Jobvite’s latest guide, The Enterprise Guide to Talent Acquisition, can help you and your team learn how to tackle the biggest challenges your organization faces, improve overall candidate quality, and drive hiring efficiencies across your recruiting function. This comprehensive guide examines three key strategies for improving recruiting outcomes in enterprise organizations: 

• Pursuing Scalability as a Strategic Advantage
• Focusing on Technology and Process Prioritization
• Consistently Improving Recruiting Outcomes

The Enterprise Guide to Talent Acquisition examines these three areas in depth and highlights how other talent acquisition leaders and professionals use purpose-built recruiting strategies and technologies to improve their recruiting outcomes. Here’s a sneak peek of what’s inside:

Pursuing Scalability as a Strategic Advantage

The ability to scale hiring up or down is crucial for navigating rough hiring terrain, no matter the size or complexity of the organization. But for enterprise companies, a scalable recruiting strategy allows hiring teams to analyze and optimize their recruiting processes, evaluate and improve on key recruiting metrics, shorten the hiring process to fill roles quicker with qualified talent, and easily adjust to changes in the job market to meet candidates where they are.

Scalability is necessary to remain competitive in winning over top talent. While growth brings its own challenges, it’s essential to focus on how you can scale hiring as a strategic advantage. Recruiters and talent acquisition teams should leverage the following advice to take action and improve the versatility of their recruiting function: 

#1: Review Current Recruiting Processes

Talent teams seeking enhanced scalability should start by analyzing and optimizing their current recruiting processes. This includes identifying gaps, streamlining workflows, and leveraging technology to improve efficiency. 

In an enterprise with complex workflows, hiring in multiple geographies or locations, or looking to fill a high volume of positions, speed is critical. It’s vital to ensure that no time is wasted on tedious tasks garnering minimal results or disparate hiring efforts that lead to greater inefficiencies. 

Organizations should ensure they are using recruiting tools that seamlessly integrate multiple parts of the talent acquisition lifecycle. For example, make sure the applicant tracking system works in lock-step with a candidate relationship management (CRM) system to build a robust talent pipeline that nurtures and grows relationships with candidates. 

#2: Measure Key Recruiting Metrics

To effectively scale recruiting, hiring teams must also identify and track key metrics to understand where they are performing well and where they can improve. Below are examples of metrics that are essential to measure the success of the talent acquisition function. 

Cost per Hire is the total expense incurred to fill a job opening. It includes advertising costs, recruiting fees, travel expenses, time required for sourcing, screening, interviewing, and onboarding, and any other associated costs. Tracking this metric is essential as it allows companies to measure the cost-effectiveness of their recruitment strategies and identify what is working and what is not. By focusing on keeping recruiting costs down, hiring teams can save money and invest those resources elsewhere, maximizing their budget for recruitment and retention efforts.

Time to Fill is the length of time it takes for a job opening to be filled, from posting the job and interviewing to hiring an applicant. Tracking this metric is crucial because a longer time to fill can lead to lost productivity, increased costs, and even potential business disruption. When jobs remain unfilled for prolonged periods, workloads tend to pile up, creating bottlenecks that impede the company’s growth. A shorter time to fill allows recruiters to move quickly, attracting top talent before they take other job offers.

Quality of Hire measures the impact or value a new hire brings to an organization. Focusing on the quality of hire is a priority for many organizations, with 61% of HR decision makers and recruiters saying it is their top priority in recruiting.

Yet, quality of hire can be one of the most difficult metrics to measure. Common ways to measure it can include pre-hire candidate assessments, hiring manager satisfaction, new hire attrition, job performance, turnover rates, time to productivity,  employee engagement, and cultural fit. 

Candidate Experience is the overall impression that candidates have of an organization’s recruitment process. It pertains to the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction that candidates feel throughout the hiring process, and it is crucial to track because it impacts the company’s reputation. 

Candidates with a positive experience are more likely to advocate for the company to their professional network, friends, and family. On the other hand, poor candidate experience can lead to negative online reviews, damaged company reputation, and difficulties retaining current employees. 

Download the Complete Guide

Ready to get moving? The Enterprise Guide to Talent Acquisition provides even more insights and strategies for recruiting success. It’s a must-read for talent acquisition leaders looking to stay ahead of the competition and improve their overall quality of hires.

Download the guide today to start improving your recruiting outcomes. With Jobvite’s guidance, you can optimize your recruiting strategy and attract the top talent you need to succeed.

And if you’re ready to take the next step, then take time to see Jobvite in action by watching this product tour.

The post How to Prioritize Hiring Quality and Speed first appeared on Jobvite.

The first, second, and third priority for all of your enterprise talent acquisition team members today is to engage and convert candidates at scale and continually enhance your recruiting strategy.

To accomplish this, your best bet is to turn to advanced yet intuitive recruitment technology.

Specifically, your business should invest in a leading candidate relationship management (CRM) solution that can help you plan and carry out your recruitment marketing ideas, manage your individual and collective pipelines, nurture prospects of interest through the funnel, and analyze your recruiting team’s work — all from a single solution.

We could cover (and, well, have covered extensively) each of these TA activities and how to best conduct each one in a modern hiring platform your entire team can leverage with ease. (Hint, hint.)

Today, though, we’re going to focus solely on the first item: recruitment marketing tactics you can execute with the aid of a built-for-purpose CRM tailored to large-scale orgs like yours.

3 recruitment marketing ideas to help you get more candidates into your talent pool

Whether you’re charged with promoting highly specific job openings (e.g., those for technical or C-suite positions) or handle a high volume of requisitions each month, the recruitment marketing ideas below can help you get both your brand and latest job postings in front of the right audience.

1) Optimize your career site and job descriptions

Your “owned” recruitment marketing collateral should always be addressed before turning to paid tactics. In other words? Focus on promoting your brand and available jobs on your org’s website.

Your career site is the main gateway for job opportunities your ideal candidate profile (ICP) looks for. So, that makes it vital to regularly optimizing postings published on your corporate site. That means:

• Crafting compelling job descriptions: Ensure your job descriptions accurately represent the role-related responsibilities and expectations. Use clear, concise language, and avoid jargon. And make sure the descriptions reflect your culture, mission, and values. You want leads who land on the page featuring a job of interest to easily discern what the role entails and what your org’s all about.
• Optimizing your postings for search: Implement search engine optimization (SEO) best practices to ensure your career site and job descriptions rank high in search results for the exact job title and even variations of it. For instance, if it’s a Director of Demand Generation position, use synonym versions of that title (e.g., Demand Gen Leader, Head of Demand Marketing) in your posting.
• Designing a user-friendly interface: This task likely falls more so on your colleagues in Web/Marketing than it does on your TA team. That said, work with the relevant designer/developer resource at your company to make your careers page and job listings easy to navigate, read, and apply for. Just be sure to cater to mobile users and ensure the application process is simple.
• Highlighting your company culture: Ensure your company culture shines through by sharing employee stories, testimonials, and other info about your workplace diversity and wellness initiatives. Including images, videos, and interactive content to make the UX more engaging. (You’d be surprised how much sharing media and details like these can impact application conversions.)

