Today, less than 10% of job advertising is managed programmatically, while well over 80% of brand advertising is managed through programmatic means. Brands’ shift to programmatic advertising over the last decade has been for one simple reason: it saves money. If programmatic advertising help advertisers reach more of the right eyeballs for less, why have employers been so slow to adopt it?

Part of the problem relates to the fact that most recruiting teams are not high-spending brands that can outsource digital ad placements worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to ad agencies. They are often small teams managing a few dozen open roles. To top it off, automation is harder with the multitude of variables in job ads, and job advertising platforms themselves have been slower to enable the technology that makes programmatic advertising possible.

The tight post-pandemic talent marketplace has left employers with a need to reach not just more candidates but the right candidates: ones that have not seen your listing before, have not been inundated with ads from competitors, and are qualified to fill your open positions. Aptitude Research estimates that 40% of job advertising spend is wasted, but which 40%?

Curious to learn more about how top employers manage job advertising today, I sat down with Jim Milton, SVP of Strategy at SmartRecruiters. Before his new role as head of strategy, Jim was the General Manager for SmartJobs, our programmatic job advertising managed service. 

Programmatic Job Advertising in North America vs. Europe

Jim started by describing the lay of the land across North America and Europe. “Universally, our customers are saying that cost per applicant (CPA) has risen dramatically,” he said. “It’s gotten so expensive to fish in the same pond as every other employer that companies need to save money, so they’re more open to trying out programmatic.” And the possibilities for programmatic have expanded, with more job boards making their inventory available. “European job boards, in particular, have been slower to open up their job board inventory to programmatic technologies, but our global customers are watching their counterparts in North America do programmatic. Now employers are starting to demand it from job boards globally.” 

He described how job boards in Europe are more varied and niche compared to North America, where employers tend to rely on a handful of leading job boards. Many of SmartRecruiters’ European customers use SmartDistribute, which helps them manage their job board contracts all in one place. 

The Barriers to Efficient Job Advertising Spending

No matter where your business operates, the manual management of job advertising typically results in wasted spending. Jim put it this way: “The problem with pay-per-click advertising is that it is often out of sync with actual pipeline needs. For example, you may have an open req with ten candidates in the interview stage and an offer extended, and if you’re not micromanaging your PPC campaigns, you might let the meter run and pay for unneeded clicks/traffic.”

The other problem companies have is not distributing spending across multiple job boards. “People get deeply entrenched in their ideas about the best places to spend,” he said. A programmatic solution offers an objective view into which job boards are actually working and adjusts spending automatically. “Only a data-driven approach can guarantee that you’re selecting the right boards for your jobs,” Jim said.

The solution of using a recruitment advertising agency to manage programmatic does not always deliver on the promise of cost savings. In addition to the typical agency fee of 20% of ad spend, the agency relationship adds another layer of communication regarding changes in hiring. It also adds another level of complexity regarding data management.

Cost Per Qualified Applicant: The Key to True Job Board ROI

With the SmartJobs managed service, companies have three benefits:

• Technology that automatically optimizes their job campaigns
• Humans operating the technology who have access to data on the entire talent pipeline
• Already existing data management agreements. 

“At SmartRecruiters, we have all the data from the top of the funnel – the number of people clicking on the job, applying, and making it to the interview stage and all the way to the hire,” Jim said. “This is unique. Job boards can’t give customers data from the middle and bottom of the funnel. Our reporting includes accurate data on cost per interview, cost per offer, and cost per hire. It’s not data that has to be joined together after the fact. It’s a continuous funnel with no gaps that allows for a true ROI measurement.”

Getting beyond cost per applicant to cost per qualified applicant is an exciting way to drive value in the recruitment pipeline. “Customers have different definitions of what qualified means,” Jim said. “For some, it’s passing the resume review stage, while for others, it’s making it to the third interview. Our perspective is that every company has its own definition, and we can show it in the reporting.” 

With this rich data at their fingertips, a recruitment team can step back and compare their results before programmatic. They can also compare their job board spending to outbound sourcing, other recruitment marketing, and events. “Instead of this false indicator like cost per applicant or cost per click, you get a real ROI because the data is in one place.”

Sometimes a Programmatic Boost is All You Need

SmartRecruiters recently launched Boost, a lightweight approach to programmatic job advertising. TA teams can purchase bursts of programmatic traffic ad-hoc by entering credit card information. Boost is a great fit for high-priority roles or roles that aren’t getting enough qualified applicants. It’s also a great way to try out programmatic advertising without having to provide a centralized job ad budget to SmartRecruiters.

When I asked Jim what was most exciting in the job ad space today, he shared these phenomenal results from a SmartRecruiters client who used Boost:  

• Boosted jobs saw candidate volume rise by over 200%, and boosted candidates were 150% more likely to make it to the interview, offer, or hire stage.

The Future of Job Advertising

Recently, Indeed shifted its business model from pay-per-click to pay-per-applicant. Jim expects that in the future, this will improve their ability to deliver relevant applicants, and the business model will evolve yet again to paying per matching candidate. “It will take time to evolve, but many players are already working on this,” he said.

