When you’re looking to find the perfect person to fill a remote spot in your team, you have to start with the perfect remote job advertisement. Doing so will improve the quality of candidates at the top of your recruitment funnel. 

Perhaps it’s your first time hiring remotely, and you’re not sure what to include in the job posting. Maybe you’ve already got remote team members, but you’ve been having issues with the hiring process. Well, have no fear! Below, you’ll find four tips from the distributed workforce experts, Remote-how, on how to write the perfect posting for remote jobs and find the super star candidates you need to succeed.

Do the Research

This is perhaps one of the most important aspects of creating a new job advertisement. Have a look at your competitors and similar roles they are offering on their careers page. You’re probably looking for similar kinds of candidates, so it’s a good idea to check the requirements they’re asking for.

Take note of the skills they are looking for, as well as how they prioritize and communicate relevant information in the posting. These points will probably make up the core of your own job listing, and will help you to avoid forgetting any important details.

You can also use this method to get inspiration for the formatting of your advertisement. Some well-known companies that frequently hire remotely include Buffer, GitHub, Basecamp and Automattic. Their careers pages are excellent examples of remote job postings to use for reference.

Pro tip: SmartRecruiters platform lets you view example advertisements from other SmartRecruiters customers for inspiration when creating job postings.

Define the Exact Remote Conditions

Many people think remote work entails flexibility in terms of location and schedule. This, of course, is fairly common, but some jobs may require the occasional day in the office or for workers to be available at very specific times.

When writing job postings for remote positions, make sure that you explicitly state the terms and conditions. This will make sure that you don’t get to the interview stage with a candidate, only for them to find out that the remote arrangements aren’t what they’re looking for. 

Specifically, consider the following:

• Can your remote employee travel while working?
• Do they need to work hours according to a particular time zone?
• Will they need to make trips to specific locations at any point throughout the year? 

“During the offer process aside from the standard compensation information, it is essential to specify work hours and time zone expectations, what equipment and resources will be provided by the company, and any fun perks or benefits you plan to offer them as a remote employee. I would also provide the schedule for their first week of onboarding so they can prepare to dive right in!”

Casey Carr Jones, Director & Head of People Operations at Remote Year.

Below is a posting for a remote content writer position with Buffer. You’ll notice that they clearly define working hours, specifically which time zone candidates should be in. This sets the correct expectation for their remote arrangements up front.

Get Your Team Involved in Drafting the Advertisement

If you’re managing a team of multiple remote team members, it will be especially important to get them involved while drafting the job posting. By virtue of distance, you might not always be aware of their paint points or which additional skills they could benefit from in a new hire.

In an office environment, keeping up to date with hiring happens fairly naturally. Here in the remote world, you’ll have to make sure to over-communicate HR processes and hiring plans. By letting your team know and allowing them to voice their needs and concerns, you’ll have a better chance of hiring someone who will be a better fit for your team and its objectives.

To that end, we recommend the following two-step process before posting job advertisements:

1. Notify your team of the position you’re hiring for and ask for recommendations and any requirements they may need or can recommend. 
2. Following this, draft your job posting and present it again to the team. Allow for review, take notes on feedback and then make a final decision on the advertisement. The process needs to be cooperative and fit everyone’s needs to maximize new hire success.

A Remote Job Requires Different Skills, Benefits, and Perks

If you’ve only hired for on-site workers, you should think about the skills you’ve specified previously in requisitions, and whether or not they’ll translate for remote workers. Nine times out of ten they won’t! While both traditional candidates and remote ones will need more or less the same technical and hard skills, it will be especially important for remote workers to have certain soft skills like problem solving, time management, and communication. Since they’ll be working independently, it will be essential for remote workers to be organized self-starters capable of meeting deadlines without direct supervision.

Also make sure to mention any great remote-based perks that you have! It’s no use talking about a membership to a local gym by the office when your employee is possibly thousands of miles away in another country.

In the same content writer posting referenced above, Hotjar also takes care to clearly state the benefits available to remote staff.

Conclusion

We think you’ll find the tips outlined in this article very useful when posting requisitions for remote candidates. For actionable advice on the next step in the hiring process—conducting remote interviews—be sure to check out this informative post.