In addition to job description optimization, it’s essential to revisit the language used in postings often. Candidates often apply for a job based on how well the job description resonates with them as well as how inclusive the language incorporated is. (Tip: Avoid gender-biased terms and phrases.)

2) Use social media and job boards to reach your ICP

The above recruitment marketing idea covers your owned efforts. Now, let’s turn to external channels on which you can promote your postings and employer brand at large to resonate with your potential candidates. There are two fairly obvious digital locales where you should allocate your time:

Social media

Create and share engaging content on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, which not only showcases your company culture but also promotes your open roles. Also, engage with your followers, actively participate in industry chats, and encourage employees to share your job postings.

As for paid ads for your job openings, A/B test different types of promoted postings on LinkedIn (e.g., ones for different kinds of roles for different teams and with different job titles) to see which perform best in terms of clicks and general engagement as well as actual application completions.

Job boards

Make the most of both popular and niche job boards to get word out about your open positions.

LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter: Those are the fairly obvious go-to channels.

That said, experiment with publishing postings to industry- and/or role-focused job boards to see how many applicants those generate. (Who knows? You and your talent team may find one or two more proven sourcing channels by investigating and posting to lesser-known career communities.)

3) Engage leads generated via recruitment “events”

Not all of our recruitment marketing ideas are ones that entail getting more leads into your talent pool. This one focuses on nurturing active candidates you earned through the two above approaches.

Here’s a common scenario your recruiting team has undoubtedly encountered over the years:

• You designate a few hundred dollars to get a posting for a highly important, senior-level role at your org to be the feature job listing on LinkedIn for a month or so.
• Thanks to the attractiveness of the role in question (due to well-written job description), you generate several hundred applicants and reach your applicant threshold.
• It’s essential to engage the most qualified candidates of interest who seem like the best fits for the position. And that requires the right talent engagement platform.

With the right ATS and CRM tools in place — with dynamic candidate profiles that are automatically created upon application submission and update as new prospect or recruiter actions are taken as well as built-in nurture features — you can easily (and quickly) a) determine who the top 3% of applicants are, and b) deliver bespoke, follow-up messaging to each of these job seekers.

You put a great deal of time, effort, and money into targeted recruitment marketing activities. Thus, you need to ensure you connect with generated leads in a timely, individualized manner.

Only when you’re able to do that in a repeatable and sustainable way can you achieve your recruiting KPIs and long-term TA goals (e.g., hiring top talent in your hiring managers’ desired timeframe).

Leveraging recruitment marketing tech 

With technology advancing faster than ever, recruiters need to stay abreast of the latest digital advancements that can help them work more efficiently and better connect with passive candidates.

One of the most effective ways to achieve this? Using leading recruitment marketing software. There are three distinct benefits of utilizing this kind of tech to engage candidates in your database.

Collect candidate details and track their preferences

With an integrated database (i.e., a CRM that has built in recruitment marketing capabilities and syncs with all other critical TA tools), recruiters can maintain more detailed and enriched candidate profiles and better understand the preferences and motivations of passive candidates. 

This insight can then be used to craft more compelling, customized messages and campaign materials. This improves the chances of converting passive candidates into engaged opportunities.

Investing in recruitment marketing tech (really, a powerful ATS and CRM) that offers comprehensive, dynamic data collection and robust applicant-tracking functionality saves talent specialists precious time (i.e., from not having to manually connect TA systems or “share” data across solutions).

With automatically updated, real-time data tied to all recruiting activities — including data related to targeted marketing ads, emails, and SMS messages — in a centralized platform your entire hiring team can access, recruiters like you can focus more on refining your nurture outreach efforts.

Organize and segment your talent pool for targeted comms

Another valuable benefit of using technology with recruitment marketing tools is the ability to segment your talent pool into specific groups based on factors such as skills, location, or industry.

By organizing your talent pool into meaningful segments, you can ensure that your outreach efforts are as relevant and targeted as possible. (And that you don’t waste any of your TA spend.)

The top recruitment technology provides customizable filters and tags. This makes it easy for recruiters to segment their candidate pool and craft custom-tailored comms for each prospect. (Something that also impacts the quality of candidate experience for each job seeker.)

Build candidate relationships with personalized, timely messages

Speaking of messaging, CRMs also offer automated email campaigns. Instead of relying on manual messaging, you can use this kind of tech to automate the delivery of personalized email to a single lead or multiple candidates at predetermined times.

Or, if you prefer to execute text-based recruitment marketing ideas (a likelihood, given how research continues to show SMS comms are preferred by many job seekers today), there’s tech that offers built-in candidate texting. Just look at Jobvite. Our customers automate responses to recent applicants to ensure they connect with them shortly after the click “Submit.”

Want more recruitment marketing ideas and hiring insights? Connect with the experts at Jobvite. Our team can explain how our recruitment technology can strengthen your talent acquisition strategy.

The post Recruitment Marketing Ideas to Attract Top Talent first appeared on Jobvite.

Candidates use your career site to gauge how well they would fit in at your company. Everything from the job descriptions to your application process provides them with intel on your business and what it’s like to work there.

With candidate expectations still high in a tight labor market, where job openings outnumber unemployed workers around 1.7 to 1, ensuring you provide job seekers a stellar experience on your career site is critical.

Does your career site inspire job seekers to take the leap and apply? Here are six effective tips to inspire continuous candidate engagement on your career site and more effectively convert candidates into applicants.

Career site tip #1: Put your best foot forward

In today’s job market, attracting top talent requires more than just listing job responsibilities and qualifications for roles. Job seekers are highly selective, and in order to make an impression, you need to establish a genuine connection. The best way to begin is by showcasing your company’s values and unique organizational culture on your career site.

Use authentic, high-quality images and videos that reflect your company’s employer brand and culture, including actual employees at work or having fun outside of work. Avoid using stock photos, and instead, craft copy that represents your brand to create a comprehensive and engaging representation of your company.

Career site tip #2: Remove the hurdles

To attract candidates, it’s important to provide an easy and streamlined application process without any obstacles.

