Talent acquisition—defined as the process of identifying and acquiring skilled workers to meet your organizational needs—has been around for longer than you might think. Early forms of the profession date as far back as 2,000 BCE.

And while talent acquisition (TA) then hardly resembles what it does today, one thing has remained the same: advancements in thought and technology have always disrupted and changed it for the better. Looking back on the history of talent acquisition provides us with more meaningful insights into the profession, as well as what the future holds in store.

The History of Talent Acquisition

The Age of Empires

Early talent acquisition strategies often were government-led, as they were the employers with the most power and largest reach. During the Song Dynasty’s rule in China (960-1279) there was a set of formal examinations that citizens could take in order to enter the government’s civil service. The examinations were harder than almost any contemporary test you can think of, with a passing rate of only 1%. 

The Greeks and Romans also employed early talent acquisition strategies but for different reasons than China. With an increased need for soldiers and military strength, both the Romans and Greeks sent out recruiters to attract and select talent to fight for them. In fact, Julius Caesar implemented one of the first employee referral programs. Recruiting others was rewarded with up to a third of a year’s pay. 

Even with such good pay, the Romans still struggled to recruit an adequate number of people to join the army. They decided to aggressively rebrand the army as a status symbol. Soldiers were tattooed visibly to differentiate themselves for everyday citizens. Employer branding was taken quite literally then it seems.

The First Talent Crisis

One of the first and most notable talent shortages happened during the bubonic plague. The supply of workers dropped drastically and surviving laborers and skilled craftsmen were able to name exorbitant prices for their services.

In order to combat the talent crisis, monarchies and ruling bodies passed strict labor laws, some even stating anyone healthy under the age of 60 had to work for anyone willing to hire them. Ultimately, these efforts failed to stop the market from taking its course, and wages did rise due to the scarcity of workers. 

Recruitment Marketing Over Time

Recruitment marketing can best be viewed historically through the lens of the military as it is well documented and preserved. 

The Romans and Greeks→ The Romans and Greeks used tattoos in order to establish brand awareness and walking advertisements for the military, much in the same way that today’s modern military uses uniforms as demarcations of service. 

Continental army→ Posters were used in order to advance recruitment. These posters relied on guilty patriotism, calling all able-bodied, brave men to join in the fight. These posters also aggressively called out the enemy, likening the current governance to a form of slavery. 

WW1→ During the First World War, the push for recruitment was massive. One of the most notable ways that the various powers recruited was through posters. What comes to mind for most people is probably the image of Uncle Sam pointing his finger and boldly declaring, “I want you.”

In fact, this is one of the most common forms of early military recruitment. Early military recruitment focused heavily on the individual and what they could do for their country. 

WW2→ In WW2 we see many of the same marketing tactics as we did in WW1. Posters with Uncle Sam challenging young men to fight by looking directly into the frame become widely popular. We also see an increased push towards vengeful patriotism with posters calling on Irishmen to avenge the Lusitania by signing up to fight. 

Vietnam→ During the Vietnam War posters often depicted the US military attacking the enemy. This is probably the most notable example of unsuccessful military marketing. Due in part to the war being largely unpopular, posters fell flat, and the government was forced to rely largely on the draft.

Slogans→ “Be all you can be,” “an army of one,” “army strong,” and “warriors wanted” are the progression of slogans the US army has employed over the years. Slogans help organizations develop a clear theme throughout their marketing strategies. 

Fast Forward to Today

Talent acquisition as we know it today is quite different in nature. The profession has flourished in the private sector, as companies have come to realize just how much effort can be required when it comes to sourcing and staffing. 

Speed and optimization are the name of the game. The modern TA leader is tasked with finding top talent in a timely, efficient, and cost effective manner. To aid in this process, applicant tracking systems, AI, CRM, and other technologies have become staple tools of the trade for recruiters across the world, helping recruiting and talent acquisition reach new heights. 

However, there’s far more to the contemporary recruiter’s toolkit than software. An equally important part of any company’s hiring strategy is the process that surrounds it and the people who help facilitate it. More information on that relationship between people, process, and technology in talent acquisition can be found in The Definitive Guide to Hiring Success.

