Blog – PageUp

Why ‘Applicant to Hire Rate’ is a crucial metric in 2020

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 07:02:04 +0000

COVID-19 has changed the recruiting game. With lots of talent on the market right now, you’d think finding people to fill roles would be easy. That’s not always the case.

If you’re receiving too many applications for open roles, or too many of the wrong kind of applicants, this is a red flag. The good news is, there is a metric people often overlook that can address this problem.

Want to know about the 5 recruitment metrics you should be tracking in 2020 and beyond? Watch our webinar.

When we start the recruitment process, we have one end goal: to find and hire the right person for the role. To get there, we start with applications. But do you know how many applications you need to find one successful hire? If you’re receiving too many, you’re wasting time and effort sifting through unsuitable resumes. Too few, and you might not have the skills or talent you need for the role.

To determine your hiring sweet-spot, let’s look at one of the most crucial recruitment metrics: Percentage Applicants to Hire.

Percentage applicants to hire is defined as the total number of hires divided by the total number of applications for the role or position. Think of it as reverse engineering from the hire that you made – how many applications were required to find that person? You can calculate your percentage applicants to hire using the following formula:

The applicant-to-hire ratio is critical for organisationsorganizations to understand now and as the COVID-19 pandemic evolves. The lower your applicant to hire rate, the fewer applicants you’re saying ‘yes’ to. In these times, it’s about quality not quantity – how many applicants do you need to secure a hire? If you’re taking high volumes of applicants through the recruitment process, you may not be able to provide a personalisedpersonalized, high-touch experience to all of them.

Many organisationsorganizations are not hiring right now. During an economic contraction, there are fewer roles being advertised and high job losses, stand-downs and furloughs.

But what happens when you open up the recruitment cycle again? It’s likely that any job opening will attract more applicants and your applicant-to-hire number will increase.

If your application volumes are high, your applicant to hire ratio will be lower. A low applicant to hire ratio is not something to be desired: it means you’re putting lots of people through the screening process, but only hiring a small fraction of them.

Ask yourself:

Are my job ads targeted enough?
Do I know my most effective talent sourcing channels?
Do I need to revisit my sourcing methods to identify and focus on the talent I need?

Assessing which channels hires are coming from is important, but if you’re inundated with wrong-fit applicants, you may need to work closer with hiring managers to understand the role requirements and be more targeted in your hiring.

If you’d like to learn more about how PageUp can help you track and optimise your current recruitment and talent management approaches, you can request a demo.

How does your rate compare?

According to global PageUp research and customer benchmarking, on average for every 100 applications received, four people are hired. Put another way, on average globally and across all industries 25 applications are needed for 1 hire.

The exact numbers vary based on the industry. So far in 2020, Higher Education has hired 7% of applicants (down from 8% in 2019). Retail in 2020 has only hired 3% of applicants, compared with last year where 4% of applicants were hired. Finance has also reduced its hiring, with only 3% of applicants hired this year, in comparison to last year’s 4%.

These are changing times. If you find your organisationorganization’s metrics differ to the benchmark, there could be a host of new reasons. The important thing is for you to discover the volume of applications required to find the right person for the role.

If you’re receiving high volumes of applications, ask yourself:

Are you an employer of choice?
If you are, a high volume of applications is to be expected, especially with more talent on the market right now.
If you’re not usually an employer of choice, are your job ads targeted enough?
Can you add any screening questions at the start of the application form to sift out non-valid applications?
Are you leaving job ads open for too long?

If you’re receiving a low volume of applications for a role, ask yourself:

Are your job ads reaching and engaging the correct audience?
Do your job listings need to be open for a longer period of time?
Is your application form too long? Is it mobile optimisedoptimized?
Is your careers site easy to navigate and engaging? This is where active and passive job seekers go to find out more about your organisationorganization.
Do you need to improve your employer branding?
Are you providing a seamless and easy candidate experience?

Knowing how to track and optimiseoptimize your applicant to hire rate will help you to cut unnecessary screening costs and ensure you’re providing a high-touch, personalised experience for all applicants.

Of course, recruitment technology goes a long way in automating and improving the candidate experience with less recruiter intervention, allowing you to recruit at-scale – but being targeted and strategic in your job search will always lead to better end-results.

Tools like PageUp can automate a great candidate experience, while also tracking important metrics such as applicant to hire rate through user-friendly dashboards. If you’d like to learn more about how PageUp can help you track and optimiseoptimize your current recruitment and talent management approaches, you can request a demo.

The post Why ‘Applicant to Hire Rate’ is a crucial metric in 2020 appeared first on PageUp.

4 successful recruiting campaigns Coles launched during a pandemic

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 01:52:08 +0000

Here’s how Coles processed 55,000 applications in record time and saved in agency fees – all during a pandemic.

Coles has been at the frontline of the nation’s COVID-19 response, providing essential food, services and supplies to the public throughout the pandemic. Behind the scenes, their essential workforce has been keeping stores staffed and shelves stacked, and deliveries running around the clock for Australians who need it most.

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, Coles was able to successfully bring on 12,000 new staff in the space of a few short weeks to keep Australia running.

How did they enable finding high-quality talent at-scale and at short notice? The key lies in PageUp’s powerful applicant tracking system (ATS) that provides a full view of current talent, talent pipelines, and internal opportunities.

1. Leveraging internal mobility and redeployment

When the second wave of COVID-19 hit, Coles was once again faced with huge demand as shoppers stocked up on supplies before a looming lockdown. With an urgent need for people to come and work shifts on short notice, their talent acquisition team turned to redeployment to find the skills they need.

But redeployment is something organisationsorganizations can struggle with if they don’t have a clear plan. Coles was able to seamlessly redeploy its staff by leveraging PageUp ATS recruitment functionality to:

1. Define a population set within existing employee data by segmenting employees based on:

Where they work
When they are available
Employment type: casual, full time, part-time
Names and email addresses

2. Create a unique internal application form

This allowed Coles to gain an updated perspective of their people’s details, availability and whether they are willing to work across different stores or regions.

3. Communicate seamlessly with employees

SMS and bulk email functionality allowed the Coles’ talent acquisition team to communicate easily with existing team members around the shifting needs of the business. Many of these correspondences had links to internal application forms, where thousands of employees expressed interest in open internal roles. The details of these thousands of willing employees was then fed directly into Coles’ workforce planning strategy.

2. Processing 55k job applications in record time

As customer demand increased, Coles needed to hire extra hands to replenish key items and re-stack shelves. A ‘Friends and Family’ campaign was born, which relied on internal referrals as a valuable source of quality hires.

Coles sent an application link to employees which they then passed on to the friends and family they thought would be suitable. Based on this reference from an existing team member, Coles hired these interested candidates and moved them to offer status, undertaking reference checking afterwards. This was a fast and efficient way to get people onto the books at-scale – and this approach helped them process the 55,000 applications they received and hire 2,500 family and friends as a result.

The flexibility of the PageUp system enabled Coles to move these applicants from application to offer, getting them onboard quickly and then completing the required background, reference and employment checks post-offer.

Nina Pollard, National Head of Talent Acquisition praised the PageUp system for its flexibility, configurability and ability to adapt to challenging circumstances. “The PageUp system is so malleable, so flexible that you can mold it to your required use cases quickly,” Pollard said.

“The PageUp system is so malleable, so flexible that you can mold it to your required use cases quickly,” – Nina Pollard, National Head of Talent Acquisition, Coles

“You have all the pieces at your fingertips, so really it is just about putting those pieces together to suit your needs. What is great is that you have the ability to get the process down to your own organisationorganization’s level of detail that is needed, for instance, for us we could tailor the job card. It makes the system so powerful and able to support and adapt our unique volume and scale.”

To assist in interviewing thousands of candidates, Coles integrated video interviewing partner Vieple with their PageUp ATS in what Pollard says was an “amazingly fast” implementation time of 48 hours. Coles will continue to use video interviewing for stores now as “store managers love it”.

3. Redeploying employees: Cross-company mobility

When the first round of COVID-19 layoffs arrived, they hit hard. When lockdown was first enforced in April, it’s estimated that 780,000 Australians lost their jobs in the space of just one week.

Many of these were from organisationsorganizations such as YMCA, AFL, and AVC Liquor stores in Queensland – and Coles wanted to help these organisationsorganizations in their time of need. Coles partnered with these companies and many more to identify possible staff that had been stood down or furloughed – then used the PageUp ATS to send these people unique links to apply for roles. In doing so, Coles was able to fill critical gaps in their workforce at-speed, while also supporting Australian companies. It’s a fantastic example of cross-company mobility that sets the bar for collaboration within the Australian business community in the future.

4. Fast-tracking walk-in recruiting

Approximately 30% of Coles hires come from walk-in applicants, which inspired Coles to launch a campaign to fast-track the recruitment process for walk-ins. Using QR codes unique to the walk-in process, in-person applicants could then apply in real time and give store managers their application number in addition to their CV for immediate hiring.

Store managers can now hire walk-ins on the spot, and send their application to be processed through the PageUp ATS back at Head Office. Within 48 hours these walk-ins are ready to commence work, making the recruitment process incredibly fast, efficient and scalable.

To read more about how Coles handles high-volume hiring, see 9 tips from Coles to recruit at scale.

The post 4 successful recruiting campaigns Coles launched during a pandemic appeared first on PageUp.

17 hiring tools to support your online recruiting

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 06:43:37 +0000

The way we recruit has fundamentally changed overnight, and each new day brings fresh challenges for hiring teams. They need to do this in a way that’s scalable, and that still provides a great candidate experience. And they have to do this all completely online – from home offices, or perched at the kitchen table, conducting interviews in the one quiet part of the house (closet, laundry or garage), or propped up on the couch with a pet crying for attention nearby.

It’s a tall order for many hiring teams – many of whom are operating with reduced headcount and resources. Yet these teams are expected to deal with more applicants than ever before. The wave of layoffs and furloughs that accompany the COVID-19 pandemic – over 40 million have filed for first-time unemployment in the US alone, and close to 1 million Australians have lost their job since March – have meant there are huge amounts of people on the market. Some organisationsorganizations have seen a 400% increase in applications for an open role.

This has meant that overnight, tech adoption has been accelerated 10 years. Even laggards have been forced to adopt online recruiting tools to survive, as organisationsorganizations realiserealize that HR tech is the only viable way to scale-up their hiring power and do more with fewer resources.

In this article, we’ll discuss the 15 online recruiting tools every talent team should know about. These tools will supercharge your remote recruiting while still providing a seamless candidate experience with a human touch.

We’ll cover:

How COVID-19 is forcing a move to online recruiting
The 17 online hiring tools you need to master remote hiring, including software for:

What’s changed and why do we need to move online?

More than formal training and industry associations, 76.3% of talent acquisition (TA) professionals believe that an improved tech stack will bolster their recruitment capability. This is according to recent research presented by TalentPod at the recent Next Wave Talent conference about the top talent acquisition trends to come out of the current crisis.

The survey found that 91% of TA teams expect a mix of home and office work will be the way of the future, with 89% of organisationsorganizations already establishing a working from home policy. Talent acquisition will have increased responsibilities coming out of COVID-19, such as keeping employees engaged, and ensuring remote onboarding still keeps people connected to their new role and company. With an average ratio of 1 TA professional to 100 employees, the workload for HR teams is piling up. It’s no wonder organisationsorganizations are turning to technology to help.

What tech is your company exploring due to Covid?

65% are exploring remote onboarding
56% are exploring video – both for interviewing and advertising
54% are exploring online meeting software
45% are exploring online background checking
36% are exploring online testing

Tech will drive the next phase of development as we learn to recruit in a remote world, and in response HR priorities are shifting. People teams are now focusing and prioritising:

78% – Talent engagement
76% – Internal mobility
74% – Onboarding
59% – Outplacement

Technology supports all of the above strategies and provides a streamlined experience for candidates. But with thousands of vendors offering a range of tools, it can be intimidating to find the right tech for your organisationorganization. That’s why we’ve compiled an easy-reference list of tools to get you started on your remote recruiting journey.

17 online recruiting and hiring tools you need to know

1. PageUp recruitment marketing software

OrganisationsOrganizations spend huge amounts of time delivering a great experience for their customers, but many don’t prioritiseprioritize the candidate experience to the same degree. This is a big problem.

Let’s not forget those candidates could also be your customers – whether or not they’re successful in their application, they should still have a great end-to-end experience. Unfortunately, many organisationsorganizations are failing to deliver on the candidate experience due to the sheer volume of applications they’ve received. Most hiring managers would prefer not to go cold or “ghost” candidates, but providing adequate nurture and touchpoints is hardly practical if you’re communicating manually without hiring tools – like recruitment marketing software.

Recruitment marketing can keep candidates engaged and warm in talent pools – even if you’re not hiring right now. Pre-set nurture flows can mass-communicate to candidates at-scale, providing regular updates and personalisedpersonalized touchpoints to everyone in the hiring process. Analytics and benchmarking allows you to see where people are falling off and adjust your approach.

2. Curious Thing: Voice-based AI interviewing

The age of manual recruitment has come to an end. COVID-19 has accelerated remote and tech-enabled recruiting, and even laggard organisationsorganizations are realising they need to think differently about recruitment.

Hiring teams are becoming more open to using robotics and AI to do some of the heavy lifting – giving them hours back in the day to focus on valuable human interactions. AI solutions like Curious Thing handles the initial candidate screening with voice-based AI conversational interviews that are scalable and allow you to screen large volumes.

The AI interviewer is also able to assess candidates using behavioural questions designed to screen for attitudes and competencies – rather than simply scanning a resume. As we move into the new world of work, essential skills like the ability to be change-agile or collaborative and innovative are becoming more important than formal qualifications or “hard skills” and experience alone. The death of the resume may not be far away.

3. PredictiveHire: Text-based AI interviewing and online testing

PredictiveHire automates interviews so that each applicant is interviewed in-depth and at scale via a text chat that surfaces candidates with traits common to success. This helps you surface the best candidates, faster, while remaining completely remote. Candidates are then assessed, scored and ranked using AI technology, dramatically reducing recruiter time and effort. In some cases, this led to 90% recruiter time savings, when compared with standard recruiting processes.

4. Talegent: Online assessments

Combining a first-class candidate experience with predictive analytics tools, Talegent can assess candidates to find the best talent at-scale. Talegent offers a wide range of industry-specific solutions to predict performance: these include personality, cognitive ability and values assessments, allowing you to identify and quickly recruit top performers. The best part is these assessments can be done from anywhere in the world, allowing you to choose the best person for the role, no matter where they are.

5. Vieple: Video interviewing

Without the ability to interview candidates face-to-face, recruiters have had to pivot to video interviewing software solutions practically overnight. One example is Vieple, a video interviewing platform that can be used by recruiters and candidates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This allows candidates to schedule and record interviews regardless of location of time zones. One PageUp client was even able to implement Vieple with their existing PageUp ATS within 24 hours – and all while completely remote. Integrating with Vieple allows you to quickly identify the right candidates and progress them to the next stage of the recruitment process.

6. Alcami: Video interviewing

Alcami provides on-demand video interviewing solutions to help the busy remote recruiter. This helps organisationsorganizations to narrow down a broad talent pool and find the right people, faster. Alcami also delivers an improved candidate experience, giving people the option to take interviews when and where it best suits their schedule

7. HireVue: Video interviewing

HireVue combines video interviewing software with predictive artificial intelligence to allow businesses to surface the best candidates, faster. It provides video interviewing, assessments, and coaching to help remote recruiters interview and evaluate candidates when and where it suits them best.

8. SkillSurvey: Reference checking

Reference checking can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of recruiting. When done remotely, it can be even more tedious. SkillSurvey Reference makes reference checking simple and streamlined, and helps remote hiring teams get meaningful feedback in a timely manner. It’s an online, automated referencing solution that gives you deep, comprehensive insights on all your candidates, whether you’re online recruiting, onboarding, or managing a placement.

9. CV Check: Background checks

CVCheck is a global provider of background checks that provides the verified information you need to make confident hiring decisions by reducing your hiring risks, improving staff retention rates, and increasing efficiencies in the hiring process. Importantly, remote hiring teams can launch checks from wherever they work, making the recruitment process shorter and more efficient.

10. Sterling: Background checks

Sterling RISQ provides comprehensive background and identity verification services, which is perfect for the changing needs of an evolving remote global workforce.

11. Xref: Background checks

Xref makes reference, background and ID checking straightforward, fast and secure. Remote recruiters can request reference checks in seconds, and references can be completed in a little as 24 hours. Backed by local support teams, Xref also offers multi-language capabilities and meets the highest global compliance standards (ISO 27001).

12: PageUp Recruitment Management

When recruiting remotely, the candidate experience can be disjointed, low-touch, and just plain frustrating. To ensure a seamless experience for remote candidates from finding a job listing, to applying, interviewing, and onboarding, the best of breed point solutions we’ve just discussed should all be integrated with a powerful ATS. Integrating with a core ATS also ensures recruiters and hiring managers have a great experience – all backed up by deep analytics.

PageUp Recruitment Management features powerful analytics dashboards and custom-built reports, and with one simple system you can manage, track and optimiseoptimize every stage of the candidate lifecycle.

13. PageUp onboarding

Perfecting remote onboarding should be a priority for all talent acquisition teams. Remote new-starters are likely to feel even more disconnected from their new workplace in their first months, so HR has to work even harder to make the onboarding experience memorable. If they don’t, new starters will feel unsupported in their new role, they won’t be set up to succeed, and they’ll likely leave within a few months. Hiring teams will be left at square one.

Thankfully, technology can make onboarding smooth and efficient, and can connect new starters to the culture and values of their new organisationorganization. Tools like PageUp onboarding can deliver an astounding onboarding experience that sets a new starter up for success no matter where they are.

14. HelloSign: eSignature for easy onboarding

Onboarding remotely doesn’t just present challenges for the new hire. It also raises compliance and payroll headaches for HR teams that need to ensure boxes are ticked and forms signed, all which must now be done completely online.

HelloSign makes filling out onboarding documents easy, providing an intuitive way for organisationsorganizations to send and request e-signatures from new starters. HelloSign lets businesses integrate leading eSignature functionality directly into their onboarding process with an easy to use interface and powerful security.

15. Mumba: SSO for seamless integrations

Boosting new starter engagement starts by providing a seamless employee experience. Mumba boosts productivity and employee engagement by connecting an organisationorganization’s HR and business applications in one central hub. Through system integrations, Mumba brings everything an employee needs into one user-friendly app, accessible from any device.
Through Mumba employees can access payroll, onboarding, training, learning, and other key HR and business systems from one single interface and without the need to login to multiple systems or apps. The result is a seamless digital experience across all employee systems.

16. Frontier e-HR: HRIS and payroll

Getting employees set up on payroll is one of the most important parts of onboarding, but without proper tech to assist you when doing this remotely, important compliance information can be overlooked. Built by HR professionals, Frontier e-HR offers a comprehensive range of HR capabilities to assist you in organising, growing, and paying your remote workforce. Frontier e-HR also offers Payroll Outsourcing services with a dedicated in-house payroll specialist to ensure compliance at every level.

17. Tracker: I-9 compliance

Tracker integrates with your core ATS to provide a centralisedcentralized and seamless remote onboarding experience. Once a new hire accepts their offer letter, the required Form I-9 process is initiated – all in a completely hands-off process. Tracker’s solution automates the onboarding process and reduces administration time all the while ensuring total compliance while remote. The Tracker integration also provides time-based colour-coded dashboards, email alerts, and reporting capabilities to ease the burden of tracking various deadlines.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of online hiring tech out there – there are thousands of best of breed solutions available for you to explore. Think of this as a way to get you started on your remote recruiting journey. And if the team at PageUp can help in any way to help you optimiseoptimize and streamline your recruitment marketing, recruiting and onboarding, do get in touch.

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Rebuilding your recruitment strategy after COVID-19

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 05:53:22 +0000

COVID-19 has forced an abrupt shift to remote and new ways of work, and many have learned the hard way that organisationalorganizational agility is critical for survival. In response, hiring teams have adopted flexible and collaborative approaches to rebuild their recruitment strategy, keep the lights on and the business moving forward. But will this innovative and proactive culture continue once the crisis has passed?

Here’s what we’ve learned so far:

The global pandemic has changed the employment landscape dramatically. Companies in highly impacted industries will continue to find themselves either laying off or furloughing employees. Others will be scrambling to scale up when they come out the other side.

