Recent grads may not have a wealth of experience under their belt, but they are the future of the workforce. This group of emerging talent has a lot to offer your company. That is — if you can recruit and retain these new grads.

This article covers what factors new college graduates care about and how you can adjust your recruitment strategy to attract top-tier talent. 

What do new grads care about?

While new grads weigh several factors carefully in their job search, research shows that they care about these three factors:

1. Employer Branding 
2. Ease of Hiring 
3. Career Development 

Employer branding for new grads

Younger candidates won’t be satisfied with only an impressive salary or cool perks. A study by Monster revealed that 3 in 10 college grads want to see a company’s commitment to diversity before applying. In addition, this same study showed that 91% of college grads are looking for companies that encourage conversations about mental wellness at work. 

To attract new grads to your company, showcase benefits such as mental health days, the option to work remotely, and that your organization values diversity. You might do this by highlighting their future colleagues and fostering relationships right from the start. 

Tips for improving employer branding

• Make the candidate experience a learning experience: Let candidates see what it would be like to work at your company. Invite them to talk to potential future colleagues to get a better idea of what their role would involve. 
• Create a careers page that converts: Your careers page should be simple to navigate and leverage social media for ease of sharing. Consider including written or video testimonials from current employees discussing the workplace culture. Additionally, showcase the diversity in your organization.

Ease of hiring for new grads

According to SHRM, 60% of applicants quit their job applications halfway through due to the length or difficulty of the application. New grads that do complete their applications can also disappear during the interview process. With 74% of recruiters saying they were ghosted by younger talent, you can do more to keep talent engaged all the way to the offer stage. 

Tips for improving the hiring process

• Speed up applications: Streamline the application process for new applicants. It should take less than 2 minutes to apply to your job postings. 
• Use social channels to distribute jobs: To find younger talent, you need to go to where they are. Leverage social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok to share links to job postings. Automate interview scheduling: Don’t rely on manual phone calls or emails from recruiters. Instantly scheduling interviews online reduces the chance of losing applicants to faster-moving companies. 

Career development

The US Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that more than 50% of new grads left their first job in under a year. Young people are still experimenting and trying to find the right fit; you have a better chance of retaining them if you make it clear that there are opportunities at your company beyond the role they initially take. 

Tips for improving retention of new grads

• Communicate a clear path for career development: Younger hires can feel disengaged in their roles. From their first day, outline a clear path for career development, and help them meet these goals over time. 
• Use new hire surveys: Surveys give new grads the opportunity to reflect on their role and provide feedback on their experience with your company. If they aren’t feeling engaged, let them know that it’s okay to feel unfulfilled in a position, but they could have a future at your company in another department. This way, you open up the world of internal recruitment and keep great talent in the organization. 
• Promote internal mobility: Before turning to new hires to fill roles, allow existing employees – including newly hired graduates – to move between roles. It allows employees to advance their skills and give them opportunities to grow, and enhances your employer brand over time through positive reviews and word of mouth.

Conclusion

As you can see, attracting and keeping new grads in your organization takes effort. You need to showcase the benefits of working for your company and strengthen your employer brand to attract young talent. 

Make your application process simple and allow new grads to apply via social media platforms. To improve retention of new grads, create a clear path for career development that fosters conversation and openness. 

SmartRecruiters can help your organization hire new grads by: 

• Using our talent acquisition platform to streamline your applicant tracking process and send out automated interview scheduling requests
• Using our recruitment marketing platform to connect with talent wherever they are (social media, job boards, forums)
• Digitizing job offers and creating a seamless journey from application to onboarding. 

Take the first step towards hiring success by requesting a demo of SmartRecruiters talent acquisition software. 

Table of Contents

• What is university recruiting?
• University recruiting for Gen Z
• Components of a university recruiting strategy
• How to conduct campus recruiting events in-person
• How to conduct campus recruiting events online
• University recruiting for diverse talent
• Social media and mobile recruiting for university talent attraction
• University recruiting best practices checklist

What is university recruiting?

University recruiting is the process by which a company sources, makes contact with, and hires college/university students and recent graduates for internships and entry-level positions. Certain sectors depend greatly on university recruiting: technology, engineering, finance, and consulting. Frequently used approaches to campus recruiting include attending career fairs to connect directly with students, collaborating with campus career centers, and social media marketing.

University recruiting for Gen Z

To effectively recruit Gen Z job applicants on university campuses, focus on their skills, outlook/mindset, and values. Gen Z is:

• Tech-savvy: Gen Z is more tech-savvy than any other generation; social media platforms are integral to their personal and professional lives. For Gen Z, the Internet is a tool for work, research, and connecting with people.

• Risk-averse: Studies show that Gen Z is more risk-averse than previous generations, as they grew up during an economic crisis and political uncertainty. For many, stability and security are more desirable than risk-taking. 

• Looking for companies with a strong moral compass: Gen Z is open-minded and expects a similar attitude from an employer. They look for purpose-driven companies, from both a consumer and employee brand standpoint. Gen Z is focused on authenticity and cares about ethical consumption.

• Value diversity & inclusion: Gen Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation to date; almost half are non-white. They care about working for diverse companies that provide fair and equal pay and promotion and want to feel seen and appreciated at work.

• Cares most about salary and work/life balance: They seek freedom and flexibility in a role.

Your recruiting strategy for Gen Z should include:

• Campus recruitment: Forming and maintaining solid relationships with colleges/universities is critical to connecting with Gen Z.

• A compelling career site: A company’s career page is the cornerstone of its recruitment marketing strategy, especially for tech-savvy Gen Z applicants. The most important information should be easy to find, and the company website should be current.

• A personalized communication strategy: Ask university students to join your talent community before applying, and share content based on their interests. During the interview process, send updates to let candidates know their status. 

• Appealing job descriptions: Write job descriptions that appeal to Gen Z’s priorities.

• An employee influencer network: As Gen Z relies on referrals when looking for a new role, utilize current employees and alumni networks to attract talent on campus.

How to conduct campus recruiting events in-person

For in-person campus recruiting events, such as career fairs, assemble a team of well-informed, personable, and enthusiastic employees who can answer questions. This group of employees should include both recent graduates and older individuals. While having students talk with young professionals who recently graduated from the university can be a productive approach, seasoned, higher-level employees have vital information to share with college students who want to learn about a potentially long-lasting career at a company.

How to conduct campus recruiting events online

Online (virtual) recruiting reaches more candidates, particularly for smaller companies without a sizable recruiting staff devoted to sourcing prospective talent. In addition, online job fairs or open houses require less time and fewer resources than in-person events.

To create an online recruiting event, follow these steps:

• Select the right platform: Choose software that will provide the most functionality and a great candidate experience.

• Promote the event across digital platforms: Advertise the online event on your careers website and social media pages to optimize candidate engagement.

• Follow-up with participants: Reach out to all the attendees via email or direct message to thank them for attending the event and let them know how to contact you with any questions they may have.

• Use metrics to track success: Track the number of registrants and attendees and calculate conversion and offer acceptance rates of the attendees.