Additionally, mandatory logins and repetitive forms can discourage applicants from completing the process. With 67% of applicants applying for jobs on their mobile devices, according to the 2022 Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report from Appcast, providing an easy-to-use mobile site is also essential for a seamless application experience.

Career site tip #3: Streamline your design

Career site experiences should reflect consumer-grade websites, providing visual, compelling ways to quickly convey information. Simplify your content by eliminating unnecessary text and use category icons for corporate locations, departments, or benefit perks, wherever applicable. This allows for faster information delivery and is especially advantageous for mobile displays.

Career site tip #4: Simplify the process

Attracting top talent to your organization is a priority, but you want to ensure the process of learning about job opportunities is hassle-free. Keep search filters simple and minimal, prioritizing the candidate’s perspective and providing the necessary information quickly.

When you make it easy to find what they need, candidates will appreciate the respect shown for their time, leading to a higher likelihood of them to engage further with your content. By demonstrating your team’s organization and efficiency, you can make a great first impression on potential candidates, and keep converting them along the talent journey.

Career site tip #5: Invite them in

When it comes to showcasing your company’s employer brand and culture to potential candidates, sometimes the most effective approach is through immersive experiences. Consider incorporating a “Meet the Teams” feature on your website or an attention-grabbing video that provides job seekers with an inside look at the experiences of your inspiring employees.

These tools offer ideal opportunities for highlighting your company’s values and culture, allowing candidates to understand firsthand what it would be like to work for your organization.

Career site tip #6: Share the details

While it’s important to prioritize and prominently display your high-priority career page information, it’s also crucial to keep potential candidates interested with compelling content. Share information that they would find valuable, such as employee testimonials or global benefits that set your organization apart.

Make the content easily accessible so they are more likely to engage with it. With engaging and digestible content, you can keep candidates interested and showcase your company’s unique offerings.

It’s easy to talk the talk — but the most forward-thinking companies are already putting these employer branding tips to work. Ready to see real-life examples? Download the 2023 Career Site Lookbook to get best practices and tips from actual Employ customers.

The post 6 Tips to Engage Candidates on Your Career Site first appeared on Jobvite.

Without knowing what to prioritize, it can be difficult for employers to determine what candidates respond to, what their motivations are, and how to effectively engage with them.

By understanding these four categories of job seekers, talent acquisition teams can better understand their ideal candidates and, therefore, better engage with them.

The Job Seeker Quadrant: Four candidate personas that exist in today’s job market

Based on Employ’s research, candidates fall into one of four quadrants in their job-seeking behavior. The four types of job seekers are:

• Diligent/High-Volume Job Seekers
• Sporadic/High-Volume Job Seekers
• Diligent/Selective Job Seekers
• Sporadic/Selective Job Seekers

Diligent/High-Volume Job Seekers

Candidates who make up this persona are likely to look internally in their organizations for new jobs and make up just one in 10 job seekers.

They are motivated by job alerts they receive or by overall economic concerns in the current market. Frequently updating their resume, these candidates will apply even if they doubt the employer is hiring.

Most of these candidates are optimistic it will take them less than one month to find a new job and will apply for a job with a large salary range.

These candidates are racially diverse and seek new roles with strong company leadership. Concerned about the company’s financial position, these job seekers often use social media and subscribe to job advertisements.

The way to make a big impact on these candidates is by offering an easy interview scheduling process.

Sporadic/High-Volume Job Seekers

Candidates characterized by this persona are the most satisfied in their current job and make up one-quarter of all job seekers. They are most likely to apply with no intention of taking a new job.

These job seekers are also most likely to look internally for new roles within their current company and to frequently update their resumes.

While these candidates skew younger in age, they are also most likely to apply for a job with a large salary range. Candidates in this group have typically taken a new job in the past 12 months, and one of their primary motivations is looking for career advancement opportunities.

From a job search perspective, they regularly search via job boards, are impressed by easy scheduling, and abandon job applications if they require registration.

Most are acceptable if they don’t hear back from employers for jobs they’ve applied to, but typically receive the greatest number of automated and impersonal rejection notes.

Diligent/Selective Job Seekers

Candidates who fall into this persona make up the largest number of job seekers currently.

They are less likely to look internally within their current organization for new roles and less likely to apply for a new job if they believe an employer won’t hire them for the position. They are more likely to abandon a job application if it takes too long.

This group of job seekers also typically attributes explaining a company’s mission and values as a good candidate experience. And from a job application perspective, they are more likely to look and use a company’s website in applying for roles than other personas.

Sporadic/Selective Job Seekers

Candidates characterized as this persona are the least likely of any candidate type to apply internally for open roles. They expect to submit the fewest applications to get a new job and are least likely of any group to use social media to update their resumes for an application or apply to a job with a very large salary range.

Candidates in this category are also unlikely to put significant amounts of time into an application or to have learned a new skill in the past 12 months.

While unlikely to be ghosted by a recruiter or to ghost a recruiter themselves, they are also least accepting of not hearing back from an employer. These candidates also believe the hiring process takes too long and want personal rejection notes, emails, or notices if not selected for a role.

Applying personas in the Job Seeker Quadrant

The Job Seeker Quadrant and the persona descriptions provided here serve as a guide for companies and talent acquisition teams as they seek to get to know the motivations, triggers, characteristics, and behaviors of candidates looking for new roles in the current labor market.

By understanding the different motivations and needs of each persona type, employers have a better chance of matching their hiring process with those expectations.

Continue exploring new job seeker insights

As employers face unfamiliar territory in the current labor market (and will likely continue to for the foreseeable future), they need guidance and the latest insights to support their hiring efforts.

The Q1 2023 Employ Quarterly Insights Report examines employer data across Employ’s 18,000 customers, while exploring the motivations, similarities, and differences of workers based on a survey of more than 1,500 workers.

Download the report to discover how to better appeal to these candidate personas.

The post The Job Seeker Quadrant™: 4 Modern Candidate Personas first appeared on Jobvite.

Budget for self-development

At LiveCareer, we aim to hire talented people willing to challenge the status quo. To attract this type of employee, our company offers a budget for self-development. It’s crucial that people working for us constantly look for new ideas, be innovative, and improve their knowledge.

If our employees want to learn new things, we want to support their development. After the trial period, employees can talk to their manager and brainstorm ways to fast-track their career development. Then, they can decide on any industry course to help them achieve their career goals.

Others should also offer such benefits because it shows that you want your employees to always look for something that increases their job satisfaction. Other perks can also be good, but ‌any job that gets boring after a while encourages people to look for growth opportunities at another workplace. So if you want to decrease employee turnover, invest in their development.