As organisationsorganizations ride out the ongoing restrictions, future-focused HR leaders are beginning to make plans for the next wave of challenges beyond the Coronavirus outbreak. To survive and thrive in the new world of work, organisationsorganizations need to be ready to lead a quick, but considered recovery.

For some, the biggest challenge will be to hire strategically while making complex arrangements for their employees’ return to work. For others, scaling up their workforce and making faster hiring decisions will be top-of-mind. It’s uncharted territory for all leaders, particularly those in hard-hit industries who’ve had to make difficult decisions in the face of uncertainty. But as the economy gradually reopens, organisationsorganizations will need to reboot their recruitment strategy (whatever that may look like) before the competition snaps up talent and they’re left understaffed.

We’re in the unknown

Technology has collapsed the boundaries between work and home. But it’s still too early to predict what the future holds. How do we handle uncertainty and start thinking more strategically? We rebuild a workforce that can weather any storm.

We’ve seen just how valuable and strategic the HR function is in the wake of this crisis. Fluid and timely communications have kept our non-essential businesses running smoothly amid daily changes. We know maintaining employee support, engagement and performance has been a top priority for HR teams. But now these teams face an even greater test: planning for a return-to-work against the backdrop of an uncertain future.

What have we lost – and what are we seeing in the market?

Recent ABS figures show the unemployment rate in Australia has climbed to 7.1% in May – making it the highest percentage of people out of work since 1998.

The service industry has taken the biggest hit, with corporate roles in sales, administration, support and talent acquisition also among the first to go. These are the roles that will need replacing as soon as businesses recover. An added challenge lies in the fact that some of these roles are notoriously difficult to fill.

As talent acquisition rushes to speed up the recovery process, the temptation to fill these roles immediately will be greater than ever. But if an employer can’t find time to identify the key skills needed to support new business goals, they’re putting themselves at risk of enormous setbacks. An increase in employee turnover will put them back at square one.

On top of that, there will be a high number of applicants for open roles and top talent on the market who are ready to talk. How will employers surface the best candidates before their competitors do?

Here are five steps you can take to rebuild your recruitment strategy after COVID-19:

1. Revisit and re-evaluate your recruitment strategy (even if you’re not in a position to hire right now)

“Most organisationsorganizations’ first priority has been crisis response and emphasising health, safety, essential services, and the virtualisationvirtualization of work and education. Now, as organisationsorganizations begin to emerge from this response phase, leaders are focusing on the next set of workforce challenges as they plan for the recovery.” (Deloitte, 2020)

Whether freezing, stabilising or ramping up hiring, employers must re-evaluate their recruiting strategy and position themselves competitively in a recovering job market. Use this time to reassess your organisationorganization’s recruitment goals and make necessary adjustments based on recent changes in the market. Secondly, look at your existing talent inventory first – you may not need the same type of talent any longer. For example, you may be a retailer that previously hired high-volumes of floor staff, but have now shifted to online shopping. You’ll need more warehouse staff to facilitate this.

Keep in mind what has worked in the past won’t necessarily work in the future. Shifts in the labour market, updates to regulations and the tight race for talent should all inform your strategy. Just like marketers, recruiting teams need to pivot their strategy based on their current audiences’ needs. Similarly, employers should start thinking about how they can target different talent segments to align with their new business strategy.

To formulate a plan, consider setting up a meeting with hiring managers and C-suite to establish KPIs and ask these four questions:

Are you freezing, hiring or stabilising?
What type of roles will you need in future?
What headcount will you need?
How will you screen these candidates – and who will do so?

2. Understand the gaps

Ask yourself, “Where does my organisationorganization currently stand from a people perspective: What have we lost, and what are the new skills we need?”

The current crisis has foregrounded the truth that people are an organisationorganization’s greatest asset. OrganisationsOrganizations have learned that success can be measured by the skills, knowledge, experience and effectiveness of their employees. According to PageUp research, only 37% of organisationsorganizations say they understand their current skill gaps. COVID-19 adds another element of difficulty. So, how do you identify and replenish critical skills lost after standing down or laying off your employees?

Identify the roles you have lost

The first step is to identify the roles you have lost. These roles will need filling both in the short-term and the long-term, so it’s important to have a clear view of the skills you have and the skills you’ll need as the economy starts to reopen. Investment in talent should be like any other strategic investment choice. Get the complete picture before you make any decisions. To gain a full understanding of your current workforce, look to your talent pipelines and existing talent. This will inform next steps for building your recruitment strategy.

Understand skills gaps

Secondly, your skills gaps may be different from before. For example, if your organisationorganization has switched from restaurant services to food delivery, you may need different skill sets in your business. Or rather than simply screening for hard skills and past experience, you might consider hiring for soft skills like the ability to be agile or collaborative

Changing ways of work will also influence your skills gaps. More and more employees are contemplating whether they want to work from home in the future. Gartner research shows that 80% of Australians want to work from home – higher than the global average. As a result, you may need to screen for remote working skills such as the ability to self-motivate or strong time management.

Increase internal mobility

Some organisationsorganizations have deployed an internal mobility program to fill the skills gaps that have appeared since the crisis unfolded. Internal mobility allows teams to evaluate the scope of their existing employees and promote lateral career advancements or moves between teams and business units. For example, if an employee has transferable skills or characteristics, they may not be able to move vertically. However, these employees can be redeployed into different teams or divisions in the business.

Internal mobility is a passion of ours at PageUp – but many organisationorganization’s aren’t doing it well. But internal mobility allows you to quickly redeploy talent but it’s reliant on understanding where the skill sets lie in your business. At PageUp, we have been working with our customers to understand, redeploy and re-purpose their existing talent to fill critical roles or seize new opportunities for growth. (Especially within hard-hit areas of the business.) It’s a crucial move to stay agile and successful in an uncertain landscape. It also leads to significant savings on the direct and indirect costs involved in recruitment and onboarding.

Internal employees get up to speed faster. That’s because they carry the culture and are already invested in the company. The figures speak for themselves: according to research from the Harvard Business Review, it takes an external hire three years to perform as well as internal hires in the same job.

Read: Internal Mobility: An organisationorganization’s secret weapon in times of change

3. Set yourself up for success (before you hire)

Regardless of whether you’re continuing to hire or in a total hiring freeze, you need to be thinking about building a recruitment strategy now.

To set yourself up for success in the future, consider the following:

Engage relevant stakeholders. Make sure you’re part of the conversation with senior leaders and hiring managers. Identify which roles, behaviours and skills your business will need.

Perform a skill gap analysis. What talent do you currently have in your organisationorganization? Where are the gaps? Is it a matter of replacing what’s been lost or are new roles and skills required?

Ask what skills and behaviours are required to ensure you deliver to your future organisationalorganizational goals. ‘Soft’ or essential skills like the ability to be change-agile and collaborative will become highly sought after. We are already seeing a shift. As mentioned earlier, 80% of Australians have expressed a desire to work from home: you may need to screen for the ability to self-motivate or time management skills.

Align recruitment strategy to business strategy. This is the time to begin – or if you have already begun, accelerate your proactive recruitment. Identify the talent segments you need to target: where are they and what will attract them to your organisationorganization? It’s an uncertain market, and people are unsure and looking at their options. Take advantage of this to build out talent pipelines. Ask yourself:

Commercially, where does your organisationorganization want to be in 6 – 12 months?
Do you know what your talents requirements are apart from the obvious talent shortages?
How can you plan for them?

Create the plan. Determine the timeline for execution.

Be ready to execute. Keep employees, candidates and talent pools warm. While you’re in a holding pattern, what can you do right now? Until you’re ready to pull the trigger, you need to keep talent pools and employees warm.

Here’s how you can do this:

Externally, use recruitment marketing to proactively tap into talent and build robust talent pipelines.
- EOI capture forms
- Engage passive candidates
- Nurture talent pools
Internally, maintain employee engagement.
- Redeploy talent
- Engage furloughed employees
Identify your most effective sourcing channels. Do you know what these are? Do you have a plan in place to tap into those channels?
Build EVP (Employee Value Proposition) and employer brand. If you are replacing roles you currently have an EVP and employer brand. Now’s the time to refresh it, particularly if you’re tapping into new talent segments. When you’re ready to hire there should be consistency of employer brand. Have those discussions with your hiring managers now.

4. Screen for the right skills (and hire the right candidate)

The consequences of hiring the wrong person for the job go beyond turnover costs. Rush the process or take any wrong turn, and you’ll only delay your recovery and put your business at a competitive disadvantage. To emerge stronger from the current downturn, companies will need to be more strategic about how they rebuild their workforce (and screen for skills that are most valuable to their recovery).

This may prompt teams to reconsider the types of roles they’ll need to recruit for and realign their requirements with the business after COVID-19. For example, rapid consumer behaviour changes have forced retailers to look for a different type of workforce to compensate for their lost foot traffic. Rather than hiring thousands of holiday casuals, they may need to hire for digital skills that support their e-commerce store or marketing channels.

The death of the resume and the rise of the behavioural interview

Experts are hinting at the slow decline of the resume as recruiters look beyond experience-based assessment to select candidates with the right attitude and potential to learn. OrganisationsOrganizations have diverted their attention from manually scanning resumes to focus on tech-enabled screening for behavioural attributes.

“The need for some skills, such as technological as well as social and emotional skills, will rise, even as the demand for others, including physical and manual skills, will fall.” (McKinsey, 2018)

‘Soft’ or essential interpersonal skills, like the ability to be change-agile and collaborative, will become highly sought after in our future job markets. But screening hundreds (or even thousands) of resumes for these behaviours is almost impossible. Even before COVID-19, employers received an average of 250 resumes per role and recruiters spent 73% of their time screening candidates.

AI and the future of candidate assessment tools

To pick up on these less-tangible traits at-scale, hiring managers are using best-of-breed tech vendors that look beyond job experience on a piece of paper. Using AI, psychometrics testing and other digital behavioural or competency-based solutions, employers are able to predict, understand, and match thousands of people to jobs, faster.

These tools pinpoint job successful candidates with highly sophisticated algorithms that predict desirable traits and future performance. They even reduce the inefficiencies and inequity of traditional hiring practices, like recruiter biases, that don’t always identify the most promising employees (and have little relevance to successful outcomes on the job).

Watch: Demystifying bias in AI for recruiting

Deliver a great candidate experience

The future of recruitment is changing radically. What hasn’t changed is the need to provide a great candidate experience. It will be a highly competitive talent market, there will be more applicants than previously, and there will always be competition for high-quality talent. If you’re not providing a great candidate experience, you’re missing an opportunity to attract the best candidates.

Savvy organisationsorganizations are staying in touch with candidates (even if they’re not ready to hire right now). They’ve learned that by adjusting their channels, messaging and focusing on candidate care now, they’re setting themselves up for future success.

How do you know if you’re providing a great candidate experience? Look to your offer acceptance rate for an answer.

Your offer acceptance rate is one of the best indicators that your recruitment experience is meeting candidate expectations. Why? Because maintaining a positive experience throughout and setting clear expectations from the outset is crucial for convincing a candidate to accept your job offer.

According to PageUp’s recent aggregate job market data, offer acceptance rates averaged across all employers have seen a dip (from 96% and 97% in 2018 and 2019, to 95% today). This raises alarm bells for market analysts.

Our Head of Customer Insights and Market Research, Rebecca Skilbeck, says these numbers reflect the higher level of uncertainty in the market. Any time the economy tightens, it’s presumed to be an employer’s market, because there are more available candidates. Meanwhile, candidates are also feeling the pinch of uncertainty. Hiring teams and recruiters must ensure all conversations with candidates maintain a consistent employer value proposition (EVP) and a clear understanding of the role, salary and company culture. (Remember: these people might even be your future customers.)

“It’s hard to have a high-touch, high-quality experience when you’re putting a lot more people through the process,” Skilbeck says.

Watch: Delivering a great candidate and employee experience: Integrations make it easy

5. Lean on technology to scale up hiring

Among the hard truths uncovered by the COVID-19 pandemic is the sheer number of organisationsorganizations ill-equipped for the technological demands of the future of work. This has led HR teams to ask a serious question: How well are we keeping up?

The reality is that technology often evolves faster than the industry itself. Expectations are high, and old habits that rely on time-consuming manual processes and gut-feel aren’t up to speed. HR teams need to rewrite the rules for hiring in the digital age.

The businesses that are perfecting their use of technology (like remote interviewing, screening, candidate video applications and onboarding) now will be well-placed to win the best talent when they’re ready to scale up hiring again. There’s plenty of tech to support businesses in creating a seamless experience for hiring teams and candidates alike. But the ones that don’t evolve will struggle to find the talent they need in the next 6 months.

Choose the right applicant tracking system (ATS)

The rapid shift to remote work has accelerated the uptake of technology, forcing laggards to invest in tools that perform administrative tasks and automate their workflow. Not only do these vital tools free-up time to focus on the “human” aspect of their role, they’re given access to the best talent.

Take an effective applicant tracking system (ATS) for instance: an essential investment for employers to recruit talent at-scale in a changing environment. In the current job market, where candidate details and availability are changing constantly, industry-leading automation keeps candidate data current and accurate. An ATS gives recruiters quick access to the information they need to undertake essential tasks. Hiring teams can then manage this data to build sophisticated talent pools faster than competitors and efficiently rebuild their workforce after their COVID-19 layoffs. Keep in mind that a good vendor should take a partnership approach to deliver an exceptional candidate experience, whilst allowing your business to scale up quickly with minimal disruption.

Leverage recruitment marketing software to provide a great candidate experience

The pace of recruitment will change over the next few months, which is why savvy recruiters are deploying automated recruitment marketing software to build high-quality pipelines of talent. When organisationsorganizations start to ramp-up hiring again, competition for talent will be more intense than ever. Much more than your regular job ad, recruitment marketing allows your organisationorganization to win the best candidates. It does this by broadening your talent network, increasing quality talent conversion, and engaging with candidates at every stage of their application journey. Once you’ve converted a visitor into a candidate, recruitment marketing uses powerful targeted messaging to build and maintain a positive relationship.

Screen at scale with artificial intelligence (AI)

One of PageUp’s most recent partners Curious Thing is reimagining screening and interviewing with automated interviews that use voice-based AI. Backed by advanced analytics, a digital interviewer conducts the first round of screening – but not in a way that removes humans from the hiring equation altogether. A conversational AI speaks to candidates then feeds back data points to hiring managers. This helps them screen candidates’ behavioural attributes and aptitude before progressing them on to a human interview. Furthermore, Curious Thing AI speeds up and smoothes the process of high-volume hiring, whilst eliminating unconscious hiring biases that influence decision-making.

Finally, prepare a future-focused hiring strategy now

Few industries have been left untouched by the economic fallout of this pandemic. We know the implications are felt at all levels of an organisationorganization. Regardless of where your hiring currently sits on your to-do list, a recruitment strategy is a necessary component of rebuilding your workforce. If you’re not hiring right now, your approach should be two-fold:

nurturing and engaging with employees and candidates to keep them warm and,
understanding the resources you’ll need for the future.

Rather than waiting until you’re ready to reboot hiring, ask yourself the following:

Is your process seamless and delivering a great candidate experience?
Are you comfortable with your HR tech systems?
Are they set up to scale fast?
Do you have agile interviewing and assessment solutions?

Don’t forget: communication brings trust and a sense of purpose to your teams to carry your organisationorganization through uncertain times. As businesses recover and look to hire back the talent that’s been lost, there will be a race for talent. But if leaders are to survive the next wave of economic challenges, and thrive in the future of work, they must put people at the heart of their strategy.

The post Rebuilding your recruitment strategy after COVID-19 appeared first on PageUp.

Running effective recruitment campaigns at-scale: A how-to guide in times of change

Wed, 20 May 2020 00:31:11 +0000

Adapting to rapidly changing environments can seem like a daunting task, and when it comes to talent mobility and recruitment, it’s important to acknowledge that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. Hence, the way you run recruitment campaigns could be very different. You may be preparing to hit the ground running when the time comes for you to scale up, or maybe you needed to launch a campaign yesterday because you’re already understaffed. For others it may be the right time to apply recruitment campaign thinking for redeployment within your organisation (read more about how to run effective internal mobility campaigns).

Whatever approach you take, we’re here to help. We’ve put together the following how-to guide to explain how to scale-up recruitment and run effective high volume campaigns from application to onboarding. Even if you’re not currently working with PageUp, we think you’ll find the following strategies helpful in your recruitment planning.

Managing bulk applications

Managing bulk applications is simple with PageUp’s sophisticated, versatile recruitment campaign functionality. Depending on the roles you’re recruiting for, the use case for campaigns can vary significantly. These could include: graduate roles, internships, expressions of interest, evergreen roles (e.g. retail consultants, teaching assistants, drivers), redeployment, and ramp-up (e.g. new store opening, Christmas casuals, emergency services). Each type of campaign has its own nuances, and the PageUp system can be configured based on your specific needs. Below we’ll highlight key elements in the PageUp toolkit that will help you manage your campaigns.

Filtering

When you have a high-volume of applications, the first thing to do is to surface the top applicants right away. Think of this as filtering 1000 applications down to the 50 that you really need to look at when running through your selection process.

Knockout questions

Knockout questions work by filtering out applications that don’t fit the mandatory requirements for a role. For example, the position description for your campaign may require that the applicant has a current drivers licence for a certain type of vehicle, or that they are willing to work a certain number of night shifts. You can choose to make the applicant ineligible on the spot (configured in the application form rules) or shift their application to a status that you know to check once you’ve exhausted other applications.

Selection criteria

When receiving a high number of applications, it’s important to have questions that will filter out applicants that may not have the key criteria you’re looking for. When helping organisations design their graduate application forms, for example, we recommend asking questions that help to determine whether an applicant has previously worked well in teams. Asking about their membership in sporting teams, group projects, and community service may be proxies for experience you’d expect seasoned professionals to have gained from years in the workforce. Here’s a tip: To keep the form clean and simple, consider using conditional questions to ask for more information based on the applicant’s responses.

Scoring

When building suitable ‘knock-out’ questions in your application form it’s important to think about how the responses could be scored in order to automate the selection process. Typically this means presenting responses in a way that you can score at different levels. If you’re asking about the number of years experience, rather than providing a free text box, you could ask this in a structured manner: Less than 1 year, 1-2 years, 3-5 years, 5 years+

Segmentation

Campaigns can attract applicants with a broad range of skills and experiences. It’s therefore important to group applicants by who should review them, the types of roles that they’re appropriate for, and add structured data to their profile so they’re easy to find when searching through thousands of applications.

Sub-campaigns

Often there are so many applications for a single campaign that multiple recruiters need to participate in the selection process. One simple way to segment the work is to use the ‘New application’ rule in the application form for the campaign to automatically push the application into a sub-campaign. This is commonly used for graduate campaigns where recruiters look after individual streams.

Flags & Categories

Flags are designed as a visual indicator so that a recruiter can quickly see certain qualities about an applicant and their application. As there are a limited number of flags (having too many would defeat the purpose of an easy visual indicator), categories can also be set.‘Speaks multiple languages’ could be a flag, whereas the individual languages are stored as a category (though if you want a simple way to capture languages you can also use the canned language profile question). The great thing is you can search for both at the database level via Talent Search for proactive sourcing processes later on.

Automation

While we’ve covered quite a lot of automation already, there are some other areas to consider when processing bulk applications: embedding assessments, and communicating with your applicants to ensure a great candidate experience. Learn more about creating a seamless candidate experience through our suite of marketplace integrations here.

Assessment

One common application rule we see being set is an automated status change to complete an online assessment based on the score that the applicant receives from the application form. It’s actually possible to have all applications go through the online assessment – usage generally depends on how the assessments have been purchased from the provider.

Communication

The most common email communication to automate is the acknowledgement of a new application. Rather than a simple one liner, for campaigns this is an opportunity to guide the applicant on what is going to happen next. Outline the process, typical timelines, and key contact points so that the applicant feels informed and supported. This is a great way to build trust with standout candidates, many of whom will be deciding whether they want to work for you based on the quality of their recruitment experience.

General tips

Make sure you use a question type that makes sense for what you’re asking. If you ask a Yes/No question that should be a ‘radio button’ or a dropdown – not a tick box. How will you filter your applications if an applicant ticks both Yes & No!
If you’re using eligibility questions to automatically send unsuccessful application emails to applicants, make sure that you comply with any government legislation or guidelines and that you’re not discriminating against any minorities (this goes for asking any mandatory questions about demographic data as well).
Use a dropbox for initial emails that are sent automatically by the system. While you should add a more personal touch at later stages in the application process, it’s important not to swamp your inboxes when thousands of people may be applying to your campaigns.
Communicate! Ensure that you communicate with your applicants at regular intervals to keep them engaged. You can either do this through application status moves, bulk communication, or by using the automated email workflows in our Recruitment Marketing solution.