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70% of job searches begin with Google. Now that the search giant has put their job search algorithm into the hands of candidates, will they end there, too?

Following last summer’s release of the employer-focused Google for jobs (GJ), as part of the Cloud Jobs API, Google has now made GJ, complete with AI matching technology to surface job postings on every board they’re advertised, available to American job seekers.

With GJ, candidates can enter a search query like “jobs near me”, or “retail jobs”, and filter the results by location, specialty, company rating, or working hours – with more filters to come for ultra-personalized results. Think Google Flights, but for jobs.

It’s a big deal for both job boards and employers, for very different reasons. Job boards will have to rethink their value proposition to businesses and candidates, and while employers don’t really care whether job boards live or die, but missing out on GJ would mean missing out on candidates…

For candidates, GJ’s appeal is obvious: job boards are usually little different than their newspaper classified predecessors, as in broad, hard to search, and riddled with expired ads. Now, Google’s powerful creepy crawlies aggregate job data from around the internet to make sure posts are both relevant and up to date.

GJ does this by evolving matching technology. The idea being that enormous banks of data surface smarter matches through algorithms powered by AI and machine learning, thus eliminating the hassle of inconsistent job titling from company to company that has plagued candidates in the past.

“If I were Indeed, I would be scared; if I were an ATS that focuses on small- to medium-sized businesses, I would be scared,” says Jonathan Kestenbaum, recruiting tech expert and managing director for Talent Tech Labs. “If I were a Talent Acquisition enthusiast, I would be excited that such a large organization is taking interest in helping innovate within the space.”

Indeed has chosen not to make their jobs crawlable by Google. Rather, they are relying on the strength of their own brand, and the fact that, unlike most job boards, they are already using AI in their matching algorithms. Plus, for now, GJ with the added AI is only up and running in one country, the US, and in one language, English.

Photo Credit: Google Blog

Google may have the advantage of controlling the search engine where 70 percent of job hunts begin, But there’s still the matter of trust to consider. Facebook ran into trouble recently with their job advertising algorithm, when it was found to favor men. (Read why here) The candidate needs to know the AI underlying the search results is not so much a Harry Potter sorting hat, but more a summoning charm.

An accounting recruiter with over a decade of experience, Adam Karpiak says it may be a while before GJ really changes anything. “To the average candidate, job postings are job postings are job postings. These platforms actually make the recruiters look better because we specialize in people, NOT job postings. I’m sure GJ will be [a leg up], for the one percent of companies that understand what’s going on. It’ll take so long to trickle down to most companies, the ones that jump on it will definitely have an advantage.”

Google staunchly insists their new tech isn’t a replacement for job boards. The data giant is, in fact, partnering with LinkedIn, Monster, WayUp, DirectEmployers, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor and Facebook, to surface the best opportunities tailored to candidate specifications, hoping their foray into recruiting will push the industry forward in terms of tech innovation.

With more opportunities coming their way, job seekers are going to expect a quick and seamless process. So, recruiters, how can you make sure Google sees, and likes you? First off, make sure your job ad is compatible with Google search – you can check that by clicking here! – and be sure to follow this easy checklist, making sure your ad is:

1. Mobile friendly: Make sure your career site and job posting are easy to navigate on mobile devices, so you don’t miss the casual scrollers!
2. Informative: Adding details like office location, work hours, and flexible work options will make it easy for candidates to surface your job posting.
3. Well Branded: Reviews and content about your company will be more visible than ever, so it’s a great time to make sure everything is up to date. You may even consider branching into new media, like making that career video you’ve been dreaming of.
4. One-click–Apply Ready: Lowers candidate drop out rates, and strengthens your brand in the digital age.
5. Efficient: The influx of candidates means that process becomes extremely important. Make sure your ATS is supporting quick and organized communication for your team, so candidates have a great experience.

Read more about SmartRecruiters Google Job Search functionalities here!

Using tech creatively in recruiting is more than de rigueur, it’s the new standard. But for one German airline, there is still another horizon: right swiping.