Dorota Lysienia, Community Manager, LiveCareer

Support “workations”

A year ago, we introduced an opportunity to work from our office in Tenerife, with free accommodation and travel costs partly covered by the company. This kind of perk is still not widespread, so there is a lot of talent-attracting potential in it.

We noticed that incorporating it into our employer branding and marketing strategies gives a lot of attention to our brand and helps us stand out from other employers. Blog posts, press releases, and mentions from other blogs — all these channels generate a lot of interest in our company, and we have already hired some skilled experts who found out about us thanks to this benefit.

Leszek Dudkiewicz, Head of Marketing, US Passport Photo

Allow a pet-friendly office

Having a pet-friendly office is one way that provides a more flexible work environment. By allowing employees to bring their pets to work, we give them the freedom and flexibility to take care of their pets while still fulfilling their job responsibilities.

This can lead to a better work-life balance, reduced stress levels, and increased job satisfaction, which can attract and retain top talents who are looking for a positive and supportive work environment.

Trey Ferro, CEO, Spot Pet Insurance

Offer life insurance

According to surveys, over 80% of employees would like their organizations to provide life insurance, but most times, they don’t. By offering group-term life insurance packages to our employees, we stand out from our competition, helping us to attract top talent.

We pay for our life insurance policies in bulk, covering all employees, resulting in significant cost savings. Our employees benefit from financial security, especially those with dependent children.

Shawn Plummer, CEO, The Annuity Expert

Provide a comprehensive compensation package

An effective and comprehensive compensation package should include a wide range of components, such as salary, bonuses, stock options, health insurance, vacation time, and other benefits. Compensation packages are an important tool for recruitment and retention of desired talent, as we can tailor them to the specific needs of the employer and the employee.

A well-structured compensation package can provide them with the financial security and stability they need to perform their job duties. It also allows us to create a more attractive work environment. These packages should consider the qualifications of the employee and the job responsibilities. We should also update them periodically to keep up with market trends and changes in the job market.

Christa Reed, Head of Job Market Research, JobSearcher

Assist with housing

One benefit that is widely underutilized is housing assistance. The University of Pennsylvania pioneered the use of housing assistance in the 1960s. The program had dual benefits; it helped the university keep its workers, while also revitalizing the surrounding neighborhood.

The program offered a mortgage guarantee for employees who had been with the university for three years and purchased a home within a three-block radius. This design not only ensured short commutes for its workers but also acted as an incentive to reduce turnover.

Since long commute time is one of the most common reasons someone leaves their job, the mentioned program helped the university attract employees interested in their community and then also retain these employees.

Atta Tarki, Founder and Author, ECA Partners

Permit flexible working

As a digital agency owner, I offer flexible work arrangements, such as remote work or flexible hours. This helps employees balance work and personal life effectively, leading to increased satisfaction and motivation.

It also results in lower turnover and higher productivity. Offering flexible work arrangements is a win-win for both me and my employees because it leads to a better work-life balance and job satisfaction for them, and a more successful and productive agency for me. I’d definitely recommend that other similar companies try this.

Shane McEvoy, MD, Flycast Media

Plan for light months

One unique benefit our company offers is light months. For two months a year, we give employees a fully-paid extra day off each week of their choosing in our take on a four-day workweek.

As a remote workplace, we already have flexible working hours and a work-from-anywhere option. This additional flex-time gives our staff the extra ability to rest and recharge, without causing too much disruption to surrounding staff’s schedules.

Grace He, People and Culture Director, TeamBuilding

Help pay student loan debt

Our company is looking into ways to assist employees in paying off their student loan debt, even while many businesses are investing in their employees’ continued education. Given that over 44 million former college students in the U.S. currently owe $1.5 trillion in student debt, it makes sense.

Because student loan debt affects many professionals, employers may use this employee benefit as a sizable recruiting tool for eligible candidates. Some firms have provided employees with a monthly stipend for loan repayment, frequently with a lifetime maximum in place.

Dayna Carlin, Director of Marketing and Sales, NovoPath

Create a paid volunteer work program

As a leader at my organization, we have seen tremendous success in offering paid volunteer work to our employees. Having this benefit at our organization shows that we are dedicated to the mission of giving back to our local community, and it naturally attracts candidates that are looking for this kind of altruistic environment.

Paid volunteer work can benefit others who may not have the financial ability to otherwise volunteer, and also provides incentives for employees that already choose to give back. It is important for companies to consider offers such as this since it speaks volumes about their priorities and values.

Nadzeya Sankovich, Regional Manager, Health Reporter

Invest in your team

As the CEO of a financial planning website, it is important for me to make sure that my employees are aiming for financial independence. The way I do it is by offering investment benefits, and I think more business leaders should do it.

After onboarding, I require my employees to open an online brokerage account of their choice. Then, I offer a monthly investment scheme in which our HR department would automatically deduct a portion of their salary to deposit in their brokerage account.

Of course, they can choose how much that would be. While I don’t force them to take part in the monthly investment program, if they do, I reward it by adding 10% of their deposit each month. Sometimes it comes out of my money, but most of the time it comes out as a business expense.

To date, I have helped a lot of my employees reach the five-figure mark in their investments, and it has helped me attract other talents as well.

Jonathan Merry, Founder, Moneyzine

Learn how you can better attract top talent to join your enterprise by leveraging our advanced recruiting and hiring technology. Schedule a demo with our team today.

The post What Benefits Are Most Likely to Attract Talent Today first appeared on Jobvite.

Sure, your company also wants those actively looking for jobs to apply via your job postings on your career page and other online communities where you post openings.

But, the truth is the best talent acquisition teams understand candidate sourcing — the recruiting of passive prospects — is how they can find high-quality professionals and engage them to learn their interest in open roles.

What the modern candidate sourcing process entails

Candidate sourcing is proactively identifying potential candidates to fill job openings across your org.

Add in those who apply for positions on job boards and referred prospects submitted via your employee referral program to your sourcing efforts, and you end up with a robust talent pipeline that can greatly aid your team’s recruitment efforts (and appease your hiring managers and executive staff).

Sourcing often has the specific end goal of supporting recruiting to hire the right person for the right role, but it can also be used as a tool for augmenting your candidate database.

By broadening your talent network through scouring numerous online career communities, your recruiters ultimately have a wider range of prospects to choose to engage.

How to improve your candidate sourcing strategies

“When competition for top talent is fierce, as it is today, you need to broaden your methods of sourcing candidates,” a quarter of talent pros and consultants recently wrote for Harvard Business Review.

And they’re right. Enterprise employers like yours can only succeed in a competitive labor market by turning over every rock to find high-quality candidates who can help move the needle for their orgs.

