you can use directly or tweak for your organization. Here’s the process:

1. Pre-screen

CV upload and a brief questionnaire to filter out candidates that don’t meet your minimum criteria. Your ATS should have the ability to filter applications based on self-selected skills.

Here’s the rationale: The CV and questionnaire are low barriers for getting candidates through the door. Engineers, probably more than anyone, don’t like lengthy hiring processes. When you reduce the barrier to apply, you create the initial commitment to complete the application.

At this stage, it’s important to develop a simple checklist to help you filter candidates faster. For example:

• Years of experience
• Programming languages & frameworks
• Any big achievements
• Salary expectations

2. Screen

Send an automated coding test to all candidates so you can objectively rank them based on skills and speed. Review the top candidates’ GitHub accounts to get a better understanding of their experience. Optional: request a short video introduction, especially for engineering management roles.

Note: Coding tests are prone to cheating (despite plagiarism detection). So don’t skip step 3 below:

3. Initial coding interview

Here’s what you should do here: prepare! Candidates are not the only ones that get assessed at this stage. You will also represent your company and creating a bad impression by not being organized or having the right questions prepared in advance can ruin the experience and compromise your hiring.

Now, on to other practical considerations:

Schedule the initial interview to talk about the candidate’s approach during the coding test as well as specific points of interest on their resume. Prepare a set of questions depending on the role so you can see the candidate code in real time.

To help you, here are some proven interview questions to ask:

• How would you solve problem X?
• Why did you select this specific technology/approach?
• What kind of resources can you recommend for someone earlier in their career?

In addition to critical thought, you should notice how many clarification questions they ask (the more, the better!); are they enthusiastic when talking about a solution? Are they able to present compelling arguments?

These types of questions will typically go a longer way than theoretical questions from CS 101.

Optional: for senior roles, you can include an additional whiteboard interview.

4. Take-home project

Narrow down your candidates to the top two or three using a paid take-home project. Allow at least a week to complete so the candidate can work around their schedule.

Here are some checkpoints to help you evaluate take-home projects:

• Does it run?
• Can the candidate write good test cases?
• Does the candidate clearly log changes?
• Did the candidate use a technology/approach they know well?

5. Solution presentation

Schedule a presentation to discuss the take-home project. The idea is to get a better understanding of the candidate’s decision making and communication skills. It’s also a good idea to invite the candidate’s potential co-workers so they can meet (online or in person) before step 6 below.

6. Trial day

Invite the best candidate to work with your team for a few hours or a full day. This is the best way to see how they would fit in and gain input from their potential team. The session can be in-person or remote, depending on the role requirements. Revert to the second-best candidate if you notice any red flags during the trial.

While this may sound like a lot, it’s nothing compared to the costs of hiring a bad engineer. As long as you approach the journey with respect for their time and effort, candidates will remain engaged throughout.

Once you go through the process several times, you will streamline the steps and achieve greater speed. You can also modify the process by removing or automating certain parts so it fits your own needs.

Needless to say, junior-level hires will not have to go through as rigorous an assessment as a senior engineer or manager.

What to avoid

Now you have a starting process for hiring technical talent. But what are some things to avoid at all costs to preserve your employer brand and the candidate experience?

Little or unclear information

Overcommunication is the way to go here. There’s nothing more frustrating for a candidate than a set of unclear instructions before meeting a hiring manager that’s waiting to be impressed.

Theoretical “trick” questions

Many candidates will have years or decades of experience so introductory CS problems are likely a distant blur.

Good developers are able to find the information they need quickly and have the necessary experience and intuition for effective problem-solving. Avoid theoretical questions designed to trip candidates unless it’s crucial to the role.

Lengthy evaluation periods

Good engineers will likely get several offers when looking for a job.

This is why you need to prioritize speed and avoid lengthy hiring procedures – or risk getting outpaced by competitors.

Make sure your process is streamlined and everything is ready for new hires to begin – from standard questions to onboarding documentation and legal contracts.

Conclusion

After years of recruiting engineers and seeing how the best companies do it, this is clear:

Developers are hard to get and harder to keep.

If you want to attract the right talent and increase your chances of retaining them, I hope the advice above will prove valuable in your technical hiring process.

To summarize:

• Create a parallel hiring process for engineers to accommodate adequate skills assessment.
• Utilize a standard procedure that’s understood by recruiters, hiring managers, candidates and other stakeholders alike.
• Tweak the procedure we have suggested to fit your own needs.
• Avoid the common pitfalls when hiring engineers such as long evaluation periods and irrelevant questions.

And if there is one thing to take away from this whole article, it’s this: hiring a bad engineer is worse than not hiring at all. So make the most of your incoming applications by rigorously selecting the best and most relevant talent for your organization without compromise.

Munir Usman is the founder and CEO of CodeInterview – a technical assessment platform for software engineers. Previously, he founded and later sold development agency Pi Labs where he personally recruited 100+ software engineers to work on high-stakes projects for companies like Microsoft, P&G and Nokia.

The post How to screen and interview software engineers at speed and scale appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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

1. Introduction to Applicant tracking systems

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

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

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

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

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

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2. Overview of applicant tracking systems

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

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

What is an ATS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions to get started with evaluating applicant tracking software:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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4. Benefits of Applicant Tracking Systems

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

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

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

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

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

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5. Choosing an Applicant Tracking System

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

What are the benefits of SaaS:

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

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

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

The sensible ATS buyers’ checklist:

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

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

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6. Keys to Recruiting

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

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

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

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

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

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

Candidate management

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

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

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

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

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7. Managing the Hiring Process

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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8. Optimizing your Company’s Careers Page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 9. Managing the interview process

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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10. Assessing Your Requirements

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

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

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

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

Analytics

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

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

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

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

Performance

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

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

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

Security

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

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

Data ownership

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

Search functionality

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

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

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

Customization

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

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

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

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

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11. Checklist of applicant tracking system

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

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

Document why you are implementing an ATS in the first place

Before you implement an ATS, define your purpose, scope, and intent in doing so. Explaining the functionality of the ATS system and outlining how it can help streamline tasks can encourage your HR team to see the advantages of going through the implementation process.

An ATS can simplify or automate the following tasks:

• Creating job descriptions
• Publishing job postings to social media, LinkedIn, and job boards
• Processing job applications
• Parsing resumes
• Tracking and reporting recruitment metrics
• Automating communication and follow-up with job seekers
• Scheduling interviews
• Extending job offers
• Executing contracts
• Assisting with onboarding tasks

Make sure your team understands which aspects of their workflow can be alleviated with recruiting software, who will be affected by the changes, and how it will allow them to focus their knowledge and expertise on more important aspects of talent management, such as recruiting qualified candidates and improving the overall candidate experience.

Alert the team and get everyone on board

Some team members may not want to learn a new process, even if it will make their job easier in the future. It’s important to remember that people are comfortable in their routines and change can be difficult.

Your recruiting team may have fears about being replaced by technology, might lack confidence about their technical ability, or could worry that using recruitment technology could inadvertently make their job more difficult.

Successful implementation of an ATS starts with clear communication about the logistics and timeline of using the new software, along with any demonstrations or training that can help make the transition less intimidating or disruptive.

State clear goals and measurable metrics with new ATS

Being specific about your expectations for an ATS should be part of your implementation plan. Communicating that you believe the system will streamline the hiring process may be true, but it is also too vague to inspire confidence.

Instead, use clear goals and measurable metrics so that your team knows that the performance of the ATS implementation is being monitored in a quantifiable way. Ask your ATS vendor for case studies that include actual data such as percentages or statistics so you can foster a better understanding of the value of the new system.

Also, discuss your short and long term goals and ask hiring managers for feedback on what else could be improved upon or addressed.

Test the software and troubleshoot bottlenecks

As is often the case when learning something new, you’re likely to have some questions or challenges as your team gets familiar with a new ATS. Make sure you’re familiar with the level of support an ATS vendor offers, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Your vendor knows their ATS from front to back and can troubleshoot or offer suggestions in a way that’s far more efficient than just struggling to learn on your own.

Knowing that help is only a few clicks or a phone call away can help your team feel more confident and comfortable about incorporating a new tool into their workflow.

Integrate feedback and train your team

Once your team experiences the benefits of an ATS, they’ll be eager and willing to overcome any minor challenges that arise along the way.

Keep the lines of communication open, be clear about your plan and goals, make sure that you have a working understanding of the software and its support options, and train your team on the system’s functionality — that’s the formula for implementing an ATS and optimizing the talent acquisition process from beginning to end.

Ready to get started? Learn more about how easy it is to implement an ATS with Workable.

The post How to successfully implement an ATS appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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

Intro to Recruiting Email Metrics

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

More Recruiting Metrics

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

Intro to Recruiting Metrics

What does KPI mean in recruitment?

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

What are recruiting KPIs?

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

What can you learn from recruitment metrics?

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

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

Which are the 6 most important hiring metrics to track?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who should be tracking recruiting metrics?

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

How do I calculate recruiting metrics?

To calculate various recruiting metrics, use the following process:

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

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

Common Quality of hire formula:

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

See more about calculating quality of hire.

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

See more about calculating cost per hire.

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

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

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

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

See more on calculating offer acceptance rate.

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

See more on benchmarks for qualified candidates per hire.

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

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

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

Here are examples of the best metrics for recruiters:

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

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

Which metrics should matter most to an external recruiter?

External recruiters are usually evaluated on two fronts:

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

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

What hiring metrics should matter most to HR?

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

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

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

Which recruiting metrics matter most to the CEO?

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

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

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

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

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

How do I increase the number of job applicants?

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

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

How do I increase the number of qualified applicants?

Here are ways to attract more qualified applicants:

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

Introduction to Recruiting Email Metrics

What are recruiter email metrics?

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

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

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

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

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

How do you measure recruiter email metrics?

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

More Recruiting Metrics FAQs:

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

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

Unfortunately, there is rarely one individual who checks every single box the company prefers. In addition, spending hours upon hours interviewing many candidates is a waste of time. In fact, it’s an added burden on one’s work obligations. “Managers typically have their own job, and when they have an open position, technically may have two jobs,” says a senior advisor at SHRM.

“Managers typically have their own job, and when they have an open position, technically may have two jobs.” – SHRM senior advisor

By scheduling interview after interview in search of the one candidate that fits 100% of the criteria, companies are wasting time and money. Instead of waiting around hoping for that one perfect unicorn to apply, many companies are adopting the 70% Rule for hiring talented employees quickly and efficiently.

Based on the Marine Corps teachings, the 70% Rule says that: “You take action on any decision when you have 70% confidence in the success of the decision”. By using the 70% Rule, hiring managers can cut the time they spend evaluating candidates in half.

In addition, it gives room for talented trainers to bring those 70% employees up to the 100% level they need to be to achieve greatness in that role.

Here are the top benefits of using the 70% Rule of hiring when interviewing and recruiting new employees – we’ve done the research, so you don’t have to:

1. Grow your employees to their full potential

No matter what level of candidate you onboard, everyone needs some sort of training to acclimate to the new work environment – and more so in recent years. In fact, the 2020 Training Industry Report finds that the average number of training hours per employee increased from 42.2 hours to 102.6 hours between 2017 and 2020 for large companies. While training expenditures took a dip during the early part of the pandemic, it’s since bounced back – showing its value.

So, hiring managers might as well onboard professionals who meet 70%+ of their criteria and spend a little extra time training those new hires for company needs. Why not save the time you would spend interviewing hundreds of candidates and just bring on talented employees who will be perfect with a little bit of training?

Think about it. Would you prefer to waste hours of valuable company time sitting in interviews? Or would you rather hire candidates who meet 70% of your requirements and spend that saved time giving them valuable knowledge and experience in the actual job?

2. Motivate your employees to strive for excellence

When employees know that their hiring manager and company took a chance by hiring them, they are more likely to strive for excellence. Hiring someone who may not be immediately qualified, but could soon get there, is one of the best ways a company can develop employee loyalty. This is widely documented, including in a recent Deloitte report on what they title as “unleashing workforce potential.”

The report quotes: “In the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey, executives identified ‘the ability of their people to adapt, reskill, and assume new roles’ as the top-ranked item to navigate future disruptions.”

Likewise, a joint survey by Workable, TalentLMS and Training Journal found that 75% of hiring managers, C-suiters and decision makers saw a benefit to company productivity when upskilling and reskilling their workers.

The emphasis on adapting and reskilling can also be an emphasis on providing new employees with a dedicated training mentor, which will foster a positive work climate while ensuring your new hires are adequately trained. In addition, it is proven that employees who receive attention from an advocating mentor are more likely to feel valued within the workplace.

Creating a sense of inclusion and support within your workplace culture is the perfect recipe to develop happy employees. As stated by the University of Oxford, “Happy workers are 13% more productive.”

Developing employees who are already 70% what your company is looking for will accelerate your efforts to develop a positive atmosphere.

3. Develop your employees to your specifications

Employees who are overqualified or fit 100% of your criteria likely have years of experience in their chosen field. Oftentimes, they come with a college degree and have been exposed to the training programs of a few companies.

As such, they are less likely to develop long-term company loyalty as they are more comfortable leaving workplaces after just a couple of years. Plus, as David Silverberg writes for BBC Worklife: “overqualified workers can develop negative attitudes, such as a sense of entitlement about their skills or resentment through boredom, that can ripple out to every cubicle in an office.”

Another potential scenario is that those “perfect fit” employees are potentially creatures of habit, in that they have succeeded for so long in their way of doing things – which makes it more challenging to onboard and adapt them to your company’s existing work processes.

There’s another possible challenge for employers and hiring managers – the “perfect” hire may inadvertently set high expectations for their managers who may think they don’t need to be managed since they already know how to do the job from day one.

While these aren’t necessarily the case for every overqualified employee, it still makes sense that with onboarding and training being natural experiences for a new employee, employers can take advantage of developing employees to be a stronger fit in their work processes to benefit everyone involved.

4. Save money and retain talent

Plus, there is quite a bit of research that suggests training fresh new hires with less experience may be less costly to the company overall. Statistically, employees who are in-house trained and given ample professional development opportunities are more likely to stay with that company.

Notably, employees value working for a company that invests in their education – there’s a clear link between professional development and job satisfaction. Again, 58% of respondents in the above-mentioned survey saw greater retention when upskilling/reskilling.

Budget-conscious companies also have the option of offering learning & development – which is growing in popularity with candidates – in place of a higher salary.

Hiring employees using the 70% Rule of hiring and providing them with professional development creates a win-win for employers and employees.

Put in 70% and reap the benefits

Today, we are currently living in an era referred to as the Great Resignation. That is, millions of employees are fleeing workplaces in demand of better working conditions. Shockingly, around four million Americans left their places of employment just about every month in the second half of 2022.

That number is projected to continue throughout 2022 as well. Employees are seeking job opportunities that align with the lifestyle they want to live. This includes holding a job that brings them a sense of connectedness and fulfillment.

Hiring employees who meet 70% of the requirements to perform the role of the job is a surefire way to save time and money. This method can have both a long-term and short-term positive impact on the company.

The short-term impact is that the hiring manager will save time by reducing the number of interviews they conduct while holding out for that 100% employee. On a related note, the long-term impact is that those 70% employees are more likely to stay, thrive, and excel as they receive professional development.

Ron Sharon is an IT executive and cybersecurity leader leveraging 17+ years of experience translating business requirements to deliver innovative solutions and mitigating risk. Sharon was named Vice President of Information Security for Mercer Advisors in 2021 and is happily married with one wonderful daughter.

The post The 70% rule of hiring: When ‘hired’ is better than ‘perfect’ appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And there’s a lot of work to be done yet. One of Amy’s core objectives going into 2022 is to maintain employee retention and engagement while at the same time tripling the size of the business throughout the year.

In her words: “We’re going to have some enormous growth.”

In the midst of all of that is keeping her team members – both current and future – motivated.

This means, she says, “investing in all of our people to ensure that our culture is one that everybody’s super excited to be a part of and where they can grow their careers and do some of the best work of their lives, and have a lot of fun in the process.”

Doing that in a high-volume tech hiring space is a big undertaking – but she’s succeeding in the venture with a combination of expertise and street smarts.

On surviving the Big Quit

One of the significant developments of 2021 is, of course, the Great Resignation in the United States. Quit rates in the country are at an unprecedented high – reaching as high as 3% of the total working population with upwards of four million workers handing in their notice every month from July 2021 to November 2021.

Add to that an increasingly loud voice among younger workers about their disillusion with current work culture – so succinctly and blatantly on display in Reddit’s Antiwork community (which employers do need to pay attention to).

While obvious, this does signal a clear shift in the talent market. The onus is no longer on candidates to prove their worth to an employer; it’s now on the employer to position themselves as a place where people want to work. So, the question bears asking: what’s the employee value proposition that you can offer to make your job opportunity more attractive to a prospective employee?

For Amy, that value prop includes the working environment that you’re creating for them.

“I think the trend in 2022 is that people are going to look for companies that want to invest in them,” Amy says. “They’re going to look for companies that are flexible and aren’t going to require that they go into an office that they don’t want to go into, that will continue to afford them the flexibility that they’ve all grown to appreciate.”

And this isn’t going to end anytime soon. In fact, it marks a paradigm shift that employers need to adapt to. The Great Discontent report released in mid-2021 shows that flexible work options is high up the list of things that candidates value in a job, with 37.5% of US workers saying it’s one value proposition that would attract them to a new opportunity.

And SMBs that think about their employees first are the ones that’ll get ahead in the new talent game, says Amy.

“Companies are starting to realize how important engagement and investment is in their people,” she explains. “And those are the companies that are winning. And so if you were to talk to those companies, they would probably report lower than market averages in terms of loss. And the reason is because they have the formula. They understand what they need to do.”

Amy does offer a caveat – this needs to be done in a way that supports both ends of the equation.

“[Employers] have to create a trusting environment and a supportive environment and still be able to drive productivity and all the things that are core and critical to the business in an effective way. So I realize that there’s a balancing act here. Employers want to be able to maximize the return from the people.”

There’s tangible proof of the ROI in all this. A 2017 Gallup study finds that highly engaged employees lead to a 17% increase in company productivity, and 24% less turnover in companies in high-turnover sectors.

Amy doubles down on that message – because of that clear ROI, companies need to put in the work to meet those new expectations in the talent market.

“[That’s the] balancing act for 2022 that people really have to figure out.”

On investing in your workers

So how exactly do you ‘invest’ in your people? One area surging in popularity in 2022 is learning and development. In a survey commissioned by Workable and TalentLMS, 91% of tech workers want more learning opportunities from their current employers and 58% cited “skills development” as one criteria in choosing who they want to work for. It’s also a top motivator for tech employees.

And there are other ways to attract and engage employees – Amy shares a few more with us.

The value of connection

Amy stressed several times the importance of ensuring that workers feel connected to the company, whether that’s in a remote environment or otherwise.

“First of all, you have a full-time person dedicated to building the community, whether it’s different activities, whether it’s different communication strategies; there’s a number of different things that have to happen in order for that to be done effectively.”

We’re humans after all – the sense of community in the workplace can be a powerful thing.

The value of compensation

In the above-mentioned Great Discontent worker survey, 63% of workers cited salary as the reason why they’re looking elsewhere for a new job – and 62% say it’s the top factor in their decision to move to a new job.

It’s clear: companies must think about compensation in their value proposition.

“I do think you have to pay people competitively for the market, for their job. And so if you’re underpaying people and you’ve gotten away with it so far, you probably won’t continue to get away with it because people are starting to realize what they’re worth because of how hot the market is.”

This doesn’t mean giving raises across the board, she cautions. It’s more about fair market value.

“You have to pay people what the market suggests they’re worth or they’ll find a company that will.”

The value of people

Ultimately, whether it’s salary, learning & development, or connectivity, what people officers need to be thinking about is the ‘people’ factor. Employees are people too.

“If you’re treating people the way they want to be treated and they feel connected to your mission and connected to the business, they aren’t leaving. People that are leaving because they don’t feel connected. They don’t feel appreciated and they feel like there’s better opportunities for them.”

When your employees take pride in what they do and feel part of a larger mission, that can be even more motivating than a straight-up higher salary – if you’re one SMB that may be challenged in your ability to offer higher wages, this can be a good workaround.

On proactively sourcing candidates

Now, let’s get to the other challenge of the Great Resignation – the dwindling number of candidates that we’re seeing in our Hiring Pulse data and elsewhere. When you take a month’s candidates per hire and compare it with the average CPH of the previous three months, there was a negative trend in that data every single month in 2021:

It’s doubly a challenge for companies like the one Amy works at when high-volume hiring is part of the overall company strategy.

“We don’t have much of an employer brand [because] the company’s only three years old. And so our lower candidate pipeline, I would attribute to not having a strong employer brand because we’re a new company.”

But that means the work is cut out for Relay Payment’s recruitment team, which has resorted to fresh strategies to bring new candidates into the hiring process under Amy’s leadership – at high volume too.

“We get a lot of hires from referrals. I would say 30% of our hires in 2021 were referral-based,” Amy says, adding that they offer bonuses to team members who have successfully referred a candidate who ultimately gets hired.

The lack of a strong, recognizable employer brand is a challenge facing many SMBs, and Amy is well aware of that. She has ways to get around that.

“Our recruiters have had to work really hard to source candidates proactively because people don’t know us well enough to have a big application pipeline.”

So how do you do that? A ton of stuff, says Amy, who cites LinkedIn Recruiter – which she admits is expensive – as a tool to get the word out about a job, and external recruiters when they need to make a niche hire or when time is of the essence. Searching for candidates in Google using related keywords is also an effective strategy.

On growing the team that grows teams

But that’s a lot of work, of course. Amy has a solution for that: Hire more recruiters.

“I actually just doubled the size of my recruiting team in the last week,” she says. “I hired my first dedicated recruiter last summer. I hired a second recruiter in October [2021] and I just hired two [in early January 2022] that will start [in February]. So I’ve gone from one recruiter to four in like eight months.”

The reason being – if you have more team members dedicated to the specific goals in recruitment, you’ll draw more applicants for your open roles.

“The volume of people that you’ve got building your brand and sourcing and building pipelines will also help generate an enormous amount of activity as compared to having fewer people.”

“The volume of people that you’ve got building your brand and sourcing and building pipelines will also help generate an enormous amount of activity as compared to having fewer people.”

Anyone in sales and marketing will understand Amy’s thinking process here. If you want to see increased conversions (i.e. hires), you not only have to bring in the right kind of candidate via referrals and online search – you also have to bring in more candidates.

“For us, it’s about bigger pipelines. We want bigger top of funnel. So how do you invest to get your top of funnel big enough, such that if you have 90 of a specific type of role that you want to hire in a year? [This] is what we’re doing with our AE team. We’re going to add 90 AEs [in 2022].”

And even with the candidates-per-hire metric steadily dropping month over month in 2021 and 2022, any SMB worth their salt – including Relay Payments – will want to have a healthy selection of candidates for any given role. Amy is vividly aware of that.

“If you do the math to back into 90 hires, what do you need your funnel to be? It’s gotta be enormous.”

That’s hiring and retention at scale in Amy’s world. What’s yours? Share your workplace story with us and you may see it get published!

The post Hiring at scale in tech for 2022: A top CPO shares her tips appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Most helpful when building a case for a hiring solution

This one’s easy. You want to get the smoothest, baddest applicant tracking software in the land, but your boss is too embroiled in their own processes to take notice. You know what makes them sit up and take notice? If you present them the value of an ATS in their own language – which usually is in monetary terms.

So, our piece on how to calculate the ROI of an ATS comes in hugely helpful here. Pull out the old calculator, get a pen and paper, and start crunching those numbers!

Read now: How to calculate the ROI of an ATS

2. The most informative for driving DEI where it matters

Awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion shot into the stratosphere in mid-2020 and it’s still top of mind for many employers worldwide. But we have two major messages when it comes to DEI: first, there’s a difference between D, E, and I, and second, you don’t “win” at diversity just because you’ve managed to achieve it throughout your company.

Rather, you need to attain diversity in leadership. There’s a glaring imbalance in diversity numbers in leadership when compared with overall diversity, and that needs to be improved on if real progress is to be made. And if you’re not getting buy-in from your leaders, you can convince them that it makes good business sense to do so. This infographic gives you everything on all of the above, and more.

Check out our infographic: Diversity in leadership: Why it matters and what you can do

3. The most audacious piece of content

We’ve been talking (and writing, and video-ing) about the future of work for a long time now. We’ve discussed remote work, flexible schedules, gender parity, salaries, global talent markets, candidate discontentment, talent shortages, and a lot more.
‘
But one topic really tickled our fancy (and yours, too, if you’re accustomed to a standard Monday-Friday work week) – the four-day work week. The Chief Growth Officer at Service Direct shared their first-hand account of how the company tried an alternating four-day work week as an experiment, and found it hugely successful.

Read now: Implementing an alternating four-day workweek: how & why

4. The most comprehensive (and timely) study

This one is a no-brainer to us. Out of all the blog posts, infographics, videos, etc. that we’ve produced throughout 2021, two 6,000-word survey reports published in September really stand out. They’re the result of two in-depth surveys to better understand what matters to workers in a job – one for the United States and one for the United Kingdom.

If you’re an employer looking to understand what candidates really want so you can attract more of them to your company, grab a cup of coffee (or beer – we won’t tell anyone), and have a read.

Read the US report: The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (US)

Read the UK report: The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (UK)

5. The best for geeking out on hiring data

We know that hiring benchmarks are important to our audience, especially in these wacky times where nothing feels normal anymore. So we developed a new way to look at hiring trends because month-over-month and especially year-over-year data doesn’t make sense anymore considering the volatility of the labor market.

The result of that new methodology is the Hiring Pulse, which was launched in September. It’s a monthly series of data-packed insights so you can see where hiring is going, be it based on industry, function, location, or overall.

Read the latest: The Hiring Pulse

6. The most insightful and commandeering

A big contributor to our content in 2021 is the Evil HR Lady, Suzanne Lucas. A veteran in the HR space who now can speak from direct experience, her sharp to-the-point tone is popular with our audience.

