Tag: recruitment

The Latest Trends In Recruitment Marketing

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_30Recruiting top talent to your organization requires a lot more these days than an ad in a newspaper or a posting on a real or virtual bulletin board. Your organization must truly engage with past, present and future clients and employees to get word out about who you are and what you need. Staying on top of the latest trends for recruitment marketing will help to ensure that you get the tech-savvy, highly skilled and creative staff members you desire.

Taking to the Skies

One of the leading trends in recruitment marketing is the use of cloud services. Organizations like yours are using the cloud for activities related to hiring, recruitment and retaining of staff. Some ways you can use the cloud include storing of resumes and references.

Creating Online Communities

The creation of online communities allows you to directly engage with potential candidates. Applicants can post questions to be answered by members of your team. Your current staff can also use these forums as a way to engage with one another, especially if your organization has staff around the state, country or world.

Establishing Digital Recruitment Strategies

If you’re looking for new team members that are attuned to technology and communication, you need to market yourself digitally through social media. Today’s applicants are increasingly looking to websites such as Twitter, Facebook and others to find out about potential opportunities for employment. Make yourself known so that qualified candidates can easily find you.

Shifting to Mobile Marketing

Members of Generation Y, Generation X and even the Baby Boomers are trending away from the use of desktop and laptop computers. Instead, they are using tablets and smartphones to conduct their communications, Internet searches and quests for employment. Optimizing your website for use on mobile devices will help applicants navigate through your application process more easily.

Engaging through Social Media

Building an online community on social media is another must-do for recruitment. Above and beyond posting your job openings, you should also use social media to build a following of customers and add to your contingent of partners across many industries.

 

How to Recruit, Hire, and Retain the Best of Generation Y

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_10Generation Y, also known as the Millennial generation, are people born between the years of 1982 and 2000. This generation of workers operates under a much different life plan and moral code than their predecessors, the Baby Boomers. They’re even different from Generation X, who are currently in their prime working years. These proven strategies will help you to effectively recruit, hire and retain the best of Generation Y.

Recruiting Generation Y to Your Organization

If there is anything Generation Y is known for, it is walking to the beat of their own drummers. To find the best and brightest of Generation Y, you may need to recruit outside the “ivory tower” and look to places such as community organizations, international volunteer programs and other places where members of this generation are spending time before and after their college years.

Hiring with Purpose

During the hiring process, prepare your human resources staff for an onslaught of questions from the applicants. They will want to know their purpose in your organization and how they will fit into the culture. You’ll need to offer clear-cut explanations for not just their specific job duties, but how their work will make an impact on the world around them.

Fostering Growth and Opportunities

Members of Generation Y are committed to lifelong learning and want to be challenged in what they do. Your organization can retain these highly motivated employees by offering continuing educational opportunities as well as work-related perks such as tuition reimbursement, on-site workshops and partnerships with community organizations who can benefit from their expertise while teaching them additional skills such as creative thinking and resourcefulness.

Offer Flexibility and Alternative Reward Systems

In order to be able to maintain their outside interests, volunteer activities and continuing education, members of Generation Y want a workplace that offers flexibility. Alternative work hours other than the typical 9 to 5 business hours are key to helping members of this generation stay with your organization. Telecommuting is another option to retain these tech-savvy staff members. Also consider alternative reward systems such as more vacation time rather than bonuses.

 

What Are the Best Practices for Achieving Workforce Diversity?

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_014Diversity in the workforce is a proactive undertaking that is much different from the legally binding requirements of affirmative action and equal employment opportunities. A diverse workforce takes into account much more than gender, race and ethnicity. These best practices will help your organization set and achieve reachable diversity goals.

Start at the Top

Just like a parent should set an example of desired behavior before expecting their children to follow, so should the leaders of your organization. A diverse management team shows that you’re committed to the cause from the bottom up and the top down. The top members of the organization should speak positively of diversity and communicate their commitment to this ideal situation. Be sure to include a business case for diversity that can be shared with your stakeholders and other interested parties.

Create Organizational Diversity Goals

Simply having the idea of “diversity” on the minds of hiring managers isn’t enough. The human resources staff, hiring managers, CEO and others must come together to create organizational goals around diversity. Perhaps this means adding a new manager with a different cultural background or considering the addition of staff with unusual experiences. Whatever the goals are, they need to be in writing and widely shared.