What’s Next?

As of 2016, millennials are the largest generation in the U.S. labor force. Close behind them are the members of Generation Z. Not only will millennials and Generation Z change the median age of the American workforce, they’ll also radically disrupt the norms and landscape of the labor market.

TA teams will have to adopt accordingly. Below are a few examples of the ways in which recruiters will need to change their strategies to engage and attract a new generation of talent. 

Update Your Benefits Package

It wasn’t that long ago that 401k’s, a solid dental plan, and company equity were considered to be desirable workplace benefits. However, times have changed, and so have the expectations and priorities of the newer, younger generations. Whereas a few decades ago, it wasn’t unheard of for someone to spend their careers at one company, today it’s almost unheard of for someone to stay at one company for more than five years.

Many large employers have recognized this shift and are moving to more fluid perks that attempt to combat churn. These include rotational programs, flexible work schedules, liberal working from home policies, and unlimited PTO. 

Strive for a Seamless Candidate Experience

The ideal experience for anything and everything online these days is seamless and frictionless. Your job application process should reflect that. If candidates can order a baby grand piano on Amazon’s mobile app with the tap of a thumb or file their income tax returns in under twenty minutes, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to apply for a job at your company with equal ease. 

Provide Experiences

While millennials are known as digital natives they also place a large emphasis on experiences over goods. Sending top talent a branded water bottle or company swag can be a good way to get their attention, but research shows us that younger generations would rather be presented with unique experiences. Clever companies provide these in the form of conferences, networking events, or even social causes.

Showcase Inclusion and Diversity Over Culture 

With shows like Silicon Valley and the widely popularized notion of the “tech-bro,” younger generations are more weary of homogenous workplace cultures than you might think. In fact, 77% of Generation Z said that a company’s level of diversity affects their decision to work there.

Therefore, focus less on company culture and hiring for cultural fit,  and place more emphasis on attracting a diverse, yet harmonious community of employees. The culture you’re looking for, with a little guidance and oversight, will organically follow.

Prioritize Employee Satisfaction

In the age of Amazon and online shopping, younger generations are likely to look for reviews before committing to anything—including jobs. According to Glassdoor, 70% of candidates look at company reviews before they make a decision.

And considering that current and former employees are the ones leaving said reviews, it’s important to focus on employee satisfaction. This will safeguard your company against scathing online feedback, which could hamper your chances of attracting top talent. 

Final Thoughts

Talent acquisition has come a long way since the age of ancient empires. And if history has taught us anything, it will continue to evolve and change. Those who are successful in finding the best and brightest talent, will embrace the constantly fluctuating nature of the profession and look towards the future with an open mind. 

Want to know more about current changes in talent acquisition and what you can do to future-proof your company? Schedule a demo with our team of TA experts today.

The onboarding process is what bridges the gap between the candidate and employee experience. This transitional phase is subtle and quick, but, when given due consideration and care, pays off in dividends in the long run.

Onboarding is one of foundational building blocks of Hiring Success. Unfortunately, all too often it’s a process that’s overlooked and underrated. As a formal introduction, an effective onboarding process can put new employees on the path to success in your company, or steer them in the opposite direction.

In an age when companies are now investing more than ever in the acquisition and retention of talent—why do anything less than guide employees, at every step of the journey, to total success?

Let’s take a closer look at the true value of onboarding, what makes for a memorable onboarding experience, as well as what your company can to do continuously measure, build, and improve upon its process.

What Is Onboarding?

Employee onboarding is the process of formally integrating new employees into your organization, making them feel welcome and immersed in your company’s culture, as well as introducing them to the tools and teams they will be working with.

Onboarding can take many shapes and forms. In some companies, it consists of meetings and presentations in which new hires passively learn policies and procedures. In others, it’s a much more laid back affair and can consist of games, skits, costumes, thumping music, and a limbo bars.

No matter the approach, onboarding’s main objective is to ensure that newcomers feel welcome and comfortable in their new environment, and to provide them with the necessary skills, knowledge, and resources needed to begin their working relationship with your company on a positive, productive note.

