WINNING STRATEGIES WINNING STRA

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1 WINNING STRATEGIES

2 1 Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Social Recruiting for 2012 Chapter 2: Applicant Tracking Software Chapter 3: Effective Hiring Collaboration Chapter 4: Increase Employee Referrals Chapter 5: A Career Site that Sells Chapter 6: Recruitment Marketing Chapter 7: Facebook Recruiting Apps Chapter 8: Recruiter Candidate Relationship Management Chapter 9: Fast Sourcing with Candidate Search Chapter 10: Benchmark Success with Recruiting Analytics Conclusion

3 2 Introduction The beginning of each year marks an influx of hiring among companies as budgets are approved and company growth has been forecasted. Recruiters must plan for the upcoming year to help ensure each team within the company has the necessary manpower to meet their objectives. This playbook provides you with tools you need to build your 2012 recruiting strategy. Instead of sourcing, hiring and moving on, make 2012 the year where you innovate and make your company s hiring even more effective. Whether it s streamlining processes, buying a new, integrated Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or taking your social recruiting efforts off the back burner, make this year count. 1. Social Recruiting for 2012 What is it? Social recruiting is more than just a buzzword. As recruiters, we are in the business of finding the right people. We re matchmakers between job seeker and enterprise. To recruit is to build relationships and connections; and social recruiting is about finding those people and interacting with them. Social networks have made that easier and more personal, if you do it right. Using the social web, we can now engage and communicate on a mass scale, while still developing a one-to-one connection. Benefits? 1. Broad capabilities connect to the largest pool of candidates 2. Easy to deputize employees for referrals 3. Low-cost 4. Authentic and multimedia messaging

4 3 Where to begin? Finding the best way to recruit socially can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Start by defining your voice and understanding how the people in your company interact with each other. Job seekers are beginning to change online visibility with work in mind Job seekers who modified privacy settings in the last year with work in mind. Make no mistake; social recruiting is not about posting jobs. Your messaging matters, whether it s broadcasted or targeted. Think about how you want to structure your voice and engage job seekers and candidates. ALL JOB SEEKERS 19% 9% 7% What to look for in an application There are many applications to automate and streamline your social recruiting efforts. However, automation can be bland and computerized, and often will only publish SUPER SOCIALS 32% 26% 18% jobs to social networks which isn t a bad thing, but it can be repetitive. Frequency is important. Remember, you are talking to people not other machines. Jobvite Social Job Seeker Survey 2011

5 4 When looking at applications to help you recruit socially, think about ease of use and your return on investment. How will this tool benefit your long-term and short-term recruiting efforts? What reporting does it offer? If you do not have a social recruiting strategy in place that captures important data, then you are leaking revenue. Look for tools that help you understand and measure how your top candidates find you, which channels they use and which posts or jobs that interested them most. The most important question to ask: Is it easy for employees to use? That s right. Social media is only second to employee referrals, which we will discuss in more detail in Chapter 8. One of the best aspects about social recruiting is that everyone can be involved. A great social recruiting strategy includes every single employee. When planning your social recruiting strategy for 2012, consider your employees and whether or not it is easy for them to publish to their networks about jobs, company culture and other points of interests for job seekers. Who s doing it well? Total Attorneys has expanded its social recruiting efforts and has dramatically grown the number of referral and social network hires, with a referral rate of 50% 1. Social recruiting has enabled us to hire strong new employees who we would never have connected with via traditional recruiting channels and we are now leveraging social channels at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, said Sarah Widner, talent manager at Total Attorneys. At Kosmix, the majority of employees send open jobs through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and . The new recruiting strategy has allowed the company to proactively find talent. 1 Total Attorneys Jobvite enables innovative technology-enabled law services firm to leverage social networking and referrals to find new hires.

6 5 Our employees unlock their professional and social networks to help Kosmix make hires in a way that we haven t been able to do before, James Hunt, managing director of BINC Onsite. Groupon has dedicated social network channels specifically for recruiting. You can subscribe to Groupon Jobs on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In 2011 Groupon built a candidate pipeline to more than double its size with nearly 94,000 applicants that lead to hundreds of new hires 2. 2 Jessup, Dan. Groupon presentation at HR Tech. Oct Raw data.