Enact Mentoring Programs

A work site mentoring program shows that you’re committed to helping diverse members of your staff achieve their personal and professional goals. Mentors can be within your organization or from partnerships you have within the community, such as at local colleges and universities. The mentoring program should include activities during the workday as well as optional events during evenings and weekends.

Recruit Widely and Broadly

While every organization has their favorite recruitment events and locations, expanding beyond these can help you achieve your goals for a more diverse workplace. Look to partnering with community organizations in your city as well as those in nearby small towns and villages where recruitment events are rare. Take your show on the road to satellite campuses of large universities. Consider recruiting from vocational schools and community colleges where appropriate.

 

Increase Brand Awareness and Your Recruitment Reach by Implementing Fresh Content

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_16When you need to increase awareness of your brand and bring in new, energetic staff members to your team, one way to do so is to implement fresh content across all of your media. Your website is the first place prospective candidates go to find out about you. Old, outdated content that is no longer relevant or that never changes from one day to the next is a sure way to turn off high-quality applicants. Consider implementing these four types of content to keep your recruitment and brand up to date.

Informative News
When you’re launching a new company-wide initiative, releasing a new product or making updates to an existing service, let your customers and potential employees know about it. Take care to not only release statistics but to create small sound bites of 88 words or less about what’s going on this week at your organization.

Videos
Actions speak louder than words, and today’s job seekers want to see what your company is up to. Uploading relevant videos to your website and social media pages helps applicants really get a feel for what your organization is doing. Videos should not be highly choreographed or edited but should provide a glimpse of the important goings-on at your headquarters and facilities.

Asking Questions
Another way to increase your brand awareness and keep recruits interested in your organization is to ask questions as a part of your overall content stream. Be welcoming to any and all responses, including those that might not be as positive as you would like. Even criticism helps to keep the conversation going. The more likes and followers, the more of your content that will be shown on your followers’ feeds.

Success Stories
Your customers and potential recruits love to hear success stories related to your brand and not just self-serving ones. Let your customers, current employees or former staff members who have retired or moved on tell others about their successes with you. Perhaps an episode of exceptional customer service or a fantastic mentoring program is just what your recruitment marketing needs to draw in the best of the applicants.

 

How Conducting a Behavior-Based Interview Can Help You Find the Right Candidate

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

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How Conducting a Behavior-Based Interview Can Help You Find the Right Candidate

As the economy makes leaps and strides past recession, employers are ramping up their hiring processes in response to the surge in talent. In order to find the best candidates, many hiring managers are using behavior-based interviews. According to the U.S. Department of Veteran’s affairs, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior[1]. Consider three reasons why this interviewing process can help you find the right candidate for each of your available positions.

Identifying Essential Experience

Because what has happened in the past is highly likely to happen again, asking interviewees about their previous experiences in particular situations will help you get a grasp on how they can handle stress, deadlines and other pertinent situations. You might ask questions such as what an applicant did when other team members didn’t hold up their end of the deal on a project or how they handled an irate customer. This helps you get a feel for the applicant’s personality as well as his or her mastery of customer care and teamwork.

Capturing Skill Sets

Every job has essential skills that must be mastered in order to achieve and maintain success. To get a behavior-based idea of an applicant’s relevant skills, you could ask a question such as, “How did you increase conversions on your most recent online marketing campaign?” This type of question gives you inside perspective on a worker’s mastery of specific types of skills, their flexibility to change what isn’t working and swap it out for something else, and their willingness to work toward and achieve a goal that benefits the organization.

Meshing with the Corporate Culture

In addition to finding candidates with the right experience and skill set for the job, you’ll also want to make sure they will fit into your corporate culture. This is a fantastic time to ask hypothetical behavior-based questions, such as “What would you do if there were no supervisors in the office for an entire week, and none could be reached by electronic means?” These types of questions help you figure out who will be the most likely to succeed in your organization.

[1] http://www.va.gov/PBI/index.asp

7 Steps for Recruiting Hard-to-find Passive Candidates

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_02Passive candidates are highly sought after for their skills yet difficult to obtain in the current job market. Because they are already employed, passive candidates are typically content in their careers and not actively searching for new job opportunities. Find out how a 7-step process could help you in recruiting passive candidates.

