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recruiters Archives - SourceMatch

Aug 05
1
habits of successful recruiters

7 Habits of Successful Recruiters

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Here’s a look at the habits of successful recruiters, in a time when the war for talent has become a reality for most organizations.

1. Keep Your Confidence and Persistence

Recruiting has its highs and lows. Staying confident and persistent can help you when things seem to slow down. It’s important to remember that a “no” now, could turn into a “yes” later. Don’t get discouraged, just shake it off and keep going with a smile. It’s not about you, it’s about a million other things that could be going on with your future client or candidate. Maybe there are personal things that put them in a bad mood. Maybe the workload is very busy right now. Keep calm, confident, and persistent, and you may have a future client or candidate. It’s important to check back, even if they said “no,” because time can change a lot.

2. Stay Proactive and Positive

In recruiting, you will need to do your research to stay proactive and be successful in the long-term game. What big changes have occurred in the recruiting world? The economy? Your clients’ businesses? By discussing and researching current trends, you can stay up to date with any changes. Staying positive despite the ongoing change demonstrates your ability to maneuver through obstacles, which will make you look great to potential clients. A smile and a positive attitude will go a long way!

3. Organizing Your Recruiting

It’s very beneficial to organize your contact list of clients and candidates. Using Excel or Google sheets is a good start. There are also specific sites that allow you to sign up for an account which will keep track of that data for you. For instance, when you send an email, some applicant tracking or customer relationship management systems keep track of who and when you sent it, allowing that legwork to be taken care of. It can remind you to follow up with potential clients or potential candidates. Do you use Google calendar or Calendly? Those are a few ways to keep track of meetings and appointments. There are numerous sites or software applications that can help you stay organized. In recruiting, it’s important to stay professional and organized with your time.

4. Knowledge of Clients and Candidates (and their needs)

Are you up to date with your clients and the current candidate pool? Staying up to date with your clients’ needs means keeping in contact with them, checking in on a regular basis, and finding out about any new workplace cultural norms. Have they adopted any new norms or are there any issues with employee retention? How can we help our clients solve those problems (if any)? Offering to listen to your clients’ needs shows that you respect and care about their business. Staying up to date with the current candidate pool means knowing what candidates are demanding in regard to the workplace and pay. How competitive are their skills in regards to the pay they are looking for?

5. Consistency of Building Relationships and Referrals

Building and adding clients to your base helps your company’s recruiting service. By constantly looking for potential clients and referrals, you create future clients and more revenue. It’s important to make time for relationship building. Have you reached out to new clients and offered to take them coffee or out to lunch? What about your current clients? It doesn’t hurt to take them out or send a nice gift to the staff. Those small gestures pay off big time when they share your business as a referral.

6. Communication, Empathy and Listening Skills

Being able to actively converse and listen during a conversation, is a great skill to hone. By asking questions and listening to your client, you build a relationship. It’s known that people who are interested in others create a bond and relationship by allowing the other to share information. People feel connected to others, the more they are allowed to talk about things that relate to them. Actively listening empathetically, is actually a skill that will benefit your relationships. Rather than just glaring over when someone is talking; smile, nod, and show interest. Let the other person finish his or her thought or say “excuse me” if you need a turn to speak. You can add to what the other person has said and show that you listened, as well. This makes the other person feel cared for and important.

7. Current Trends / Technology

Staying up to date with the current recruiting trends and technology will boost your know-how and relevance. What AI is available and what can it do to help with recruiting? What about the current recruiting trends? Which companies are struggling to find employees and what jobs are hot right now, and need to be filled asap? What are candidates looking for and what are companies looking for? LinkedIn is a great resource for learning about current trends with both businesses and candidates. Other popular recruiting resources are listed here. Recruiting is an ever-evolving process, so it’s important to stay in the loop!
The SourceMatch team regularly publishes blog posts, opinions, and curated content to save you the trouble of having to look for the best sources on the internet.

Being a successful recruiter can require a lot of know-how and practice. By keeping your confidence and persistence, staying proactive and positive, organizing your recruiting, having knowledge of clients and candidates (and their needs), staying consistent with building relationships and referrals, developing communication, empathy and listening skills, and keeping up with current trends/technology, you will build a successful recruiting career.

Reach out to us to learn more.

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.