7 6 2. Applicant Tracking Software What is it? An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a recruiter s database that enables better management of resume and applicant information, helping to automate the recruiting process and manage workflow. A good ATS helps recruiters automate every stage of the hiring process from posting to hire, tracking every requisition along the way. It is also highly intuitive, easy to use and easily accessible online. Benefits? 1. Streamline workflow between recruiters and hiring managers 2. Increases collaboration efforts while reducing administrative time 3. Improves reporting time efficiencies 4. Provides great candidate experiences with timely s and organization Where to begin? Defining your workflow is of utmost importance, especially when dealing with busy hiring managers. The more granulated you can get; the easier it will be for everyone involved. This will help you visualize which parts of the workflow can be automated and where you can close any existing gaps. The goal is to start where it makes the most sense, using a platform that can scale to the needs of your organization. What to look for in an application When dealing with a large number of candidates and requisitions, automating your workflow becomes of essence. The last thing you want is for valuable candidates to slip through the cracks or to have scheduling errors or lost feedback from interviewers.

8 7 A good ATS will help grease the wheels of your hiring efforts, making sure that everything runs smoothly with the level of professionalism that you want your company to convey. Look for systems that are scalable, increase collaborative efforts and organize all information and activity in one space. Who s doing it well? With our ATS, hiring managers can view all feedback without waiting and without superfluous s. We can also track source and pull metrics on almost everything. The stats on active employees are amazing, and it really helps with rewards and motivation, said Andrew Cerda, recruiting specialist at Yelp. We refined our whole staffing process and built a strong model that scales as we grow. We don t throw a lot of money at recruiting by having a large staff or big agency expenditures. We have control over our process and our candidate pipeline. I m really proud of what we have accomplished, said Wendy Fitzloff, director of human resources at Support.com. Jobvite is an applicant tracking system designed from a user standpoint and it mirrors the workflow and the activity of a recruiter. It s so much easier for a recruiter to use than any other system out there, said Paul Whitney, vice president of human resources at Infinera.

9 8 3. Effective Hiring Collaboration What is it? Everyone in your company is involved in hiring in some way, whether an employee is interviewing, hiring, referring or will be working with the new hire. Hiring collaboration is a process where everyone works together on hiring the right candidates. Benefits? 1. Employees feel a part of the hiring process for new team members 2. Information is easily distributed across all parties 3. Recruiters spend less time organizing and scheduling Where to begin? Hiring collaboration begins with a plan of action to get every employee involved. Keeping employees engaged and productive in the hiring process can certainly be a challenge. Start by looking at your workflow process and checking to see if you have any existing silos or points of contention. The goal is to make it easy for everyone involved to respond or to access the necessary information to make a decision on a candidate. What to look for in an application The best way to maintain productivity is to streamline your process and find applications that are robust, scalable, secure and accessible from anywhere. With the influx of smartphones and mobile devices in the workforce, the need for easily accessible information is key, especially with busy hiring managers.

10 9 Another feature to consider is how hiring managers and recruiters view candidate information and activity. Keeping all information in one view and in an intuitive format can really make a difference in how each participant in the hiring process reacts to the workflow. Who s doing it well? Yelp has a unique workflow process that helps keep their hiring efforts on the go. The company s recruiting strategy is forward-focused in that everyone at the company is always recruiting.

11 10 4. Increase Employee Referrals What is it? Employee referrals are commonly noted to be the highest quality, lowest cost of hires at any company. Referral candidates also are known to perform better, have shorter time-to-fill periods and have greater job satisfaction. A strong employee referral program is an absolute must-have for Benefits? 1. Shorter time-to-fill periods and greater job satisfaction 2. Fit better with corporate culture 3. Require less resources to hire 4. Promote solidarity among employees Where to begin? Building an employee referral process is not rocket science, but it does take time and effort. The first step is to develop a referral culture. Employees refer because they are happy with their company and want to help it succeed. Also, a referral bonus certainly helps move things along. Once you understand why your employees refer, you can reach out to them through employee marketing campaigns that inform them about open jobs and ways to refer. For more information on how to increase your company s employee referral rate, download Jobvite s free ebook: Increase Employee Referrals in 5 Easy Steps. What to look for in an application When looking at applications to assist your employee referral program or to create one from scratch, you must first think about ease of use. The easier it is for an employee to refer, the higher adoption rate and more chances you have of engaging them in a referral program. With Jobvite s automatic publishing tool, Chiquita employees and website visitors can post jobs to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn or send an .

