Become a Hiring Expert with the Best of ClearCompany

ClearCompany has processed millions of applicants, created thousands of hiring programs, and taken hundreds of talent acquisition teams to the next level with their industry leading ATS, Sourcing Module, Onboarding Platform and Video Interviewing capabilities. For nearly two decades we’ve been helping midsize companies transform the way they source, recruit, hire and onboard talent. We’ve brought you Talent Success University, our Talent Success Conference and of course, countless talent acquisition articles, hiring research and recruiting resources right here on this site.

Based on feedback from our clients, years of research in the talent industry and utilizing best practices to find and hire A Players for our team, we’ve selected the very best ClearCompany content and put it all in one place. Welcome to Best of ClearCompany: Recruit and Hire Edition. In this guide, we’ll take you through some of our top tips, best research and most helpful articles on sourcing, recruiting and hiring. 

Don’t have time to read the whole thing? Skip straight to what you’re looking for:

• How to Plan Your Recruiting Strategy

• How to Implement Sourcing in Your Hiring Process

• The Best Way to Screen Candidates Before an Interview
• The Ultimate Do’s and Don’ts of Recruiting
• Reporting on Your Recruiting and Hiring Activities

How to Plan Your Recruiting Strategy with Quality of Hire

At ClearCompany, while we want to make hiring streamlined and effective, we also know neither of these measurements matter if your Quality of Hire (QoH) score is not up to par. It’s for this reason that we recommend figuring out how you are going to measure your QoH and where it is today in order to track improvement. To put it into perspective, in 2015, 39% of companies said Quality of Hire (QoH) was their most valuable performance metric.

Many Applicant Tracking and Performance Management Systems can give you small pieces of data that will be crucial to figuring out your QoH, but our clients appreciate having both integrated on a comprehensive platform so there are fewer inputs.

So which recruiting metrics yield the greatest insights?

While every organization has its own unique identifiers for success, there are metrics today paving the path for Quality of Hire, and it’s important that there are distinct metrics for measuring pre-hire quality and post-hire quality.

• Candidates per hire: This metric represents how many job candidates a hiring manager sees before a hire is made. “If the number of candidates seen before one is hired varies widely or is too high, it indicates your entire hiring process is out of control,” said Lou Adler. Ideally, hiring managers should only need to interview a handful of candidates before reaching a decision, particularly in a tight talent market.
• Passive candidate conversion rate: This metric is made up of several smaller metrics that track from end-to-end contact with a passive candidate from first-response contact to prospect-conversion rates. Research shows, a good recruiter will convert 75% of the passive candidates they contact into prospects.
• Referrals per call: Employee referrals are the most effective sourcing channel and increase the chances of successful job matching from 2.6 to 6.6%. Make sure your recruiters are asking top employees who else they know to fill open positions!
• Email conversion rates: Job candidates today want meaningful careers, personalization and easy-to-read information which means how they are approached for a potential job can be critical to turning them into a real prospect. Making sure email content is compelling, specific and to-the-point can significantly impact conversion rates. Adler recommends that recruiters aim for response rates that are 50% or higher.
• Text conversion rates: It’s time to get on the SMS text recruiting bandwagon. ClearCompany offers a simple, streamlined path to starting your text recruiting journey. If you’re already doing this, take the next step and analyze your results, or have ClearCompany’s platform do it for you!

Quality of Hire remains one of our most important metrics for planning your recruiting process. Make sure you’ve read our guide on calculating your QoH before moving onto your next step, which is cleaning and streamlining your recruiting process.

Streamlining Your Recruiting Process

If you’re a recruiter or an HR Professional tasked with recruiting, you likely have to:

• Answer phone calls and emails
• Complete ATS searches
• Implement social recruiting campaigns
• Review resumes
• Figure out job ad spend and manage career sites
• Screen candidates
• Schedule candidates for interviews
• Enter data into multiple systems

…..and let’s not forget interacting with hiring managers.

So, it can be difficult to find the time to analyze and evaluate your recruiting strategy and success. Here are some tips to clean up your recruiting process so you can plan your strategy for the rest of the year.

Evaluate, then Automate

The time spent assessing a candidate’s cultural fit should be exponentially more than time spent scheduling interviews. In fact, 89% of hiring failures are due to lack of cultural fit. If we remove the time consuming parts of hiring that happen before an interview even happens - more time can be spent focusing on whether the candidate would fit your company culture. It’s easy to get bogged down by these tedious, routine tasks.