Want more?

Read tips from Coles on how they recruit at scale.

Existing customers can learn more about configuring rules and scoring on application forms on our Knowledge Portal.

The post Running effective recruitment campaigns at-scale: A how-to guide in times of change appeared first on PageUp.

Hiring in the time of COVID-19: 3 key considerations

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 05:51:37 +0000

Work as we know it has fundamentally changed in the space of just one month. As HR grapples with the new realities of remote working and economic slowdown, hiring teams are reimagining recruitment in a virtual world. As some recruiters ramp up their efforts to meet increased demand, others are freezing hiring but looking for ways to keep their talent pools warm.

In these uncertain times, some recruitment trends remain unchanged. The expectations of a positive recruitment experience – from candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters themselves – is more important than ever before. Technology is empowering a new breed of recruiters who are digital-first and can adapt quickly to virtual ways of working. And the organisations that are first to embrace video interviewing software and virtual onboarding programs are the ones that will win the critical talent they need.

If you’re recruiting and onboarding remotely, here are three key things to consider.

1. What are your video interviewing needs?

Organisations now have to find alternatives to traditional in-person interviews – and quickly. From video interviewing software to remote screening solutions, HR teams need to carefully choose the tech they’ll rely on to facilitate this change.

When selecting what technology you’ll use, consider the following:

Ease of use: any solution you choose should be easy to use and mobile friendly.
Are you purchasing new tech or using free tech? There are a variety of options available if you don’t have the budget to purchase new video conferencing tech. Skype and Google Hangouts are two examples of free software options that will allow you to conduct online interviews. If you’re relying on free tech, the features and functionality can be limited – this may not be the best option if you’re looking to recruit at-scale. Zoom and Fuze are popular paid video conferencing options used by organisations around the world.
Do you want to conduct live or pre-recorded interviews? The tech you choose ultimately depends on your business needs: do you want to conduct live, or pre-recorded interviews? Video interviewing providers like Vieple allow recruiters to conduct automated, pre-recorded first-round interviews which reduces time to hire and eliminates scheduling headaches. Pre-recorded interviews can be filmed at a time that suits the candidate, and recruiters can conduct their reviews at a time that suits them. Since launching back in 2012, Vieple has tracked the use of video interviewing. Back then, 7% of organisations used video interviewing. Last year, 52% of organisations were using video interviewing software, and this number will likely accelerate in coming months. The organisations that are the early adopters are usually the ones that have recruiters and technology working seamlessly together.

It’s important to reset candidate expectations during this time. Be up front: the recruitment process won’t look like it normally does: it may be longer (or faster), it will be conducted remotely, and screening may be more intensive.

Virtual recruiting can be awkward at the best of times: internet connections can lag, it’s hard to break the ice from behind a screen, and with most of the country currently working from home, distractions abound. Children, pets, elderly family members are all in close quarters, which can lead to some memorable on-screen moments. It’s best to accept distractions may happen, take them in your stride, and move on.

2. Adjust your approach to screening

Video interviews can be challenging: recruiters may be new to using this software, and many candidates may have never done a virtual interview before. It’s important to adjust your approach to screening to take a range of variables into account.

Provide guidance to candidates on what to expect and tips to succeed. Before the interview, get in touch to suggest that they:

Do a tech test prior
Use a headset
Find a quiet place to conduct the interview
Ensure they have good internet coverage
Select a location that is well lit by indirect light

Hiring managers may also need guidance on how to conduct interviews and make hiring decisions. Things like honing competency-based questions, how to structure interviews when body language cues are absent, and how to put candidates at ease are all important considerations.

Set aside time for housekeeping at the start of each interview to avoid mishaps: having hiring managers ask ‘Can you hear me, can you see me?’ is a good place to start. If an interviewee’s internet is slow, let them know. If they are sitting too far from the camera, or too close, sort it out before the interview begins.

When you’re used to looking for nonverbal cues in face-to-face communication, it can be difficult to pick up on these indicators via video. This makes it difficult to assess for cultural fit, which means recruiters need to get creative and reframe the questions they ask.

Recruiters should ask questions that give a snapshot of the candidate’s personality – their sense of humor, their values and style of communication. Make the interview process as human and personal as possible to compensate for the distance between the recruiter and the interviewee.

Of course, if your organisation has to hire in high volume during this time – like many in the retail and healthcare industries – this high-touch approach won’t always work. When hiring at-scale, screening technology plays a vital role in processing large volumes of applicants and surfacing the best candidates more quickly.

Add screening questions to the application form to quickly rank candidates based on required skills and/or disqualify non-suitable applicants
AI-powered platforms like PredictiveHire surface candidates based on attributes unique to high-performers in the same role. The startup helped fashion chain Superdry screen 150,000 applicants to shortlist the best candidates for a role, and in doing so increased the retailer’s retention rate by 70%.
Career site chatbots can answer common questions candidates may have, and can even handle interview scheduling and automate candidate care.
Background screening providers like Xref can reduce time-to-hire in critical times like these by conducting automated reference and background checks.
Vieple can automatically schedule and pre-record first-round interviews that recruiters can screen in their own time.

3. Onboarding is more important than ever

Starting a new role can be challenging enough without the anxiety and uncertainty of starting at a new organisation during a pandemic. It is more important than ever for organisations to onboard new hires properly and make them feel supported, seen, and connected to their coworkers. You want to curb the negativity of the current situation, and maximise the ‘employee honeymoon’ phase.

Onboarding reinforces employer brand and can cement a new starter’s perspective of your organisation. According to Gartner research, if onboarding is engaging the probability of the employee staying 2 years or longer goes up. If it’s not, you risk losing the people you’ve worked so hard to attract – and it’s millennials who have the least tolerance for a poor experience.

If their first few weeks aren’t positive, new hires might not leave straight away – the economic landscape is too uncertain for that – but they could leave as soon as things begin to return to normal. Gartner research shows that while employees are likely to stay with a business during a crisis, if they’re not treated properly – this means having their efforts appreciated and their wellbeing prioritised – they’ll leave the organisation as soon as the economy recovers.

Luckily for HR teams that are being forced to onboard remotely, face to face onboarding is a thing of the past. Virtual onboarding is gaining momentum, empowered by a raft of technological solutions – from chatbots, to automated software that sends new hires everything they need to hit the ground running before day one.

Once a new hire starts with your organisation, HR has a key role to play.

To become accustomed to any new situation, routine is important. HR should develop a schedule for new starters in their first week to help them get introduced to the key people and teams that they’ll be working with. This regime helps restore a sense of normality and structure so new starters can navigate their first week without feeling lost.

New starters should be encouraged to maintain a regular cadence of contact with team members, and HR should schedule regular check-ins to address any concerns or simply let them know they’re here to help. When new hires arrive back at the workplace, they should feel as connected to their team and your culture as if they’d started in-person.

The post Hiring in the time of COVID-19: 3 key considerations appeared first on PageUp.

Building a successful DE&I strategy: A step by step guide

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 05:52:43 +0000

A robust diversity, equity and inclusion plan is a must for organisationsorganizations in 2020 – no longer just a nice to have. But diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces don’t just spring up overnight. Building a diverse workforce is impossible without intentional and inclusive talent acquisition strategies. HR can lead the way by carefully constructing DE&I strategies to attract, engage and hire people with diverse backgrounds and experience, and create an environment where everyone feels they belong.

The business case for DE&I

McKinsey research shows diverse organisationsorganizations outperform competitors by 35% and decision making by diverse teams delivers better outcomes than that of individuals 87% of the time. Diversity of experience, background and thought brings strength to an organisation. It promotes innovative thought and challenges the status quo, creating resilient and agile teams that are well-positioned to overcome challenges.

According to recent research from McKinsey, companies that double down on their DE&I initiatives now will be better positioned for growth and renewal post-COVID-19.

Some of the qualities that characterize diverse and inclusive companies—notably innovation and resilience—will be much in need as companies recover from the crisis. (McKinsey, 2020)

Truly diverse and equitable workplaces are created by designing processes that are inclusive of all people – regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education, disability, beliefs and other factors. And a truly diverse culture should be reflected and celebrated in an organisationorganization’s employer brand.

An employer brand that celebrates diversity is critical to attract top talent to your organization. 39% of candidates reject a role or do not proceed with a job application due to a perceived lack of inclusiveness within the organization, a recent McKinsey study shows.

Here’s where recruitment marketing takes centre stage. Recruitment Marketing strategies can support organisationsorganizations to attract, engage and nurture a diverse pool of candidates at-scale. Leading organisationsorganizations often take the following approach:

Showcase diverse content and perspectives from the first engagement with a career site to highlight an organisationorganization’s inclusive employer brand and culture
Build diverse microsites and landing pages that highlight specific DE&I programs or policies
Create inclusive job descriptions and reduce wording bias
Grow and nurture diverse talent communities with targeted campaigns and nurture flows

If you’re new to recruitment marketing, you might be wondering how to get started. We’ve pulled together a step by step guide to help you plan and execute a DE&I strategy that delivers results for your organisationorganization.

A robust diversity, equity and inclusion plan helps you meet compliance obligations and strengthens your bottom line with diverse perspectives. Recruitment marketing ensures you are attractive to the diverse groups of talent you want to recruit. Developing a DE&I initiative involves four main phases:

Data collection & analysis

Planning

Implementation

Ongoing improvement strategies

1. Data collection and analysis

First, you need a complete view of your workforce to understand your employee demographics and identify if there are inequities based on these demographics. Using the information already in your ATS or HRIS, set out to determine the following:

Capture data on employee demographics to identify trends or areas to address
Demographic data including Federal and State protected categories such as Age, Disability, Ethnicity and Gender
Consider capturing data on behavioural attributes, learning and thinking styles

Once you’ve collected this employee data, look for the gaps and areas for concern. See if you can identify underrepresented demographics and then continue to drill down by location, department, and position to identify trends. If you’ve identified areas for improvement, it’s time to start planning a more diverse recruitment strategy.

2. Planning

What are your goals? It’s important to have clear goals in mind before you start to implement recruitment marketing approaches to attract more diverse candidates. Some common goals include: Improve employer brand, fill hard to fill roles with more diverse candidates, capture more quality candidates from underrepresented groups.

Goal 1

Goal 2

Goal 3

What recruitment marketing approaches will you use? Once you’ve outlined these DE&I goals, list the recruitment marketing approaches you’ll use to achieve them. For example, if your goal is to find more female candidates for hard-to-fill roles in IT, your Recruitment Marketing goals may be to add 50+ female candidates to your talent pipelines in IT. If your goal is to hire for a certain type of learning style or behavioural attributes, consider the screening tools that you will need (there are a range of AI-powered screening vendors available on the market that can help reduce bias in the recruitment process).

Approach 1

Approach 2

Approach 3

Focus areas: How will you achieve these DE&I goals? It’s important to hone in on a few key focus areas, rather than trying to achieve everything at once. We recommend you start by considering your current and future workforce needs, then focusing on the crucial diversity gaps that need to be addressed immediately.

Where are the diversity gaps or inequities in your current workforce?

What does the workforce we need for the future look like?

What key diverse groups/talent segments do we need to focus on attracting?

3. Implementation

Follow these 4 steps to successfully implement a recruitment marketing strategy that attracts more diverse candidates and talent segments.

Identify which positions and teams are critical to address

Get your key stakeholders – the hiring managers and business leaders – onboard for input. Together you need to identify which positions and teams are most in need of increased diversity.

Focus on the diverse talent segments you need to attract

Narrow in on the talent segments that are most critical to attract and focus your efforts here. Establish personas (including key values) for each segment that reflect the diverse demographics you’re trying to attract. This will inform your content strategy later on.

Do your research

Take the time to undertake research on the diverse groups and demographics you want to attract before you get started. This helps you understand your audience, their needs and motivations to develop an approach that’s inclusive and effective.

4. Ongoing improvement strategies

Once you’ve identified the diverse talent segments you want to attract, you’ll want to start engaging them with personalisedpersonalized content.

Create content that’s inclusive and catered to each group

Your content should showcase your value proposition in a way that addresses the different perspectives and groups you’re trying to attract. Pay attention to the design of your career site and the language of your job listings: they may have unconscious bias that is deterring diverse talent from applying. Give your target applicants the information they need – and the motivation – to progress down the candidate funnel.

Choose the right channel: go where the talent is

What channels and networks do your target candidates and groups spend time on? Which do they use for social sharing – and which are used to cultivate professional networks? Do these diverse candidates commonly belong to any groups or industry bodies?

Get in front of passive candidates with proactive attraction

Transitioning from reactive recruitment to proactive attraction requires applying a marketing mindset to get in front of passive talent, tap them on the shoulder and entice them to work for your organisationorganization.

Target your ideal candidate at every stage of the journey

Engage target candidates at each stage of the consideration cycle, so that when the time comes when they’re open to a move, you’re top of mind. Create segment based go-to-market plans that move key diverse audiences along the consideration journey and down the funnel.

Use technology to automate a great candidate experience

Recruitment marketing technology can automate targeted candidate communication and candidate care, serve up curated content, track what’s working and what can be optimisedoptimized – freeing recruiters to build valuable relationships with candidates.
AI-powered screening technology providers such as PredictiveHire and Curious Thing can remove unconscious bias from the recruitment process by anonymising and screening candidates on behavioural attributes – rather than having a recruiter simply scan a resume. AI-powered vendors can be leveraged on an ongoing basis to make the language of job listings more inclusive and appealing to diverse groups.

Use metrics and measuring to improve

It’s critical to establish benchmarks and regularly track metrics to monitor and tweak your recruitment marketing efforts, adjusting as necessary until you get the results you’re after.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Lead organisationalorganizational change at a cultural level

DE&I initiatives will not succeed if they are not championed at a cultural level. A proactive recruiting team can fill talent pipelines with hundreds of diverse applicants, but if a hiring manager has conscious or unconscious biases, you’ll struggle to change the status quo. This worksheet focuses on getting you started using recruitment marketing to fill talent pipelines with diverse candidates. The cultural piece is up to you. Ask yourself:

Are there barriers blocking the employment, opportunity or inclusion of people from different demographic groups?
Are there policies or practices that need to be eliminated or re-visited?
Are there potential hiring manager biases that need to be addressed?
Are our company values, culture and beliefs inclusive to people of different religious, ethnic or political backgrounds?

If you’d like to learn more about how PageUp Recruitment Marketing can help you build a DE&I strategy that delivers results, request a demo today.

The post Building a successful DE&I strategy: A step by step guide appeared first on PageUp.

5 recruitment metrics you should track in 2021

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 03:37:42 +0000

In 2019, when we first released our research on 5 recruitment metrics you should use (but probably don’t), the world was a very different place. It was an applicant’s market, and recruiters had to work hard to win the best talent.

A year later, amidst a global pandemic that has fundamentally reshaped the way we work, these five recruitment metrics still matter (perhaps, even more than ever). OrganisationsOrganizations are freezing hiring, furloughing employees, ramping up recruitment – some are even doing all three. With many hiring teams working on a skeleton staff, the way forward can seem difficult.

These five measures of success can guide your recruitment strategy now and help you track its performance in the future. While recruitment metrics like time to fill or cost to fill tell you what’s happening, the ones we’ve identified are all about answering that ‘why’ question: they tell a behind-the-scenes story of what’s really happening with your organisationorganization’s recruitment in 2020.

Last year, we presented five recruitment metrics that deliver enormous value, but which are underutilisedunderutilized. In this post, we’ll revisit each metric and analyseanalyze how they’ve changed in the last year – and what that means for the future.

Recruitment metric #1: Offer acceptance rate

Why does it matter? Recruiting is expensive and each candidate that turns down a job offer costs your organisationorganization money. It may be a recruiter’s market at the moment with an oversupply of people looking for work – but are you really finding it easier to secure talent, and if not, why not? High-performing organisationsorganizations average a 99% offer acceptance rate each year, while the industry benchmark sits at 95% in 2020.

You go to a lot of effort to find ‘the one’ – the candidate that is the right fit for your organisationorganization. They’ve been screened, interviewed, tested and background checked. They have the skills, experience, attitude and cultural alignment that you want. But do they want to work for you? Tracking your offer acceptance rate will help you understand how you’re performing.

Our 2020 research found the average offer acceptance rate across all industries globally is 95% – which means for every 100 offers made, 95 people said “yes” and 5 said “no”. That’s down from 96% in 2019. To put this in comparison, top-performing organisationsorganizations average 99% each year. So, if your offer acceptance rate is less than 95% it’s worth considering why.

Offer acceptance rates vary between industries and companies. In Retail and Finance, the offer acceptance rate has dropped 3 percentage points and 2 percentage points respectively, year on year. This means more people are saying “no” to a job offer in 2020.

The likely reason for this is that uncertainty prevails. Jobseekers are feeling uncertain about the employment market and are putting their feelers out for multiple different roles. And candidates are unsure if it’s the right time to change roles, so they may be saying “yes” to an offer then rescinding their acceptance. We expect this to change on the other side of the COVID-19 crisis (all the more reason to track this recruitment metric now).

If your offer acceptance rate is below the industry benchmark, ask yourself:

Are you an employer of choice?
Is your compensation competitive?
Did something happen during the recruitment process?
Is your recruitment process fast enough to secure talent?

Recruitment metric #2: Applicant to hire rate

Why does your applicant to hire rate matter? This recruitment metric tells an important story about the effectiveness of your job listings. With more applicants on the market and applying for roles, you don’t want to be wading through more applications than necessary. Tracking applicant to hire rates can show whether job ads are targeted enough to reach and engage the right audience.

Our research tells us that in 2020, 4% of applicants across all industries are hired. This means for every 100 applications received, 4 people are hired (you can think of it as 1 out of every 25 applicants is hired). Globally, this has remained constant from last year, but per industry, the story is different.

Higher education has stayed steady at 7%, but retail and finance have both experienced a decrease in its applicants to hire rate from 4% in 2019 to 3% in 2020. This shows that each role is receiving more applicants.

What does this mean in light of COVID-19? During an economic contraction, there are fewer roles being advertised and high job losses. It’s likely that any job opening will attract more applicants. Many organisationsorganizations are not hiring right now – but when you open up the recruitment cycle again, what happens to that applicant-to-hire number?

If your application volumes are too high, your applicant to hire ratio will be lower. That can indicate your job ads are not targeted enough, you’re not using the most effective sourcing channels, or you need to revisit your sourcing methods. In order to get better-fit applicants:

Work with hiring managers to understand the role requirements to create clearly defined job descriptions
Create targeted job ads with clear role requirements
Revisit your EVP and employer branding to ensure it aligns with your organisationorganization’s culture
Identify and focus on effective sourcing channels and methods

The applicant-to-hire ratio is critical for organisationsorganizations to understand now and as the COVID-19 pandemic evolves. Remember it’s about quality, not quantity.

Recruitment metric #3: Candidates to hire rate

Why does your candidates to hire rate matter in 2021? With more talent applying for roles, it can be tempting to put more candidates through the hiring process. A lower % means recruiters are putting more candidates through to the hiring manager interview stage. Failing to track this recruitment metric can cost an organisationorganization hundreds of thousands of dollars in recruitment fees and negatively impact employer brand.

Our research has found that historically the average % candidates to hire sits at approximately 10%. In other words, one candidate out of 10 is hired which means 9 are told “no”.

Globally, in 2020 the % of candidates to hire has fallen to 8% across all industries, or as a ratio, one out of 12.5 candidates are hired (23 out of 25 told no). Of course, this number varies industry to industry, with COVID-19 hitting some industries such as Retail particularly hard. The graphs below show Retail has fallen from 7% in 2019 to 5% in 2020. Finance fell from 9% in 2019 to 7% in 2020, while Higher Education fell the most, from 16% in 2019 to 13% in 2020.

The trend is understandable: with more people applying for roles, there’s a temptation to put more candidates through the recruitment funnel. But there are multiple issues with this approach:

It’s costly and time-consuming for interviewers and hiring managers to screen and interview high volumes of candidates
Keeping hiring managers engaged with the recruitment process becomes a challenge
More candidates lengthens the recruitment process which runs the risk of losing talent to competitors
You can damage your employer brand by providing a poor candidate experience
There’s the potential to impact consumer brand – your candidates may also be your customers

Taking a large number of candidates through your recruitment process is obviously labourlabor-intensive and costly, and it can also mean you’re not engaging your silver medallist talent. Don’t forget to nurture warm talent pools and silver medallistmedalist candidates. This can be achieved with recruitment marketing – but it’s an area of talent acquisition that isn’t yet well-understood by many organisationsorganizations. Sitting at the top of the funnel, recruitment marketing has a vital role to play in today’s talent attraction landscape.