Here are a handful of candidate sourcing strategies that can help you pinpoint premier prospects.

1) Be specific with and streamline your candidate searches

Having a well-thought-out sourcing strategy requires companies to consider the types of individuals they want to fill their open positions. That means creating clear and comprehensive candidate profiles in your applicant tracking system is a must.

Only then can you and others on your TA team easily resurface recently sourced talent and older prospects you previously engaged months (or even years) ago.

When conducting prospect searches online or in your recruiting database, don’t limit the search to generic queries based on the job title, location, or qualifications. Those are all important things to consider when searching for strong-fit candidates.

Instead, be detailed. Use semantic search terms related to the position’s responsibilities and associated technologies or companies. Also, use modifiers and Boolean operators to zero in on the exact kind of candidates you’re looking for.

Better yet, consider using tools like Zero-Click Intelligent Sourcing to eliminate manual search and automatically identify candidates for every new and existing job within your company’s ATS.

The kind of advanced sourcing functionality automatically processes every job in your ATS and attaches qualified candidates in your talent pool to that opening (or “opportunity”) for further consideration.

No more having to manually comb over profiles to find top-tier talent.

2) Maintain a strong candidate sourcing pipeline

Speaking of your recruitment database, a vital element of any successful candidate sourcing strategy today is not just looking back to find previous candidates and applicants, but to proactively engage them with compelling messaging to entice them to want to learn more about a new opening.

Because you will source qualified talent for each role, but typically only hire one person for each position, make sure you take the opportunity to keep in touch with talent. That is, ensure silver-medalists aren’t forgotten and are labeled as such in your system for future potential outreach.

At some point down the line, your TA team will want to reengage these formerly final-stage candidates who made it through the interviews, but were not selected. In fact, turning to these individuals can save you time from having to source net-new passive prospects — an added bonus.

For instance, if they previously interviewed for a developer role, note as such in the intro of your email to them and relay which new, similar role that’s now open may be of interest to them.

3) Try multiple avenues to find passive prospects of interest

When sourcing candidates, it’s important not just to wait for job seekers to find you. The whole point of any good sourcing strategy should be to actively cultivate new candidates for potential hires.

That means looking at passive candidates who are not actively seeking a new position.

“The most practical approach to passive recruiting is prioritizing external communications, such as sharing glimpses of your company culture and mission on social media, as well as the impact your company is having on its customers, industry recognition and workplace benefits,” BrightPlan CMO and Head of People Neha Mirchandani recently shared with Forbes.

It’s important to remember that the resumes of passive candidates aren’t always up-to-date though, so be careful. You’ll want to cross-reference these individuals’ information across sources and even ask some for clarification on experience and qualifications.

4) Identify your top sources for talent — and double-down

When sourcing candidates, you shouldn’t just be assessing potential employees. You should also be evaluating the sources themselves. That means identifying the sources that have yielded the most positive results for your business. (And, conversely, getting rid of poor-performing sourcing avenues.)

Ask yourself:

• Where have we had the most success in finding talent online and offline?
• Where have we converted the most active candidates into new applicants?
• Are the major job boards our best source for top talent? What about niche ones?
• And what about employee referrals? Are we getting regularly referred talent?

You should also routinely monitor your recruiting analytics to help you make smarter, faster decisions about which passive candidates to advance in your funnel and extend offers to.

For example, you should know how long it takes you, on average, to fill a position and tie that hiring speed data to your sources leveraged to gauge their effectiveness (or lack thereof).

Similarly, compare your own time to hire with those of other companies in your industry to see how you measure up. Using TA-centric benchmark can help you discern what you should be doing differently and note where you can optimize your hiring process to accelerate time to hire.

Learn how your talent team can leverage our built-in candidate sourcing capabilities to amplify your enterprise recruiting efforts. Schedule a demo with our team to learn more.

The post How to Create a Better Candidate Sourcing Strategy first appeared on Jobvite.

There are a lot of highly skilled and qualified job seekers out there. That said, not all of them will meet your specific organizational needs and preferences. And even when you find the ones that do, chances are you’re not the only one looking to recruit them.

So, how do you zero in on finding candidates that are best suited for the job?

Employee referral programs have been called the “Holy Grail of Hiring” by Recruit Rockstars CEO Jeff Hyman, in a recent article for Forbes, because of their effectiveness. And, with the right talent acquisition software in place, your company can reap the rewards from such a recruiting approach.

7 tips to create a highly effective employee referral program for your enterprise

Aptitude Research from 2022 found more than three in five (62%) orgs with employee referral programs have decreased their average time to fill for referred candidates who were ultimately hired.

What’s more, these businesses have since a twofold improvement in their first-year retention rate for referred employees compared to non-referred employees, per the study.

The benefits of employee referral programs are clear. Now, it’s just a matter of creating an effective employee referral program that helps TA engage good-fit prospects for active and upcoming job openings and help them realize greater return on investment with their recruitment process.

(That is, a lower cost per hire, a faster time to hire, and greater employee retention for leads hired.)

To help you and your enterprise get started on the right foot, here are seven ways your company can begin implementing a successful employee referral program — and alleviating some pressure on your talent acquisition team to source a high volume of high-quality candidates.

1) Establish your goals for the program

When it comes to creating an employee referral program, the first item on your hiring process checklist should always be to set a series of concrete goals. It’s important to be ambitious, but also realistic.

Set goals that follow the “SMART” guidelines: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. For example, a good goal might be to receive a certain number of employee referrals by X date.

2) Collaborate with your management team

Essential to any employee referral program are, of course, your existing employees.

Make sure that leadership and managers are actively involved in the process of developing your program, and also actively involved in communicating your goals to the rest of your workforce.

Using advanced recruiting and hiring software like Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite is a good way to keep everyone — including your C-suite — on the same page regarding referred prospects and how those particular candidates compare conversion-wise with non-referred leads.

(In other words, share how far in your funnel referred individuals make it versus those who engage with your job postings on job boards or are proactively sourced elsewhere online.)

3) Clearly define the job requirements

One of the most important factors in achieving success when starting an employee referral program is making sure that your employees are fully informed about and clearly understand the requirements for the positions you’re hoping to fill.

Your employees can only suggest appropriate candidates if they know what it is you’re looking for.

4) Offer a variety of employee incentives

Keeping your employees motivated is key to maintaining a healthy referral rate. So, how do you keep your employees motivated? The answer is with employee referral program rewards.

If your employees are going the extra mile to help you recruit promising candidates, they deserve a pat on the back for their efforts, either in the form of cash bonuses, gift vouchers, or extra time off.

With Jobvite’s built-in incentive management tool, you’ll always know who goes above and beyond.