On another front, Jim thinks the distinction between sourcing and job advertising is likely to blur. He said, “Imagine a system that takes a req and automatically farms it out to either a programmatic advertising network, or to qualified sourcers, or both, depending on the importance of the role and the budget behind it to use for talent attraction. I’d love to see the paradigm of a true sourcing engine emerge where the details of where and how to market a job are handled conditionally and automatically, as much possible.”

Until then, you can get started on programmatic job advertising with SmartJobs and Boost in North America and the UK. If you just want to save money and time by managing your job boards more efficiently, try SmartDistribute. And if you’re looking to save money in multiple ways across your talent acquisition function, download our ebook Guide to Evaluating the Business Value of a Talent Acquisition Platform

A well-crafted job description helps job seekers see themselves in the role, determine if they have the right skills to perform, and indicates what skills they might develop on the job. By taking time to craft skills-based job descriptions, you widen talent pools, attract more diverse candidates, and increase hiring velocity. It’s one of the first steps on your hiring for skills journey.

Follow these guidelines and view the example to get started.

Re-examine each part of your existing job descriptions 

As you evaluate job descriptions through the lens of skills, keep these questions in mind:

• What skills does the job require, which do they need to have on day one, and which skills can they acquire over time?
• Are there components that imply a bias towards a pedigree or specific educational/work experiences that aren’t necessary to excel at the job? 
• Do the requirements align with the job’s required competencies? 

Components of the Job Description

Job Description

• Outline how specific skills will be used in the role and communicate its business impact. Include a breakdown of daily and weekly job duties and describe the types of projects the role covers. Candidates empowered with this information can assess whether their skill set matches the competencies required.
• Frame the role in positive, general terms that don’t imply biases toward specific age ranges or educational backgrounds. 
• Indicate the benefits an employee will receive from working in the role. This might include the opportunity to build new skills or contribute to a compelling company mission.

Company Description

• In addition to a description of what your company does, articulate your company’s approach to career development and list behavioral values that guide how work gets done.

Required Qualifications 

• Include the skills a candidate will need to show up and be successful on day one. This includes not only technical skills but also behavioral skills such as communication, persuasion, adaptability, etc.
• Be specific about competencies/skills required that are not educational-degree or experience level specific. This reduces the chance of applicants having to guess if they’re a good fit before they begin the application and interview process. 
• Is a certification or form of education (e.g., college major) necessary for this role? Unless the position requires specific science/math knowledge only transferable via a particular degree, don’t limit your job opportunities to specific majors.
• List other ways the candidate could have acquired the skills and knowledge you need without having a degree or certification. This avoids closing the talent pool to only members of specific economic/academic backgrounds and ensures compliance in some countries.
• If the role requires knowledge of certain software or tools, list them one by one.

Preferred Qualifications

• Include the skills that would be nice to have, such as additional education, areas of expertise, or leadership skills. This section allows you to attract your ideal candidate while not limiting your reach by making the job description so specific that it turns away candidates who meet the required qualifications.

Additional Information

Include the compliance statements standard in your region. These may include:

• Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
• Fair Chance Ordinance (FCO)
• Candidate Data Privacy Notice 

Example Job Description

The following job description may or may not be similar to how your organization currently writes job descriptions. The purpose of this example is to demonstrate how you can weave skills into the qualifications section of the job description without having to make a separate list of skills. By tying each job duty to the skills required to carry it out, you give candidates the opportunity to self-assess their current skillset and imagine themselves in the role. 

Skills-based hiring does not stop at the job description. Writing the job description in this way becomes a baseline for how you evaluate the candidate. For each skill in your list, consider how you will evaluate it. For example, to evaluate program design skills, you could ask a behavioral question such as, “Tell me about a program you designed and implemented.” 

A well-designed hiring process with multiple interviewers will have predetermined skill-based questions for each interviewer. This way, questions don’t get repeated and you can put together a picture of the whole candidate as a team.

Position Title: Customer Service Manager

Skills-based verbiage in bold

Job Description

The Customer Service Manager is responsible for ensuring the satisfaction of our customers. This position will report to our Managing Director, and keep them up to date on activities within the Customer Service department. In this job, you will supervise the daily operations of the customer service representatives, create a reliable customer loyalty program, and manage the relationships with customers, including handling customer queries and complaints. You will get the opportunity to build relationships with our valued customers, make an impact on our contract renewal rate, and foster team spirit among a group of dedicated employees.

Indicates the benefits an employee will receive from working in the role.

Company Description

The Fuller Organization is a company rooted in cleaning values. The organization founded in 1875 helps customers achieve high levels of cleanliness at a reasonable cost.  We pride ourselves on our customer relationships and strong customer loyalty. Working with the Fuller team is exciting, fast-paced, and will reward you with the knowledge that your work contributes to peace of mind and environments that meet high standards of hygiene.  At Fuller, we value the growth and development of every team member.  Our core value “Thrive together” means that we learn from each other and grow from it. We believe at Fuller you will not only find a great place to work, but also a great place to grow, learn new skills, and develop your career. 