Why It Matters

In many ways, the onboarding process isn’t so different from the first day of school—an experience that’s almost universally considered to be anxiety-provoking. It doesn’t have to be, though.

All that’s necessary to bridge the gap between two strangers is a handshake and a hello. Think of onboarding as an extended handshake and hello; an ice breaker to facilitate relationship building between new hires and their colleagues. The sooner they’re comfortable, the sooner they’ll feel at ease, confident, and ready to dive into their work.

Failing to do so, however, could potentially leave employees feeling unintegrated, disengaged, and ultimately disinterested. Furthermore, the absence of a formal onboarding can hinder the productivity of new employees, as well as their colleagues and supervisors.

Don’t take our word for it, though. According to Click Boarding, an HR-tech platform based in Minnesota, there’s some pretty convincing data that highlights the importance of onboarding.

• Companies with an engaging onboarding program retained 91% of their first-year workers.

• New hires with a well structured onboarding program were 69% more likely to remain at a company for up to three years.

• Onboarding improves company ROI by more than $79,000 / year.

The Essentials

1) Don’t Wait for Day One

As the old saying goes, “Why put off until tomorrow what you can start today?” Onboarding is no exception. You don’t have to wait until the actual orientation to start bringing new hires into the fold.

Small gestures like sending a welcome email or hand-written note to your future colleagues— or encouraging your team to reach out on LinkedIn and say “hey”—are highly encouraged during the onboarding process. It requires only minutes of your time and sends a signal of acceptance to newcomers early on that they’re sure to appreciate.

2) Everyone Loves a Good Story

You can’t realistically expect someone who’s going to work for you to become professionally invested in your company without good reason. Sure, you can always make the argument that pay is a good motivator, but transactional agreements can only carry you so far. Plus, times have changed and so have the workplace priorities of employees.

How do you convey the importance of your company to new hires, then? It’s pretty simple, actually. Tell them an honest, good old-fashioned story.

Try to think of a friend or family member who possesses the gift of gab and whose words can enchant and leave you spellbound, wanting to know more. Narrative can be captivating and persuasive—this pertains not just to individual people, but to groups of people (companies), as well.

Think about it for a minute. There’s a good chance you’re at least somewhat familiar with the life story of someone like Bill Gates; that he founded Microsoft in a garage in the 70s, within a decade became the youngest billionaire ever at 31, and in addition to being a hugely successful entrepreneur, dedicated himself to a life of philanthropy. His (and Microsoft’s) is a story that’s well-known.

Not every company will have a tale to tell that’s on par with Microsoft’s, but a backstory of that magnitude isn’t even necessary. If you can honestly explain the “who,” the “what,” and the “why” of your company, that will already make it more relatable than an impersonal business whose intentions and character are left to speculation.

Someone in your company surely already has a great elevator pitch for investors. Put one together for the people who will be investing their time and effort into the success of your company.

3) Provide Some Purpose

To long for a purpose in life is to be human. Therefore, considering the fact that as adults we spend the bulk of our waking hours at work, it stands to reason that people also long for purpose in their careers.

Keep this in mind when designing your onboarding process. What purpose is your company trying to achieve? Do you have goals and projects in place to make that purpose a reality? That’s not to say that your company’s purpose should mirror that of a non-profit’s if, for example, it’s an accounting firm. The exact definition of purpose is flexible. What’s important is that you clearly communicate that purpose during onboarding, and thereafter.

Even if it’s a simple, straightforward purpose with supporting goals and objectives, it will help your workforce to rationally understand the “how” and “why” behind their work. Additionally, people tend to be more cooperative when they’re given a purpose/reason for their actions.

4) Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Your organization’s main assets are the people that make it run. As people are social animals, it’s important to emphasize values like cooperation and trust. Cultivate an appreciation for these values from day one by embedding related activities into your onboarding. The development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships at work is an ongoing task; impress the importance of said relationships from the start.

5) Play the Part of Cultural Informant

Make sure your new hires know the layout of the office and the social aspects that come with it. For example if people in the company often go out for coffee in the afternoon, make that known. If competitive games of foosball are a regular occurrence, but only after lunch, let them know. Insider tips like these help employees come into the fold with confidence.

