Category

Recruiting

Jul 02
0
recruitment marketing strategies

Recruitment Marketing Strategies. Online Presence is Essential in Today’s Digital Economy

By | Blog, Recruiting | No Comments

In recruiting, you need multiple avenues for finding the best and the right talent. Not only data analytics and AI sources, but you also need to stay up to date with the latest recruitment marketing strategies. Have you been doing your research on those strategies? If not, let us at SourceMatch help you learn more about retaining and recruiting candidates, using the most up to date research.

Various Types of Marketing Strategies

Where do we start?! There are so many different and new marketing strategies that change daily! As recruiters, we need to stay current with those. Where should your focus be? Which platforms match your clients’ needs? Which sites are the best for finding the correct talent? These are some questions that we ask daily to fulfill our clients’ needs. Every search is unique and will require some variation of each strategy.

Current Recruitment Marketing Platforms

There are quite a few different types of social media sites that recruiters can utilize for reaching out to candidates. It’s estimated that there are 3.2 billion social media users, which accounts for 42% of the population. Social media platforms such as Facebook (68% of Americans use this site and a total of 2.2 billion users globally), LinkedIn (630 million users globally), Twitter (326 million users globally), and Instagram (1 billion users globally), are some of the most common. Using these websites, you have the option to freely post and reach out to potential candidates, learn more about those candidates, and even use the paid marketing options they offer for those connections to potential candidates. For example, with Facebook, you can share any job openings, research users’ work history, and connect with them to find out more about a proper professional fit. With LinkedIn, you can easily find work history, current, and prior experience, while also having the option to connect through a message portal. Usually, LinkedIn will include significantly more information than Facebook, very much like a resume. This helps us learn more about potential candidates and make an initial assessment of how well they align with the basic requirements of a role. LinkedIn is also very useful in sharing knowledge and information that both candidates and clients find valuable. With an average of 2.2 hours of social media time spent per day, utilizing this resource is valuable for recruiters. For instance, SourceMatch publishes recruiting videos, short posts, blog articles, company news, and useful infographics.

Recruiters also have access to specific recruiting websites. Those include Zip Recruiter, Career Builder, Glassdoor, and Indeed. These have multiple marketing tools that allow you to post jobs, contact a specific group of candidates that meet a certain profile or promote ads that can reach very large audiences within certain states or even across the country. Some of these offer free or paid marketing services, depending on your company’s needs.

Marketing on your Company Website

A company’s digital presence may start with outreach, however, professionals and clients will check your company’s website. Is your user-friendly? Does it allow candidates to easily apply for jobs? Can users ask questions or is the FAQ section accessible? What about email notification sign up (do you have a pop up for email notifications)? These are some ways that companies can use marketing tools to keep users engaged in the hiring process. Having a user-friendly website (i.e. fast, intuitive, and functional) will attract candidates. If they can see that your website is current and professional, it’s one step closer to building trust.

It’s important to keep your FAQ section up to date as well. Have you noticed any user confusion? Have you tested the job application functionality on your site? Was it easy or confusing? If it was confusing, then SourceMatch can help guide your company to the current marketing trends and updates. If it was easy and users remarked that it was a top-notch experience, then you are on the right track.

Having an email notification pop up / sign up for jobs is a great marketing tool to keep candidates in the know. Maybe one candidate was content in a role, but something has changed and he or she wants to try a different position. If you have the email notification sign up available, it will send candidates the latest job openings. The best time to send out emails is between 4pm to 8pm (Marketing Stats C, 2019). This creates more interest and even brand awareness. Other companies will see that your company is becoming more popular, causing word of mouth awareness, and contributing to potential clients as well.

It is important to keep up with your company website and visitors. Using marketing tools, you can track trends and metrics. Shivarweb has quite a few metric trackers to choose from. Was there a particular post that attracted more views? What was going on during a time with fewer clicks? This leads you to understand what is most interesting and useful for your visitors, may those be prospective candidates or clients.