One message we want to drive home is that in this rapidly evolving talent marketplace, the onus is on employers to adapt to this new environment if they want to attract candidates. Suzanne drove that point home with her piece on how the rules of talent engagement are changing.

Read now: The rules of talent engagement are changing: What’s new now?

7. The most inspirational content of the year

The Evil HR Lady isn’t the only contributor we saw in our content in 2021. In February, world-renowned talent management expert Josh Bersin joined us for what turned out to be the most-attended virtual event we’ve hosted all year.

The webinar, titled Step Into the Future with Josh Bersin, led off with one of our favorite descriptions of the tumultuous work world: “We’re entering an effervescent time.” It’s a refreshingly optimistic delivery on all the things that HR can look forward to, and left many in our audience smiling during these tough times.

Check out the webinar:

Check out the podcast:

And if you don’t have the the time, we’ve compiled the top 10 takeaways into a blog post for you.

Read more: Josh Bersin’s recruiting and HR trends for the future

8. Most popular Tutorial

A list like this can’t simply be left to our judgement of what we think is our best and most helpful hiring resource because, well, our judgement alone can’t always be trusted (we’re human, after all). We also need to look at the raw numbers too – for instance, the title of most-read tutorial of the year goes to (drum roll): the top HR interview questions!

It is what it says: the top 10 interview questions asked in the HR interview – which would mostly be at the screening stage of the hiring process. It’s a very nuts-and-bolts piece which delivers – which is probably why it’s number one in terms of popularity for the year.

Read now: HR interview questions: The top 10 questions asked in the HR interview

9. Most popular Stories & Insights

Our Better Hiring site also includes thought leadership and insights in the hiring world. Which means it would make sense to share the top hiring resource from our Stories & Insights section as well. Again, it’s something that’s very top of mind for recruiters in our audience: the most common recruiting challenges and what you can do to overcome them.

What’s great about this piece is how cut-and-dried it is. It lays out very neatly the top challenges that recruiters are dealing with (especially right now), and shares actionable solutions which can be valuable for an overworked, tired audience that’s just looking to get the job done so they can sleep at night.

Read now: The most common recruiting challenges and how to overcome them

10. Most popular video(s)

We noted above that the Josh Bersin webinar was the most impactful in terms of attendance – but what was the most popular video hiring resource of the year? Well, we’re going to cheat and share two, because they’re so different in terms of tone and purpose and both deserve their moment in the spotlight.

First, our customer case study featuring Cytora, an insurance startup in London, and their story of how they accelerated hiring from 20 to 60 employees in just 2.5 years:

And second, an expert-led video tutorial on how to build up your DEI initiative, from someone who does it as a full-time job:

Both videos saw immense reach throughout 2021 and continue to be popular today.

What’s your top hiring resource of 2021?

A list like this would be remiss if we didn’t ask our audience directly: what do you think is the top hiring resource we’ve created all year? We want to know. Send us an email to content@workable.com with “Hiring resources” in the subject heading, and tell us why you liked it so much and what else you’d like to see from us going into 2022.

And without further ado, wishing you the best for 2022!

The post Top 10 hiring resources to help you hire in 2022 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What can you do? Here are five ideas to help you build an agile recruitment process, and hire when there aren’t extra people and extra dollars in the budget.

1. Target your recruiting efforts

The big job boards cost a lot of money and provide access to a wide variety of candidates. However, you don’t need a wide variety of candidates – you need candidates to fill your positions. Who cares how many plumbers there are in Pomona when you’re recruiting accountants in Akron?

Focus your recruiting efforts and money on niche job boards and through networking. You need to find people who can and want to do the jobs you need to fill. Narrowing your search can help you find those people.

2. Utilize your current employees’ networks

Everyone talks about networking to find a job, but you also need to use networking to fill positions. Who is likely to know a bunch of people that do X? Why, people who work for you that also do X!

Many companies have employee referral programs to help encourage people to refer their former colleagues, and that can be a reasonably inexpensive – and quicker – way to gather candidates. But, you can go a step further and ask hiring managers to take a look through their own networks and see what they can find. Have them look at their LinkedIn connections and see if anyone seems qualified.

This part of agile recruitment has another distinct advantage: Hiring managers know what they are looking for better than a recruiter can know, so if the hiring manager looks through contacts, something may pop out that a recruiter would overlook.

3. Focus on your current staff

Yes, we were talking about hiring, but too many companies make the mistake of focusing on hiring new people and forgetting about your current employees. For every employee you keep, that’s one less person you have to hire!

Take a look at what it takes to get new people in the door and make sure your current employees have that salary and benefit level. If all your competitors offer sign-on bonuses for new hires, your employees may jump ship if you can’t provide a stay bonus.

This seems like it costs a lot of money, right when you’re trying to stay lean, but what costs more?

• Giving a stay bonus and a raise to a current employee who does a good job and is already fully ramped and trained; or
• Going through the recruiting process, offering a market rate salary and a sign-on bonus to someone new?

And keep in mind you then have to train that person. No matter how experienced this person is, they still have to learn your systems and methods. It’s always cheaper to retain than it is to recruit.

4. Ask the employees themselves

Sometimes employees have insights that managers (especially senior managers) don’t have. This isn’t because managers are bad – it’s just that sometimes they don’t understand the day-to-day. They’re not in the trenches, after all.

When trying to run agile recruitment, ask the people who do the daily running what they need. Maybe no one sees a need for a senior team leader for their group because Jane is handling it well, and everyone likes her. Perhaps everyone wants the most is a group administrative assistant to help with the paperwork.

While it’s true that managers have a more empirical perspective of what’s needed and what’s not needed – but you won’t fully know unless you ask employees as well. Forget about traditional structures and ask away. You may be surprised how much you learn where you can cut back and which positions you need to target immediately.

5. Put the money where it counts

Often companies have salary budgets, travel budgets, and facilities budgets, and they cannot take money from one category to pay another.

Why?

What is the most important thing to your company? The default reaction is “the people!” That is probably true, but it doesn’t have to be. It depends on what your company does and what product or service you produce. It may be that the best use of your money is something that will automate tasks (including in recruitment itself), meaning you can have a smaller headcount.

But, I’ll tell you what it almost surely is not: your location.

Sure, location, location, location. But, with many people wanting (and expecting) to work from home and fewer people willing to do a long commute, having that downtown office space may not be the best use of your budget.

Of course, not all companies can or should have a fully remote workforce, but you need to consider the rent costs of where you are when you’re attempting to recruit people. If your employees commute long distances, moving to where they live may be better. If many jobs can be done at home, maybe a smaller office is in order.

Focus your money on the most important thing – which is probably your employees.

Recruiting isn’t easy at any time, but with tight budgets and high salary demands, it can be even more complicated than usual. Hopefully, some of these elements supporting an agile recruiting process will help you get through it.

The post The agile recruitment process: hiring with leaner teams and budgets appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Consequently, to stay relevant and apace with increased competition for new hires, recruiters and hiring managers need to possess sharp talent acquisition skills and have a robust recruitment tech stack to capture the best talent for the position. Recruitment guru Josh Bersin emphasizes the evolution of recruitment and how this is an opportunity for recruiters to really step up their game.

One big step in the right direction is purchasing an ATS and other technologies to support that. If it’s your first time investing in recruitment software, ensure you have the following capabilities in your recruitment tech stack:

1. Employee referral program
2. Chatbots
3. Candidate texting
4. Email automation
5. Social media automation
6. Talent network
7. Virtual recruiting events
8. Job postings
9. Content management system
10. Candidate relationship management

1. Employee referral program

An automated employee referral program helps in creating a solid company culture by building high-performing teams. It reduces the hiring process and costs and, at the same time, getting more high-value future employees.

Most recruitment marketing softwares have built-in employee referral programs. Job openings are automatically sent to the employees’ email addresses with the job description and the ‘refer’ button to submit the referred candidate.

Some of the automation rules or processes you can create with your referral program include:

• Monitoring where the referred candidate is in the hiring cycle and send updates to the referrer.
• Linking your ATS to your payroll system, so referral fees go straight into your employee’s salary.
• Measuring the success of your employee referral program – i.e. number of shares via email or social, number of referred candidates, number of successful hires and the quality of those hires.

Check out our complete guide to employee referrals.

2. Chatbots

Chatbots are a form of AI used in messaging applications. They are automated programs that interact with web visitors like a human would do.

In recruitment, chatbots can help increase your engagement with candidates, hasten the recruitment process, reach out to more candidates, and provide quick answers to their questions.

Chatbots can be the first point of contact after the candidate submits his resume. They can be tasked to contact candidates to explain the overall application procedure.

Chatbots can also gather contact information, answer applicants’ initial questions and schedule interviews. More advanced capabilities include ranking and scoring candidates, enabling recruiters to remove unsuitable candidates for the specific role.

Incorporating chatbots eliminates the HR team’s repetitive tasks so they can focus on more critical activities. In addition, chatbots are easy to scale and can keep the hiring process progressing fast, even when you are inundated with candidates for an open role.

3. Candidate texting

With candidate texting technology, recruiters can send job openings right to candidate’s phones. It is a big help for recruiters, especially during seasonal or bulk hiring or in sectors with a large component of deskless workers and high turnover such as in hospitality or food services.

Plus, with a 98% open rate for SMS and text messages, it’s a great communication tool with assurance that your message will get through.

Recruiters can reach thousands of job seekers quickly with customized text messages. Textbots can automate screening, so the process continues. Since these texts are integrated into the recruiting software, data is collected automatically so interviewers and hiring managers can evaluate whether to pursue a candidate or not.

Another feature is automated intelligent interview scheduling. Texting makes it easier for candidates to reply and confirm interview schedules. Scheduling changes or unexpected cancellations can be communicated instantly.

The automated messages help answer common application questions quickly on the candidate’s side, empowering them to screen and move ahead or out of the recruiting process quickly.

If they’re hired, automated text-based communications will help facilitate the candidate’s onboarding process and provide a seamless candidate experience.

Read more on candidate texting best practices and texting strategies for different scenarios.

4. Email automation

Automated email sendouts allow personalization at scale and can recommend ideal content for every candidate.

Despite being around for some time, HR teams can still capitalize on this marketing strategy to communicate with targeted candidates regularly and stay on top of their minds.

Email marketing automation comes with templates and sequences to save time and resources when reaching out to candidates to introduce the company, announce current job openings, send follow-ups, send alerts for future vacancies, etc.

Once the candidate is hired, you can send an email on the first day of work explaining the onboarding process and setting expectations. The hiring manager can then send a follow-up in six weeks to check how things are going and maybe schedule a call or a lunch.

And then again, if they’re on a fixed contract, emails can be scheduled at a determined later time if they’re reaching the end of their contract and looking for their next opportunity.

5. Social media automation

Social media automation enables recruiters to distribute jobs across Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels. They can set logic-based rules around which vacancies should be sent to which social networks, the date they should be posted and taken down, based on the performance of specific jobs.

Social job distribution can also broaden the demographics of the target job seekers – a must for any DEI-minded employer – enabling recruiters to broaden the candidate pool by reaching out to media-savvy social applicants.

Recruiters can also compose and edit new content via mobile devices while on the go. This ability to work remotely provides flexibility to deliver other content like blogs, industry updates, company news, etc.

The benefit of using social automation tools ensures that recruitment messaging is consistent across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other social channels. It also helps you find qualified candidates easily, and add them to your list of potential hires in the future.

Check out our FAQ guide on social media recruitment strategies.

6. Talent network management

You can automate your talent network by adding a form to provide an alternative for candidates to opt in if they don’t complete the application. Having CTAs scattered across your site and content can capture those all-important passive candidates.

Once the candidate opts in, you can set up rules in your recruitment marketing platform to segment talent based on preferences, interests, and skills. You can send preference emails asking the types of content they want to receive and the types of roles they are interested in, and record email opens and links clicked.

To set up your automation, you need to understand and build your target candidate personas and the type of information they are searching for. Then, create a messaging sequence for their journey.

The more targeted your messaging, content, and job you send to your talent network, the better candidate experience you can deliver and possibly, outbid your competitors for those star candidates.

7. Virtual recruiting events

Virtual recruiting events allow HR to expand and diversify the talent pipeline by reaching to them anytime, anywhere. It can also improve your diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

With this software, you can build your events page that allows you to handle interviews and registrations. For career expos, as an example, candidates undergo a screening process set with pre-qualifying questions. They are scored and matched directly towards jobs and recruiters for engagement.

VRE software provides a better candidate experience and avoids wasting each other’s time if they do not match.

Other features include the ability to promote events across social media, manage on-site attendees, capture leads and resumes, and build employer brand by emailing invitations, post-event surveys, and other campaigns for ongoing candidate engagement.

Some virtual events you can adapt to suit your staffing objectives: career expos, professional development events, educational workshops, info sessions, hackathons and creative challenges, theme-based panels or presentations, virtual presentations, and much more.

8. Job postings

A good recruitment marketing platform allows you to automate the process of writing (with pre-defined job description templates) and posting jobs on various free and paid job boards and social media networks within a single platform.

You can also manage your media budget and inventory and even facilitate the use of programmatic job advertising to optimize advertising spend.

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Job Posting.

9. Content management system

Today’s candidates search employers the same way consumers find products and services.

To stand out in the crowd, organizations must build unique candidate experiences through employer brand content and recruitment marketing strategies to attract the right talent. This is called inbound recruiting, as emphasized by Hubspot:To perform inbound recruitment, you need a CMS.

With a CMS (Content Management System), you can quickly and easily create and update content, optimize your job listing and share vacancies on social media, to name a few. You can also integrate your applicant tracking system (ATS) and configure your content to be searchable on search engines.

10. Candidate relationship management

CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) helps you nurture relationships with passive candidates.
With the right CRM, you can:

• Track candidate’s journey during the application process
• Easily build and segment talent pools and cascade targeted communication to the right job seeker at the right time
• Update all your ATS information so you can target the best applicants for open roles
• Automatically track and measure your campaigns’ performance and results to improve future marketing strategies

Your hiring tech stack matters

Talent acquisition is poised to evolve post-pandemic and beyond as recruitment platforms become savvier and more sophisticated, largely due to AI and emerging technologies.

Hence, it would be best to keep abreast of the latest developments in recruitment automation software to stay ahead of competitors in the high-stakes talent game.

Gem Siocon is a digital marketer and freelance content writer at Recruiter Copywriter. She specializes in recruitment marketing and employer branding, helping staffing agencies and recruiters for over 10 years. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

The post Your recruitment automation tech stack: 10 must-haves appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post Building a better candidate experience with automation appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What employers really want is what they’ve always wanted: to fill all their open positions with hard-working people who stay with the company, grow and pledge their loyalty. Ideally, employees who refer others, work until retirement and never consider seeking employment elsewhere.

But, in today’s workforce, is it possible for any employer to get all the things they want?

Let’s look at the employment landscape: In the United States, 1 in 4 people has been unemployed for over a year. The UK saw 1.55 million people unemployed in the three months up to July 2021. And the worldwide unemployment number increased to a documented 220.5 million people – although in reality, it’s likely much higher than that.

So, with an abundance of employers who want to hire combined with a record number of unemployed people, why can’t companies find workers? What do these job seekers want? And what benefits do they value most?

To help answer these questions, let’s look at the top three workforce trends to be cognizant of so you can fine-tune your hiring strategy into the last quarter of 2021 and beyond.

Workforce trends to watch in Q4 of 2021

The pandemic accelerated several trends and changed the future of work. But as a recruiter, what are the three most important things you should watch out for? Read on to find out.

1. The Great Resignation

Although new job openings are through the roof, workers are leaving companies in droves. In August 2021, 4.3 million workers quit their jobs. That’s the third consecutive month where the number was higher than the previous month.

In the UK and Ireland, a study from Personio of workers revealed that 38% of people surveyed intend to change roles in the next 6 to 12 months. The same study showed that 45% of HR decision-makers are worried about employees leaving their positions when the job market improves.

“COVID brought the great awakening which is leading to the great resignation. It helped us align what is really important and highlighted what brings us happiness and fulfillment,” says Rachel Halsey Bullard, Senior Recruiter at Emeritus.

“If the workforce does not provide the same fulfillment we experienced during the shutdown, then employees will go somewhere else to get it. ”

So, who exactly is resigning from their jobs? Let’s take a look.

Quit rates are highest among mid-career employees

Younger people in the workforce have high expectations from their employers. They’re done with the current system and refuse to go back to “business as usual.”

We recently surveyed 750 people – some employed, some self-employed, and some unemployed – in the United States to find out how content they were with their current jobs. The study revealed that 80% of those aged 21-29, 74.9% of those aged 31-39, and 75% of those aged 40-49 are either open to work right now or actively looking for a new opportunity.

We also surveyed 500 people in the UK and found that 79.8% of those aged 21-29 and 85.1% of those aged 31-39 are either actively looking for or passively open to new work right now. This means just one in five of those aged 21 to 29 and less than 15% of those aged 30 to 39 can be seen as quite settled in their current roles.

Tech and health care have the highest quit rates

The manufacturing and finance industries saw a slight decrease in resignation rates but the healthcare industry saw a 3.6% increase over the previous year. The tech industry also had a rise in resignations of 4.5% more than last year.

Related: Learn from Boston tech leaders on what attracts tech workers to your company.

These resignations were largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many workers – because of the extreme stress and increase in job demand – felt overwhelmed and burned out. It inevitably follows that they should drop out of the workforce as a result. It’s not a sustainable situation for them.

2. Increased competition for top talent

In March and April of 2020, millions of people also lost their jobs. Now, not only are employers looking to refill those positions back to pre-pandemic levels, but they’re also adding more jobs to their existing payroll in Q4 of 2021.

Because so many people now have the ability to work from home, the competition for top talent is continuing to increase. Candidates today have many more choices – not only are they applying to local jobs but they’re also considering opportunities nationally and internationally.

Employees with the most desirable skills and experience are most in demand.

Another thing about these job seekers is they’re more informed. They prefer to actively research companies themselves rather than relying on the word of a recruiter.

3. Labor shortages

In the United States, the unemployment rate in August was 5.2%. July’s number was slightly higher at 5.4%.

The average monthly job growth this year has been 586,000 – although that number has dropped in recent months. And while employment rates declined in the retail industry, other industries – like professional services, transportation, warehousing, manufacturing, and private education – saw job gains.

Related: Check out our Hiring Pulse for the latest in recruitment data, including job openings, candidates per hire and time to fill metrics.

In August, the number of unemployed people decreased to 8.4 million, which is lower than previous months but still much higher than the pre-pandemic level of 5.7 million.

In the UK, however, the numbers show more signs of promise. The unemployment rate fell to 4.6% in the three months ending July 2021, which was the lowest it had been since June-August 2020.

So what’s going on with this labor shortage? Let’s look at that.

What contributed to the current labor shortage?

One factor many believe played a major role in the labor shortage was extended unemployment benefits. To assist workers laid off due to the pandemic, US Congress passed several relief bills. One in particular gave people receiving unemployment benefits an extra $600 per week in addition to what they were already receiving from their state.

After a few months, the $600 amount decreased to $300 per week. But, this additional assistance expired on September 6, 2021. Consequently, it makes sense that this should increase the number of active candidates in the job market.

But, in spite of the end of extended unemployment benefits, many companies aren’t confident that factor alone will be enough to entice workers to rejoin the workforce.

What will continue to impact the labor market in Q4?

As we progress through Q4, some impending challenges still remain that may continue to impact the current labor market. These include a lack of child-care options, the surgence of the Delta variant, and the continuing threat of COVID-19.

Hiring tips moving forward

So, as a recruiter, what should you do moving forward? Here are a few tips to help you find, hire and onboard great candidates in Q4 and beyond.

1. Directly engage your dream candidates

Showcase and highlight the most important employee benefits to attract qualified candidates. Show job seekers – and passive candidates – why they should choose your company over all the others who also want to employ them.

2. Diversify your candidate sourcing methods

Are you only getting a few inquiries for your job posts – like 20 potential candidates showing interest instead of well over 200 applicants? If so, you’re not drawing enough attention. Spread the word by using a combination of methods: a wide range of job boards, social media, your company careers page, employee referrals, advanced sourcing tools, and other strategies to get the word out and draw qualified candidates.

3. Focus on the candidate experience

One in two job seekers admits to having a negative experience in the recruitment process. How you communicate with candidates, conduct interviews, and follow up with them all impact the candidate experience – and can encourage qualified candidates to either accept or decline your offer of employment.

4. Prioritize diversity and inclusion

Make your company’s environment appealing to the people you want to attract. Highlight your unique workers and show accessibility options throughout the office. Put policies and procedures in place ahead of time to show you’re an inclusive employer.

5. Offer a desirable perk or incentive

The benefits package you offer could be the reason that a candidate decides to choose your company over another. Offer the best benefits you can and make the offer as compelling as possible. In short, make it worthwhile for someone to spend their time and energy working for you.

6. Create a positive onboarding experience

Your onboarding process introduces the new hires to your company, your culture, and shows them their roles. Make new hires feel welcome and comfortable by providing continued training and consistent feedback.

Now, once you get their attention, it’s time to think about how you might attract them to your company.

Consider flexible working arrangements

Flexible work is one of the most coveted employee benefits an employer can offer. It allows workers to better integrate their home and work lives, and gives them the opportunity to meet their personal needs, family obligations, and other responsibilities.

According to our New World of Work survey, flexible work is one of the biggest and most important workplace changes derived from the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey revealed that 71.1% cited remote work and 35.7% cited flexible/staggered schedules as paradigm shifts going forward.

Our UK Great Discontent study also found that 57.7% of UK workers also crave flexible schedules and say it’s quite important to them.

Now, flexibility is a part of the compensation package many employers are offering. For jobseekers, it’s a must. Some won’t even consider an offer unless it includes some level of flexibility – like the option to work from home a few days per week.

FlexJobs surveyed 4,612 people between July and August of 2021 about their job-seeking plans. Three out of five said they want a fully remote position while 39% surveyed wanted a hybrid working arrangement. Only 3% said they wanted to forego flexible arrangements and return to fully in-person work.

The same survey found that 21% of people desire flex work so much they were willing to make significant sacrifices for it – like giving up some of their vacation time in exchange for working remotely. In addition to that, a quarter said they would even consider taking a pay cut of 10% to 20% if they could work from home.

Some of the fastest-growing career opportunities offering flexible work are computer and IT, medical and health, sales, project management, customer service, marketing, accounting and finance.

It’s not just a fad

The rate of remote work is also expected to nearly double what it was prior to the pre-pandemic number of 16.8 million. By 2025, it’s expected that 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely.

This arrangement is beneficial for both workers and employers. Some benefits for workers include no commute time, reduced stress and fewer distractions. Employers, on the other hand, get to enjoy their own benefits like increased employee engagement and more productivity.

When 20.8% of US workers and 16.6% of UK workers say the main reason they’re open to other opportunities is the need for better work flexibility, pay attention. So, plan accordingly in your talent attraction strategy.

What should you do if flex work is not an option?

We’re not naive – we know flex work isn’t always an option. To counter that, consider the different types of flexible work. It’s about more than giving people the opportunity to work from home. It includes the option to adjust the days and hours when you’re working and to modify your schedule.

If your industry can’t accommodate work-from-home arrangements, try offering flexible schedules at the employee’s discretion. And if you can’t give full flexibility, you can offer staggered schedules, especially for service and other customer-facing roles. Here’s an example: Schedule one employee to work 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and have another come in from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Here are a few more things you can do to make your company more attractive to job seekers:

1. Pay a competitive wage

Many employees are at increased risk because of the pandemic, especially essential workers. Adjust your salary to reflect the current financial realities of your employees. This was a resounding conclusion from our Great Discontent surveys – compensation is still a top factor in jobseekers’ minds.

2. Invest in health precautions

Show your employees the health precautions you’re taking and how far you’re going to keep them safe. Include this information in your job advertisements – including details on vaccination mandates and other areas of concern – to show candidates how committed you are to their well-being.

3. Improve your company culture

A positive company culture – such as Proxyclick’s – will help to increase employee retention in your organization. It can also help you attract the best candidates – who share your company’s beliefs, goals, and values.

Workforce trends post-COVID

So, what’s the new future of work? Here’s what it boils down to: job seekers want change and evolution in their work setup. They have a new set of expectations for companies and they aren’t willing to settle. And most of all, they want to be happy and engaged.

After enduring the past year, they rearranged their priorities – and got to see the important things that matter most to them, and for many, this was a baptism by fire. Now they’re taking that attitude and those expectations into the workforce.

The things employees want aren’t groundbreaking discoveries. They want to work for companies that are sensitive to their needs. Companies that value what they do. And companies that acknowledge and appreciate their efforts.

They care about work-life balance, meeting family obligations and maintaining health and wellness. They also covet flexibility, because it allows them to do these things with simplicity and convenience. Consider these trends in your workforce planning strategy and you may find yourself ahead of the pack for the new year.

The post 3 workforce trends to prepare for in the last quarter of 2021 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But even for the most abstract tests, there are still best practices that can ensure you can learn what you need to know about a candidate.

Enter science and technology. Since you’re digitally transforming your entire recruitment process, it makes sense that you can and should digitize your assessments as well. Plus, you want to have a standardized process like in every other stage in the recruitment process.

Workable’s cognitive and personality assessments are specifically designed to fit in seamlessly within that environment to ensure you make the right hire for your business. There are five areas where you can test candidates:

1. Workplace personality
2. Abstract reasoning
3. Verbal comprehension
4. Numerical comprehension
5. Attention & Focus

The first of these, of course, is the personality assessment, while the other four are for assessing cognitive abilities.

These tests weren’t designed on a whim. A great deal of background and research – including input from international psychology experts – have gone into the design and development of these tests.