 

Feb 13
1
recruiters and hiring managers

Recruiters and Hiring Managers. Connection and Disruption in the Recruiting Process

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Recruitment: a plus or a minus
One of the important functions of a solid business is the Human Resources department. It deals with aspects such as compensation, benefits, new employees, recruiting, training, organizational development, and culture. It is also meant to act as an adviser to senior staff, providing clarity regarding the impact of their operational, financial and performance planning on people. However, the topic of recruitment attracts considerable attention in most organizations. It is estimated that U.S employers spent in recent years no less than an average of $140 billion annually on recruitment activities. The recruiting process has a direct impact on an organization’s bottom line. Those organizations that excel at it, experience 3.5 times more revenue growth and twice the profit margin as opposed to all other employers who will rather see recruitment as an expense due to the lack of return on investment.

Recruitment is about one common objective
We know that hiring the right employee for the right job isn’t easy and hiring them at the right time can be even more challenging. Employers have the power to decide which type of people they want to hire and what strategic message they’re sending to reach the targeted professionals. Done poorly, an organization’s recruitment efforts will generate job applicants that are unqualified and will miss the highly qualified ones because they were unaware of a job opening. Whether we talk about an organization’s senior management, hiring managers, or recruiters, they all have different expectations when they think about recruiting. Senior management thinks in terms of strategy, growth, and bottom line. Hiring managers will focus on tactics and short to mid-term projects goals. Recruiters will think in terms of identifying possible candidates, assessing their skills, behavioral and cultural fit, as well as making the tight deadlines that come with growth. Despite their apparently different expectations, all stakeholders active in their organization’s recruitment process have one objective: getting the right people on board.

Do your homework
Among the most important factors influencing the recruiting process is the hiring manager’s perception of the candidates that are being presented by the recruiter. Even within the same organization, the hiring managers are the recruiter’s clients. This is why an evaluation of how well recruiters serve the hiring managers’ interests and needs is required.

Here are a few reasons that will lead to the failure of the recruiting process:
a) Recruiters don’t have a good understanding of the type of candidate that hiring managers require;
b) The recruitment process takes too long;
c) Recruiters forget to keep hiring managers updated on the status of the recruitment process;
d) The intense use of the e-mail by the recruiter;
e) No interaction with the hiring manager and lack of proactivity.

Some of these might be the result of poor communications between hiring managers and recruiters. Others may be caused by the fact that hiring managers are unclear about what they need in a new hire. A slow process can be caused by not acting quickly when it comes to reviewing job applications and scheduling interviews. To avoid all these obstacles, recruiters must work directly and closely with the hiring managers to develop a list with realistic expectations for each job opening. The recruiter should take time to understand what the hiring manager appreciates most about the people who are currently doing well in their team. Looking at the current team members and what made them a good fit is useful to determine both tangible and intangible factors influencing the recruitment and hiring processes.

Communication is key
It’s estimated that 80% of recruiters think they understand the requirements of the jobs for which they recruit, and only 39% of hiring managers agree with it. Such a disconnect is detrimental to all parties involved in the recruitment process and can lead to a loss of time and money.
Recruiters are responsible to educate the hiring managers on whether expectations are realistic when correlated with the labor market.
Recruiters should always keep the hiring manager updated about how things are progressing throughout the process and ask for information rather than wait for the hiring manager to contact them. On the contrary, recruiters ought to focus on creating a collaborative process in which all parties are aware of the hiring status, and can at any time connect to the company’s applicant tracking system for most recent updates. Technology has made communication much more accessible and streamlined through smart recruiting software applications that are synchronized across all available platforms.

Recruitment strategies and processes
By communicating the right values ​​in your job advertisements to properly on-board candidates, the recruitment strategies you use can make or break the hiring process. Here are some that you should try.

Your brand is important
Probably the most important element in attracting, hiring and retaining talent is Branding, and it’s the most difficult. In fact, 72% of recruiting leaders around the world agree that branding has a significant impact on employment.
Having a strong employer brand is a great way to attract great applicants. However, it is not easy, it requires a significant investment of time and money.

Introducing an employee recommendation system
Unlike employer branding, starting a program that helps identify potential new hires does not cost you much and can get you results pretty quickly. Here are some benefits that come with this kind of initiative: lower recruitment costs, reach professionals that otherwise might not have applied for your openings, shorter timeframes to fill positions, and in essence less money spent on hiring.