Articulates the company’s approach to career development and lists behavioral values that guide how work gets done.

Qualifications

• To manage a time of five customer service representatives, you’ll need skills in leadership and strong coaching skills.
• A new customer loyalty program is a key initiative for our business. You’ll rely on project management and program design skills to design and implement this core program.
• Ability to collaborate cross-functionally is essential to this role as you will be communicating with stakeholders across the marketing and services teams to execute the customer loyalty program and communicate results to business teams on an ongoing basis. Your skills in survey development and analysis with help you contribute to our team’s continuous improvement.
• Your skills in customer interaction, problem-solving, negotiation, and communication will help us deliver unparalleled service that keeps our customers coming back.
• You are a fast learner with new systems and have demonstrable skills with word processing software, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Includes the skills a candidate will need to show up and be successful on day one.

Lists required tools/software

Avoids listing educational requirements or years of required experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Two or more years of experience managing teams in a customer service environment.
• Experience in the service industry

Includes nice-to-haves

Additional Information

This is a full-time, salaried role that covers a Monday-Friday day shift. We offer health, vision, dental, life, and disability insurance, 401(k) matching, an employee assistance program, parental leave, and paid time off.

The Company provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type, without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Includes useful details about the job, benefits information, and compliance statements

Learn how to hire for skills

To learn how to build skills-based hiring into every aspect of your TA process, download our ebook, A Practical Guide on Hiring for Skills

Table of Contents

• How Some Recruiters Have Cracked the Job Ad Code
• Aha Moment: What If SmartRecruiters Could Democratize Job Ad Optimization for All Enterprises?
• Simplifying Vendor Management
• Stay Agile, But Still be Able to Take a Lunch Break
• Collect Data for Future Optimization
• The Bottom Line is a Raised Bar

Throughout my 15 years in the TA tech space, people have been making excuses for job boards and job ad performance in general. The bar seems to have lowered with time.

“Well, we do get lots of applications…”

“At least with PPC we are only paying when someone clicks!”

“Job posts are really just for branding”

As noted by SHRM and elsewhere, job boards never top the list of quality sources (they don’t come near internal mobility or referrals), yet companies spend billions on posting credits, slots, and PPC. At SmartRecruiters, we followed up on a hunch that some recruiters were cracking the code on generating consistently high-quality applicant flow. You’ll want to take a look at what we found.

How Some Recruiters Have Cracked the Job Ad Code

When SmartRecruiters analyzed the habits for tens of thousands of recruiters, across 4,000 customers, we found three core strategies that best predict job advertising success:

1. Have a backup plan for every job

Savvy recruiters appear to use multiple sources per job, staggering advertisements vs. putting all their spend in one basket, all at once. For example, they may start with free aggregators, then switch to LinkedIn slots, and finally try Indeed PPC or programmatic.

Why? Because there is always an element of timing and luck in advertising. Changing the channel on ads that aren’t attracting the right people at a given moment is one way to shake things up and improve the odds of finding right-fitting applicants.

2. Set pipeline “rules” and reminders

How long is too long to wait for ten candidates to pass assessments or three candidates to be scheduled for interviews? Savvy recruiters are taking a disciplined approach to setting specific, time bound goals for filling their pipelines. These types of rules appear to be foundational for making the agile optimizations mentioned above.

3. Careful planning and budgeting based on applicant quality

This pattern was harder to detect from raw ATS data itself, but it bubbled up via surveys and hundreds of quarterly business reviews with customers. Recruiters making the most hires via job ads work at companies that analyze the historical quality and conversion of candidates, rather than just focusing on clicks and costs per click. These employers in turn used these analyses to reshape hiring budgets and increase investments in quality sources.

Yes – All of These Strategies are Easier Said Than Done, Manually

Recruiters are not accountants or marketers and most of them don’t have the spare time to wear those hats. Only a small fraction of SmartRecruiters customers can devote partial, let alone full-time headcount to the analysis, manual optimization, and experimentation outlined in this post.

Aha Moment: What If SmartRecruiters Could Democratize Job Ad Optimization for All Enterprises?

The solution came to us in the form of SmartJobs, a “Smart, Managed Advertising” service that would sit inside the SmartRecruiters Talent Acquisition Suite and use the company’s own data to automate all of the strategies mentioned above, and more. Think of SmartJobs as a lean, data-driven, recruitment advertising agency.

Nonetheless, this isn’t all big data and automation. Behind the tech is our expert recruitment marketing team–including a media planner, media operations specialist, and account director–who helps TA teams create a tailored plan to deliver against their unique hiring goals.

Simplifying Vendor Management

Vendor management and performance comparison all in one spot, no more manual spreadsheets to manage. With SmartJobs you can..