Recruitment metric #4: Sourcing channel effectiveness

Why does sourcing channel effectiveness matter? Measuring sourcing channel effectiveness tells you which sourcing channels are working, and which need to be reconsidered. This can result in significant savings.

In a 2019 Harvard Business Review article, George W. Taylor Professor and Center for Human Resources Director, Peter Cappelli said, “few employers know which channel produces the best candidates at the lowest cost because they don’t track the outcomes.”

PageUp research has found that 54% of applications come via job boards, but these applications only lead to 17% of hires. Compare this to talent relationships: even though only 2% of applications come from talent pools, these applications account for a staggering 22% of a company’s overall hires. This means that talent relationships – in other words, talent pools – is 34X more effective than job boards in producing successful hires.

Comparing year on year, talent relationships has remained the highest-performing channel. It only takes 2.4 applications from talent pools to result in 1 hire.

Contrast that with social media, where in 2020 it takes almost 150 applications to result in 1 hire. Compared to 2019, the effectiveness of social media to produce hires is decreasing. But it’s a channel that gives free access to essentially millions of passive candidates, and targeted campaigns can still be incredibly powerful.

The proportion of applications via careers site increased in 2020, but the proportion of hires decreased: We can see year on year that it’s becoming a less effective sourcing channel. It takes 53 applications to secure a hire compared to 37 in 2019. If your careers site effectiveness has gone down since last year, this should be motivation for a careers site overhaul. Make sure you’re constantly tracking and optimisingoptimizing careers site content to ensure it’s appealing to candidates and is designed to convert visitors into applicants.

Internal mobility is a sourcing channel that has seen noticeable changes year on year. It now only requires 5.9 applications to result in 1 hire – down from 6.8 in 2019. This reflects what we’ve heard in the market – a number of organisationsorganizations have sought to redeploy their workforce internally rather than going out to market to hire.

Job boards have become noticeably less effective in producing hires in the last year. In 2019 it would take 68 applications to result in 1 hire – but in 2020 that number is just over 80 applications per hire. This may reflect the volume of applicants currently on the market, which has increased the number of ‘wrong fit’ applicants coming through more generalist channels such as social media and job boards.

Candidates who are coming through referrals, talent pools and internal mobility, by contrast, are already aligned to your business and what it’s trying to achieve, have largely been pre-vetted, and have already had the chance to self-select in or out of the recruitment process.

Do you know the effectiveness of your sourcing channels? Ask yourself:

What are our main sourcing channels?
Where do the most applicants come from?
Where do the most hires come from?
What is the cost per hire per channel?
How should our sourcing channel strategy change based on this?

Recruitment metric #5: Mobile applications and time to apply rates

Why does it matter? With remote work becoming the new norm, the trend towards mobile adoption isn’t slowing down. Companies need to deliver consumer-grade recruitment journeys to speed up the application process and attract top talent.

Mobile applications and time to apply rates are two separate recruitment metrics, but they work together to tell a story that might otherwise be overlooked.

Are your mobile application and time to apply rates in line with industry standards? Ask yourself:

Is your careers site mobile-optimisedoptimized?
Do you offer applicants the opportunity to pre-fill from social sites/CVs?
Are your job application forms suited to mobile usage?

Tips:

Make application forms shorter
Include screening questions so candidates can be moved through, or out, of the process quickly
Try applying for a job using your own form: where can the process can be streamlined?
Search for a role on your career website using a mobile – was the process easy?

In the past year, 24% of applications were submitted via a mobile device, according to PageUp research. Last year, that number was 23%. That’s up from 15% at the end of 2017, and 19% in 2018.

PageUp research has also found that there is a correlation between abandoned job applications and applications made on a mobile device. As the application form lengthens, the number of incomplete applications via mobile devices increases. Lengthy job applications become tedious on these devices, applicants give up and they don’t complete the application. This doesn’t happen as often on desktop – although lengthy application forms are not recommended on any device.

If you’re looking to optimiseoptimize your mobile recruitment approaches, make it simple and easy for jobseekers to apply on-the-go. Consider allowing candidates to attach their resume or autofill applications from their social media profiles.

Measure recruiting success with PageUp’s powerful platform

Knowing which recruitment metrics to track helps you identify the most effective ways to attract the best talent in a changing landscape. Learn more about how our powerful talent management technology can help you optimiseoptimize your recruitment approaches at pageuppeople.com

The post 5 recruitment metrics you should track in 2021 appeared first on PageUp.

9 things HR cared about in 2020

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 00:55:25 +0000

2020 has been a challenging year for people around the world, regardless of age, background or geography. HR professionals have had it even harder, supporting teams in times of crisis, while also working through these challenges themselves.

But hope springs from adversity, and this year HR has truly stepped up as a leader in the new world of work. Talent management has become everyone’s business, and talent teams are getting the attention they deserve from C-suite leaders that now fully appreciate their worth.

Old, outdated systems have been digitised, processes streamlined and centralised, virtual hiring and remote work practices accelerated overnight. Armed with the business-buy in and the technology solutions to make it work, HR is ready to take a seat at the table as we forge ahead into the new decade.

As we look back at the year that was, we can see how closely HR trends and challenges mirror our society. From a global pandemic and economic downturn, to racial upheaval across the globe, HR is the first responder and the first line of defence organisationsorganizations have to help their teams make sense of the world around them.

2020 will be remembered as a turbulent, tumultuous year. Let’s not forget how HR responded:

1. Employee communication and care

When the first wave of lockdowns rolled out around the world, many organisationsorganizations were forced into remote working arrangements overnight. HR teams had to figure out how to make it work, developing policies on the fly and ensuring teams were supported during this tough transition. With so much uncertainty in the air, HR stepped up and showed real leadership, reminding us what the ‘human’ aspect of human resources stands for. In this piece, we explored how talent teams were managing the shift to remote work, and how they were supporting teams in times of change.

Read: Taking care of teams in times of crisis

2. Mastering remote hiring and onboarding

As organisationsorganizations got into the groove of remote work, some hiring teams found themselves faced with a dilemma: how to provide a great, fully virtual recruitment experience. Even the most progressive organisations had probably met candidates in-person at one stage of the hiring process. Now, recruitment teams had to ensure a streamlined, fully tech-enabled experience that left applicants and candidates wanting more. No problem, right? In this blog, we explored 3 key considerations for organisations looking to find great talent in the time of COVID.

Read: Hiring in the time of COVID-19: 3 key considerations

3. Addressing COVID-19 challenges

This 7-part series saw our Head of Customer Insights and Market Research Rebecca Skilbeck in conversation with our SVP Global Talent Deborah Mason. They tackled how HR could address COVID-19 challenges: supporting employees, encouraging engagement, redeploying staff, managing remote workers and shared their thoughts for the future. It’s a great how-to playbook for HR professionals looking to hear from some of the best in the business about the issues facing the industry today.

Watch: PageUp talks: The COVID-19 playbook (7 episode series)

4. Supporting internal mobility

With the pandemic ramping up and an economic recession looming, many organisationsorganizations put a freeze on hiring. But that didn’t mean skills gaps went away. Roles still needed to be filled by skilled workers, and organisations started to look within to find this talent. In this article, we took a look at how organisations are leveraging internal mobility to meet their hiring needs, while also keeping employees engaged and developing in their careers.

Read: Internal mobility: An organisationorganization’s secret weapon in challenging times

5. Scaling up recruiting to meet COVID-19 demands

Not all organisationsorganizations were halting their hiring. Some were ramping up recruitment to meet demand: many retailers providing essential products were inundated with customer demand as lockdowns dragged on across the globe. Some PageUp customers processed as many as 55,000 applications in one recruitment campaign. To quickly hire the staff they needed at-scale, organisationsorganizations turned to technology to automate candidate care and process bulk applications. This article takes you through setting up and running effective recruitment campaigns at-scale, while remaining agile enough to respond rapidly to change.

Read: Running effective recruitment campaigns at-scale: A how-to guide in times of change

6. Proactively rebuilding recruitment strategies after COVID-19

As we adjusted to the new COVID normal, organisationsorganizations started to look to the future and wonder how they would rebuild. A crucial component of this was their recruitment strategy: what would it look like going forward? As the business landscape shifted, what new skills should they be recruiting for? And what new roles would emerge? This article deep-dives into how organisationsorganizations can rebuild, starting with their recruitment strategy. It takes a step by step approach, examining how COVID has affected the business landscape, how to identify emerging skills gaps, and the crucial behavioural traits you should be looking for in a top candidate.

Read: Rebuilding your recruitment strategy after COVID-19

7. Virtual recruiting tools

HR processes have been accelerated years into the future thanks to the overnight shift to remote working. PageUp is lucky to have a partner marketplace with a comprehensive collection of world-class HR tech vendors and software providers, and in this blog we cover 17 must-know tools to support online recruiting.

Read: 17 hiring tools to support your online recruiting

8. Workplace diversity, equity and inclusion

This year will be remembered not just for COVID-19, but also as the year the world stood up, spoke up and took action on racial inclusivity, diversity and demanded equal opportunity for people of all backgrounds. With organisationsorganizations around the world turning a spotlight to their own DE&I strategies, we took a look at the building blocks of a successful DE&I strategy in this step by step guide.

Read: Building a successful DE&I strategy: A step by step guide

9. Data-based recruitment strategies

What recruitment metrics should savvy hiring teams be tracking in 2020 and into the future? Last year, when we first released our research on 5 recruitment metrics you should use (but probably don’t), the world was a very different place. In this blog, we revisit each metric and analyse how they’ve changed in the last year – and what that means for the future.

Read: 5 Recruitment Metrics You Should Use in 2020 and Beyond

If you’d like to know more about how PageUp can help you adapt and thrive in the new world of work, request a demo today.

The post 9 things HR cared about in 2020 appeared first on PageUp.

Here’s what an effective recruitment marketing campaign looks like

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 03:10:18 +0000

Recruitment marketing drives higher volumes of qualified candidates to apply for a role with best-practice marketing automation, optimisationoptimization and candidate relationship management (CRM). But what are the experiences and touchpoints within a typical recruitment marketing journey?

Attract (amplify employer brand to attract great people)

Recruiter is appointed to uncover the best candidates.

A hiring manager approaches a recruiter for a role that needs filling.
They begin their research to understand the position requirements, looking to existing internal talent pipelines for suitable candidates to target the right talent.

Posts job to careers site: Automation does the rest.

Recruiter posts a job ad on a dynamic careers website optimisedoptimized for search engines (SEO) and mobile-responsiveness.
The job posting is shared automatically across social media and other key promotional channels.

Curious, potential candidate explores options for a career change.

An interested candidate – passive or otherwise – considers the possibilities of a career change.
They begin their research, exploring all the roles that pique their interest.

Dynamic careers site content showcases employer brand on any device.

Next, the candidate visits a company’s careers site to get a sense of the culture and find suitable roles.
Dynamic careers site content showcases the company’s Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and empowers the right-fit candidate to apply.
Enabled by cookies, the candidate receives hyper-targeted EVP content.

Event pages and expression of interest (EOI) forms capture even more hot prospects.

A company’s careers website attracts more high-quality candidates with:
- Expression of interest forms
- Company newsletter sign-ups
- Event registration forms
- Alumni talent network registration forms
- Internal opportunity registration forms

Candidates sign up and enter the talent network.

These ‘Candidate magnets’ allow passive talent to connect with the company they’re interested in.
Calls-to-action (CTAs) and easy to use forms and fields capture their details.

MobiliseMobilize (analyse, prioritiseprioritize and build high-quality talent pipelines)

Jobseeker activity and interaction data is captured to build rich candidate profiles.

A smart careers site pulls in information from multiple sources and channels
Sophisticated candidate relationship management (CRM), scoring, and insights store candidate details and collect data on their interactions.

“Silver-medalist” candidates, alumni and internal talent profiles are captured and kept warm in talent pools.

Valuable runners-up are primed and ready to go for future job openings.
The details of alumni and internal talent are captured and stored in talent pools to maintain lifelong connections or ‘employees for life’.

Candidate relationship management (CRM) software helps sift through candidates with powerful segmentation.

Powerful CRM software helps the recruiter transition from reactive recruitment to a proactive sourcing strategy – they no longer rely on reactive hiring or outsourcing.
Interests, diversity and inclusion considerations, and experience level segment candidates.

Smart recommendations highlight candidates that best fit the job criteria.

CRM automatically identifies best-fit candidates – surfacing hidden candidates along the way.
Automated talent pipelining gives the recruiter more time to engage with suitable candidates.

Recruiter works faster and smarter with a 360-degree view of their talent pipeline.

Consolidated information lets the recruiter analyse, prioritiseprioritize and build high-quality talent pipelines,
This 360-degree view offers more accurate forecasting.
Working smarter, not harder, the recruiter has more time for more high-value activities, leading to a better candidate experience and competitive edge.

Data and insights help hiring teams optimiseoptimize their approach.

The recruiter leverages new insights to adapt and optimiseoptimize their approach.
Focusing investment in the right channels, the recruiter can reduce their sourcing spend and convert even more quality candidates.

Engage (nurture candidates and provide an exceptional experience)

Recruiter creates and schedules automated workflows.

A recruitment marketing automation platform handles manual tasks, reminders, and follow-ups.
These scheduled workflows place the candidate journey design in the hands of the recruiter.

Candidates are carefully engaged with the right message, at the right time, on the right platform.

The recruiter maintains a positive candidate experience with quality talent anytime, anywhere using preset nurture flows and automated follow-ups.
With SMS job alerts, email nurtures, candidates are kept interested and informed.

Chatbots help candidates seek out the information they need.

Chatbots start a conversation before candidates self-select in or out of the application process.
They also answer any questions around salary expectations and role requirements.

Targeted nurture flows automatically progress candidates further down the funnel based on their level of engagement.

The system assesses and scores candidates accordingly, and high-quality applications progress to the next stage.

Candidate hits “apply” and information is fed into an applicant tracking system (ATS)

The recruiter presents the hiring manager with the best options.
Candidate information is stored in an ATS for future reference.

Best-fit candidate is hired. Future-fit candidates are on top of the recruiter’s list for next time.

The recruiter now has a steady pipeline of candidates ready for when a role arises.

To find out more about how you can implement an effective recruitment marketing campaign from start to finish – request a demo.

The post Here’s what an effective recruitment marketing campaign looks like appeared first on PageUp.

The secret to building talent pipelines? A smart careerscareer website

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 06:45:31 +0000

Gone are the days of posting a job description on a job board and hoping the perfect candidate hits ‘apply’. To land great hires in today’s competitive job market, talent acquisition teams must adapt and build a steady pipeline of candidates ready for when a role arises. But piquing the interest of top talent is almost impossible without the appeal of a great company careers website (or careers site).career website (or career site).

Why are careers websitescareer websites so important?

According to LinkedIn data, 59% of candidates visit the company website before applying to find out more about an organisationorganization and what it’s like to work there.

Building interest in job opportunities begins and ends with a company’s careers or job description pages. This is where organisationsorganizations communicate what they do and how candidates connect to organisationsorganizations and their people. Here, recruiters, hiring managers, and their employees can tell an authentic story about their culture and attract quality applicants to jobs: these pages are where jobs and employer brands come to life.

Here’s how modern careers websitescareer websites can help employers ensure their online presence, including all digital recruitment experiences and touchpoints, meets candidate expectations:

Careers websitesCareer websites work proactively for recruiters

While reactive hiring approaches may be useful for short-term goals, proactive hiring helps recruiters pipeline candidates and nurture them in pools to keep them warm. In other words, talent acquisition teams need to proactively build long-term professional relationships with passive talent ready for future opportunities.

But pipeline and pool-building might sound like a tall order for busy hiring teams. Our research found that only 43% of organisationsorganizations have well-established talent pipelines and pools equipped to meet their company’s future hiring needs. Careers sites are a constant touchpoint for all jobseekers, and a good careers site will lure passive candidates into a recruiter’s net without any manual effort.

CMS tools

How? When content management system (CMS) tools and recruitment marketing are combined, careers sites become incredibly powerful. The CMS allows companies to build and easily edit job boards and showcase their employee value proposition (EVP) and employer brand with dedicated landing pages.

In addition to this, modern recruitment marketing tools automate a company’s advertising activities at-scale, like sharing job postings across the most effective hiring channels.

Watch: Recruitment marketing – fireside chat with Audra Knight (Foundation Medicine)

They support an excellent candidate experience

Even despite the recent COVID-19 layoffs and furloughs, many employers still find themselves struggling to attract and retain great people. Talent Board’s latest CandE Recruiting Focus report found that 85% of employers cited improving the candidate experience as a top priority for their organisationsorganizations in 2020.

Candidates are no longer at the mercy of employers picking and choosing who best fits their needs. The power balance has shifted, and employers need to provide a great candidate experience if they want to hire top talent.

Promoting an open role in 2021 requires more effort than a job board post. It requires companies to create beautiful careers sites that offer memorable candidate experiences and considers the unique needs of the talent they seek.

Many organisationsorganizations are now focused on ensuring each applicant (successful or otherwise) has a positive candidate experience. With compelling messaging, personalisationpersonalization, and user-friendly navigation, careers websitescareer websites create the best first impression and make it easy for candidates to apply. They also help hiring managers set realistic expectations about the role, team, culture, and organisationsorganizations to ensure a better job fit, improve quality of hire and employee retention rates.

Candidates love looking at careers websitescareer websites

Knowing where to post jobs in the digital world can be a stressful, costly, often fruitless affair. But year on year, careers websitescareer websites have proven to be the preferred and most valuable channel for candidates researching a potential employer. They’re also the very first place a candidate visits after seeing or hearing about a job.

The good news: there are website content management tools that make it easy for talent teams to showcase their employer brand, without having to write a line of code. With endless customisation, easy-to-use templates, and dynamic content suggestions, these tools help HR teams deliver a personalisedpersonalized experience to everyone who visits their careers site, with pages that are designed to convert.

Useful and attractive pages showcase employer brand

It might be easy for the Googles and Microsofts of the world to appeal to winning talent. But what about companies that are still working on their brand recognition – or those expanding beyond their current market?

According to a 2019 NA Talent Board CandE Benchmark Research Report, employers with the highest positive candidate ratings were those that focused more on engagement pre-application.

High-quality candidates who mean business will often visit the company’s careers site to get a sense of the workplace culture or look for open roles. A massive 39% of candidates now say that company culture is the most important marketing content for their research on prospective employers.

To win the war for talent, companies need to showcase the job, the company values, the perks, and reasons why they are a great place for an employee to build their career. Well-informed, committed candidates will always go further through the recruitment process.

How can a careers site help?

A robust careers websitecareer website does an excellent job of humanisinghumanizing the research and pre-application process. Recruiters can test and measure their content to determine what’s working and what’s not. They can also start a conversation long before a candidate self-selects in or out of the application process. Careers websitesCareer websites ensure more high-quality candidates apply and have a positive experience.

These careers websitecareer website features can empower interested candidates to apply for an open position:

Video job descriptions
24/7 chatbot assistance
Dynamic website content
‘Why work here?’ blogs

What do the numbers say?

Our research has found that in 2020, careers websitescareer websites accounted for 20% of all global applications and 11% of hires. The effectiveness of the careers site as a sourcing channel is 45 – which means 45 applications are required to secure the one hire.

But in 2019, they were more effective: globally, for every 37 applications submitted, one person was hired. In terms of volume, 22% of applications and 14% of hires were via the careers website.

This speaks to the volume of applicants currently on the market, which has increased the number of ‘wrong fit’ applicants coming through these channels. This year, jobseeker behaviourbehavior has changed: with more talent on the market, people have fewer chances to be choosy – and many are applying to whatever opportunities seem like a close fit. Many will be applying for multiple jobs.

Despite this, those applying through a careers site are still much more likely to convert to new hires than job boards and social media channels. These candidates are already interested; they’ve had a chance to interact with the content and get a feel for the culture and vision. They can self-select in or out based on the information provided by the careers site.

What do employers say?

In speaking with our customers, those with highly effective careers websitescareer websites have proactively worked to showcase their values, mission, and culture and create transparency on their response to COVID-19.