Don’t neglect the passive candidates
Passive candidates can be a real treasure if you take the right approach to reach out to them. Note that most of them don’t have an updated resume or aren’t motivated to apply. The good news is that an estimated 85% of the workforce would gladly change their job for better opportunities. It’s all about portraying them in a way that’s transparent and detailed enough to determine a response.

Focus on publishing an accurate job description
Make sure your job ads are proofread, double-checked and accurate. If you are trying to find the right candidates for your job offer, It’s important that their first impression of your organization and digital presence is a good one.

Improve your job interview
According to LinkedIn research, 83% of candidates had a negative experience during an interview and most wouldn’t have applied for the job had they known. To avoid bad interview experiences ensure that your candidates receive all the information they need about the role, that they’re asked meaningful questions, and that interviewers show genuine interest in understanding their career.

Conclusion
We all are aware of the fact that the world of recruiting is growing rapidly, and while these strategies are helpful this year, it’s very probable that in the years to come these might not be trending anymore. Keep learning, researching and adopting new ways to attract the best talent in the market, since people are key to a company’s ability to thrive among competitors! At the same time, not all these recruitment strategies will work the same for all companies. Our advice, in order to advance your hiring process, try, improve and customize them, and adjust them to your organization’s needs.

May 08
2

How CATS Improves the SourceMatch Recruiting Experience

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Technology plays a crucial role in advancing efficiency and financial results. According to the 2017 North American Staffing & Recruiting Trends Report, technology adoption is unsurprisingly high: 64% of North American staffing firms use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to track candidate activity and 60% use a customer relationship management (CRM) system for business development. Recruiters want to work smart, not harder. At SourceMatch, it’s this philosophy why we use CATS as our applicant tracking system for all of our recruiting processes.

CATS helps us save time, organize better and structure our recruitment operations in little time. When one of our clients needs 5 new hires in the management department within a short time frame, we trust the automation CATS provides to hire the right people in an efficient manner.

The recruitment workflow in CATS is streamlined and helps us shorten the time it takes from receiving an order to presenting the hiring manager with the best candidates – a huge benefit in the recruiting industry. It’s easy to track and manage candidates through the recruiting process so that team members can see the most up-to-date statuses and quickly move forward with the next interview, the offer, or whatever the next step in the process is.

Thanks to its user-friendly interface, custom dashboards, and numerous integration options, CATS quickly becomes something that just makes sense to us (including our new hires). When we do have a question, we can rely on CATS’ support team for the assistance we need, when we need it.

Many recruiters work on a regular basis with Excel or Google Sheets. Though these do work for simplistic tasks (detailing project status, defining task types, etc.), they lack the intuition of software built for recruiters. CATS is customizable through workflow optimization, job orders dashboard and many more productivity and analytics features. CATS also post your jobs on several job boards (free and some paid) which helps with attracting talent. It is a software built by recruiters, for recruiters, and it shows.

Recruiting has its challenges, but the fact that each experience is different in and of itself helps us improve and become better at what we do. Our experience taught us that regardless of the type of work we are doing, we must always use the right tools in order to succeed. For SourceMatch, CATS is not only the right tool, but it’s also the applicant tracking system we recommend to anyone for their hiring needs.

Jan 09
2
recruiters

What’s the Biggest Problem Modern Recruiters face?

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One can say that the greatest challenge for recruiters is staying human in an era of lightning-fast technology.

If until a few years back we could still hope to build relationships with candidates and client organizations, and act as that educated advisor (at best) for both candidates and clients, today things are changing fast. Speed has taken the steering wheel of recruiting over careful consideration of all factors that can make a professional success in the job and organization they are considering and vice versa.

Dehumanizing the whole process leads to superficial hiring and disaster (whether organizations like to admit it or not) just months after the hiring decision has been made. The later can take many forms but here are just a few: the disappointment when new hires understand that everyone involved in the process made a rushed decision, the lack of engagement and creativity pursuant to that reality check, and finally, a decision to start looking for another employer from that point on or in other cases just staying complacent (pick your own worst-case scenario!).

On the one hand, as recruiting specialists, we need to educate our clients about the risks of moving too fast (i.e. just bodies in placeholders), and on the other, consult candidates so that they are equipped to make a sound decision (i.e. right career move).

So, let’s go through some challenges of the recruiting process.

Every Recruiting Journey Starts with the First Step: Effective Sourcing

First of all, let’s look at the recruitment screening process. According to talentnow.com, 52% of talent acquisition leaders say the hardest part of recruitment is screening candidates from a large applicant pool. 