Marketing on Smartphones

Have you taken a look at your website using a smartphone? Is it user-friendly and compatible? What about starting an app for your company? These are just a few ways that you can market your company using smartphones. 91% of social media users, use smartphones to access the sites. Having a user-friendly website is very important and makes your company look professional for clients and candidates. As we are in a very technologically mobile time, where 80% of Americans now own a smartphone, it’s imperative that we keep up with the times. We must also check our website on smartphones. This helps us understand where the user is coming from and if there are any errors that need to be fixed. Is it clear for the user? Are the titles and buttons showing up correctly? Is your website engaging to users? Do they want to learn more about your services and company? How about your company name and logo? Does it stand out and flow easily? Apps are all the rage in the marketing world right now, where people check their phone apps every 12 minutes according to App Stats, 2019. Did you know that mobile apps are expected to generate $189 billion by 2020? Consider creating a company app, where users can have immediate connections for your company’s news. Marketing using these tools can really boost your company’s reach outs.

How to Stay Current With Technology Marketing

SourceMatch stays up to date with the most current marketing technology for recruiting. We have a team that is specifically focused on marketing and the latest trends involved with that. By using the most current technology, we provide our clients with the correct candidate match. Reach out to us to learn more! We would be happy to discuss and assist your company with recruiting searches.

Jun 25
1
2019 global talent trends

What are the key 2019 Global Talent Trends?

By | Blog, Recruiting | No Comments

According to an analysis performed by Mercer – with input from 7,300 respondents including 800 C suite executives, 1600 HR leaders, 4800 employees across 16 geographies and 9 industry sectors – there are key 2019 global talent trends that leading companies are pursuing in 2019:

1. Aligning work to future value
“One-way companies are forging ahead is by creating integrated people strategies that pay attention to today’s needs, while tipping the balance in favor of investing for tomorrow.”
What actions are companies taking today to prepare for the future of work?
Identify gaps between current and required skills supply 52%
Develop a future-focused people strategy 51%
Adapt skill requirements to new technologies & business objectives 48%
Revise the workforce plan to close skills gaps 45%
Identify how employees may support or disrupt changes 45%
Redesign jobs 32%
None of the above 1%

2. Building brand resonance
“A company’s desirability is no longer only the purview of employer review sites like Glassdoor; employees’ collective voice on matters of culture, equity, and ethics are now mainstream news.”
So employer branding matter. The way you create it, will contribute to attracting the right talent for your needs.

3. Curating the work experience
Work experience has to be relevant in order to help them grow as individuals and thrive. What makes employees thrive at work? At a global level, the ability to manage their work/life balance comes first, followed by recognition for their contributions and the 3rd as importance come opportunities to learn new skills and technologies.
In the United States, things are not very different. The ability to manage their work/life balance comes first as well, followed by recognition for their contributions but on the 3rd place as importance is feeling a sense of belonging.

4. Delivering talent-led change
Is HR ready to rethink the entire life-cycle? Traditional mindset should be left aside, and with the use of the new technologies, pay close attention to employee experience and be open to new agile working style. Ask for their thoughts, ideas and opinions as this is a great way to crowdsource initiatives and changes that will engage your employees.

Talk to the team at SourceMatch today!

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.

 

Apr 17
0
artificial intelligence in recruitment

Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment Part 2

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

Here’s a look at the way candidates perceive Artificial Intelligence in the recruitment interview stage.

“The future of recruitment hangs in the balance”, says Craig Fisher. Couldn’t agree more. While recruiters find themselves in the AI learning process and try to ease their work with the use of AI, candidates have something to say as well, don’t they?
The graphic below is based on a survey where more than 200 job candidates were asked about how comfortable they are interacting with an online robot (chatbot app) to speed up the interview process.
Let’s see how comfortable candidates are answering initial questions about the interview process, scheduling interviews and helping with interview preparation, and performing skills assessment.

When it comes to:
a) Answering initial questions about the interview process, the results are as follows:
21.17% are extremely comfortable
36.9% fairly comfortable
23.42% uneasy
18.92 extremely uneasy

b) Scheduling interviews and helping with interview preparation, we can see that:
36.94% are fairly comfortable
29.28% extremely comfortable
16.67% are uneasy,
17.57% are extremely uneasy.

c) Performing skills assessment:
35.59% are fairly comfortable
25.23% are extremely comfortable
18.92% are uneasy
20.27% are extremely uneasy.

Because we earlier talked about balance, we can notice from the numbers above, that most candidates seem to be open working with robots at least in this part of the recruitment process: the interview.
There is no doubt that we need the human touch in the recruitment processes. Candidates expect it and recruiters are not planning to leave that aside, but there are low-level processes that can be automated and ease every party involved. The future of work will be influenced by Artificial Intelligence and the way we look at it, the way we learn and how quickly we adapt to it, as AI has proven to be in many ways a helping hand.