5) Create an easy-to-understand referral process

No matter how motivated your employees are, it doesn’t amount to much if the process for referring candidates is complicated or confusing. You want to make it as easy for them as possible.

Jobvite technology provides SSO-enabled referral portals, automatic referral status updates, and AI-powered chatbots, which allow employees to make referrals even when on the go.

6) Develop an interview training program

Getting employee referrals is only one part of the puzzle when it comes to recruiting great candidates. Once the applicants have entered your recruitment pipeline, the next step is to interview them. For this, your hiring managers should be trained ahead of time.

Make sure the interview questions are the same for all applicants. This will make it easier to choose the right candidate because it will allow you to compare and contrast everyone’s answers.

7) Closely track and evaluate your results

No employee referral program is perfect at the start. You will have to make alterations and updates to your referral process as time goes on, and you learn more about what does and doesn’t work.

Fortunately, with Jobvite’s Talent Acquisition Suite, you have access to robust referral analytics data, which can help you see exactly where your system is lacking and where it is thriving.

Optimize your organization’s employee referral program with our advanced ATS 

Employee referrals are the gold standard of candidate recruitment strategies, and now, with Evolve, our unified TA suite, it’s never been easier to start your own effective employee referral program. 

With a limited number of qualified and available candidates, it’s difficult to navigate a crowded applicant pool. At Jobvite, we strive to help businesses streamline and optimize that process to ensure they have the candidates they need to achieve lasting, sustainable recruiting results. 

With incentive management, successful referrer tracking, referral analytics, and more, our Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite is the employee referral solution you’ve been looking for.

To learn more about Jobvite’s best-in-class recruitment software for enterprise orgs, watch our on-demand product tour or schedule a one-on-one demo with our team today.

The post Building an Employee Referral Program from Scratch first appeared on Jobvite.

How have you loosened candidate requirements or taken more risks recruiting in a tight labor market?

To help you navigate this challenging hiring environment, we asked CEOs, business leaders, and recruiters what changes they have made to candidate requirements.

From getting rid of cover letters to including candidates willing to relocate, there are multiple strategies that can help you fill vacancies in a tight labor market.

Here are 15 recommendations from business leaders on candidate requirement changes you can make.

1) Getting rid of the cover letter

Many companies across industries have done away with the archaic requirement of a cover letter and still attract top talent. Cover letters are an unnecessary pain and a waste of time for both the applicant and recruiter.

Instead, we focus on initially screening through resumes, then exploring questions of motivation, thought process — things originally described in the cover letter — during interviews.

Adam Shlomi, Founder, SoFlo Tutors

2) Allowing outside-of-industry experience

At one point, my law firm solely considered applicants with former experience in the legal industry. However, due to recent labor shortages, we have widened our administration and marketing applicant pool to anyone with applicable experience.

They don’t need to have experience specifically working for a law firm, though that is preferred, and we are willing to interview candidates who can apply previous professional knowledge to our open roles.

So far, taking this risk has worked to our benefit. Although our new hires may not have former experience in law, they still have the skills needed to excel in their positions. This has opened our candidate pool to include more potential employees with extensive experience and terrific work ethics.

David Aylor, CEO & Lawyer, David Aylor Law Offices

3) Hiring based on referrals and recommendations

One way we’ve not only taken more risks in recruiting but also made the time-to-hire a lot shorter is by hiring based on employee referrals and customer recommendations.

As there is someone to vouch for them in terms of character and work ethics, we believe the rest can come with time and the skills can be easily taught.

Instead of wasting time going through the hiring process, we check referrals and ask why the employee recommends them, and based on their responses, we’re willing to hire new candidates and teach them the skills they need.

Tim White, Founder, milepro

4) Focusing on potential for growth

In the current labor market, we have been very focused on identifying potential in new hires. Where a candidate may lack experience, we focus on where they see themselves growing best.

The fact of the matter is that the experienced labor force continues to retire faster than it replenishes. Investing in the future ensures fresh ideas, room to grow, and a strong sense of loyalty from giving them a good place to start.

Kevin Callahan, Co-Founder & CEO, Flatline Van Co.

5) Widening the pool of candidates

No, we have not loosened our candidate requirements. We have, however, become more flexible in our approach to recruiting and hiring. For example, we have increased our use of social media and online job boards to reach a wider pool of potential candidates.

We have also worked with staffing agencies to identify qualified candidates. We have been willing to consider candidates who may not have all the traditional qualifications for a position but who demonstrate the potential to be successful in the role.

As a result of these changes, we have seen an increase in the number of candidates who apply for our openings. In addition to this increased volume, there has also been an increase in quality among candidates, which has helped us deal with the tight labor market.

Shaun Connell, Founder, Writing Tips Institute

6) Entertaining applicants with resume gaps

While it’s risky to hire applicants who have been unemployed for quite some time, our business is open to working with them if they’re the best fit for the job.

In terms of recruiting, resume gaps are not a big deal for us. What we need are people who have the right personality and skills to perform the role they are about to play.

Keep in mind that the past few years have been difficult for many people, especially in looking for a job when most businesses are shutting down.

We don’t know how many talented people out there deserve a chance, so it’s fair to give everyone the opportunity to apply and prove themselves, regardless of their employment history. Only then can we find someone who embodies our company values and has no problem working with us in the long run.

Adam Garcia, CEO & Owner, The Stock Dork

7) Making pledges for accommodation

At the time of the tight labor market, it is quite impossible to find a good employee who can fulfill all the requirements of our company efficiently. At our company, we have to promise different attractive benefits in order to attract candidates.

One of the biggest risks that we have taken was the pledge for accommodation.

We already knew that it will be difficult for us to manage and it will create different problems for us in the future, but we had no other choice and we took this risk to fill the gap of employees in our company.

Joe Troyer, Chief Marketing Officer, ReviewGrower

8) Offering high salaries

One of the biggest risks that we have taken while recruiting in a tight labor market was offering handsome salaries to the candidates so that they would join our company. But, this affected our profit level pathetically because the salaries we offered were totally out of budget.

We didn’t have any way out of the employee shortage, and that was the reason why we took this risk. Our decision was totally in the favor of employees, but it was against our betterment and long-term benefit.

Robert Warner, Head of Marketing, Virtual Valley

9) Prioritizing soft skills

It’s not that we’ve loosened our grip. But, we have started to approach recruiting and candidate requirements differently due to the continually tight labor market.

Instead of looking at the technical skill set we desired, we started looking at the soft skills we valued as a company, which widened our search and strengthened our team.

For example, your search will be pretty long and limited if you are looking for a specific skill set. If you instead look for a candidate with great communication, teamwork, and leadership skills who’s eager to learn and grow with your company, you can invest that time and energy into teaching them.