• Manage and negotiate contracts
• Purchase and renew ad space
• Manage user credentials and ad credits
• Track performance by job or channel

Stay Agile, But Still be Able to Take a Lunch Break

You know how to manage your candidate pipeline and adjust according to incoming data, but you don’t have 100 hours in the day just to spend on job advertising. Let SmartJobs do some of the legwork.

• SmartJobs automates spending adjustments based on the changes in your talent pipeline
• Pause ads for jobs that have a full pipeline
• Boosts traffic to jobs that need more volume
• Switch sources when the quality is poor

Collect Data for Future Optimization

It’s hard to make meaningful changes to your strategy without strong data insights. That’s why SmartJobs has data collection and delivery built-in. ATS data is combined with sourcing analytics to give you a complete end-to-end view of your advertising performance.

• Receive detailed monthly reports
• See candidate journey with post-to-interview and post-to-hire analytics
• Compare all your sources side by side
• ROI analysis of your advertising strategy 

The Bottom Line is a Raised Bar

When it comes to making sensible investments in job advertising, costs are critical to the equation. In a world where job advertising doesn’t yield great results, the variables that matter most are cost per post, click, applicant, etc.

But in a world where job advertising attracts consistently high quality candidates, the bottom line must be reconsidered alongside all line items in a sourcing budget, and beyond. 

In other words, what if you could make 3x the number of hires from set-it-and-forget-it ads, while reducing costs of manual sourcing and external agencies, speeding up start times, and giving hundreds of hours back to recruiters? With SmartJobs, we are going back to the future of job advertising to help companies do just that. 

In this chapter of TA Tech history, who would have thought job boards and job ad networks would be having the last laugh? If this all leads to a leaner, more powerful way to connect talent to jobs at scale, we are happy to laugh heartily, together.

Want to learn more? Download the SmartJobs Product Sheet

When talent acquisitions leaders were strategizing for 2020 they could not have anticipated the rapid changes that would occur in the candidate market. On March 11th 2020, the World Health Organization officially proclaimed COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic and the industry saw a sudden shift in the job market.

The demand for workers in healthcare, consumer goods and logistics jumped across Europe and the USA. This was inflated by the knock-on effects of a boost in online shopping, buying in bulk and increasing cases of COVID-19. For the talent acquisition lead it meant everything planned, along with the go-to playbook, was thrown out the window. Communication with job seekers and candidates was now more important than ever. 

In preparation for the influx of corona queries, enterprises such as Airbus, McDonald’s, Deutsche Telekom and other clients utilised their recruitment chatbot to automate communication with job seekers and candidates by creating coronavirus categories. 

Job Seeker Study Results

6 weeks after the announcement, jobpal’s data analysts gathered all 600 COVID-19 related questions that job seekers were asking in order to gain a better understanding of their behavior. These are the results:

• 47% of chatbot end users wanted to know about the company’s reaction to COVID-19. With queries such as “What are you doing to protect your employees from COVID-19?” and “How are you dealing with the Corona crisis?” 
• 23% of chatbot end-users had hiring-related queries such as “What is going to happen with my application due to corona?” and “Can I apply despite Corona?”. 
• 11% of chatbot end-users asked interview related questions such as “Will my interview be impacted by coronavirus?” and “Do all applicants get a new appointment for tests and video interviews?”. 
• 10% of chatbot end-users asked a range of other questions that surrounded the business rather than around hiring such as “How do I get food from you despite COVID-19?” and “When do you close because of coronavirus?”. 
• 7% of chatbot end-users wanted to know more information about the COVID-19 virus itself and had queries such as “I am worried about COVID-19 what should I do?” and “Give me information on corona”. 
• 2% of chatbot end-users asked about what will happen after the COVID-19 crisis – “Will you hire after the coronavirus?”.

Learnings from the Job Seeker Study

What’s an interesting takeaway is the volume of queries in certain areas. For example, company reaction is almost half of the total queries registered. This shows that job seekers across the board are most likely to ask questions about the company’s response to the pandemic. It’s clear that to see the need to communicate the business’ stance on COVID-19 is a must. 

Hiring related queries take up 23% of the dataset – an interesting result which can tell us a lot about the candidate market. It could be that the volume of the queries relates to the concerns at the forefront of the job seekers mind. Stability and security could see less movement in job roles as talks of economic downturn continue. 

“Can I do a video interview instead of a normal interview?” – video interview questions populate a large portion of the 11% interview related questions. It’s no secret that interviews made the move to virtual platforms over March, and it could be seen as the new normal for candidates and recruiters. Another hypothesis around this category is that the majority of those asking questions are candidates who are already in the pipeline.  

The “Other” category consists of queries that relate to business operations. This could suggest that even if a job seeker is inquiring about a position they can also ask about the business from a consumer perspective. In a similar light, 7% of queries regarding the Coronavirus can also be perceived from a consumer standpoint. Post-COVID 19 makes up the smallest portion of the queries, which can tell us that during that period very few job seekers could see past the pandemic. 

