Also discussed: the need to focus on maintaining a human touch in the hiring process, the use of technology in recruitment, and the idea of promoting from within.

Don’t worry if you missed the webinar. We’ve got you covered offering all the important tips to help you hire better, surpassing the economic headwinds.

Better hiring practices – the takeaways

Let’s delve deeper into each of the major takeaways of the webinar:

1. Empathy is key

The hiring process isn’t just about filling a position. It’s about understanding the human element behind each application. Empathy plays a pivotal role in ensuring that candidates feel valued and understood especially when creating a hiring strategy in tough times.

It’s essential to put oneself in the shoes of the applicant. Consider their journey, the challenges they might face, and the anxieties they might have.

“From the recruiting perspective, we try to create a timeline of each department’s process, leading with empathy. It’s really just putting ourselves in the shoes of the candidates and understanding if this recruiting process is enjoyable for us,” Dave Deguzman, Head of Recruitment at Ylopo, comments.

By approaching the hiring process with empathy, HR professionals can foster a more inclusive, understanding, and efficient recruitment process.

Jordan Greenstreet, Sr. Partner Marketing Manager at Checkr adds: “From the Checkr perspective, our whole mission is fair chance hiring. It’s built on the premise that everyone, regardless of their background, has the right to be fairly assessed for the role that they’re qualified for.”

This not only enhances the candidate’s experience but also positively impacts the company’s brand in the job market.

2. Dealing with inundated qualified candidates

When a job posting is inundated with qualified candidates, it’s crucial to maintain a transparent, communicative, and empathetic recruitment process. Firstly, leverage technology to ensure timely communication.

Automated emails can be set up to acknowledge receipt of applications, providing candidates with a clear expectation of the timeline for feedback.

For instance, if a match is identified, the candidate could be informed within a set number of days. If not, a courteous rejection email should be sent.

While it’s disappointing to receive a rejection, it’s preferable to being left in the dark.

Setting clear expectations from the outset ensures candidates are not left waiting indefinitely.

Additionally, personalizing communication, even if it’s automated, can make a significant difference in how the company is perceived.

Remember, word of mouth is powerful; candidates will share their experiences with peers. The recruitment process should align with the company’s brand, ensuring every interaction reflects the company’s values and ethos.

Deanna Baumgardner, President at Employers Advantage, agrees that “it sucks to get a thanks note but it’s better than getting nothing. Even if it’s not as easy as a click of a button, I think the investment in the time that it takes to communicate with candidates is worth it”.

3. Onboarding is crucial

The initial days of a new hire are critical in setting the tone for their entire tenure at the company.

Effective onboarding goes beyond just introducing a new hire to their role.

It’s about integrating them into the company culture, ensuring they have the necessary resources, and providing continuous support.

Deanna Baumgardner states: “It’s really just planning ahead. Plan through the recruiting process to know who is involved, what is each person’s role in the recruiting process, and what specifically are you looking for from your candidates.”

Especially in remote settings, where face-to-face interactions are limited, HR professionals should prioritize regular check-ins, assign mentors or buddies, and provide clear documentation and training materials.

“One thing I think about when it comes to onboarding is that it is the most important aspect of a team member’s lifecycle experience when they join the company. Having a solid onboarding experience is especially crucial when working remotely,” Nadia Alaee, senior director human resources business partner at Deel, comments.

4. Promoting from within

Internal growth and development are essential for employee satisfaction and retention.

Encouraging and facilitating internal promotions can lead to higher job satisfaction, increased loyalty, and better overall morale.

HR professionals should ensure that employees are aware of potential career paths within the organization, offer training and development opportunities, and maintain open communication about potential growth opportunities.

As Melissa Escobar-Franco, VP of HR in Workable, puts it: “We really want everyone here at Workable to see that they have a career here, that they have a career path in place. We want to keep people on board for longer, while still having a healthy turnover rate.”