By searching for candidates with strong soft skills who can learn exactly what the job requires, you are building a company whose team is specifically trained and whose top priority is teamwork.

Susan Shaffer, President, Pneuma Nitric Oxide

10) Changing education requirements

Requiring a degree for a job position significantly slashes the scope of applicants to recruit. Removing this requirement from our job descriptions is one tactic I went for to cope with the tight labor market.

In my niche, I believe that skills and experience are heavier credentials than a diploma. I don’t want to lose potential best employees because they are lacking in technicality.

I started to value self-learners who have amassed a great amount of experience or have grown their portfolio because of their resilience. I don’t want to miss the opportunity of working with some of the industry’s best just for the reason that they’re missing a piece of paper because of its price tag.

This goes without saying that we equally value candidates who worked hard to earn a degree, but it’s more of we don’t discriminate against those who were not able to do so.

Josh Tyler, CEO, Tell Me Best

11) Hiring overqualified candidates

Recruiters typically view it as a risk to hire overqualified candidates for a position because there is a high probability of turnover. This was a calculated risk my management had to take in the tight labor market of late.

To mitigate our risks, we conducted more thorough applicant interviews to give us deeper insights into the reason why an overqualified applicant is applying for a job that is below their level.

Candidates with reasons that make valid and reasonable arguments are often considered.

For example, we are willing to take a risk on accepting an overqualified applicant who is seeking a lower job offer for a reduced workload or those opting to shift career tracks.

Claudia Gancayco, Chief Marketing Officer, Leg Master

12) Focusing on skills more than experience

In today’s job market the ideal candidate is either unwilling to leave their current company or gets counter-offered by another company. This means we’ve had to take more risks and adjust who an ideal candidate is depending on who is available.

For example, instead of hiring people based on overall experience, I’ve been focusing more on their skill set in the most important functions in a role, not how long they’ve had that experience, but more on their knowledge, their ambition or passion about that skill, and improving on those skills and others they don’t have that much experience in.

I’ve also seen many candidates moving industries, which we saw less of in the past, and the key to a successful transition is focusing on their transferable skills from their old industry to the new one.

Heather Scott, Recruiter, Sojourn Solutions

13) Expanding the search area

Previously, some clients who had an office in Ukraine were ready to consider candidates only in certain locations, for example, only Kyiv, Lviv or another city of Ukraine where an office was located.

The work schedule included some days of work from the office and the rest could be done remotely. After the start of the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, many engineers went abroad or changed their location within Ukraine.

Therefore, clients are ready to work with IT specialists remotely from different locations, regardless of where the IT specialist is currently located.

If a company has built a workplace where employees can work remotely, it doesn’t really matter where the person is. Some clients have switched to the format of international teams, where specialists from different countries and different nationalities work. In this case, we search all over the world.

This helps to quickly close important vacancies with good candidates.

Vadim Lobarev, CEO, MindHunt

14) Considering junior candidates

Consider juniors as investments. With the unemployment rate we are facing, we have to seek different ways to work with candidates. We can’t wait for 100% fit candidates. They might never appear.

The trend that I see and support is an investment into junior candidates’ potential and internal training & development programs. It’s risky, and it takes time and money, but if you do it well, they return it to you. In a business case where this model is NO GO, we try to revise requirements in comparison with real use in daily operations.

Most of the time, we find English as a mandatory criterion, but, in reality, employees never use it.

Barbora Školaudy, Head of Recruitment, Talent’em

15) Including candidates willing to relocate

Most of our clients are looking for candidates already living in the area of their workplace, and of course, people who already have an in-force work permit.

Due to the lack of candidates fulfilling all their requirements lately, we are widening our pool, including people who are willing to relocate to the area considered.

We focus mostly on EU citizens, though, since that makes the paperwork much easier.

Javier de la Morena, Co-Founder, NBS IT Recruitment Consultants, S.L.

Discover how you can better evaluate job candidates for open roles at your enterprise with evolve, our advanced Talent Acquisition Suite. Schedule a one-on-one demo today.

The post 15 Candidate Requirements That Are No Longer Required first appeared on Jobvite.

Today’s job market has given employers considerable challenges when it comes to finding and hiring qualified potential candidates who are good fits for job openings. The competitive labor market has driven companies to rethink their recruiting strategies and look to optimize their hiring practices.

With that in mind, we’ve compiled the top 10 outdated hiring practices that each of your talent team members ought to ditch straightaway to improve your recruitment model.

10 hiring practices that are actually hurting your talent attraction and conversion efforts

You already know it’s worth your time and energy to reduce unconscious bias in your job interview processes, continually refine your employer brand messaging, showcase your company culture and employee benefits in job postings, and promote open roles through targeted social media ads.

Those are the “do’s” for your talent acquisition strategy. Below are 10 highly specific “don’ts” tied to your hiring practices that you’d be wise to get rid of from your recruitment approach ASAP.

1) Not offering flexibility and remote work

It’s surprising to see how many companies have gone back to require full in-person work for those jobs that can work remotely. If the last few years have shown us anything, it’s the importance of offering inclusive work options and accommodation to employees — without them needing to ask for it.

Remote work flexibility offers valuable accommodation for workers who may be neurodivergent, those who are caregivers, live with disabilities, or even have a lack reliable transportation.

This is an easy way to expand DEI in your organization while improving quality of hire.

2) Fluffing job descriptions

Everyone loves to read an exciting job description. The problem is, however, it may not offer a realistic job preview. This very old tactic of fluffing job descriptions is a tired one.

Employers can get carried away when it comes to listing the benefits of working for the company and over-exaggerate the requirements for the role. Candidates want to know what to expect when starting their new role, and don’t want to be unpleasantly surprised.

In fact, Employ research shows up to a third of candidates are leaving in the first 90 days after joining an organization because their experiences didn’t match the job description.

That’s why it’s important to write a transparent job description that’s clear on the role’s expectations, work environment, and employer value proposition. Avoid fluffing job descriptions and stick to clear descriptions with relevant, accurate role-based info.

3) Taking too long to make a move

Top candidates aren’t on the job market for very long. This has made it more important than ever for recruiting and hiring teams to have effective communication during the hiring process.

Many companies lose their best candidates to competitors because of a lack of communication and taking too long to make an offer.

Shortening the feedback loop between hiring managers, recruiters, and candidates will help secure top talent in a competitive market. Use a centralized talent acquisition platform to improve communication among teams and empower them to quickly make informed hiring decisions.