12 11 Social networks are key for referrals. According to Facebook, the average user has 130 contacts. Assuming all your employees are on Facebook, the widespread reach of a company s network, including employees, is exponential. Look for software that allows employees to post to their networks and tracks referrals so that you can reward accordingly. Who s doing it well? Yelp has a fun tool on their career site that allows visitors to see which of their LinkedIn connections are Yelp employees so that job seekers can proactively ask for a referral. Over 50% of Yelp hires are from referrals.

13 12 Total Attorneys increased its referral rate to 67% in six months. When you give people tools to be transparent about the company, they can contribute to the conversation about your brand. It s great when your employees think highly enough of the company that they want to talk about it and want to invite people to work here, says Ed Scanlan, CEO of Total Attorneys Coupons.com has an employee referral rate of 52%. It s really wise to use the entire company and its network so that you can spread the word and get the net out that much farther. It is the most effective way to recruit, and as a result, Coupons.com has had better quality candidates in the pipeline sooner, leading to more qualified hires, said Ken Perluss, director of staffing at Coupons.com.

14 13 5. A Career Site That Sells What is it? Career page is one of the most highly trafficked pages on a corporate website. Visitors arrive due to interest in the company or via job advertising, Internet searches, word of mouth, referrals, recruiters and any other recruiting channels. Some arrive with a purposeful goal (applying for a new job), while others are just window-shopping for a better opportunity. Benefits? 1. Displays company culture 2. Provides job seekers with sought after information 3. A space for people to find and apply to open jobs or learn more Where to begin? Your company s career site should have a roadmap for conversions (when a visitor turns into an applicant). Once you ve decided on the type of candidates you want, plan on how to attract them to apply with your career site. The number one rule is to make it easy for candidates to find what they need and to apply. For a closer look on how to build a winning career site, download our free ebook: 21 Career Sites that Sell. What to look for in an application? There are plenty of applications that can help you design a career site, but the most important aspect of this avenue is the behind-the-scenes data. Your career site should be in close communication with your ATS. Ideally, you can have a custom career site associated with your ATS for all applicant tracking and career site needs. A good goal to have in mind when looking at software platforms is to make sure the entire process for both applicant and recruiter is seamless and simple. If your current system is not up to par, perhaps 2012 is the year to revamp your career site.

15 14 Who s doing it well? Zynga s career site perfectly transitions its corporate brand with its talent brand, showcasing the playful atmosphere of the company as well as the hard work and creativity of employees. The structure and theme of the website is consistent and easy to use.

16 15 Yammer does a fantastic job of displaying company culture, including pictures of employees, and the opportunities offered. Candidates often want to know how they would fit in the bigger picture of the company and how they can further develop their career path.

17 16 6. Recruitment Marketing What is it? Whether you attract applicants through job boards, referrals, social media, advertising or any other form of recruiting outreach, you are marketing your company and what it can offer job seekers. Recruitment marketing is unique in that a company has the opportunity to develop a sub-brand that encompasses employee lifestyle what we call a talent brand. With recruitment marketing, recruiters can build a talent network and market to candidates and interested subscribers. Promoting jobs, corporate culture and career opportunities. Benefits? 1. Organically attract more applicants using a variety of channels 2. Build a subscriber base of interested job seekers 3. Track and measure recruiting efforts Where to begin? Recruitment marketing, like any other marketing program, begins with a clear understanding of your talent brand and what type of candidates you would like to attract. Especially since, not everyone who is qualified for a position would be a good fit for your company Once you know whom you want to attract, you can start building out campaigns, social job promotions and a well-rounded career site that is geared toward the type of applicants desired. What to look for in an application There are several elements to considering when managing your recruitment marketing. The key points are how do you build your talent network and how do measure the results of your efforts.

18 17 Who s doing it well? TiVo sends a separate recruiting twice a month to all employees, providing hiring updates, interesting articles and referral incentives. Each includes a specific, personalized message, usually a story or anecdote about a referral. The company understands that recruitment marketing is more than attracting candidates; it s involving everyone in the company to find the best talent for the available jobs.