Thankfully, there’s a solution that is currently the top subject in HR. Automated chatbots are now being used on career sites and improving candidate experience. Chatbots work with the schedules of both candidates and hiring managers to get the tedious parts of setting up an interview out of the way. If it’s an administrative task, chances are automation can handle it. It will likely take a period of time before these tools are successfully implemented and become the norm. However, once they are standard, there will be more time for your hiring team to focus on the human aspect of Human Resources.

Tip: Time each recruiting activity so you have an idea of how much time is actually being spent on each task. Then, adjust so that the bulk of your time is spent on those high priority activities. Automate the rest.

Stop Multitasking!

Neuroscientists talk of the “cognitive cost” of switching back and forth between tasks. When you find yourself switching between writing a job ad to answering the phone to asking that hiring manager what she thought of the candidate...STOP! None of those things will get done well and you’ll waste valuable strategic energy. Use the time blocking exercise from above to really track where you are spending time and how often you genuinely focus.

Tip: Stop trying to multitask. Instead of being as efficient as possible, multitasking is diminishing the quality of your recruiting process and consequently producing a ripple effect in the recruiting strategy. Similar to our previous tip, plan out your activities and set a timer to keep yourself in check.

Be Your Own Worst Critic

You must go through your own process. If there is a mantra for talent acquisition professionals, this should be it: find your job by googling keywords and your area from an incognito browser. Can you locate your opening on job boards? How long does it take to find your position? Once you find it, how long does it take to get through your career site to the right job and then to go through the application process? Consider submitting a fake resume that matches the qualifications of the open position to see if your ATS is identifying good candidates. Determine how long it takes to get a response and what that process looks and sounds like from a candidate’s point of view.

Tip: Have a friend or an employee who isn’t in HR go through this process as well and compare notes. The goal is to get an accurate idea of what’s working and what isn’t. Take special note of features that would make your candidate’s journey easier, like automatic parsing or an automated FAQ page.

The first step in making your hiring strategy successful is working to have the most streamlined recruiting process. Getting there means having productive and improvement-driven recruiters who know how to make the best use of their time, whether that’s facilitated by HR technology or not. How are other companies getting the job done? 75% of hiring and talent managers use either applicant tracking or recruiting software to track candidates and analyze their processes. ClearCompany’s applicant tracking system makes measuring Quality of Hire simple and effective.

How to Implement Sourcing in Your Hiring Process: 9 Hacks

The sourcing life has never been easy, but it’s hard to say that it’s not super fun. And if you’re an HR professional, getting down and dirty with research into passive candidates can be a refreshing break from succession planning or managing your annual performance reviews. Try some of these neat sourcing hacks, tools and tricks to improve your sourcing game for the next time you get to play detective!

Engage your employees. They know people at church, from their neighborhood, their kids’ schools and more. By giving them ideas of where to start looking for their next great referral, you instantly widen your company’s talent pool! Check out these stats:

• Employee referrals have the highest applicant to hire conversion rate – only 7% apply, but this accounts for 40% of all hires.
• Referral hires have greater job satisfaction and stay longer at companies – 46% stay over 1 year, 45% over 2 years and 47% over 3 years.
• 67% of employers and recruiters said the recruiting process was shorter, and 51% said it was less expensive to recruit via referrals.
• 70% of employers felt referred hires fit the company culture and values better.
• Statistics show 1 out of every 5 referrals get hired.

• Referrals are the #1 quality hire, meaning they perform better on the job than any other source of hire.
• 55.3% of respondents said employee referrals are “productive” or “very productive” sources of diversity hires.
• Referrals are 5 times more likely to be hired.

• 82% of employers rate employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best return on investment.
• 88% of employers rated employee referrals above all other sources for generated quality of new hires.
• Referral hires perform 3%-15% better than hires from other sources.
• On average, it takes just 10.4 referrals to lead to a hire.
• Time to hire is 29 days for referrals.

Take it a step further. Write out an email or script they can use to get it going. If you’re going to ask your employees to be ambassadors and help you source, make it as easy as humanly possible.

Use Chrome extensions and aggregators specifically designed for sourcing. There are tons of great lists out there with free sourcing tools for all of us to use. The secret? Not that many HR pros think they can source so they avoid anything beyond LinkedIn. Dean DaCosta, Stacy Zapar and Katrina Kibben all offer advice on sourcing - everything from tips for sourcing beginners to expert x-ray ideas for the more advanced.