It’s Friday. It’s almost quitting time. You don’t have plans. Your phone is in your hand, thumb twitching from an entire 30 seconds of non-use. If you’re one of the 10 million daily active users on Tinder, you may get to swiping on strangers’ faces, based on your synaptic speed of gauging beauty, brains, or compatibility of body parts. This evermore popular and socially acceptable behavior might land you a drink, a date, maybe more; but before today, you’d never think it could get you a job.

Not that kind of job. You perv. Starting this week, a German airline has taken a novel approach to recruitment by creating their very own Tinder profile, in hopes of landing candidates for various positions, both in and out of the cockpit.

Just as Facebook has always used your digital footprint to sell you targeted ads, Tinder has been dealing paid-for product profiles for a while now – you’re seeing the same products you shopped on Amazon yesterday because you registered with your Facebook account, remember? – but as for matching with a corporation and having them message you about job openings and link you to their careers page, that’s a new thing.

“Using a mobile online platform like Tinder to reach additional applicants is digital, modern, up-to-date and maybe a bit tongue in cheek – these attributes are in line with Eurowings,” said CEO Michael Knitter.

Oooh. Edgy.

A budget subsidiary of national carrier Lufthansa, Eurowings was likely considered lower-profile, thus lower risk than the German mothership to engage in this kind of experimental recruiting. Or maybe it has something to do with Eurowings being a domestic entity, in geography and society where “European” attitudes to sex make this kind of hybrid app experience more acceptable? Imagine if United or American Airlines got the way of your San Francisco booty call. That might be bad PR for airlines that can’t afford much more of it.

At this point, it’s all speculation (the initiative is only three days old). If it fails, Eurowings Tinder will just be another left swipe, considered for a moment and dismissed forever. But if it works, in the same way people who once wouldn’t confess to, but now flaunt, their dating-app notch tally, “Hey I got a job off Tinder” could be a new twist on an old taboo. Maybe in a year it’ll be a point of pride. Because like going on an actual date after a Tinder match, you still have to get through the interview, at which, unlike a date, there won’t likely be any booze to help you.

This week, we’ve released a sleeker job posting process that allows you to post a job in three steps. In addition, we’ve rolled out our first private beta RPO service for healthcare.

After filling out details about the job, you’re directed to our Store where you can select from the best performing boards for your job, as well as post it to free boards, your careers page and job widgets on websites, and your Facebook Careers App. As part of this release, we’ve streamlined the user experience of our Store by highlighting promos and moving all package details for each job board under its logo.

Once you’ve posted your job to boards and your website, you can share it with your social networks as the last step.

We’ve also partnered with Kelly Healthcare Resources to offer our healthcare customers an easier way to hire a recruiter for their jobs. For more information about this private beta release, please contact us at john@smartrecruiters.com or 415 992 5287.

Coming up, we’re focused on improving your payment options by allowing you to store payment types in your account. We’re also adding database services to help you expand your talent pool of great candidates for jobs. To share your feedback, please check out our customer support community or give us a shout at support@smartrecruiters.com and 415 508 3755.

Sourcing talent is a science.  There may never be a time where company can say, “Accountant, Lansing Michigan,” and an accountant will just appear. But SmartRecruiters, the hiring platform, is using Big Data to predict sourcing effectiveness. How? It starts with posting over 100,000 unique jobs to over 100 job boards, publications and social networks.

SmartRecruiters measures the quantity AND quality of candidates for each job. It then aggregates this data to rank the best performing job boards for any particular position and location. Because the SmartRecruiters platform includes a full applicant tracking system, it is in the unique position to be able to measure the quality of candidates based on their progress in the hiring pipeline. The algorithm places different weighted values upon each hiring status for each candidate. So if you are hiring an intern, Craigslist may bring in more candidates, but a niche site such as, CollegeRecruiter or Youtern, usually shows up as a better performing board because a higher percentage of their candidates progress to the interview stage, and ultimately onto making hires.

While the biggest job boards, such as Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, and LinkedIn, continue to drive job listings, SmartRecruiters reports that 62% of job postings (across 50,000+ customers) are to niche job boards and websites. Through SmartRecruiters, businesses are also advertising jobs where candidates read, meaning publications such as Wired, communities such as 37signals, and social networks such as Facebook.

In posting thousands of jobs every week, SmartRecruiters continues to refine this algorithm. The future is: you share the job details and location, and SmartRecruiters reports how many candidates, qualified candidates, and very qualified candidates each source will produce.