19 18 7. Facebook Recruiting Apps What is it? LinkedIn has been a huge resource for recruiters and will continue to be a great source. However, employers and job seekers are commonly on different social networks. According to Job Seeker Nation , 64 percent of companies use two or more social networks to recruit. As a result, job seekers and social job sharing has emerged on Facebook and maintains a steady growth. Benefits 1. Reach job seekers where they network 2. Target individual candidates or broadcast jobs 3. Easy for employees to share jobs on Facebook Where to begin? Recruiting on Facebook should be a section in your overall social recruiting strategy. Think about what type of candidates are on Facebook and how to target them. Remember, you must treat Facebook and LinkedIn differently. Users on LinkedIn may be more accepting of recruiting requests, whereas Facebook users might not be. Develop a plan of action, benchmark goals and message voice, then execute accordingly. You may want to consider Facebook as more of a referral network and LinkedIn as a sourcing network. Still, this is dependent on your overarching social recruiting strategy. What to look for in an application There are several Facebook applications that you can use in order to rev up your recruiting efforts. Look for applications that attune to your strategy and goals. For example, if your goal were to capture more applicants through your corporate Facebook page, perhaps you d want to consider an app that allows visitors to apply directly from your fan page. 3 Job Seeker Nation Burlingame: Jobvite, PDF.

20 19 Or if you want to encourage employee referrals, consider a Facebook app that allows employees to easily share jobs with their friends and connections. Who s doing it well? Whole Foods Market Austin has integrated the Jobvite Work With Us Facebook app that allows visitors to browse jobs, sign up for job alerts or visit the career site or share the position with a friend.

21 20 8. Recruiter Candidate Relationship Management What is it? Recruiter Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) platforms provide recruiters with an easy and efficient way to communicate with their talent pool, applicants and existing candidates. They ideally organize prospects and sourcing results so that every promotion and activity is categorized and logged for all members involved to view and track accordingly. Benefits? 1. Build and communicate with your talent pool easily. 2. Organize and streamline job promotions 3. Host better candidate experiences Where to begin? In lieu of your recruitment marketing program, a recruiter CRM should be an accent to the plans that you have designed for your talent acquisition campaigns. When beginning with a CRM, you can determine which types of threads, or tracks, you want to send to prospects, candidates, hires and others. Then your CRM should help you organize and market to your candidate pool. What to look for in an application Once you ve spent the time and energy to build your talent pool through sourcing or other marketing efforts, you will need to communicate with them in an efficient and organized manner, making sure to track all responses and organize your database along the way. A good CRM allows you to import, store, organize and score prospect data, making sure all profiles are updated. You can also find programs that will allow you to view only the candidate information that is most useful to you, meaning that hiring managers don t have to filter through s and other notes that are meant for recruiters only.

22 21 Who s doing it well? I didn t want job seekers to look at us like any other major brand. Our goal is to leave the candidate with a better appreciation of TiVo, said William Uranga, Senior Director of Staffing at TiVo. The differentiation of our candidate experience is very important to us in the war for talent. With Jobvite, we can create a candidate experience that incorporates our corporate identity and provides a positive experience for the jobseeker.

23 22 9. Fast Sourcing with Candidate Search What is it? Sourcing candidates is the bulk of a recruiter s job. There are many ways that recruiters source and compare candidates. Many search their existing databases, LinkedIn, resume sites or social networks. Others use Boolean search or use a variety of sourcing software platforms. Benefits? 1. Find candidates that match requisitions and keywords 2. Scans the open web for candidates Where to begin? With hundreds of resume databases, social networks and existing contacts, finding the right fit can be a long and tedious process. In any case, sourcing candidates is all about the keywords that you use. When looking at your job descriptions try to think of the bigger picture of the role. Which skills are essential and which ones are nice-to-haves? Then refine your searches based on the specific criteria of your requisitions. If the right candidates aren t showing up, then you may want to rework your job descriptions. What to look for in an application As hiring kicks up in the beginning of each year, filtering through candidates and reaching the right ones at the right time is of utmost importance. Consider tools that have aggregation platforms that can be scheduled for automatic searches so that you don t have to redo searches every day or week. Put together a plan of action for duplicate resumes and searches, as job seekers post their profiles on multiple job boards. Look for tools that can combine results of several databases so that you can save time filtering through duplicates more easily. You may want to develop a ranking system so that you can easily score prospects and add the best ones directly into your candidate relationship management system (CRM, discussed in Chapter 8).