University recruiting for diverse talent

A well-designed recruitment strategy will help you effectively market to, connect with, and recruit minority students and graduates. Incorporate these elements in university recruiting:

• Establish your diversity brand: Showcase the company’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. Display relevant employee resource group activities on your company’s career page. Host the CEO’s diversity statement on both the career page and various social media platforms. 

• Develop strategic relationships with HBCUs: Strategic partnerships at historically Black colleges and universities will attract diverse talent and lead to future opportunities to reach highly educated talent. 

• Work with student groups: You can build your employer brand in diverse communities through strategic sponsorship, thought leadership, and events aimed at diverse student organizations. 

• Frequent virtual career fairs for targeted student groups: Look for virtual events that reach diverse groups such as women, veterans, and people with disabilities.

• Use employee resource groups (ERGs) to increase recruiting efforts: Members of your employee resource groups can act as representatives for university recruiting and outreach efforts to campus organizations. 

• Elevate your company’s employee referral program: Include an intentional message about the company’s need for a diverse workforce in your referral program. Highlight the importance of diverse referrals to your company, and explain how you address inclusivity at your company.

Social media and mobile recruiting for university talent attraction

For tech-savvy college students who live on their phones, your social media and mobile strategies help build your company’s employer brand and allow you to identify and target candidates. 

• Mobile-friendly job application process: A simple application process that can be completed on a mobile phone eliminates the barrier to application for candidates, wherever they are.

• Use QR codes in signage for job postings: College students are particularly mobile phone dependent; QR codes should be embedded in all aspects of college recruiting. QR code readers come pre-installed on most smartphone devices and there are many free apps for users with a device not pre-installed with one. 
  • A QR code for job recruitment at a retail site or a campus event represents an opportunity. By clicking the link, potential candidates will be immediately sent to careers page or a job application form. 

• Post jobs on social media: With a mobile-friendly landing page and application process, you can link to jobs in Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google, and Twitter ads. Adding social media to your recruitment strategy can attract active and passive candidates, target your ideal talent pool, boost your employer brand and company culture, and save on recruiting costs.
  • According to GlobalWebIndex, the average internet user has over five social media accounts. As of this year, Instagram has over 1 billion users, and Twitter has over 300 million — and those numbers will only continue to grow.

University recruiting best practices checklist

These are steps that all university recruiting efforts should include to attract and engage the student community:

• Curate a list of primary & secondary school choices: Start by creating a primary campus list and a secondary campus list. The primary schools are where your company will focus most of its efforts. This list is often based on universities with programs that match a company’s required hiring qualifications. It may also include schools from which the company’s outstanding employees graduated. The secondary list should include other schools that are a good source for high-quality applicants. While these schools may have great talent, the number of potential candidates might be lower for various reasons.

• Engage in early recruitment: The best employers start reaching out to students in their first year at university. Some companies are now targeting high schoolers for the early promotion of their employer brand. 

• Build inspiring relationships: It’s not enough to be active on campus. Your company should build inspiring, ongoing relationships with university career centers. Clubs, associations, athletic teams, and faculty members can help promote your company and reach top talent.
  • Find a professor who will invite a company representative into their class or a lecture series in which the company gives a presentation about a topic relevant to the class. This can help raise awareness of the company and generate interest in the profession/field.
  • Identify a recent intern to serve as a campus ambassador who can be a conduit between the company and the school. Students and recent grads know their campuses well and can help spread the word about opportunities at the company.

• Connect with students on and off-campus: University recruitment strategies can include a mix of on-campus and off-campus initiatives and tactics to appeal to your student target audience.

• On-campus: In addition to recruiting students for positions, career centers help facilitate introductions of students to employers. They coordinate career and job fairs, student job programs, graduate school expos, information sessions, table displays, and networking events — all opportunities to meet future talent. Further, schools have departments and/or students who manage online and offline advertising located in academic and high-traffic campus areas — communication channels that should be leveraged.

• Off-campus: Include a clearly defined content strategy on social media and mobile devices. Consider hosting an open house at the company or a career fair. Invite current employees to participate in the fair and share their experience working at the company. Current students can meet potential future colleagues and get a glimpse of what a career at your company might look like. 

• Show new applicants you understand them: Gen Z isn’t interested in micromanaging or monotonous work. They want money, job security, and rewarding experiences. They want to be mentored in an environment where they can advance quickly. An employer who understands what is important to their target student audience and communicates it effectively will be regarded as an employer of choice.

• Use storytelling to attract and engage talent online: Give the company a human face. Develop an online personality via sharing employee testimonials and case studies of prior hired students who have grown and thrived at the company. Consider showcasing photos of corporate and social events. 

• Offer internship opportunities: Create attractive summer, co-op, and intern programs that will allow the company to hire the best talent. Expose students to the company’s brand long before other employers and long before students seek their first full-time career opportunity. 

• Deliver an exceptional candidate experience: The candidate experience is crucial to how the student community regards a company’s brand. Gen Z applicants want to be acknowledged and respected while interacting with a potential employer. You can count on them to share their experience with peers and on social networks. Make sure your hiring processes and applicant tracking system facilitate experiences that leave candidates with a positive impression of your company.

• Measure your results: It’s not enough to put a campus recruitment strategy in place and hope for the best. You need to measure your results to know what worked and what failed. Set goals and KPIs, and assess your results. Over time, you’ll discover the best universities to source talent and most effective channels to communicate your brand. Metrics will also help you understand the types of content and initiatives that attract and engage top-tier talent.

Talent Acquisition has changed forever. Rising volatility and competition have dramatically changed the way you source talent. Remote work has transformed the way you hire. The great resignation is reshaping how you manage and retain employees. Job openings have reached record heights, putting recruiters under pressure. Clearly, the first generation ATS hasn’t moved fast enough to meet the challenges of the day. What do you need to stay competitive in this new world?

Table of Contents

• A traditional ATS is no longer enough
• Compelling candidate experience
• Engaged hiring managers
• Productive recruiters
• Take our ATS Quiz!

A traditional ATS is no longer enough

An applicant tracking system, often referred to as an ATS, is a software application that automates the hiring process. Applicant Tracking Systems were originally designed to store job applications and track applicants through the process. Over time, their capabilities expanded to incorporate candidate sourcing and hiring, among other recruitment needs. The problem is that many of these newer functionalities were designed to be process-centric rather than candidate and engagement-centric. Because these new functionalities were bolted on to the legacy solution, and not developed as an integrated tool, the UX is often clunky and not easy for recruiters to use.

Today, organizations need to be agile and engagement-focused to attract, select and hire the best talent at scale. This is achieved when the 3 pillars of Hiring Success are aligned: candidates have a compelling experience, recruiters are productive, and hiring teams are engaged. If you’re struggling to achieve this with your ATS, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s explore some of the critical capabilities you should look for to achieve your hiring goals.  