Take one of our customers, Klook, for example. As a travel technology business, most wouldn’t expect them to be as visible in the job market right now: but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be. Senior Manager, Global Employer Branding and People Communications, Marilyn Yee, shifted the business’ focus towards building engagement, awareness, and communicating what Klook was doing as a company during the pandemic.

Read: Employer branding with Marilyn Yee (Klook)

SEO allows jobseekers to discover an employer easily

If recruiters want their job postings found, they need to use the keywords and search queries jobseekers are actually using. That means exercising restraint in ‘industry speak’ and funky job titles like ‘Chief Inspiration Officer’ or ‘Recruitment Ninja’. If someone were looking to hire a Digital Marketing Manager, they wouldn’t advertise for a ‘Customer Conversation Artichect.’ Always use plain, conversational language (not buzzwords) when writing about a company and its people.

To get job openings on the radar of top talent, organisationsorganizations should follow these simple Search Engine OptimisationOptimization rules:

Always use SEO friendly job titles and descriptions
Build well-optimisedwell-optimized sitemap structures
Create content that keeps visitors on-page and clicking through
Showcase company blogs on relevant candidate topics
Write copy that answers common questions about roles
Share postings on social media to drive traffic to the website

Pro tip: do some research before posting a job. Which pages come up first in your Google search – and what have these pages done to get there?

Some recruiters take a partnership approach by asking copywriting specialists within their marketing department to look over ads and give feedback. An easier way to do it is to use smart careers websitescareer websites that automatically index pages, flag areas for improvement, and share content via top-performing social media channels.

They promote and support diversity, equity, and inclusion

86% of female millennials look for an employer’s policy on diversity and workforce inclusion when deciding whether to work for someone. But many organisationsorganizations struggle to communicate an inclusive EVP (employee value proposition) on their website to support their diversity hiring strategy and build rich talent pools.

Careers sites aren’t just a home for open roles; they’re a reflection of a company’s values and culture. When executed well, careers websitescareer websites can be a key driver of diverse talent attraction. Rather than forcing a candidate to search far and wide for a DE&I policy or programs, microsites and landing pages tell an authentic story about the company’s culture and values from the moment a candidate arrives.

Best-of-breed careers websitecareer website technology goes the extra mile with advanced analytics that allows hiring teams to measure progress, report on visitor demographics, and make improvements along the way.

Pro tip: language is a powerful tool. Be sure to write thoughtful, inclusive job descriptions that encourage people from all walks of life to apply, regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, education, abilities, beliefs, and communication styles. Tools like Textio can help recruiters keep bias out of their job ads.

Dynamic website content offers a personalisedpersonalized experience

You wouldn’t show offices in San Francisco to someone in Hong Kong – just as you wouldn’t advertise a talent acquisition role to a developer.

But many company careers pages tend to focus on a single audience because few have time to update their content for every visitor or reader. Yet, recruiters still need a wide range of content to create personalisedpersonalized journeys tailored to individuals’ interests, needs, and characteristics.

High-quality careers websitescareer websites deliver unique experiences based on who is looking at the pages. Using website cookies and AI-powered suggestions, candidates are served hyper-targeted EVP images and text based on their location, language preference, demographics, or interests. Dynamic content journeys feel more personal and can be the difference between a successful application or a drop-off.

Strong CTAs hook ‘hot prospects’

Think of a modern-day marketer creating a customer lead magnet: An irresistible website lure that offers prospects something valuable in exchange for contact details. Likewise, careers websitecareer website calls-to-action encourage passive, high-quality prospects to join a pool of candidates. More than just a simple ‘apply now’ button, a careers websitecareer website call-to-action can include:

Expression of interest forms
Company newsletter sign-ups
Event registration forms
Alumni talent network registration forms
Internal opportunity registration forms

A compelling CTA captures passive candidate details and keeps them warm in talent pools. These ‘candidate magnets’ allow passive talent to connect with companies they’re interested in working for. And when the time is right, they’ll have been nurtured and ready to receive their exclusive invitation to apply for a job.

Why is this important? Our research has found candidate relationship management (CRM and talent pooling) is one of the most effective sourcing channels. In 2020, 2% of applications and 22% of hires were via proactive talent relationship initiatives. In fact, on average, less than three (2.4) applications from talent pools were needed to secure a hire.

Mobile optimisationoptimization reduces candidate drop off

86% of all active job searches begin on a mobile device. In 2020, PageUp Head of Customer Insights and Market Research, Rebecca Skilbeck, discovered almost a third of retail industry applications were being filled from a mobile device.

“Recruiters should aim to make mobile application forms shorter while including better screening questions so candidates can be moved through, or out, of the process quickly,” Skilbeck said.

With more people at home searching and applying for jobs on mobile devices, it’s either time to adapt or lose tech-savvy candidates to competitors. Unresponsive page design hurts SEO, and complicated or outdated application processes can put candidates off. On a positive note, PageUp’s mobile-friendly careers sites receive 6x the amount of applications with responsive pages and user-friendly forms to convert quality talent.

Pro tip: recruiters should try navigating their own pages or filling out forms on mobile to see where processes can be streamlined.

Careers websitesCareer websites that recruit for you

Do you know if your careers websitecareer website content is actually working? Our clients see a 37% conversion rate from first visit to completed application.

Represent your brand with pride and attract and convert quality talent with PageUp Recruitment Marketing. Our powerful, easy to manage, responsive, and optimisedoptimized careers websitecareer website builder takes the work out of hiring.

But don’t just take our word for it – get a free recruitment marketing demo to see a PageUp careers websitecareer website in action or learn more about the module here. We’re always here to help you select from the best talent in the market (not just the best who applied for your job).

The post The secret to building talent pipelines? A smart careerscareer website appeared first on PageUp.

Experts share 6 key talent acquisition trends for 2021

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 22:51:18 +0000

2020 was a year like no other, and 2021 is shaping up to bring even more unprecedented challenges, innovations and creative solutions. With the future of work well and truly here, HR professionals are being forced to look beyond the horizon and decipher key talent acquisition trends to survive and thrive.

Once, people teams had the luxury of time to plan, test and tweak approaches. Now, many of us are taking it day by day: ten year plans have been scrapped, and ‘business as usual’ is a distant memory. Many TA teams are looking for guidance. Many HR leaders are doing the same.

In times like these, we look to the experts for advice and predictions in an unpredictable landscape. Industry commentators like Hung Lee have their finger on the pulse of what it means to recruit in 2021, and can help make sense of a landscape that’s shifting every day.

Speaking on a recent PageUp webinar, Hung Lee outlined his 8 key talent acquisition trends for the new year. This is by no means an exhaustive list – but it is a good way to check that your organisationorganization is on the right track.

Here’s what we know so far about what matters in recruiting in 2021:

Everyone is an international recruiter
Digital transformation and automation take center stage
There are new challenges and considerations for diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I)
Alumni (former employees) become an organisationorganization‘s greatest asset
Employer branding becomes a non-negotiable
Internal mobility evolves into a key source of quality talent

2020 was the year that HR truly stepped up and took a seat at the table. In 2021, it’s time to continue that momentum and take the lead in transforming workplaces for the new world of work.

Talent acquisition trend 1: The global talent pool

COVID-19 has accelerated once-distant trends and forced the world’s biggest work from home experiment. Even laggards have been forced to adopt remote tech – and organisationsorganizations are realising it can work. In spite of organisationalorganizational complexities and the challenges of remote work, up to 37% of jobs can now be done fully remotely. In the US, there was a 150% increase in remote jobs from 2019 to 2020. In the UK, there was a 342% increase in the same period (Iain Moss, Adzuna, 2020). In Australia, there was more than a 200% increase in remote work in some states (NSW, ACT and Victoria).

OrganisationsOrganizations are getting into the groove of remote work, and this has opened up possibilities for a global network of talent. No longer constrained by brick and mortar offices, organisationsorganizations can hire the best people in the world – not just their city. In 2021, everyone is an international recruiter.

“Moving the job to where the people are is increasing,” says Hung Lee, curator of recruitment industry newsletter Recruiting Brainfood. Lee observes that “remote means anywhere” – and with technology improving and C-suite leaders enjoying the cost reduction of work-from-home arrangements, TA will shift from on-premise to remote hiring.

This brings about major changes:

Moving away from the traditional full-time hiring cycle, remote workers can be freelancers and contractors. This trend lends itself to a “try before you buy” approach, according to Lee.
There is zero friction for talent to move from company to company – which means the employee experience is more important than ever
Compensation is set by the elite organisationsorganizations. No longer confined to local salary benchmarks, smaller players may struggle to compete with salaries offered by large organisationsorganizations. For many jobseekers, the ability to live in their hometown but get paid a New York-level salary is appealing – and makes it hard for local organisationsorganizations to compete.
Competition for top talent is global

Talent acquisition trend 2: Digital transformation and automation becomes a priority

In a year of constant disruption, even the most progessive companies have had to think on their feet. They’ve achieved this agility through workforce automation. Research shows that 92% of senior executives agree that the lockdown period has made digital transformation a priority.

COVID-19 has forced the automation of in-person human roles, where possible. At the same time, remote working has flourished and given way to a raft of digitisationdigitization and automation. RPA (recruitment process automation) has delivered unparalleled efficiencies in the recruiting process, spurred on by reduced TA headcount and recruiters simply having to do more with less. What was once paper-based, manual and resource-intensive (multiple recruiters and interviewing rooms, onerous rounds of shortlisting and assessments) has become streamlined and fully digital.

Talent acquisition trend 3: Alumni form part of the talent community

“Retain the relationship, not the employee” recruiting guru Bill Boorman advises. This year, cash-strapped and time-poor recruiting teams are turning to the ‘talent community’ – alumni, silver-medalists and internal talent – as a source of pre-vetted, quality hires.

The return of the talent community creates a new job for recruiters – engaging talent even after they’ve left the organisationorganization. In the past, once someone walked out the door they were often gone for good. Now, HR teams are acquainting themselves with the concept of ‘Boomerang employees’ – those that leave the business then eventually return. These people are an invaluable source of qualified talent, external referrals and, when treated well, should become lasting employer brand champions.

As people flow through the company from candidate to employee and eventually alumni, someone has to own and track this experience to ensure it’s a great one. Some organisationsorganizations are approaching this by having a community manager that manages and engages people outside of the company. Others are developing alumni networks and using their career site as a leveraging point to attract alumni back.

Hung Lee shares key ways to engage alumni:

Make relationships the entire point
Bridge community & company. Careers sites are a great way to do this
Treat talent mobility the same as career development
That development might exist outside of company
Not a single career path but career optionality

Talent acquisition trend 4: DE&I

In a year that’s brought us a global pandemic, political unrest and a worldwide shift to remote work, it would take a lot to capture our attention. And yet in 2020, DE&I did just that. As Black Lives Matter protests spread awareness and action around the world, the importance of racial equality, diversity and inclusivity in our own organisationsorganizations captured the spotlight.

Lee says “DE&I has gone from being de-prioritisedprioritized to re-prioritisedprioritized” as organisationsorganizations do the work in “rebuilding institutions that have been historically unfair.” Technology is helping to attract diverse candidates and reduce systemic bias in the hiring process, helping organisationsorganizations to meet their DE&I goals at-scale.

Remote working increases accessibility for roles, but it also presents new hurdles to overcome. Technology opens the door for people from different backgrounds, geographies and ability to land roles, but access to good technology is not universal. Digital inequality – poor internet connection or older tech – can introduce a new set of uncious biases for candidates.

Lee points to a recent study by researchers from USC, who found that audio quality has a direct impact on perceived reliability and expertise. When they presented identical conference presentations in high and low quality and asked participants to evaluate the researcher and the research, people evaluated the researcher and research less favourably when the audio quality was low. As we enter a new remote world, new biases appear which require attention and awareness. According to Lee, addressing these issues of inequality requires “mitigating with more tech, not less”.

Talent acquisition trend 5: Employer branding becomes a non-negotiable

Where once a great employer brand was seen as a “nice to have”, it is now a necessity for organisationsorganizations to compete for talent on a global stage. Lee says that “This is a once-in-a-lifetime period for organisationsorganizations looking to fortify their employer brand.” The way organisationsorganizations respond to this crisis will affect and define their brand for decades to come. This means providing a great experience: caring for employees with trust and transparency, and caring for your candidates with open and regular communication. Maintaining this level of care will become a core TA responsibility and expectation — and technology will help time-poor hiring teams to facilitate this at scale.

Talent acquisition trend 6: Internal mobility

With lockdown restrictions forcing widespread layoffs, and with reduced recruiter headcount forcing hiring teams to do more with less, organisationsorganizations are redeploying staff to cut costs and keep valued skills within the business. According to LinkedIn insights, internal hires increased by 19% in April-August 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019. Internal hires now make up almost 20% of an organisation’s workforce on average.

But according to Lee, “COVID revealed we don’t do internal mobility well.” In a recent survey by HR.com, over a third of respondents say that no one owns the internal mobility process. And over a quarter of employees are unaware of available job opportunities.

In 2021, it will be up to TA teams to gain full visibility of their workforce and identify hidden skill sets or opportunities for development. Technology can help to provide this visibility, and a powerful ATS can even provide smart recommendations for redeployment opportunities.

Lee posits that “TA will be known as ‘Talent Access’ – they will ensure the availability of the entire talent universe to the employer.” Managers will transform into ‘career coaches’ and rely on performance management technology to facilitate everyday feedback and on the go learning opportunities. According to Lee, TA will take ownership of internal mobility and talent delivery, signalling a move away from hiring-manager led placements.

Free playbook: Maximising the potential of your workforce with internal mobility

Final thoughts

These six talent acquisition trends point to a future of work that’s tech-enabled and automated, but that also uplifts the human aspects of Human Resources. With technology automating manual and repetitive tasks, TA teams are freed to do the real work: building meaningful DE&I programs, engaging valued alumni, raising up internal employees to greater heights. As we embark on this uncertain journey together, go safe in the knowledge that the HR world and your talent communities will always be there to share wisdom, support and guidance. And for help on the technology and automation front, there’s always PageUp – get in touch today to see how we can help optimiseoptimize each stage of your talent lifecycle.

Request a demo

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Recruitment CRM or an ATS: is one really better than the other?

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 01:04:34 +0000

Last year, 61% of companies spent more on their recruitment CRM software than on their ATS, and a staggering 1 in 4 companies are looking to upgrade their recruitment technology stack this year.

It’s no surprise. Many companies find it difficult to attract the talent and skills they need to be competitive. In fact, 40% of CFOs say skills shortages are the top constraint to achieving their company’s goals, according to our research.

But thanks to modern-day hiring tools, it doesn’t – and shouldn’t – need to be this way.

When talent acquisition teams shift from reactive to proactive recruitment using marketing automation software, they can divert more time and resources into nurturing the right people into the business.

But first, there’s one huge misconception about candidate relationship management and applicant tracking software that needs to be cleared up.

Which is better – recruitment CRM software or an ATS?

It’s actually a trick question.

Many people don’t think they need an ATS if they use a CRM – and vice versa.

But while a CRM is a powerful recruitment marketing tool when used alone, it’s more efficient when paired with an ATS. It’s also important to take insights from the entire candidate journey rather than just focusing on improving one aspect of hiring. OrganisationsOrganizations that find more ways to maximise their use of time will always have a competitive advantage.

So, what’s the difference between a recruitment CRM and an ATS?

The two systems work at different stages of the candidate journey: one before, the other after a candidate hits ‘apply’.

The CRM is a powerful segmentation tool that automatically nurtures talent and delivers an engaging experience for passive candidates and active jobseekers. In contrast, the ATS is an applicant repository, workflow automation, and compliance tool used by recruiters and hiring managers.

To put it simply, both a CRM and ATS are equally important in delivering the functionality needed to build quality talent relationships with less recruiter effort.

What is CRM software used for in recruitment?

The recruiting CRM is a recruitment marketing tool and pre-apply capability that sits just above the ATS to help organisationsorganizations engage and nurture future talent. Here are some common use cases:

Candidate nurture

Just as marketers use a CRM to manage the relationship with their customers throughout the buyer journey, recruiters can use the same software to build relationships with candidates throughout the recruitment journey.

SMS job alerts and emails keep candidates interested and informed. And preset nurture flows and automation enable recruiters to maintain a positive experience with quality talent anytime, anywhere. Some companies even use chatbots to help candidates seek out the information they need or answer questions around salary expectations or role requirements.

Proactive recruitment

When talent teams think of proactive recruitment, they often think of social media advertising and reaching out to candidates one by one. But proactive recruitment should never be a frantic search. It’s more about nudging interested candidates in the right direction and keeping them warm. This type of proactive talent attraction can help build and maintain a more sustainable talent pipeline. (It also gives talent teams more time back in their day for high-value activities that support a better candidate experience.)

The secret sauce? Intelligent careers sites.

AI-powered content management systems allow companies to build and easily edit job listings and showcase their employee value proposition (EVP) and employer brand with dedicated landing pages.

Once the smart careers site captures the interest and details of enough passive candidates (from multiple sources), the CRM ensures they’re ready to engage when the right position becomes available. If you’re hiring for hard-to-fill roles, this is how it’s done!

Analytics

Recruiters no longer have to rely solely on instincts to make content and sourcing decisions. With sophisticated candidate relationship management, jobseeker activity and interaction data are captured and used to build rich candidate profiles. Some CRMs even deliver smart recommendations that highlight the best sourcing channels, candidates that best fit the job criteria (candidate scoring), and uncover hidden talent along the way.

With a 360-degree view of the talent pipeline, recruiters can even use internal mobility and alumni rehire strategies to develop their talent bench strength. This kind of data can save organisationsorganizations thousands of dollars in sourcing costs.

Who uses recruitment marketing and CRM software?

Recruitment marketing and candidate relationship management software are still relatively new to most organisationsorganizations. But they’re fast becoming preferred recruitment tools for savvy talent acquisition teams and employer branding specialists.

Many top employers and Fortune 500 companies have already transitioned to a talent-meets-marketing strategy to differentiate themselves in the job market and win the best talent.

Teams are adopting modern recruitment marketing or CRM software to analyse pipelines, optimiseanalyze pipelines, optimize sourcing channel investment and support new, more effective strategies such as:

careers sites, social channels and talent networks,
search engine optimisationoptimization (SEO),
content creation for jobseekers,
employer branding,
mobile-friendly candidate experiences,
high-touch lead nurturing and,
personalisationpersonalization throughout the candidate journey.

Infographic: What an effective recruitment marketing campaign looks like from start to finish

Why do I need applicant tracking software?

Once a candidate applies for a position, their information is automatically fed into an applicant tracking system for the next stage. The ATS enables hiring teams to manage applications faster and deliver an engaging, consistent and personalisedpersonalized candidate experience at scale. Here’s where the ATS delivers value:

High-volume recruitment

If the last 12 months have shown us anything, it’s that talent scalability is fundamental regardless of whether we’re freezing, furloughing, or ramping things up.

There’s no faster or more efficient way of bringing in high volumes of candidates – from the ‘apply’ to ‘offer’ stages – than an ATS. With recruitment workflow automation and powerful analytics, talent teams can move selected candidates from application to offer and complete the required background, reference, and employment history checks pre-offer.

Read: Running effective campaigns at-scale: A how-to guide in times of change

DecentralisedDecentralized recruitment

A decentraliseddecentralized recruitment model focuses on the needs of hiring managers as well as recruiters. Many large and enterprise-level companies shift some of their recruitment responsibilities to remove friction between the two parties and directly connect hiring managers to their ideal employees. It also helps streamline processes, speed up decision making, and adds a personal touch to the candidate experience.

With the right ATS, organisationsorganizations can create, maintain and collaborate on documents in real-time, and ensure total alignment between hiring managers and recruiters.

Compliance

Boring tasks are important. And with the help of an ATS, hiring teams keep doing the boring things without getting bored.

Applicant tracking software lets recruiters keep a record and build custom reports that make hiring decisions quick, easy, and accessible for all. Managing these processes through an ATS saves valuable time and money by reducing human error, double entry, paperwork, and selection bias. It’s also an essential tool for enterprise-level companies looking to mitigate risk and prove ROI.

Good systems are kept up-to-date by automatically rolling out any updates behind the scenes. Compliance mandates are constantly changing, which is why navigating new regulations can be a real headache without automation.

And the journey repeats

Once the best-fit candidate has accepted a job offer through the ATS, all other future-fit candidates are on top of the recruiter’s list for next time. Their details are then fed back into the recruitment marketing system to ‘keep warm’ in the CRM for future opportunities.