We know you want to ensure these assessments are valid and rooted in science before using them in your recruitment process, so we’ll give you some quick highlights to save you the time of researching the deeper material. Once you understand the science, you can then think about how you might include them in your process – please see our resources at the end that can help you with that.

Personality test science and methodology

Workable’s personality assessment is deeply rooted in scientific methods, and is built on the Five Factor model of personality testing accepted in psychology circles worldwide as the de facto model of personality.

The five factors come from statistical analysis of the adjectives used to describe people across five dimensions – and have been translated to many languages and cultures. They are:

1. Agreeableness
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extraversion
4. Openness To Experience
5. Emotional Stability (or Neuroticism)

These factors are sometimes referred to as the acronyms OCEAN or CANOE. They’re not based on an either-or measurement, but rather, on where a test-taker places on a scale or continuum. It’s been scientifically linked to predictors around health, education and on-the-job behaviors, which makes it a valuable test to evaluate candidates for a role.

Workable’s version of the Five Factor model goes deeper, analyzing 16 additional areas that are selected and modified to be most relevant in the selection process. Workable’s personality assessments have also been analyzed for consistency using Cronbach’s alpha testing and other indexes. For some quick context, this is a common statistical analysis designed to ensure the validity of Likert scale surveys (i.e. sliding-scale or continuum surveys).

Many questions have been adopted from the public domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), which have contributed to questionnaires in more than 850 published studies. The IPIP scales have demonstrated high internal consistency metrics along with strong correlations with the scales of many established personality questionnaires. (You can examine the comparisons here.) This further validates many of the scales we measure in our personality assessments.

Cognitive test science and methodology

Professionally designed by testing experts at Psycholate, Workable’s cognitive assessments are likewise modeled after common cognitive tests in the industry.

The verbal and numerical comprehension question sets have been professionally designed by testing experts, and cross-checked by psychologists with a background in psychometrics to ensure validity and accuracy. Other tests were also performed including the above-mentioned IRT testing and parameter estimation, and items that met the criteria were added to the abstract reasoning and attention & focus question banks.

Meanwhile, for the abstract reasoning and attention & focus assessment tests, multiple prototypes were created and tested, contributing to the final version that a candidate sees when they take these tests. Again, these tests were professionally tested and reviewed by psychology experts to ensure each test meets psychometric and industry standards of quality.

Cronbach’s alpha testing was also applied during design and pilot stages.

Real-time scoring, adaptability and length

These tests are not simply scored via ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ answers. Rather, they utilize the universally recognized Item Response Theory (IRT) framework. It uses complex statistical algorithms with each question having a measured level of difficulty and quality metric based on historical data.

Scoring for all four cognitive assessment tests is conducted using the Expected A Posteriori (EAP), which allows for real-time scoring of the candidate with each question answered, and updating upcoming questions based on that scoring. This means the next question is presented based on previous answers.

An adaptive test will estimate the candidate’s ability after every new response based on answers up to that point. It will then adjust and display the most suitable or relevant question to match that just-estimated ability level. As a result, an adaptive test is shorter because it only asks the questions that are needed, without burdening the candidate with potentially irrelevant questions.

Also, unlike preconfigured tests with a set number of questions, an adaptive test decides when to stop based on answers received up to that point. IRT scoring offers not only a score for the ability of a candidate; our assessments can also calculate the positive or negative quality of this score via the Standard Error of measurement (SEm).

Obviously, a score based on more items is more reliable. So Workable’s adaptive tests will stop once a candidate’s score reaches a satisfactory and measurable level (i.e. a low enough SEm) or when a maximum number of questions (for example, 20) has been reached in order to protect the test content.

This all ultimately means that each individual candidate will experience a different and unique set of questions. Along with other measures, this ultimately assures test security: It’s practically impossible to replicate the exact same test or create a cheat sheet to assist in ‘passing’ a test.

There are safeguards in place to ensure that the same question isn’t asked twice in the same assessment.

Want to learn more?

This is, of course, just a summarization of the main science and methodology that have provided the foundation on which Workable Assessments is built. Now that you have a high-level understanding of the science behind the tests and what they’re testing for, it’s now time to think about how you might incorporate that as an essential tool in your hiring toolbox.

If you’re interested in learning more about our assessments feature – or even taking it for a test drive – don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Finally, if you’d like to learn more about some of the concerns around assessments from a candidate’s perspective and why you needn’t worry, we cover that in this article. Meanwhile, here’s a tutorial on how to conduct a post-personality assessment interview.

The post Workable Assessments: The science behind it all appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Avoid bad hires

A bad hire is shorthand for a new employee who leaves the business within 12 months of their hire date. The US Department of Labor estimates that the individual cost of a bad hiring decision is roughly equivalent to 30% of that new hire’s first year salary.

Bad hires can be especially costly. For one, a longer time to ramp can result in delays in other areas of the business, such as a product launch. Even after all that time and training, a bad hire may never ultimately realize their revenue-producing potential at your organization.

In short, you have no choice but to cut your losses and start over with a new hire.

So, how can you quantify the cost of all bad hires to your business? First, you need to estimate a few numbers:

1. Estimated number of hires in the next 12 months
2. Average % of new hires that leave w/in 12 months
3. Average employee salary

Once you have those numbers, it’s time to start calculating. Follow this formula:

Cost of Bad Hires Calculation

For example – let’s say your company is planning to hire 20 new employees this year.

The average salary of those 20 employees is $55,000.

Historically, 15% of your new hires churn within the first year.

(Avg. employee salary) * (30%) * ((estimated # of hires in the next 12 months) * (% of hires that leave w/in 12 months)) = Annual cost of bad hires

First, multiply that average salary of $55,000 by 30% to calculate the cost of one bad hire. Then multiply that by the projected number of bad hires in a year (20 employees * 15% churn).

That brings your total annual cost of bad hires to your business to $49,500.

Total Annual Savings: Avoiding Bad Hires Calculation

Now, in this same example, using the formula below, imagine you’re able to decrease bad hires by 25% using the ATS you’ve selected. It’s as easy as taking that $49,500 total above and multiplying it by 25%.

(Annual cost of bad hires) * (% decrease in bad hires) = Total annual savings from avoiding bad hires

That totals $12,375 in bad hires, alone – a worthy addition to the ROI of an ATS.

So, how does a good ATS help you avoid bad hires? It helps you:

• Find more qualified and diverse candidates to choose from. With Workable, you can find more qualified candidates using proactive sourcing tools like AI Recruiter, People Search and Referrals.
• Make better hiring decisions with fair and consistent evaluations. With Workable, use standard interview kits and scorecards, objective cognitive pre-employment assessments, and one-way video interviews to help you screen more thoroughly at scale.
• Engage your hiring managers from the start. With Workable’s click-efficient UI, global support and industry-leading mobile app, hiring managers will be more engaged throughout the entire process.

2. Reduce external costs

Think about all of the extra money you spend on different softwares and services in your tech stack – can you eliminate any of them with a good ATS? In the short term, your ATS will cost money, but in the long term it can actually save you money.

With Workable, for example, most customers can rely less on external agencies and costly third-party sourcing tools because Workable has a full suite of sourcing features built right into the ATS.

Now, you need to show that to finance. How can you calculate the reduction in external costs to your business with an ATS? Think about the following:

1. Average annual spend on job boards and third-party sourcing tools
2. Average annual spend on agency fees
3. Average annual spend on third-party tools (like e-signatures, assessments providers, video interview providers, texting providers, etc.)

First, add these costs together to understand the total cost of all of your external recruitment tools. Then, think about which ones a good ATS can help with. You’ll find that you can reduce some costs – and eliminate others outright. Remember, in the eyes of finance, every little bit of savings helps.

For example, if you can decrease reliance on expensive external staffing agencies by just 20% AND get rid of just one other third-party subscription, the combined savings from these alone will likely far outweigh the cost of the ATS you’re asking finance to approve.

Total Annual External Costs Calculation

Let’s try out this scenario: every year, your company spends $20,000 on sponsored job posts and third-party sourcing tools. Add to that another $37,000 on agency fees, bringing that total to $57,000.

That’s not all; there’s another $15,000 being spent per year in combined costs for e-signature software to get those employment contracts signed, plus a texting tool so you can quickly contact interested applicants.

Just put them all together into one tidy sum: your total external costs per year.

(Avg. annual spend on job boards and third-party sourcing tools) + (Avg. annual spend on agency fees) + (Average annual spend on other third-party tools) = Total external costs per year

In this case, the total annual cost to your business of these external tools amounts to $72,000.

Total Annual Savings: Reducing External Costs Calculation

Now, imagine that you decrease the reliance on your sponsored posts and external agencies by just 20% now that you’re able to use passive sourcing features and a referrals platform. Plus, the new ATS includes e-signature offer letters and texting built right into the software – so you can fully eliminate the cost of those subscriptions.

So, in this case, you take that $57,000 spent on agencies, sponsored posts, and other third-party sourcing tools, multiply that by 20% – bringing the total to $11,400.

((Annual spend on agencies, sponsored posts and third-party sourcing tools) * (% decrease in)) + (Average annual spend on other third-party tools)) = Total annual savings from reducing external costs

Add the annual costs of the other third-party tools ($15,000), and you have $26,400 saved in external recruitment costs with the addition of an ATS. That’s a compelling addition when presenting the ROI of an ATS.

So, how does a good ATS help you reduce external costs?

• Native sourcing tools bring sourcing in-house. With Workable, best-fit candidates are automatically recommended for every job. Prefer to reach those candidates via social media channels? Workable makes it easy to extend your reach through custom Facebook and Instagram campaigns to those highly valued passive candidates.
• Most hiring teams rely on a suite of tools from different providers to get hiring done. With Workable, most of those tools are built right into the ATS, eliminating the need for additional, costly subscriptions. Native video interviews, assessments, texting and e-signatures not only save your organization money, but they create a more natural and cohesive candidate experience.

3. Increase recruiter productivity

One way to demonstrate the value an ATS provides is to calculate the bottom-line impact of a more productive recruiting team. This is especially important for scaling companies, where the talent team is often asked to do a lot more with the same resources – or in some cases, leaner teams and budgets.

Our first impulse is to often use time-saved to demonstrate ROI — but for a finance team that’s focused more on revenue, time doesn’t always calculate well. Yet, you can still make a strong impression on your C-suite and decision makers when you highlight the real value of time in terms of salary.

So, what’s the best way to calculate this? You’ll need these inputs:

1. Number of recruiters on your team
2. Average recruiter salary + benefits
3. Estimated increase in productivity

Added Recruiter Productivity Calculation

Now, let’s say there are three recruiters on your team, with an average salary of $71,500 (including benefits). You can increase the productivity of the team by 20% with an ATS that reduces or even eliminates bottlenecks via automated email scheduling, automatic approval workflows, and more engaged hiring managers.

You’re looking at total cost savings of $42,900 – that’s over half the cost of an additional recruiter! That speaks volumes for the ROI of an ATS.

Total Annual Savings: Increased Recruiter Productivity Calculation

(Number of recruiters) X (Average salary + benefits) X (% increase in productivity) = Total cost savings from increased recruiter productivity

So, how does a good ATS help you increase recruiter productivity?

• Intelligent automations that eliminate tedious, administrative tasks and reduce human error. With Workable, automated actions keep interview scheduling and candidate communication completely streamlined.
• Engagement and collaboration is key. Your ATS should keep the entire hiring team engaged from the start. Workable’s mobile app is the perfect personal hiring assistant for busy hiring managers, and our two-way email and calendar sync keeps all communication easy to find in one place.

4. Decreased time to fill

Reducing time to hire and time to fill are at the top of every recruiter’s wishlist. And, at first, it seems pretty straightforward to measure. After all, if your time to fill was reduced to 29 days from 36 days after you implemented your ATS, it stands to reason that your new ATS reduced your time to fill by seven days. Pretty simple stuff, right?

But, that doesn’t really tell the whole story. Reducing time to fill can have a massive impact on your business. With a few simple calculations, you can help your C-suite understand how critical that seven-day reduction can be to the success of your organization.

So, how can you better quantify the ROI of decreasing time to fill?

You’ll need a few key inputs for this one:

1. Current time to hire
2. Desired time to hire (what you think a good ATS will help you achieve)
3. Estimated number of hires in the next 12 months
4. Annual company revenue
5. Number of full-time employees in your company

Total Cost of Time to Fill Calculation

Calculating the total cost of our time to fill will take a few steps. The first thing we’ll do is calculate revenue per employee:

(Annual company revenue) / (Number of full-time employees) = Revenue per employee

Next, we’re going to to calculate the cost of vacancy, per day using 220 (roughly the number of working days in a calendar year if you’re in the US, for instance):

(Revenue per employee) / (220) = Cost of vacancy per day

To calculate the total vacancy cost for your organization, simply multiply cost of vacancy per day by current time to fill and the number of estimated hires for the next 12 months:

((Cost of vacancy per day) * (current time to fill)) * (Number of estimated hires in the next 12 months) = Total cost of time to fill

For example: you’re a company with $2.9 million in revenue. You have 60 full-time employees and you want to add 30 more over the next 12 months. This means your revenue per employee is roughly $48,300. Divide that by 220 working days, and you have a cost of vacancy per day of roughly $220.

Multiply that cost of vacancy per day by those 30 additional employees you plan to hire, and multiply that by your current time to fill of 36 days – and your total cost of time to fill is about $237,600.

With that, you can calculate the total annual savings when you decrease your time to fill by seven days. That calculation can give you a pretty compelling case when presenting the ROI of an ATS.

Let’s give it a try: subtract the desired time to fill from the current time to fill (resulting in seven days in this case), and multiply that by the cost of vacancy per day ($220).

(Current time to fill – desired time to fill) * (Cost of vacancy per day) = Money saved per hire

The result is your money saved per hire, which totals $1,538.

Total Annual Savings: Decreased Time to Hire Calculation

You can then project your savings out over the entire year when you multiply your money saved per hire ($1,540) by the 30 hires planned over the next 12 months.

(Money saved per hire) X (Number of estimated hires in the next 12 months) = Total annual savings from decreased time to hire

The result is your total annual savings from your decreased time to fill, which in this scenario would be $46,200. Your ROI of an ATS just got even stronger!

So, how does a good ATS help you decrease time to fill? It helps you:

• Attract more qualified candidates. The faster the right candidates find you, the faster you can hire them! With Workable, you can expand your reach with one-click job board posting and boost your brand with a highly customizable and engaging careers page.
• Create a modern candidate experience. From the moment a candidate applies to the moment they (electronically!) sign the job offer – Workable is designed to make it easy, fast and enjoyable for candidates to move through the process.

5. Total ROI of an ATS: Putting it all together

Now that you’ve done your research, gathered all the inputs and made your calculations, it’s time to put it all together into one compelling case. Here, you’ll want to show all of the expected monetary savings, along with the added value the ATS provides.

Using the examples and calculations above, here’s how you can pull it all together into a simple sheet presenting the ROI of an ATS:

The post How to calculate the ROI of an ATS: A step-by-step guide appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s not all. There’s the extra burden placed on your day-to-day with legal and moral expectations to meet diversity, equity and inclusion metrics, increased compliance obligations including data privacy, employee vs. contractor classifications, and wage regulations.

And all of that while working on the same hiring budget you’ve had on your desk since before the pandemic – but with one or two less people in your team. That’s a lot to ask of a hiring team – especially in terms of time.

So, to help you out, here are 11 recruitment time-saving tips to help you optimize your hiring process while working with a lean budget and lean team. Spoiler: Workable’s recruitment solution can help you with pretty much all of them.

11 recruitment time-saving tips to speed up hiring

1. Automate the process
2. Offer self-scheduling options for candidates
3. Take advantage of templates
4. Enable mobile-friendly recruitment
5. Introduce e-signatures
6. Utilize a user-friendly career page builder
7. Take advantage of AI
8. Clone the process
9. Post to multiple job boards with one click
10. Automate your reporting
11. Remote interviewing

1. Automate the process

When handling large numbers of applicants, it becomes nearly impossible to engage each and every one of them personally, even when shortlisted.

Luckily, there are tools available that allow you to automate different steps in the process. Steps that can be automated include:

• An initial thank-you email in response to an application
• A rejection message for those who are not the right fit
• Moving candidates through the pipeline based on assessment scores
• A calendar self-schedule link sent out to someone who’s been moved to the next stage (more on that later)

Remember, you’re still dealing with human beings in the process. An automated, impersonal, careless rejection email can be off-putting for the candidate and may even impact impressions of your company in their network. Ensure that the tone and style of the email is appropriate, and always prioritize that candidate experience!

Workable’s automated actions tool can help you preset emails and processes while providing the templates (more on that below) to help you get started on recruitment time-saving.

2. Offer self-scheduling options for candidates

Whether you’re a recruiter or hiring manager, you know how much time can be spent communicating back and forth when planning for a phone screen, a video interview, or an in-person interview at any stage in the process. Factor in the number of candidates involved, and you can see how you might be wasting time that’s better spent on other, more applicable tasks.

All of that can be eliminated, however, by giving the candidate the opportunity to reserve an available time slot right through a link to your calendar. Workable’s self-scheduling tool enables easy scheduling from start to finish – and is one of the leading recruitment time-saving tips in this list.

3. Take advantage of templates

Writing a job description or a series of interview questions from scratch for every job opening can be a time-consuming task, especially when you’re hiring en masse after a new funding round or expansion to a new market. It’s also potentially susceptible to bias in terms of the language used, job requirements listed, and questions asked.

Save your time by utilizing templates. Templates, of course, don’t need to be posted as is – rather, they provide a great foundation for you to start to customize to each job. Plus, they save you a lot of time in the workflow.

Workable has more than 700 job description templates, 390 interview question templates, dozens of company policy templates, checklists, emails and much more that can be imported right into your applicant tracking system.

4. Enable mobile-friendly recruitment

Recruiting is a full-time job for recruiters, but is an added workload for hiring managers and executives whose decisions are needed to move candidates through the pipeline. Bottlenecks will happen as a result.

You can alleviate those breakdowns by giving busy hiring managers and executives the option to sift through candidates on their smartphone. Think about it – they’ll be able to check in during their commute, while taking a break in their day, or when (ahem) taking care of other business. That’ll speed things along.

Workable’s mobile-friendly app enables all of that, and more. Ben O’Mahony, from Cytora, commented on why the mobile app is awesome for busy hiring managers:

“They don’t need to see the entire recruiting pipeline at all times. They just need to see who they’re interviewing. And this is quickly done through the Workable app.”

5. Introduce e-signatures

Getting candidates to sign that job offer so you can close the books on the process is easier said than done, especially when it’s a remote hire or a new employee from another location. Having contracts delivered to and from the new hire is a time-consuming process, and that piles up when you’re handling multiple hires at once.

E-signing can solve all of that hassle. Everything’s going digital now – especially as the work world becomes increasingly remote. That includes all the legal stuff, like contracts, in a fully secure online environment to boot.

Workable’s ATS comes ready-made with its own e-signature tool to meet those important signature needs and is a small but important recruitment time-saver.

6. Use a user-friendly career page builder

Careers pages, like anything else in your website, can involve a lot of design work involving a team that’s already busy working on marketing and sales materials day in and day out. Plus, there’s a lot of back-and-forth involved where you have a ‘perfect’ careers page in mind and you’re working with design to make that happen.

You can skip all of that by bringing in a feature that enables even the least tech-savvy HR manager to build an impressive careers page using click-and-drag options.

Workable has its own advanced careers page builder built into its software. And this tutorial can help you whip together an amazing careers page in a short time, putting your employer brand on a pedestal and attracting the very best candidates to your company.

7. Take advantage of AI

We’re now in a strange time where many companies are experiencing difficulty finding the right candidates – or even a satisfactory number of candidates – for specific job postings. This especially applies when you’re hiring in a hyper-competitive space, such as developers or software engineers, or when looking to fill a niche role – both situations that often result in a shortage of candidates. This can put the onus on the recruiter to seek out potential applicants – including passive candidates – which involves a lot of legwork and time invested.

But there are ways around that. Artificial intelligence, when used in the right way, can seek out and find great candidates for you based on your job description and other parameters that you set – including specific keywords, qualifications, and other directives.

Workable’s AI Recruiter was introduced specifically for this purpose. And it can come in especially useful for you right now.

8. Clone the process

When someone – especially one of your top employees – puts in their notice, it feels like you have to start all over again. Not only is it like capturing lightning in a bottle, it also takes time to set up a new job ad, put together a new series of interview questions, create a new assessment, etc., etc., etc.

What if you just went back to that original process that led to the hire of this amazing employee, and simply cloned it? Not only can you replicate what was successful before, you can skip those steps doing this for high-turnover roles such as in sales and hospitality.

9. Post to multiple job boards with one click

Your job description is approved and you’re ready to distribute. Next steps:

• Step 1: Post job ad to LinkedIn.
• Step 2: Post job ad to Facebook Jobs.
• Step 3: Post job to Indeed.
• Step 4: Post job ad to Glassdoor.
• Step 5: Post job ad to Monster.
• Step 6: ….

You get the point. Doing that over and over and over again can eat up all the hours in a day, and that’s just for a single job opportunity. Although it’s standard to expect an ATS to deliver job ads to numerous job sites automatically, you want to be sure you have the right ATS to post to not just the most job sites, but the right ones.

Check out the list of Workable’s existing job site integrations to get an idea of how many job sites you can post to with one click using our recruitment software.

10. Automate your reporting

Reporting on recruitment metrics is crucial to successful hiring, but it can take quite a bit of time to analyze data and then break it down into reports for the C-suite who are most interested in how your hiring process impacts the bottom line.

There are many different reasons you need reports in hiring, such as:

• Identifying breakdowns and bottlenecks in the process that can prolong time to hire and time to fill
• Understanding where your best candidates are coming from
• Tracking diversity metrics in your candidate pool
• Staying compliant with government-mandated requirements, including EEOC, CCPA, and GDPR protocols

All that data in your recruitment process can be automatically turned into reports to benefit all of the above, including having reports sent directly from your software. Workable’s software has reporting functions to meet each of the above needs.

11. Remote interviewing

While it’s not necessarily time taken out of your own work day, you’re asking a lot of a candidate when you schedule an in-person interview. Assuming the commute takes an hour each way door-to-door, you’re making the candidate spend three full hours – or more – for a one-hour interview. Not only that, it doesn’t bode well for candidate experience, especially in an increasingly digital work world. A recruitment time-saving tip here will be invaluable.

With a few exceptions – such as the more intensive later-stage interviews – do your candidates a favor and carry out your interviews via phone or, ideally, video. There’s a multitude of tools out there that can help you – including Workable’s one-way video interviewing tool which can take care of the screening stage and even that first “interview” stage in one step.

Optimize and grow

Of course, these time-saving recruitment tips won’t free up your entire day – but they can free up a good number of hours in your workflow that can be better spent on the more in-depth work.

You can now invest time and energy into branding yourself as an employer, meeting with hiring managers to best understand what they want and need in a new hire, and overseeing new employee onboarding.

Not only do these increase your profile within the company as someone who can do the job without fail, you can better participate in more high-level discussions around workforce planning. It’s a win-win all around – for yourself, for candidates, and the company as a whole.

The post 11 recruitment time-saving tips for the overburdened recruiter appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With automated actions, our newest efficiency-boosting tool, make recruiters’ jobs easier and speed up time to hire by automating repetitive tasks and emails. Automate and personalize bulk candidate communication to increase productivity, allow candidates to self-schedule meeting times to streamline interview scheduling, and ensure every applicant gets a customized and personalized response to improve both the candidate experience and your employer brand.

Workable helps companies in 100+ countries efficiently scale up their hiring processes with tools like hiring plan, interview self-scheduling, native video interviews, and top-notch customer support.

The post Introducing automated actions: Increase productivity and hire more efficiently appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But how can you choose who to move to the next phase based solely on those criteria? Even though you have some evidence, it’s easy to get lost in translation, especially when you have numerous applicants to screen.

That’s where Workable Assessments can step in and do the trick.

First, you’ll get a better overview of each candidate’s skills on different cognitive areas that you define as important to thrive. Second, you’ll learn more about their workplace personality and behavior to see if they’re a good fit for your current team and workplace.

Certified by psychometric experts and designed within the Workable platform, the Workable Assessments feature is not only credible, but also a handy solution for hiring teams. With easy access to performance insights and a user-friendly interface that enables collaboration, it’s an asset for organizations who want to introduce pre-employment testing into their screening process.

Inside Workable Assessments: Understanding different test types

Here’s a brief breakdown of Workable Assessments: the cognitive part consists of four tests measuring different types of mental skills – abstract reasoning, numerical comprehension, verbal comprehension, and attention & focus.

1. Cognitive Assessments

Abstract reasoning: This looks at the ability to logically analyze multiple information that are presented in a more abstract form – usually not numbers or words. For example, software engineers and researchers often need to think abstractly and out-of-the-box to recognize patterns and resolve problems in a resourceful way.

Numerical comprehension: This assesses how candidates handle and analyze numerical data in order to reach appropriate decisions. For example, an accounting candidate should have a high degree of this skill in order to perform their daily responsibilities. Overall, positions in Finance, Banking and Audit require a high numerical comprehension level.

Verbal comprehension: This measures the ability to understand and analyze verbal information, such as arguments and written statements, e.g. reports. For instance, it’s a critical skill for lawyers and journalists, among others.

Attention & focus: This assesses abilities that require observation and acute working memory. This is vital for roles that require a high attention span or switch often between tasks, such as content editors and data entry agents.

The jobs mentioned in the examples above are indicative. Every company shapes their roles based on its business needs and for similar job titles, requirements may vary. Once you define the mandatory skill set needed, you can hand over the related assessments to candidates.

2. Workplace Personality Assessment

Workable’s personality assessment is based on the Big 5 Model and unveils how people behave in a professional setting. More specifically, they measure the degree of the personality traits below – and 23 related factors, that define their workplace personality:

• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• Emotional Stability
• Openness to Experience

Before you administer the assessment, determine what traits the ideal candidate should have based on the role, responsibilities, and current team dynamics. For example, if you’re looking for a salesperson, then a high extraversion level would be an asset, but it’s not the same if you’re looking for a content marketer.