Compelling candidate experience

Qualified candidates are a lot like prospective customers. They have bargaining power and lots of options. Their entire experience matters – from how candidates learn about your company, to how you interact with them, to the tools they use to apply. To find and engage them, recruiters need to think like marketers. An ATS that only addresses the bottom of the funnel (candidates trying to apply for jobs) will not position your team for hiring success. Instead, you need to look for a robust set of recruitment marketing features that will help you attract passive candidates and engage them towards conversion. 

A career site that’s geared for conversions

Most ATSs offer basic career sites – static job pages with long lists of open positions. This might have worked in the 90s, but in 2022, your career site needs to do a lot more. It should be part of  your recruitment marketing tool belt, and it should be used in a more strategic way. Think about this: about 70% of job seekers start their search on Google. They do some high-level research. They want to educate themselves about the market and their specific role, and possibly your company and your product before they decide to apply. A career site that contains high quality, personalized content that’s optimized for search helps you attract them. We have seen companies using this strategy increase the number of organic search conversions by 40%. 

The success of your career site will also be determined by its ease of use. Candidates want to be able to apply quickly and easily, on the device they choose. Long and drawn out application forms are things of the past. 

Besides an optimized career site, you need tools to build a digital marketing funnel. That’s where programmatic advertising comes in.  

Programmatic job advertising and sourcing 

Your talent acquisition team needs tools that will help them discover top talent, understand what they are looking for and attract them with targeted campaigns. A first generation ATS should help you post jobs to your job page. A second generation ATS should post automatically to job boards, LinkedIn and other channels. A third generation ATS goes further: it intelligently places ads on job boards that drive the highest conversion for each job type, and dynamically shifts budget to the highest priority roles. Modern ATSs need to have a sophisticated job advertising capability that is pipeline aware, automated, and dynamically allocates budget to the highest-converting job boards.

Obviously not everyone who lands on your job postings will be ready to apply. But that’s ok because you can invite them to subscribe to your newsletter or job alerts. Once candidates make it into this talent pool, you need candidate relationship management (CRM) capabilities to nurture them towards conversion. 

Candidate nurturing and talent relationship management

According to Fosway, “Applicant Tracking System vendors without a TRM-offering are at high risk of being replaced.” An ATS with CRM or TRM capabilities helps you nurture candidates and match them with the right roles. This critical functionality should also help you track all touchpoints and candidate journeys in one system, just like you track customers. 

These recruitment marketing capabilities help you find the right talent and engage them with a compelling experience, so you can ultimately convince them to apply. This brings us to the second pillar of hiring success. 

Engaged hiring managers

According to recent findings from Josh Bersin, collaboration between recruiting and hiring managers is the number one indicator of high performance talent acquisition. This is where effective applicant tracking, evaluation and collaboration play a critical role. 

Applicant tracking

The original ATS was designed to move a paper or email-based process to a computerized system so that recruiters could scale. A modern ATS is more like a system of record, a single source of truth across the entire talent acquisition process. It should make it easy for recruiters to work with many different candidates and spot an applicant’s status quickly, across multiple workflows. It should include advanced candidate search functionalities. It should also help you screen and evaluate candidates faster. 

Evaluation

Modern ATSs come with chatbots and automated Q&A or screening tools to help you speed up the evaluation process at the beginning. Some also include AI capabilities that help you screen hundreds of candidates down to dozens, and create a shortlist of potential matches. Once the recruitment team sources the right talent and makes the key connections, it’s up to the hiring team to close the YES candidates. With the right data at hand, the hiring team is better positioned to collaborate with their recruiting counterparts. 

Collaboration

Modern ATSs should foster collaboration with hiring managers so you can make better and more informed decisions. For example, it should enable you to assign focus areas to each interviewer. It should allow interviewers to collaborate on their findings, in a way that minimizes bias and groupthink. It should come with a central messaging engine and let you configure tasks and notifications to keep your team on track. 

Productive recruiters

As we discussed above, talent acquisition teams that are highly productive operate more like marketing and sales teams. We talked a lot about the importance of collaboration throughout the process. Recruiter productivity and hiring optimization are just as important, especially at a time when job openings are at an all-time high. 

Analytics and AI to improve decision-making

Great recruiting teams know “their numbers” and leverage them to not only prioritize tasks across the hiring spectrum, but also provide accurate hiring forecasts and achieve desired business outcomes. A legacy ATS is not positioned to support this. Legacy solutions don’t capture nearly enough data to assess hiring performance. Much less to measure if your hiring process is working for or against the bottom line.

An ATS with robust analytics provides deep insights through trend analyses on historical hiring decisions and dashboards on pipeline performances, with all the data stored in one place. Josh Bersin’s latest study on global TA teams reports that high-impact TA teams are 6x more likely to use AI and predictive analytics and see 30% greater profitability compared to those that don’t use these tools.

Internal mobility

The great resignation is keeping recruiters and HR teams up at night. But according to a recent Sapient Insights survey, only 22% of companies have an internal mobility program in place. Recruiters should be looking for talent internally and externally. The problem is that they don’t have the right tools. Companies are at risk of losing their talent to the competition if they don’t compete on an equal footing. 

A modern ATS should enable you to build an internal career site and build talent pools of team members who are interested in different career paths. Match people to jobs using AI matching and set up internal interviews the same way you do external interviews. 

Onboarding support

Successful recruitment teams also know that the first 3 months of employment are the most vulnerable period. In some industries, a poor onboarding experience can lead to a 22% turnover rate. That’s why many are looking for a comprehensive solution that will address this critical part of the journey as well. Your onboarding process should not just be about legal formalities, it should facilitate a smooth transition from applicant to employee. 

The final word & our ATS Quiz

As Fosway explains, “standalone ATSs that only cover the lower part of the recruitment funnel are a thing of the past.” Your ATS should go beyond workflow automation and candidate tracking. It should incorporate recruitment marketing for active and passive candidates, and career sites that boost your employer brand. It should also facilitate enhanced HR decision making based on your desired business results. Moreover, it should be built for today’s complex talent market, offering you a competitive advantage with internal mobility features and a great candidate experience that’s optimized down to the onboarding stage. 

Take our quiz to find out if you should replace your ATS. 

Table of Contents

• What are ‘hard to fill’ positions?
• Why are they considered ‘hard to fill?’
• Recruitment strategies for hard to fill positions
• Hard Jobs to Fill in 2021
• How Employers Can Help The Underemployed and Unemployed + Fill Open Roles

Hard to fill positions are what keep recruiters up at night. Whether it’s finding someone with the right skills or in the right geography, hiring for certain roles can seem like an impossible feat. Which reqs are difficult to fill can be influenced by greater economic trends, and right now it may feel like all roles are hard to fill. It’s not in your head, the New York Times reports a rise in job openings (by 35%)  and a fall in applications (by 20%).

With workers having their pick of jobs (many having used the past year to upskill into new roles), we thought it’s important to discuss this tight labor market and give some advice to employers who want to keep hitting their recruiting and growth goals.

What are ‘hard to fill’ positions?