6) Formidable Forms and Formalities

While there are several cool and unconventional ways to make the onboarding experience really enjoyable—unfortunately there are others that will probably never cease to be a bit dull. Like filling out state and federal tax withholding forms. However, it’s a very important part of the process. One that requires attention to detail, for the sake of your company and the employees you’re onboarding.

Make sure that you inform yourself and new employees of what paperwork will have to be completed before their first day. It’s also important to set aside time to thoroughly explain labor laws, safety regulations, company-related compliance requirements, as well as those mandated by local, state, and international governing bodies. For example, General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) regulations or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) 

7) Be Visual and Straightforward

New jobs can be daunting. Sometimes it can take new hires months to settle in, understand all the working parts, and realize how they fit in to the big picture. There’s a lot of information to take in at first.

Therefore, if you can find a way to clearly and visually explain (cue up your org charts!) the structure of your company, hierarchy of management, the general division of labor among departments, and how all of that ties back to the responsibilities and workflows of new hires, it will definitely make the whole experience slightly more digestible.

Need some inspiration on how to create a great org chart? Check out the following resource from Microsoft.

8) Be Resourceful and Friendly

Set your employees up for success by letting them know where to turn if they need something. Remember, it can take awhile to get set up during the first few weeks (or longer) at the office. Newcomers need time to get into the groove, establish a routine, internalize new processes, and so on.

Inevitably, they’ll have a lot of questions and gaps in their knowledge. This doesn’t come without at least a touch of anxiety for most people. You can help mitigate that by having go-to resources and knowledge repositories for everything related to your company’s processes, guidelines, resources, and regulations. That could be something as simple as a shared folder in Google Drive or a thorough Confluence Page. Knowledge is power. Share it.

Make Your Checklists and Check Them Twice

Depending on how involved your company’s onboarding process is, you—and new hires you onboard—might have to take care of several administrative tasks like filling out forms. If you happen to be onboarding a large cohort, the number of tasks you’ll be faced with could start to multiply like quickly. To stay on top of the tasks at hand, lean on one of the organizational tools around—the list.

It’s not the list in and of itself that’s important. Rather, it’s what it represents and helps accomplish—organization and standardization. Both essential to onboarding. If you misplace or outright forget to collect an importance document from a new hire, like their payroll information of work permit, the consequences could be very inconvenient.

Or imagine the following scenario: a group of employees is onboarded and informed of a newly implemented company perk like a yearly personal development budget for everyone in the company. However, two weeks later the next group of new hires don’t receive that info during their onboarding process, only to find out weeks or months after the fact.

Might seem like a small oversight, and it’s one that could easily happen depending on how many people in your company are responsible for onboarding, but it won’t be viewed that way by your colleagues if they’re under the impression that there’s a lack of parity in the company when it comes to benefits.

Best way to avoid such snafus? You guessed it: checklists. Below you’ll find four free and thorough onboarding checklist templates available for download.

Keep Count of Costs to Make the Most of Your Process

In order to maximize the money you invest in onboarding, it’s important to first determine the associated costs, such as the following examples:

Onboarding Paperwork and Administrative Time

• Let’s say you have an HR assistant that you pay $15.00 an hour, If you hire 70 new employees per year and it takes an average of 10 hours of admin time, per new hire, to process their paperwork— that adds up to $10,500 per year.

Cost of Management to Onboard and Train New Hires

• If you’re Head of People (who makes $80,000 per year) spends 8 hours on onboarding per new hire, and you hire 70 new people per year—that amounts to $21,280 per year.

Taking just these two costs into account, for a company that hires 70 new employees per year, the average costs amounts to $454 per new hire. However, there are a handful of other factors that should be taken into consideration, too:

• How much time do team members in other departments (such as IT) spend, on average, helping with onboarding and training?
• How much money, per new hire, is spent on the welcome kit / package?
• What’s the average cost per new hire for hardware, software, furniture, and other supplies?

Stretching Your Onboarding Bucks

When you have a more granular view of the money required for onboarding, you can then begin to explore products and solutions that could potentially save you valuable time and money. For example, if you know that you spent approximately $10,500 per year on administrative paperwork and you find a company that guarantees they can reduce that cost by half through digital document delivery—that’s an option worth pursuing.