Rename your wifi network. If you are sourcing for a hospital, retail location, restaurant or other customer facing location or you work near your competitor or a popular restaurant or bar, this hack is for you. Rename your WiFi to something clever like “Know how to code? Leave your resume at the desk.” As Sourcing Monk points out, you can do this on a personal device or use careersite addresses and symbols in the name as well. If you think your company will find this a little too “out there,” try offering free WiFi that directs people to your jobs page or a featured job you’ve been struggling to fill. Or bypass the boss and rename your personal device WiFi next time you’re at Dunkin’ Donuts.

Try the Prophet Chrome extension from HiringSolved. When you view a person’s profile on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, an arrow will appear in the top right corner of your screen. Click it to display a list of all the social profiles and websites associated with that person. It will also display a list of possible email addresses for this person, based on the information contained within their social media accounts. Then simply click “Find Email” and you’ve got it!

Try alternate keywords. 75% of 18,000 full-time employees surveyed considered themselves passive candidates, but they may not know all about job SEO like you and me. Candidates with very little online footprint won’t be found with a standard keyword search. For example, candidates with a high security clearance may have sparse profiles that lack the specific phrases you’re looking for. Instead, look for clues and alternate keywords. Locations, length of time on LinkedIn with no job history and more can all be clues that someone is doing more than what’s tracked on a professional network.

Reach out on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter individually. 85% of employees surveyed said they would be willing to talk with a recruiter who tries to reach them on social media. If you aren’t friends with the person, you’ll have to do it publicly and risk getting shot down. But it’s a candidate’s market out there, big risk = big reward in the talent battles.

Use the phone and dial the last name on the list, not the first. While it may seem counterintuitive, so much sourcing has gone online lately, that potential candidates can be surprised by a phone call. And many busy recruiters and sourcers are not taking the time to scour the bottom of the list (which is not the same as the bottom of the barrel). So take the time to reach out and connect with someone who may have been overlooked a thousand times before.

Make sure your recruiting process and candidate experience is fantastic. About 11% of job seekers said they would decline a job offer from an employer with a bad reputation – even if they were unemployed.

Give Diversity a Chance to Thrive in Your Sourcing Process: 8 Great Reasons

Many recruiters and HR professionals WANT to implement diversity in their hiring process, but lack the statistics and facts they need to sell this concept to their higher-ups. Next time you’re pushing to make your company more well-rounded (after all, only ⅓ of the workforce classifies as a minority), check out these diversity hiring facts to overcome objections, illustrate impact and create urgency with your hiring executives.

The Biggest Reason Companies Can’t Do it? 41% Say They’re “Too Busy"

A SHRM report recently noted that 41% of managers are “too busy” to implement diversity initiatives. It may be true that managers have too much on their plates to handle on a given day, but the stat reveals just how small of a priority diversity hiring is. Here’s how:

• Make it a team effort. Not everything needs to fall on your hands. Get insight, feedback and support from other members of senior management. Getting commitment from them creates a way for everyone to encourage diversity throughout the organization.
• Create a committee. This could be a small group of managers, or even team members, that collaborate on and establish ways to create more diversity within the workplace. Remember this group should be diverse in employee rank, race, gender, age, etc. A team that lacks diversity will not bring about the best approach to welcoming diversity.
• Use other companies. Today, diversity is a group effort in that organizations of all types and in every industry are trying to be more inclusive. While it might unveil some of your own shortcomings, looking to others who are succeeding can inspire new ideas for your own company and help you start on your own path to a more diverse workforce.
• Be honest. No one is perfect and even seasoned leaders can struggle with understanding how to implement diversity. Approaching the issue with honesty will show self-reflection and encourage others to join in on improving the problem.

Sign of Progress: 43% of companies are now offering holidays that allow employees to take time off based on their religious or cultural situation, which shows more diversity.

Fewer CEOs Are Women Than Are Named David

When a single name outnumbers an entire gender, it reveals a staggering problem. This stat reveals just how few opportunities women get in the business world, and no matter what people may think, it’s not because women can’t handle leadership. Women are more than capable of handling all the demands of a business — the people in charge simply aren’t letting them prove themselves.