CNN reports that the pandemic has added an additional squeeze to the labor force as working parents may find it hard to procure childcare with schools and daycare centers not yet back to full capacity. Many employers are receiving fewer applications per job than in 2019. That being said, ‘hard to fill positions’ means different things to different teams. Sometimes a position is hard to fill because the role requires very specific expertise or experience, other times the risk or demands of the role narrow the candidate pool. 

Why are they considered ‘hard to fill?’

There are several indicators of a position being hard to fill. Perhaps the number of applicants declined or the applicants aren’t qualified. Another indicator is if your hiring velocity has decreased i.e. your ability to hire on time and on budget. If you are struggling to hire right now, you’re not alone. CNBC recently reported that small businesses are particularly struggling to find the right talent with 42% of owners having job reqs that couldn’t be filled and 99% of those businesses said that qualified talent was scarce or none existent. 

Recruitment strategies for hard to fill positions

In June of this year (2021) the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a nationwide initiative to address the workforce shortage which included legislation to increase the availability of childcare and expand visa programs. In tandem with these more universal measures, you may want to take some targeted action yourself within your company.

The Harvard Business Review cautions against relying on market norms of the past, i.e. don’t expect candidates to return to you when unemployment benefits run out. Consider that some workers have relocated or upskilled, while others are still struggling to find childcare or are concerned about their health and safety. HBR suggests these tactics…

• Look local and global: Practical concerns like transportation and being able to get to the job are of paramount importance when it comes to in-person roles. Consider on-the-ground recruiting tactics for locals (like flyers or referral bonuses) or geographically targeted ad campaigns. For remote roles, do not restrict the talent pool based on time zones; by opening up the talent pool to various geographic regions, you can find talent in underserved or untapped areas.
• Make commutes easy: Many people have relocated during the pandemic away from big cities so you may find your talent pool depleted. Make the commute into town worth it with transportation passes or gas compensation. If the job is virtual only, or based on a hybrid model, be accommodating to the at-home necessities of your prospective applicants; for instance, if they need to look after elderly family members or children at-home, create work schedules that permit them the best hours to be productive while at work and attentive to their roles at home.
• Pay a living wage: It’s no secret that wages have stagnated in the past few decades, adjusting salaries for current day living costs will attract loyal workers. This is especially important for essential workers whose jobs have become riskier in the wake of the pandemic.
• Invest in health precautions: Be proactive about communicating your health precautions whether it’s mandated vaccinations, free PPE, onsite safety precautions, or time off for vaccination recovery. You can include this information on the job advertisement or your career site to let candidates know you care about their safety.

Consider your demographics: You may also want to consider recruiting efforts to older worker demographics (50+) or parents, as these groups have been hit hard by layoffs and childcare concerns throughout the pandemic. Targeting your outreach and even making sections on your career site addressing these groups will let them know they are welcome. For parents specifically, flexible work options and explicitly stating you don’t judge resume gaps could be a game changer.

Hard Jobs to Fill in 2021

The LA Times reports that small businesses are having a harder time filling positions than larger corporations. Often larger businesses can afford quick salary or benefit hikes that SMBs can’t. Economists surmise that as the job market expands once again, the lowest paid jobs will be the last to be filled and caution against seeing these changes as anything permanent.

In the past few years, employers have struggled to find tech talent. Now, anecdotally, it seems that in-person roles are some of the hardest to fill right now. This comes as no surprise with childcare and personal safety still being a concern of many workers.

• Foodservice
• Education 
• Childcare
• Elderly care
• Cleaning
• Construction

How Employers Can Help The Underemployed and Unemployed + Fill Open Roles

Sylvia Allegretto, a UC Berkeley labor economist, told the LA Times that the shortage isn’t with labor but with benefits. When we consider this idea, it brings some of the trends we are experiencing on the ground into perspective: decreased applications for entry level / in-person jobs. These roles, especially, have seen a stagnation with wages and benefits.

Perhaps it’s time to offer vacation days and health care options for part time workers and hybrid work options for parents. With so many people having been laid off in the last year, these benefits and accommodations could be a good way to build trust with prospective employees and show you care about their livelihoods, in addition to their workplace productivity.

Studies reported by Forbes have shown that unemployment benefits and stimulus payments are not a deterrent to return to work, but poor treatment is. Workers now feel they can find better work than they could before. This is a good business case to invest in culture — no matter the size of your business.

Are you interested in hosting your own virtual career fair, but need a little more info first? You’re not alone, and we got you covered.

Table of Contents

• What does a virtual career look like?
• What are the benefits of a virtual career fair?
• What are the disadvantages of a virtual career fair?
• How do I plan a virtual career fair?
• What is the best recruiting technology to set up a successful virtual career fair?

Virtual career fairs are new twists on a recruiting staple. Once upon a time, recruiters from like-industries or with similar candidate needs would gather in a hall, set up booths, and meet potential applicants. It was a way for recruiters to contact high volumes of talent that were actively seeking employment. 

Today, the busy schedules of candidates as well as pandemic safety guidelines have encouraged recruiters to find creative alternatives for large, in-person gatherings. Enter the virtual career fair. Virtual career fairs take the expo hall online, yielding the same high volume recruiter-candidate interaction without breaking social distance codes. But it’s not all about health regulations, it’s about looking to the future.

This method of recruiting was a long time coming. Back in 2017 a Gallup poll already reported that almost half of employed Americans had worked remotely for some amount of time and 2018 US Census data showed 5.2% of employed Americans working entirely from home. Researchers from Harvard Business School have even found in initial studies that working from home or remotely can increase productivity. So if organizations can benefit from remote work, then why can’t recruiting? 

Indeed, recruiting stands to gain a great deal from harnessing the power of virtual events, but some are reluctant to take the leap without more concrete information. We understand, so we put together the top five need to know questions to get you started on your path to virtual recruiting. 

1. What does a virtual career fair look like?

A virtual career fair is an online information session that you can host a single organization or with partners. Candidates will join a large video conference call and the host will present a video or slides about the company and available positions. Allow time at the end for a Q&A session and be sure to send follow up communications to the attendees. 

2. What are the benefits of a virtual career fair?

Hosting an online event can save you time and money. You can cross off ‘venue,’ ‘booth,’ and ‘printed materials’ from your budget–while erasing all transportation time for you and your team. Think of the stress you will save as well, with no last minute changes or cancelations brought on by health concerns: An online event can take place as long as the wifi is on.

In addition, if you are serious about scaling your hiring then you need to be able to think bigger than your city or region, there’s a whole world of talent out there to recruit. The fact is, virtual events have the ability to reach a greater talent pool than those that are in-person. 

Virtual career fairs have advantages for candidates as well. Potential applicants may find it easier to attend a virtual event, as they won’t have to worry about transportation, travel time, child care etc. Life is hectic for all of us and even interested talent may find it hard to attend an in person event–especially if they are already employed. 

Beyond the practicality of virtual career fairs, these events are powerful drivers of employer brand. Top tier candidates will appreciate the flexibility and creativity of companies who harness their tech to save them time and keep them safe.