Which is the best CRM recruitment system or ATS?

With a whole host of talent technology solutions out there, it’s not easy to choose the right ATS and CRM for your business.

An easy way to approach it is to think about the key selection criteria for your organisationorganization. Eventually, your team will need to put forth a request for proposal (RFP) document for a talent acquisition vendor. So outlining the key features and functions you need to optimiseoptimize your unique hiring process and win top talent is a good exercise.

The 5 most important factors to consider when upgrading your recruitment technology stack:

1. Functionality

Recruitment teams are constantly looking for new ways to be more efficient. Sometimes there’s a need to keep up with seasonal spikes or attract hard-to-find talent. Other times there’s a need to cut sourcing costs. Finding a vendor that can support your unique company objectives is crucial.

With PageUp’s unmatched depth of functionality, we’ve helped customers all over the world streamline complex volume and specialist recruitment practices. We listen carefully to our customers and offer holistic solutions (not just the software) so that everyone can use PageUp to its full potential.

2. Customer support

Many hiring teams make the mistake of upgrading their talent acquisition tech stack but never realiserealize their investment’s full value.

Unlike other vendors, PageUp delivers on its promises. With 24/7 premium support and a dedicated Customer Success Manager, we work closely with you to solve your team’s challenges (even long after implementation). Because good recruitment software is nothing without great customer support.

3. Scalability

Without software that’s fully scalable, running an effective recruitment campaign is expensive and time-consuming and may overlook the nuances of your hiring needs. Always look for a system that can manage bulk applications, offer powerful filtering and candidate segmentation, and automate candidate assessments and communications.

4. Configurability

Some applicant tracking or recruitment marketing systems are sold as rigid out-of-the-box solutions. The best solutions are highly configurable – meaning they work flexibly to support a range of different workflows and industries – depending on the organisation’sorganization’s recruiting challenges. Consider a vendor, like PageUp, that adopts a partnership approach to help you maximisemaximize system features to get the best results.

5. DecentralisationDecentralization

As mentioned earlier, organisationsorganizations now realiserealize that a decentralisedDecentralized recruitment model works better for the entire business. It allows hiring managers to quickly select candidates based on their local knowledge and branch criteria.

It even empowers operators across different functions to access the information they need independently: whether it’s a hiring manager, member of IT/Security, or faculty member for higher education. PageUp’s cloud-based system is easy for everyone to use.

If you’d like to learn more about PageUp talent acquisition software and the problems we solve, get in touch for a free demo today.

PageUp is a powerful talent acquisition platform with unique capabilities to transform hiring experiences. Our Recruitment Marketing, Recruitment Management and Onboarding tools enable businesses to seamlessly find great team members that help drive the outcomes they need to be competitive. It’s the hiring technology you’ve been dreaming of.

The post Recruitment CRM or an ATS: is one really better than the other? appeared first on PageUp.

33 ways to get better at recruiting according to the experts

Mon, 03 May 2021 06:42:37 +0000

“How can I get better at recruiting?” you ask.

Every talent professional wants to excel and achieve recruitment success. But what does it take to get the best candidates through the door and into the right roles? The right strategy, tools and a passion for getting to know your candidates better.

In fact, candidates do a lot of the leg work for recruiters. More often than not, they’ll do their own research to find the right-fit role.

But in our current digital age, trying to master the technology and keep up with candidate expectations can be daunting for many recruiters.

Fortunately, there are experts who bring a wealth of experience and tried-and-true strategies to the table. In this article, you’ll learn the techniques they use to achieve benchmark-busting recruitment ROI and win the best talent.

Job descriptions

1. Make your job descriptions more enticing

For Adam Karpiak, job descriptions say a lot about a company – and it’s not always positive. While you may be searching for motivated, eager employees that can remain cool under pressure, describing a role as ‘fast-paced’ can turn jobseekers away before you’ve had a chance to say more.

“Employers, ‘fast-paced’ isn’t a selling point… it’s a warning,” says Karpiak.

When writing job descriptions, eschew jargony terms like ‘hustler’ ‘rockstar’ or ‘guru’ for clear role expectations. Most importantly, portray your unique culture and employee value proposition in a positive light – and articulate why someone would want to work for you.

Remember, a job description is often the first contact a person has with your company. Sell yourself well – don’t sell yourself short.

2. Share stories – not requirements

Sharing stories about your company culture, mission and values is far more impactful than simply listing out requirements for a role. Often, to convince a candidate to join your organisationorganization, you need to connect with them on an emotional level.

“Storytelling is how we connect with people and should be a recruiter’s number one asset,” says Joe Matar.

“I’d take a recruiter who can tell a great story about company, culture, and people all day over a recruiter who knows all the latest tips and tricks and best practices. Tell me a story to prove me wrong.”

Provide a great candidate experience

3. Stop ghosting candidates

Have you been in this situation before? You spend hours perfecting an application for a role you think you’re a great fit for, and then…silence. Days stretch into weeks and months, and you run through different scenarios in your mind. Maybe there was a network outage, and the application was never received? Maybe it got lost in a pile on someone’s desk? Or maybe the organisationorganization is just too disorganiseddisorganized and outdated to communicate with their applicants.

Whatever the reason, your opinion of the organisationorganization is tarnished, and you’re unlikely to apply again when future roles come up. It’s something that’s happened to almost all of us, regardless of whether we’ve applied to a small business or global organisationorganization.

“The IRS, with no budget and an old ass IT infrastructure, can tell 100M people when and how they’ll get their stimulus money, but Fortune 500 companies can’t tell 75 people the status of their job application,” says Adam Karpiak.

All too often, companies leave candidates in the dark about the status of a job application. It’s a fundamentally broken part of the recruitment process, and it has a hugely negative impact on employer brand. If you’re turning away quality talent just because they weren’t the right fit for this role, you’re losing the chance to have them on hand for future opportunities.

“Good recruiters have empathy for all jobseekers…not just the ones they think can be useful,” Karpiak adds.

4. Providing a great experience is the right thing to do

Joe Matar has seen firsthand how damaging a poor candidate experience can be – especially during a global health crisis.

“I was interviewing a candidate this week and she kicked off the interview by telling me how responsive and transparent our #recruiting team had been throughout the entire hiring process.

…But then she went on…

The next part was about all the other companies she had applied to since losing her job due to the pandemic. All the dead ends. All the resume black holes. All the unresponsive recruiting teams she’d encountered. The bar for candidate experience is set so low, yet the emotions run so high.

“It is waaaay too easy to ignore the person on the other side. A resume, an application, and an email on your screen is what we see. But there’s a real person behind all those bytes of data.”

5. Consider the ‘jobseeker bill of rights’

Whenever Katrina Kibben presents, they ask the room a question: “Who here has been a jobseeker before?”

Everyone’s hand in the room usually rises (those who don’t raise their hand are often not listening).

Then, Kibben silences the room by saying these seven words:

“Do you remember what it feels like?”

“The hopelessness? The despair? That feeling that you have no control, and you’re at the very bottom of the list?”

Kibben suggests a Jobseeker Bill of Rights could create a humane candidate experience – and fix the broken way we recruit.

“Every candidate gets access to the profile that’s generated after they take an assessment: every score, every time.
Candidates may respond to ask for feedback on what eliminated them from consideration. Responses are mandatory.
Curious what they’re really saying in a job posting? Ask for clarification, and get it.
Applications will not ask people to submit a resume, then manually enter the entire work history.
Employers set expectations about the types of questions they’ll ask in the interview and what they’re looking for in an interview guide candidates get at least one week in advance.
Honest answers about salary requirements for every candidate.
Only editorial candidates will write cover letters.”

6. Ask why candidates are dropping out of your hiring process

Dr John Sullivan has seen the same scenario play out many times:

“You sourced a candidate who impressed your hiring manager, has all the skills for the job and fits your company’s values. But before you can extend an offer, the candidate changes their mind (or worse, ghosts you). Here’s why it’s happening and what you can do to fix it.

If [the candidate] had an unexciting interview or feels like they are being treated poorly because of a lack of feedback, or even a rude recruiter or disinterested hiring manager, the best will exit quickly.”

If you’re wondering why people are dropping out of your recruiting process, apply for a role to try and understand the experience from end to end. Where are the gaps? Where can the process be sped up or personalised? Understanding how an external candidate experiences your organisationorganization will help you identify the leaks in your recruitment funnel and empower you to fix your processes.

7. Treat candidates like customers

A negative candidate experience has repercussions beyond the current recruitment cycle.

Our Head of Customer Insights and Market Research, Rebecca Skilbeck, says 72% of jobseekers have shared a poor experience on sites like Glassdoor, social media or directly with a colleague or friend. And 27% of candidates would ‘actively discourage’ others from applying for a job with that company.

But that’s not all.

For many businesses, some candidates may even end up being customers. And you can bet they’ll remember their experience and take their business elsewhere.

“Treating candidates with respect and dignity is important, even if you’ve never met face-to-face. It’s small things like giving feedback to unsuccessful applicants that make a business stand out,” Skilbeck says.

8. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver

As head of recruiting at Flexe, Stephen Medawar knows you have to provide a world-class candidate experience to compete for top talent. The key lies in personalisingpersonalizing the experience to appeal to each candidate’s expectations and desires – but he’s careful always to ensure he’s selling an accurate picture of what it’s like to work at the company.

“You start by learning about the candidate’s career goals, what motivates them, and their deal-breakers, and you personalisepersonalize their experience. Then, throughout the interview, show them how they’ll achieve their goals at your company. Always be truthful, though. There’s nothing worse than starting a new job and finding out you’ve been sold a bunch of lies.”

9. Nurture talent pools

If you want to do more with less and demonstrate ROI on sourcing efforts, Joe Matar has one straightforward piece of advice: don’t neglect your talent pools.

“The THREE (3) #recruiting techniques that will give you the biggest bang for your buck for the remainder of the year are:

1. Engage your current database of candidates / applicants
2. Engage your current database of candidates / applicants
3. Engage your current database of candidates / applicants
EVP and Employer Brand”

Employee Value Proposition and Employer Brand

10. Define your EVP or buy your tombstone

“You can either pick an EVP, or you can choose to RIP. Buy a shovel, dig a hole, get in it and bring your company with you,” Alan Fluhrer told attendees at Disrupt HR.

A good EVP is cost-effective and uses common sense, Fluhrer explains. Put simply: an EVP is “a way to communicate your company values, mantra and beliefs across the company, locally, through different functions and geographies.”

Instead of turning to outside consulting firms to manufacture an EVP that feels inauthentic, Fluhrer says HR teams are best-placed to articulate what makes their company a great place to work.

Fluhrer notes there are “multiple EVPs in every company – get used to it”. EVPs can differ depending on whether you’re attracting C-suite executives, Salespeople or operations workers. Even roles in different locations can have unique value propositions – what’s important is finding out what these value propositions are, then using this to tell a compelling story about why people should join – and stay with – your organisationorganization.

11. Employer branding is a necessity for global organisationorganizations

Once employer branding was seen as a ‘nice to have’, it is now necessary for organisationorganizations to compete for talent globally, explains Hung Lee. Lee says that the COVID-19 pandemic has crystallisedcrystallized employer brands as each organisationorganization takes a different approach to support its staff during the pandemic. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime period for organisationorganization looking to fortify their employer brand.”

Watch now: Recruiting Trends in a Remote-First World presented by Hung Lee

12. Beware EVP silos

“Does your EVP reflect the entire company – or just one facet of it?”

Charu Malhotra often asks organisationorganization this question – because all too often, HR is the sole creator, manager, and amplifier of an organisationorganization’s employer brand.

“Marketing, internal communications and talent teams need to work as one team. If employer brand is siloed in HR then content creation and employee advocacy isn’t given an opportunity to flourish,” Malhotra observes.

For an employer brand to truly reflect life at an organisationorganization, you need inputs from all facets of the company – not just HR. Think of your employees as brand champions: valuable sources of authentic content and insights that can be shared across company social media accounts. Encourage them to post about life at your organisationorganization using a dedicated hashtag, and you’ll have a free and authentic way to amplify your unique employer brand.

13. Articulate your employer brand digitally

Remote hiring presents many challenges. Without in-person meetings and office tours, candidates can struggle to get a sense of the culture and atmosphere of a workplace.

Chris Russell observes candidates are struggling to assess company culture and job fit through virtual hiring: Three in four candidates (75%) agree that “virtual hiring makes it difficult to really assess how a company’s values and culture align with my own.”

To help candidates get a feel for your culture, ensure you’re communicating your brand and EVP through virtual platforms. As remote hiring becomes the norm, you should be able to showcase what it’s like to work at your organisationorganization – including ‘day in the life’ videos and employee testimonials – clearly on your careers site and social media platforms.

14. Differentiate yourself from the competition

Tim Sackett often sees organisationorganizations trot out the same old lines about their winning culture and employer brand. For Sackett, these generic sentiments don’t get to the heart of why someone would actually want to work for that company. He suggests asking yourself one simple question:

“For the most part, every organization spouts off about being the best place to work. Statistically, that just can’t be true. Everyone can’t be the best, right?

Why does anyone really want to work at your company?

That is really the only question you need to answer. It might be because you’re the tallest of the seven dwarfs in your marketplace. It might be because it’s a decent-paying job close to home. Maybe you have a friendly culture, and mostly everyone gets along.

But, really, why would anyone choose you?

The answer will set you free. It will allow you to really have fun with who you are and find others that are like you.”

15. Play to your strengths

If you’re a smaller organisationorganization, it can seem impossible to compete with the big guys on perks, benefits and pay. But Tim Sackett says you can still recruit top talent – you just have to be strategic.

“Small companies may not be able to compete with large companies on their benefit packages, but large companies can’t compete with the flexibility small organizations offer.”

16. Transparency will get you far

If you were to ask Erika Klics, former Head of Talent and People at Spot AI, what the secret to recruiting talent is, she’d say it comes down to honesty and transparency.

“Hone in on who you are and what you can offer. Be transparent about the role, the team, and your company. Whether it’s stories from current employees, a clear set of projects they can build, or transparent compensation targets, give people the tools they need to decide if your company is the right place for them.”

17. Quality over quantity

Sometimes when it comes to employer branding, less is more. If you’re doing a good job of employer branding, you’ll be getting more of the right kind of applicants, and less of the wrong kind.

As James Ellis observes, employer branding is one of the few types of marketing where getting more leads, more applications, and more candidates isn’t necessarily better.

“If you’re marketing something like donuts, more ad interactions lead to more sales. Build a campaign that sells a million donuts and you’re getting a bonus. But in recruiting, if your marketing leads to a million people applying, you’ve done something wrong,” Ellis explains.

“The name of the game in employer branding is quality over quantity. Recruiters don’t want more leads and applications, they want fewer, so long as there are enough quality candidates to fill the role…recruiting only can only put one person in the role, so it’s not about finding the most people, but identifying and attracting the best person for the role.”

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

18. Don’t make it a box-ticking exercise

Katrina Kibben is a vocal supporter of diversity and inclusion in organisationorganizations. They explain that ’a few diverse hires’ does not equal a diverse workforce. That work is an ongoing process of continual education, listening, and growth.

“The checklist mentality around diversity has to stop. Just because you have a diverse person does not mean you’ve done the work to build an inclusive company,” Kibben says.

19. Bias is everywhere: learn to fight it

As Jeffrey W Shapiro observes, “Bias is literally everywhere: Proper grammar, accents, slang, use of verbal pauses…. all things that have zero impact on if this human being is qualified for the role but can become a roadblock to job seekers.

Knock It Off. Do Better. Be Better.”

Look in the right places

20. The future is remote-first

If you’re looking to build the workforce of the future, Joe Matar has some simple advice: “Go where your candidates are.”

Rather than expecting candidates to come to them, the best organisationorganizations are seeking top talent out and connecting with them on the platforms and in the communities they inhabit.

“They are remote: connect with them virtually.
They are near your physical office. Connect with them at a coffee shop.
They are remote now but relocating and working in person: connect with them virtually initially, bring them in to see the facility and meet the team deeper in the funnel.

Now optimize the candidate experience for each path and you are well on your way.”

21. ‘Jumping around’ isn’t always a bad thing

It used to be a warning sign if a person had multiple job changes on their resume – now, it’s a sign of growth and ambition, according to Anessa Fike.

“Employers – you will start to see more and more ‘jumping around’ on resumes in the next 5-10 years. Gen Z understands the dynamic that if you want to move up in title and compensation quickly, those are more likely to happen by jumping to a different role and company every year.

If you don’t consider these candidates, you are missing out on a ton of talent that your competitors are not. You are also likely missing out on a ton of talent that isn’t white and male.”

22. Source from your internal talent pools

With lockdown restrictions forcing widespread layoffs and reduced recruiter headcount forcing hiring teams to do more with less, organisationorganizations are redeploying staff to cut costs and keep valued skills within the business.

According to LinkedIn insights, internal hires increased by 19% in April-August 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019. Internal hires now make up almost 20% of an organisationorganization’s workforce on average.

But according to Hung Lee, “COVID revealed we don’t do internal mobility well.” Lee suggests that in the future, “TA will be known as ‘Talent Access’ – they will ensure the availability of the entire talent universe to the employer.”

Managers will transform into ‘career coaches’ and rely on performance management technology to facilitate regular feedback and on-the-go learning opportunities. According to Lee, TA will take ownership of internal mobility and talent delivery.

Free playbook: Maximising the potential of your workforce with internal mobility

Ask the right questions

23. Ditch the script when interviewing candidates

Adam Karpiak says job interviews are “basically someone asking scripted questions to someone waiting to give scripted answers.”

“If you aren’t looking to have an honest conversation with a potential employee, just email the questions and save everyone 60 minutes of fake smiling,” he says.

He also has a withering indictment of stock-standard interview questions such as ‘what’s your biggest weakness?’

“If asked in a job interview, ‘what is your biggest weakness?’ a perfectly acceptable response is, “I can see yours is asking useful interview questions,” Karpiak says.

24. Ask these 3 questions

There are three questions that every interviewer should ask candidates, according to Lou Adler. The answers you receive will tell you whether a candidate will be the right fit for a role, or whether you should continue the search.

“The first question: Can you tell me about your single most significant career accomplishment of all time including when it happened?
The second question: The biggest accomplishment required for success in this job is (describe a major accomplishment or KPO in some detail). Given this, can you tell me about something you’ve accomplished that’s most comparable including when it happened?
The third question: If you were to get this job, what would you need to know to put together a detailed plan for accomplishing (the major accomplishment asked in question two)?”

Invest in training in-house recruitment teams

25. Train hiring managers

Getting hiring manager buy-in is a crucial step to selecting the right person. So why do so few organisationorganizations spend the time to upskill hiring managers in successful recruitment strategies?

As Dawn Burke observes, “If hiring managers are critical to hiring success why do so many forget to train them?”

26. Learn a recruiter’s core competencies

As Celia Harper-Guerra observes, recruiters don’t often formally train to be recruiters – they just learn on the job.

“In order to hire the best talent, companies need to first take the time to invest in their in-house recruitment teams. It seems simple, but it’s a strategic, long-term investment,” says Harper-Guerra.

“Recruiters don’t go to a university to become a recruiter, they often fall into this role, and they learn on the job. There are a number of core competencies that a recruiter needs to be successful. A recruiter needs to be a brand ambassador for your company, a pipeline (sourcing) expert by understanding how to leverage different types of technologies and software, and to be a business consultant for their hiring managers. A recruiter will understand their industry market conditions and what type of talent is available in those markets.”

Taking the time to understand these core competencies will help you become a better recruiter and drive real results in your role.

27. Understand what hiring managers really want

Sometimes, it can seem like there’s a huge disconnect between what recruiters want and what hiring managers want. As a recruiter, you can present a handful of what you think are great candidates for the role, but the hiring manager may have had a different set of expectations for their ideal hire.

Steve Levy recommends sitting down with hiring managers at the outset to determine exactly what they’re looking for in an ideal candidate – and set expectations accordingly.

Speaking at SourceCon, Steve said:

“The chances of you finding that one ‘perfect résumé’ that everyone else has missed is a pipe dream.
Take hiring managers out of the building for coffee.
If the hiring manager can’t describe what ‘it’ is, have them draw a picture of their environment and systems – this is guaranteed to get them to think more clearly about their roles.
They’re not candidates, talent, human capital, or data points – they’re ‘people.’

Rely on technology and automation

28. Reduce time to hire

Getting the ideal candidate to apply for a role is only half the battle. If your recruitment process and time to hire is too long, you’ll lose quality talent in droves.