Sign of Progress? The number of women CEOs at Fortune 500 companies fell by 25% this year, dipping to 24% from 32% in 2017, an all-time high. Women are the chief executives of just 4.8% of the 500 most profitable companies in the United States.

Racially Diverse Teams Outperform Non-Diverse Ones by 35%

One of the biggest things stopping managers from implementing diversity is that they’re afraid introducing people whom may not agree with each other will hamper productivity. However, because diverse teams outperform non-diverse ones, companies should actively try to engage with diversity initiatives as soon as possible to make sure they’re implemented, instead of trying to hamper them out of fear.

In fact, in a cognitive intelligence study, researchers observed successful teams had three things in common:

• they gave one another roughly equal time to talk
• they were sensitive towards each other (even in awkward situations)
• they included more women - making them the most diverse

In other words, having different types of people on the same team can help others look at problems more carefully while also being more innovative, creative and inclusive about their solutions.

57% of Employees Think Their Companies Should Be More Diverse

Your employees want to be more productive. Without a flood of new experiences, ideas and people to keep them motivated and excited about their work, they could get burnt out. So when it comes to diversity, you can be sure your employees have your back.

40% of People Think There’s a Double-Standard Against Hiring Women

Both women and men are more likely to hire men over women, and it’s likely what leads to a lack of gender diversity in the workplace, as well as problems with women in leadership positions (which we discussed in an earlier stat). Companies need to recognize this bias and implement programs which favor women in order to counteract this inherent bias in hiring. Your performance reviews need work too. 58.9% of reviews from a study contained critical feedback for men, compared with 87.9% of the reviews received by women.

What can you do about this?

• Check your job descriptions and advertisements for gender-bias. Textio and other services have released tools and reports to help you do it!
• Try blind applications. A study by Harvard and Princeton found that blind auditions increased the likelihood that a woman would be hired by between 25 and 46%.
• Do a beta test with hiring managers. When an orchestra switched from auditions where they could see the candidate to blind auditions, the percentage of women members in the orchestra jumped from 5% to 25%. Similarly, institutions using a double-blind method to review scientific studies have similarly increased the number of women who get published in journals.
• Learn the facts. In a large study done in 2015 of more than 4,600 people, teams that welcomed more women performed better than those with fewer or no women.

African Americans are 16% Less Likely to Get Invited to Job Interviews

A study revealed that white names got 50% more callbacks than black names, regardless of the industry or occupation. Arguments against affirmative action say that it gives minorities without the skills to properly perform in the tasks required of them an unfair advantage. But in reality, initiatives like it are created to battle the inherent bias against African Americans in the workplace. Categorically, people of minority backgrounds are invited less often to interviews, and when the numbers are this consistent, it makes the case for targeted diversity initiatives.

What can you do?

This is where a true understanding of interview bias comes into play. Individuals should be hired based on skill, experience and performance - not by their name or ethnic background. Sadly, snap judgements are still very much a part of interview and hiring decisions. As a manager or employer, there are things you can do to prevent bias from seeping in:

• Create a bias-free process. Create a list of questions and tasks that every candidate must answer and in the same manner and point during the assessment. Keeping consistency ensures everyone has equal opportunity to perform well.
• Justify your decision. Don’t decide right away on which candidate is the best choice. Look over your notes and justify why they are (or aren’t) the best fit. Write down your reasoning and make sure that it is based on more than just superficial facts.
• Expand your hiring team to include minorities and underrepresented people. Welcoming more than one colleague into the hiring decision will help deter bias.

Bilingual Employees Earn 10% More Revenue

Nearly 90% of managers said that better cross-border communication would improve the bottom line. Hiring bilingual employees, no matter what other language they may speak, is one great way to increase diversity in your company and see immediate benefits. If many of your employees interact with customers and clients on a regular basis, being able to speak multiple languages is a huge boon for your business.

Teams Where Men and Women are Equal Earn 41% More Revenue

Gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to earn above-average revenue. Another stat that supports moving towards greater gender diversity. When companies employ more women, they’re able to take advantage of a greater wealth of perspectives. The results are faster solutions, more creative thinking and higher overall revenue.

The Best Way to Screen Candidates Before an Interview: 8 Essential Questions to Ask

Interviews can be troublesome, even for the most seasoned recruiters and HR professionals. Incorporating video interviewing allows companies to quickly screen out candidates who aren’t right for your company before the time-consuming phone screens or face-to face interviews. But to be effective, you need to ask the right questions. Here is a short list that can help you find your next A-Player:

What kinds of things do you like doing outside of work?