Conversational AI technology equips talent acquisition teams with the ability to communicate effectively in their employer brands’ tonality 24/7. Consequently, automating this part of the hiring process provides the TA team’s time-back to focus on more urgent tasks, retrieve data insights from their candidates and increase engagement. Automation’s ability to drive efficiency in recruitment and time-saving capabilities is one of the reasons why the demand for AI in recruitment has shot up to 36% in 2020, compared to 7% in 2019.  

Enterprises such as Airbus and Deutsche Telekom have proved successful with automation in their hiring process with a positive impact on efficiency, candidate engagement and experience.

There have been a lot of clichéd phrases used to describe the “unprecedented times” we live in which we ponder what the “new normal” is and what will remain of the “past we’re leaving behind.”

While these expressions might seem a bit hollow, they do contain a very real truth: things are not the same and things are not going to go back to the way they were. That’s why, when the world shifted for us at TSA Group—Australia’s leading specialists in CX consultancy and services —we knew the time was now to make some major changes.

With the onset of COVID-19, our small team of 13 recruiters (seven full-time and six part-time) found itself in a high pressure situation. Our clients were coming to us asking for more support, as the volume of calls were steadily increasing.

As unemployment skyrocketed, we also knew that through supporting our clients, we were supporting the community by providing a positive candidate experience and meaningful work opportunities when it was needed most.

We were hiring for all types of contact center roles from team leaders to customer service representatives. Our current operation had worked for us for a long time, but the time had come to scale a contingent workforce rapidly. In order to take on the influx of volume we saw coming, we knew we needed to look externally for support.

That’s when I reached out to SmartRecruiters. 

We had to switch to a system that could enable a digital hiring process, handle the volume of placements we needed and still be cost effective. Because the change had to happen fast, the system had to be intuitive. In a normal scenario, we would have time to build a training program and roll out gradually. Now was not that time. We needed to work with someone who met deadlines and was able to deliver on time. You know… people who walk the talk.

In just nine days, we went live with SmartRecruiters.

I must give a huge shoutout to Ben Rynja. There were many nights on the phone with him and the SmartRecruiters team. We were learning how to use the system AS it was being built and implemented—building the plane while it’s in the air, so to speak.

There wasn’t time for a designed process—we instead augmented/updated it as we moved candidates through the pipeline based on feedback from our recruiters and our candidates. We both put in long hours and formed a true partnership while working together to make this happen.

Our success has been phenomenal. In just three weeks we’ve had:

• 16,135 applications
• 210 hires
• 97% Hiring Velocity (roles filled on time)

Most importantly, our candidate experience has only improved. You see, we are receiving a large amount of inquiries from people who are desperate to find a job right now. And TSA Group genuinely cares about people—whether you ultimately join our team or not.

We want you to find success. That experience starts from the first time a candidate receives a “Thank you for applying” message because we know that to receive acknowledgement is SO important right now. As is showing where a candidate is in the interview process. The automation available with SmartRecruiters makes it happen. 

It’s equally as important to go back in the timeline (at scale) and let candidates know if we are no longer recruiting for roles that are now on pause—without forcing our already labored recruiters to pick up the phone and be overwhelmed with that daunting task.

This mass communication was received with an overwhelmingly positive response by our candidates. “Please retain my details and reach out to me when things improve” is the best kind of response to receive. 

COVID-19 is a time I won’t forget. For many reasons. This “unprecedented time” brought forth a new career highlight for me. I could finally give the amazing TSA Group recruitment team the tools they needed to supercharge their already incredible skills.

Candidates are getting tangible feedback giving them a level of confidence and trust in how they are progressing through the interview process. And the process is fair, fast and seamless. With SmartRecruiters, we were able to collaborate more effectively with hiring managers than ever before.

We had one operational manager per site delegated to working hand and glove with the team in assessing candidates, using SmartRecruiters. Being able to tag/comment within the system allows hiring managers the simplicity and flexibility they need to act quickly, interview fairly, and document the process well. By gaining feedback in real-time we were able to avoid unnecessary and costly delays throughout our process. 

Final Thoughts

It truly was a collaborative effort on all fronts that was transformational for both our TA team and our processes. This “unprecedented time” has allowed us to reevaluate our current position and leave a few things in the past. And we’re ok with that, because this “new normal” is something we’ve been wanting for a long time.

Find out how SmartRecruiters can partner with your company to transform your talent function and—like the TSA Group—achieve hiring success.

Google Hire has been scheduled for discontinuation. In September 2020, the applicant tracking system (ATS) will be removed from G-suite, affecting recruiters and business owners across North America and the U.K.

This news comes as a disappointment to those who rely on the ATS to source and hire new talent. As a company devoted to connecting people to jobs, we can empathize. A well-made recruiting platform can mean the difference between company-wide growth or total stagnation. Finding such a tool can be hard; having to give it up even harder.

Therefore, to make the transition easier, we’d like to offer a demo of SmartRecruiters with free data migration to all existing Google Hire customers. We’d love the opportunity to share with each and every one of you something we’re very passionate about—Hiring Success. 