As Chris Menendez, Lead IT Recruiter at Hays PLC observes,

“The number one gap I observe in the market between candidates and employers is hiring timeline! In an age where strong engineers are on and off the market in literally days, the antiquated system of 3 step interviews over 2 weeks will hurt the hiring process TREMENDOUSLY. The ideal employer has the process nailed down to 1 or 2 steps (one being virtual), and a process implemented so they can make a decision on decline or offer same day.”

29. Technology can personalisepersonalize the candidate experience

Bill Boorman sees the future of recruiting relying on personalisationpersonalization and authentic engagement – aided by automation and pre-set workflows.

“Everything I’m working on now at the moment is being pushed towards personalisationpersonalization and single user experiences,” Boorman says.

“Messaging and communication experiences whether it’s on a career page, Facebook or Snapchat should be a personal experience. To scale it, it has to be somewhat automated, but there are a lot of things we can do with data and making sure it’s the right workflow and infrastructure to make it a reality. It’s all about the person, whether it’s the recruiter, the hiring manager or the applicant.”

30. Technology can surface soft skills and behaviouralbehavioral attributes

Experts at McKinsey are hinting at the slow decline of the resume as recruiters look beyond experience-based assessment to select candidates with the right behavioursbehaviors and potential to learn.

“The need for some skills, such as technological as well as social and emotional skills, will rise, even as the demand for others, including physical and manual skills, will fall.” (McKinsey, 2018)

As organisationorganizations divert their attention from manually scanning resumes, technology allows recruiters to screen for behaviouralbehavioral attributes at scale. Using AI, psychometrics testing and other digital behaviouralbehavioral or competency-based solutions, employers are able to predict, understand, and match thousands of people to jobs, faster.

Watch: Demystifying bias in AI for recruiting

Build lasting relationships

31. Tap into alumni networks

“Retain the relationship, not the employee,” recruiting guru Bill Boorman advises. This year, time-poor recruiting teams looking to do more with less are turning to the ‘talent community’ – alumni, silver-medalists and internal talent – as a source of pre-vetted, quality hires.

The return of the talent community creates a new job for recruiters – engaging talent even after they’ve left the organisationorganization.

32. Make relationships the entire point

Hung Lee shares 5 key ways to engage alumni:

Make relationships the entire point
Bridge community and company (careers sites are a great way to do this).
Treat talent mobility the same as career development
That development might exist outside of the company
Not a single career path but career optionality

Free playbook: Alumni networks re-imagining the employee experience

33. Recruitment doesn’t end after day one

According to Joseph J. Balbi, strategic hiring means considering the value a candidate can add immediately — and their potential future value! Where can development take them, and what can they grow to be. Here are some development stats worth chewing on.

“ROI of Engagement:

Highly engaged teams produce at 21% greater profitability
Top 25% in engagement leads to a 200% increase in success
41% less absenteeism
59% less turnover
17% increase in productivity
20% boost in sales

ROI of Feedback:

45% reporting as engaged say feedback is a factor
14.9% lower turnover when regular feedback is implemented
Feedback on strengths is 30x more likely to boost engagement
92% feel critiques are effective (delivered appropriately)

ROI of Coaching:

The mean ROI of leadership coaching was 700%
20% recouped 5,000% in ROI on coaching investments
Of those coached, 80% say performance, productivity and communication skills have improved

ROI of Recognition:

80% motivated to work harder when they’re appreciated
70% feel that praise improves motivation and morale
49% say they would leave if not acknowledged

Of those recognisedrecognized in the last 6 months, 93% say work has purpose,” Balbi says.

HR teams like yours are driving value with PageUp

Every recruiter cares about getting the best people into the right roles. But sometimes, we miss an opportunity to become more targeted and meet today’s high candidate expectations.

That’s where PageUp comes in.

Request a demo to learn more about our revolutionary hiring software and the problems we solve.

PageUp is a powerful talent acquisition and management platform with unique capabilities to transform hiring experiences. Our Recruitment Marketing, Recruitment Management, Onboarding, Learning, Performance and Succession tools enable businesses to seamlessly find and retain great team members that help drive the outcomes they need to be competitive. It’s the hiring technology you’ve been dreaming of.

The post 33 ways to get better at recruiting according to the experts appeared first on PageUp.

Attracting top talent in today’s market

Mon, 31 May 2021 20:00:49 +0000

Why is top talent so much harder to find?

Right now, every organisationorganization is competing for talent in what is shaping up to be the toughest labourlabor market in decades.

Job opening figures are soaring, but application levels haven’t recovered since the onset of the pandemic. Employers are struggling to attract enough talent to fill open roles, with skills gaps and a lack of applications threatening to hold back global recovery.

The job of hiring scarce talent now falls onto talent acquisition teams – many of whom are operating with an increasing workload and reduced headcount. Competition is also fierce. There are 50% more open job ads than there were before the pandemic. Talent professionals are stretched beyond belief, asking, “Where and how do we find our next hire?”

It’s a good question. What we can tell you is that the organisationsorganizations winning the war for talent are leaving no stone unturned when it comes to creative, data-driven sourcing approaches. Their practices include:

Top of the funnel recruitment marketing strategies
Targeted content and job pages
Candidate pipelining and automated engagement
Alumni and internal talent networks

But before we dig into some examples, let’s explore how we got to today’s tough candidate market.

A snapshot of today’s talent market

Recent PageUp data has revealed employers are struggling to attract enough quality candidates, with skills gaps and a lack of applications threatening to hold back Australia’s post-COVID recovery.Recent PageUp data has revealed employers are struggling to attract enough quality candidates, with skills gaps and a lack of applications threatening to hold back global post-COVID recovery.

Job roles are soaring compared to the same time last year. In April 2021, the number of advertised roles was up 52.5% compared to pre-pandemic levels (Jan 2020). But job applications have not increased in step with this change. The total number of job applications submitted in April 2021 was still down 12.5% from pre-COVID levels. This shortage of applicants is hampering business recovery.

There are a few possible reasons for this decline in applications:

People are still hesitant to start a new role as COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions continue amid delayed vaccine rollout.
People are unwilling to switch to a new career amid ongoing uncertainty in the global market
Salary is a strong motivator for pursuing and accepting a new role – and wage growth has stagnated over the past year. The recent Budget forecasts wage growth of 1.5% in 2021-22, below inflation which is forecast to grow by 1.75%.
Australia is receiving no skilled migrants who would usually fill these open positions.
Wages for hourly workers are historically low. And with the current COVID benefits, for many, it pays to stay unemployed. Companies need competitive hourly rates and benefits to attract today’s jobseeker.
Workers are taking a step back to consider their career prospects for a post-COVID world carefully.

Other challenges:

High employee turnover. There is a great post-pandemic resignation boom coming. Employers are scrambling to maintain their culture and employees.
Companies operating at reduced capacity need experienced, skilled hourly workers – not a stream of warm bodies for a brief tenure.

In a nutshell, recruiters are working much harder to find enough applicants for a role. And they’re doing so with reduced team capacity while fighting for in-demand talent with pandemic-level compensation and benefits.

This makes it even harder to attract the right type of applicants.

Recruiters are spread too thin

With COVID-19 forcing many hiring teams to become lean, recruiters are now forced to do more with less. They’re expected to hire faster, hire at a higher volume, and hire with fewer resources.

In Australia, recruiters went from an average of 17 open roles per month to an average of 21 – an almost 25% increase in workload. Jobs per recruiter have increased by almost the same amount in EMEA, while recruiters in Asia have also seen an increase in job postings.

In America, the story is different – jobs posted per recruiter have actually fallen from 23 to an average of 19 – a decrease of 17%. But as vaccination rates rise and the US economy starts to recover, we predict these rates will dramatically increase.

To make things more difficult, offer acceptance rates are falling – currently sitting at 95% compared to 97% in 2019. Research shows that 63% of jobseekers would reject a job offer after receiving a bad candidate experience. Even with fewer resources, recruiters have to provide an engaging, high-touch experience or risk losing talent to competitors.

How are recruiters handling these challenges?

Recruiters are getting out of ‘the recruitment rut’ and trying new and novel sourcing channels to secure skilled and diverse talent.

Talent doesn’t just exist on jobs boards

Recruiters who only post to job boards or rely on LinkedIn search to find talent are fishing from the same talent pool as every other organisationorganization. Winning the best talent requires a more creative and strategic approach to sourcing. Hiring teams are turning to recruitment marketing tactics as an alternative to ‘posting and praying’ on job boards. The aim is to move from ‘fishing’ for talent to proactive attraction.

Recruiters are using careers sitescareer sites and email communication as valuable sourcing channels to attract the talent they need. To make the most of these sourcing channels, savvy hiring teams are leveraging recruitment marketing tactics such as targeted microsites, landing pages and personalisedpersonalized email nurture programs. The recruiters who do this well are able to attract talent that exists beyond the well-worn path of job boards and recruitment agencies.

Helping top candidates choose their next employer

Instead of asking why talent is so hard to find, top companies are asking ‘why’ a candidate would want to work for them, ‘where’ they look for jobs and defining their ideal candidate persona.

Recruiters then use these personas to adjust their talent acquisition strategy to attract and engage the people they want. Targeted and relevant job descriptions and employer branding efforts help build real connections with top talent.

The cost of these recruitment marketing strategies is often far lower than the typical spend on job boards and agency fees. Those who find themselves in a rut should consider trying new recruitment marketing strategies to shift the needle and attract new talent.

Let technology do the heavy lifting

But I’m so swamped I don’t have time to try anything new! Many recruiters will tell us.

It’s true that hiring teams are spread thin. Whether your hiring team is light on resources or struggling to re-hire the talent you lost, the best thing to do is admit you need help – and lean on technology for backup.

“If you don’t take time to stop to sharpen your axe, you’re just getting slower and slower every day,” observed PageUp VP Global Channels Dayne Nash. This was in a recent conversation with Jason Burns, Head of Talent Acquisition and Employer Brand at Businessary. If the sentiment rings true for you, it’s time to stop, reassess your talent needs, and consider how technology can add value.

Technology is helping recruiters automate high-touch candidate attraction and engagement at scale by:

Building easy to edit careers sitescareer sites that engage key candidates and capture interest through custom calls to action (CTAs)
Showcasing content specifically designed to appeal to key talent segments
Building diverse microsites and landing pages that appeal to these target candidates
Grow and nurture target talent communities (i.e. developers) with email campaigns and nurture flows to engage at scale
Using SMS and nudge notification workflows to make it easy to engage with candidates anywhere, any time

By using technology to strategically automate top of the funnel attraction activities, you’ll draw in more of the applicants you need – without having to lift a finger.

This will free you up to build strategic relationships and concentrate on finding the best person for the role.

Build sustainable pipelines of talent

Being able to draw from pools and pipelines of talent is an invaluable asset for the time-poor recruiter. Proactive recruiters are building talent pipelines filled with previously vetted candidates, like alumni (former employees), silver-medallists and existing (internal) employees. These people have already been sold on working at the company, so it makes sense to keep them warm and engaged with regular job alerts, personalisedpersonalized content and high-touch communication.

Leverage alumni networks

OrganisationsOrganizations are turning to their former employee networks to reduce their average time to fill and cost per hire. Flight Centre Travel GroupLiberty Travel recently saved as much as $35,000 per alumni hire by using PageUp Recruitment Marketing to engage and mobilisemobilize its alumni network. They created a dedicated alumni careers sitecareer site and talent network, email nurture programs and custom targeted job listings.

Building a talent pipeline allowed the Group to dramatically cut sourcing costs and establish a pool of qualified, pre-vetted candidates to draw from.

Watch now: Working towards sustainable talent pipelines with Flight CentreWatch now: Working towards sustainable talent pipelines with Liberty Travel

Champion internal mobility

With companies around the world looking to fill the gap that skilled migrants have left, organisationsorganizations are looking internally to find the skills they need through internal mobility and upskilling programs.

But more needs to be done, according to the experts.

“The impact that COVID-19 has had on skilled migration in Australia has only amplified the need for local upskilling, especially for those industries…that traditionally source much of their talent from overseas. But many of Australia’s CEOs appear in danger of missing the opportunity to locally upskill.” – PwC, 24th CEO survey, 2021

Recruiters have turned to internal career development and cross-functional secondments to develop the talent they already have on hand and prepare for future skills shortages.

To run these internal mobility programs successfully, talent teams need to create transparency – do employees know roles are available? Do they understand the role requirements? Are they encouraged to apply for positions?

The organisationsorganizations running these programs are using recruitment marketing tools to establish internal career sites and nurture internal talent pipelines with new roles, openings and opportunities. In the future, the best TA teams will take ownership of internal mobility and talent delivery, signalling a move away from hiring-manager led placements.

Rely on referrals

Referrals are a strong source of hires for many companies: PageUp data shows that it only takes 5.5 applications through referrals to result in 1 hire. Compare this to 48.6 applications through job boards required to result in 1 hire.

Consider how you can incentiviseincentivize referrals from within your business (many organisationsorganizations offer referral bonuses) and establish a formal program that you advertise internally across all talent segments in your organisationorganization.

Re-thinking benefits

With pay rises on hold for many organisationsorganizations, it can be hard to attract new talent with pandemic-level benefits. Without competitive compensation, how can you convince candidates to apply?

Consider what other benefits your organisationorganization can offer – for example, the ability to work in cross-functional teams and the potential for internal mobility could be a huge drawcard for applicants looking to advance in their careers.

Offering targeted benefits can also help attract specific talent segments. For casual workers, the promise of a ‘stay’ bonus is an appealing reason to apply – and stay with – a potential employer. Travel & Leisure Co., a PageUp customer, built a dedicated landing page on their career site advertising a staying bonus to attract and retain hourly workers over the summer period.

Next steps for attracting talent

To find talent in a tough candidate market, you need to leave no stone unturned in your search. Re-thinking your hiring strategies and going beyond the well-worn path of job boards and agencies is the first step to getting the most out of your recruitment spend and securing your next star hire.

Is an outdated applicant tracking system holding your business back?

To help you on your talent attraction journey, there’s PageUp Recruitment Marketing. We’ve developed a purpose-built, modern recruitment marketing platform to help talent professionals create and edit customer careers sitescareer sites and landing pages, attract and engage talent at scale, and use advanced personalisationpersonalization and automation to nurture rich talent pipelines.

If you’d like to learn more about our solution and how it can help tackle the tough recruitment challenges you’re facing, get in touch today.

The post Attracting top talent in today’s market appeared first on PageUp.

Recruitment software features you actually need in 2021

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 04:21:35 +0000

With more recruitment software vendors to choose from than ever before, it’s not easy finding the right solution for your business.

Modern recruiters are expected to be in a million places at once. Job boards, company websites, social media, email. And there’s a smorgasbord of smart-sounding tools out there claiming to make a recruiter’s life easier.

Some platforms boast slick dashboards but lack functionality. Others are a nightmare to track candidates. Some even market themselves as automated while still requiring experienced recruitment professionals to do low-value manual work.

So it’s no surprise 4 out of 5 companies aren’t satisfied with their current provider.

But here’s the biggest problem: most recruitment software solutions are designed from the wrong perspective.

Why design philosophy matters

Software features are a big part of the story when selecting a vendor. But they’re not everything.

That’s right. Experiences that lead to better outcomes for candidates and hiring managers count just as much.

Still, too many recruitment software solutions are designed purely from the recruiter’s perspective. You only have to look at the actual business outcomes to understand why that’s a problem.

The best recruitment software solutions ease the recruiter’s administrative burden while also taking the candidate’s and hiring manager’s experience into account.

Why?

Because it’s in everyone’s best interest.

Candidates who receive straightforward and seamless experiences feel highly valued and exit the process with a positive view of the company.
Hiring managers who are more involved in the recruitment process feel more satisfied and equipped to make decisions.

The best software should walk the line between delivering on the expectations of candidates in the sourcing and screening process – and aligning departments and business goals on the employer’s side.

Unfortunately, it can be tempting to overlook these outcomes in favourfavor of good branding and gimmicky features.

Throughout this guide, we’ll share valuable tips to improve hiring experiences across the board, and consequently, your business bottom line.

Pay for outcomes, not features

The key to selecting software that can deliver real value is to start with the problem and align the solution to specific business needs.

Then, consider true partnerships that support both the product and your team’s vision. If in doubt, dig a little deeper and ask the tough questions to determine whether a provider will actively support your team in the long term – and whether that comes at an extra cost.

Know your end goal

At the end of the day, what are you hoping to get out of your recruitment software? A reduced time to fill? Better quality hires?

If you know your end goal, it’s a lot easier to track your recruitment efforts at each step to ensure they lead to the results you’re aiming for.

So, what brings you here? Why are you in the market for a new recruitment system? Here are some of the top reasons businesses invest in recruitment software:

Improving quality of hire

The cost of a bad hire is more than most people think.

Aside from all the recruitment and onboarding costs, poor hiring decisions can be detrimental to an organisationorganization’s culture, productivity, engagement and brand.

Some managers hire in their own image. Others overlook essential soft skills in favourfavor of technical skills and credentials. But the problem isn’t a hiring team’s lack of judgment. It’s a lack of technology to make better-informed decisions.

In fact, 28% of bad hires are the result of a broken or limited hiring process.

Thankfully, there’s tech to empower more high-quality, suitable candidates to apply (and less of the wrong kind) – as well as tools that help recruiters identify high-potential candidates and build stronger relationships with hiring managers across the organisationorganization.

Essential functionality for attracting and selecting better candidates:

AI-powered dynamic careerscareer website content (jobs, blogs)
Automated optimisationoptimization (accessibility, search engine, social media)
Smart talent pipeline building
Candidate engagement scoring
Automated watch list
Powerful talent search and rich categorisationcategorization
Hiring manager interview and selection tools

Improving time to fill

If your goal is to increase hiring efficiency, you need tools that can help you find, identify and hire quality talent faster than your competitors.

According to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), it takes a company 36 days on average to fill a role. And each vacancy costs around $500 per day.

Waiting until it’s too late isn’t just expensive business – it opens up the risk of losing qualified candidates to competing organisationsorganizations.

Smart tools help recruiters respond to updates quickly as candidates step through the application process. And useful dashboards give hiring teams the visibility and insights they need to move swiftly on key hiring decisions.

Essential functionality for finding the right fit faster:

An engaging and dynamic careerscareer site
Extended reach through industry leading job boards
Recruitment workflow automation and analytics
Smart talent pipeline building
Pre-employment assessment
Offer management
Automated provisioning for new starters
PersonalisedPersonalized onboarding and eLearning

Automating end-to-end talent acquisition

Today’s recruiters are feeling the pinch of fewer resources and an ever-increasing workload. And competition for talent isn’t going away.

Expectations are high and old methods that rely on manual processes, hunches and ‘gut feel’ aren’t delivering results like they used to.

Delve into the details and the business case to implement modern technology is strong. There’s an opportunity to work smarter (not just harder) at every stage of the recruitment funnel and job application process.

From recruitment marketing all the way through to onboarding software, technology can enable a seamless experience for recruiters, candidates, and hiring managers alike.

Essential functionality for automating the entire hiring process:

Job posting automation
Recruiting chatbot and 24/7 virtual assistants
Workflow management and automation
Automated candidate outreach
Automated interview scheduling
Integrated talent management
Improving the candidate experience

As we mentioned earlier, recruitment software (like applicant tracking systems) have helped ease a recruiter’s administrative burden for a long time. But candidates were often missing from the picture – and the ones that did make it through a company’s online application were forced to play the waiting game…only to be met with rejection.

63% of jobseekers would reject a job offer after receiving a bad candidate experience.

Talent acquisition teams need empathy for all applicants, not just those who are useful to them now.

Make no mistake: candidates left in the dark about their application status will share their poor experience with the world. And you can forget about contacting them for suitable roles in the future.

Today, digital tools can make meaningful human connections with high-touch candidate engagement. Recruiters can now automate fluid and timely communications behind the scenes.

It’s all thanks to modern candidate relationship management (CRM) software – enabling employers to build relationships with candidates throughout their recruitment journey.

Essential functionality for keeping candidates highly engaged:

Easy-to-edit Content Management System (CMS)
AI-powered dynamic website content
Enhanced job description pages (embedding videos and blogs)
Candidate relationship management (CRM)
1:1 candidate communications
Automated assistance and text-to-apply
PersonalisedPersonalized onboarding portal
Job alerts and automated nurture campaigns

Managing applicant volumes

When the pressure heats up for recruiters handling high application volumes, they need scalable solutions that help them find the needle in the haystack.