 

Apr 15
1
a better way to recruiting

A Better way to Recruiting – Interview with SourceMatch

By | Blog, Recruiting | No Comments

There is a better way to recruiting than virtually moving resumes and candidates around on the recruiter’s desktop. It all comes down to the human interaction and depth of understanding of a candidate’s unique complexity.
With that in mind, the chances of getting the best and right talent your organization needs, grow exponentially. Why even bother? Can’t we just count on our “guesstimation” skills? Beyond achievements and resumes, there are multiple facets of the candidates’ personality that will reflect on their long-term performance. Why take blind chances? At SourceMatch, we count on staying human in the recruitment process, but also use validated systems and proprietary assessments that quantify all dimensions of a candidate’s profile that are predictive of success on the job.

The skills gap is very real and affects the recruiting efforts of most companies. They have trouble finding enough of the right level of talent and skills. Recruiters’ efforts are affected by an imbalance of high demand for talent and low availability and hence why many times they count on salary to convince candidates to make a move. From that, an artificial career progression ensues. Professionals end up “promotions” more often than healthy.
At SourceMatch, we start from one premise: by empowering our clients to access, hire, motivate and retain the best talent – our mission as a recruitment company, we can bridge the skills gap. Once hired, a company’s job regarding that new employee isn’t over. Motivating and retention are crucial and have their success roots in the recruitment process. Put in place the right recruitment strategy and retention is an entirely different ballgame.

There’s a saying that we believe in: “An organization’s ability to grow is only as good as its ability to attract, hire and retain the best talent, but also helps them develop professionally.”
By helping them develop professionally, you are not only making sure that they stay motivated, but you can achieve your goals in a different time frame.

As Bogdan Negru, our Vice President of Solutions, mentioned in this interview, one of the aspects that helps a company thrive is continuous recruiting. Employers are challenged every time they find themselves in the situation to fill vacant positions now or yesterday. The temptation to get someone in the job ASAP is so great that many times hiring managers end up having anyone that can manage somehow. SourceMatch’ continuous hiring solution enables our clients to constantly look for candidates that match their culture, the traits that make candidates successful in their organization, have objectives that align or complement their own, and finally values that don’t contradict, but rather improve theirs.

Working with a recruitment partner can be a bliss – listen to this interview that the SourceMatch VP of Solutions – Bogdan Negru – had with Malcolm Lui, explaining how that happens.

Apr 11
0
recruiting

Design Recruiting with People in mind, not just Numbers.

By | Blog, Recruiting | No Comments

Dear Hiring Managers,

We recruit with people in mind, but we do it by means of numbers. Recruiting project managers at SourceMatch have one main objective, and it is to provide valuable results to hiring managers they collaborate with. Their business is to understand statistics in such a manner that make the interaction profitable, thus creating a win-win-win situation. Why a triple win you may ask? Because recruiting needs to be a partnership between the hiring manager, the recruitment project manager and the candidate who is to be hired.

Think about how you would develop a general recruitment plan. You would have to review job descriptions. But before that, you would have to consider people finding strategies and use alternative labor pools. You would also have to have an image of how your company is perceived as a workplace from the outside. And as you would go about the process you would hit some roadblocks and you would have to adjust your goals. But these roadblocks you did not plan for could be a setback. This is where a recruitment company could come in handy as it would act as a buffer against the unexpected. Recruitment project managers would be helpful in determining your overall recruitment needs by having well-established business goals.

Or imagine you are on the lookout for a specific talent or that you are looking to hire a large number of skilled workers. How long will it take you, the hiring manager, to hire? How long does the recruitment process take for professional recruiters? Most companies out there would certainly know right off the bat that it takes on average less time to recruit when working with a partner specializing in recruitment. Time is only one of the factors you have to consider, the others include the variety of sources, recruiting research, and thorough process of vetting candidate’s before they even get to you. All of them matter when it comes to making a decision that affects an organization’s operations and growth plans. If you would have to estimate the true cost of hiring, we recommend looking at some statistics to put a value on the process.

You may come across reports saying that hundreds of talented people are going after the same job. And at the same time, you may come across conflicting recruitment statistics that highlight the difficulties of the skills gap and missing talent. Now let’s talk in concrete terms. If you take into consideration stats like “90% of job seekers say that it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency” or stats like “79% of job seekers say they are likely to use social media in their job search” you may look at those big numbers and jump to the conclusion that finding someone is easy. In reality, it’s not.