Even though Workable’s cognitive assessments are targeted to white-collar professionals, the personality assessments benefit all types of companies and roles. And remember, you don’t have to provide all tests in bulk; it’s up to you to decide what’s best for your hiring process.

About candidate experience

As with every other Workable product, this is designed with candidates and hiring teams in mind. We understand that pre-employment assessments could be stressful for candidates, so we made sure to provide an easy-to-navigate experience in an intuitive interface.

Before the assessment starts, candidates learn how the tool works. They have time to warm up, get comfortable with the instructions and answer a few practice questions.

In addition, we’ve introduced adaptive technology, which means that the difficulty of the provided questions varies and adjusts to the candidate’s ability. This minimizes the time needed to complete each test and makes candidates feel more confident throughout the process with their performance.

So, these are Workable Assessments, everyone. We’re thrilled to offer you this hiring solution – we hope you are, too.

The post Introducing Workable Assessments: Make data-driven hiring decisions appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Before we go into detail on assessment concerns, let’s take a look at the types of assessments. There are five core assessments:

1. abstract reasoning
2. numerical analysis
3. verbal communication
4. attention & focus
5. personality

Each of them have their distinct best practices for specific job roles – for instance, verbal communication skills are desired for those working in public-facing roles such as customer service or sales. Numerical analysis can be applied to those working in finance. And so on.

Now, let’s look at the concerns about these assessments.

Why you should use cognitive assessments

Let’s first look at cognitive assessment concerns, with reasons why you should include them anyway.

Concern #1: They reduce the candidate to a number

The concern: A standardized recruitment process – especially for larger organizations who have built a scalable hiring model – can make candidates feel like they’re on a conveyor belt. When you add assessments, candidates will feel like you’re just adding another statistic to them.

The reality: A standardized process is also more susceptible to bias – despite the sincere intent for the opposite. Likewise, AI screening of resumes can lead to a new problem, as seen in the example of Amazon. Even if you take AI out of the picture, humans can still be influenced by the reputation of the school the candidate went to, or their charisma in a face-to-face interview.

When you add assessments to the process, you can analyze cognitive abilities and potentials in an isolated environment without being influenced by these other factors.

Concern #2: There’s plenty to learn in other stages of the process

The concern: In between the resume, cover letter, interview, and even the reference check, you already have plenty of information to help you make a good decision on the candidate. Adding assessments just further complicates things.

The reality: Each of the stages in the evaluation are designed to understand specific parts of a candidate’s eligibility for a role. But gaps remain: for instance, it’s hard to discern how much of a candidate’s success actually comes from their own contribution or just from the environment they worked in. Plus, exaggerating one’s accomplishments in a resume isn’t entirely uncommon.

With assessments, you’re future-proofing your company against those potential bad or misleading hires by directly analyzing what they can actually bring to your company.

Concern #3: Assessments prolong an already lengthy process

The concern: Adding assessments just adds time to an already lengthy recruitment process – a common gripe among many candidates.

The reality: Yes, they’re right – if those other stages are clumsily managed with slow turnaround at the recruiter’s side due to an excess of work. But optimization tools, such as automated emailing, self-scheduling options, and one-way video interviews, can shorten those stages. This gives you the luxury to seamlessly add assessments to the mix – also in a semi-automated way – without prolonging the process. In effect, you’re getting more for less.

Now that we’ve covered three main concerns around cognitive assessments, let’s look at the more charged topic of personality assessments.

Why you should use personality assessments

While cognitive assessments are already a widely accepted element of the recruitment process, the value of personality assessments isn’t as universally acknowledged. The controversy around Myers Brigg and DiSC profile testing is widespread, and there’s little consensus on their usefulness.

Concern #1: Personality assessments promote biased hiring

The concern: Testing for personality promotes biased hiring. For instance, if you find that someone’s not a so-called “team player” or a good “cultural fit”, you may opt not to move forward with them. It also unfairly favors extroverted “go-getters” and “problem solvers” over equally qualified introverts who prefer to focus on the work at hand.

The reality: Personality assessments should not be dealmakers or dealbreakers in a hiring decision. They only help provide stronger insights into a candidate that may not be found in other stages. Perhaps a candidate seemed quiet and unmotivated during an interview – a personality assessment may find them to be introverted yet still just as qualified as a louder, friendlier candidate who made a stronger impression in the interview stage.

Concern #2: Candidates will try for the “right” answer rather than being honest

The concern: When jobseekers take a personality test, they’re going to be naturally inclined to try and give the ‘right’ answers to further their candidacy for the role. They may not be wholly honest.

The reality: It’s not a test. It’s an assessment. You’re trying to get a deeper understanding of their personality and traits. The result can help you learn how they’re likely to behave in the role, how they like to be managed, the job environment in which they most thrive, and their preferred communication style, among other things that help you understand who the candidate is and what motivates them.

Concern #3: Personalities have nothing to do with the job

The concern: Many see personality assessments as irrelevant and even as an invasion of privacy. What do they really have to do with candidacy for a role?

The reality: As stated above, having a good understanding of how a candidate might act or behave in the workplace will help you build better teams and a work environment in which they can thrive. This can create a better all-around employee experience with more engaged and productive employees.

Assess your own team first

That being said, personality assessments have their limits. To use them to their fullest benefit, have the existing employees in your company take an assessment as well.

Not only can you identify opportunities to build stronger teams, more motivational environments, and better management structures, you can also set up mentorship programs specifically tailored to specific personalities that can bring the best out of a new hire.

This means a much stronger onboarding and a shorter time to maximum productivity.

It’s not a dealmaker or dealbreaker

Boston-based management consultant Laura Crandall seconds that. Personality assessments shouldn’t be the defining factor in making a decision – nor should they even influence a decision.

Laura adds: “The name is a bit misleading, as, at their core, these tests aim to identify how personality traits, be they assertiveness, optimism, extroversion or introversion, and the like, will manifest in workplace behavior.”

And she adds succinctly: “They’re just lenses.”

In the end, while they are great tools to overcome the “one size fits all” solution, cognitive and personality assessments need to be utilized properly for them to be effective. You also want to communicate their intent and benefits to the candidate as clearly as you can to maintain that all-important candidate experience.

Think of it as adding another tool to your HR toolkit that focuses on bringing the best people to your company, and bringing the best out of them while they’re there.

The post 6 major assessment concerns and why you shouldn’t worry appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

How to scale up your hiring: 13 features for rapidly growing companies

1. Hiring Plan
2. Department Hierarchy
3. Access rights and permissions
4. Integrations
5. Compliance
6. Interview self-scheduling
7. Automated actions
8. Bulk actions
9. One-way video interviews
10. Mobile app
11. Customer support
12. AI Recruiter
13. People Search

Maintain transparency, accountability and control

When you scale up your hiring in a company that’s growing aggressively, that hiring process no longer involves just the recruiter or hiring manager. There are other stakeholders involved, including those at the executive level, department heads, finance managers, and others. Plus, the recruitment process grows in complexity as you’re no longer hiring just to fill a seat.

For that, you need to have a recruitment system that maintains transparency to all interested parties, holds them accountable to their respective roles in the hiring process, and is controllable all in one place. The following features will enable you to have such a system in place.

1. Hiring Plan

Rapid growth requires a strategic hiring plan that’s as dynamic as your company. You might be able to manage requisition approvals manually for one or two employees, but certainly not two hundred at a time. When you’re hiring at high volume, you need an organized approach so you can prioritize requisitions properly, budget them accurately and maintain visibility at all times.

With Workable’s Hiring Plan, you can track requisitions, manage approvals and review budgeting data, all in real time. Hiring managers create requisitions when they need to hire, and follow standard or custom approval workflows. As roles are opened and filled, your Hiring Performance report updates automatically, so you can track changes, make adjustments and forecast your hiring budget for the year.

2. Department Hierarchy

As your organization evolves, so does your organizational structure. As teams change and expand, you need a system that makes it easy to adapt.

Enter Department Hierarchy. This centralized department management makes it for you to manage custom departments and hierarchical structure — meaning, as your company grows your hiring structure does, too.

Filter your careers page, dashboards and reports based on the departments you’ve set up and organize key features of the hiring process by department and location. Super admins control every aspect of department management and setup, so you can maintain strict control and organization as you scale up your hiring process.

3. Access rights and permissions

When you grow from five to 500, the number of people involved in the hiring process expands exponentially. With more users and varying degrees of seniority, it becomes more difficult – and more essential – to protect sensitive data. Control who sees what, when with Workable’s roles and permissions.

User roles define which hiring tasks team members should (and can) perform, and user permissions ensure they get just the right amount of access to get the job done.

4. Integrations

Growing companies usually don’t depend on just one system to get their hiring done. From SSO to background checks to HRIS and onboarding Workable connects with the tools you rely on.

With Workable you can transfer candidate data seamlessly and safely or connect to your business intelligence suite to access robust analytics and measure custom KPIs. Need to go custom? With Workable’s open API and world-class Tech Solutions team, nothing is out of reach.

Check out Workable’s extensive list of integrations.

5. Compliance

Managing compliance can get more complicated as your business grows. As you expand across countries and continents, so does the list of regulations and laws you must comply with.

Workable helps you navigate local, national and internal regulation – no matter where you’re operating. Our suite of automated compliance features make it easy to manage and demonstrate compliance. Whether it’s GDPR, CCPA or EEO – Workable has you covered with features like automated data deletion, candidate opt-out links, and anonymized candidate surveys and reports.

Save time, automate admin and hire at scale

When you’re processing hundreds of applications for a single job opening, that’s a lot to manage. That number grows exponentially when you’re filling multiple positions at once and on a regular basis. The following features will help optimize the process in a scalable way, and avoid lengthy delays in the recruitment process.

6. Interview self-scheduling

It can take days to coordinate scheduling for just one candidate — imagine trying to do it for one hundred! At a rapidly scaling company it’s downright impossible to schedule interviews the old-fashioned way — 100% admin and 0% value added.

With Workable’s self-scheduling option, you can eliminate the back-and-forth and book timely, convenient interviews with just a few clicks. In your initial outreach template, simply include the self-schedule link. The candidate can view the available slots on your calendar and book on the spot. All you have to do is show up!

7. Automated actions

Stuck doing the same old boring hiring tasks over and over again? They’re not just tedious, they can also cost you serious time and effort when multiplied over hundreds of open positions. What seems like just two minutes can easily turn into two hours of admin work per day as candidates and open roles pile up.

With Workable’s automated actions you can increase productivity and speed up time to hire by automating repetitive tasks, emails and invites. Develop custom email templates and create automations by job, department or hiring stage.

Whether you’re sending an assessment test, self-schedule interview links or disqualification emails – Workable makes it easy to set up, cancel and edit automations.

8. Bulk actions

At a rapidly scaling company, you’re likely dealing with hundreds or thousands of candidates. Taking basic actions like sending emails or disqualifying applicants, can take ages if you’re forced to do it one-by-one.

Luckily, Workable’s bulk actions make it easy to take action with just a few simple clicks. In Workable, you can use templates with bulk emails to email sourced candidates or send mass rejection emails to disqualified applicants.

Simply open the hiring stage, select the candidates you’d like to email and click ‘send bulk emails’ from the bulk actions menu. Workable even has built-in duplicate detection to prevent candidates from receiving emails twice.

9. One-way video interviews

When you’re scaling up, you need your time-to-hire to go way down. You need tools that will help you screen at scale, and more easily identify qualified candidates. Enter, Video Interviews. Video Interviews reduce the time you need to spend communicating, scheduling and carrying out the screening process.

Workable’s one-way video interviews are built with the candidate in mind – there’s no messy tech, no downloads and no leaving the application form. It’s all built into the Workable platform, which also makes it easier for the hiring team to collaborate and compare feedback. And since hiring teams can review responses and provide feedback at any time, from any device, you’ll identify your best candidates faster, too.

Engage the entire hiring team

Hiring may be in your day job, but it’s not always in the day job of the hiring manager or executive. Nevertheless, to do your job well, you need their active participation. The following two features will help you make their part in the process easier – which in turn makes it easy to do your own job even at scale.

10. Mobile app

The hardest part of hiring at scale can be getting hiring managers on board and engaged. The mobile app makes it easy for hiring managers to stay connected, no matter where they are.

The mobile app acts as your personal assistant giving you an overview of upcoming events, overdue tasks and all the helpful context you need. You can screen, communicate, evaluate and even hire, all from your phone.

Learn how a Workable sales executive hired 20 salespeople in three months using her smartphone, despite a packed schedule.

11. Customer support

When you’re at a high growth company, you can’t get hung up on a tech question. You need real answers from real people, real fast. Workable’s global support team has you covered, no matter what timezone you’re in.

An agent is never more than a simple call, chat or email away. And, with a 95% customer satisfaction rating, you could say we specialize in solving problems.

Fill your (rapidly growing!) talent pipeline

Finally – talent shortages and niche roles often pose a challenge to recruiters who need to attract the best and brightest candidates to your company. This feature will help you.

12. AI Recruiter

When you’ve been tapped to help your company double in size by scaling up your hiring, the best place to start is with a healthy talent pipeline. But instantly filling your pipeline with a host of diverse, qualified applicants is easier said than done.

Until now. With Workable’s unique sourcing toolkit you won’t need external recruiters or additional sourcing software to get a leg up in the talent market. With AI Recruiter you can take sourcing into your own hands. Get a list of the top 50 passive candidates for every job in your account, instantly. Add them all into the sourced stage with one click.

13. People Search

Already know what skills you’re looking for? Leverage the power of the internet in an instant. Be as specific or as general as you like while running a full boolean search based on experience, keywords, location, education, etc. You’ll get matching passive candidates with their best contact info.

Learn how an insurance startup tripled their employee base in 2.5 years, hiring for difficult-to-fill niche roles using People Search.

The post How to scale up your hiring process: 13 features for rapidly growing companies appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Personality assessments, in particular, should be conducted with care. To ensure a fair and equitable analysis, follow up with a post-personality assessment interview.

The challenge here is that such an interview cannot follow the traditional structure of an interview, with a preset series of questions. Additionally, many post-personality test questions are customized based on individual test results and will differ from one candidate to the next. So, you’ll need to allow for flexibility here to gain a better understanding of the more intangible aspects of a candidate’s eligibility for a role.

With all those factors in play, here’s how you can use post-personality test questions to conduct a fair and equitable interview process.

Why should we care?

Often, interviews include questions like “What is your biggest flaw?” or “Where do you see yourself in five years?”. Research shows that questions such as these are most prone to interviewer bias.

Nevertheless, this approach may work when evaluating a handful of candidates. But when the number of candidates grows and each candidate needs to be assessed, a traditional interview with typical questions becomes more difficult when so many variables and intangibles are involved in an analysis.

This is why a structured way of conducting and recording a candidate’s post-personality assessment interview is crucial during the hiring process for a specific job. To maintain structure, follow these five steps in mind to ensure you’re set for success:

1. Prepare beforehand
2. Invite every candidate
3. Set up the interview
4. Perform the interview itself
5. Report immediately afterwards

1. Prepare beforehand

The first step is to prepare ahead of the interview. Review a map of all available personality factors and facets. Consider the relevance of each for the job, and focus on eight to 10 core facets that you want to evaluate.

If you’re unsure whether or not to include specific personality traits or characteristics in this list, consult with someone already in that function or team to get a better understanding of what traits are beneficial to the role.

Once you have the list of traits and characteristics you want to look at, it’s time to start collecting insights via the interview.

Now that you know what you are looking for, it is time to start collecting data and invite candidates to interview.

2. Invite every candidate

To ensure a fair and equitable process, make sure every candidate gets an interview. Remember, you’re looking at specific behaviors and characteristics that are better analyzed via assessments and interviews than via candidate profiles.

Another factor is that candidates’ own biases can factor into the assessment results – for instance, they may be naturally inclined to give the “right” answer to further their candidacy for a role even if there’s no actual right or wrong answer. There will also be those who don’t seem to match what you’re looking for in an ideal candidate.

A post-personality assessment interview gives you the opportunity to hear them out. You may find candidates who use uncommon tactics to turn disadvantages into advantages. Some may have different approaches to handling dissatisfied customers, for example.

3. Setting up the interview

Now it’s time to set a standard for the pre-interview period. Your goal here is to make sure each candidate feels welcome, comfortable and respected. That also means creating a comfortable environment and allowing enough time for candidates to respond in depth – and for you to really listen without distractions.

This is especially important when conducting a post-personality assessment interview because you want the candidate to feel at ease.

Meanwhile, make sure you’ve done your homework on the suggested interview questions – which are customized as well. These questions, via Workable’s personality assessment feature, can come up in cases where greater clarity is needed in specific areas.

For example, a candidate may show significant “friendly” or “distant” traits, which would trigger questions via the feature (which are, again, customized) to help understand those elements at a deeper level. These questions will be available via Workable’s personality assessment feature in cases where the candidate has scored below or above average in specific personality characteristics.

Some of these questions may not correspond to characteristics included in your list you made in Step 1. In that case, you may skip them.

4. Conducting the interview

During the interview, you should always go back to the priorities you’ve outlined in your initial preparation. Ask yourself:

• “Why is this characteristic important?”
• “How will a candidate with this characteristic perform better in this job?”

There will be a corresponding question or statement for each characteristic. Follow-up questions are available if you want to explore further. Once you’re satisfied that you’ve learned what you need to know about the candidate, move on to the next question(s).

It’s important to pay close attention to the candidate’s responses. Your goal is to understand how the candidate will perform in the job in terms of personality traits.

5. Report immediately afterwards

After the interview is over, record your assessment of the candidate’s qualities. It’s best to do this immediately after the interview, and in a standardized format that allows you to compare results with other candidates.

Post-assessment interview best practices

When interviewing, follow these best practices:

• Be actively engaged in the interview, and pay attention to the candidate’s responses. These questions are as much for your benefit as they are for the candidate’s – don’t treat this as an afterthought.
• Ensure a stress-free environment that allows the candidate to bring their best self to the interview. Even if you want to see how a candidate responds in a stressful situation, there’s a time and place for that; don’t deliberately create that atmosphere in this particular interview.
• Be intensely aware of the most important personality characteristics for the specific job position that you’re interviewing for.
• End the interview in a professional and respectful manner, and be sure to note your impressions of the candidate immediately afterwards, as to not miss any important details.

Consider a training program or consultation with fellow HR professionals to ensure an ideal outcome for yourself and other members of the hiring team.

You may also find the following tutorials and templates to be helpful in ensuring best results:

• Personality interview questions
• How to read candidate body language in an interview
• How to assess soft skills in an interview
• 12 behavioral interview questions
• Emotional intelligence (EQ) interview questions

The post How to conduct a post-personality assessment interview appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Evaluating free vs. paid applicant tracking software
  • Features you can expect on a free ATS plan
  • Features likely to be missing from a free ATS
• Who are free applicant tracking systems suitable for?
• Signs a paid ATS may be more beneficial for your business
• Top 5 best free applicant tracking systems
  • SmartRecruiters
  • Zoho
  • BreezyHR
  • Recruitee
  • Teamtailor

Evaluating free vs. paid applicant tracking software

Luckily, there is applicant tracking software available for any budget or business need. Rather than just choosing one from our list, check out the pros and cons of each to see what is right for your organization. After all, there’s no reason to pay for a level of service you don’t need and won’t use, but free applicant tracking systems do have limits to what they can offer.

Features you can expect on a free ATS plan

So what kind of features come standard with most free ATS plans?

1. Seamless job posting

One of the most useful tools an ATS can offer is the ability to post job listings across many platforms at once. This saves time and effort for your HR department.

2. Resume aggregation and management

When applications start coming in from the many places you posted your job listing, an ATS can help you aggregate and sort the resumes that you receive. Free applicant tracking systems have features built in to allow you to search for candidates in your applicant pool by background, job title, skill set, and other factors. This helps you pull the most qualified candidates for further research and interviews.

3. Communication & automation

Many free applicant tracking systems also come with communication features that streamline the applicant management process. This means that key elements of the communication process with job applicants – such as email communication, interview scheduling, and first-round interviews – can be automated in order to save time and labor costs. Depending on the type of free applicant tracking system you’re using, this can range from simple communication features to full, large-scale process automation.

Features likely to be missing from a free ATS

Free applicant tracking systems may have a lot of time-saving features to offer, but paid applicant tracking systems have some seriously useful features that you just can’t get with a free plan. These may include:

1. Unlimited job postings

Free applicant tracking systems often have limits on the number of job listings you can post at a time. They might also limit the number of websites that they cross-post your job listing on, whereas more robust paid plans offer access to many websites at once and unlimited job listings.

2. Resume storage, CRM-style

This feature stores applications and resumes submitted in a searchable database that your HR team can access at any point in the future, essentially giving you a ready-made talent pool of candidates interested in your organization, even if they were not selected for the role they originally applied for. Free ATS’ usually have limits on how long your resumes can be stored for, if they retain them at all. However, know that the recent growth in data privacy legislation will require more attention on compliance than in the past.

3. Social media functionality

A free applicant tracking system can aggregate and filter applications for your HR department, but it usually can’t pull information from social media as well. A premium ATS finds candidates through their social media profiles as well as through submitted applications. This broader candidate pool is a huge asset!

4. Analytics

Another paid feature is data analytics for your talent pool. A paid applicant tracking system can gather and analyze data on your candidates. It can also monitor for compliance and DEI goals when using candidate surveying tools.

5. Mobile compatibility

When you use a free applicant tracking system, you pay with less access to features like mobile compatibility. With so much work activity done on the go these days, it may be worth paying for a system that includes a native app or, at the very least, is mobile compatible.

6. Ad free & secure

One way that companies can afford to release free applicant tracking systems is by running ads on their systems. This not only makes for a distracting and messy user experience, but also poses potential security risks.

7. Scalability

Due to their limited features, free applicant tracking systems are not great for businesses that may need to quickly scale up in the future. If your business is growing quickly, it’s a good idea to invest in an ATS that can handle a higher load of applications.

Who are free applicant tracking systems suitable for?

Free applicant tracking systems aren’t the best choice for everyone. There are real limits to the features they offer, and in many cases, paying for an upgraded program is far more cost-effective. Here are some scenarios where a free applicant tracking system may work best for your organization:

1. Your recruitment process is pretty simple

There’s no need to overcomplicate something if it’s already working for your business. If your recruitment pipeline is simple yet effective, a free ATS may be all you need.

2. You only hire a few candidates each year, or have a small recruiting budget

If you only fill a few job openings each year, it may not be worth the cost of a paid ATS to fill those openings. A free ATS can get the job done in this scenario, with limitations.

3. You have an IT team that can alter open-source software for your ATS

There are a few open-source ATS solutions out there. If you have an in-house IT team with the bandwidth to tweak and customize this open-source software for your company, that may be a better solution than paying for a full service ATS. Bear in mind, however, that you’re also limiting yourself to your IT team’s capabilities and while the ATS is “free”, the amount of hours invested in customizing the open-source ATS solution can be seen as an added expense.

Signs a paid ATS may be more beneficial for your business

If you have a feeling that your organization could benefit from a more sophisticated program with better features, here are some signs a paid ATS could be worth it for you:

1. Your hiring process is complex

Larger businesses with complicated talent pipelines can benefit from the features offered by a paid ATS. A paid applicant tracking system can help you standardize your recruitment process. It can also make continuous hiring a breeze, which is great for industries with high turnover.

2. You hire many people per year

The cost of a wrong hire is a price no business can afford to pay. But the larger your organization is, the more likely you are to be hiring for a number of management positions, which can be some of the most costly to hire or replace. A paid applicant tracking system with better features will easily pay for itself in an organization that hires many people each year.

3. You want to free up time for your HR/recruiting staff

With the automations, streamlined communication, and analytics offered with most paid applicant tracking systems, your HR team will save valuable time that can now be spent on resolving internal matters or interviewing high-value candidates. A paid applicant tracking system will also keep your hiring team on the same page throughout the hiring process.

4. You want to keep track of standout applicants

A paid applicant tracking system often includes the ability to store resumes from applicants in an easy-to-use database, allowing hiring managers to search the database for qualified candidates, even after the position they applied for is filled. Again, as above, be mindful of compliance considerations when storing candidate data.

5. You want to find the most qualified candidates

Free applicant tracking systems simply can’t compete with the premium features offered by paid versions. If easily finding the most qualified candidates is your top priority, it’s probably worth investing in a service that will truly get the job done.

6. You want to audit your recruiting process for efficiency

Is there time waste in your HR or recruiting department? Has your organization gone through the frustrating process of multiple bad-fit hires? The automation and other features that a paid ATS offers can help your leadership pinpoint and correct areas of inefficiency and waste.

Top 5 best free applicant tracking systems

But not every organization can afford or needs what a paid applicant tracking system has to offer. If you’re still interested in trying out a free applicant tracking system, here’s a breakdown of the five best free programs out there and what each of them has to offer.

SmartRecruiters

SmartRecruiters offers tons of features for large firms to recruit and hire; their free version is great for smaller companies who are looking to fill fewer positions. Unlike many free applicant tracking systems, their free version offers most of the same features of their paid version, the main difference being limits on the number of active job postings they allow.

Zoho

Zoho’s free applicant tracking system is tailored for recruiting and staffing firms, so if you’re in another industry, you might want to take a look at the other free ATS’ listed here. That being said, it has many useful integrations like evaluation management, job description templates, and background check software.

BreezyHR

BreezyHR is one of the few applicant tracking systems to offer a limited version for free forever, rather than just a short free trial of the full version. Highly rated by software review site Capterra for its robust features, Breezy offers many features other ATS’ don’t, like skill assessment and a native video interview system. The free version only allows for one active position and one active talent pool at a time.

Recruitee

While free only on a trial basis, Recruitee is a highly flexible ATS with all the features you’d expect from a free ATS: resume search, job posting, and interview scheduling automation. It also offers integrations for internal HR processes, like recruitment goal checking, and workflow management. Recruitee does not include onboarding software.

