Ghostbusters for Recruiters: Conjuring Up Strategies to Banish Candidate Ghosting!

Candidate Ghost Blog

It’s Spooky Out There.

Imagine this: You are a recruiter well into the hiring process when suddenly a candidate abruptly stops responding to your emails and texts. It is as if they’ve vanished into thin air, wasting your time and delaying your recruiting efforts.

For many unfortunate employers, this situation is not merely hypothetical, it’s a problem known as candidate ghosting; one of the more frustrating issues facing recruiters today.

Candidate ghosting comes in many forms, ranging from an applicant skipping an interview to the extreme case of a new employee never showing up to work. While this sort of behavior was once largely restricted to unskilled labor, recruiters now report candidate ghosting becoming more prevalent in industries like technology and health care.

How To Avoid Candidate Ghosting.

A recent SHRM article by Roy Maurer outlined strategies to help offset this problem, including reducing the time spent recruiting and simplifying the recruiting process to better maintain candidate interest.

Another more meaningful approach is to promote more transparency and open communication between the hiring organization and the applicant. If a candidate doesn’t have a clear understanding of the job responsibilities, requirements, and, more importantly, your Employer Value Proposition, then the employer runs the risk of the candidate realizing too late in the process that they are not a good fit after investing too much time.

Additionally, if the candidate feels comfortable communicating with a recruiter, then they will be more apt to raise questions, clarify expectations, and be more forthcoming about concerns that could dissuade their decision to ghost a recruiter.

Finally, a hiring organization with a clear and compelling EVP is better equipped to educate candidates about their work environment early in the hiring process ensuring a mutual cultural fit and less chance for ghosting behavior. A strong EVP also highlights the unique benefits and personality of your organization, and when done right, can discourage candidates from shopping your competition.

Who You Gonna Call?

Buyer Advertising, a leader in recruitment and employee communications for close to sixty years, is here to help you bust ghosts with proven strategies to improve your hiring process, better define your Employer Brand, and open up lines of communication between you and your candidates with our Talent Engine Connect CRM. To learn more about our customized recruitment solutions, contact Natasha Cuomo, our VP of Strategic Partnerships, at ncuomo@buyerads.com or visit our website, www.buyerads.com.

About Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates critical to our client partners’ success. We cultivate unique Employer Brands that set our clients apart from the competition while creating a personal connection with their future employees. Our industry-leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service. With a proven history of supporting a diverse mix of organizations for close to sixty years, we are confident we’ll exceed your expectations.

Buyer Talent Engine: Career Site Platform Updates

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Attracting top talent in today’s competitive landscape requires innovative tools to maximize recruiting efficiency while promoting an organization’s unique Employer Value through relationship marketing. For more than two decades, industry leaders have trusted Buyer Talent Engine as the foundation of their tech stack, empowering organizations to achieve their hiring goals.

Never resting on past success, Buyer Advertising continues to invest in our technology culminating in our most recent version of Buyer Talent Engine, which now leverages Artificial Intelligence and greater flexibility to creatively connect with prospective hires through storytelling and employee experiences.

Talent Engine Optimize

More than 25 million job searches take place on Google each month, making Job Search Engine Optimization a vital strategy to compete for talent while reducing overall cost per hire. For more than 20 years, Buyer Talent Engine has provided clients unmatched job SEO, resulting in increased page one job search visibility while unlocking thousands of untapped candidates from Google and Google-For-Jobs.  In fact, one Buyer client experienced an astounding 80% of hires from Job SEO while spending just 10% of their overall recruitment advertising budget.

Talent Engine Attract

Traditional Pay-Per-Click Advertising if not managed independently from the job boards can waste your recruiting budget by attracting excess applicant flow while simultaneously underexposing vital jobs. Buyer Talent Engine Attract, using AI technology combined with hands-on media analysts, efficiently drives candidates to the openings that need the most exposure based on applicant conversion data and goals. This combination of analytics paired with personal insight allows for unprecedented optimization of your advertising budget resulting in a higher ROI.