5. Challenges of global hiring

Hiring across different geographic locations presents its own set of unique challenges and considerations when your are implementing your hiring strategy in tough times.

When hiring globally, it’s crucial to be aware of cultural nuances, local employment laws, and compensation standards.

Additionally, with varying time zones and work cultures, HR professionals need to ensure that communication remains consistent and that all employees, regardless of location, feel integrated into the company culture.

Lastly, the time between the signing of the job offer and the starting date is crucial. Especially, when hiring from abroad, these times may increase.

Nadia Alaee offers her view on this: “We’re keeping them excited about the deal, sending them any sort of documentation they can start, introducing them to team members. Having the hiring manager have a touchpoint with them on a cadence that makes sense to make sure that they’re still really excited even though it’s two or three months away”.

6. Gamifying recognition

Gamification can be a powerful tool to foster a culture of appreciation and acknowledgment within an organization.

Implementing gamified recognition systems, like awarding points or badges for achievements, can motivate employees and encourage positive behaviors.

However, it’s essential to ensure that such systems don’t inadvertently create a competitive or exclusionary environment. The focus should always remain on fostering collaboration and appreciation.

Dave Deguzman shares his experience at Ylopo: “we typically give people five tacos a day to offer. We have the reward store, but we really focus on the gamification around. We’re trying to foster a culture of recognition and giving rather than a popularity contest of the one who receives the most tacos. So it’s the people that are appreciating the most versus the popularity.”

7. Using technology in hiring

While technology can streamline the hiring process, it’s essential to balance automation with a human touch.

Leveraging technology in recruitment, like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) or AI-driven screening tools, can make the process more efficient.

However, HR professionals should be wary of over-relying on these tools. It’s essential to maintain a personal touch, ensuring that candidates have a point of human contact and don’t feel lost in an automated system.

Deanna Baumgardner comments: “Technology creates a lot of efficiency and it can bring people to the surface or it can eliminate people that aren’t qualified. But we need to take the time to remember that there is somebody on the other end who is a human trying to get their next job and to create a livelihood for themselves and their families”.

By understanding and implementing these insights while crafting your hiring strategy in tough times, HR professionals can enhance their hiring practices, ensuring a more efficient, inclusive, and empathetic recruitment process during economic headwinds.

Candidate to employee, made easy. Book your demo at Workable and make use of the world’s leading hiring platform.

The post Evolve your hiring strategy in tough times: 7 webinar lessons appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

More than 600 people signed up for the event, titled Optimizing the candidate experience: A webinar with Spark Hire.

Meet the experts in that webinar:

• Melissa Escobar-Franco, VP of People at Workable
• Jackie Sirni, Senior People Operations Specialist at Workable
• Jeremy Tolan, Partnerships Manager at Spark Hire

A video of the hour-long chat is below – but if you want just the digestible highlights, read on to learn the key takeaways on how to make your hiring process more efficient:

Can you share some tips that you use for personalized communication with candidates?

Melissa: “It’s mostly about continuous engagement with your candidates’ entire journey from start to finish, and how you’re connecting with them. We always say that a recruiter is a candidate’s first friend when they connect with a company. How much more personal can you get when you have someone on the other end rooting for you?”

Jeremy: “Something that we do a lot at Spark Hire in our own hiring process is incorporate video in the email communication. A study from White House Research and Advisory found that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to just 10% when they read it. So taking the time to add that video can really help personalize the process and is super effective.”

With all of the tools and automations that exist, do you see any challenges that may come along with all these personalizations?

Jackie: “Yes, it’s always going to make the recruiter’s life easier by having those automated emails built out, but you have to build them in a thoughtful way. For example, I know that sometimes the hiring process for entry-level positions can go very fast. The candidate could feel like we’re rushing through the process when really it’s just the natural cycle of it. So on that first touchpoint with the candidate, I tell them this could feel a little crazy. We can slow down if you need to, but we do want to fill this position pretty quickly. There’s a need to explain why we’re moving fast, but still make them feel like they have personalized communication with us.”