3. What are the disadvantages of a virtual career fair?

It’s easy for a virtual event to slip people’s minds. Candidates may not feel as committed to an online RSVP as to an in-person one. So be sure to send out reminders and calendar invites to facilitate attendance. It doesn’t hurt to point out in the invite that there will be a live element to the event so would be attendees feel motivated to show up.

At a traditional career fair, you will get time to interact with candidates one on one or in small groups. These small interactions–a handshake, a face to face conversation–can make a big difference. It’s harder to make personal connections in an online forum. This is where your planning and comfort with your tools will show. Let candidates know at the beginning of the session how and when they can ask questions and consider doing breakout sessions for a more intimate feel. Make sure to follow up with attendees with next steps, a simple email does the trick.

4. How do I plan a virtual career fair?

A virtual career fair can be planned from your desk without much fuss, but you’ll need to be organized and strategic. 

• Before: Choose your conferencing platform, create a landing page with your event info, promote on social channels and via email, send out invites, and prepare your presentation.
• Day-of: Send out reminders, test your camera/microphone, and get ready to meet some awesome talent. During your presentation keep an eye on the chat for questions.
• After: Congratulate your team, thank any helpers (even those who shared your event on their social channels), send follow-up emails to candidates with next-steps, and track your metrics like invite to attendee ratio to create an even more successful event next time!

5. What is the best recruiting technology to set up a successful virtual career fair?

The tech element is generally the most intimidating aspect of planning a virtual career fair, but most of the tech you need you probably already use. Keep it simple and focus on the main three:

• Recruiting Chatbot: Utilize a chatbot with advanced, conversational AI, like SmartPal, to recruit at scale and at an efficient pace that will improve your hiring velocity.
• Recruitment CRM: Use this for sending out invites, reminders, and follow ups. Consider creating a landing page with the event info and field for candidates to sign up for an invite.
• Video tool: Whether Zoom or Google hangouts select a video tool and test it out beforehand–even if it’s just a test run at your next team  meeting.
• Social Media: Leverage your social channels to put out the word about your virtual career fair and link them to your landing page. If you have a large facebook audience then consider making an event page.

With an unemployment rate in excess of 13%, the overwhelming majority of industries find themselves unable to maintain their pre-COVID employment numbers.

Yet, while many companies have experienced a considerable contraction in their workforce over the past few months, a number of large corporations–Amazon, CVS, Albertsons, and others–actually expanded their hiring efforts in order to address the increased demand for their services.

Unable to utilize traditional hiring processes, these companies found creative and efficient ways to identify and hire quality candidates. With more states and business re-opening, the need to successfully re-hire or hire furloughed talent is imperative.

So, if your organization is fortunate enough to be hiring during the pandemic, looking for furloughed employees may be a good place to start. The question becomes how to do so most effectively. This article covers some of the most fundamental considerations.

What is a Furlough?

Before we get started, it’s worth defining what a furlough is and distinguishing a furlough from a layoff. Fortune magazine has a good answer to these questions. 

A furlough “is an unpaid leave of absence. While furloughed employees still technically retain their jobs, the furlough itself means that they cease working for their employers and do not earn a salary.

The idea is that this is a temporary arrangement, and workers will one day be able to return to their jobs.” While furloughed employees typically do not earn a paycheck, they do maintain their benefits, like healthcare. Furloughed employees are also eligible to collect unemployment benefits.

Furloughs vs. Layoffs

And therein lies the difference between a furlough and a layoff: “While a furlough is meant to be a temporary arrangement, being laid off is quite the opposite: a permanent termination of one’s employment, including salary and benefits. The door is open for one’s return when furloughed; when laid off, that’s very rarely the case.”

This distinction is essential. Hiring a furloughed employee means that you are likely hiring a temporary one. Furloughed workers remain employed and often expect to return to their employer once the furlough period concludes.

But during an economic crisis like the one we’re experiencing now, this arrangement may be mutually beneficial. Just as a furlough is temporary, it’s likely that the boost in demand for your goods and services are as well.

Since furlough periods will likely conclude once businesses are allowed to open and social distancing policies are eased or lifted, the furlough timeline should map nicely onto your period of increased demand. 

In other words, furloughed workers are likely looking for temporary jobs for roughly the same amount of time as you need them. 

The CVS Model of Recruiting and Hiring Furloughed Workers

So how do you hire them? Well, it’s useful to start with the strategies major corporations are already utilizing. 

Hilton: Hilton Hotels has furloughed over a quarter-million workers. 60,000 of those work directly in corporate offices; the other 200,000 work at Hilton franchise hotels. 

As numerous news outlets have reported, Hilton has partnered with a number of corporations, including Amazon and CVS, to find temporary work for their furloughed workforce.

This partnership has enabled both sides to implement procedures that have eliminated bureaucracy and promoted greater connectivity between organizations to allow Hilton employees to quickly and easily transition into their new temporary roles. 

The major component of this partnership is the creation of a “shared online resource center.” Providing further detail, CVS describes the partnership as constructing a “technology-enabled hiring process that includes virtual job fairs, virtual interviews and virtual job tryouts.”

CVS’ success is remarkable. They’ve hired more than 60,000 new employees, far in excess of their goal of 50,000. The increase marks more than a 25% expansion in their workforce.

“We went to virtual almost overnight,” said Jeffrey Lackey, CVS’ VP of Talent Acquisition. “We have something that would normally take a large corporation months, years potentially…In 48 hours, we created an accelerated hiring process.”

The other key component in this partnership is an agreement on shared competencies, skills, and experience between Hilton and partnering corporations.

Explaining why corporations were willing to partner, Nigel Glennie, vice president of corporate communication at Hilton, in an interview with USA TODAY, stated, “The recognized quality of our team members, including their hospitality and service culture training, make them ideal candidates to quickly step in and assist organizations in these temporary assignments.”

As the Hilton case study reveals, the two most important components of constructing systems and methods to hire furloughed employees are:

1. Finding workers with shared skills, competencies, and experiences.
2. Designing technologies that streamline the identification, hiring, and transition from furlough to temporary worker. 

How to Proceed with Talent Communities

We think there are three basic steps to begin the recruitment of furloughed workers. They are:

1. Identify desired workers
2. Forge partnerships with appropriate organizations
3. Strategize streamlining the hiring and transition process

Start by identifying the workers you’d like to attract. An important early distinction is whether there are furloughed workers within your industry. Ask yourself questions like:

1. Are there furloughed workers that work in our specific field and industry?
2. If not, are their furloughed workers in related industries, which require similar skill sets and knowledge bases?
3. If not, what industries are furloughing workers and how can we leverage their skills and experiences to help meet our increased demands?

Additionally, keep geography in mind. A competitor may have furloughed hundreds of ideal workers for you to hire, but if they’re located on the other side of the country you’re out of luck. Workers are unlikely to relocate for temporary work. So look locally when examining the previous three questions.