This may seem like a fluff question, but it is actually quite substantial. Employees with hobbies tend to be happier, which leads to a 31% more productive workplace. In addition to happier employees, you may uncover skills that go beyond the particular job description and make the candidate a greater value to the team.

What is your ideal job?

This question gives the candidate a chance to open up about their career goals and the benefits they most appreciate. Make note of the things they want that the role or the organization as a whole cannot or will not provide. If this list is extensive, the candidate may not be a long-term fit and you are better off proceeding with alternate candidates.

Why did you choose this company/this job?

This is your opportunity to find out not only how much research the candidate completed prior to the interview, but also if the candidate is truly interested in this particular job or just any job. Ideally the candidate would demonstrate a knowledge of the company and how their personal values and goals align with that of the business.

How do you like to work?

The goal of this question is to determine if the employee fits within your work culture. To avoid the answer of “however you want me to,” you might consider providing additional options. Do they enjoy collaboration or seek to avoid it? Do they try to multitask or focus on checking items off of their to-do list one at a time? Their answers allow you to gauge how they would work with the other members of the department to meet business objectives.

What career accomplishment are you most proud of?

Ask this to gain insight into a candidate’s work experience and see if their accomplishment wows you. If you are impressed, then you have found someone who could make an impact. If you are underwhelmed, you can move on to alternate candidates.

How would your past experiences influence decisions you would make here?

The answer the candidate provides is a window into what they gained from previous work experience and how they could translate that experience to provide value to your company. It may also give you a sense on what they value in an employer.

How open are you to the idea of doing things outside your job description?

It is hard to fully encompass the entirety of a job in a job description, especially because roles tend to expand over time. So ask candidates if they are open to these changes in responsibilities as the workplace evolves. By being upfront, you are viewed as an honest employer and the employee isn’t taken off guard with extra responsibilities that accompany advancement opportunities.

What can you contribute to our company?

The candidate explains why they are the best candidate for the job and how their skills will help your company succeed. Listen closely as they explain their “it-factor.” You may hear examples of similar tasks that fulfill the needs of the job opening or how the candidate can diversify your talent pool.

Video interviewing accompanied by asking effective questions will guide your screening process into a new realm of efficiency. Are you ready to give it a try? ClearCompany’s Talent Operating System is the only software that utilizes your organization’s mission, competencies and goals to hire, retain and engage more top talent - creating unparalleled levels of success. See a demo today.  

Engage Candidates with Text Recruiting

Recruiting: https://blog.clearcompany.com/5-tips-to-make-text-messaging-an-effective-recruitment-channel

Candidate pools are more mobile-focused than ever, and they want to work for businesses that care about their preferences and needs. If you haven’t incorporated text messaging into your recruitment strategy, it may be time. Here are some reasons why:

• Your ads are seen. 75% of US adults use a smartphone and globally that number is expected to surpass the 5 billion mark by 2019. Instead of emailing candidates or posting your opening on dozens of job boards online, recruiters can use text messages to put the job posting right in the palm of their hand. The 98% open rate of text messages blows the email open rate of 23% out of the water.

• Smartphones are used for social networking, shopping...and job searches. A 2017 survey showed that 89% of job seekers use their mobile device when job hunting, and 73% prefer to receive targeted job opportunities via text. Not only is texting convenient for the candidate, it also establishes a more personal relationship between the candidate and the business in a fraction of the time of traditional recruiting methods.

• Approachability and quick responses earn candidates’ trust. When you ask a company about a product or service they offer, you expect quick response times. The same can be said about job inquiries. Research shows that 53% of candidates trust a company more when it reaches out quickly. Lack of timely responses leaves a candidate feeling unimportant and possibly questioning if this is an indicator of a larger issue within the company.

5 Tips to Make Text Messaging an Effective Recruitment Channel

Candidates are open to text recruitment techniques now more than ever. But recruiters need to use this channel effectively to see optimal returns. Here are some easy guidelines you can follow to make your text-recruiting more professional, courteous and successful.

• Don’t spoil your opener. We already established that text messages have an astounding 98% open rate. But since your text will come from a random phone number, you need to be thoughtful about the message you craft. Make sure to introduce yourself and be approachable and open. Let the candidate know what the opportunity is and how it benefits them, but avoid sounding like a sales pitch. Also avoid using all caps. If your first text looks like spam, that’s what it will become.