Of course, there are best practices for sourcing. These include working with a high-performance sourcing team that finds and qualifies new candidates. But recruiters need to build a pipeline for assessing the talent pool. They have to have a strategy in place and if that strategy is not properly implemented it is easy to waste time. Imagine if the job requirements are not properly analyzed or the candidate persona isn’t correctly defined. The search may go in a different direction than what is needed. Moreover, if the recruiters don’t know the tricks of the trade, the ATS (applicant tracking system) will be a lost gold mine.

For instance, not many sourcing analysts know they should start every search with the previously interested candidates who applied in the past thus using their existing database before going out in the digital world to start their search.

Following this line of thought, attracting the identified and desired candidates is not just another hurdle recruiters nowadays face. According to various recruitment statistics, attracting top-quality candidates is the biggest challenge of recruiters, period. It is one thing that 82% of Fortune 500 executives don’t believe that their companies recruit highly talented people. When becoming aware that 54% of employers currently have positions for which they can’t find qualified candidates, it’s clear that recruitment is no kids’ play. Still, in the world of high-quality recruitment services, the failure to attract talented candidates is not an option. The solution lies in making the candidate’s journey about them, and then in the recruitment processes that are constantly revised and renewed and therefore adapting and evolving.

Keep the Candidates’ Interest in Mind

Another challenge is keeping the balance between how aggressively you present the opportunity to potential candidate’s and what they want for their career. The key term is “potential”. When we talk to candidates we don’t want to assume they’re (by default) interested. Rather, start your discussion with a candidate by asking if it’s the right time to make a career change. We need to care about his/her plans since that determines if it makes any sense to even talk about a job opening. Fellow recruiters would you like it if somebody reached out to you and started telling you about an opportunity without any considering for YOUR plans? We are working with living and breathing human beings and if we don’t care we don’t have any place in this line of business.

The Interview is also the Candidate’s Interview for Your Company

What comes after candidates engage with recruiters? An interview. Another challenge recruiters face is the hurdle of developing an interview structure that’s interesting enough for candidates who applied for that role. The recruitment process must be a professional and positive experience for your prospective candidate. If you are a recruitment firm, the recruitment process must be highly attractive to your client as well. The point is that regardless of the industry you are navigating through, the job market you are sailing or the candidates pool you are choosing from, your recruitment process must be top-notch and offer a convincing experience for your clients and for your prospective hires. When the recruiters have sourced candidates and then interviewed the interested ones, the recruitment project managers make sure of two important things. First, they build an interview that highlights technical and behavioral skills that are needed to meet the job requirements. Second, they conduct the interview professionally. The first one is to please the client and the second one is to motivate the candidate. Either way, quality is key. Interviews are the perfect opportunity to show candidates what they can expect from your organization down the line.

Build a relationship

The interview leads to the next difficulty, which is maintaining the candidates interested while the hiring manager interviews and chooses the one that best fits the opening. Although you want to recruit a candidate as soon as possible, you don’t want to compromise, and only want to hire the best talent possible, and that usually takes time. This means that when someone is selected for an interview with the hiring manager, he or she must wait for weeks until other candidates are interviewed as well. During this time, the recruitment project manager makes sure to stay in touch with all of the viable candidates to build rapport with them, keep them interested and engaged.

Problem: “Ghosting” is a phenomenon in which job candidates schedule an interview but fail to show up, or they get hired but don’t report to work – without so much as a phone call. It may be hard to rationalize such bad behavior, but human resource professionals say it could be candidates’ way of paying employers back for their indifference during the recession. Jobs were so scarce that companies often received hundreds of applications for a single job, but many failed to acknowledge the time candidates took to apply.

Candidates who are not a fit for the role will still want to hear back from you about where they stand. Don’t ignore them. They need to be handled with care because although they were not selected, they are candidates who could be a great hire for future openings. Recruiters need not be biased by their lack of time and get back to the candidates making sure they are appreciated not only for their qualifications and experiences but also for the time they invested in the recruitment process.

In conclusion, when recruiters face challenges it not only affects them but the entire recruiting process, and thus their clients and candidates. But when challenges are identified they can be transformed into learning and development opportunities. At SourceMatch, recruiters are in a constant process of improving themselves as they strive for the best outcomes. Feel free to check it out here.