Let us put away the myths and the misconceptions around Social Recruiting – that partaking in Social Recruiting will attract and add to the amount of unqualified applicants already in the recruiter’s inbox. If anything, Social Recruiting helps attract more qualified applicants and it helps single out the best talent. How, you ask? Let’s simply start by looking over some key stats to begin our appreciation and love for Social Recruiting:
93% of Recruiters review a candidate’s social profile (Source). This gives recruiters a more personal view of the candidate and can help them determine whether or not they will be a good fit for the company culture.
73% of companies have successfully hired using social media (Source). The ease of use that comes from social recruiting has benefited companies that more and more of them are following this trend. They are able to put forward a more personal view of the company, and are able to provide easier ways to apply for a position online.
42% of companies say that the quality of candidates has improved because of social recruiting (Source). These benefits often stem from employee’s referring their friends and family members to the job postings online, LinkedIn being the largest network that people use for social recruiting and applications.
With this rise in Social Recruiting and the numbers that show an increasing demand for this method,what is the future for Social Recruiting? How should companies successfully apply this to their current strategy?
The Industry Future:
According to SourceCon, for the success and strength of Social Recruiting to continue to flourish as it is right now, recruiters need to develop a relationship with the people applying to the jobs. This might require talking to the applicants during off business hours like the weekend and after work, since this is when they are most likely available if they are currently employed.
To help recruiters with this, our companies should create an easy to use social recruiting atmosphere, an example being more mobile recruiting functionalities. Creating a more accessible way for recruiters and applicants will help with the development of your company’s social recruiting needs and is a crucial investment to the company.
Another investment to look into besides mobile recruiting is Employee Advocacy programs. Employee Advocacy is the new social recruiting trend that is taking over when it comes to bringing in highly qualified candidates. To better understand what an Employee Advocacy Program is, Bambu gives an easy to follow definition. They are employees who:
Generate positive exposure and raise awareness for a brand through digital media or offline channels
Recommend a company’s products or services to a friend or family member
Represent the best interests of the company both internally and externally
Can help build employee ownership of the organization
Are experts on your product or service and can be a credible spokesperson for your company
So, why wouldn’t we want our employees to talk about how great your company culture is and your business’ success via social media? How the employees perceive and talk about your company via social has a great impact on how the outside word sees your company and ultimately who will want to apply. The best employee advocacy programs help bring in the right outside talent that is both qualified and fits with the employee culture. This takes a huge load off the recruiter, providing them with a pool of qualified candidates right at their fingertips, candidates who already want to work for your company since they have heard so many great things about you.
Interested in hearing more about Social Recruiting? Listen to our webinar for more key statistics and the steps you need to become Social Recruiting savvy.
In last month’s blog post on Part 1 about KPI’s, we covered five crucial recruiting metrics that will help take your HR team to the next level. In addition to those five, however, we’ve compiled a few more that will allow you to be smarter about where you are focusing your recruiting efforts and judge the effectiveness of those efforts.
Qualified Applicants per Requisition
Qualified applicants per requisition is a good indicator of the effectiveness of your sourcing channels. It takes into account not simply the total number of applicants for a position, but, more specifically, the number of qualified applicants. One source may produce hundreds of applications, but perhaps only ten of the applicants actually made it beyond the screening questions or the minimum requirements, while a different source may produce only a few applicants, but a higher percentage of them become qualified candidates.
Once you know which sources provide the greater percentage of qualified applicants, you can focus your energy and resources on these channels. This saves companies from wasting time or money on expensive job boards when perhaps they receive their best candidates from employee referrals or social media sites.
The way that you determine what a qualified applicant means will vary based on the specific requirements that you establish for each requisition, but it is important to establish an average over all requisitions for a specific time period. The metrics to pay attention to are the number of total applicants, the number screened in, the number hired, the ratio of screened in to applied, and finally the percentage of the total hires from each source. Ultimately, qualified applicants are the only ones that matter and the ones that you will want to keep in contact with for future opportunities.
Recruiter Efficiency
Today, with technology changing and systems being put in place to help with Big Data, and the ability to monitor every aspect of the recruiting process, companies now have the ability to monitor and measure recruiter efficiency.
Recruiter efficiency takes into account several metrics, but really comes down to how effective a recruiter is at finding the most qualified candidate in the shortest amount of time, and ensuring that they are someone who will not only accept the company’s offer, but will become a valuable asset to that company.
This metric is very obviously tied to the bottom line, and thus becomes a highly scrutinized metric all the way up to the executive level. The level of recruiter efficiency can be directly tied to the cost of hire for any given position, and thus to the overall performance of a company’s recruiting strategy.
The following factors should be considered to determine one recruiter’s efficiency versus another’s:
Open requisitions assigned to them
Pending requisitions
Requisitions on hold
Requisitions in approval
Requisitions filled
Average days to fill
A successful recruiter will know the best sources for each requisition, will be able to realistically portray the company’s needs, and provide the organization with employees that will become top performers and contribute to a high retention rate.