1. Defining candidates

Make out a detailed list of a performance-based job description defining the requirements for the perfect candidate. This list goes beyond a simple job description; instead, it outlines the work that needs to be done. If you can confirm your candidate is competent and motivated to accomplish the work described, then you can be assured that person has the requirements for the position.

2. Finding candidates

A quick Boolean search can help you find a group of select candidates that fit your description. LinkedIn is another great way to get connected with passive candidates.

3. Contacting candidates

A compelling email or a brief voicemail is a great way to catch a potential candidate’s attention.

4. Discussing the opportunity

Engaging in a conversation about a potential job opportunity is not difficult; however, the way you deliver the discussion could either make or break it. An important thing to remember is to not pitch too hard too fast. This means taking the time to listen and determine what the person would require to seriously consider the offer.

5. Attracting the candidate

Selling the job is not always the key to persuasion. Find out what the gaps are between the performance-based job description and what they have accomplished. Express your concerns about these potential problem areas for growth. When your candidate tries to convince you of why they are qualified for the job, you know you are ready to move forward.

6. Focusing on career opportunity

Maximize the career growth opportunity rather than focusing on compensation. Convincing candidates that the opportunity presents the best option for them is a deal winner. You don’t want your candidate to be sold on the wrong reasons.

7. Hiring managers’ accountability

Holding your hiring mangers accountable to a certain standard of high quality is important. You want the best people for the job, but you also need a right fit in company culture.

Having a recruitment strategy in place specifically designed for passive candidates can help tremendously. This 7-step process, if followed correctly, is sure to land you passive job prospects.

The Hiring Process: Interviewing Potential Job Candidates

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_012While vast amounts of resources exist, there is no perfect answer to selecting the right person for your organization. Nevertheless, the interview is a tremendous link in the hiring process. When used effectively, your hiring team can get more out of the interview to help you make better hiring decisions.

Interviewing potential job candidates is one of the last steps in the hiring process. There are actions that precede meeting with candidates to discuss a job opening. It is best to make sure that your recruiting team completes these actions, which will have a direct impact on the effectiveness of the interviews.

Objectives for Interviewing Candidates

Essentially, there are five objectives for every job interview. Accomplishing all five shows how well you are prepared to introduce your organization and position to people who have applied for the job.

1. Collect relevant information about the potential candidate
2. Describe position and expectations of the job
3. Assess how well the job candidate may fit into the position and corporate culture
4. Educate job candidate about the culture and purpose for the organization’s existence
5. Answer any of the candidate’s questions

Plan the Interview

Keep in mind that the interview begins before you sit down with a candidate. In preparation, make sure that you:

• Review the job description
• Prepare questions that focus on skills, abilities and past work performances
• Determine measurable criteria for comparing and analyzing each candidate
• Decide if a panel or one-on-one interview style is appropriate
• Review all documents from job candidates
• Prepare applicable tests that relate to job skills

During the Interview

Give the job candidate space to formulate answers that demonstrate a good fit for your company’s needs. Do this without offering too many details upfront and possibly putting words into the candidate’s mouth.

Ask questions that provide insight into the candidate’s past work performances. For example, if the open position demands organization skills, you might ask, “How do you keep track of desk work and schedules?” Pay attention to how the candidate listens and responds.

Arrange to conduct the interview in a private and reasonably comfortable room. With a solid list of questions and ample preparation time, you are in a stronger position to turn job candidates into productive employees.

 

Engineering, Designing and Deploying a Career Web Page That’s Accessible From Anywhere on the Employer Website

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_016An increasing number of job seekers are using mobile devices to conduct their employment searches. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly or fully functional on mobile devices, your company may be missing a large segment of the candidate population as 77 percent of job seekers read postings and 45 percent apply for jobs on their smartphones [1]. Consider these tips when engineering your recruitment website.

Setting up a User-friendly Career Web Page

When creating a job recruitment page for your corporate website, take the time to work with the IT team to ensure the page is accessible on a wide variety of devices. What works on an iPhone does not necessarily show up correctly on a Blackberry or Android device. The page should also offer responsive design elements such as fluid images, flexible resolution and compatibility with different Web browsers.

Enhancing Website Accessibility

To make your career page accessible from anywhere on the corporate website, consider the page resolution. If you want to be mobile-friendly without having a separate mobile website, adjust the page format to portrait, rather than landscape. You’ll also need to adjust the text size and make images small, if you include them at all. Your IT department should test the accessibility using a variety of devices to ensure that the recruitment page works as expected from all the links on your website.