I am a master packer. Seriously, I am a pro. I once fit a weeklong trip to London from Oklahoma City in a carry on suitcase and a backpack complete with an assortment of clothes and work items like my phone, laptop, camera, and the assorted array of cords that accompany such things.

Proper packing of a suitcase takes planning, organization, and a little flair.  For example, I like to roll up my clothing very tightly fitting more in a smaller space.  Items are packed in order of priority and their importance with the most used items being packed last. All this organization, planning, and strategy can be applied to writing your job ad.

• 
  
• 
  
• Choose Your Message Carefully.  Since I have limited space in my suitcase, I choose my wardrobe very carefully.  Outfits and pieces can be worn multiple ways and are organized based on the weather and purpose of my trip.  Your job ad is the same.  The marketing must craft your message of the job, share your company’s story, and stay true to (or better yet, improve) your employer brand.

• Neutral Colors Are Best.  As I mentioned my shoes, scarves, pants, and jackets work together to pull off multiple looks with as little time and effort. I like to be in control and hate carrying around extra weight in the name of fashion. Consider the simplicity of bullet points. Trendy and flashy accessories like jewelry, hats, and boots take up space and detract from my overall job ad and employment brand message.

• Organize Your Efforts but Be Creative.  One of my favorite travel accessories is my cord organizer keeping my smartphone and laptop cords and batteries from being a jumbled and knotted mess.  The bag’s intended purpose was originally for cosmetics and jewelry, but it provides a different solution that leaves all my must have electronic accessories easily within reach.  Standard job ads are boring, and while you should organize your efforts to suit you target job seeker audience, don’t be afraid to be a little creative and unconventional especially if it serves a higher purpose – gaining the attention of your targeted and qualified candidate audience.

Writing a job ad that encompasses the job opening is not easy.  It requires planning, creativity, and consistency.  Arm your recruiting team with the proper traveling accessories and equipment to source, recruit, and hire the best qualified candidate for your organization.

 Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. When she talks, people listen.

When writing a job posting quite often the author writes it from their point of view. After all it is their job and their company, so why not write the job posting to reflect what they want? The problem is that the biases of the writer may become apparent in the language that is used in the job posting. Here’s how to avoid bias language in job postings.

What is Prohibited Job Ad Language?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the governmental agency that oversees Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the protections provided for “protected categories.” On their web page entitled  Prohibited Employment Policies/Practices they give some specific examples of how employers can get in trouble with language in the recruiting process. They specifically say:

“It is illegal for an employer to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for or discourages someone from applying for a job because of his or her race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.”

For example, phrases around origin, religion, and physical condition such as “American born,” “Christian values,” and “must be in good health” can (and probably will) get employers in trouble.

Examples of Prohibited Job Posting Language

These examples from actual job ads – give examples of some prohibited job postings language, and the reason why:

*3-5 years of related experience in Human Resources and Payroll. This implies that someone with more experience, such as an older candidate with more than 5 years of experience would not be welcome. 

*Housewife. Bus Boy. Waitress. Houseman. Stay away from gender specific titles.

*Reliable transportation. Unless the transportation is needed to conduct the on the clock work. 

*If you would like to be considered for our team of entertainers, text your first name, your height and weight, your age, your city of residence, and your contact information Height, weight and age are not requirements to be stated unless they are what is known as BFOQs (Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications). The EEOC takes a very dim view of their use.

In job postings it is important to keep your language job-related. Describe the work to be done and the work habits and characteristics necessary to accomplish the work. Avoid describing characteristics, especially physical characteristics, of the potential employee.

Liability

As an employer you are not only held liable for the your actions, but also for the actions of all employees involved in the recruitment process and for those people who are acting as your agents. You need good (and compliant) job ads. This means that any recruitment agency that is working on your behalf must also comply with the EEOC standards.  If they don’t, not only can they have legal difficulties but those difficulties can be extended to you, the actual employer. So review and approve any job postings they are using on your behalf.

Mike Haberman is the HR Compliance Guy. He is a HR consultant and Partner at OmegaHRSolutions. Photo Credit PivotalMatters.