• Reinforce the candidate’s value. People want to feel valued. A recent study determined that 76% of employees who do not feel valued are looking for other job opportunities. So if you can articulate the value the candidate could bring to the position and the business, as well as how the opportunity provides personal value, you are more apt to receive a response.

• Respond with speed. One of the main advantages of text messaging over email is speed. People are more adept to ignore email notifications than text notifications. In fact, 90% of recruiters report using text messaging helped speed up their process significantly. But if you expect speedy responses from a candidate, be prepared to reciprocate.

• Make follow-up easy. If the candidate needs more information before applying, invite them to continue the conversation in the method of their choosing. If responses are lengthy, candidates may prefer switching to email. If they are ready to apply through their phone, it is imperative that your careers website is optimized for mobile to ensure a seamless transition from first contact through application. The power of text can only truly be unleashed if you can properly capitalize on it.
• Text with caution. Text messaging isn’t the preferred method of contact for everyone and can feel invasive if done at inopportune times. 24% of candidates think it’s inappropriate to text them outside regular business hours, so stick to the 9-5. Also, think about time differences if chatting with candidates outside of your area. Be mindful of the type of information being shared over text and how communications are tracked in case of an audit or investigation.

The recruiting industry is increasing its focus on candidate experience, and recruiters must be trained to follow best practices so they don’t come off as salesy, pushy and invasive. Texting messaging can be highly beneficial when added to your recruitment tool belt, but only if done so correctly.

If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of text recruiting, see a demo of our Applicant Tracking System complete with ClearText.

The Ultimate Do’s and Don’ts of Recruiting

Recruiting has come a long way in the past several years with technology advances improving and simplifying the hiring process. From digital recruitment marketing efforts to AI and more, it’s hard to keep up. To help you get the right process for your organization, we’ve put together the ultimate list of do’s and don'ts in recruitment.

Recruiting Trends: DON’TS

With technology and social media being prevalent resources in recruitment marketing, it’s impossible to complete each and every strategy with perfect finesse. Although these resources are great, they often supply a recruiter with an overload of information. If the data gathered is not utilized correctly or you’re spreading information over too many platforms, a strategy probably won’t be as successful as originally predicted. However, recruiters can take the necessary steps to be aware of what things should be changed in the upcoming months. Take a look at the don’ts below and determine if they apply to your process. If they do, it’s time to re-evaluate and make changes.

DON’T: Rely Only on Broad Job Blasts on Social Media

People use social media to connect with other people, companies, brands and more, not for being blasted with every job ad on the internet. Making your recruitment process human and authentic is an important part of succeeding in today’s market. To achieve this, invest in more resources, like your own employer career site or referral programs for employees, to promote your employer brand through influential content. Connect before you recruit.

DON’T: Assume Spending to Sponsor a Posting Will Automatically Fill Your Req

Recruiters shouldn’t rely on job ads alone to pull more candidates. Make sure you have a process to track return on investment and the amount of time your recruitment team spends shifting through these candidates. If your recruiters spend most of their day wading through stacks of unqualified applicants, try targeting your board dollars, or at least supplement them. If this is how you’re playing the field, you can expand your horizons by implementing a social media campaign and investing more to build your employee referral program.

DON’T: Forget the Importance of Cultural Fit

Looking for a candidate that fits the company’s culture is important to employee retention. Hiring employees that don't mesh well your culture can lead to a potentially toxic environment and a high turnover rate. However, many employers fail at defining a clear view of cultural fit, finding a repeatable way to evaluate it, and eliminating bias in the process. Here are four ways to safeguard against the cultural fit drama:

• Have a clear description of your organization’s culture for potential hires
• Establish specific interview questions for gauging cultural fit, rather than relying on someone else’s subjective chemistry
• Coordinate cultural fit with business goals and take into account data-driven analysis of performance predictors
• Place reasonable priority on how much cultural fit factors into hiring

DON’T: Ignore Candidates that Fall Just Outside the Qualification Requirements

It is difficult to check every box on the qualifications list while making sure someone is a cultural fit. Since employers are placing high significance on cultural fit, it’s surprising that candidates are still being overlooked if they don’t tick every single box. A candidate that doesn’t meet every listed qualification might still excel in your organization. Skills can be taught, but work ethic and values, once formed, typically stick with that individual for life. Instead of limiting your talent base, broaden your search, keep an open mind and start searching for soft skills.