Talent Engine Engage

Buyer Talent Engine career pages are custom designed to seamlessly integrate with your corporate web pages and adhere to all brand standards including fonts, typefaces, navigation treatment, page styles and color palate.  However, it also provides a level of creativity unmatched by traditional Applicant Tracking Systems including graphic based job postings, embedded job search filters across all career content pages, integrated video, blog and social media content, featured jobs and Google maps on job postings and dynamic user experiences based on candidate website behavior.  Additionally, Buyer Talent Engine provides custom job search options including zip code, proximity, keyword, category, location, type, facility, brand, and Military Occupation Service (MOS) Code job searches.

Talent Engine Analyze

In today’s ever-changing environment, accurate data is crucial to ensuring the success of your recruitment strategy. That’s why Buyer Talent Engine delivers the most comprehensive suite of data analytics available today featuring detailed auto-capture candidate source metrics for paid and organic media including:

  • Applies Started
  • Applies Completed
  • Qualified Applies
  • Offers
  • Hires
  • Media Cost per Apply and Hire
  • Hire Details – Name, Job Title, Date – by Source
  • Influencing Media Source Tracking
  • And More

All metrics can be sorted by date, location/entity, job category, status and viewed comparatively over time periods.

Talent Engine Connect

Buyer Talent Engine makes it easy to cultivate candidates with our full featured CRM providing automated job notifications and other HR related news via text and email.

An integrated, third-party job board “Quick Apply” feature, a selective career site interest-capture form, “drag and drop” resume feature and bulk list upload function allow for easy candidate acquisition while robust candidate management tools provide ranking, filtering, tagging, dispositioning, internal sharing, and communicating with candidates through text and email. Additionally, AI can now automatically rank candidates against published job requirements and displays a rational for each rank.

Talent Engine Promote

Automatically promote content throughout the entire hiring lifecycle and convert more candidates with Buyer Talent Engine. Our communications platform empowers you to create, schedule and send out relationship building content via text and email, increasing candidate hires over time. You can also define unique audiences based on job categories, locations, tags, and pipeline stages and set triggers to send content based on status updates or date and time. Additionally, you can leverage built in AI to help generate fresh content for drip marketing and blog posts and track candidate outreach including campaign content, sent messages, opens, and click throughs.

Talent Engine Spotlight

Showcasing your employees as part of a robust Employer Brand campaign has proven to make organizations more relatable to job seekers. Now you can collect and share authentic employee experiences through videos with Buyer Talent Engine. Encourage employees to submit self-shot videos as part of a campaign to share their success stories.  These videos are stored in an approval queue and, if selected, are posted to a custom branded video wall. The videos are also made available to publish with embedded links on the career site and in email and text marketing at your discretion. An administrative tool allows access to manage the submitted videos, admin users, the video approval process and employee email and text lists for internal marketing.

Set Up & Integration

Setting up Buyer Talent Engine requires minimal IT resources to launch in less than 60 days. This means your organization can be up and running quickly, without presenting a major technical overhaul or compromising your brand integrity.

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates critical to our client partners’ success. We cultivate unique Employer Brands that set our clients apart from the competition, while creating a personal connection with their future employees. Our industry leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze and track candidates through the hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service. With a proven history of supporting a diverse mix of organizations for more than fifty years, we’re confident we’ll exceed your staffing expectations.

To learn more about our customized recruitment solutions, contact Natasha Cuomo, our VP of Strategic Partnerships, at ncuomo@buyerads.com or visit our website, www.buyerads.com.

Buyer Talent Solutions: Talent Engine

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With 50+ years of recruitment advertising experience, we have deep-rooted knowledge of the daily challenges employers face when looking to hire. It’s allowed us to create an all-in-one solution our clients use with great success—Talent Engine.

Talent Engine is our search engine optimized hiring platform that empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, and track candidates through the hiring process—backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service. It features Buyer’s extensive suite of recruitment solutions and is categorized into four main areas: attract, engage, optimize, and analyze.

Attract

Talent Engine Attract is all about eliminating waste, driving better candidate flow, and improving ROI. Our programmatic ad management solution drives candidates to the jobs that need the most applies. We do this through automated ad placement to determine which jobs need more exposure, detailed analytics to optimize media/advertising budgets in real-time, and non-contract, performance based tracking down to the job level. We’ll also ensure your ads appear on major traffic drivers like Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, and more.

Engage

Talent Engine Engage works to captivate top talent with a customized career site. Start fresh with our Employer Brand development services to showcase your workplace culture, or upgrade your site’s user experience through the implementation of video, dynamic job descriptions, and original content.