Building Recruiting Partnerships

From there you can forge partnerships with appropriate organizations. The Hilton case works so well because there is mutual benefit on both sides. Amazon isn’t trying to poach Hilton workers and Hilton isn’t trying to offload healthcare costs onto Amazon.

In other words, everyone wins— Amazon, Hilton, and workers. As you identify organizations you’d like to partner with, be sure you approach them with a plan detailing how all sides will benefit. This is, after all, a partnership, not a competition.  

A Platform for Talent Redeployment

Lastly, once you’ve established partnerships you need to find creative ways to identify, attract, and hire furloughed workers. As the Hilton case shows, a shared database of some kind is particularly useful.

In fact, SmartRecruiters has released a talent redeployment platform to minimize the impact of layoffs and create talent communities for employees to enjoy priority hiring by recruiters in, across, and/or outside of your organization.

The tool enhances in-placement and outplacement functionality, and improves the overall experience by enabling employees to opt-in to the talent communities of their choice.

The platform helps promote greater visibility to the internal skills of your employment, more accuracy predicting the skills you lack, and helps rapidly mobilize and redeploy talent to mitigate loss of functions. 

Conclusion

Remember, in order for hiring furloughed workers to work most effectively, it has to benefit all sides. Each organization should find the arrangement desirable. More importantly, workers should feel comfortable that the pursuit of temporary work with a partner organization is encouraged by their employers and will in no way have an adverse impact when they are able to return to their employer. So do your homework and be creative!

P.S. there’s no better time than the present to reassess your ATS. For a limited time, SmartRecruiters is offering eligible companies a below-market-rate offer for a complete and flexible talent acquisition platform. Designed to drive technological change, this stimulus package will help businesses that want to take advantage of the hiring slowdown to upgrade their ATS and reduce costs. Benefits include:

• Contract buyouts and zero transition costs
• Significant savings on technology, people, and sourcing costs
• An accelerated path to Hiring Success

Many a year, I’ve spent too many hours that I’d care to share watching the NFL Draft. At times, it is both heartwarming and gut-wrenching; the stories of so many inspirational college athletes, usually narrated by ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi, are relayed within the broadcast that you find yourself rooting for each of them to get a chance to live out their professional dreams.

As an employee of SmartRecruiters, I now realize the true nature of the NFL Draft: it is the best public example we have in the United States of the talent acquisition process. NFL front office professionals —general managers, player personnel, scouts—are the equivalent of a company’s talent acquisition team and the NFL coaches operate as the proxy for hiring managers —the people who will develop and interact with the new players on a day-to-day basis. 

This year’s NFL Draft, due to the public health circumstances we are all confronting, makes it the greatest experiment in virtual recruiting, hiring and onboarding, from which all companies can learn to adapt and refocus their hiring process steps to excel at the new normal.

Virtual Recruiting Lessons From the 2020 NFL Draft for Your Company

While the NFL was able to host its central recruiting event of the year, the NFL Scouting Combine, in late February, the teams of the league were not able to attend the usual slate of pro days, whereby college athletes perform drills and participate in interviews at their alma mater. Therefore, the full breadth of assessments that NFL teams utilize to evaluate their new hires was abbreviated. 

The in-person assessments of the traditional recruiting schedule generally provided an opportunity for the talent acquisition professionals of NFL teams to find diamonds in the rough. For instance, maybe a player didn’t perform amazingly well during his collegiate career, but he scored off the charts in both the physical and mental tests during his pro day.

Therefore, in this year’s Draft, it begs the question as to whether teams will have to rely more on the traditional markers of future athletic success: a player’s college stats and physical measurements.

In addition, teams might rely more on recommendations and evaluations from former coaches and teammates of players than ever before, since teams cannot conduct the extensive in-person interviews they are accustomed to.

As a result, the NFL’s hiring teams might exercise more caution than ever before, preventing unheralded college players from getting their first professional opportunities. 

This possible phenomenon represents a cautionary tale for talent acquisition leaders across the country. Many of the tools recruiting professionals were utilizing to break down previous barriers to employment and finding talent in places that otherwise were overlooked, such as reverse recruiting events, have now been curtailed.

Additionally, budgets for many recruiting teams have been truncated, forcing even more difficult decisions about where to spend remaining recruitment investments. Nonetheless, I think this is the moment where a company can really fortify its true social mission and public purpose by continuing to find alternative, virtual methods to recruit from diversified talent pools. 

For example, over 26 million Americans have become unemployed in the past five weeks; both a sobering reality and nonetheless, an incredible opportunity to build a talent pool for new hires. If your company is still hiring, the talent community of possible candidates is arguably more plentiful now than it ever will be, so be bold and utilize all of the virtual resources at your disposal to take your previous in-person events and shift them into a virtual reality. 

The scenes we will see of draft picks shedding tears of joy and hugging their loved ones after being selected during the NFL Draft can also be a scene your company recreates by hiring talent that is currently on the employment sidelines. 

Virtual Hiring’s Impact on the Relationship Between TA & Hiring Managers

The virtual setting of this year’s draft highlights the importance of the relationship between a hiring manager and a talent acquisition leader. In the normal setup of a NFL Draft’s war room, a NFL’s team primary hiring manager, the head coach, is seated right next to the team’s head of talent acquisition, the general manager.

In-person, you are able to arrive at last-second decisions based on impromptu conversations and real-time developments. With the individualized war room setups in the home offices of the hiring and TA teams, the head coach and GM will need to be on the same page well before they make their selections.

This example presents many learning opportunities for hiring managers and talent acquisition leaders in the non-sporting world. The coffee machine chat when you have deliberations about an interview that just took place will not be occurring in the near term.

Therefore, you have to make sure you are properly documenting all of your recruiting recaps in interview feedback forms that might traditionally be reserved for in-person back-and-forths. 

In addition, while letters of recommendations and candidate assessments are always critical elements of an effective recruiting process, virtual recruiting, like the NFL Draft this year is revealing, makes these aspects even more valuable because you will need to rely more on non-subjective forms of candidate evaluation without the traditional face-to-face interview.

The traditional measuring sticks of resumes and cover letters will continue to play important roles, but if you want to continue to find the equivalent of the 6th round pick that nets your company’s next Tom Brady, you will need to broaden your virtual recruiting scope to include more data points that reveal a candidate’s potential. 

Once, you have hired your talent via a completely virtual process, the NFL Draft is also providing a clue as to how you can carry over culture building and onboarding practices in a virtual environment.

The NFL has sent the hats and jerseys of each team to all the players who will potentially be selected in the first round of the NFL Draft, continuing the tradition of a new draftee donning the swag of his soon-to-be employer.

During traditional recruitment and onboarding, many companies utilize their swag as offerings of commitment to new hires. If the resources are still available at your company, you should also continue to provide the company swag that employees can feel proud to wear or place on their laptops while working from home.

Final Thoughts

In summation, the NFL Draft this year will not only be an entertaining viewing experience for the casual observer, but it will also be an educational watch for recruiting professionals because NFL teams decided now is not the time to defer the dreams and talent development of young professionals.