DON’T: Label Candidates with Diverse Backgrounds as Job Hoppers

Diverse resumes can tell recruiters that people who are considered job hoppers are likely to be high performers who value career development and diversity. Millennials are notorious for being called “job hoppers,” but in actuality, only roughly 36.6 percent of Millennials stay in a job for 13 months or less. The gig economy is showing the benefits of hiring these types of candidates. Since these applicants often times need less training, they may save your company money.

DON’T: Leave Current Employees Out of the Process

Don’t hide the success of your fantastic employees from the world. Give them some public kudos as a way to show them you’re grateful for their work, while providing a good examples to others. In recruiting, this helps show which people on your team excel and provides an authentic view of your organization. Try allowing candidates to ask your employees questions to make them a part of the hiring process.

DON’T: Overlook the Idea of Video Interviews

As the majority of the workforce is occupied by Millennials, the popularity of using technology in the recruitment process has risen. Video interviews have many benefits, like making it easier to hire in the gig economy. It also helps your employer brand when looking for new hires, but it can make comparing and contrasting candidates even easier. Having recorded interviews allows you to easily revisit key moments of the interview to aid in your decision of hiring the candidate or not. It’s time to join the digital age and try video interviewing!

DON’T: Forget About Your Visual Brand

Design and imagery doesn’t only enhance your company’s other marketing strategies. Recruiting has fully embraced mobile and social technology, meaning it’s time to create more attention grabbing photos, video and even GIFs. This allows your company to convey your brand’s actual “look” and “feel” to interested candidates. Social videos generate 1200% more shares than posts containing text and images combined. It’s also one of the best ways to showcase your company culture and find the perfect hire.

Recruiting Trends: DO’S

The digital recruitment age is here and recruiting methods are going through a large-scale transformation to keep up. Technology is helping recruitment efforts yield faster, measurable results. Fierce competition in the recruiting and HR industry isn’t going away anytime soon. Get a leg up on emerging trends by thinking seriously about the following:

DO: Get Mobile Apply Solutions

Mobile apply capabilities are now a complete necessity. More than 50% of today’s internet usage is done on mobile devices, making them an important tool in job searching. To have a modern recruiting process, companies need to have their own mobile apply solutions. Mobile-friendly is quickly fading and mobile-first is replacing it, meaning if your candidates can’t easily find and apply using their phones, your talent pool is declining.

DO: Enhance Your Messaging

Customized content, even as simple as using a candidate’s first name or the position applied for in emails and follow ups, helps organizations convey their authenticity while building a relationships with potential hires. The value of having a great content strategy is undeniable. More and more companies are pushing out higher quality content in order to beat out their competitors. Some companies have already integrated their content strategy across every department of the company. Quality over quantity will win out. Making it personal and intelligent, will help you tell your story and set the tone for your target audience.

DO: Get On Board with Marketing Automation

Recruitment marketing automation is here and not going away anytime soon. This technology will save you time and money by simplifying processes. Try treating your candidates the same way you treat your clients. By doing this, you can create a better candidate experience, retain more passive candidates and start building a talent pool from applicants that might not have have been right for you 5 years ago.

DO: Overhaul Your SEO Strategy

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the act of getting a website to appear in the top listings of all the major search engines. Target keywords are still a significant part of SEO strategy, but Google is not placing more importance on high quality content over keyword optimization. This creates a bigger need for content and SEO strategies to be seamlessly connected. Eye-catching graphics, infographics and videos enhance user experience and readability and, as a result, increases “dwell” time. What’s more is that users are replacing short keyword search queries with longer, complex ones, making it imperative that content ranks high on relevance and quality.

DO: Invest in a Spectacular Website

Candidates automatically perceive companies with outdated websites as uncredible. In 2007, the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab conducted a study about web user perception and discovered 46.1% of respondents said that website design was their number one criterion for judging credibility. And that was 11 years ago! To be taken seriously amongst a sea of competitors, one of the first steps you should take is invest in a visually appealing, easy-to-use, mobile-friendly website. Doing so not only keeps you relevant, but enhances the user experience, helps shape your employer brand and makes you stand out.