Teamtailor

Like Recruitee, Teamtailor offers a free trial as opposed to an outright free option. With branding features, an easy-to-use interface, integrated onboarding, and mobile compatibility, Teamtailor is yet another great option.

Olivia Jones is a freelance writer and marketing consultant. She helps companies create compelling content. Learn more about what she does on her website or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The post The best free applicant tracking systems appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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.

Let’s go back to the beginning:

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.

We’re in the industry ourselves, so we know how overwhelming it may be. To make it easier for you to decide on an ATS best suited to your needs, we’re presenting you with the best applicant tracking systems in the market today.

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.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Why you should ask candidates unique interview questions
• Examples of unique interview questions
• How to incorporate unique questions during your interview

Why you should ask candidates unique interview questions

Usually, by the time people get to the interview stage, you know that –at least on paper – they meet the qualifications for the job. But, resumes and cover letters can be deceiving. When someone writes “developed new system for X,” the truth might be; “I was in the same room as the people who developed the new system for X.” That’s the type of stuff you want to tease out. That’s what you can do in the face-to-face interview.

If you simply keep to the same template for all positions, you won’t find the answers you need. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t ask similar questions to candidates for the same position – you should, in fact, to ensure a standardized process – but questions need to be uniquely tailored to the individual candidate.

This requires a bit more work from the hiring manager – you have to pay closer attention to the resume and cover letter – but it can pay off handsomely when you now know the candidate you’re hiring is the perfect fit for the job. Increased engagement, lower turnover, better productivity – there are numerous payoffs in a higher-quality hire.

Examples of unique interview questions

1. Tell me about the moment you came up with the idea for X.

When someone lists their accomplishments on their resumes, asking this question helps tease out if they really did what they said they did. Were they the ‘idea’ person or simply someone who implemented someone else’s idea? (It’s not bad to be an implementation person! It’s just a different skill set.)

Someone who developed the idea will almost always have a moment they can describe. “I was in my car on the way home, listening to a podcast, when the person said, ‘plastics.’ I was like, ‘Woah, plastics. That’s what I need to do.’”

When you ask a candidate about an accomplishment on their resume, you find out their level of involvement with the achievement, and you find out how their mind works. It’s a great question for anyone in a leadership or creative role.

2. Tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them.

This question is stolen from Elon Musk, so you may argue that it’s not unique. What makes this a unique interview question is that you get to find out strengths and weaknesses that directly pertain to the job.

If you ask, “What is your biggest weakness?” you’ll get some drivel that won’t help you find the right candidate. If you ask this, the candidate can give you a tailored answer.

3. What made you go into this field of work?

This unique interview question helps you ascertain a cultural fit. You need to know what you are looking for in the answer to this. Is the candidate excited about their field of work? It gets you the background information you want and (often) insight into where they want to go in the future? Is this a stepping stone? A stop-gap measure? Or a job the person really wants?

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” is one of the more popular questions to get that information, but it’s reviled in these times of uncertainty and shorter tenures. The above question will give you better insight into the candidate’s longer-term objectives.

4. Here’s a description of a problem we’re working on. Can you give me a five-minute idea of where and how you’d begin solving this?

This puts your candidate uniquely into the job and not on general principles around the role. Note: this isn’t an assignment to create a three-hour presentation, and it’s not an attempt to get free consulting out of a candidate. It’s a five-minute look at where they would start.

From this, you learn their background, problem-solving approach, and ability to comprehend the situations they will face in the job.

How to incorporate unique questions during your interview

The point of these unique interview questions is to target them specifically to the job and the company. By the time you conduct an interview, all the candidates have already been determined that they can likely do the job. Through these questions, you get to learn a lot more about the individual and how they would fit into your department and team.

So many canned interview questions have the candidate thinking, “What does the hiring manager want to hear?” rather than “Here is what I have to offer.” These questions directly engage the candidate’s unique experiences and the unique struggles of the business. You’ll have a better understanding of the candidate with this type of questioning.

Use these questions as part of your general process. Depending on the role, you may want technical questions, hypothetical situations, and questions about their career progression. But, with everyone, you want to know how well they’d do in the job. These questions help.

The post 4 unique interview questions to help you find the best employees appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Described as a digital challenger bank in the United Kingdom, Starling Bank operates out of four locations in the UK and Ireland with headquarters in London. They take a more customer-centric approach to banking, and continue to grow rapidly as a disrupter in the financial industry. They have amassed £363M in total funding and more than two million customers to date, plus they have been voted as Best British Bank for three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020.

Starling Bank’s incredible growth requires a highly efficient recruitment solution that can handle the volume of candidates and hiring managers while maintaining seamless, easy to use functionality. Workable’s ATS gives Starling Bank what it needs to confidently maintain its recruitment process. 

Says Marc Douch, Talent Acquisition Manager at Starling Bank:

“It’s a simple platform to use from a recruiter and a hiring manager point of view… Training new hiring managers is almost non-existent because I just set them up with an account. It’s fairly self-explanatory.”

To meet the skyrocketing demand of its services in the market, Starling Bank has consistently hired at a high volume in two major areas: engineering and customer support.

“We hired just under 600 people last year and, I think so far [as of November 2020], we’ve hired about 450,” says Marc. “So, it’s been a bit of a busy past couple of years from a hiring perspective, that’s for sure.”

The Video Interviews feature, which eliminates resource-heavy communications between the recruiter and job applicant to set up screening calls, has been particularly helpful, says Marc. 

Marc adds that recruiting continued at its torrid pace even as Starling Bank shifted to a remote working environment, making Video Interviews an even more useful tool in the company’s recruiting toolbox. In fact, he says business has moved even more smoothly than it did when everyone was in the same working space.

“We’ve gone from a company that was five days a week in the office to no one’s in the office five days a week,” Marc says. “We’ve ended up doing some stuff in quicker time than we probably would have done in the office.”

Marc also highlights Workable’s award-winning customer support team as a huge bonus to using the recruitment solution – when operating in such a busy recruiting environment, recruiters like Marc rely on solving problems as quickly as they arise. 

“The support that you get is more responsive, more thoughtful, more on the ball than any other ATS I’ve ever worked with,” says Marc.

Starling Bank’s choice to use Workable’s recruitment solution enabled it to continue to grow its workforce rapidly to meet booming business demands. Moreover, it ensured a seamless shift to a fully online recruitment process throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – making possible a highly efficient operating system beyond the crisis as the business continues to scale rapidly in future.

The post Starling Bank scales from 50 to 1,100 employees in five years, staying efficient with Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With candidate surveys, our latest DEI feature, assess DEI performance in your hiring strategies and evaluate ways to improve. Collect anonymized data post-application to understand candidate demographics, identify sources that generate more diverse candidates, and monitor pipeline performance by demographic to improve inclusion within your company.  

Workable helps companies in 100+ countries create a more inclusive hiring practice with diverse candidate sourcing, anonymized screening, candidate surveys, structured interviewing, and enhanced reporting.

Read more on this topic:

• How to measure diversity using candidate surveys
• Candidate survey template

The post Introducing candidate surveys: Improve inclusive hiring practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Zinger Property is a property management group that owns 16 buildings across the US Midwest with 4,000 apartment units. Based in Chicago, their mission is to blend technology and the traditional human touch in property management. With Workable, they’ve found a recruitment technology partner that aligns with their mission to ensure a personalized touch in the hiring process. Alongside their main Zinger brand, they also hire for their subsidiary company, RuMe. Their multi-tenancy account with Workable allows them to hire in one place, keeping senior leadership aligned on their robust hiring plan.

Says Kate Blake, Assistant Director of Operations at Zinger: “Workable has completely streamlined our entire recruiting process. Furthermore, our staff working in the field is able to utilize the mobile app, which has been a game-changer.”

Prior to COVID, Zinger had been vetting video interview solutions to reduce the administrative time required to screen candidates. When Workable offered their new solution, they went with it because it was a fully native platform keeping all the elements of candidate evaluation in one place.

Says Kate: “Every member of our hiring team reviews the video interviews. Early in the process, our direct hiring manager will review. As candidates progress, our corporate staff utilize video interviews prior to approval.”

Inclusivity increased with the introduction of video interviews as senior leaders who approve hires were able to gain a better overall impression of candidates. The enhanced inclusivity of the video interview feature aligned naturally with Zinger’s vision of a fully inclusive company culture. This was an added benefit to the original value proposition of Workable Video Interviews, which was to eliminate the time-consuming nature of phone screens in the hiring process.

Says Kate: “I would say that video interviews have cut our recruiting time practically in half.”

Video interviews are sometimes stigmatized among candidates as being impersonal. Zinger combatted that by keeping branded video interviews and ensuring increased flexibility for the candidate – so much that a newly hired employee spoke out about their positive experience.

Says Jim Oates, Associate Analyst at RuMe: “It was definitely easier to schedule than a phone screen because you can do it on your own time. I found this online interview to be a great process that was very time-flexible and very much in favor of the applicant.”

Zinger Property Group’s choice to use both Workable’s ATS and Video Interview products enhanced inclusivity, decreased admin screening time and solidified a branded, personalized candidate experience.

The post Zinger Property enhances their inclusive hiring process with Workable Video Interviews appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In 2020, talent teams were looking for ways to diversify their sourcing channels and methods. With AI Recruiter, we helped customers immediately source 50 passive candidates from outside their existing network for every job.

Many companies faced unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 crisis. Unfortunately, with the pandemic came layoffs and furloughs at many companies. For customers trying to help former employees find a new job, we built Bridge, a tool that connects former employees with employers actively looking for candidates. 

The move to remote work made it harder for candidates to get a feel for company culture, meaning employer branding and careers pages became increasingly important in showcasing your company. With Branded Careers Pages, we help you put your best brand forward: flexible templates and customizable sections are included right in the Workable platform. 

As remote work opportunities increased, companies continued to attract talent globally. With language options, we made it easy for you to localize the entire candidate experience in the languages of your choice, available in English, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish. 

Many HR leaders looked to advance diversity, equity and inclusion as their organizations continued to navigate the new world of work. To address customer requests and needs, Workable released anonymized screening: the ability to anonymize your screening process by hiding details like candidate name, background, and gender. Anonymizing this data in applications can help companies decrease inherent bias and increase inclusivity in their hiring practices.

To help customers connect with candidates more easily, we introduced two premium features: Video Interviews and Texting. Video Interviews streamlines remote screening efforts, helping candidates record responses to interview questions at their convenience. Personalize the experience with a welcome video or pre-record videos with prompts. It’s a flexible process proven to help you screen more candidates, faster. Texting encourages recruiters to message candidates directly from the Workable platform or app and track responses in real time on the candidate timeline, just like with email.

With updates to our hiring plan, you now have the ability to filter by hiring manager, requisition owner and status for more granular reporting. To make company growth simple, we introduced Department Hierarchy. Department Hierarchy offers centralized department management with hierarchical structure, meaning as your company grows, your hiring structure does too. 

Speed up executive sign-off and get candidate signatures faster with updated offer letter templates, approval workflows, e-signatures and more, right within the platform. We take compliance very seriously and make it easy for your teams to stay compliant, adding CCPA to our existing suite of EEO/OFFCP and GDPR features. 

What’s coming in 2021

We’re building out our product roadmap based on customer feedback, market research, and our overall product vision. With that in mind, we wanted to give a sneak peek at what’s to come in 2021.

We will continue our focus on DEI with the release of a native Assessments feature and customizable surveys for candidate experience and diversity metrics. We’ll introduce automation to current communications, meaning you’ll be able to automate emails and text messages based on hiring stages. We’re bringing a slew of enhancements to our current candidate database, and we’ll focus on developing a number of additional features based on your feedback. We’re thrilled for what’s coming in 2021 to Workable, and we hope you are too.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us. 

The post 11 efficiency-boosting releases from Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With Texting, Workable’s latest premium feature, you can now message candidates directly from the platform or app. Reaching out about a new opportunity, or scheduling an interview? Texting makes it easy for you to reach candidates quickly, wherever they are. Track responses in real time on the candidate timeline, just like you would with email.

Texts have a 98% open rate and a 60x faster response time than email, and 95% of all text messages are read within 90 seconds. Communication templates help you personalize with ease and seamlessly switch from email to text at any stage of the recruiting pipeline. By getting in front of candidates faster with Texting, you can focus on what actually matters: hiring great candidates.

The post Introducing Texting: Make the right hires, faster appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The hardest thing you’ve not been told

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.

Stop us if this sounds familiar. At this stage your company doesn’t have a dedicated recruiting team. Hiring tends to come in waves, so everyone just pitches in. The tools you use weren’t designed for recruiting. Spreadsheets are great for accounting, they kind of suck at hiring. And you have been amazed at how much a single open position can clog your inbox.

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.

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.

We asked employers about that and got pretty good responses. For instance, Agneiszka Kasperek has a lot to offer on the topic as the CMO of Estonia-based Taskeo.co, a software supporting companies moving to cloud management. She recommends deliberately hiring people who would be a good fit for remote work.

“That is,” she explains, “people who aren’t intimidated by software or learning how to use it, self-starters, motivated and independent. In remotely working companies, certain character traits are more important than the skills that the new person comes with. The skills can be learned. Character traits – not so much.”

In other words, different people thrive in different environments. When you’re screening applicants for remote jobs, you may need to update your hiring criteria. So what ‘character traits’ can you look for when evaluating candidates?

Let’s start with four common worker archetypes. They are Jennifer, Pam, Lukas, and Esther.

Jennifer

Jennifer is an extrovert who thrives off interaction with others. For her, ideas happen between people, not inside one person’s head. Not only does she inspire others through her contributions to the team; she also is inspired by working closely with others towards common goals.

As such, she excels in a driven office environment where she can walk into a room and take over that room’s energy, and comes up with her best work through meetings and presentations. She can rapid-fire her way through a brainstorming session and thrives in spontaneity. She’s the talkative one at lunch who breaks the ice immediately.

If you had a project that needed multiple team members dynamically working together for it to succeed, Jennifer would be the first person you’d recruit to ensure a successful project.

Pam

Pam, on the other hand, is much quieter. She’s an immensely creative and productive employee, but in a different way than Jennifer. In a busy and noisy office environment, she struggles with all the distractions when she’s trying to get work done. As such, she’ll come early in the morning when few people are in the office to hunker down and do some deep work for a couple of hours. She’ll also find a spot away from others – whether it’s a vacant meeting room, a cafe, or in a quiet corner of the workplace – and work diligently with headphones on.

Those who know Pam know not to bother her when she’s got that game face on. They know they’ll get what they need from her at lunch hour, on a coffee break, or during a pre-scheduled meeting. With all that, you know that if you give Pam a project to complete by a certain date, she absolutely will deliver on time.

Lukas

Then there’s Lukas. Like Pam, he likes to have control over his schedule, because he works better in a predictable and structured work environment. He doesn’t like surprises – he likes to know what he’s in for. He likes to know that the weekly team meeting happens at 10 on Mondays, and that his project is expected on his manager’s desk by EOD on Wednesday – provided it’s been discussed ahead of time.

He doesn’t like to have extra work thrown at him with a “Lukas – I’m really needing to get this done by mid-afternoon today, can you clear your calendar and give this a quick look?”. Likewise, he doesn’t like seeing a meeting on his calendar bumped on 30 minutes’ notice. But if there’s a clear structure and a well-thought-out plan already in place, and if he knows exactly what needs to be done, Lukas will absolutely crush his part of the project.

Esther

And finally, there’s Esther. Like Lukas, she prefers structure and predictability in her work world. And, like Jennifer, she thrives off interacting with people. But she also understands that things pop up and priorities get moved around on a regular basis. She gets frustrated at first, but she’ll take it as it comes and adapt accordingly, knowing it’s better to adapt.

And there’s also a lot of Pam in her – she will absolutely revel in a setup where she can block off a few hours a day to do some deep work and churn out a day’s worth of productivity in those hours. But she knows that she needs to make herself available at any given time in the day, and that she’ll need to adapt accordingly.

And also – if you had a half-baked but novel idea and needed someone to take a deeper look and even bring it to fruition without needing a lot of guidance, Esther’s your go-to person. Likewise, if you had a last-minute project that needed immediate attention and you needed someone to say “Don’t worry, I got this!”, Esther would excel there too.

Evaluating candidates for soft skills

Now, imagine you’re a hiring manager evaluating candidates for a remote position. These four are your finalists. They all tick the same boxes – work experience, education, qualifications, skills. But you’re looking for someone to specifically excel remotely. First, let’s look at the soft skills needed for that.

In the aforementioned survey, adaptability and resilience (67.4%) and self-motivated/self-starter (54.2%) led the way as sought-after traits in the new remote world of work.

Also, a recent survey of Workable’s own employees found that time management, effective communication, and adaptability were the three most common new skills developed when they went fully remote at a moment’s notice in March. While the first two can be good soft skills in any work environment, the third one – adaptability – can be more important when evaluating candidates for a fully remote company.

Does it work in practice?

The signs point to ‘yes’. SmartBug Media CEO Ryan Malone – who has run a fully remote company since launching in the late 2000s – looks at two specific properties when evaluating candidates for their ability to work in a distributed team:

Social energy: Ryan will ask a simple question: “When’s the best time for you to work?” The answer may help him see whether a candidate gains a “freedom” in setting their own hours and removing all the distractions typical of an office environment, as opposed to losing the social aspect of office life (i.e. a lunch with colleagues).

In other words, he’s looking for where they get their social energy from – and that helps him determine if they can thrive in remote work.

Resiliency: Ryan is also looking for people who can adapt and pivot quickly in a less structured work environment, where there are very few windows for employees to walk to a colleague and vent after a hiccup in the workflow.

“So,” Ryan says, “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.”

Alison Bernstein, the president of New York-based real estate firm Suburban Jungle Realty, is also pragmatic about remote work. The ability to be self-organized is high up on her list of highly valued skills when evaluating candidates.

“Having an organized schedule with space, time and childcare (if need be) to take calls, attend video chats, and simply execute daily activities is a great start,” she says. “One must begin to set their own goals and timelines and make sure those goals and deadlines are met.”

Sheena Ponnappan, the Chief People Officer of Singapore-based business outsourcing/offshoring agency Everise, also likes to look for those special signs that a person can thrive in a home environment.

“We have built a high-touch model through the recruitment process where we strategically interview for work-at-home propensity and demonstration of abilities to be successful without face-to-face contact.”

Sheena will go as far as to look for specific regions and population groups with high retention rates when evaluating candidates. Additionally, like Alison, she’s looking for “the ability to self-support home technologies and [candidates] who are committed to remote work as a life choice.”

The same goes for Inna Shevchenko, the CMO at iGMS, a short-term rental management SaaS company headquartered in North Vancouver, Canada. For Inna, determining a candidate’s potential to succeed within the existing remote structure at iGMS is a core focus of her candidate evaluation process.

“I believe that if you hire the right person, getting buy-in, user adoption, and the desired level of learning become less challenging,” says Inna. “This way, we ensure that the new hire will adapt easily and fit into the culture.”

So, who is that ‘right person’?

Let’s go back to evaluating our candidates in the final-four list – Jennifer, Pam, Lukas, and Esther, paying attention to their ability to thrive in a remote work environment.

Jennifer

Jennifer’s productivity might falter without being able to organically interact with her deskmates and colleagues on a regular basis. Unless her calendar was booked with meetings back-to-back or if her manager was connecting with her every day, the hours on end in an isolated home office might negatively impact her energy and motivation.

Pam

Next to a desert island, a remote job would be Pam’s dream job. She would love to stay at home and work 24/7 in her home office, where she’s able to maintain greater control over her own schedule and not “have” to talk or engage with others on a regular basis. She can muster up the needed energy for meetings, but the times in between are those golden solitary times where she can really crank out her best stuff.

Lukas

Like Pam, Lukas may see this remote job as a perfect setup for him. But a remote work environment is not necessarily absent of those unpredictable “pop-up” meetings – loved by Jennifer, Lukas not so much. He functions better when he knows precisely what everyone else is doing and what is expected of him each week. In a remote environment, there’s more of a need to fly by night. If he isn’t 100% informed of his expectations and deliverables early on, his productivity might falter.

Esther

Finally, Esther understands and appreciates the ambiguity of a remote work world and has the resilience that allows her to overcome the little trip-ups and changes throughout. Even if it’s not ideal, she can pivot as needed, whether it’s for a meeting being moved or a lack of clarity as to what’s needed for the client presentation on Friday. She also has the self-confidence to go forward without needing a greenlight or validation from her manager. She can take on a task or project with minimal supervision, and can be trusted to turn out a great product in the end.

Don’t put all soft skills in one basket

So, with all of that, who would you hire for a remote position? At first glance, it might come down to Pam or Esther, with the latter getting the job due to her ability to perform even in a volatile or ambiguous working environment. And in remote – you really do need that because it’s such a hands-off climate.

But take care when evaluating candidates for soft skills. Just because a Jennifer comes off as more outgoing does not necessarily mean that she cannot thrive in a remote work world. Maybe she’s an incredibly quick learner and can adapt to a new balance in her work and life.

Likewise, an Esther isn’t necessarily set for success remotely – maybe she rolls with the punches, but when direction is needed, she doesn’t handle that well or doesn’t know how to follow instructions step by step. You may even come across a Pam or Lukas who turns out to be the very best candidate for the position based on their amazing output and performance in spite of everything else – and that’s OK, too.

Not only that, soft skills are not always easy to gauge in those first few interactions in the candidate evaluation process. Jennifer’s demeanor may seem outright extroverted, but there may be some deeper aspects to her you might not initially perceive in an interview. Likewise, Pam and Lukas might be more adaptable to unpredictability than you – or even they – realize.

In the end, the ‘environment’ matters

Also, while you’re evaluating for skills and best cultural fit, it bears noting that if the rest of your system isn’t conducive to success and productivity, it doesn’t matter who you have in your team. You still need a quality recruitment process, a standardized onboarding, and a strategy to build connections with others.

But do you know what the trickier part really is? In the long haul, it’s still up to you to set them for long-term success regardless of the environment they’re in and their individual traits. That’s ultimately your job as an employer and manager – to bring the best out of your team whether remotely or in the physical workplace.

The post Evaluating candidates for remote work? Your hiring criteria matters appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are businesses planning for the remote work future?
• How important is technology in remote work?

Digital transformation is a long-time buzzword that now means the digitization of information, industries, organizations, and operations. And if remote work is the biggest paradigm shift prompted by COVID-19, remote work technology is the vehicle to make that a smoother transition.

Technology – the great enabler

When we asked respondents what made them able to move to a remote workflow without disruption, more than two thirds (68%) reported it was because they already had the technology for remote workers to do so.

“… industries and businesses are going to adapt to using digital platforms to deliver their work and product. People are adjusting to social distancing and embracing the technology to meet people and make their daily earnings.” – Survey respondent

Of those planning to remote operations or distributed teams, nearly half plan to introduce or increase digital capabilities in that transition – in short, more technology for remote work.

Those in senior-level management prioritized tech adoption in the post-COVID work environment, much more so than those at entry/mid-level. Perhaps executives see tech adoption as a company-wide, internal digital transformation while entry/mid-level employees see it primarily as technology for remote work day-to-day.

“COVID-19 has shown … that weak link [in] being penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to technology adoption. During the shutdown, those who spent on technology were able to be ‘business as usual’ where workforce worked 100% remotely.” – Survey respondent

Those in entry/mid-level employee positions are more concerned about the readiness of their business than those in senior-level management. Also, several custom entries from our respondents indicate the lack of senior-level buy-in.

Some of these differences may indicate potential issues around employee engagement.

“The world of work will be focusing on new technology to make work efficient and boost collaboration in virtual ways, [and] more adaptive to remote working style. The expenses for office rental & travelling will be cut as well, [and] more creative ways in employee engagement events.” – Survey respondent

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 6 on remote employee engagement in the new world of work 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Remote work technology: the road ahead is digital appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Onboarding remote employees – in many cases, without having ever met them in person – is no easy task. In Workable’s New World of Work survey, 37.4% cited remote onboarding and training as major issues when hiring in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, while 49.7% said candidate onboarding would be problematic in recruiting in the post-COVID work world.

But Eric isn’t one to be discouraged by those numbers.

“Regular meetings and discussions on Zoom, Hangouts, and Google Duo have helped us in overcoming all the challenges,” he says.

He adds that there are business benefits as well.

“There’s been a reduction in costs because no infrastructure is required in the workplace. Team members are arranging it at their distant locations themselves.”

That’ll be a welcome reassurance to the 26.4% of budget-conscious senior-level executives in the above-mentioned survey who said new hire onboarding would be one of the main overall challenges in the new world of work.

Camaraderie makes the team merry

Eric is just one of the dozens of business owners and managers who responded to our query for tips and tricks on remote onboarding. One lesson was clear from many: while a standardized process is especially important in successful remote onboarding, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Companies thrive on teamsmanship and camaraderie, so you want to build those strong connections from the first day forward if you want the new hire to be set for success.

That’s easier when it’s done face-to-face, as those connections are built via introductions, meetings, and team exercises in a shared physical space. But strengthening work culture and bonding between colleagues is tougher virtually.

“Remote onboarding has been a big challenge because with this we’re not able to introduce the new team members to the culture and environment of the organization,” Eric says.

So, how do you get started on building connections in a remote work world, particularly when onboarding? It’s not easy, but if you follow these best practices from those we heard from, you’ll be able to build those important connections between your new hire and their new colleagues.

Here are four best practices for you to stay ahead of the new trends in remote employee engagement.

1. Be even more hands-on

It’s easy enough for new hires to spontaneously chat with others when in the same physical workspace, but it’s not easy when that new hire is sitting invisibly in front of their computer. They can’t look around and chat with their desk neighbors or take a tour of the office and introduce themselves to people. That can severely impact new hire engagement from day one.

