Monthly Archives

May 2019

May 16
0
technology in recruiting

Technology in Recruiting – save time and Money Without Losing the Human Touch

By | Blog, Future of work, Recruiting | No Comments

While technology continues to advance, companies will have to keep the human touch, in regards to the workplace. Finding and retaining the right talent depends on many key factors. Those factors include: finding a candidate that matches the company culture, using the right platform to find those candidates, and keeping up with technological advances, in regards to recruiting.

Which Recruiting Company Will Find for you the Right Talent?

Many recruiting companies offer different types of deals and platforms to find candidates. Some will send you resumes to sort through, some will narrow down your search, and others will use both technology and holistic approaches to find the right candidate. It’s important to take this into account when deciding which company to use. Would you like a short term employee or long term? Would you like to spend time interviewing or have a recruiting company do that legwork for you? How vast is that company’s lens in regards to finding candidates? You have to consider all these questions.

What Types of Technological Resources do Recruiting Companies Have?

There are many different types of websites and software programs that recruiting companies can utilize to reach out to candidates. SourceMatch uses these sources, not just one, to find the best candidates for a certain role. After that, SourceMatch provides even more assessments, to learn about this candidate. We offer skills assessments as well as behavior-based assessments. Using these tools, SourceMatch aligns the top candidates to your company’s open role. We take pride in matching a workplace culture to an applicant’s style of working.

How Does Big Data Play a Role?

Big data plays a role in a company’s hiring process. According to entrepreneur.com: “Earlier, companies had little to guide them on a potential applicant’s future flight risk other than gut feeling. Now, tools integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) and deep analytic capabilities can parse the data on your company’s current employees — including their prior experiences, skills and latest achievements — to learn what good candidates look like based on past hiring decisions. In addition to your own enterprise data, AI can look at data from across the industry to build a profile that can then be applied to cull resumes, screen candidates based on warning signs, and grade and rank a shortlist of qualified candidates for each job opening.” Technology is very much integrated into recruiting. At SourceMatch, we actually use a unique combination of technology and workplace culture matches. We identify each client’s needs and work together to assess and identify the best talent.

Understanding How Culture and Technology Work Together in Recruiting

We incorporate culture and technology in recruiting practices. It takes a balance of knowing the advancing technologies available, and how to incorporate those while recruiting. According to forbes.com: “When newly hired executives leave after a relatively short period of time, the reason is rarely that they lacked the technical skills to deliver on the job. More often, it’s because they struggled to form relationships within the company or lacked cultural compatibility.” That being said, knowing your clients and staying up to date with current technology, can benefit both recruiters and employers. Recruiters can utilize social media and other recruiting platforms, while also getting to know more about their clients and candidates. This allows for the correct “pairing” of the candidate with the client’s organization.

How Social Media can Help the Recruiting Process

Many recruiters have seen the benefits of using social media to find candidates. You can learn about communication and personality, as well as some work history (if listed). You have people sharing job openings through social media as well as recruiters reaching out to candidates via social media. According to entrepreneur.com: “Employers from different industries have reported over 30% increase in the referral candidate counts via social media recruiting techniques. Industry recruiters have always preferred the candidates referred by existing employees, and social media helps them engage in referral recruitment easily.”

The Pros and Cons of an Automated Hiring Process

Technology can make the hiring process more effective for both candidates and recruiters. Candidates can now search and apply for many jobs rather than filling out applications and dropping them off at the front desk. This benefits candidates and employers in regards to saving time, but it can take away from the “human” interaction aspects. Technology can also help “weed” out incorrect candidates at a much faster rate, leading recruiters to the best candidates, sooner. On the other hand, keeping a more personal, human approach helps both recruiters and candidates find the best job. A person may look good on paper, but that person may not fit in the work culture of a certain position or workplace. Knowing both the personality of the candidates, as well as the culture of the workplace, give recruiters the ultimate advantage.

Keeping the Human Touch in Recruiting

To keep a human approach in recruiting, companies can either hire internally, use personality assessments, or reach out to recruiting companies that use more than AI. Hiring internally gives employees and employers opportunities for growth. Employees know that there is room for growth and employers have the time to learn about their employees. Using personality assessments gives employees and employers knowledge about where they fit in the company work culture. This can boost employee and employer confidence in job roles and relations. Using a recruiting partner, companies can learn about new models of finding the right candidates and fix any retention related issues. This is great for companies that have noticed human or workplace-related concerns, along with high turnover.

May 09
2
employer branding

Employer Branding Practices in Recruiting

By | Blog, Future of work, Recruiting | No Comments

Have you heard the rumors? Did you know how much employer branding can do for your business? Promoting your company as an employer of choice to the people you want to hire is the smart way to attract talent. Before we dive deeper into what efficient employer branding looks like, we want to make one thing clear: working with the right recruitment company will make your brand shine brighter. If you associate yourself with professional recruitment firms, the brand you spent time creating, will be presented to target groups as you wish. This will allow you to reach your goals in a proficient way. However, let’s get back to our subject.