How do you leverage technology to create a positive and favorable hiring experience?

Melissa: “You really need to have a robust applicant tracking system in place. It’s really going to help you do your job and do your job well. Here are some specific technologies that we use within our ATS that I think are beneficial for both the hiring team and the candidates alike:

• Job descriptions: We have thousands of job descriptions in our tool so that we don’t have to start from scratch when it’s time to hire
• Interview Scorecards: These ready-made interview question packages will help you evaluate different elements of a job applicant’s candidacy for a role. They also ensure uniformity and accuracy in interviews.
• Assessments: You can also use these predesigned assessment tools to assess core competencies such as numerical reasoning, verbal comprehension, abstract reasoning, and so on.

Jackie: “My personal favorite tool within Workable is the self-schedule link. I could sing its praises for the rest of my life. Everyone has been in that moment where you’re trying to schedule an interview and your day gets busy, the candidate gets back to you at the time they’re available and you’re like, sorry, somebody already booked me for that time. Can we reschedule? With the self-schedule link, I send it to the candidate and they get it and book the interview with me within minutes of them getting it. Then it’s on my calendar, and I don’t have to think twice about it.”

Jeremy: “Video interviews are the main feature that our software provides, and there are two types of video interviews that are really helpful for organizations. One of them is a one-way video interview where you’re able to set up questions in advance so that candidates record video responses on their own time. The other one’s a live video interview, which most people are familiar with. We found that on average, the companies that are using Spark Hire’s one-way interviews have made their screening process five to seven times [faster].”

Q: Why is it so important to be transparent with your candidates about the interview process? What are organizations doing to be more transparent with their candidates throughout the process?

Jeremy: “Just put yourself in your candidate’s shoes. Applying for jobs can be a really stressful experience for candidates, so you want to set up an environment where you’re trying to relieve that as much as possible and make candidates feel as comfortable as possible, so being transparent plays a role in that.”

Jeremy (cont’d): “To add that transparency, something that I’d really encourage you to do is ask your team members to be involved in your process. Encourage them to connect with candidates that would be interested in speaking with a member of the team that they’d be joining. Having a candidate talk to a peer can be like the ultimate testimonial for your company. And it can be a great way to win that candidate over and have your organization stand out.”

Jackie: “A huge part for me is building out that interview timeline, and being honest about how long the process is going to take. So I always outline something about who they’re going to talk to and then I’ll give a little bit of information about who each person is in the process.”

Melissa: “We believe in transparency so much that we’re holding ourselves accountable to it. It’s actually included in our performance reviews in terms of how quickly we’re getting back to candidates, what are the touch points in between, what’s the quality of the feedback that’s being given, etc. We care about it so much that we are rating ourselves against it because we really want to do a good job there.”

The post Optimizing the candidate interview experience: Experts share their tips appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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So, how can you choose the best place to start? The answer is easy – “look at the data”. We surveyed nearly 800 business and HR professionals, resulting in numerous compelling insights to help us better understand the status of DEI in companies and the most impactful ways to take action.

Tune in to hear the experts discuss how to:

• Dissect the most compelling insights around DEI in the workplace and utilize them to create a business case
• Differentiate between “talking the talk” and “walking the walk” when establishing a tangible and sustainable DEI strategy
• Benchmark your own DEI goals with quantitative and qualitative data across your sourcing channels, recruitment process and workforce

The post A deep dive into the data behind DEI appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In the past year, we’ve experienced major change like never before. At home. At work. While some organizations are struggling with attracting and retaining talent in this new world of work, others are thriving. Why?

In this session, Josh will reveal his top 12 predictions for the future. If optimizing your culture, benefits, DEI, employer brand, candidate experience, or hiring technologies are on your priority list for 2021, this session is for you.