Whether your organisationorganization is hiring for multiple roles or one really popular job, the best recruitment software makes it easier to visualisevisualize, assess and progress applications without sacrificing the candidate experience.

Essential functionality for bulk recruitment tasks:

Automated workflows
Automated scoring
Embedded assessments and video interviews
End-to-end analytics
Recruitment funnel analytics (candidate journey insights)
CentralisedCentralized templated communication
Calendar integration (direct interview sync)

Reducing hiring bias

There’s no secret sauce for building a diverse workforce. But there are plenty of tools every talent professional can use to remove unconscious bias and create more equitable conditions for candidates early on.

Whether it’s to remove bias in job descriptions, restructure referrals or source candidates from untapped talent pools – the barriers to diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) vary between industry, function, role and seniority.

Talent teams need relevant data insights to track demographics at each stage of the process, take action where it counts and measure outcomes.

Essential functionality for building high performing and diverse teams:

Enhanced job description pages
Campaign pages for underrepresented cohorts
AnonymisedAnonymized profile screening
Demographic analytics and reporting
AI-powered behaviouralbehavioral screening

Abandoning multiple tech solutions for an all-in-one platform

Talent acquisition teams today must work proactively, optimisingoptimizing every step of the hiring process to drive the outcomes they need to be competitive.

They need platforms that provide deeper functionality and showcase their organisation’sorganization’s unique recruitment experience and brand.

The problem is that fragmented solutions don’t solve multiple business problems. (Not to mention the nightmare of team members losing access.)

But, there’s no magic bullet like many Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) solutions claim to be. In an ever-changing talent acquisition landscape, the best solutions are the ones that grow with you through 1-way or 2-way integrations.

Essential functionality for quality hires on a single-user interface:

Final thoughts

Many talent acquisition professionals make the mistake of upgrading their tech stack but never realiserealize the full value of their investment.

If you take one thing away from this article, remember that the easiest way to make a poor recruitment software choice is to not have a strategy. If you know which hiring outcomes you’re hoping to achieve, you’re way ahead of the curve and headed towards success.

What recruitment software solutions have (or haven’t) worked for you?

Good recruitment software is nothing without great customer service

At PageUp, we take a partnership approach to customer service – so you’ll always feel like you’re getting the most out of the system.

Unlike others, we listen carefully to our customers and offer real outcomes (not just the software) so that everyone can use PageUp to its full potential. With our deep functionality, configurable system, change management consulting, and dedicated ongoing support – it’s no wonder so many PageUp customers are Raving Fans.

We’d love to work closely with you to solve your team’s challenges. So reach out for a full demo of our modern talent acquisition platform today.

Request a demo

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Stages of an effective recruitment funnel

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 05:06:32 +0000

There are six stages of an effective recruitment funnel. Here’s a logical, comprehensive picture of the strategies recruiters can use to secure the best people.

Stage 1: Awareness

This first stage of the recruitment funnel is where candidates first become aware of your employer brand. In today’s highly competitive job market, you need to articulate your company’s unique EVP and stay front of mind. You also need a combination of active and passive sourcing strategies.

Think paid and organic job ads, careers site pages, ‘Why Work Here?’ and company values statements, video content, targeted landing pages for key talent segments, employer reviews (sites like Glassdoor) and more.

Stage 2: Interest

Now, let’s talk about nurturing candidates. You’ve probably heard marketers talk about lead nurturing. Well, you can use the same tactics to target unique candidate personas as you scale your recruitment strategy.

That’s why the second stage of the recruitment funnel is so important. It’s where you use personalisedpersonalized content to capture candidate interest. Some examples include custom calls to action, job opportunities, event registrations, projects, and other career-related information.

Stage 3: Consideration

Here’s where the nurturing becomes more targeted to better your chances of converting talent. Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to start reaching out to candidates left, right and centre. Real-time event triggers allow you to instantly reach and engage with candidates in the moments that count most.

Custom calls to action, direct sourcing, recruiter outreach, and an automated list of ‘candidates to watch’ are possible today with modern candidate relationship management (CRM) and automation software.

Stage 4: Application

Now that you’ve led quality candidates on a journey through content and made your direct pitch, it’s time to make the application process as quick and easy as possible.

OptimisingOptimizing your application process for mobile is a must. And keeping the forms simple (and screening questions relevant) will be the key to ensuring each candidate moves through the process quickly and has a positive experience. Remember: if you’re not doing it right, someone else will.

Stage 5: Selection

Stage five of the recruitment funnel is where you narrow down your talent pool to a select group of potential hires and screen for the right skills.

Tech-enabled recommendations can help you screen for specific skills and flag high-potential candidates. But this is not the time to go cold or ‘ghost’ candidates!

Instead, give candidates the rockstar treatment while they wait. Recruiters can save valuable time by using automation software to deliver timely and fluid progress updates on a candidates’ application status.

Stage 6: Offer

Did you know the average offer acceptance rate dropped 3% in 2020 – which means more people are rejecting offers?

At stage six, presenting an offer to the best-fit candidate (before competition snaps them up) is a no-brainer. And for those silver-medallist candidates who just missed out, you can keep them nurtured, engaged and on top of your list for future opportunities.

Beyond the funnel: Onboarding

Finally, now that you’ve selected your next star hire, it’s time to roll out the red carpet with an onboarding experience that gets them up to speed before their first day.

While onboarding doesn’t quite fit into the recruitment funnel, it’s a critical step for ensuring a successful hiring process. A great onboarding program immerses new starters in your company culture and gives them the tools and information they need to become productive team members that stick around.

To find out more about how you can implement an effective talent acquisition strategy from start to finish – request a demo today.

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9 Recruitment trends for 2022

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 03:31:50 +0000

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PageUp research: What jobseekers really want from your candidate experience

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 01:03:53 +0000

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How AI tools make hiring faster and fairer

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 05:15:05 +0000

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Are you spending too much on job boards?

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 05:13:32 +0000

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APM’s recruitment marketing wins allied health talent

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 04:26:28 +0000

Since 1994, APM has delivered life-changing human and healthcare services to enable better lives across 10 countries. With a network of 7,500 people, their services reach more than a million people each year.

APM is on a growth trajectory, with high demand for its disability employment, allied and occupational health, psychology and wellness services.

But this created a twofold challenge: finding talent to grow key areas of the business, and growing in a highly-competitive market.

Allied health roles typically receive four applicants per role, in comparison to retail, where there is an average of 90 applicants per role.

International and local border closures meant qualified, available talent was even tougher to access. Attracting enough applicants required a different approach.

Amplifying EVP across multiple brands

To forge a trailblazing talent attraction strategy, APM’s Employer Branding Manager Dario Paolini needed to understand how to attract APM’s ideal candidate personas. He also knew APM needed to elevate and amplify its brand – not an easy feat, considering the organisationorganization operates across 10 different brands.

Paolini started off by undertaking detailed market analysis. It revealed 73% of qualified candidates were passive candidates, and just 27% were active candidates. It typically took four months for candidates to move from awareness to applying for a role.

“With this knowledge, we knew we needed to focus higher in the recruitment funnel. A best-in-class careers site would allow us to educate top talent about our vision, values and story, engage this passive audience and encourage them to apply,” Paolini said.

APM adopted a recruitment marketing strategy to drive content into spaces where their target audience consumed media. This would help the business generate awareness and interest among active and passive candidates. They could then turn that interest into a pipeline of prospective candidates.

A compelling EVP captures top talent

APM used PageUp Recruitment Marketing to launch 19 different job search pages across its 10 brands. With custom content for each brand driving traffic to the careers site, the business can capture the interest of human services and healthcare talent, then move them from awareness to application. A simplified signup process and compelling Calls to Action (CTAs) makes it easier for visitors to enter APM’s talent pool and stay updated with content and suggested jobs.

https://careers.apm.net.au/brands

APM has 10 different brands. The team has created job search pages for each of these which include videos highlighting the benefits and the cultural nuances of each of the different brands.

PageUp software empowered APM’s team with insights to understand the content driving engagement and application rates, where applicants were coming from and how people interacted with the content.

Job landing pages reinforce the employer brand with a video to showcase a ‘day in the life’ stories and recommended jobs in the sidebar. This is based on the candidate’s browsing history.

Within eight weeks, we converted 18 new hires. 40% of candidates who reached the interview stage were hired. They wouldn’t have applied for a role unless they were engaged and nurtured along the way,

Dario Paolini, Employer Branding Manager, APM

Having a full view of the recruitment funnel allows APM to capture visitors and convert them to hires using automated workflows. For example: by setting up automatic notifications to those who did not apply, but viewed or started an application, APM saw a significant increase in applications submitted.

“With these insights, we can continue creating content that speaks to our audience’s values and desires, authentically uphold the APM brand, and convert applications.”

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“This is incredible”: Streamline your talent pipelining with PageUp’s latest LinkedIn integration

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 01:48:21 +0000

In today’s hyper-competitive talent market, recruiters don’t have time to waste on manual data entry or unnecessary admin. At PageUp, we’ve been busy finding ways to streamline processes and automate the ‘busy work’ to give hiring teams more time to be strategic.

That’s why we’re pleased to announce we’ve hit ‘Live’ on our integration with LinkedIn’s Recruiter System Connect. The PageUp product team has been working with a number of early adopter customers to trial the integration, and initial reactions are very positive.

Here’s what Kate Reid, Global Talent Brand and Recruitment Manager, H&H Group has to say:

“Previously we had to download profiles from LinkedIn Recruiter, send to co-ordinators, and manually create profiles in PageUp, there was so much unnecessary work involved. We now have a streamlined process. This is incredible.”

The LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect integration provides a full two-way view of candidates across LinkedIn and the PageUp ATS. Hiring teams can immediately see which LinkedIn candidates are already in their PageUp database, and when viewing candidates in PageUp, they’ll see their most up to date LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn estimates that the integration can save recruiters who actively source candidates on LinkedIn 3+ hours per week.

How? The LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect integration allows customers to connect PageUp’s ATS with LinkedIn Recruiter Hiring teams will now be able to see which candidates have already applied (and the jobs they applied for). The integration also allows you to export candidate profiles from LinkedIn Recruiter directly into open job requisitions in PageUp.

Want to know more? Here’s a full list of the new features

In LinkedIn Recruiter:

An “In ATS” (in PageUp) indicator for LinkedIn members who are already in the PageUp database, including details about their previous application process, hiring outcome details and source of application.
Past Applicants spotlight allows you to filter and prioritiseprioritize candidates who previously applied to your company and/or are already in PageUp.
1-click exporting allows you to export candidates to jobs you are trying to fill.

In PageUp:

1-click exported candidates appear against the relevant job.
LinkedIn profile widgets accompany candidate records, allowing you to view up-to-date LinkedIn profiles and shortcuts to common Recruiter actions within PageUp.

PageUp also allows customers to automatically post jobs from PageUp into LinkedIn job slots managed through LinkedIn Recruiter.

What next?

We’ll be working closely with our customers over the coming months to enable LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect. If you currently use PageUp and are interested to know more, reach out to us through your Customer Success team. If you’re considering using PageUp and would like to know more, you can request a demo and we’ll walk you through the platform in real time.

Want to know more tips and strategies to improve your proactive sourcing? Start with our latest guide, 5 Proactive Recruiting Strategies to try in 2021.

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What jobseekers really think about your DE&I practices

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 07:21:20 +0000

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) practices have become a central focus for HR teams in today’s competitive talent landscape. But how can you ensure this shines through in your employer branding and messaging in a meaningful way?

If your goal is to capture high-quality talent, it’s not something you should leave to chance.

More jobseekers than ever are considering DE&I as an important factor in their decision-making process. And organisationorganizations that don’t have an inclusive online presence are losing the best talent. In fact, 39% of candidates reject a role or do not proceed with a job application due to a perceived lack of inclusiveness.

If you’re struggling to find the talent you need, it could be that jobseekers don’t think your organisationorganization is supportive of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The solution? Increase your organisationorganization’s ability to hire great talent by authentically showcasing DE&I at each stage of the candidate journey. Positive imagery through your job ads, careerscareer site and other channels will help you tell your DE&I story.

What is DE&I (diversity, equity and inclusion) and why does it matter?

More than a “set and forget” talent acquisition objective, companies with strong DE&I strategies create conditions where creativity, productivity and empathy thrive.

Truly diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces are those with fair processes and an employee value proposition (EVP) that supports all people – regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education, disability, beliefs and other attributes.

The benefits are clear. Gender-diverse companies are up to 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability than those that aren’t. Culturally-diverse companies are up to 33% more likely to outperform their less diverse counterparts. Inclusive teams have also been shown to make faster, better business decisions up to 87% of the time.

So, let’s talk about how the job search has changed and what this means for employer branding.

Today’s jobseekers do their homework

More than 75% of jobseekers state diversity is an important factor for them when evaluating companies and job offers.

Jobseekers search company channels for content that prioritisesprioritizes diversity, like:

Videos, images and quotes on your website and careerscareer site
Employee-driven content, including social media posts and profile stories
Statements about DE&I commitments and policies

That’s right. To attract DE&I jobseekers and diverse employees, companies need to share content that celebrates diversity and is inclusive of all people. Being deliberate with your imagery and language and showing how your company is committing to DE&I can help reinforce your identity as a company for diverse employees.

But remember: if your content doesn’t feature diverse perspectives and representation across all your channels, you run the risk of deterring high-quality candidates from applying. To ensure your content approach is authentic, rather than performative, use real photos of your employees instead of stock images. Candidates want to see content that’s true to a company’s core values and the initiatives it supports.

Are your job descriptions turning away certain applicants?

Often, a few word choices in a job description can unintentionally create bias and limit the size and diversity of your talent pool.

For example, underrepresented groups including women and BIPoC (Black, Indigenous, People of ColourColor) workers are less likely than others to identify as “experts” regardless of their experience or seniority. These demographics are also less likely to apply if they feel they don’t meet 100% of the listed role requirements.

The good news: there are plenty of modern solutions and tools available to assist. Online tools like Textio, can produce gender-neutral job listings. These flag areas for improvement by identifying problem spots in your word choices. (Think words like “competitive” which can be skewed towards males.)

While it’s great to use these tools and limit your list of “must haves”, it’s up to recruiters and employer brand specialists to review job ads carefully.

Does your website and careerscareer site celebrate diversity?

Inclusive job descriptions are an important piece of the puzzle in the candidate experience. But the content on your website, homepage and careerscareer site creates the bigger picture.

Let’s consider companies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Women are doing incredible things in these industries and the number of females taking up these careers is on the rise. But a common question we hear from hiring managers is, “How can I attract more women to STEM roles?”

Share employee profile stories and other content that features women in STEM roles. This is a great tactic to organically attract women in these fields.

At the end of the day, there are many content pathways you can take to feature underrepresented groups. (Videos, images and stories all work well!)

Can you share employee quotes from BIPoC C-suite leaders on your careerscareer site? What about a careers video featuring diverse team members in different roles?

Be authentic and creative in choosing the types of content you want to share. The possibilities are endless.

Read: PageUp introduces new AnonymisedAnonymized Screening feature

Doing the work is just as important

It takes time, effort and attention to build a diverse workforce. Yet diversity is only one part of DE&I. It’s only meaningful if you have the recruitment process and workplace culture to back it up. Providing employees with a sense of belonging, respect and support helps you retain the diverse talent you’ve worked so hard to recruit.

If there’s work to do, you might need to instilinstill conscious inclusion efforts, like bias training, throughout your workplace. Or, embed diversity practices into your culture and everyday learning experiences. Programs, events, celebrations and mentoring are great avenues for this.

Successful DE&I programs don’t have an expiry date. But they are something to sustain and build on as an organisationorganization. Not only will your continuous effort improve financial outcomes and business performance, it will enable you to attract diverse, high-quality candidates in a tight talent market.

If you’re ready to drive meaningful change at your organisationorganization, request a free demo of our modern recruitment marketing software. Our easy-to-edit, intelligent careerscareer sites automatically flag areas for improvement, giving you the tools and insights to create content that resonates and converts.

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5 strategies to hire higher education talent

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 04:47:22 +0000

Universities and colleges were previously seen as some of the most attractive places to work. They’ve had a long tradition of meaningful work and job stability. These factors were crucial talent attraction and retention drivers.

But here’s the thing: perceptions and priorities have changed. Academics are retiring early due to COVID-19. Most employees don’t want to return to campus full-time. And many are prepared to leave their meaningful work behind in search of the compensation corporate jobs can offer.

What’s more, tighter budgets and a leaner workforce have made it almost impossible for HR teams to work diligently to build quality relationships with talent.

To attract and retain the best faculty and staff in the new world of work, HR leaders must adopt a proactive mindset that will allow them to identify and track their future needs.

Every experience will matter – from recruiting and onboarding to exit and rehire. Higher education will need a multi-pronged approach to sourcing, engagement, and development.

Throughout this ebook, we’ll share 5 proactive strategies to help higher education HR design and build a workforce for the future.

You’ll learn:

Why institutions are losing quality talent to competitive markets
Essential high-volume recruiting tactics for hard-to-fill academic and senior management roles
How HR leaders can adapt to changing candidate and employee expectations
5 crucial activities to position your institution as an employer of choice

Gain instant access to the full ebook below.

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PrioritisePrioritize your DE&I efforts: PageUp Introduces AnonymisedAnonymized Screening

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 05:27:38 +0000

When we released our guide to building a successful DE&I strategy, the response was huge. PrioritisingPrioritizing and improving processes to support diversity, equity and inclusion in recruiting really resonated with our customers. In response, our product team spent some time reflecting on what we do really well (more on this below) and where we have room for improvement. Building on client feedback, we’ve evolved our previous ‘blind recruitment’ functionality (relabelled to anonymisedanonymized screening to use more inclusive terminology) to move beyond an ‘all or nothing’ approach.

Why focus on anonymisedanonymized screening?

AnonymisedAnonymized screening is designed to help broaden the representation of diverse candidates that progress beyond the shortlisting stage. AnonymisingAnonymizing personal information reduces capability assumptions influenced by ethnicity, race, gender, and other sociodemographic factors.

Research tells us that reducing unconscious bias requires conscious intervention. We have two systems of thinking – automatic or intuitive, and conscious reasoning. Our intuitive, automatic thinking accounts for 80 – 90% of what’s happening in our brains. It helps us deal with the complexity of everyday life. But the downside is that automatic thinking introduces bias because it relies on intuitive or learntlearned behaviourbehavior. In a hiring cycle this can lead to less diverse candidates moving through selection processes. The conscious reasoning system, on the other hand, is all about active analysis and conscious decision-making. Interventions or “nudges” can promote this system of thinking.

Technology is a facilitator that we can use to nudge users in the right direction. However, we also acknowledge that technology mustn’t get in the way of users achieving their goals.

We’ve made it possible to configure each recruitment process to allow our clients to pilot anonymisedanonymized screening with selected groups within their organisationorganization. To cater to a broader audience, we’ve added anonymisedanonymized profile components into our applicant progress board (a kanban-style board for hiring managers to shortlist and progress applications).

PageUp provides a series of tools that help reduce bias and facilitate inclusive hiring practices:

At the attraction stage, features include the ability to support dedicated microsites and landing pages and create inclusive job descriptions.
The easy-to-edit content management system allows HR teams to blog about an organisationorganization’s culture and practices, and highlight diverse employee experiences.
PageUp provides an out-of-the-box candidate experience that is accessible across all channels for jobseekers with disabilities.
During the job application process, EEO data is collected through permissions based on field capture to meet applicant tracking requirements and ensure that these metrics are hidden on an individual candidate basis.
Affirmative action plans can be tied to position descriptions and EEO criteria pre-populated into job requisitions, along with out-of-the-box diversity dashboards and EEO and OFCCP reporting.

We’ve also taken the approach of ‘hide by default’ while providing a way for users to access a candidate’s name if they really need to.

In phase 1, we’re providing users with a basic redacted resume that removes a candidate’s name and email address. PageUp user experience research found hiring managers still rely heavily on the resume. In fact, it is consistently the top action that our users perform on the applicant progress board. Under consideration for phase 2 is an advanced redaction service that can remove company names, institutions and much more.

What next?

We’ll be working closely with clients over the coming months to pilot anonymisedanonymized screening on specific recruitment processes. If you’re interested and a client, reach out to us through your Customer Success team. If you’re considering using PageUp as your ATS, you can request a demo and we’ll walk you through the platform in real-time.

You can find more about the tools we have to support your DE&I strategy here.

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