Optimize

With over 250 million job searches occurring on Google each month, it’s crucial to position your job opportunities for optimal exposure. Talent Engine Optimize elevates the position of your job postings in organic search results to increase your career site traffic. The platform is customizable to preserve your unique brand/content, with no need to change your current ATS.

Analyze

Finally, Talent Engine Analyze evaluates your recruitment marketing efforts while increasing your ROI with real-time, track-to-hire source metrics. Key metrics could include cost per qualified applicant, cost per hire, time to fill, candidate conversions to applicants, and much more. With Talent Engine Analyze you can send text/email reminders to candidates to prevent application falloff while identifying influential media/direct sources delivering candidates and hires.

Talent Engine is a direct product of Buyer’s resources and industry knowledge, and we’re ready to leverage it to meet your hiring goals. Contact us at 857-404-0864 or info@BuyerAds.com to learn more about our customized recruitment solutions.

Interview with a Bot: The Emerging Advantages of AI in Recruitment

 

AI graphicWhether you call it Siri, Alexa, even Olivia, Artificial Intelligence comes in many forms and is re-shaping how we use technology to simplify the world around us.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) is when machines demonstrate seemingly natural intelligence that imitate humanlike functions—conversation, problem solving, learning, etc. Continuing to evolve, AI has made its way into the world of Human Resources. In fact, AI is now being used to analyze applicant data to efficiently narrow down candidates, to facilitate consistent contact with candidates to prevent application drop off, and to automatically schedule and confirm candidates for interviews without the need for human intervention.

We’ve Been Testing AI with Surprising Success

As an example, MJHS, a large not-for-profit healthcare system and client of Buyer, recently experimented with an AI assistant, powered by the tech start up, Paradox Olivia, to simplify the screening and scheduling of candidate interviews for one of their hiring events. Results were impressive with an astounding 77% increase in event registration, a 100% interview acceptance rate and a 60% decrease in cost per applicant acquisition when compared to previous hiring events. Based on this success, we have committed to further integrate AI technology into additional hiring solutions for MJHS and other Buyer clients.

Let us Future Proof your Next Recruitment Strategy

AI is just one of the many solutions that Buyer is leveraging today to ensure our clients’ success. Contact Michael Wishnow at 978-985-1163 or mwishnow@buyertalentsolutions.com to learn more about our customized recruitment solutions that deliver results no matter the budget.

About Buyer

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates critical to our client partners’ success. We cultivate unique Employer Brands that set our clients apart from the competition, while creating a personal connection with their future employees. Our industry leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze and track candidates through the hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service. With a proven history of supporting a diverse mix of organizations for more than fifty years, we’re confident we’ll exceed your staffing expectations.

How Technology is Changing Human Resource Management

image_10Technology is changing every sector of the economy at a rapid pace. One of the biggest changes is in the way that information is shared. When human resources managers are seeking to recruit staff members, post jobs or keep track of applicants, technology is interwoven throughout every process. Consider these three ways in which technology is changing the way that your organization finds, evaluates and trains new people to work in your organization.

Recruiting Through Social Media

More than 92 percent of human resources officers report that they use social media as a recruitment tool [1]. Most adults actively participate in at least one social media network. Human resources teams can post job openings through a variety of methods on social media. They can use a person’s university affiliation, experience, likes and interests on social media as recruitment techniques. Social media also allows for the implementation of viral recruiting techniques. For example, if your company has dozens or hundreds of seasonal jobs to fill, shares and retweets on social media are fast ways to recruit the staff you need.

Digital Job Postings and Applications

Long gone are the days when you had to fax a job advertisement to the newspaper, wait for them to print it and then wait for applications to come in through snail mail. You can now use technology to almost instantaneously deliver job postings to dozens of recruitment websites, university posting services, professional networks and social media outlets. Applicants do not have to carefully print their applications. They can deliver them to you through your platform or send them electronically through email, allowing you to get responses within minutes of posting an opening.

Information Storage and Retrieval

When your recruitment strategies on social media are successful, you could end up with hundreds of applications. Technology facilitates the storage and retrieval of all of this information. When you have another, similar job opening, you can refer to your database and see which qualified applicants might fit the bill. Cloud computing makes it easy and cost-effective to store a great deal of digital information for recruiting.