Another way optimize the money you allocate to onboarding is to leverage the synergies of your recruitment and learning & development (L&D) budgets.

According to organizational psychologist and leadership coach Alison JY Lee: “Valuable information about each new hire is collected through the hours spent in the recruiting process. By the time of onboarding, you should have information on their key strengths and the key challenges that may affect their engagement and performance in the company. Using that information, you could sync with L&D to address these areas with an individualized development plan from the get-go. This way, you’ll be able to extend value from recruitment spending into performance, and get savings from the accelerated pace at which a new hire can add value to the business.”

There’s an Integration for That

Like every tool, you need to figure out how to make your applicant tracking system (ATS) work for you. Not the other way around. Fortunately, there are some really great products on the market to make the onboarding process more seamless—and many of them can easily be linked to your ATS.

These integrations will allow you to facilitate many of the administrative aspects of the onboarding process, freeing up your time to focus on the larger task at hand—making it a memorable experience.

Below you’ll find three examples of employee onboarding solutions that just might make your life a little easier.

1) One Less Task to Background Check off the List

Once you’ve extended a candidate an offer, chances are you might need to run a routine background check before proceeding to the next step. Often these are seen in food service and retail, but they are also commonplace in high security clearance jobs.

Background check solutions like Checkr make it easy to quickly screen candidates, share the results with your team, and store said results in a centralized location. This cuts down on turnaround time, improves the candidate experience, reduces recruiter workflows, mitigates risk, and helps TA teams maintain compliance.

2) Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

There was a time when one of the greatest occupational hazards that HR teams faced was paper cuts—especially when onboarding new hires. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case.

Thanks to companies like DocuSign, it’s now possible to electronically create, send, and receive legally binding signatures for important documents like offer letters and job contracts. Just think of all the time (and paper cuts) you’ll save by not having to fill out forms, take trips to the post office, or schedule meetings for the sole purpose of signing documents.

3) Welcome Talent as You Would Like to be Welcomed

Did you know that 22% of new hires leave the job within the first 45 days? If only they’d had a more memorable onboarding experience!

Platforms such as ClickBoarding have made the entire onboarding process accessible, easy, and an obvious choice for any company looking to add a bit of pizazz to the way they welcome new talent.

To borrow their messaging: “Keep new hires connected and engaged with the brand they fell in love with. Welcome them with a video, office map, cultural norms, and any other content that tells your story. Add branded content during every part of the experience to start building their loyalty even before day one.”

Top 5 Takeaways to Keep in Mind

1. There’s immense value (monetary and non-monetary) in onboarding.
2. Put thought and care into the process. It makes a difference.
3. Organization and standardization are essential.
4. Calculate your costs. Be mindful of ways to optimize budget.
5. Look for digital solutions to save money, streamline process, and boost candidate experience.

Coming Attractions—2021: SmartRecruiters’ Onboarding Solution

The onboarding process, among other things, bridges the transition between the candidate journey and employment. When executed well, it helps facilitate an experience for the job seeker / soon-to-be employee that’s seamless and memorable.

If mishandled, it creates for a dissonant experience. One that might make a new hire question their decision to accept the job your company has offered them.

Needless to say, there’s a lot at stake. Therefore, SmartRecruiters is pleased to announce that we will be offering onboarding functionality as a native, integrated feature on our talent acquisition suite as of 2021. More details can be found in the above keynote presentation from SmartRecruiters’ Head of Product, Natalia Baryshnikova’s, at this year’s Hiring Success conference.

Now that you’ve got a handle on how to take your onboarding game to the next level, what’s next? Make every phase of your candidate experience memorable. We’ll show you how in The Definitive Guide to Hiring Success.

Safeguarding your company against high levels of employee churn is a twofold process. First of all, you need to know your organization’s turnover rate. Secondly, you need to know what steps can be taken to keep it at a minimum.

Understanding turnover rate is essential to creating a talent acquisition and retention strategy that allows you to be proactive in sourcing and hiring and helps you avoid scrambling for talent at the last minute.