This puts the onus on you to be even more hands-on than you would in a normal onboarding process. This applies not only to HR but to colleagues and managers as well, says Neal Taparia of Solitaired.

“You have to be very hands-on to ensure successful onboarding,” says Neal, the CEO of this new NYC-based company that ties classic games to brain training. “New employees are [more] hesitant to speak up via online channels than they are in person to get an understanding of everything. They don’t want to ask too many questions over Slack, and ask for additional Zoom calls.”

He adds that you also need to check in regularly to ensure that a new hire is headed in the right direction and is on track throughout your new hire onboarding plan.

Involve the hiring manager

The value of inclusive leadership is especially crucial for new hire engagement when working remotely, Neal emphasizes.

“It’s easy for managers to forget to check in on new employees that have started remotely. [At Solitaired], we train our managers on what successful remote onboarding means. Specifically, we have a rule where managers should be checking in at least 10 times through the week to make sure everything is going in the right direction.”

Husam Machlovi is the founder of digital studio With Pulp, which operates fully remotely out of New York state. His company has served notables such as AMC Networks and World Wrestling Entertainment. He also advocates for the active participation of hiring managers in the new hire’s engagement.

“The most effective remote onboarding tool for us is simply to check in with each other,” says Husam. “I like to check in with new hires and ask them how I can support in any way, how things are going, do they have any questions? My goal is to create a space where people feel safe to ask questions.”

Grant Aldrich, CEO/founder of the Los Angeles-based online learning site Online Degree, says the manager or CEO is responsible for making sure everyone feels connected throughout the company, keeping new employee engagement high at this crucial time.

“This goes beyond checking in and extends to starting conversations and asking questions in your communication channels,” he adds.

Michael Alexis, the owner of New York-based Teambuilding, a virtual team cohesion service, emphasizes the importance of active participation by all parties included – both the newly hired and the ones doing the hiring and onboarding.

“Following documents and watching videos alone is boring,” says Michael. “It’s important to us that these early days and weeks for a new team member are as engaging as possible.”

Make yourself available – and ensure the new hire knows it

Dan Bailey of WikiLawn, an online lawn and garden care resource center which lists services all across the United States, notes that it does take more time to onboard someone remotely, as he simply cannot sit next to the new hire and walk them through all the steps of their job. But it’s still important that he and his colleagues are available to the new hire for anything they may need on the spot.

Not only do his teams record videos with instructions and prepare documents to be more detailed, but also set response time as a critical measurement. In fact, he applies customer support standards to ensuring his new hires get what they need quickly.

“We’ve found that new hires often have many questions that can go unanswered for an hour or more if someone isn’t assigned to being available to help them, so that is one way we’ve improved how we manage onboarding,” Dan explains.

“At least one other teammate is available during working hours by messenger, email, and phone so the new hire doesn’t have to waste time and become frustrated waiting on a reply.”

2. Make the employee feel welcome

Austin Heerwagen of Koda Digital, a medical marketing agency operating out of Carrollton, Texas, admits that disconnection was an issue when operating remotely, especially with new hires coming on board.

“Our biggest pain point initially was gaining buy-in from new employees. There is no tour around the office, parking space, elevator ride, or birthday parties – employees can feel like they are a replaceable cog in a machine.”

That makes it even more critical to make your new hire feel welcome and connected.

Caitlin Byrnes can speak firsthand to the value of this. When she was hired as VP at Peppercomm, a public relations firm in NYC, she found that her new company had a great new hire onboarding plan in place, but some things stood out above and beyond HR obligations particularly in a remote work environment.

“For instance, team members carved out time for virtual coffee with me, and gave me a positive ‘shout-out’ in my first all-hands meeting,” Caitlin says.

“These personal touchpoints made me feel more comfortable working with a team I’d never met in person. Even more importantly, it helped me understand who I could go with questions when I couldn’t just pop around the corner.”

Line up meetings with everyone

Shayne Sherman, the CEO of TechLoris, a computer service in Brookline, Massachusetts, highlights that importance in the absence of water cooler conversations and “quick drops by one’s desk”.

“We made sure to make company intros and offer the chance to say a few words at the latest company all-hands meeting. From there, the new hire’s manager would schedule a remote lunch or after-work drinks, via Zoom, to get to know each other and open the chat up to be a bit more informal.”

Greg Hayes, CEO and co-founder of venture-backed office furniture startup Branch in NYC, makes sure the new hire is properly and formally acquainted with their full team right away.

“We ensure that each new team member has a lengthy 1:1 video chat with everybody on our team, to ensure they better understand everyone personally and what their scope of work entails. We also plan a happy hour around each new member’s arrival to welcome them in.”

Tara Lilien, the Chief Talent Officer at Peppercomm, takes it one step further.

“I think giving the new hire an opportunity to lead a meeting, facilitate a staff learning event or shadow a client meeting or call are all great on-the-job moments that will allow for stronger and quicker integration into the team.”

Send them a welcome package

Austin at Koda Digital likes to make sure the new employee receives a gift basket containing company swag and attire, business cards, and gift cards for restaurants near them. He’ll even make sure to include personal gifts based on interview discovery.

“For example, one employee really liked sloths, so we sent her a desk-buddy sloth to let her know that we care about her too – not just her work. In addition, on the employee’s first day, we send out UberEats gift cards to everyone and have a ‘catered’ nice-to-meet-you lunch.”

Kick things off with a friendly, informative email before their first day, setting the tone going forward.

3. Don’t assume everyone knows your tech, because they don’t

When you’re working in a company that utilizes a lot of technologies and has fully jumped on board the digital transformation train, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that everyone knows your tech stack. Don’t do that, says Neal at Solitaired.

“Some of us use Google Apps and Microsoft apps so regularly, we assume everyone knows these systems as well as we do. This is definitely not the case.”

He learned this the hard way, too. One time, he hired an employee that had never used the Google productivity suite and they were too embarrassed to admit that. That made onboarding an especially painful process.

Doesn’t matter who’s at fault for it – it’s a negative first experience for the new hire that starts things off on the wrong foot.

Get them acquainted with tech quickly

Get ahead of the problem, Neal recommends. “Take an intake survey beforehand. If someone does not know about Google apps, we ask them to read up on it beforehand, and give them a tutorial on their first and second day of work.”

Amy McWaters, the CEO of Gifts Australia, a souvenir e-commerce company in Sydney, Australia, also finds that tech adoption remains an issue in the remote new hire onboarding plan. Late logons, lost connections, and struggles with tech integrations continue to be a pain point for her company. She recommends taking care of things even before the first day of onboarding or training – effectively preventing a problem before it even occurs.

“Work under the assumption that tech issues will arise, if not on your end, then on the trainees’ end,” Amy says. “Give installation instructions at least three days out.”

Gargi Rajan, general manager of human resources at Mercer / Mettl, an HR technology company operating just outside of New Delhi, India, likes to get several birds with one stone: hackathons. The benefits are multiple: it helps onboarding in a remote manner, gets new hires quickly acquainted with their new colleagues, and puts everyone on a level playing field bonded by a common interest. Tech adoption is a huge, huge bonus.

“Since everyone understands the challenges at hand,” Gargi explains, “they all come together to accept the technological tools and processes as partners in working smoothly and seamlessly.”

But don’t be fazed if you do run into some issues with tech adoption among your existing and new employees. It may seem daunting on the surface, but with a silver lining underneath.

“Every aspect has its limitations,” Eric at Couture Candy says. “Maybe we wouldn’t have known the creativity required in businesses if tech adoption was quick and easy.”

4. Make it a two-way street

Even as an employer who knows your company inside and out, you can’t assume to know everything that the new hire needs. So, establish a two-way street – solicit feedback from your new employees and refine your new hire onboarding plan based on what they’ve shared with you.

Neal at Solitaired is quick to that point, having new employees fill out a daily survey about their onboarding during their first week on the job.

“It became a forum where they could clear up any confusion, and for us to get them back on the right track. It’s simple and effective.”

At Branch, Greg encourages new employees to be “hungry learners” and not to be afraid to ask any questions.

Listen, learn, and improve

Phil Strazzulla, the CEO at the online review site Select Software Reviews, doubles down on collecting feedback from your new colleagues, acknowledging that it is new ground for many companies.

“Ask your new hires for feedback on the [new hire onboarding plan], what worked and what didn’t. Get your HR team as well as your managers together to go over the results and make changes to address them.”

Jitesh Patil, SEO and content specialist at project management software company Toggl Plan in Tallinn, Estonia, also advocates for this measure of successful remote onboarding – and himself works remotely from Maharashtra, India.

“We request regular feedback from new joinees — end of week 1, end week 2, end of the first month, and so on.”

This series of sample questions for your new hire can help you collect valuable feedback on your remote new hire onboarding plan.

Set up an open Q&A channel

Michael at Teambuilding takes a unique approach to the two-way street in his company’s remote onboarding strategy.

“One way we’ve made the onboarding process more engaging is using employee journaling. For each new hire, we create a private channel in Slack where they can share their thoughts and ideas,” Michael explains.

“For example, it might be a note like, ‘I’m a little confused at who these people are’, and then we can chime in with info about team members or organizational structure. The journal also introduces fresh eyes to our systems to help improve. For example, ‘I noticed that XYZ is inefficient, and in previous roles I’ve done it this way that was more efficient’.”

It can also be a morale booster for those doing the actual onboarding, he adds.

“[We] are happy to receive feedback like ‘never felt so welcome in any of my jobs before’ or ‘everyone is so welcoming here’”.

Maximize the connectivity

Nuances are often lost in the remote work world. You can overcome that by getting everyone as involved as possible, ensuring the new hire feels part of the team from day one, staying on top of any potential tech hiccups, and establishing open two-way communication channels. That will set your new hires for success as early in the game as possible.

It also helps your existing employees get better acquainted with each other – including their individual styles and working habits – and fosters a more cohesive team environment, even in a world where few people have actually met but still work together on a daily basis.

And this doesn’t need to be a chore, either, says Eric at Couture Candy.

“Remote onboarding is fun if you enjoy it,” he says with a smile.

Want to read more? Check out our tutorial on reducing new hire turnover in your company.

The post Your remote new hire onboarding plan: Build those connections appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

After all, our customers are important to us. As Workable’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, it’s very important to me as well. We want to give you an added level of confidence that Workable is a fully secure organization.

The good news for you is that after being rigorously audited and assessed, we’re proud to say we’re officially ISO 27017:2015 and SOC 2 Type 1 accredited.

ISO 27017:2015

ISO 27017:2015 is SaaS-oriented and certifies that we have guidelines for information security controls applicable to the provision and use of cloud services.

SOC 2 type 1

SOC 2 type 1 proves that Workable has designed appropriate controls to provide reasonable assurance that our service commitments and system requirements were achieved based on the AICPA Trust Services Criteria relevant to Security, Availability, and Confidentiality. We will be moving forward with SOC 2 type 2 to further validate the strength of our security controls over time. For more information, check out our documentation on it.

This isn’t just about being able to prove that our tech is safe and secure. It’s also about proving that Workable operates safely and securely – meaning you, your business, and your information are safe and secure when working with us as well.

The post Workable evolves with even higher security accreditation appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As you’re managing through one of the most stressful years for HR & talent teams, we know the last headache you want is to deal with is switching your ATS. But, with Workable, there’s a way to switch quickly and easily.

In this webinar, we’ll show how you’ll still have the same great Google integrations, and can do even more with us than you could before. And if you decide to switch, we’re offering free data migration for Google Hire users, plus you’ll also get our new remote screening tool, Video Interviews, free to use for 3 months.

If you’d prefer a personalized demo, request one here.

In just 60-minutes, this webinar will help you:

• Discover everything you can do with the Workable hiring software, and how it compares to Google Hire
• Gain insight into why hundreds of Google Hire users made the switch to Workable
• Get answers to all of your Google Hire & Workable related questions (we’ll leave plenty of time for you to ask)

The post Why companies move from Google Hire to Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The concern is valid. Time wastage due to non-work-related tasks has been a perennial problem even when managers are in the same building as employees. According to a Salary.com survey, 89% of employees have admitted to wasting time at work, with the top 10% wasting three or more hours each day.

It comes as no surprise, then, that several of the top concerns of owners and managers about employees transitioning to remote work are related to how employees spend their time at work. Concerns include reduced employee productivity, reduced focus, task completion rate, and work-life conflict.

The solution to this problem may seem obvious: time tracking software. It’s not a new technology. Both co-located and remote teams have used it for years. Yet, the debate about whether time tracking is a boon or bane has been going on since the technology was invented.

As with any other technology, the benefits and perils of remote time tracking lie in the details of its implementation. The technology isn’t inherently good or bad. Your time tracking outcomes will depend on how well you use it.

To help you get the best results from tracking with your remote team, outlined below are the dos and don’ts of remote time tracking in three key areas of productivity and performance management.

1. Initial implementation

Don’t: shock your employees with a sudden rollout

Whether or not the transition to a work-from-home arrangement is the reason that prompted you to implement time tracking, make sure not to drop the news on your team like a brick. Any change you introduce needs to follow a specific set of steps for it to be accepted. This includes remote time tracking.

As explained by project manager Michal Bielak, “Don’t just gather your team members in a room one day and say, ‘From now on, we’ll be using this IT time tracking software to see how your work’s going. Click here, now click there, perfect, thanks, the meeting’s over’ — that is, unless you want to bump into a group of gossipers every time you go to the kitchen. People want to be treated fairly: if you introduce some changes, explain the rationale behind it.”

Do: conduct a Time Tracking 101 with your team

Instead of a sudden, out-of-the-blue implementation, notify employees well ahead of time and explain the importance of time tracking to them.

Then, get them up to speed with the software well in advance and teach them everything they need to know about the time tracking system you’re about to introduce. The time you invest in doing this prep work will result in better utilization and a higher level of appreciation for time tracking among your employees.

Below are the key areas you need to cover when doing a time tracking 101 with your team:

• The tool/platform/technology that you will use for remote time tracking
• The activities/tasks you will track
• How the time tracking data you collect will be used
• Privacy protection measures you will put in place
• The benefits of time tracking for your team

2. Employee management

Don’t: use time tracking to micromanage

It’s very easy for managers of newly transitioned remote teams to fall into the trap of micromanagement and to use time tracking to do it. Managers can abuse the capabilities of time tracking software to monitor every minute detail of how employees are spending their work hours.

Some may even use the additional features of time tracking technologies such as screenshots and geofencing to implement a “Big Brother-like” surveillance over their teams.

Do: use time tracking to foster accountability

To address micromanagement, you must understand where the desire to micromanage stems from. Most of the time, it’s the fear that your employees might not be doing the work they’re supposed to be doing during the hours they’re supposed to be doing it. This can lead to resentment and resistance from employees.

Instead of using time tracking to create fear among your employees that you’re watching their every move, empower them to foster a sense of accountability. Give them the leeway to track and manage their own productivity.

Of course, you will still use the data gathered using time tracking to make informed and smart decisions about performance management and employee engagement. However, the ultimate goal is to use time tracking as a tool to enable your team members to be constantly cognizant of their performance and productivity.

3. Time tracking structure

Don’t: leave procedures up to your team

One of the primary goals of time tracking is to generate reports that you can use to help your team meet both productivity and business goals. This won’t be possible if there’s no uniformity in how your team members track their time. While you want to make it as easy as possible for your employees to record their time, you also don’t want time tracking to lack structure.

For instance, one of the common pitfalls of time tracking is the lack of naming conventions, a common problem in project management. Without uniformity in naming protocols, you won’t be able to determine whether resources are allocated properly to tasks and projects. It can also affect how you charge for billable hours.

Do: provide clear and simple guidelines

Even the most sophisticated time tracker will fail if you don’t implement clear and easy-to-follow guidelines. Below are a few of the questions your remote time tracking manual should answer:

• What tasks/projects should be tracked or not tracked?
• How should time entries be recorded?
• How should tasks/projects be categorized?

Having clear and straightforward guidelines is a key time-tracking best practice that shouldn’t be ignored. When tracking remote team time, make sure you have documented procedures in place to make it as seamless as possible.

Making remote time tracking work for your team

Time tracking is a pretty straightforward concept, but its implementation is an intricate process. Following the gold standards and avoiding the pitfalls in your time tracking system’s initial rollout, in employee performance management, and in providing a structured time tracking methodology will create a solid foundation for remote team time tracking.

If you do decide to make remote work your company’s “new normal,” you will discover iterations to these do’s and don’ts and come up with your own time tracking best practices for your team.

The post The 3 dos and don’ts of remote time tracking for you to know appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Headquartered in Dubai, GCC operates in countries ranging from Iraq to Indonesia to Australia. Over the past two decades, they’ve established a strong reputation for excellence in their facilities management, providing top-caliber service in kitchen and dining solutions including staffing, facilities, maintenance, and much more. In response to COVID-19, in partnership with Workable, GCC transitioned onsite interviews to virtual interviews when hiring for their global workforce. 

As Roda Collado, Recruitment & HR Operations Lead emphasized, they were already familiar with some video interview technologies when candidates were overseas, but in-country interviews needed to be quickly reestablished virtually.

“What changed is that even the in-country interviews are done either through internet web conferencing or over the phone.”

As the company responded to urgent employee needs and abrupt changes in work-life balance, the corporate team worked to figure out how they’d continue to hire and meet the expectations of their partner companies in these uncertain times. As this was happening, Workable launched their native one-way video interviewing product and GCC jumped at the opportunity to try it out. During this difficult time, GCC started using video interviews right away without expending valuable time and resources learning how to use it. 

“I’ve received good feedback from our hiring managers – even the candidates themselves. I feel that it’s easy to use and that, [on] the recruiter’s side, it’s integrated into their profiles.” 

By eliminating the time-consuming and restrictive phone screen process, everyone on the hiring team could review the candidate profile in their own time, in a previously unachievable way. Instead of the recruiter conducting the phone screen on their own and sharing feedback with the rest of the hiring team, hiring managers got involved earlier and could more actively step in and provide insight on who they wanted to move forward.

There’s the consistency in terms of questions being asked, so the hiring manager, or the hiring team are able to compare one candidate [with another], based on a consistent set of questions.

Candidates were so pleased with the process that they went out of their way to tell the GCC team. Asynchronous video interviews made it easier to schedule (eliminating the need for back-and-forth email communication) and put candidates at ease, enabling them to conduct the interview on their own time and in their own space. This proved especially crucial in that first screening round, before either party had developed a relationship, and increased candidate interest. It also spoke to GCC’s ongoing emphasis on an inclusive hiring process. When Roda compared video interviews with phone screens, she felt that video interviews were less subjective and less prone to bias. 

Speed up your hiring process like GCC

GCC quickly implemented Video Interviews, and in turn actually sped up the hiring process, allowing hiring team members and other company people to focus more on working through this very unusual time while maintaining a high-quality hiring process across all locations.

The post GCC Services fosters a more inclusive hiring process with Workable Video Interviews appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Get all the right data, skip all of the manual admin.

This new automation will eliminate manual admin and avoid costly data errors, freeing up valuable time and resources to focus on other pertinent tasks in your work without worry. Eight fields can be automatically transferred from Workable to ADP, including: First & Last Name, Email, Phone Number, Start Date and more.

Get started, quickly

Like everything with Workable, getting started only takes a few clicks. To get started, simply:

1. Purchase the Workable connector for ADP Workforce Now®  
2. Watch the data flow — auto export is turned on by default

Want to learn more about ADP Workforce Now® 

ADP Workforce Now® is a cloud-based platform for HR management software, where you can easily manage all of your HR functions — payroll, HR management, workforce management, talent, and benefits — and gain insights across them all.  

To purchase the Connector now, visit: http://adp.marketplace.com/workable

The post Announcing: Workable Connector for ADP Workforce Now® appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

There are also many ways in how Video Interviews may be helpful to you and your company. Instead of going into detail about what those benefits are and why, we thought we’d make things more fun and interactive for you with a Video Interview Quiz. In this quiz, you’ll learn how one-way video interviews can be one of the most important tools in your recruiting toolbox.

There are no right answers or wrong answers here – every answer is actually “correct”, but you’ll get a different piece of information or an interesting fact or statistic with each answer. And the best part? You can take this quiz again and again and pick up something new every time.

Whether it’s for your own convincing or for someone else’s buy-in to get Workable Video Interviews to optimize your recruitment process, there’s a lot here for you. Ultimately, this is purely for your own educational entertainment.

Without further ado, here’s the Video Interview Quiz!

The post Take our Video Interview Quiz – and optimize your hiring appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Learning from the front lines

Workable’s early adopter program is one of the tools we use in Workable to make sure that what we provide is as useful and intuitive as we want it to be. We try to incorporate as much feedback as possible from our users, and the early adopter program is one of the most straightforward ways to get that information.

One of the first such programs that Workable ran was for the internationalization feature, a complex and intriguing feature looking to branch the product out to other markets with different languages. Our researcher and product team went into that beta with many questions, but with careful planning and methodology they carved out a much better and more intuitive end product.

Since the goal of the early adopter program is to validate our designs and assumptions from the design phase and make sure that we always serve our customers, choosing the right people to participate and “test” our new feature is key. We have fostered great relationships with a lot of our customers and that helps with ensuring that the feedback we get is as honest and open as possible.

It was a great opportunity for me, since it looked like one of the first things I would get to do with this new product would be to actually talk to our customers about it! So we started gathering feedback and talking with the beta users and improving the product as we went on.

And along came COVID-19

Then everything changed. The virus started spreading and lockdowns were ordered throughout the world. Suddenly everyone started to work from home and use virtual tools for everything. It looked like it would be very useful to have one for interviewing as well.

There are not a lot of opportunities in someone’s life to know that they truly made an impact when it was needed. For everyone on the team it was clear that the tool we had been working on could be helpful in a time when everything was unknown and unprecedented.

Workable’s vision practically shifted overnight to that of being even more socially responsible. We knew that unemployment was going to skyrocket and that, on the other extreme end, some industries needed to hire people really fast. We realized we could help people find new jobs. Teams got together and worked tirelessly to produce Workable Bridge to help out employees that were laid off.

Scaling ourselves to help others

As for Video Interviews, our team quickly decided to offer the tool to any Workable customer who could use it, for free. It was designed for anyone to use – no need to be tech savvy. Candidates could record themselves on their phone, no fancy or expensive equipment needed.

In a time where it was nearly impossible to find an open slot in someone’s schedule, interviews could happen in an asynchronous way and then hiring managers could rate them in their own time as well. Ultimately, a top-notch user experience was key.

All teams involved went into overdrive:

• The marketing team worked day and night to make sure that our messaging was clear: We are not trying to sell anything to anyone – we truly believe our product can be helpful to businesses in their time of need.
• The product team maintained the rhythm, making sure that no loose ends would be left.
• The legal team worked on finding a way to make sure that no bureaucracy would exist for the companies that wanted to use it, since the product was technically still in closed beta.
• Account managers started connecting with their customers to inform them about Video Interviews.

The interest spiked quickly and numerous companies started using the product. Within the first three months, 264 accounts adopted video interviews, with 462 candidates being hired using the tool with an answer rate of almost 50%, compared to the industry standard of 30%.

Like many things in a COVID world, our implementation and feedback loop was accelerated, bringing Workable Video Interviews to the present where we incorporated into the product all of the lessons learned from opening our doors to the public one month early.

We only know that this made us better and strengthened the relationship we have with our customers.

Valia Lekka is a Senior Product Manager at Workable. She was part of the team that developed Workable’s Video Interviews feature.

The post Early adopter program key to Video Interviews success appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is asynchronous communication?

In the modern workplace, whether that’s remote or not, asynchronous communication means that there is a time lag in response between the sender and the recipient, be that another colleague or customer. This is the main difference between asynchronous vs. synchronous communication, with the latter involving in person meetings, live chatting or video conferencing.

Briefly, in asynchronous communication terms, if you want to ask your colleague a question about an ongoing project, you won’t address it to them right away, even when you’re at the same office, but you’ll leave them a message so that they respond on their own time.

We’ve all practiced asynchronous collaboration at work, more or less, and tech tools have played a huge part in this. Emails, messaging apps (Slack, Hipchat, etc.), shared documents in cloud-based platforms (G-Suite) where employees can collaborate and reply are common asynchronous communication examples, among many more.

Now that we’ve explained what asynchronous communication is, let’s turn our attention to “why” we’re talking about it. When done properly, the benefits of asynchronous communication are plentiful and can boost both your performance and productivity – and your teammates’, too.

The assets of asynchronous communication

Have you ever found it difficult to concentrate on your daily job duties after being interrupted by an unexpected casual chit-chat about a project your colleague is working on? It’s fine if this happens sometimes because mutual support and camaraderie is a critical part of being a team. But what if it interferes with your productivity?

Recent research has shown that we live in a more collaborative era; we schedule our working day around meetings, Slack conversations and emails with our colleagues and sometimes these events could take up 80% of a full working day. This can be detrimental to our performance; technically we spend more time hopping from one meeting to another or replying to messages than focusing solely and mindfully on our tasks.

But with asynchronous work we can tackle this issue and spend more time resolving tasks with extra attention and care. The key benefits are many:

More productivity

In workplaces where asynchronous collaboration is reinforced and enabled with technology, productivity is higher. People can follow their agenda and complete daily tasks more easily when they are able respond to their colleagues’ requests based on bandwidth or set up time slots throughout the week to prepare feedback for specific projects. Plus, by focusing their attention on one task at a time they have a more detailed look and bring in better results.

Less stress

Switching from one project to another throughout the day and being unable to stick to your own agenda can also be stressful. You probably can recall a time when you struggled in meeting an important deadline and a colleague asked you for a favor. It can be difficult to prioritize what is more urgent in such circumstances or reject your teammate’s call for help.

With asynchronous communication you allow yourself – or your employees – to put all energy into what you do each time and have better control over your workload, so there is no reason to overstress.

Higher quality

When you go through a request at your own pace you can concentrate on details and process things in greater depth. When exchanging information in the form of a conversation instead, you don’t really have the time to inspect all problem aspects. By documenting details on a work matter to receive feedback from your colleagues step by step, you get and give a better review and more constructive input. This type of documentation helps the whole team equally and results in greater output.