[1] http://www.gethppy.com/hrtrends/technology-changing-human-resource-management

What is the Future of Applicant Tracking Systems in Recruiting?

image_16In today’s competitive economy, employers still hold the edge when it comes to filling a job that pays well and offers great benefits. These openings could attract dozens, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of applicants. Sorting through so many applications could take all of your time, which is why applicant tracking systems in recruiting are so important. As many as 50 percent of mid-size employers use these systems while up to 90 percent of large corporations use them [1]. Consider these ways that applicant tracking systems could be of use or change in the future.

Improving the Quality of New Hires

Applicant tracking systems in recruiting will continue to provide an opportunity to boost the quality of the new hires that you bring into your corporation. These tracking systems can help you to use pre-identified standards, such as certain programming languages in computer systems jobs or fluency in Spanish for sales jobs. The automatic selection of candidates with the ideal qualifications helps you to avoid wasting your time reading through applications of people who do not have what you are seeking in a new hire.

Complying with Laws

Now and into the future, you will be able to use applicant tracking systems in your recruiting procedures to comply with local, state and federal hiring requirements. For example, if your organization were to receive a complaint about the recruitment or hiring practices, you could refer to the data collected by your applicant tracking system to back up your practices and provide key details about the numbers of applicants and their demographic information.

Instantaneous Messaging with Applicants

When a fantastic application comes into your tracking system, you may want to contact that person right away and have the individual come in for an interview. The future of tracking systems will allow for instant messaging or calling of the applicant. Being able to quickly contact a fabulous candidate gives your organization the best chance of adding that person to your organization instead of letting the person slip through the cracks and end up with one of your competitors.

 

[1] http://www.hireright.com/blog/2014/02/four-key-benefits-of-an-e-recruiting-solution-ats-applicant-tracking-system/

The Pros of the Telecommute Perk

image_011Telecommuting began to rise in popularity within the past decade when fuel prices soared. While it immediately benefited employees who would no longer have to spend hundreds of dollars per month to fill their gas tanks, human resources managers also began to notice benefits. Telecommuting is a growing trend – about 40% of U.S. employees are working remotely either full time or part time [1]. If you are considering implementing a telecommuting policy at your organization, keep these pros in mind when making your decisions and setting up the rules of your telecommuting program.

Efficiency

Employees who work from home may be able to start their workdays earlier and end later than they would if they had to commute. They may also experience fewer distractions, such as conversations at the water cooler or disruptions from coworkers chatting rather than working. On the other hand, employees who work at home may become distracted by household chores, the doorbell, television, and spouses or children who are also at home.

Equipment Savings

When employees work from home, your organization may be able to cut on some costs, such as utilities, office supplies and furniture. A typical business could potentially save up to $11,000 per employee per year [2]. When telecommuting employees do come into the office, they may be able to use shared work areas. This might even allow your organization to be housed in a smaller space. Keep in mind that you may have to reimburse your employees for their work-related internet fees, pay phone bills for work calls and provide them with a laptop so that they can do their work from home.

Employee Loyalty and Retaining Staff

The flexibility of being able to telecommute may help to increase the loyalty of your employees. Employees who have young children may appreciate the ability to work from home on days when their childcare center is closed or when their child is sick. You may be able to retain your staff by offering the option of telecommuting one or more days per week. Your employees are sure to enjoy the time savings and experience less stress from not having to drive in weekday rush-hour traffic. The savings on gas and wear and tear on cars also benefits your staff, who may decide to stay with you for these benefits.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2016/07/27/for-employee-retention-theres-no-place-like-home/#48ca551855ec

[2] http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics

How Members of the Baby Boomer Generation Can Learn Tech Speak from Millennials

image_04As the Millennial generation enters the workplace in numbers large enough to overtake the Baby Boom generation, there can be a communications chasm between the two groups. Millennials have grown up with in-hand technology, including smartphones and tablets. The Baby Boom generation has had to actively embrace these tools, especially when it comes to using them in the workplace. Forging that communications gap can be done by getting the members of the two generations together in a variety of situations. The Baby Boomers can learn tech speak from Millennials using these three strategies.