You want to attract, recruit and retain a specific type of talent. In this case, employer branding can facilitate hiring the right fit. Truth be told, a company’s employees represent the ideal and mission it stands for, the culture inside of it, and your company has an employer brand, whether you have actively pursued one or not. If you haven’t yet strategically pursued to recruit through your brand, you might find yourself in the peculiar case of having a huge disadvantage. That is because smart employers are out there in the digital world and they pay close attention to their image. They have a target in mind, and they structure their approach in such a manner that the image they create is appealing to the talented people they want to hire. They are strategically smart and increase their statistical chance of having a profitable business.

Why does employer branding matter and why do companies invest so heavily to attract and retain talent through their hiring process? Statistics show it clearly. 86% of HR professionals say recruitment is becoming more like marketing. And when you take into account surveys that say that employee turnover can be reduced by 28% by investing in employer brand or other statistics that show how 50% of candidates wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation – even for a pay increase, you have a strong case for investing in it.

When it comes to employer branding, reputation and popularity are key factors to be considered. When people who are on the hunt for a job, and even cold prospects, look at you as a company, they see a business identity and quickly assess for themselves if it is an identity they would want to be associated with. They assess your value proposition, they automatically assume they are able to provide you with the quality of work that you desire, and they ask themselves if the type of career you offer fits their aspirations. If the answer is yes, they try to get an interview with you. An article on employer branding pointed out that 78% of job candidates say the overall candidate experience they get is an indicator of how a company values its people. This means that not just your image is key but also the way you conduct your hiring process.

Provided that you already have a strategy in place, there are certain tools that can help you improve your employer brand. Although 49% of employers believe they don’t have the tools to effectively enhance employer brand, that is far from today’s digital reality. You can apply marketing methods and tactics to showcase your brand. There are also recruitment marketing tools that work wonders. They are all about increasing your brand awareness through career sites or email campaigns. That is to say that the way you present yourself through your website matters. In a survey done by CareerArc in 2018 a 52 percent majority of respondent candidates first seek out a company’s sites and social media to learn more about an employer. So, if the impression you create on social media is a good one, you’ve got yourself in a position that gets candidates’ attention.

Another factor to be taken into consideration is “word of mouth”– generated an opinion. Whether you like it or not it is also a part of employer branding. Your employees talk about you and also your former employees talk about you. They share things with their friends, they post little ironies on their social media pages and companies can’t hide anymore behind marketing gimmicks and buzzwords because there is so much more transparency generated by the need to be more authentic. One option is to think strategically about these uncontrollable “word-of-mouth” factors and influence them positively, addressing them internally and genuinely trying to resolve concerns or issues. But first, you need to adopt a strategic approach to employer branding across the employment lifecycle. One good thing to start with would be to undertake an employer brand audit followed by an employee experience mapping project. The results you would gather from will inspire your leaders to change their perspective and thinking on how their management style affects the company’s brand.

At SourceMatch we have our own way of doing employer branding and what lies at its core is communication and the shared sense of our core values. They include doing things with integrity and putting excellence into perspective. We culturally fit together and we also invest in each other’s personal development, and that adds value to the outcome of our recruitment process. You can get a taste of our personal spin on employer branding throughout our social media.

 

May 01
0
skills gap

Skills Gap in the US Part 1

By | Blog, Future of work, Recruiting | No Comments

Business and HR leaders are concerned about this skills shortage (and here we are talking about the skills required by US businesses and the skills US workers have) and among HR professionals, 75% of recruiters deal with this skills gap among candidates who apply for job openings.
With implications and impact on the overall economy, the talent shortage is a serious challenge for organizations intensified by new technologies they use.

Let’s talk about numbers.
According to the 2019 State of the Workplace report, there were 7 million jobs open in December 2018, with only 6.3 million unemployed people looking for work.
“over 50% of respondents feel that skills shortages have worsened or greatly worsened in their organizations in the last two years.”

Missing skills.
The trade skills (Carpentry, plumbing, welding, machining, etc.) are the top technical skills missing, and among soft skills missing, we find problem-solving, critical thinking, innovation, and creativity.

“83% of respondents have had trouble recruiting suitable candidates in the past 12 months.” Why?
To make a point, in this following infographic we list the top reasons why organizations are struggling to hire the right candidate for the job: competition from other employees, candidates that do not have the needed work experience, nor technical skills, mismatched salary, benefits are not competitive for the market, and so on.

Although it is a burden for many employers and recruiters out there, it can create an opportunity for a company to identify the missing skill, figure how to obtain them, and get a sense of how to position their workforce for the future of work.

Fortunately, there are several ways in which the skills gap can be reduced.
How do you bridge the skills gap? Where there’s a problem, there’s a solution. Follow us and stay tuned for the second part of the graphic, where we look at what can be done.