In just 60 minutes, Josh will give you a leg up on tackling 2021 and beyond.

The post Step into the future with Josh Bersin appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Join our expert, Stefan Nerinckx, Partner, Head HR-law department Fieldfisher Brussels & Professor, Employment Law University College Brussels, for Part 1 and 2 of “Breaking down Brexit”.

Part 1 was recorded in Dec 2020 before the Brexit split took full effect. Watch Part 2 below for a brief recap of Part 1 and a current update.

The post Breaking down Brexit appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we’re sitting down with Lissa Khan, Recruitment Manager at Weetabix. She’ll break down how to use your careers page to attract talent and put your brand into the spotlight. You’ll also get an early sneak peek into Workable’s new Advanced Careers Pages.

In just 45-minutes, you’ll learn:
– The most important elements of a careers page
– Creative ways to engage and attract talent on your site
– Top features in Workable’s Advanced Careers Pages

The post Advanced Careers Pages: Talent Attraction Made Easy appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we’re turning to culture and employer brand leaders to tell us how. They’ll show us how to reboot your employer brand from the inside out. And bring your questions, you’ll have plenty of time to ask the experts.

In just sixty minutes, this webinar will help you:

• Build the foundation of a thriving modern culture
• Measure success and adapt over the first 6 months to a year
• Showcase your work culture and attract great talent

The post How to reboot your employer brand appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s why we’re turning to Fadjanie Cadet, LEK Consulting’s Diversity Recruitment and Engagement Lead, to talk about actionable ways for you to succeed in your diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

She’ll talk us through…

• How these initiatives have changed over time
• What makes it unique now during these times
• How to start and make it sustainable for the future

The post How to build up your DEI initiative appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we turned to DEI experts, Chikere Igbokwe, Executive Recruiter and Diversity & Inclusion Activist at Macmillan Davies, Siobhan Randell, Inclusion and Diversity Lead at WhiteHat, and ZeShaan Shamsi, Partner at The People Collective. They’ll walk us through how to launch and build a strategy that is sustainable for the future. They’ll break down where to start and will share actionable changes you can implement in your recruitment process and company culture right now. And bring your questions, we’ll leave plenty of time to ask the experts.

Tune in to hear the experts discuss how to:

• Dive into quantitative and qualitative data across your sourcing channels, recruitment process and workforce
• Identify immediate and long-term changes that your organization can take to build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce
• Generate buy-in from your leadership team and across your organization

The post How to build a sustainable DEI strategy appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The conversation around remote work has shifted from short term to long term planning with companies looking to establish stable remote work policies and maintain business continuity.

For many businesses going fully remote is the most viable option, however it is not an easy decision to execute. Business leaders from HR, to Legal and Finance must work together to weigh the complex considerations that go with a move to fully remote work.

In this webinar Shopify, GitLab, Hired and Workable will discuss how they’ve transitioned to fully remote businesses and how to successfully navigate through this change.

Key Takeaways

• Legal, financial and operational factors to consider
• Cross functional partners to include in your decision
• Managing through change as a team

The post Managing the cross-functional transition to fully remote work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Your organization has announced a hiring slow down during the COVID-19 pandemic. So what do you do?

Advanced People Operations teams are focused on projects that will impact their organization in the future. One area of focus, aided by a shift to a more distributed workforce, is increased diversity and inclusion initiatives.

DE&I goals won’t go away, and as companies become more familiar with remote hiring, diverse pools of candidates will be more accessible than ever.

In this webinar we’ll explore how to impact your DE&I goals in the near term and lay the foundation to source, recruiting and hire diverse talent in the future.

Key Takeaways

• Actionable near term DE&I initiatives
• Operationalizing pay equity and total compensation
• Setting the foundation for diversity recruiting

The post Building a Diverse Distributed Workforce 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.

In this webinar, we explore what HR and Talent professionals can expect from a post-COVID hiring process — and what you can do now to prepare. You’ll get a closer look at our collective “new normal” and learn how it will impact your day-to-day, from attracting talent to onboarding new employees.