Exploit Similarities

One way to get Baby Boomers to start using tech speak is to explore the similarities between talking about tech and talking about any other specialized field of knowledge. Every industry has its own lingo. Take advantage of the similarities by engaging Baby Boomers with Millennials in familiar situations. What used to be a “conference call” may now be referred to as “Skyping,” for example. Moving about on a website used to be called “tabbing” or “paging” but now is just “scrolling.”

Mentoring Programs

Mentoring programs are a great way to get people of different experience levels working together. A member of the Baby Boom generation can be paired with a Millennial for practice opportunities to learn about tech speak. Millennials will benefit from the increased face-to-face interactions as much of their world revolves around digital communications. These mentoring programs do not only have to be among coworkers but can also include college and even high school interns who come into your organization for short periods of time.

Teamwork

Effective engagement can also take place through teamwork. Placing members of different generations into the same working teams in your organization can help everyone to learn each other’s styles of communication. While Millennials often see communication as a way to convey bits of information, the Baby Boom generation may see communications as a way to get to know another person. These ideas can be meshed by having people interact in a variety of ways in the workplace. Seeing a project through from start to finish enhances communication.

 

Determining Whether an Applicant Tracking System is a Necessity for HR Professionals

image_05Before you make a decision about whether or not to use an applicant tracking system, consider what has happened to give rise to their use.

Gone are the days when job applicants typed their resumes, wrote a cover letter, mailed it and went through the same process for the next job. Now, applicants can post their resume online, and in just a short session at their computer, they can submit their resume to 10, 20 or more jobs without even considering if they meet the job requirements. The result? Recruiters are buried in online submissions.

To counter the enormous influx of resumes, many from clearly unqualified candidates, companies have resorted to applicant tracking systems to cull the number of resumes by identifying keywords that must appear in the resume before an actual recruiter sees it.

Often, a company will receive 250 or more resumes for an open position. Their applicant tracking system will only allow about 25 percent of those to move forward, but are they the right 25 percent? While the numbers support the success of using these systems, when you dig a little deeper, there’s often a gap between the use of keywords and the actual skills required for the job. Just because an applicant’s resume is worded to “beat the system” doesn’t mean he or she is qualified.

Applicant tracking systems are increasing in use, and they serve a real purpose, but there are some characteristics that should be considered before purchasing and installing one:

  • Make sure the system you purchase is mobile friendly. If it isn’t, you could be losing qualified candidates who move on to a more mobile-friendly application process at another company.
  • Ensure that your system allows qualified candidates who aren’t hired to go into a recruiting pipeline.
  • The filters in your system should not be too restrictive. For example, while an MBA may be preferred, a master’s degree in another area might be acceptable as well.

Many HR professionals see more value in a well-trained recruiter who can scan a large stack of resumes and sort them quickly into “unqualified,” “maybe” and “call for phone screen.” As job seekers become more familiar with the system, they’ll get better at presenting themselves as someone who uses the right words instead of someone who can do the job.

Using Technology to Anticipate Your Future Hiring Needs

image_08Whether you are a startup business or an already established company, planning ahead for the future is a necessity. Being prepared for the future means considering where your company is at today and where you would like it to be tomorrow. Find out how technology and strategic workforce planning can go hand in hand to help you anticipate your employment needs for the coming years.

Utilizing technology can make workforce planning more efficient and provide improved results. Special workforce planning software allows you to analyze your company’s current workforce trends and make educated projections for trends in the future. By plugging in internal and external data, software can help you arrive at more accurate results. Not only can software help you plan for the future, but it can also help guide you along the way by monitoring your progress and alerting you to any variations from the master plan.

Another key benefit is that software can help your company adapt to changing conditions. The talent that was critical for success a few years ago may not suffice in an environment with new challenges that demand new solutions. Workforce planning is not limited to software only, but utilizing your technological resources wisely can better support your executives, HR department, and hiring managers throughout the process. Have a one-on-one session with your IT consultant and discuss the kinds of workforce planning software that are available and which one in particular would be a good fit for your company’s needs.

In summary, using technology to plan for the future creates a culture where workforce planning is based on data and better equips executives in evaluating how changes in objectives and the environment impact staffing levels. Most importantly, approaching workforce planning in a way that fits your company’s needs and aligns with your future goals is key to a successful future.