4) Requiring applicants to create a login before applying

Candidates are busy, and they know what it’s like to use consumer-grade technology. Yet, many companies still require candidates to create a log-in for their ATS before filling out an application.

Lose the gated applications and watch an increase in quality candidates applying for even hard-to-fill roles. Data-driven recruiting technology and processes help convert more applicants by capturing profile information from the application and resume after it is submitted.

5) Having long-winded applications

Remember the old days of applying for a job and having to input every line of your resume before attaching it on the next page? (Oh, how the times have changed.)

That outdated process is one of many examples of an inefficient application process that needs to be left in the past. Candidates today will abandon this lengthy application process and instead are looking to finish an application in less than five minutes.

A mobile-optimized application process is also crucial to finding and hiring top talent in today’s competitive job market. Leverage click-to-apply, text-to-apply, and other strategies to easily convert applicants from their smartphones.

6) Ghosting candidates (intentionally or not)

Companies are pressured more than ever to provide a quality experience to every applicant that goes through the hiring process. Even though employers work hard to do this, some don’t have the right tools to effectively manage communication with candidates.

Recruiters can’t manage the complexities of hiring today without proper recruiting automation and hiring team collaboration tools. Allow automation and AI tools to reduce some of the burden of manual recruiting communication and never leave a good candidate hanging.

7) Requiring in-person interviewing

Employers aren’t expecting the reshuffling of the workforce to be over anytime soon, and many candidates applying for your role are already currently working elsewhere.

Busy candidates don’t have time to come to the office for an in-person interview, and some may be far away from any of the company’s locations. An outdated hiring practice that needs to be scraped is requiring an in-person interview for a role.

In such a fast-paced job market, recruiters are skipping timely in-person interviews and opting for video interviews and meetings. This is not only saving them effort in planning and organizing schedules, but it also allows them to consider candidates from a wider range of locations.

8) Offering little or no onboarding

After a quality hire is made, they should not be thrown into the deep end of their role just yet.

Onboarding includes teaching new hires about valuable company info like culture, reporting structure, and resources.

Your company’s onboarding program should be consistent for all employees, but gear towards an individual’s role when it comes to training. It should lay out expectations for new employees and get them integrated into their role as easily as possible.

9) Offering limited paid time off

In a candidate-driven market, now is not the time to cut down on benefits that employees expect. Paid time off (PTO) days are important for the health and wellness of all employees — and candidates want to know that they’re valued this way.

Benefits like PTO, total compensation, bonuses, insurance, and salary are all big in a candidate’s consideration when choosing their next employer.

Some companies are even extending time off even before a new employee starts to give new hires time to refresh. Remember to list benefits like this in a job description to easily attract and convert candidates to apply for a role.

10) Using outdated technology and services

Recruiters and hiring teams can’t manage hiring in today’s complex market without the right technology, services, and tools. Your org needs advanced software, personal connections, and services to save time and effort on manual tasks so you can focus on the human aspects of recruiting.

Looking to upgrade your TA tech stack? Start with a new, more advanced ATS — like Jobvite.

The post 10 Outdated Hiring Practices to Stop Using Today first appeared on Jobvite.

You keep hearing about record job openings as the country heads back to work. Yet here you are, sitting at your desk, looking at your ATS and wondering why it isn’t overflowing with applicants. You’ve exploded your budget for ads, slapped a new banner on your company home page, and begged staff to refer past colleagues. This all should be working. Your career site visitors are up. Candidates were interested in your jobs, but why didn’t they apply?

Sounds like you have a candidate conversion problem. It’s time to put yourself in your candidate’s shoes and see what your candidate experience is like firsthand. Here’s how:

Show your Employer Value Proposition

Now that job seekers are on your career site, are you showing them a place where people would want to work? They’ve seen the job description, but before they apply, they want a glimpse into daily life as an employee. And with the increase in hiring this year, they can wait to choose a flexible employer that takes care of their needs and promotes diversity, equality, inclusion, and belonging.

Remove Barriers to Apply

If you’ve done this well, candidates will next look at how to apply. Candidates want application processes that are easy from start to finish and without barriers to entry. Some of the most frustrating career sites make candidates:

• Search through too many job postings to find the one they were interested in
• Create a login (with a complex, unique 8-character password) and create a profile
• Go through an overwhelming amount of clicks to access the application
• Manually enter their resume into text boxes (despite uploading a pdf copy)

If the application process isn’t quick and straightforward, candidates will not complete their applications. Industry averages show that only 30% of applicants who start the application process actually complete it. That’s seven of every ten candidates that you have already invested in who are choosing to walk away and not complete the application. Successful organizations should break down the barriers of entry for job seekers. Eliminating registration requirements as the first step when a candidate applies is an easy way to improve candidate conversion and give your employer brand a boost while you’re at it.

Eliminate Technical Issues

Next, think about what a candidate would do if they encountered a technology issue or had a question about the application process. Companies spend so much time and budget on driving candidates to the career site to apply only to lose those job seekers to technical issues and a lack of help options, leading to lower conversion rates and increased candidate frustration. Think about adding a chatbot to answer frequently asked questions or elevate the issue to someone who can help the candidate and, therefore, your candidate conversion rate.

Optimize for Mobile

Are you mobile-optimized? Jump on your phone (we know it’s near you) and look at your application process via mobile. Mobile phone usage has been steadily increasing over the years, and you should make sure your application process is smooth on any platform. Better yet, remove more barriers to the application by providing text options to apply and communicate with candidates.

Shorten the Feedback Loop

Lastly, think about how it feels as a candidate to hit that submit button and wait for a response. Think about how often you need to wait for the status of anything today. We expect to know, almost demand, to be kept informed on where we are in the process of fulfilling a purchase or inquiry. Whether that is tracking where your Lyft driver is in real-time, what stage of delivery your Amazon purchase is in, or even when your Grubhub food delivery will be at your doorstep. This is the expectation candidates have as well with employers.

Provide a Better Experience

The bottom line is, if you want to hire top talent, it doesn’t matter how pretty your career site is or how many available jobs you’re offering if your candidates are frustrated and left in the dark. Are you providing an experience where they can easily apply for positions? Or are you forcing them to jump through unnecessary hoops? Are you keeping them informed of their application status? Or are you letting them wait by the phone until they give up and apply elsewhere?

Let Jobvite Help

Whatever hiring challenges you’re facing, from candidate conversion and beyond, having the right tools and technology in place will help you streamline workflows, increase operational efficiency, and improve the candidate experience. Looking to learn more about what Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite can do for your team? To see Jobvite in action, watch the on-demand Jobvite Product Tour or request a live demo.

The post How to Solve Your Candidate Conversion Problem first appeared on Jobvite.