We define Hiring Success as the ability to attract, select, and hire the best talent for any role, on demand and on budget—an outcome enabled by the SmartRecruiters technology. And to-date we’ve empowered over 4,000 companies in 100+ countries across the globe to achieve such outcomes. This is what Hiring Success has looked like for many of those companies: 

Don’t take our word for it, though. Here’s what one of our clients—Sandi Lurie, VP of Global Recruiting at Optimizely—has to say about SmartRecruiters and Hiring Success:

SmartRecruiters is not just a great ATS, they are an incredible partner in the journey to hiring exceptional talent. The platform itself promotes easy collaboration across hiring teams and the UI is intuitive.

Sandi Lurie
VP of Global Recruiting
Optimizely

Interested in writing the first chapter of your company’s Hiring Success story? Then schedule a demo today. And, as mentioned above, to make the transition as seamless as possible, we’ll offer full support with free data migration. We look forward to hearing from you!

With candidates viewing a job ad for less than a minute on average, recruiters can’t waste time with these common mistakes.

Picture this. It’s Friday morning. You’re ready for another great day of recruiting, a steaming coffee sits on the desk next to you. This is your zen place.

You fire up your laptop, ready to write a stellar job ad, when it hits you – this seemingly simple copy is actually super important! You can’t just write a ‘whatever’  job ad. This post will be the first point of contact for candidates to the open role, and maybe even your company.

You start downing your coffee and typing furiously. ‘This ad has to be perfect!’ you think. ‘Unless I want to have as much impact as a fly has on a windshield.’

Well, not to alarm you further, but according to a recent study, most job seekers spend a measly 49.7 seconds reviewing a job ad before clicking away.

So, it’s clear the stakes are high, but let’s return to our calm place… put down the coffee, give your keyboard a break, and let’s go over the hallmarks of a successful job ad, and the terrible, no-good, please-don’t-do-thats to avoid at all costs.

1. Sugar-Coating the Company Culture

When writing a job posting, you want to reflect your organization’s culture and connect back to your core values. Now, what you don’t want to do is sugarcoat things and mention values your company doesn’t actually live.  Make sure you are being upfront in your job ads to attract top talent with the right mix of hard and soft skills that would make a great cultural fit.

Why?

If you say your company is ‘all about work-life balance’ when really you expect workers to pull long nights and be reachable at all times, the charade will be up once the new hire starts. Ultimately, the reality will hit them that they were sold a false bill of goods. When that happens, be prepared to see them leave and don’t be surprised when the negative Glassdoor review follows.

Here’s an example of how to be real about your company culture:

We are looking for a Social Media Marketing Specialist who thrives on teamwork and accountability. If you are not OK with hard startup culture, this place might not be a good fit for you…

2. Staying Silent on Benefits and Perks

Lean on your strengths. If your company has great benefits or perks be sure to flaunt them — remote work options, dog-friendly environment, stellar dental plan, public transit passes, whatever it is, candidates will be interested.

Why?

Having selling points in your job ads that showcase how different you are, sets you apart from the competition. Creating these positive differentiators is important, especially if your brand is relatively unknown.

Here is an example of how to showcase benefits:

If you join our team, you won’t have to leave your furry friend alone at home all day, here at our company we have a dog-friendly office. Speaking of friendly, we are also eco-friendly, we encourage our employees to make use of public transit by offering free monthly passes.

3. Using Meaningless Buzzwords

We all want to hire someone who is: A laser-focused self-starter who can hit the ground running with a blue sky thinking to join our team.

So while you might think that cramming your job advert with buzzwords and fancy wording can make you sound more knowledgeable, it actually comes off as vague and lazy; it may even negatively affect your application rate.

Why?

Did you know that 64 percent of job seekers will not apply for a position if they do not understand what it is about? So, make sure to use specific and simple language that actually resonates with your audience. (If you don’t know who your audience is, this article can help you define your candidate persona.)

Here’s an example of a job ad with specific language:

“The ideal candidate is a product manager with a deep understanding of programmatic advertising and machine learning algorithms as they relate to job boards, advertising, and overall job distribution.” – SmartRecruiters, Product Manager Job Post.

4. Not Going Mobile Friendly

Here is some food for thought: Only 42 percent of recruitment sites are mobile friendly, yet 50 percent of candidates use their smartphones to look for and apply to jobs.

Why?

Mobile search is easy! People scroll through ads while watching TV, or maybe even at work. If you manage to tick the mobile box, you will be able to tap into a much larger candidate pool.

Here’s an easy checklist:

• Under 700 words
• Optimized for one-click apply
• Formatted to fit mobile screens

(Check out common mistakes of mobile recruiting!)

Final Thoughts

Often, the best candidates are already employed aka ‘passive talent’, but that shouldn’t dissuade your recruiting efforts. In fact, 51percent of those who do have jobs are searching for new ones or watching for openings. So, your job ad still counts!

If you manage to avoid these job advertisement writing pitfalls, you will max out the odds of sourcing your next Elon Musk.

From her unique perch in TA marketing, this CEO has an unparalleled view of the industry that you’ll want to see!