Better talent

When you have embraced an asynchronous collaboration culture it’s easier to attract a wider talent pool around the globe for jobs that do not require colleagues to physically be in the same location. Employees are able to collaborate effectively from different time zones, buildings, or offices in an asynchronous way so place and time zone no longer limit your access to great talent.

Asynchronous collaboration best practices

Asynchronous communication sounds like the real deal, but how can you introduce it to your business and team operations effectively? Here are some good practices to start with:

1. Sync with an asynchronous mindset

If your employees are not used to such a working style, train them to do so. Empower them to own their agenda and workload and emphasize that no one will judge them if they take their time to respond to a request. Define what type of enquiries should be perceived as urgent by teammates on a general or per-project basis. This way employees will have clearer expectations and will be able to prioritize tasks more efficiently.

2. Set clear deadlines

If your employees or teammates operate in different time zones, make collaboration equally easy for everyone. Avoid scheduling meetings over time or reaching out to colleagues for feedback before the end of their working day. Encourage your employees to share transparently how they like to work and when they prefer to operate collaboratively throughout the day.

3. Introduce the right tools

Whether that’s your project management tool or your ATS search for platforms whose functionality better enable asynchronous communication and collaboration, with effective documentation, filing and options like comment sharing and tagging. For example, with Workable, once you’ve screened candidates and move on to the selection phase, you can share comments and tag your teammates inside the platform so that they get back to you when it’s convenient to them.

4. Organize your notes and feedback

To make asynchronous collaboration successful, you have to find ways to provide effective notes and feedback to avoid back and forths in communication and time delays on important deadlines. Plus, going through a task in-depth in order to give clarifications or feedback will probably give you a new perspective and enable you to resolve or address it more quickly than expected.

5. Create/update troubleshooting guidelines

Not all of your employees will be able to fix operational tech issues that come up the same way. Make sure to build some guides with steps and solutions to some common technical problems (e.g. internet connectivity, security, etc.) and help employees concentrate on their day-to-day work.

Remember, not all meetings could be emails…

It seems that the benefits outweigh the losses for both organizations and individuals, but keep in mind that asynchronous communication is not the cure to all problems. Sometimes, you still have to meet in person or virtually with your team to address and solve complex issues. When you figure out that you spend lots of time trying to fix a problem over email or texts, sometimes it’s better to schedule a call or a meeting with your team and tackle it right on the spot.

Also, some processes such as brainstorming gain extra value from get-togethers. One idea builds on another and collectively leads to better results. Plus, meeting with your teammates on a regular basis helps you understand each other’s working habits, lifestyle and interests and enables you to build stronger relationships with them. That’s not easily replicated through asynchronous messaging.

When it comes to sharing some laughs and creating happy memories with your teammates, nothing beats the live version of it all.

So if you’re in the hunt for new applications and tips to manage remote teams successfully or to collaborate effectively with your teammates globally, asynchronous communication is probably your thing. There’s going to be a trial-and-error phase, and that’s OK. You won’t figure out everything immediately.

For starters, ask your employees and teammates for feedback and remind them that they do not have to send it straight away but respond based on their own bandwidth. Now that your employees are given the opportunity to think through their responses, the answers you do get – whether later in the day or tomorrow or next week – may surprise you with their insightfulness and creativity.

The post Asynchronous communication in the workplace: benefits and best practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Founded in 2014, Cytora tripled in size over the past 2.5 years, going from 20 employees to 60. Projecting rapid growth, their old ATS didn’t meet their needs. Struggling to get everyone on the same page and collaborate effectively, they started looking at other options. In Workable, Cytora found a partner who understands the importance of having the whole team on the same page. Cytora’s CFO Tom Coward discusses how Cytora keeps hiring data in one system with Workable Hiring Plan, doing away with disconnected spreadsheets.

“One of the things Workable does really well is that we have the requisition system in operation, so before any role gets started on, the requisition has to be approved.”

Achieving their hiring goals means they need everyone in sync, each with the same information at their disposal. Workable gives Cytora the ability to view a snapshot of what’s happening across the board, from the beginning in candidate sourcing through to scheduling interviews with self-scheduling options, to seeing where job offers stand and what obstacles could be holding up an offer. 

Additionally, Cytora wants and needs to look at their recruitment history and build on their learnings.  They want to see where everything currently stands and investigate reports in order to troubleshoot and improve their future hiring process. 

Says Ben O’Mahony, Director of Operations: “All the way through to working with hiring managers and the leadership team to really coordinate everyone’s feedback, comments and thoughts – Workable provides the reports that show really clearly which stages are holding things up.”

They’re looking at one of the UK’s fiercest talent markets, that of engineers in London. With Workable, they’re able to see who’s out there with auto-suggested candidates and their own queries with our People Search product. Also understanding the importance of referrals in the market, they take advantage of leveraging their employees’ networks by actively leveraging Workable’s Referrals feature.

Says Cytora’s Chief Product Officer Thomas Soulez: “It’s really difficult to find, not just engineers, but engineering roles like product, designers who have domain experience in insurance, but as well are invested to working at the kind of pace we’re working at.”

There’s no room to room to play around. When communicating with top candidates in London, those who are available get snapped up quickly. Cytora’s team understands that, and they’ve engaged the whole hiring team, keeping communication clear with two-way calendar sync allowing the team to access information no matter where they are. 

Courtney Wood, Talent Acquisition Manager, responds to that competition with a powerful toolkit to stay aligned with growth targets:

“We put such importance on moving quickly because we know how competitive it is out there. For good candidates, they have so many options. Being able to move quickly through the process, having the tools that enable us to do that is really important.”

With Workable, Cytora now has all hiring information in one centralized location. As the company grows and hires the best candidates in the UK, they’re moving forward with an inclusive hiring process and stellar candidate experience.

The post Cytora scales by 3X in 2.5 years, securing top talent for niche roles with Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. I’m concerned about hurting my candidate experience by taking a more automated approach. I don’t want to lose the human touch or turn off candidates. How have your customers tackled this concern?
2. Is there a possibility to send the video interview more than once? For instance, if a candidate misses the deadline or doesn’t have a great internet connection, will they be able to re-do it?
3. I’m not a tech expert. I’m still learning the ropes. Is this more for tech-savvy teams?
4. Is there a possibility not to give the candidate time to think?
5. Can multiple members of the hiring team leave evaluations with different scores?

One-way Video Interview FAQs – the answers

1. I’m concerned about hurting my candidate experience by taking a more automated approach. I don’t want to lose the human touch or turn off candidates. How have your customers tackled this concern?

If you’re using video interviews for the first time, it’s normal to wonder how they will impact your candidate experience. Will the candidates respond positively to this type of interview? Will you be able to keep this as personable as possible? The answer to both questions is yes; Workable’s Product Team has been through many trial-and-error phases to remove all kinds of frictions candidates may come across with:

“We’ve taken a lot of steps in order to make it more natural, more easy, not so awkward … for the candidate”, Michalis explained.

With Workable Video Interviews, candidates can test network connectivity and audio/video quality before they start recording. Candidates are also able to practice their answers before sending off the final videos. Be sure to give them more than one take so that they can present the answers they’re most proud of. As Michalis said:

“By taking all these sorts of precautions, we are trying to eventually offer the candidate a great experience and minimize the number of candidates who are going to have problems.”

But how do you personalize this process for each candidate? Michalis suggested explaining the video interview process to candidates step-by-step ahead of time so that they know what to expect and can prepare for success. You can also customize the email video interview invitation with interactive content to make it more engaging. For instance, you can upload a video presenting your hiring team and experiment with a more “laid-back approach to relax the candidates”, in Michalis’ own words.

Zoe also added her perspective on how to make video interviewing more personal:

However, if you sense that some candidates are still hesitant to conduct one-way interviews, perhaps there’s reasoning behind their concern. Address those concerns with curiosity: For example, they may be worried about using older tech which will produce a poor result or they may not have a quiet place to record their answers. As Michalis noted:

“If they [candidates] feel they really cannot do that, offer them an alternative and just use a different way of interviewing for that particular step of the process.”

In other words – video interviews don’t need to be dealmakers or dealbreakers for either you or the candidate. It’s there to optimize the process – not a test of the candidate’s capabilities in itself.

2. Is there a possibility to send the video interview more than once? For instance, if a candidate misses the deadline or doesn’t have a great internet connection, will they be able to re-do it?

Michalis briefly explained how you could respond to cases where candidates could not complete the interview before the deadline:

With Workable Video Interviews candidates can also split the work if they wish to or if a problem pops up. They can record individual interview parts on different days and different devices, at their convenience.

As for technical limitations (e.g. video quality, network issues, etc.), Michalis stated that they took all of them into consideration when building the product. Before candidates record their answers, potential frictions are tested and interviewees receive a headsup about technical problems they could meet down the road and possible solutions (see also question 1).

Whatever the reason, you will have the option of extending the deadline for submitting the video interview, or sending it again if the first one doesn’t come through as expected. Again, this highlights the importance of clear communication with the candidate to set the expectations either way.

3. I’m not a tech expert. I’m still learning the ropes. Is this more for tech-savvy teams?

Video interviews are not just for tech experts. Less tech-savvy hiring teams can also use this feature easily and set up video interviews seamlessly with just a few clicks. Michalis explains:

“We’re also about to launch a new functionality which will basically give them [hiring teams] the ability to have a pre-made, automatically prepared, interview question set based on the algorithms from machine learning and artificial intelligence on what are the the best questions you can have in an interview for a specific role, with specific skills, etc.”

The evaluation part is as handy, too; Hiring teams watch interview recordings on a simple-to-use video player and can leave comments and notes based on candidates’ performance, or even with thumbs up/down emojis. User experience was a priority going in for the Product Team – with particular emphasis on those new to video interviewing.

If you want to get a better, step-by-step understanding of how the Video Interviews tool works both for candidates and users, watch our webinar “One-way video interviews: The new normal”.

Zoe added that those simple tool functions have already allowed many customers from different sectors to succeed with Video Interviews.

Learn how healthy food restaurant chain Salad and Go screened candidates for two new restaurants in two weeks using Workable Video Interviews:

4. Is there a possibility not to give the candidate time to think?

Sometimes you want to assess how quickly a candidate can address a specific question or situation. To test that, you can give candidates a set amount of time to prepare for their answers. The hiring team can either select “unlimited time to think”, which means they can take as much time they need to practice their answer, or set a “time to think” frame which can be as short as one minute. Michalis clarified the reasoning behind these options:

5. Can multiple members of the hiring team leave evaluations with different scores?

Yes, multiple hiring team members can assess and score candidates independently when using Video Interviews. Each member can watch video answers at their own convenience and leave comments or notes as they see fit. Michalis explained:

“Each hiring team member can watch the video answer and can add their own comments, notes, and evaluations for the candidate. A new scorecard will be automatically created and completed for each member.”

Plus, all notes and scores for each candidate will be put together in a structured way inside the tool, making it easy for the whole hiring team to track them and make better hiring decisions.

The post One-way Video Interview FAQs for hiring teams appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Since I am fortunate enough to witness how these kind of products are made, how the teams are working on them and even work with some people that built them, I could not help myself – I wanted to find a similar problem to solve: To design an interface for human beings under stress, with a goal to reduce that stress.

Stress mode: on

On a bright morning at a recent Workable summit, we were told that a new team would be formed with one goal in mind: build a new product to allow candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers to perform asynchronous video interviews. The business case was solid; on the recruiter’s side, it saves time so they don’t have to schedule phone screens and carry them out with candidates.

On the candidate’s side, it provides a reliable platform to record answers and share them with the company they’re applying to. We wanted to examine a scenario: How would the candidates record their answers? To answer this, we held a design sprint. We talked with several real-life candidates – even those who had performed a video interview in the past.

You can see plenty of feedback about the whole video interview concept in public, such as in this subreddit post. Even the negative stuff is immensely helpful for us, because we want to solve those problems and challenges with our new feature.

The number-one problem we would have to solve, as far as the candidate was concerned, was pretty clear. It’s the stress. I know, it sounds rather generic and vague, but picture this: You are a candidate and you have to record and submit a set of five questions via a browser. It’s a terrifying scenario for many candidates. Questions abound:

• This is my first time doing this. How does this platform even work?
• What if my internet fails me halfway through this process?
• How can I possibly look and act normal when I’m talking into a computer?

Reviewing these concerns can take up a lot of time – and it did.

Design comes into play

Since that list of concerns is quite comprehensive, it was obvious that we had the problem outlined. Here’s our opportunity to jump into Sketch and solve that problem. Right? Wrong.

In fact, it was too early to do that. Instead, we gathered more feedback from candidates who had done video interviews in the past and grouped their responses into specific concerns. That feedback gave birth to a set of principles that would guide us when we built the application.

Here’s the set of principles we outlined – a quick and dirty three-point list:

1. Make feedback always visible

This was the first and toughest one. We needed to allocate valuable real estate on the screen to provide platform feedback to the candidate. This feedback isn’t just about error messages; it’s about guiding the user throughout the whole process. It’s more about providing a north star.

Of course, it plays well with error messages too. Assuming the person will get the concept that a message is always there showing what’s going on at any given time, this will be the spot the candidate will look to for feedback if anything comes up (such as a technical issue).

2. Be picky about the options

The interview process – and especially the video part of it – is a high-stress time for a candidate. So, what you choose to expose to the candidate is extremely important. Remember the Google Maps example at the beginning of this story? Google Maps has been doing an excellent job structuring map and navigation information in such a way that you’ll have your route in the spotlight at any step of your experience.

The image below is a great example on how we achieved this for Video Interviews. This is the scenario when the candidate has the maximum number of CTAs displayed in the interface.

3. Separate screen into logical groups (and group relevant actions)

Video interviews in general, is a fairly new concept. That means there’s is no known path to follow and no real precedence to build on. Moreover, it’s not the most widely known or understood interface – yet. Video interviews can be a steep learning curve for many.

So, what I wanted to do was separate the interface into logical groups, and then group those together. By doing this, we would make a more intuitive interface.

In the end, we added three major controls: Navigation, Questions, and Interview. Each one of these three groups represented a specific pool where similar and common actions could be pulled together.

Outcome

Stress is quite intangible – it’s difficult to measure. Business metrics, retention, or adoption is much easier. Because of its intangibility, the stress factor of video interviews was difficult to solve. We can’t outright eliminate it, but we can remove some of the elements that might contribute to it by providing an interface that’s easy to grasp and understand for candidates.

Moreover, we wanted to make the person behind the screen feel that they are in control of the interface. For instance, the recording will start only when they’re ready. The interview begins only when they’re ready. Their answers are sent only when they’re ready to be sent. This puts the whole experience within control of the user, without the need for a “smart” experience that would make decisions and choices for you.

This project has been a great success so far. The numbers prove it too: our data shows that the completion rate of our Video Interviews is much higher than the industry standard. Industry-wide, we found that one-third of candidates actually complete their video interview, whereas candidates using our Video Interview platform completed it two-thirds of the time.

In closing – we set out to craft an interface that was simple to use, to free candidates of the burden of learning the interface and allow them to simply present their best selves during the video interview. Talking into a machine is obviously a bit awkward – we didn’t want candidates to feel that awkwardness. So we set out to make it as comfortable of an experience as possible. While we’re continuing to assess feedback, we’re excited to see how the positive response grows as more and more companies adopt our Video Interviews interface.

The post How we approached (video) interviews appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Second, this guides us through iterations and improvements that can eliminate problems and frustration for the end user. Finally, this can actually decrease the risk of failure and improve profitability for the company, with reduced costs of customer support and happy customers who will spread a good word about our product to the world.

The Video Interviews feature first kicked off about a year ago, with our team gathering for a Design Sprint. The purpose of this week-long structured workshop is to map out and understand the problem, ideate, and agree on a target. We actually ran two separate design sprints:

• First, we did one focusing on the candidate’s experience (receiving a request to complete a video interview, recording answers and submitting the assignment).
• Once an MVP for the candidate experience was ready for implementation we did another, focusing on the recruiter and hiring manager’s experience (setting up a video interview for a job, sending a request to candidates and then viewing and evaluating the candidate submissions).

Defining personas and finding people to talk to

Leading up to the Design Sprint, we identified people who could share valuable insights with us on the topic at hand, which was oneway video interviews for recruiting purposes.

For the candidate persona we reached out to recently hired Workable employees who had experience with video interviews for their current role, or a previous one.

For the recruiter persona we reached out to select customers who had expressed interest in this feature to their account managers, as well as our amazing in-house recruiting team (who always contribute to our research and usability testing).

Understanding and empathizing with the end user

Hearing first hand from video interview applicants was an eye-opener, especially about how stressful this experience can be for them. Anything from a hardware issue to a distraction in their surroundings could cost them a good submission and jeopardize their progress in the interview process, which is critical for active job seekers.

At the same time we learned that candidates think highly of companies that use this type of “high tech and modern” method in their hiring process. These and other candidate insights guided us in designing a helpful and pleasant experience for them.

Recruiters talked to us about how bias can be a challenge for their hiring team while evaluating candidates. This is a challenge that video interviews could potentially augment if the evaluator focuses on the visual appearance of the person or the environment the video submission is recorded in.

At the same time they were very excited to get their hands on this tool that can help them screen candidates better and faster from an early pipeline stage.

Validating and testing our ideas

Equipped with a deep understanding about who we are designing for, what they need and want, the team got straight to work and designed the key parts of the candidate and recruiter experience respectively. We created working prototypes and invited a handful of Workable employees to test them out. This helped us validate the direction we had chosen and helped us identify some issues at an early stage, before spending effort on development.

Finding volunteers to test the candidate experience was easy, since we targeted any person who could potentially be asked to submit a video interview for a job application. to test the hiring manager experience, we targeted any manager who would potentially screen a candidate for their team with a video interview, even if they had never done this before.

Testing the product in the real world

As the development of the feature was reaching completion we engaged our own recruiting team and six key customers in an Early Adopter Program. We gathered their input as they used video interviews to screen and evaluate candidates over the course of a few weeks. Even though we had incorporated user input at multiple points since the beginning of the project and were confident in what we had built, there was still more for us to learn from its performance in real world circumstances.

We did not get much feedback from candidates besides some minor technical issues that were quickly fixed. This could mean that we indeed did a great job and delivered something that works perfectly, or perhaps that candidates were not willing to share their feedback during their application process with a company (and I don’t blame them).

Recruiters, however, shared great feedback with us, most of which has already been added to our roadmap. One of their key concerns was about creating a “good” video interview, in which they ask candidates enough questions to get the information they are looking for, but also does not require too much time to complete, which could lead to them dropping out and not completing the video interview.

Keep listening, keep learning, keep improving

Upon the completion of the Early Adopter Program video interviews became available to all Workable customers. You might have thought that our work was done, but it wasn’t! The world and people evolve and change and so should our product. We will keep monitoring the traffic and usage analytics of the feature to track performance and identify issues. We will also keep listening to all incoming feedback from our customers through different channels, such as customer support and the account management team, in order to react to it.

Salad & Go, for example, shared some great feedback on how they’ve been able to use video interviews to conduct remote hiring:

We will keep asking questions in order to understand what our users need and improve our product for them. This is essential to the quality and success of Video Interviews – and this is important to us as well.

Anything from a casual conversation where you ask a friend for their opinion on something, all the way to a formally structured research or test activity can help you learn something you did not know before. And this is the essence of user-centered design, so start talking to your users today!

The post Video Interviews: Designing for and with end users in mind appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

High-volume hiring – also known as mass recruitment – refers to filling positions on a larger scale than normal, in a shorter time frame. A business usually needs to hire employees en masse due to rapid growth, new opportunities, and expansion to new markets or regions. Seasonality is also a factor, e.g. in hospitality where demand for new workforce can fluctuate wildly depending on time of year.

For recruiters and hiring teams, managing high-volume hiring can be hard, especially if you’re new to it. To overcome some of the common high-volume recruiting challenges, such as finding top talent promptly with the minimum possible cost, you need to calibrate a well-coordinated hiring process from job posting to onboarding new hires. This is not always a piece of cake, especially when hiring many employees at once for different departments and roles.

In this guide you’ll find bulk hiring techniques and tips for each phase of the recruiting funnel. Pick those that complete your current recruiting practices best to reach your goals without compromising quality and candidate experience.

Plan carefully and make technology your friend

Firstly, whether you are creating a high-volume hiring strategy for future use (see seasonality example mentioned above) or you’re facing urgent hiring needs due to unexpected forces (as happened in healthcare sector during the COVID-19 pandemic) there’s one thing you certainly need to have: A good plan. If you’ve recruited in bulk with your team in the past, get together and comb through all your hiring methods and procedures that succeeded.

A kind reminder; automation and tech will prove to be life-saving – perhaps more now than ever. Use your ATS and other tools to automate time-consuming tasks such as scheduling or communicating with candidates and teammates (e.g. follow-up communication email) to free up time for other more valuable tasks.

With these two handy tips in mind, let’s now move to the core guidelines.

1. Define skills and evaluation process

With urgent hiring needs and lots of applications to choose from for multiple roles, it’s important to understand the value each new employee can bring to your business. That’s why you should thoroughly discuss with hiring managers and team what background and must-have skills the ideal candidates should have before moving to the job posting.

Name the top three role responsibilities and what abilities are necessary to nail them. Ask yourselves; What will the new employee’s KPIs be? What values and strengths are essential to thrive in each job position? After you spot these factors, recall them during the next steps to make sure you attract candidates that fulfill all the essential criteria.

Next, create a plan of how you’ll evaluate applications and candidates, and divide roles among colleagues. Who will conduct the interviews and who will provide feedback for assignments? This will save you lots of time you would otherwise spend communicating back and forth with your colleagues or important details getting lost in translation. With so many activities loading at the same time, it’s easy to lose track of who decides what.

Remember, the more detailed your plan, the more benefits you’ll reap along the way. Try to picture the obstacles you are likely to hit going forward and potential solutions for each, to avoid nasty ‘surprises’.

2. Optimize candidate-facing content

When advertising high-volume hiring jobs, develop your content strategically to attract as many skilled candidates as you can within a set time frame. You can start by optimizing your content: Firstly, make sure to mention job responsibilities and requirements in job ads as thoroughly as you can. Avoid leaving space for loose interpretation; with high-volume hiring jobs, time is precious – you don’t want to waste time trying to explain or re-explain aspects of the job to hopeful candidates.

Plus, describe the company values and culture in the brief so that potential candidates not only have a clear idea of the role, but also of the company, before they apply. Dare to be creative; share interviews of employees describing daily work-life and habits. Finally, include perks and benefits and photos of your latest get-together or event to show what your company is really made of.

If you hire often at scale, optimize your careers page and job descriptions based on Search Engine Optimization rules and design pages that convert. This way, you increase the probability of candidates landing in front of your job openings while searching the web or even individual job boards. You could also make these pages easy to navigate by dividing the distinct roles into categories.

3. Mark your sourcing strategy

Now that you’ve created the ideal candidate profile and you’ve described it in the job ad, and with a polished careers page ready to shine, it’s officially sourcing time. Let’s face it; it’s not easy to find hundreds of suitable applicants through just one platform. You need to scout through different channels and make it easy for candidates to apply in simple steps, with easy-apply and mobile-friendly solutions.

Post on job boards and social media

First off, post job ads on multiple job boards to expand your outreach. Find also niche job boards based on industry to attract targeted candidates (e.g. TeachingJobs for teaching positions in the US). A bonus: diversifying the job boards you’re posting to also leads to a more diverse range of candidates.

Don’t stick to the same ol’s; search candidates through social media like Facebook, Instagram, and more. You can also run high-level social media campaigns targeting suitable candidates based on detailed requirements you’ve set and share this job opportunity with them.

Boost employee referrals

Good people tend to know good people; all you need is to convince your employees to introduce and refer skilled professionals for your roles. This is even more helpful with high-volume hiring when you need to reach out to more candidates in less time. Your employees know your brand and culture and have a stronger idea of who would be a good fit for a role, with the required skills and work ethics that would fit in nicely. Systemize the referring process as much as you can and offer participation incentives to make it more attractive to employees.

Keep your talent pool updated

If high-volume hiring is common for your business, keep your talent pool filled to the brim with potentially good candidates anytime you spot them and you’ll thank yourself later. They could even be candidates you’ve rejected in the past as they did not meet all the criteria at that time – but perhaps they’re a great fit now. You can also use AI-powered solutions to source passive candidates and add them in your talent pool for future (or current) reference.

4. Screen en masse (and efficiently)

To save time when screening tons of applications, use a resume parsing solution to find the relevant applications for you and disqualify the unsuitable ones based on criteria you have set. In this way, you’ll more quickly filter in those applicants who tick all the boxes.

But if you follow the ideal candidate profile method mentioned above, you might trip over your unconscious biases and miss out on great candidates from diverse backgrounds. To avoid this trap, stay open-minded; don’t put overly strict requirements for the application selection phase, but instead focus on finding the silver lining. Sometimes learning capability is a stronger asset compared to experience.

Following up, structure your next screening steps so that they are equal for everyone; ask the same questions and hand out an assignment and/or a pre-employment assessment tool (e.g. a GAT) that will reveal the candidates’ real abilities. Data will always show you a clearer image if you treat them wisely, especially when things are moving fast and you need to hire people as quickly as you can.

Utilize video interviews

When you have many applicants to review in a minimum time frame it’s difficult to organize interviews at your company’s premises or when you’re hiring remotely. That’s precisely when you can make the most of one-way video interviews. Ask candidates to self-record themselves answering the interview questions you’ll submit to them. You can then evaluate them at your own convenience and sync with your colleagues – who likewise are working in their own schedules – to share feedback online later.

Be mindful of the questions you ask; if you’re using an assessment tool and an assignment avoid asking the same questions twice. You’ll not only save time but also learn as much as you can for the candidates before you qualify them for the last round, the interview with the hiring manager/executive.