Instead, they have lifted and shifted their entire recruiting and hiring approaches to virtual environments, set up “war room” offices in their home basements, and are declaring to the entire country the time is now to bring to life the professional aspirations of first-time job seekers.  

A recap of the final day at Hiring Success 20 in San Francisco! The best-in-breed conference for all topics and products talent acquisition and Hiring Success.

If you thought day one was full of energy then day two was out of this world. The excitement from day one was brought back with vim and vigor as attendees gathered in to further the discussions and networking they had set in motion on Tuesday. 

Sipping coffees and eating artisanal scones, attendees made their way into the conference hall adorned in blue and green lights. Charlie Nelson and Sarah Wilson kicked things off as the MCs for the day’s opening session. The ‘Donny & Marie’ of Hiring Success shared a few jokes and introduced SmartRecruiters’ new CTO, Alesia Braga, to the stage.

Alesia recapped the accomplishments of our technology and product developments for the past fiscal year and then presented the host of the Product Keynote, Natalia Baryshnikova, SmartRecruiters’ Head of Product.

Product Keynote

Natalia expertly detailed the anticipated launch of SmartMessage, later in 2020. SmartMessage will be SmartRecruiters’ natively built SMS platform for instant candidate conversation between recruiting teams and job seekers. It can be enabled through Messages and WhatsApp, allowing recruiters to reduce the chances of interview ghosting by sending real-time notifications straight to candidates’ phones.

Then came the centerpiece of the product announcements – SmartX. Noticeably, the SmartX logo featured the colors of purple and gold, not the characteristic blue and green corporate hues of SmartRecruiters. Natalia, an avid basketball fan, had orchestrated the design touch to the recent, tragic passing of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna Bryant; the moment was heralded with applause from the audience.

SmartX represents the building of the ultimate platform for the collaboration of recruiting, devised from the analytic insights of over 500,000 hiring scenarios. It will be a revolutionary platform that has a specialized dashboard for each member of your hiring team, including one for your head of TA! The overall dashboard will provide a great snapshot of your strategic metrics, such as Net Hiring Score and the percentage of roles filled on time. 

There will also be customized hiring process dashboards for each hiring team member, displaying data and information that is related to your role in hiring. For recruiters, there will be a bounty of new features to utilize: such as the recently released mass self-scheduling, which you will be able to use in concert with SmartMessage. After a few rounds of recruiting, the dashboard will spot your pattern and suggest creating a recipe for your hiring process, which you can customize at your discretion. With SmartX, the experience of hiring will become a more collaborative and efficient endeavor. 

…And since we know you will be successfully hiring more top-tier candidates with SmartX, it will be vital to onboard those candidates in an equally efficacious manner. Enter SmartOnboard. With a launch date at this time next year during Hiring Success, SmartRecruiters’ native onboarding platform will provide multiple touchpoints to eliminate the ever-present phenomenon of ‘first day ghosting.’

To wrap up the product keynote, Alesia came back on the stage to announce another pivotal development for SmartRecruiters during this fiscal year: the launch of our international data center based in Ohio! With our continued investments in the security and compliance framework of our data infrastructure, physical and technological, our customers and users can continue to place their trust in SmartRecruiters. 

As Alesia noted, “insights are the new oil,” and SmartRecruiters product and technology platforms will continue to evolve and improve based on the ingenuity and innovation of our teams and the feedback of our users, as evidenced by the 200 features shipped in past year, 145 of which were requested by users!

The Future of Work

Gary Bolles, the wearer of a trio-and-more of hats, including the creator of the Singularity University and the chair for the Future of Work, embarked on an educational odyssey into the evolution, present and coming modes of employment. Bolles described the three traditional pegs of work – 1) problems to be solved, 2) sets of tasks, and 3) human skills applied to those tasks to solve those problems – have become constrained and transformed by modern business processes and technologies. 

In the modern world, where more and more workers delve into a weekly portfolio of work, as opposed to the 9-to-5 office life of previous generations, it is imperative for companies to devise ‘generative career design,’ enabling problem-solving-centric job roles and functions, through which workers will be able to simultaneously advance their careers and earnings while accomplishing objectives and performing tasks that they love and help confront the common challenges facing the world. 

How to Become the World’s Best Workplace

At the Green Stage, MC’d by Matt Charney, attendees were able to listen to the wise teachings of Macy Andrews, the Head of Global Employer Brand and University Recruiting at Cisco. 

Macy detailed how she led the climb of Cisco to being voted as the #1 workplace by Great Place to Work’s preeminent World’s Best Workplaces report in 2019. The core centerpiece of her change initiatives was powered by Cisco’s People Deal, which was designed to be a new employee value proposition equating to: What We offer + What We Expect In Return = People Deal. From this new deal, Macy and her team implemented the tenets of ‘Connect Everything, Innovate Everywhere, Benefit Everyone.’

In practical terms, this meant:

• Giving everyone at Cisco their birthday off, without having to use a PTO day. 
• Scrapping their old performance review management processes and moving to a human-centered approach that emphasized personal experience between manager and employees over process. 
• PC Refresh ‘Refresh,’ with which they were able to reduce the productivity downtime of upgrading to new computers every three years from an application form of 26 clicks to 3 clicks and two weeks of learning to only two days! 

In summation, Macy emphasized that to shift a workplace environment in a wholesale fashion, workplace leaders need to fully embrace universal changes that can improve the work experiences of all team members!

San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s Address 

The penultimate session of Hiring Success ‘20 was the much-anticipated address from London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. Prior to the Reverse Recruiting event, Breed spoke eloquently on the topic of hiring as it relates to social justice. 

Breed expressed her excitement about SmartRecruiters’ Reverse Recruiting initiative and the potential it has to improve the connection between employers and communities that are sometimes left out of the conversation. Pointing to our diversities as to what makes us unique, strong employees, she encouraged the audience to change the world for the better by opening our companies’ minds and doors to give everybody the opportunities they merit. 

“I’m only mayor because someone gave me an opportunity,” said the mayor. Fitting words for the theme of her address and the conference as a whole.

Bringing the session to a close, Jerome left us with these sagacious words, “Open your heart, and remember who we hire defines the world we live in.”

Reverse Recruiting 

Hiring Success ‘20 closed on an inspiring note with a Reverse Recruiting session— a core component of SmartRecruiters’ conferences where recruiters are paired en masse with job seekers that have had difficulty finding work to strengthen their resumes, conduct mock interviews, and develop skills and strategies helpful in finding employment. Among these candidates are immigrants, veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals, individuals with disabilities, parents and caregivers returning to work, and seniors.

This year’s session was particularly noteworthy given the aforementioned attendance of Mayor London Breed. In the summer of 2019, Breed’s administration launched the Opportunities for All initiative with the mission “to connect young people of all backgrounds to paid employment, job training, and mentorship opportunities.”