Naively believing that your employees will stay with you until they retire will land you in hot water. With the average turnover rate across all industries being 17.8 percent, you need to understand what turnover rate is, what your organization’s turnover rate is, and how you can reduce it. In this post, we’ll show you how to do just that.

What Is Turnover Rate?

• Employee turnover rate is the percentage of employees who leave an organization or company during a determined time frame. Employees who voluntarily left, were let go, or fired are often included in employee turnover rate, however, internal transfers and promotions usually aren’t included in the calculation. 

How to Calculate Employee Turnover Rate?

Employee turnover rate is calculated as follows:

1. Find the dividend, which is the total number of employees that left your organization during a specified period of time (month, quarter, year, etc.)
2. Find the divisor, which is the average number of employees in your organization at the beginning and end of the period.
3. Divide the dividend by the divisor to find the quotient
4. Multiply the quotient by 100 to calculate your company’s employee turnover rate.
5. Alternatively, simply use the calculator provided below.

How to Analyze Your Employee Turnover Rate

Employee turnover rate can be an insightful metric. If your company sports a low turnover rate it can mean that your company has a good work environment and that employees are happy. A high employee turnover rate can mean that there are problems in your hiring process and office environment.

• Compare: Once you have determined your organization’s turnover rate it’s useful to compare it to averages. While the nationwide, non-industry specific number is 17.8%, you should look into location and industry-specific averages to gain further insight into where your organization sits within the range. For example, software had the highest turnover rate of any sector in 2017, coming in at a whopping 13.2%.
• The DSP approach: The DSP approach refers to department, supervisor, position approach. If any of these three umbrellas see a large turnover rate it’s worth assessing if there is anything that can be done to improve employee turnover rates. 
• Reasons for termination: Look into why employees said they were leaving the organization, if a pattern emerges that can be a good way to access and address the reason for a high turnover rate. 
• Utilize data to seek out trends: Most employers have ready access to a wealth of data on their employees. Information like age, tenure, and average salary can be analyzed across the company to see if there are trends in the turnover rate. 

How to Reduce Employee Turnover Rate

Finding, training, and onboarding new employees is time-intensive and costly. Finding a solution to reduce employee turnover is essential to maximizing employee ROI. Still not convinced? With the average cost-per -hire sitting at $4,129, and the average turnover rate being 17.8%. A company of 100 will need to spend roughly $73,000 to keep their organization staffed.

1. Hire the right people: Clearly defining the role and making sure the applicant is not just a fit for the job but also the team.
2. Up-to-date compensation and benefits: Today employers offer competitive benefits as well as a wealth of new benefits. Failing to stay up-to-date on these job factors is asking for employees to leave for better opportunities. 
3. Encourage prosocial company culture: Celebrating employees, gamifying work, and expressing gratitude for a job well done makes employees feel at home, making them less likely to leave. 
4. Allow for flexibility: Employees’ lives are complicated. Allowing for flexibility makes it possible for employees to get their work done, but somewhat on their own schedules. If you don’t offer some flexibility chances are another company will. People with pets and families greatly value work flexibility. 
5. Engagement is king: Unengaged employees leave companies. Tracking employee engagement as well as taking steps to keep employees engaged is vital in retaining employees. Disengagement is also expensive, costing between $450 and $500 billion annually.
6. Show upward trajectory: Employees want to work at a company where they can see a future as well as upwards movement. Show employees a clear career path at the company. Hiring from within and utilize an applicant tracking system that allows for internal mobility.

Emerging Methods of Minimizing Employee Turnover Rate and Why Turnover Employees Are Not a Lost Cause

In the past, we have seen employees leave companies without ever looking back, or at least that’s what we thought. However, it seems as if employers are looking into ways to draw on the talent pool of ex-employees stemming from the realization of the benefits that come with engaging alumni talent.

Every organization strives to hire the best talent out there. But with high turnover rates in the industry, it seems as if finding new talent as good as the last is a game of diminishing returns. James Sinclair of Enterprise Alumni has extensively researched the ROI of hiring alumni or “boomerang hires.”