24 23 Who s doing it well? Orbitz has developed a unique social recruiting strategy based on targeting passive candidates. The company cultivates a number of leads through social media, newsletters, user groups, sourcing and on-campus events at high schools and universities worldwide. Maintaining ongoing relationships with passive candidates is key. We send talent newsletters, which help us to lock down quality passive candidates well in advance. Creating these kinds of relationships early has been extremely helpful in acquiring quality new hires, said Becky Wilcox, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Orbitz Worldwide.

25 Benchmarking Success with Recruiting Analytics What is it? Analytics is a term for measuring data captured from marketing campaigns, websites or recruiting efforts. Tracking and measuring the results of your recruiting efforts, job promotions or employee marketing greatly helps recruiters understand what is working and what isn t so you can hire smarter (top talent at a lower cost). Knowing why job seekers apply and from where they found the job, is also vital in preparing for any recruiting strategy. Benefits? 1. See which tactics are working and where to allocate spend 2. Develop goals for continual improvement 3. Get results from different campaigns and test theories Where to begin? The first step when planning your 2012 recruitment analytics strategy is to decide on which metrics are best for you and for your team members. Not every metric matters to everyone. Some key metrics to start with are how are your most qualified candidates finding your jobs and what s your career site visitor to conversion rate. For more information about metrics and recruiting benchmarks, download our free ebook: Recruiting Analytics: 5 Ways to Benchmark Success. What to look for in an application For your career site, you can always use Google Analytics to filter the traffic and understand points of entry and which visitors apply for which jobs. However, the granular data required to fully understand the metrics that are most important to recruiters will not be easily found through Google Analytics. Ideally, your ATS will have captured all the necessary data from applications to opens to social job shares. Then it should also have an organized layout that will easily allow you to build out reports that attune to specific company hiring needs. For example, if you are spending money on your social recruiting campaign, you will want to know how well it is working or what you can do to optimize it.

26 25 Who s doing it well? Companies who are actively working to increase their referral rates and the number of applicants captured from social media and the career site are guaranteed to be using an analytics platform. It is essential to have a frame of reference as to what works best or what needs to be fixed.

27 26 We have hiring visibility and knowledge of where candidates were coming from without a whole lot of effort and anxiety. It was really hard for us to understand that, unless we did some meticulous excel spreadsheet tracking, sorting and managing, which nobody really likes to do. That is the biggest value that Jobvite has provided us, and it helps drive a whole lot of decisions, making the hiring process run as efficient as possible, said Steve Leech, Vice President of Human Resources at Shutterfly. It only takes three minutes to run a Jobvite report, and we can see which social sites are working without having to check the individual channel. It s so cost effective, considering the amount of work we get out of it. We can track source, evaluate time-to-fill and track recruiters work, spending less time on administrative tasks and more with talent. We ve seen such a great return on investment, said Andrew Cerda recruiting specialist at Yelp.

28 Conclusion Combining a series of well organized recruiting tactics and the necessary tools can really make or break your recruiting strategy. Still the single most important takeaway from this playbook should be strategy. Tools and technology can only go so far, whereas a well-defined recruiting strategy can really set in motion a full-swing hiring effort that can maximize every inch of your platform s capabilities. If you re in the market to upgrade your recruiting software, think about your hiring process and what tools can help easily and quickly facilitate your recruiting workflow and engage all employees. ABOUT JOBVITE Jobvite is the only recruiting platform that that delivers real-time recruiting intelligence with innovative technology for the evolving social web. Leading, fast-growing companies today use Jobvite s social recruiting, sourcing and talent acquisition solutions to target the right talent and build the best teams. Jobvite is a complete, modular Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform which can optimize the speed, cost-effectiveness and ease of recruiting for any company. To find out more, take a product tour. Jobvite Hire is a practical, intuitive web-based platform that helps you effectively manage every stage of hiring. It s the only social recruiting and applicant tracking solution that makes it easy for everyone to work together on hiring. With Jobvite Hire, you can improve the speed and quality of talent acquisition, create a great candidate experience, increase referral and social network hires all while using fewer resources. Jobvite Source, is an easy-to-use web-based application that can help you achieve your recruitment sourcing goals today. It s the only social sourcing and candidate relationship management application that helps you target relevant talent through employee referrals, social networks and the web then build and engage your talent pool. Jobvite Source is one intuitive platform to manage all sourcing programs and see the results. Ready to learn more? Check out our free product tours >