Cost per Hire
For most companies, everything still comes down to the bottom line, which is why “Cost of Hire” remains one of the most important metrics to track in HR’s recruiting efforts. It is crucial to know exactly how much it is costing your organization to hire each position, and where you may be losing money. HR needs to be able to show executives cost-effectiveness when it comes to a recruiting strategy.
It is not uncommon to hear that the cost of hiring someone is more expensive than a full year’s salary for that position, and there are many articles that back up this claim (How much does it cost companies to lose employees?, The Cost Of Hiring A New Employee, You make $70k but cost your boss $88k, etc.). While not all of the costs are related directly to recruiting a new hire, there are many recruiting decisions that impact the overall cost. That is why it is crucial to know exactly how much it is costing your organization to hire each position, and where you may be losing money.
Cost of hire takes into account factors, which of course will vary based on the position being hired for.
The subject of millennials is similar to the subject of technology, they both have changed the workforce in the last decade. As a millennial myself with mostly millennial peers, when I thought about hiring my generation and what we bring to the workforce, I thought about our goals and what motivates us. I can think of a clear difference in motivation compared to other generations. Everything from conversing and how we interact and socialize with our coworkers to our expectations about work was shaped by our upbringing. The millennial mindset is heavily influenced by the growth of technology as well as stress levels from finances and the pressure to compete with your neighbor.
With the growth and expansion of mobile technology, we can see that millennials are a lot more public via social media. Millennials hear about jobs via social media (like Facebook) and also through interactions on Twitter/LinkedIn. Once it is out, millennials search and find it. The next step for most of them is getting hired. Employers assessing the value of the applicant and also the pros and cons they hear in rumor mill about hiring millennials can be quite the challenge.
What are the pros and cons about hiring millennials?
Pros:
New blood
Bring energy and excitement to their role
Flexible working remote or in the office
Create or want to be a part of an active company culture
Hardworking
Cons:
They are harder to retain because they job hop more frequently
More demanding on flexibility on job
More demanding for work/life balance
Want more recognition from higher ups
They get bored easily and need to be kept stimulated
Sometimes carry a sense of entitlement and aren’t willing to work hard and “pay their dues”
So with all of that, how do companies maintain millennials if they are constantly hopping from one venture to the next? Or getting bored easily and carrying a sense of entitlement since they aren’t willing to “pay their dues?”
First, we need to understand their frustration. A majority of millennials attend college and come out of it with no work experience in order for them to start using their degree. Or are competing for entry level positions with people who have been out of school for far longer than them. Most entry level jobs that they see postings on LinkedIn, Indeed, etc. have a minimum requirement of 3 years or less. But realistically, the employer prefers the applicant with at least a couple years under their belt, which already is creating a disadvantage for them. Anthony Carnevale, a director and research professor for Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce says, “the bar is higher today. They’re (Millennials are) the first generation that needs to have a college degree and experience to compete, before they even enter the workforce.” (Newsweek) Compare this to previous generations making enough to support a family off a high school/GRE diploma.
Most millennials are viewed as hopping from one job to the next and demanding too much on salary when realistically a good amount of them are being laid off for company purposes or are not being paid enough to pay off their student loans or debt and living expenses, both which create this need to search for a new job elsewhere. People shouldn’t assume it is the norm, according to Business Week’s Richard Florida, “the average for the under 30 group is 1.5 years between job changes,” and I’ve been in my job a little over two years and have several friends who have been in their jobs even longer. People cannot always trust the stereotype.
Besides the stereotype of job hopping there is the stereotype of being lazy, but Millennials do want to pay their dues but they want to see the value coming from what they are doing. They want to see an end goal. And having performance or learning programs once they are hired excite them and encourage them to keep working harder. They see a light at the end of the tunnel to keep working harder. That’s the messaging companies should give as well when hiring, to be realistic in what the work day includes but also certain potential positive outcomes for working the lower pay job.
Millennials can be a powerful resource for companies who take the time to get to know them, share opportunities, and value their excited and energetic attitudes about work. They have new ideas and are eager to prove their worth to the organization – not to just be another piece of the corporate framework, but to be valued for who they are and the ideas they bring. Be prepared to offer them the salary, support, and culture they need and they can be among your hardest working employees. And if you don’t, you become a large part of a millennial’ need to job hop.
The Brilliant HR Talent Management Platform offers tools that will help streamline your recruiting and hiring processes, from posting jobs and screening candidates to providing a smooth onboarding experience for new employees and hiring managers.
The recruitment process is the process of hiring the right people in the right place, at the right time. This is a critical activity which allows companies to conduct proper and effective workforce planning. This process is important because it involves all stakeholders, to make sure they are well equipped with the appropriate knowledge and skill
set to hire. Where there are several well-known candidate sources to look for future employees like the company website, job boards, vendors etc., this blog we will instead focus on the internal employee transfer employment.