Boomerang hires have a 44% higher retention rate over 3 years than outside hires. Setting up an Alumni program can be a fantastic way to get ahead of the inevitable turnover rate at every company. Making it clear that employees can come back to the organization after leaving, and maintain ing channels of communication with alumni employees is a great way to transition your hiring response/ process to turnover from reactive to proactive. 

Final Thoughts

While it can seem like a massive task to tackle, look into, and analyze employee turnover rate— the fact of the matter is that you can’t afford not to. 

Hiring new employees is expensive and resource intensive. And most employers set themselves up for a lack of hiring success by responding to turnover in a reactive manner.

Coming up with a plan to combat employee churn allows you to take your organization from being reactive to proactive. By analyzing your turnover rate and identifying its causes you can work to minimize gaps in your company’s staffing and effectively plan for the future.

Find out more about how SmartRecruiters can help you reduce turnover rate by hiring the right people the first-time-round by scheduling a demo today!

Historically we’ve tracked and measured hundreds of metrics in our customers’ hiring activities inside the SmartRecruiters platform. This year, we have distilled that number down to 15 metrics that have the highest correlation with the health and performance of talent acquisition organizations as witnessed by our previous analysis. 

These metrics reflect our customers’ hiring performance in 5 important categories: Hiring Team Engagement, Recruiting Team Performance, Candidate Experience Management, and Company Internal Engagement.

Additionally, we have focused on metrics that are least impacted by variables such as company size, industry, type of roles typically hired, size of hiring teams, etc. 1) For each award, we use a combination of 3+ metrics that measure different aspects to support the selection. 2) We normalize the metrics with interfering variables to prevent favoring any particular type or company size.  

The winners will be selected from customers with the best performance across those metrics from Jan 1, 2019, to Dec 31, 2019. 

Most Compelling Candidate Experience Award

Candidates say the No.1 frustration during the overall job search is the lack of response from employers. The Candidate Experience Award applauds employers who take the time to continuously communicate status updates to their candidates at all stages in the hiring process. The award measures three factors: the response rate to all applicants, the response rate to interviewed and rejected candidates, and the speed of the first response. 

Most Productive Recruiting Team Award

A recruiting team’s success requires a combination of timely hires and systematic pipeline management. Successful recruiting teams make more hires on time and manage their candidate pipelines with intention. The Recruiting Team Award measures three important aspects of recruiters: their ability to fulfill the companies’ hiring needs, their efficiency, and their management of the candidate pipeline. 

Most Collaborative Hiring Team Award

Hiring the best talent takes a tremendous amount of teamwork. The Hiring Team Award recognizes a highly structured, efficient, and collaborative hiring team. The award measures three important factors: the level of involvement from hiring team members, the robustness of the hiring process, and the efficiency of individual interviewers.  

Most Active Company Award

Achieving hiring success takes more than the hard work from talent acquisition practitioners. The Company Award is measured by three important factors that gauge company-wide involvement with recruiting: how successfully employees are engaging with internal opportunities, the relative size of active user base, and the product usage level and user feedback in helping us build a better product.  

And without further ado the winners for 2019!

Most Compelling Candidate Experience

1. Equinox

Equinox prides itself on being the best of the best when it comes to high-quality fitness clubs. With such a top tier customer experience, Equinox needed a way to create the same experience of excellence when it came to candidate experience. Equinox uses a decentralized system for recruitment in which local branch managers conduct their own hiring based on their requirements. This approach utilizes around 20 full-time recruiters supported by over 300 local hiring managers who also often carry out many other Equinox activities on a day-to-day basis. SmartRecruiters decentralized systems to enable Equinox to increase speed and communication between hiring teams and candidates. 

2. Home Instead 
3. Devoteam
4. Wipro Digital 
5. RLH Corp 
6. Colliers International
7. Uncommon Schools
8. Dungarvin
9. International SOS
10. Allstate

Most Productive Recruiting Team

1. Public Storage

Public storage knows how important a productive recruiting team is to business success. With over 2,000 locations public storage needs to move quickly in order to meet the high growth demands of the company. Nathan Tan Head of Talent Acquisition & Workforce Analytics at Public Storage notes how velocity and cost metrics allow you to analyze whether the hiring processes in place are efficient and effective and adapt accordingly.