HR tech marketing is a pretty small niche to land on but for Maren Hogan, CEO and Founder of Red Branch Media, it just made sense. This “dyed in the wool” marketer was introduced to the burgeoning world of talent acquisition (TA) through her spouse, who was starting a recruiting agency back in 2008. Though that year turned out to be a most inauspicious time to start a company – need we recall the Financial Crisis of 2008 – the adventure did set Maren on her path towards becoming one of the leading experts in the HR and Recruiting Tech industry.

She laughs while reminiscing how Red Branch Media was intended to be a small-scale operation that would allow her to tweet from the couch. However, demand proved otherwise, and eight years later Red Branch has become a full fledged agency with 50 employees and presence at most major TA events.

Now, Maren brings her expertise to Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26-27 in San Francisco both a judge for the Recruiting Startup Awards and as the host of her own session, The Innovation Quadrant: How to Align You with Your Company. We talk with her today about what she has in store for us at the conference, and the role of brand in sourcing.

Can you give us a preview of your session?

My session, The Innovation Quadrant: How to Align You with Your Company, comes from my deep interest in what drives innovation within companies. I began looking at different types of innovation and building a quadrant for companies and individuals to map themselves based on the Global Innovation Index.

In our 30 minutes together, I’m going to give a simplified version of the innovation questionnaire I’ve developed, and attendees will grade themselves on a scale of A-to-D in each of the four quadrants: management, leadership, inspiration, and individual contributor.

You’ve said recruiters need to sell a job brand – not just employer brand. Could you explain the difference between the two?

Anyone who has worked at a large company knows the culture will vary in different departments, branches, or teams within the company and that’s why it’s important to get specific.

On a super high level, employer brand is the company’s value proposition and culture. I think of it as the promise a company makes towards all levels of its employees from VP to janitor. On the other hand, the job brand will speak to the unique culture of a group within the company, and the responsibilities of the role. It’s something that you have to work more closely with the hiring manager to figure out, including understanding what type of person does well in that role.

Why is it so important to get so specific when it comes to brand?

Maybe it’s my Omaha sensibility, or just my marketing standpoint, but it doesn’t make sense to me that a company would make a commitment to hiring someone without being sure they were the right person for the job. The average salary in the US is about 62k. That’s the cost of a house here in Omaha. I wouldn’t make that investment without being sure.

Talk to me a little bit about some new sourcing channels.

Obviously, sourcing channels are always evolving, the ones that were new and innovative a couple of years ago are no longer as relevant today. When I try to discover new sourcing channels, I put myself in the candidate’s shoes. Who am I? Where do I hang out, in person or online?

When people think sourcing, they generally think ‘online’, but sometimes it works to go super old school. I had one client sourcing college students and what worked there was posting signs in bar bathroom stalls.  

Another sourcer I know just kept a pile of candy on her desk and gave out a piece to anyone who delivered a name and number. It honestly worked more effectively than any $100 referral bonus program I’ve ever seen… I guess because of the immediacy?

It just depends on who you’re looking for aka your ‘candidate personae’ and where that personae will be.

You talk a lot about candidate personae, is creating candidate personaes something that is becoming more popular now?

Anecdotally I would say yes. I’ve been talking about candidate personaes for over five years now. It used to be when I asked a group who had candidate personaes for their job no one raised their hand, now almost everybody does.

Hear more from Maren Hogan on why she’s coming to Hiring Success 19 – Americas in her video below!

News of Google’s 50 million euro fine has rocked the business world, but as other multinationals panic, recruiters can rejoice in some of the unexpected benefits of the GDPR regulation.

On January 21st, 2019, The French Data Protection Authority announced from Paris it would be slapping Google with a 50 million euro fine or around 57 million dollars for not correctly disclosing to its users how their data would be collected and managed by its search engine and services such as Youtube, and google maps to present personalized advertisements.

As one regulator put it “Google’s practices obscured how its services can reveal important parts of their user’s private life since they are based on a huge amount of data, a wide variety of services and almost unlimited possible combinations.”

This comes as the fourth and the largest fine brought against a company breaching the new General Data Protection Regulation (enacted in May 2018) and sends a message to the rest of the business world that no corporation is too big to avoid penalties. Google is determining whether to appeal the fine, but faces an uphill battle as history has shown through multiple billion dollar fines that the European Union does not favor the tech giant.

We, at SmartRecruiters, have been following the development of these measures since they were announced, bringing attention to the fact that many people didn’t know if their Applicant Tracking System (ATS) was up-to-date. (Evaluate your ATS here!) We also covered the Cambridge Analytica scandal, detailing how the business community is reacting to the changes that need to be made in order to stay GDPR compliant.

Now that we are in 2019 and the world has not imploded over these new regulations, Smartrecruiters has some new information that demonstrates that GDPR has actually had some positive effects, specifically in the world of recruiting. I know, crazy to think that bureaucracy had any benefits… but hear us out, and check out this infographic below describing them.