DO: Measure ROI

Stop assuming and start using your resources. So many metric tools exist and can be used to measure everything from number of hires to expenses, quality of hire and everything in between. These tools give companies a look at the ins and outs of all your recruiting efforts, so you can stop estimating those important numbers and stressing about how the unknown is affecting your budget. Finally - a way to see if your efforts are paying off.

DO: Be as Transparent as Possible

Being transparent with your candidates is a crucial need in the recruitment space today. This is a big deal to potential employees. They are looking for a company with openness. Candidates want to know who they might be working for, so don’t hide the minimal things. It’s important they understand exactly what they are getting into, which can help with their performance, as well as retention levels.

DO: Get Feedback

Research shows that people who are satisfied with their candidate experiences are 38 percent more likely to accept a job offer. What do your candidates think about your company’s communication and time of response? Was the interview process acceptable or tedious? Whether it’s through email or in real-time, getting feedback from candidates is essential in making your recruiting process top-notch.

DO: Take Advantage of Apps

It seems like people are more reliant on their phones than ever, so it is no surprise that mobile recruiting is on the rise. 45% of job seekers search daily for jobs via a mobile device. If you are not present on the apps they are using for this task, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Consider starting with current employees, asking them to leave reviews on sites like Glassdoor.

DO: Make Connections

Engage candidates by creating talent communities for unique marketing efforts. Group based on location, skills, experience, certifications and more. This makes your recruiting process and candidate communication more effective.

See a demo of how ClearCompany’s Talent Communities can help you access the A Players currently residing in your ATS.

How does your company stack up with this list? Are you committing some no-nos or neglecting some important do’s? Take the steps you need to ensure your recruiting process is evolving alongside the recruiting and hiring landscape and allowing you to land top talent.  

Stop Overanalyzing. Stick to These 5 Recruiting Reports

Running reports and analyzing metrics is vital to ensuring your recruiting processes are running efficiently. However, if you took the time to analyze every possible metric, you wouldn’t have any time left to actually recruit! So we have outlined the 5 most important recruiting reports to help you stay informed on what is and isn’t working in your recruiting process.

1. Time-to-Hire

Time-to-hire refers to the amount of time between a job being posted and day one of the hired candidate’s employment. In other words, how long it takes to fill each vacancy. The average time to hire is 23.8 days, pretty long, especially if you are talking about a revenue-generating position.

A quick hiring process is a benchmark for a strong talent management program. And while a candidate-driven market can make this harder as companies battle for top-talent, it is always important to evaluate time to hire across roles and seek to lower the average.

2. Cost of Hire

A SHRM report noted that the average cost-per-hire is $4,425, up from $4,129 the previous year. This can really add up when you have several vacancies you are trying to fill. When calculating your cost of hire, consider the following:

• Recruiter fees
• Placed advertisements
• The manager’s time spent interviewing, as well as the time of any additional employees in the room
• Social account setup and maintenance
• Administrative and accounting costs (contracts, health benefits, pay accounts, etc.)

3. Retention Rates

It has been reported that when an employee quits, it costs employers 33% of a worker’s annual salary to replace them. This number factors in direct expenses, loss of productivity due to vacancy and training time.

Evaluate retention rates by comparing different departments and pay rates. You may notice trends that can help you evaluate if additional benefits are needed to retain talent, or if there is an internal issue that needs to be addressed. The month-to-month review of this report is essential in spotting these issues.

4. Sourcing Channel

An effective recruitment strategy means sourcing candidates from multiple channels. Keeping notes on what channels your new hires are coming from will help you evaluate the effectiveness of a channel. Notes should include:

• How many candidates are brought in by source
• The number of qualified applicants coming from the source
• Where the candidate first heard about the opportunity

By reviewing performance regularly, you have data to support shutting down underperforming sources in order to focus on those that provide you a greater ROI.

5. Open Vacancies vs. Positions Filled

This metric does exactly what its name suggests - compares the number of positions that are open to the number that have recently been filled. Large organizations should review this metric alongside time to fill as there is a direct correlation. Ideally the open vacancy number is lower than the number of positions filled.

Data analysis is crucial to ensuring that your recruiting and hiring processes are strategic rather than habitual. The right software can make all the difference by gathering necessary data from various sources and providing numbers in a fashion that are easy to digest. ClearCompany’s efficient and user-friendly ATS will help you find exceptional talent. See a demo today.