Secure candidate experience

One of the biggest challenges in high-volume recruiting is maintaining a good candidate experience. When you have to screen people quickly, after rejecting a candidate during the assessment phase you might forget to follow up with them and move on to other more urgent tasks. This can potentially hurt your brand reputation as these candidates may share their opinion, both online in sites like Glassdoor and offline with friends and peers.

It’s important to remember that even rejected candidates are potential strong assets in your talent pool in the future. Don’t get lost in the noise; follow your hiring process steps and candidate experience strategy diligently and reap the benefits in the long run.

5. Automate documentation and onboarding processes

New hire experience is equally valuable to candidate experience. When hiring and onboarding people in bulk, many nuisances will appear; you’ll have many documents to file, lots of questions to answer and many people to train – and each of them should be treated uniquely. Tech automation can help massively with this.

For example, an HRIS system such as BambooHR will help you obtain and organize all hiring documents. Onboarding software such as Click Boarding can help you keep the planning of onboarding activities and trainings in one place and prepare new candidates for success (both tools are integrated to Workable’s own recruiting solution).

Train wisely

When training new hires en masse, don’t forget to make the sessions as personable as possible. Each of them will have their own learning style and pace; apart from organizing skill training sessions, build guides that explain key aspects of the tasks and include Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to help them figure out the basics. You could also create buddy or mentoring systems to boost their confidence while they learn how to perform their tasks successfully.

6. Analyze recruiting metrics and repeat

Now that the hard part is over and you’ve finally onboarded new employees, it’s time to reflect and report. Analyze key high-volume recruiting metrics such as source of hire, time to hire, and conversion rate to understand what worked well and what should be improved in the future.

What source did you get the most candidates from? How successful were your pre-screening methods based on candidate drop-out? Understanding these metrics thoroughly will not only benefit your mass recruiting efforts but your hiring as a whole.

Happy hiring!

Yes, happy indeed; as already explained there’s no need to overly stress about high-volume hiring – just make sure you have a rock-solid plan to tackle all challenges. Again, sit down with your teammates, discuss openly and plan your strategy step-by-step. And most importantly, don’t forget to reflect back on your wins and drawbacks when hiring is over – it will definitely contribute to your future high-volume hiring success.

The post High-volume hiring: How you can make it work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The challenge

The solution

• Recruitment was hugely time consuming
• Lacked infrastructure to manage recruitment effectively internally and relied on agencies
• Spent several hundred thousand dollars a year on agency fees
• As business grew, HR was under pressure to reduce overhead and improve service levels

• Build a business case to purchase and implement Workable
• Decrease agency reliance because of global job board distribution
• Reduce time to hire with hiring manager engagement across all recruitment stages
• Save more than $300K in agency fees in first year

Alexander Dennis designs, engineers, builds and supports a range of market-leading buses. They operate in the UK, North America, Continental Europe and Asia Pacific. Globally, there are over 25,000 people every minute of every day riding their buses. To break that down even further, more than half of the buses that you see on the roads in the UK are made by Alexander Dennis, with over 3.5 million passengers a day in London alone making a journey on one of their buses.

The company’s revenue tripled in the past decade but the HR Team had not grown at the same speed, requiring Alexander Dennis to rely heavily on agencies and manual spreadsheets. Tasked with reducing spend, David Raphael, Head of Talent Acquisition, made the business case to purchase Workable, saving Alexander Dennis $300,000 on agency spend in their first year with Workable.

“With Workable we’ve significantly reduced our agency spend and at the same time, modernized, standardized and future-proofed our recruitment process.”

The HR Team of 12 needed an easy to use system and one that was quick to implement for 120 hiring managers and counting spread across the world. With Workable, Alexander Dennis took charge of recruitment without having to expand their HR Team by collaborating across hiring teams, thus exceeding the Finance Team’s mission to reduce spend.

“I couldn’t guarantee that I was going to get the results. I knew I would, but I couldn’t guarantee. You know, Workable’s a good product. It’s a great one.”

David, new to Alexander Dennis when he made the business case to purchase Workable, was untested in major business initiatives at the company, but with Workable, the HR Team automated admin and became a true business partner.

The post Alexander Dennis saves over $300K in agency fees in the first year of using Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Almost overnight video has become essential to the way we work and hire. And while video interviewing is nothing new, asynchronous interviews, also called one-way video interviews, are becoming a key tool for hiring. More than just a short-term solution for a temporarily remote workforce, many talent & people teams are embracing video screening as the new normal.

In just sixty minutes, this webinar will help you:

• Develop a process to screen candidates at scale on your own time, from anywhere and any device
• Learn how structure effective one-way video interviews, from question input all the way to hiring manager collaboration
• Empower candidates to show their best self with a guided, thoughtful process (no download required!)

The post One-way video interviews: The new normal appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

When it comes to hiring, we apply a similar lens. For example, you can also think about candidates being at the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.

In February, we opened up two roles on the Tuff team:

• SEO Strategist
• Growth Marketer

Our first step was laying out our hiring strategy. We decided to work with a Talent & People Ops consultant, Mary, from Intention Consulting. We wanted to work with an expert who could help us build a strong and tested process to find the best people for Tuff.

For the SEO Strategist role, we needed a channel specialist who could help our clients increase their organic reach. We work with a diverse set of clients and corresponding business models so we needed someone who has broad SEO experience (rather than specializing in local SEO) and who is comfortable adapting quickly.

For the Growth Marketer role, we were looking for more of a marketing generalist. At Tuff, a Growth Marketer partners closely with our clients to understand the core of their business, their goals outside of marketing, and then get really specific on how we can help drive growth. We needed someone comfortable working closely with clients but in a more generalist role there is flexibility in how they achieve the goals depending on their background.

Here’s what we learned

Specialist vs. Generalist

There is a difference between hiring for a Specialist (SEO Strategist) vs. a Generalist (Growth Marketer). The SEO Strategist role took 47 days to fill from job posted to offer letter signed. We had a more tailored skill set we were looking for. The Growth Marketer role took 29 days to fill from job posted to offer letter signed. We had clear outcomes we wanted this person to achieve and competencies we were evaluating for but there was room for more diversity in their background (i.e. content, paid search, paid social, etc.).

Process

Before these hires, we had 3 full time team members. Now, we are at 5. We learned a few lessons about the process, specifically how much to involve team members who also had a lot on their plate in terms of client work. It was important for us to create a Scorecard (more below) at the start of the process to have clear and explicit alignment on the outcomes we needed these team members to be responsible for.

Sources

We spent $553.34 on LinkedIn. In the end, the two hires came from alternate sources. We break it down more below. We would still spend the money on LinkedIn as it accounted for 80% of the applications and 50% of the interviews. Just not eventual hires.

Employer Branding

In Tuff’s client work, we are very transparent and open. It’s a value Mary came to recognize in our work and it opened up doors when it came to employer branding and helping qualify candidates. With her help, we ramped up these efforts on LinkedIn when we opened up the two roles, posting about our company retreat that happened while we were interviewing and tagging the Tuff team in hiring posts so people could check out their profiles before applying. The person we hired for the Growth Marketer role was a connection of Tuff on LinkedIn.

SEO Strategist hire

We posted the role for SEO Strategist using Workable, on February 6.

Tuff’s new SEO Strategist, Derek, signed his offer letter on March 24. This hire took us 48 days from posting to offer letter signed.

We break down the interview process in more detail below (i.e. what is a topgrade interview?) but here’s a breakdown of our funnel metrics:

Here are a few of our conversion rates we found interesting:

• Applications to phone screen: 5.45%
• Phone Screen to Topgrade Interview: 18.75%
• Applications to Hire: 0.17%

Growth Marketer hire

We posted the Growth Marketer role on February 19.

Tuff’s newest Growth Marketer, John, signed his offer letter March 18. This hire took us 29 days from posting to offer letter signed.

Here’s a breakdown of our funnel metrics:

And, here are a few of our conversion rates we found interesting:

• Applications to phone screen: 3.01%
• Phone Screen to Topgrade Interview: 30.76%
• Applications to Hire: 0.23%

Let’s compare some of these metrics for the two roles:

As you can see, the biggest difference is in the ‘Phone Screen to Topgrade Interview’ conversion rate.

People interviewing for the SEO Strategist role had a lower chance of moving on from the Phone Screen to the next step of the interview process. We did considerably more phone screens for SEO Strategist (32 phone screens) than for the Growth Marketer role (13 phone screens).

In hindsight, this makes sense based on our experience hiring for a Specialist. There are so many areas of expertise when it comes to SEO. We had a fairly specific skill set we were looking for so as we learned more about the candidate’s background and the type of work they were looking to do, disqualifying a candidate or moving them forward felt clear.

Tuff’s interview process:

Step 1: Create a Scorecard

The Scorecard is the foundation of the interview process we held. It is what we used to evaluate candidates at every step of the funnel. By spending an extra 15-20 minutes upfront at the beginning of the interview process, the Scorecard helps lead to a speedier process, better alignment on the team which leads to better hires, and helps mitigate bias by keeping us evaluating on the objective outcomes and skills we needed these hires to achieve and come in with.

The Scorecards we used for both roles had the same four parts:

• Mission – Why does this role exist?
• Outcomes – What will this person be responsible for?
• Hierarchy of needs – What is need to have vs. nice to have?
• Competencies – What characteristics are most important?

Step 2: Post the job!

While this might seem like the first step, it is so important to have clear alignment from the team that it comes after creating the Scorecard. We used Workable as our Applicant Tracking System for a few reasons. As a small (but mighty!) team, Workable was at a good price point for Tuff and offers a 14-day trial that we used to make sure Workable was the right system for us. Workable also posts your job for free on a number of other job boards like remote.co, where our SEO Strategist hire initially spotted the role.

Step 3: Create Interview Plan

Once we had the Scorecards filled in and the job posted, we moved ahead to clarify the interview process and each team member’s role in evaluating candidates.

Step 4: Phone Screens

Goal: Understand motivations and ability to contribute to Tuff client’s + culture. Mary held the resume and phone screens to help save the Tuff team time by qualifying candidates at the early stage.

Here are the questions we asked for the SEO Strategist phone screens:

• What are your career goals? What would your ideal role look like in the next 2-3 years?
• What are you really good at when it comes to SEO?
• What are 1-2 areas you think you could improve?
• Tell me about the most structured and then least structured workplace you’ve been a part of. How did you feel about them?
• Think of someone you have worked really well with in the past. What characteristics, values, or skills did you learn from them and try to replicate?

Step 5: Topgrade Interviews

Goal: Uncover the patterns of somebody’s career history to match with the scorecard.

For candidates who made it through the Phone Screen, we had them speak with me (Founder of Tuff), next. I asked the following five questions for each job on the candidates resume, beginning with the earliest and working your way forward to the present day. Follow-up questions and curiosity are key to keeping this interview conversational.

• What were you hired to do?
• What 2-3 accomplishments are you most proud of?
• What were some low points during that job?
• Who were the people you worked with? Specifically:
  • Your manager: what was it like working with them? What would they tell me were your biggest strengths and areas for improvement?
  • Your team: what did it look like? What worked well? What was challenging?
• Why did you leave?

Step 6: Focus Interviews

Goal: Assess the competencies we’ve agreed are important for success in the role.

As you may have noticed on our funnel metric breakdowns above, we skipped the Focus Interview at times to prioritize speed. These interviews were assigned to Chris and Nate, the other two existing team members at Tuff. These interviews were focused on competencies and attributes the team had identified were important for the roles and culture we’re building at Tuff.

Step 7: Project

Goal: Get a more in-depth understanding of the candidate’s skills.

Here’s the project we shared with our Growth Marketer candidates:

We didn’t want the project to be too time consuming so set the expectation to spend no more than 3 hours on the project. P.S. Snacks is also not a client of Tuff. We wanted to make sure we weren’t asking someone to do work that a Tuff team member would be paid for. So, this is an example of work they’d be doing if they joined the team but it isn’t work Tuff would gain monetary value from.

Step 8: Hire

We did it! Through this process, we were able to find and get to know two great candidates who have now joined the Tuff team.

Sources

Tuff’s new team members came from two sources:

1. The person we hired for the Growth Marketer role was a LinkedIn connection of mine on LinkedIn. He reached out to me after spotting the role and we entered him into the interview process, uploading his resume into our Applicant Tracking System.
2. The person we hired for the SEO Strategist role applied through remote.co.

For more context on what sources were stronger for us, here are two charts below. The first shows Applications by source – you can see LinkedIn brought in the majority of our applications.

This chart shows Interviews by source. These are the people who after we screened their resume, we decided to talk to. Again, LinkedIn is at the top of the list.

Conclusion

We learned so much as a team and with Intention Consulting while hiring for these roles. As a growth marketing agency, the team has a natural inclination for numbers and conversion rates that made our collaboration stronger and more successful. Workable’s own hiring solution helped hugely as well.

The post From 1,018 applications to 2 new hires: Tuff Growth’s hiring process appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Learn how Salad and Go screens candidates with Video Interviews:

The post Introducing Video Interviews: The next evolution in remote hiring technology appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Salad and Go is a fast-growing, healthy fast food chain that’s been featured in Business Insider and Fast Company. Based in Arizona, their mission is to make healthy food accessible to everyone. As COVID-19 hit the United States, Salad and Go adopted Workable’s Video Interviews platform to screen candidates for 2 new restaurants in addition to the 16 they already have.

“We’re using the new Video Interviews tool to pre-screen candidates and move quickly into the interview step. Normally, we have daily open interview sites, where any interested candidate can come by,” says Brandi Hale, Salad and Go’s Head of People and Culture. 

“This [in-person interview] process is not possible for us right now due to the [COVID-19] crisis. This tool has helped us be more efficient during this time and get our jobs done. Thank you!”

The pivot to remote hiring was a seamless experience for Salad and Go. They quickly adopted Workable’s Video Interviews feature and the results were nearly immediate – they screened 50 candidates within two weeks. That works out to at least five screens per business day. 

Says Brandi: “Video Interviews helped us retain that personal contact we want to have always with anyone who’s applying to our organization.”

When the world goes back to normal, they’ll continue to use Video Interviews as it’s made their hiring process more efficient.

The post Salad and Go – now expanding – screens candidates remotely with Video Interviews appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The survey of 150+ software developers shows that the majority of respondents are very comfortable interviewing and beginning a new job entirely remotely, especially if they are actively looking.

Further, 39% of software developers in our survey reported feeling more productive since shifting to work remotely, compared to 30% feeling that they have become less productive (31% estimated no change). So not only is there available and eager talent, but many software developers may be operating at peak productivity. Of course, this is going to vary depending on each individual’s situation and experience, but perhaps it is one bright spot in a truly unfortunate environment.

“Development work doesn’t need to be centered on a physical location. With how wide-spread technology is and how responsive it can be, there’s no need to shackle people to cubicles and corporate offices.”

– Full-stack software developer with 5+ years of experience

Employers in growing industries need to quickly reinvent themselves to attract and onboard the best talent in this new work-from-home reality. Here is how you can rapidly implement a remote tech hiring process:

Set expectations internally and externally

It’s dangerous to assume that you can continue running the same exact interview process you’ve always had with the only difference being a Zoom or Google Hangouts link in the calendar invitation. Several things could easily go wrong:

• Employees may get too relaxed with attire, body language, and overall presentation.
• Internet connectivity, background noise, or other distractions could interfere.
• Sensitive or private Slack notifications and text messages could show up on screen shares.
• Interviews that typically include whiteboarding technical scenarios may lack the necessary tools to assess and qualify candidates.

To avoid these pitfalls, set expectations with the candidate and interviews accordingly:

• Emphasize to the employees conducting the interview that it is important to maintain professionalism despite the circumstances.
• Provide both the candidate and interviewer’s phone numbers in case there are internet issues.
• Remind employees to turn on do-not-disturb notifications before interviews.
• Do role play on a quick dry run with the interviewers and candidate beforehand to make sure all the necessary systems and tools are working.

Further, remember that your candidate (and interviewers) may have been severely impacted by the pandemic in ways you are unaware. Candidates may have recently lost their job or have a family member who is sick. Remind your team members to be sensitive, considerate, and patient.

Revisit your company culture and how to emphasize it

Does your engineering interview process typically contain bells and whistles to impress candidates? For example, do you often introduce a company executive or give an office tour? Do you take the candidate to a fancy lunch with their prospective coworkers? Here are a handful of ways you can rethink how to emphasize your company culture it during a remote tech hiring process:

• Develop an engineering culture packet that includes:
  • a note or link to a video from your VP of Engineering or CEO introducing themselves and how the company is continuing to operate given the circumstances
  • a demo video of your product and services
  • links to relevant Glassdoor, Built in NY, or AngelList pages and articles.
• Reimburse the candidate and interviewers for a coffee and lunch delivery from their favorite restaurants to enjoy during the interview (and support the local economy).
• Let the candidate sit in on an engineering standup (or another meeting where there won’t be sensitive information shared) so that they can see how the team is continuing to collaborate while quarantined.
• Share a snippet of a recent company email or All Hands video with the candidate that highlights the upbeat mood and tempo your company is maintaining during these trying times.
• Emphasize how you’ve transitioned your benefits packages to better accommodate and facilitate wellness during social distancing.

Even if your company culture has temporarily – or perhaps, permanently – changed during the pandemic, you still have the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage and impress prospective candidates. Going out of your way to deliberately and thoughtfully rethink your culture puts you ahead of the pack.

Update your recruiting technology stack

You may have to rethink sourcing efforts as meetups and events get postponed. Resumé review could become less relevant as rapid introductions from previous employers take precedence over an updated job history.

For sourcing, you need a new strategy for increasing visibility of your job postings. There are a number of aggregators online to post your remote job or list your company as hiring:

• https://candor.co/hiring-freezes/
• https://www.getsilverlining.com/
• https://www.layoffs.tech/
• https://www.wfhbuthiring.com/

Now is also a good time to monitor LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and trackers for layoffs and for potential candidates who have recently started looking for new roles.

To complement traditional resumé reviews, consider using a code screening platform. Overall, it’s less biased and more scalable due to being virtually automated once integrated with your ATS.

• Medium: The Best Technical Assessment & Code Screening Platforms of 2020
• G2: Best Technical Skills Screening Software
• Capterra: Pre-employment Testing Software

For live interviews where you need to assess coding, architectural, or critical thinking skills, check out Mural and Coderpad.

And, of course, you’ll want to be using a flexible and candidate-centric recruitment solution like Workable to seamlessly manage the entire hiring experience in a remote environment.

These are trying times but you are fortunate to still be hiring! Good luck getting your team aligned and reinventing your technical hiring process. I’ll continue sharing the latest proprietary employment and interview data for software development on Medium.

The post How to reinvent your tech hiring in a remote-first world appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Last month, over 4,500 people registered for the webinar “Going Remote: Best Practices for HR and Recruitment”. Hundreds of live audience questions poured in to be answered by leaders at fully remote working companies like InVision and Stack Overflow.

There wasn’t enough time to answer them all during the webinar, so the experts met again to tackle the most common ones. Watch this video to hear tactical advice from talent leaders and founders who have learned best practices through years of remote working.

Sample Questions:

• How do I prepare candidates for virtual interviews?
• How should I engage candidates during a hiring freeze?
• How can I empower managers to onboard and train new hires remotely?

You can also get answers to common questions around remote work in our FAQ guides:

• Remote Working FAQs
• Remote Hiring FAQs
• Remote Onboarding FAQs

The post Going Remote: FAQ Video appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

For many of us, working remotely is a whole new ballgame and hiring and on-boarding remotely feels straight out of left-field.

That’s why we turned to People Operations & Talent leaders from Stack Overflow, InVision and Smartbug Media. They explained everything we need to know about remote working, from hiring and on-boarding to managing your day-to-day tasks. With over 2,200 attendees and 250 questions from the audience, the panel was kind enough to meet again and answer your FAQs.

This webinar and FAQ session will help you:

• Adopt a virtual hiring process, without sacrificing candidate experience
• Onboard and welcome new employees in a fully remote setup
• Communicate and collaborate effectively and keep business moving with a newly remote workforce

You can also read the key takeaways of the webinar and our FAQ guides on remote work:

• Remote Working FAQs
• Remote Hiring FAQs
• Remote Onboarding FAQs

The post Going Remote: Best Practices for HR & Recruitment appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post COVID-19: All the resources you need to survive and succeed appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Video interviews are becoming a popular method among companies that want to evaluate candidates remotely. And there are benefits for you, as a candidate, too; you cut back on commute costs and time and you get the chance to interview at – and work for – a company that’s across the world. So you’d better rock this video interview.

While it’s not so different from the ol’ in-person interview, there are some nuances you need to keep in mind if you want to shine during a video interview. Let’s take it step-by-step and see how you can best showcase your skills when interacting with potential employers online:

Just (don’t) hit the “rec” button

First, make sure you have all the proper equipment in place. And what does that involve? Your computer, a webcam and a microphone. Your computer might already have an in-app camera and/or mic, which could work for you in this case. You might also want to use headphones to block noises. If you’re lacking any of this equipment, consider borrowing from a friend or going to a local library, community center or coworking space; they may offer some private offices along with equipment that you can use for your interview.

Then, you need the appropriate video software. Depending on how the company is conducting video interviews, you may or may not have to install a tool on your computer, e.g. Skype. Check the video interview invitation email they sent you; you’ll most likely find some information there, for example, a link that you can follow to join the video call. Click that to see how it works because if you need to download an app, it might take some time and you don’t want to do that a couple of minutes before the interview. If you’re in doubt, don’t hesitate to reach out to the recruiter or hiring manager you’re talking to and ask for clarification.

Once you have your hardware and software ready, it’s time to run some tests. Here’s how to have a tech run-through:

• Have a sound, microphone and camera check. It’s useful to record something to see how you look and sound and whether you need to make some adjustments. (For example, if the microphone is too close to your mouth, it can cause audio spikes.)
• Place the camera at eye level. This way, you can maintain eye contact with your interviewers.
• Check your internet connection. Poor signal could cause interruptions and miscommunication. If you’re using a wifi connection, try moving your devices closer to the router and if there are other devices and users connected, ensure they don’t take up much bandwidth during your interview.
• Close unnecessary tabs and applications. They may slow down your connection – and also become a distraction – so it’s best to keep open only when you absolutely need, e.g. the video interview platform and your online portfolio.
• Charge up your devices. Before the interview, ensure your computer and the rest of equipment you’ll be using are fully charged or plugged in – keep in mind that video calls tend to drain computers’ batteries much faster compared with regular use.

Set the stage

When recording a video interview or having a live video call with your potential employer, be mindful of the background, be it visual or audial. If you choose, for example, to have the interview at a busy cafe, noises will distract you and your interviewers. Likewise, laying on your couch with your pajamas and your laptop on your knees doesn’t exactly project yourself as professional.

Here are some tips that will help interviewers focus on what you’re saying as opposed to what’s going on around you:

• Choose a quiet room. If you’re living with family or roommates, let them know about your interview and coordinate accordingly so that there are no interruptions or noises during that time.
• Find a well-lit place. Opt for natural lighting facing you; don’t have the light on your back. If that’s not possible, put a lamp behind your camera or use your mobile’s flashlight to lighten up your face.
• Pick the proper attire. This doesn’t just refer to business or business casual wear; it’s also about picking colors that read well on camera. Avoid busy patterns and the color white. Test what works with your background, too.
• Mute notifications. Before the interview, remember to put your phone on silent mode and turn off notifications on your computer. A message or pop-up could easily disrupt the flow of the interview.

It’s dress rehearsal time

Once you’ve tackled technical requirements and set up your space, prepare yourself for the video interview, just like you would if it was a traditional face-to-face interview. This means, researching the company, refreshing your memory about your skills and work experiences, and practicing your answers to common interview questions.

However, speaking in front of a screen could raise your stress levels. Here’s how to feel more comfortable:

• Practice, then practice some more. Record yourself talking or even have some video calls with friends who can give you feedback. As you get used to the idea of “speaking to your computer”, you’ll sound more confident and more natural.
• Don’t forget about body language. Just because interviewers can mostly see your face, it doesn’t mean that you can’t use body language to your benefit. Smile, nod, make hand gestures if that helps your flow and look away for a couple of seconds when you want to think.
• Think about potential interview questions. In one-way video interviews, you might know the questions beforehand. This means you have some time to prepare your answers or even record different takes and pick the best. If it’s a live video interview, you might have an idea of what you’ll discuss (depending on who you’re talking to) so you can write down a few key points that you want to mention.

Ready, set, action!

It’s time for the interview – a few minutes before the meeting and after you’ve tested your equipment, turn your notifications off, sit comfortably, take a deep breath and when you’re ready, click “Rec” or “Join”.

Since you’ve prepared adequately, all should go well. But some things can go wrong during a video interview – not all of it your fault. Because technology can be a fickle beast at times, be sure to have quick troubleshooting tips at the ready.

‘Can we reshoot that?’

For example, poor connection or poor audio quality could be distracting. And while you can’t predict everything, here’s what to do in case you face some technical or other hiccups:

• Restart the software or your computer. There’s a reason why “Have you tried turning this off and on again?” is a popular IT trick; it’s because it often works. If you face technical difficulties, try signing off for a few minutes and restarting your devices to see if that helps.
• Have an alternative solution in place. Be ready to switch to another device if needed, e.g. a tablet or your phone – smartphones usually have good cameras so quality shouldn’t be an issue. To do so, you’ll need to have the appropriate software (Skype, Google Hangouts, etc.) installed. If you use your phone, try to keep it in a stable position and in the landscape view.
• Keep the interviewers’ contact details handy. You might want to quickly let them know that you face some temporary technical difficulties or that you’d rather reschedule. Don’t leave them waiting, though – drop them a quick email or call them to coordinate.
• Ask for clarification. Don’t hesitate to ask interviewers to repeat something if you’re not sure. You don’t want to risk giving a poor answer because you didn’t hear the question properly.