Based on this infographic we can see that one of the natural consequences of making the hiring process and data collection of applicants more transparent, are more engaged candidates. People have overwhelmingly responded to the request to consent option (83 percent) in less than a day, with less than one percent have deleted their profiles.

When candidates feel that a company is respecting their information they are more likely to interact with the hiring process. Companies have gotten in on the action as well and 79 percent of SmartRecruiters customers have included a company or country-specific privacy policy. 63 percent have also internally trained their staff to properly process their personal data which is significantly more when compared to the rest of the world where only 10 percent of companies have enacted the same measures.

These efforts by and large benefit recruiters as they do not need to worry if their company’s management of candidate data breach GDPR compliance and they have Candidates more willing to engage with the hiring process.

SmartRecruiters’ efforts have made our customers some of the most prepared for GDPR compliance and because of that, they are not sitting in the same hot water as Google or Facebook at this moment. If you would like to know more about SmartRecruiters’ resources  Check out our SmartRecruiters’ GDPR Resource Kit or FAQ page for answers to all the most common recruiting questions concerning data privacy.

If you want to predict the end for your employees, look no further than the start. A bumpy on-ramp into your organization could very well be steering many of them to the nearest exit.

It should come as no surprise to HR managers, but the first 18 months of employment — when turnover can reach as high as 50 percent — are pivotal in the employee-employer relationship. But according to a Gallup study, a meager 12 percent of employees “strongly agree” that their organization provides a sufficient onboarding training process.

Far too many HR departments risk an abbreviated tenure with new hires by neglecting this early stage. Given the costs of losing a team member — at least six to nine months of his or her salary — preventing employee turnover should be a top priority for every company.

The Untapped Power of Onboarding Software

Thankfully, many HR departments have the necessary tools right at their fingertips. Many of these teams have already implemented a learning management system (LMS) for staff training, but they might not understand some of the ancillary LMS benefits. What was once a tool solely for internal use can now be leveraged long before an interview.

The advantages of a learning management system can begin as early as the recruitment phase. One HR executive recently told me about a successful hire funneled directly from the company’s online recruitment program, which vets candidates with mini certification courses and games designed to test skills. This talent acquisition software enabled the company to build a robust profile of candidate data before the interview process, which ensured it was choosing from the best of the best.

Finding and Onboarding Top Talent With LMS Software

Taking your onboarding program online can yield similar results for your firm. Here are five benefits of recruiting and onboarding new employees using your learning management system:

1)

You can track recruits on a centralized platform. Without a central database enabling a rapid review of an array of applicants, a recruiting manager might have little time to assess résumés or set up interviews. Using online training platform software to aggregate all the pertinent information about your recruits can save precious time.

Once you have the data readily available, you can use it to quickly identify which candidates should stay in the running. The software enables you to find individuals who have the right degree or key qualifications much faster than thumbing through an unyielding mountain of résumés.

2)

You can fill in gaps using detailed reports. Onboarding software brings a host of analytics to your recruitment process. With detailed reports, charts, and graphs of assessment data, you can collect critical information to find the right talent to fit your gaps.

Companies like Johnson & Johnson are adeptly using these features to match recruits with departments. By analyzing the traits of its top employees, the pharmaceutical giant identifies criteria for its assessments and is able to screen out applicants who might be unlikely to succeed. Likewise, you can develop your own criteria for what helps someone thrive in customer service or sales and then structure your employee onboarding software accordingly.

3)

You can uncover hidden talents. As many recruiters and hiring managers have learned, it’s not uncommon for candidates to discover that they’re better suited for a different position during the interview process. Why not let your employee onboarding software accelerate this realization? You can use the system to help prospective hires identify their core talents and then see open positions that match their expertise.

By moving this critical discovery phase forward, you can save your organization a good deal of time and money. Instead of going through the painful exercise of re-recruiting after shifting someone toward another department, you can funnel new hires into the right role from the start.

4)

You can get face time with candidates. Most employee onboarding software has built-in support for video conferencing. Companies such as Unilever have scrapped résumés altogether in favor of a mixture of game-based assessments and automated video interviews.

Once again, software can save you and your department the effort of going through an in-person interview only to discover that your promising candidate is a poor communicator or a bad fit for your organization. Get that important face-to-face contact before an official interview by using technology to connect.

5)

You can customize your onboarding by pinpointing areas of improvement. Because you’ve already established a profile for new hires in your onboarding system through the recruiting process, you can transition seamlessly into training. Given that nearly 90 percent of new hires say they don’t enter a new job with all the knowledge they need, they will require help to bridge the gaps in their skills.

Regardless of any shortcomings that might have come to light during interviews, induction training for new employees coupled with specific online courses can quickly bring them up to speed. You’re thus able to dive right into on-the-job training, which more than 75 percent of new employees have identified as the most important part of onboarding.

***

While the benefits of onboarding new employees are well-established, relatively few companies think to put their learning management systems to work during these early stages. With a flexible LMS that supports gamification, video conferencing, applicant tracking, and advanced reporting features, you can employ this software to smooth the on-ramp and pave the way to success for your new hires.