Yes, you have to recruit with numbers in mind, but truth to be told you have to have the right numbers and get your facts straight. According to Glassdoor, “on average, each corporate job offer attracts 250 resumes. Of those candidates, 4 to 6 will get called for an interview, and only one will get the job”. In other words, you will pay the cost in time and resources to go through 250 candidates/resumes plus the cost of expertise and tools, not to mention the opportunity costs. If you would outsource the recruiting process to a recruiting partner, they would use their resources in an optimal way. Recruiting agencies live and thrive by means of performance metrics. Recruiting project managers oversee the recruiting process by keeping track of recruiting funnel metrics such as time to source, time to interview, time to hire, etc. They are well aware that coming with better, faster, and more reliable results than their clients could internally is the only measurement of success, and eventually the reason why clients do business with them!

Are you missing anything? You might think that your organization’s internal resources and information are enough. Along with your recruiters, you provide candidates with details on compensation packages and benefits, details on what makes the company an attractive place to work, its mission, vision, and values. It’s easy to miss the fact that attracting talent isn’t the hardest part. Attracting, or rather finding the best talent within the desired timeframe is the most difficult part of the recruiting process. For instance, recruiting project managers at SourceMatch leverage research, intelligent algorithms, multiple compensation market data, and especially proactive measures to identify candidates that wouldn’t otherwise be visible.

Our main priority is to work with clients to enable them to reach candidates that are performing above peer professionals in the market.
> Assisting the hiring manager and the client’s human resources team to build on their experience about what makes an employee successful over the long term;
> Extend the reach of the client’s recruiters whether to identify hard to find talent or large numbers of candidates needed in a short timeframe;
> By managing the whole recruiting process, and allowing the client’s human resources team to focus on talent onboarding, development, and overall experience.
> We create 360-degree candidate presentation packages that include all the data needed for our client’s hiring managers, recruiters and human resources, to make informed hiring decisions.

At SourceMatch, we’ve developed and are constantly improving our own approach to recruitment: we design recruiting with people in mind, not just numbers. We pay attention to our clients’ needs by enabling them to pursue expansion into new countries, to grow in current markets, or to identify hard to find professionals. What qualifies us according to our clients is the speed of execution while tackling complex recruiting engagements, identifying strong professionals while dealing with their limited availability, or putting in place recruiting systems that serve as immediate help in expanding teams. Discover and explore our range of case studies to see how our teams of experts deliver recruiting solutions for a variety of needs.

 

 

Mar 29
0

Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment Part 1

By | Blog, Recruiting | No Comments

Much has been said about the role of AI in recruitment. In the Infographic below we present the implications of AI for recruiters and organizations and for the second part, the benefits of AI for candidates in order to have a clear representation on how AI can positively affect your hiring strategy.

So, what do recruiters think about the implications of AI and how does it affect a recruiter’s work?

Statistics say that 56% of recruiters around the world say interviewing innovations due to AI are ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ important to the future of hiring. These can make a recruiter’s job easier by saving time and making its work more effectively.
39% of companies already use data to predict candidate success, while 60% of companies are planning on investing in AI-powered recruitment software, according to Harver’s report.

According to the same report, AI is most helpful in saving time (57%), removing human bias (43%), delivering best candidate matches (31%), saving money (30%).

According to a Yale University study, researchers asked 127 scientists to review a job application of identically qualified male and female students and found that the faculty members – both men and women – consistently scored a male candidate higher on a number of criteria such as competency and were more likely to hire the male. When it comes to the hiring bias, AI has proven to be a real success. For instance, tools can mask candidate gender from hiring managers and eliminate the bias. Bias can affect recruitment in your organization a lot. Dr. Pragya Agarwal mentions in a Forbes article that “Unconscious Bias can be a huge setback in creating a truly diverse and inclusive workplace”.

AI comes in hand in many ways and shapes, and we must be open to the change it brings and customize it to our needs in order to get the best out of it and hire right.

 

Mar 26
1
stand out with candidates

How can your Organization and Recruiters Stand out with Candidates?