In just sixty minutes, this webinar will help you:

• Ready your hiring process for the new normal
• Immediately improve your employer brand and candidate experience
• Develop an engaging strategy for onboarding remote employees

The post Working, hiring and onboarding in the “new normal” 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.

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.

But what talent acquisition technology is there and what can we expect in the future in terms of TA automation? And how can all these tools help you solve your 2020 recruitment challenges?

To get answers to these questions, Workable hosted an hour-long webinar on Dec. 5, 2019, with the title “The Tech It Takes To Find Candidates in 2020”. In this webinar, we discussed tech in recruitment with two of the most renowned experts in the field:

• Hung Lee: an industry professional with over 15 years experience as a recruiter, head of talent and strategic advisor. He’s also the curator of Recruiting Brainfood, a weekly newsletter with around 18,000 subscribers.
• Matt Alder: a strategic consultant and a globally recognized talent acquisition thought leader with 20 years of experience. He also hosts the Recruiting Future podcast which currently has a monthly audience of 30,000.

Our own VP of Partnerships and former recruiter, Rob Long, moderated this discussion with the two experts, who shared their insights on how to use tech to find, engage, manage and evaluate candidates in 2020.

(By the way, Rob also asked our webinar viewers to vote on their biggest challenge in the year to come and the winner was – surprise, surprise – finding and attracting candidates). Here’s the full video:

If you’re more the reading type, here are six important questions Hung Lee and Matt Alder answered during the discussion:

• First, where have we come from?
• How do you approach the challenge of finding and attracting candidates?
• What technologies help us engage candidates?
• How do you build long-term relationships with candidates?
• What’s the state of assessment tech?
• What are the biggest takeaways from 2020?

1. First, where have we come from?

Matt Alder opened this discussion: “The best way to understand the future is to learn a little bit about the past.” He showed us a helpful diagram he created:

The post The future of talent acquisition: Two experts talk about recruitment tech in 2020 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Getting a pipeline’s worth of candidates to apply for your job might seem like it requires a lot of time, a lot of effort and/or three magic wishes. But, truth is, you don’t need any of those — with Workable, you can find the perfect number of candidates just by optimizing how you write, and where you publish your job posts. And we can help you nail that in 30 minutes. Join our webinar to learn how to:

• Understand your current job board performance
• Create job descriptions that more candidates will see
• Boost your job visibility even more with premium tools

The post How to attract more candidates with your job posts appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Join our panel of recruiting and immigration law experts, Dr. Sarah Lieberman, Louise Haycock & Matt Buckland for a discussion on possible Brexit outcomes for recruitment, what a post-Brexit talent market might look like and how you can start to prepare.

The post Brexit: Recruiting Through Uncertainty, London appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Whether you’re the woman confronted with these challenges, or the people leader tasked with solving them, our Boston-based panel will share strategies you can use to address and overcome the unique issues that arise when age and gender biases overlap in the workplace.

The post Diversity in Gender & Age, Boston appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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2018 is bringing unique challenges to recruiters in the form of new data privacy regulations in the EU (GDPR) and increased scrutiny from people worldwide about what data they share with companies and how it’s used.

In this webinar we’ll cover:

• GDPR features
• Single sign-on options
• Workable’s ISO 27001:2013 certification

Designed GDPR features around three main tenets of GDPR, Right to erasure, candidate consent and data retention.

The post Security and data privacy: SSO, ISO, GDPR appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The session will specifically focus on those in the recruiting, HR and talent industry. Throughout and at the end of her presentation, questions were taken from the audience.

We have recently published three great resources if you’d like to read even more about GDPR for HR and recruiters:

1. GDPR checklist: Requirements for recruiters and HR
2. A recruiter’s guide to GDPR compliance

The post A GDPR rundown for US companies, NYC appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.