Her dedication to providing San Francisco residents with a clear path to employment not only makes her an excellent addition to the Hiring Success conference, but a welcome ally to SmartRecruiters’ Reverse Recruiting initiative, which seeks to “connect overlooked candidates to jobs at scale.”

Conclusion: 

It’s not possible to convey the excitement, insight, and transformative power of Hiring Success in a mere article, as Hiring Success is truly an immersive experience. From the bottom of our hearts we would like to thank all of the truly inspiring speakers that took the stage this year, the whole SmartRecruiters family, the Marriott Marquis and their staff, as well as our amazing sponsors. Thank you all, and we can’t wait to see you again next year!

Hiring Success has arrived! Today, February 11th, TA leaders, HR practitioners, and recruiting professionals from around the globe congregated at the Marquis Marriott in the heart of San Francisco and began a two-day journey towards illuminating and evangelizing the incipient movement of Hiring Success! 

Located in the downtown hub of San Francisco, the San Francisco Marriott Marquis stands 40 stories tall with vivid views of the bay as well as cityscapes that surround it. Just a stone’s throw from the picturesque Yerba Buena Gardens, Hiring Success 20 is in the perfect location to immerse yourself in the current era of TA transformation. 

Over 1,000 attendees gathered to discuss and engage in deep dives on everything ranging from compliance to scaling your organization’s recruiting process through social networks. Talent acquisition leaders, CEOs, and global heads of talent took the stage to discuss and lead roundtables on some of the most pressing issues facing our organizations today. 

While no blog post can even begin to convey the full immersive experience that is hiring success, here are a few highlights from an impactful day one.

Hiring Success, donning three stages as well as various locations for roundtables kicked off with attendees registering en masse and networking with fellow conference-goers.

Hiring Success Is Business Success

Jerome Ternynck, Founder & CEO of SmartRecruiters, started Hiring Success ’20 off with a bang! Taking the stage with a presence that only the leader of the Smartian family can bring, attendees listened carefully as Jerome dove into what it means to be on the frontlines during the current war for talent among enterprise companies. Jerome documented how the negative business externalities of viewing recruiting and TA as backroom functions and cost centers. 

Pivoting to details from SmartRecruiters’ Definitive Guide to Hiring Success, Jerome highlighted how replacing the legacy metrics of cost per hire, time to hire, and quality of hire with hiring budget, hiring velocity, and net hiring score respectively can combine to transform the opinions of C-Suite members on the business value of recruiting and talent acquisition. How can companies learn to adopt these new metrics of recruitment? Enter SmartRecruiters’ product release calendar for the fiscal year of 2021, HiringSuccess.com and Hiring Success the book. 

First, the product news, where Jerome introduced SmartMessage, SmartX, SmartOnboard. With SmartMessage, recruiters will have the ability to use an actual phone number, via Messages or WhatsApp, to talk in real-time with job seekers and send push notifications, enabling reminders regarding interview schedules and evaluation forms. 

SmartX represents the next frontier in collaborative recruiting — an all-in-one evolution of the SmartRecruiters platform where your entire hiring team will be able to track internal metrics, such as net hiring score, and provide feedback and analysis for each point of the recruiting and talent acquisition processes. For SmartMessage & SmartX, customers can anticipate their launches towards the end of summer. Lastly, SmartOnboard will become SmartRecruiters native onboarding platform, launching by this time next year during Hiring Success ’21. 

Second, with the introduction of HiringSuccess.com, Jerome noted it will become the home of talent acquisition thought leadership, discovery, and education, propelling the common understanding of new and novel recruiting topics by creating a community of contributors and commenters from the TA industry-at-large. 

Thirdly, Jerome introduced his book, Hiring Success, aimed at evangelizing the tenets of the hiring success movement to CEOs and business leaders around the globe. The book is written from Jerome’s decades of experience in the recruiting and TA world. Hiring Success is designed to change the way executives look at recruiting and TA, bringing it from a cost center to a function that adds unparalleled value to an organization. 

Breaking Past Barriers 

A roundtable discussion hosted by Shelley Winner and Dana Stevenson was a revolutionary discussion. Gathered at the conference table was a diverse collection of individuals, including business developer representatives from Goodwill, sales managers at a top tech firm, government officials from the City of San Francisco and Alameda County, and a CSR from Checkr, just to name a few. There were more people seated around the table than the perimeter allowed, owing to the poignancy and purpose of the session. 

The theme of the session is revealed in the title, with Shelley and Dana profoundly recounting how they have individually overcome one of the most pernicious barriers to employment in the modern era: finding a meaningful job post-incarceration. 

Shelley, an employee at a top tech company, detailed her childhood travails of growing up with a father who was in and out of the prison system, in addition to suffering from drug addiction. Shelley began on a path in life that led to her arrest while she was pregnant with her eventual son.

Fortunately, she took her rehabilitation efforts in prison seriously — seeing it as her paramount opportunity to take responsibility for her past actions and renew her commitment to not only bettering her own life but the future life of her child.

Through her halfway house, she was able to join Code Tenderloin, discovering that a career in tech sales was a pathway that was perfect for her skill set.

While climbing through the application stages, she found the perfect opportunity at her current employer; she was near the finish line of signing an offer letter, and then her background check came back, at which point, her current employer then sent her a letter informing her, due to her past incarceration, they would not be able to hire her.

Nonetheless, Shelly recalled that her current employer had emailed her at one point information regarding the City of San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance, which bars employers from discriminating based upon prior criminal record.

After repealing the decision, Shelley was then asked to re-apply to the position, which she got! Two promotions and many business trips later (her two former managers were the aforementioned sales managers from a top tech company present at the roundtable!), she is a beacon of hope.

Dana, a beloved Smartian, also shared his life story— one of triumph through tragedy. Devastatingly, his mother passed away while he was a child, and soon after his father began to become overcome by issues with addiction. After a series of even more trying personal experiences, Dana was on a path that eventually led to a prison term of twenty-five years, starting at Pelican Bay.

While in prison, Dana began to participate in Narcotics Anonymous and discovered not only how to forgive himself and take accountability for his past actions, but also how to cope with and understand how the events of his childhood had harmed his personal development.

Fast forward to March of 2019, upon his release from prison, Dana was able to find his way to SmartRecruiters’ Reverse Recruiting gathering in San Francisco; there, he discovered an opportunity that he realized was perfect for him considering the events and circumstances of his life — a job at SmartRecruiters as a customer service representative.

Dana and Shelley are shining examples that if we hire past our common barriers and search for talent beyond our misconceptions and preconceptions, we can not only help break down decades-long forms of discrimination in society, we can also power business growth from contributors previously purposefully or unknowingly unseen by hiring teams — a successful, winning formula for transforming the workplace and the world simultaneously!

Conclusion: 

Hiring Success ‘20 day one has come to a close, but there is still so much more ahead. Today we saw speakers push the boundaries of what talent acquisition means. Of course, a recap is just that—and can never truly encompass the magnitude of the discussions held at the conference. If you didn’t make it this year, be sure to get a ticket for next year’s event! And check back tomorrow for our recap of day two!