By | Blog, Recruiting | No Comments

We present 4 key points about how your organization and recruiters can stand out with candidates:

1. Feedback. Offering constant feedback.
Once you have received an application, as a recruiter there is only one thing candidates expect, and sometimes keeps them waiting forever. There are at least two scenarios:
When candidates are not a good fit and recruiters forget about their resumes. From thousands of applications on the table or desktop software, the recruiter’s job is to find the perfect match for the position. But what about all the other candidates? Those who don’t make the cut and thus don’t move forward, also deserve an answer.
When you’ve already had an interview with a candidate, they will be waiting for an answer. If you tell them that they should hear from you, and to wait for your call or email, but won’t give them a specific date but rather a vague timeframe (i.e. “in the next few weeks”). When nothing happens weeks later and the position might have been filled, the other candidate’s know nothing. They might be in the process for more than the job with your company, so that leaves them with uncertainty, especially when they have hopes! In both situations, the recruiter’s feedback and response are what shows your candidates that you treat them as people, and not as pieces of paper.

We encourage candidates to pay attention to those hiring companies that keep them posted even when they have to give bad news. That is a result of a good culture that focuses on people and the importance of long-term impact within and outside the organization.

2. Being a good listener.
It will bring many benefits both to the job seeker and the client. When a recruiter listens to what the other parties have to say, he will understand what their needs are. It is said that good communication starts with listening. Communication is not just about how much we talk and what we say. When a recruiter starts working with a new hiring manager, she must not advise, diagnose, or assume anything before having understood their context, plans, and expectations. Use probing questions, quantify expectations as much as possible, verbalize objectives and ask for confirmation of the same understanding. A good listener will be able to reflect on what is being said and restate the message using the same or very similar words. For instance, this is especially useful to discuss the meaning of terms that might have slightly different definition in a client’s organization (i.e. sourced candidate as in prospective – “we have their resumes and they contain the basic qualifications”, or as in “we have their resumes, they qualify on paper, and we’ve talked to the candidates and they’ve already confirmed interest”).
Be ready to invite the hiring manager to speak as much as they can about the position beyond the words of the job description by asking open-ended questions, listening, and asking additional probing questions when needed.

3. Marketing and sales skills.
A professional recruiter will always know how to market and promote the services, knowledge, job opportunities and expertise in an effective way so that both clients and candidates are entirely satisfied with the process and outcome. Hence why understanding the key mechanism of marketing and sales is important: match a need with a solution where everyone has something to win. Recruiters must sharpen their selling skills if they hope to have any relevant results. A recruiter will stand out if she manages to develop a partnership with the client rather than just being a simple vendor.

Most recruiters will approach the recruiting process as merely transactional. They are provided with a job requisition, they post the job ad on known job boards, they search the database for matches and so on and so forth. In other words a simple equation with a few variables and a result. Instead of this shallow approach, recruiters can first start by asking one simple question: “what makes an employee successful in the client’s organization?” In other words: what are those traits that helped new hires to be productive, to grow int he role, to be fully committed and engaged? Same goes for vetting candidates. Recruiters should never settle for a resume or vague interview questions and answer. Validate their skills and experience through probing questions, assessments and add the depth of information that hiring managers need for sounds hiring decisions.

This is why whether talking about the client organization or candidates, there’s no one size fits all. Rather, recruiters need to craft their recruiting strategy and approach to candidates in a way that validates and compares both a role’s requirements and candidates’ complex profiles. Give context to each role by emphasizing the story that goes with it, including aspects such as vision, culture, challenges, opportunities, professional and personal development, etc.. Inspire people and bring emotion. That will help candidates you are interacting with, to think about all the facets of the position you are presenting to them, so the can decide whether they are a fit or not.

4. Relationship building.
We must not forget that recruiting at its foundation is about being able to connect with others. Recruiters should be natural connectors of people. That is why a recruiter must be active on social media and in real life. They interact with many people and should easily connect with everyone. The easiest way to connect with people is by building trust, which only comes with speaking the truth and being straight forward, and non-confrontational. Don’t oversell your ability to recruit to your clients, and don’t oversell a job to your candidate’s. Keeping that balance helps to develop the right relationship on both ends of an outstanding recruitment process: a consultant for both clients and candidates.

In the end, it comes down to an organization’s not-so-hidden agenda when hiring people: “How do we develop the right recruiting strategy so that both candidates and ourselves win?”
At SourceMatch, we take joy and satisfaction in assisting our clients with this process that creates value long term, not just short term!