Saratoga Institute reports that, the average cost of finding and hiring someone from outside the company is 1.7 times more than an internal hire ($8,676 vs. $15,008). What’s more, in the Business Times research shows that between 40% and 60% of external hires aren’t successful, compared to only 25% for internal hires are unsuccessful. This is good news for employees who typically leave firms due to lack of career opportunities, yet its bad news for job seekers who may have fewer jobs to apply for as internal hiring rises. According to Business Times article
Advantages of Staffing Internally:
Money: Rather than going through the whole recruitment cycle from scratch and paying investment money in different sources to find the right qualified external applicants; internal staffing allows you to easily find the right nominees for the position.
Culture Fit: When you promote or transfer an internal employee, you know that he/she already fits in with the corporate culture, which is something that is often a risk with external candidates; for example many candidates can say the right things in the interview but that does not mean that they can fit as part of the team. So as an employer you already know the work ethics of your employees which reduces this risk factor when hiring external candidates.
Motivation: Motivation is key because it allows companies to retain their talent and reduce turnover. When employees know the career path that they can achieve as a result of hard work then they are tempted to stay and work harder resulting in a happier staff and higher revenue generation.
Time: As we know time is money. So rather than spending time in publishing an open vacancy in different sources and going through the whole interview process and waiting for the new hire to submit his resignation from the other company and join yours; you can reduce the recruitment time in half by hiring internally.
How is that Accomplished?
Finding the right people internally starts by having the right tools that allows you to assess employees on relevant competencies and skills. Running their gap analysis and create career plans for them while giving your employees the relevant training programs to help them grow. Allowing the employee to have access to update his/her competencies and skills profile gives your organization the ability to always have up-to-date information for future leaders’ planning.
Few other important items to take into consideration while performing internal transfers are:
Make sure your internal transfer policy is clear and followed consistently.
Give internal employees clear feedback if you select someone else so they don’t look elsewhere because of miscommunication.
Make sure their current manager is a part of the process.
Don’t make them feel like their current job is in jeopardy because they applied to a different one.
The recruitment process is one the key building blocks that helps define a company’s workforce level of competitiveness in the market and generate revenue. There are many benefits to hiring internally for vacant positions, however, doing this efficiently requires a full well planned and organized process of identifying top performers, their level of qualification and the development options.
While looking at your current employees and their referrals is a strong way to fill open positions, many times external applicants are going to make up a large percentage of your applicant pool. So how can you best attract these applicants to your company, and once there, how can you make sure to build a relationship with those applicants? And what is the downside if you don’t get this right?
Attracting Applicants
When it comes to getting applicants to visit your career center and apply to jobs, you cannot just rely on the job description to get them through the door. There are many other factors that you need to consider to make sure that it is easy for applicants to learn about your company and find a job that interests them.
First, make sure you are advertising your jobs in the right places to attract the right applicants. This could include local universities, job board, social media, the newspaper or emails to previous applicants. Every company may have a different strategy on how to best get information about your jobs out there – take a look at where your previously successful hires have come from and start from there to attract similar applicants.
Also, don’t assume a one-size-fits-all approach with your career center. Different applicants have different needs, and your career center needs to cater to those. Be able to direct applicants to corporate jobs to a career center specific to those jobs, and do the same for your hourly workforce. By breaking this up, you make it easier for applicants to find jobs that they are looking for and qualified for, and improve their user experience.
Finally, don’t forget to make your site mobile friendly. According to Beyond (http://about.beyond.com/infographics/mobile-job-search-apps) 77% of job seekers use mobile devices to search for jobs. So, if your career center doesn’t support this capability, you might end up missing out on some really good applicants.
Application Experience
Once you’ve made your jobs easy to find and learn about, make sure it is easy for applicants to apply. The process, the rules, the requirements – it is important that each one of these items is clear and easy for the applicant to follow.
Over the years, one of the number one complaints I hear about the application process is that it is too hard, too long, and too repetitive. Really evaluate your current process and get rid of the things you don’t need. If you are asking every applicant to submit a cover letter, but you never read it, remove it from the application. Having extra steps that don’t provide value to your or the applicant just makes the process longer and increases the odds that the applicant won’t finish.
Communication and Follow Up
Feedback to your applicants is one of the best ways to ensure you develop a good relationship with potential talent. After someone applies to a job, it is really important that regular updates are provided throughout the entire hiring cycle. Whether it is good news that you are reaching out for an interview, or the more dreaded news that they aren’t qualified for the opening, applicants need to be apprised of the status of their application.
Also, you may have heard of the resume black hole, and you probably know this isn’t a good thing. Providing follow up and communicating with applicants can help alleviate this issue, which is so prevalent that there are many articles and videos on how to avoid the black hole.
So What If You Don’t?
The cost of dissatisfied applicants is more than them giving up and looking elsewhere – it can leave applicants with a negative perception of your company as a whole. Whether the process is too rushed, too slow, or lacks any meaningful feedback, there are repercussions with how that potential applicant views the company, and whether or not they will share their experience with their friends or elsewhere on the internet. And don’t forget that studies have shown that job seekers are less likely to buy or use services from a company that is unresponsive when they apply to work there.