Making the Recruitment Page Easy for Job Seekers to Find

During the process of deploying your new recruitment page, ensure that the job listings page is easy to find from anywhere on your website. Simple buttons that direct candidates to the job search tool or application page make it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. Each page should contain these buttons, including your home page. No animation or videos should be on the job seeking pages as these make the pages load too slowly for mobile device users. If you want to create a video to show users how to apply for a position with your company, embed a link to the video so they can view it from a separate page or window.

[1] http://about.beyond.com/infographics/mobile-job-search-apps

Recruitment Using Social Media: How to Turn Connections into Candidates

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

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Building a solid company starts with recruiting and hiring solid people who share your corporate values. One way to connect directly with high-caliber candidates is through your current social media connections. Last year, 73% of recruiters successfully hired a candidate through social media. [1]

With unprecedented access to large numbers of people, social media sites provide an effective tool for finding candidates with the experience and skills that your company needs.

The following information offers some tips for productive efforts when using social media as a recruiting tool.

Think Quality vs. Quantity

Without much debate, it is best to build the quality – not just quantity – of your connections. While social media sites enable you to widen the recruitment pool, you must be careful to reach the right people. Having 50 potential candidates who appear to be a close fit for your company is more valuable than 500 people who use their connections as a numbers game. Less is definitely more when incorporated as a targeted strategy to recruit the right people.

Potential Candidates are Recruiting You, Too

Do not forget: social media works as a two-way street. You are looking for connections that lead to great candidates; your connections are looking for connections that lead to a great place to work. Make sure that your social media presence projects the right image and perception. This involves having current and relevant information on all the social media sites where your company is active, as well as the company website.

Ask questions. Perhaps they want to know something about your company that is not common knowledge. Ask how they plan to become an effective employee or better person. Answers may reveal who might be a good fit.

Savvy Recruitment Ideas to Get Started

A keyboard and computer screen may separate you from social media connections, but some offline conversations can still apply. Use appropriate sites to engage connections with good conversation topics. Start by describing what a typical day is like working at your company. Share team profiles, insights into the culture and statements from employees to give an inside glimpse.

Another discussion starter is sharing industry news. People who are interested in working at your company are also interested in hearing about the latest industry information.

Pay attention to which strategies work best for attracting the ideal candidates.

[1] http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245097

How to Effectively Implement an Employee Referral Program

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_01Contrary to what some people might think, not all employers can access an infinite flow of resumes at any time to find a qualified job applicant. For most hiring managers and HR professionals, their schedules are filled with daily tasks that make it harder to devote enough time to recruitment. Nevertheless, part of their role within the company is to find candidates that have the skill, ability and cultural fit for their organization.

One possible answer is hiring via employee referrals. Some studies show that a top source for quality hiring comes from employee referrals. Companies who use employee referral programs have average retention rates of 46 percent, and referral programs can save organizations $3,000 or more per hire [1]. The challenge then becomes implementing a sustainable, well-functioning employee referral program to make the hiring practice less challenging.

Develop a Comprehensive Program

Simply asking employees to hit the streets and recruit is not enough; you should develop a comprehensive plan that clearly communicates the program’s objectives and hiring goals. Even if you engage your top sales team, this does not automatically make them the best recruiters.

Communication and training should be part of the employee referral program. This will acquaint your employees with policies and company rules surrounding recruitment. Additionally, training gives you an opportunity to teach employees how to talk positively about the company.

Some organizations find that asking employees to look for talent at industry conferences or association meetings expands the opportunity to find prospective recruits. The goal is to encourage employees to refer new acquaintances in addition to people they already know.

Select Common Sense Awards

How you decide to reward employees for referring quality candidates is typically based on your desired level of employee engagement. While cash rewards are typically the top incentive, some employees are equally satisfied with extra time off or travel bonuses.

If you choose cash rewards, you might want to pay employees in portions. You can pay part of the reward upon hiring a candidate, and more is paid after the new employee completes the probation period. Final payment could be made after the employee’s first anniversary.

Organizations can gain several benefits through an effective employee referral program. The program helps to reduce the burden on one person or department for finding top talent. When implemented effectively, the program can increase employee engagement.

 

[1] https://www.recruiter.com/i/10-employee-referral-program-fast-facts/