We’ve improved the job posting functionality so you can quickly create a job, preview it, and post it with one click to job boards, your company website, corporate Facebook page, free sites and social networks.

The Job posting wizard has now 4 simple steps:

1. Create your Job Ad

2. Add Team Members and Categories

3. Select Job Boards

4. Post Job

We also moved it to a proper page (instead of a tiny overlay) and adjusted the width so that it is easier to preview long job description.

These changes are based on the feedback we’ve received. Thank you for your contributions and please continue to voice up. This is what helps us make SmartRecruiters awesome. We will continue aligning this functionality to your vision in the coming weeks.

Smart Sourcing

Where should I post my job?  We are now aggregating data across thousands of job postings to help you answer that question. We are looking at the quantity and quality of candidates that each source delivers for a specific job, industry, function, level and location.

When you create a job, make sure to select accurate values for Industry, Function, Level. You will see performance-based recommendations for Job Boards on Step 3.

Overtime, the accuracy of this sourcing engine should really allow us to make good predictive analysis of how many qualified candidates you can get from each source. No need to spray and pray – just smart sourcing.

Remember Me

We’re introducing a Remember Me functionality that lets you access SmartRecruiters without having to login again and again.

Social Networks

We continue to work on integrating with LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook so that you can better leverage your own network for referrals and sourcing. Simply authorize the SmartRecruiters App from the Posting Wizard or from your Account settings.

Happy Hiring!

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“We focus on the big three problems in recruiting,” said McCagg.

“Its hard to find the right candidates, and if you talk to the heads of HR of the Fortune 1,000, I think they’ll all tell you, they are dealing with – first of all-  an abundant volume of candidates they have to sort through, and that’s getting more and more difficult as the cost of distributing resumes is going down – with email and with social networks and all that. Being able to narrow down to a very precise candidate that matches the opportunity is very important and getting increasingly difficult.”

How much can technology do for employment levels?

“Well there is two parts to that question; as technology companies grow, they are obviously hiring. OneWire created 55 jobs in the heart of New York at the depth of the recession. We started the company in 2008. And so that is obviously one effect we have. But by getting people better matched to relative opportunities, you’re basically creating better retention because if you get better people, they are more likely to stay at jobs and be more productive, be happier in their position. And so we think  – and its hard to measure this – that OneWire along with other technologies are having a beneficial impact on getting people in the right positions for them and the right positions for their company.”

Brin McCagg is the Cofounder and President of OneWire, a company that connects professionals with precisely relevant opportunities.

Photo Credit UserLogos

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Recruiters and hiring managers can also leverage this tool as a candidate source in a number of different ways. Twitter may not be your sole candidate and recruiting solution but it can help you do the following:

Social Media Job Board. Posting job ads to Twitter taps into its’ extensive network. Since Twitter functions an information search engine and social media network, more candidates await. It only takes a click to forward your job ad to Twitter.

Taking Advantage of Job Search SEO. In addition to using Twitter job boards, you can also post jobs from individual or corporate accounts at no cost. Even if your network is very small, you can leverage keywords and hash tags to increase your reach. Include key words specific to the position using a SEO or search engine optimized strategy like you would use for a website.  Common hash tags for job seekers include #jobadvice, #jobhuntchat, and #careerchat.

Sourcing with SEO. In the same manner, you can search and source directly for job seekers, using keyword search. Free sites like Search.Twitter.com allow you to search by hash tag, keyword, and with their advanced search, even by zip code radius. A paid tool which allows for exporting via CSV file is called Tweet Adder and allows you the option to save your spread sheet lists for later use or allow them to be added to your network slowly over periods of time.

Engaging Savvy Job Seekers. Twitter allows you to engage super influencers using social media. By keyword searching their profiles as well as tweets, you can learn about events, other keywords, niche social networks, and blogs your target candidate audience frequently. Many of these niche sites and blogs allow for free entrance and provide you a wealth of information about candidate pools and areas of expertise.

Learn more erecruiting and hiring tips and tricks to make hiring easy by Jessica Miller-Merrell on the Smartrecruiters blog.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a HR consultant, new media strategist, and author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. Jessica is the host of Job Search Secrets, an internet television show for job seekers.

Photo Credit Donotargue

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