2. The Nature’s Bounty   
3. WAREMA
4. Evolution Gaming 
5. Uplift Education
6. Arkadin  
7. BlueScope
8. Uncommon Schools
9. Leidos
10. Abercrombie and Fitch Co.

Most Collaborative Hiring Team

1. Astreya

Astreya understands the importance of hiring the right people and to get that done requires communication and collaboration across hiring teams. Priding itself on providing both its clients and employees with unwavering happiness, Astreya relies heavily on hiring collaboration in order to assure a robust and fast-moving hiring process. 

2. Marc Jacobs 
3. BlueScope
4. Education Development Center 
5. Numberly 
6. City of Philadelphia 
7. Play Octopus
8. Jack Link’s Protein Snacks
9. Broadridge
10. Merkle Inc.

Most Active Company

1. Visa 

 With over 19,000 employees in 2019, it’s no surprise that Visa deals with a massive volume of candidates. SmartRecruiters ATS allows them increased engagement and collaboration across the board. With a high rate of user adoption at Visa, hiring teams have been able to achieve fast turnaround rates that increases the offer acceptance rate.

2. Biogen 
3. IKEA 
4. BlueScope
5. Square
6. FireEye
7. Mitie
8. American Iron and Metal
9. The Warehouse Group
10. Expeditors

The Methodology for Hiring Success 20 Awards is as follows. 

Methodology Used to Determine the Winners:

1) Most Collaborative Hiring Team Award

Metric 1 |Percentage of Jobs With at Least 1 Assigned Interviewer

Why: This metric reflects how structured the interview process is.

Metric 2 | Average Time to Complete a Review 

Why: This metric reflects hiring managers’ efficiency at completing their tasks to move the hiring process along.  

Metric 3 | Average Number of Distinct Users Involved per Interviewed Application 

Why: This metric reflects the hiring team’s level of involvement and the robustness of the hiring process. 

Metric 4| Percentage of Interviews With Ratings Submitted 

Why: This metric reflects hiring team’s participation at completing their tasks to move the hiring process along.  

2) Most Productive Recruiting Team Award

Metric 1 | Percentage of Candidates Moved out of New Stage 

Why: This metric reflects how well recruiters manage the candidate pipeline. 

Metric 2 | Completion Rate 

Why: This metric reflects the recruiters’ ability to fulfill the companies’ hiring needs. 

Metric 3 | Percentage of Positions Filled on Time

Why: This metric reflects both recruiters’ ability to hire and their efficiency (hiring on time). 

3) Most Compelling Candidate Experience Award

Metric 1 | Percentage of Applicants Who Receive a Response

Why: This metric reflects the experience of all applicants in terms of the company’s responsiveness. 

Metric 2 | Percentage of Rejected Candidates Who Receive Rejection Messages 

Why: This metric reflects the experience of candidates that do not move forward to be hired, but have at least one personal interaction with the company.  

Metric 3 | Average Time to Reply to a Candidate 

Why: This metric measures the experience of the candidates in terms of wait time. 

Metric 4 | Percentage of Candidates That Are Still in an Active Stage

Why: This metric measures the experience of the candidates in terms of closure and notification. 

Metric 5 | Percentage of Abandoned Candidates 

Why: This metric measures the experience of the candidates in terms of followup and closure. 

4) Most Active Company Award

Metric 1| Percentage of Hires That Are Internal Candidates OR Referral 

Why: This metric reflects how actively and successfully employees are engaging with internal opportunities. 

Metric 2 | % of User Base That Are MAU 

Why: This metric reflects how active the user base is on SmartRecruiters platform.

Metric 3 | UserVoice Upvotes and Requests

Why: This metric reflects the employees’ product usage level and their support of getting us to build a better product.

Congratulations to the winners! Be sure to tune in next year for the 2021 Hiring Success Awards!

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!

Hiring Success is almost here! February 11th-12th, TA leaders from around the globe will congregate at the Marquis Marriott in San Francisco to shape the future of talent acquisition. Where will you be?

With sessions ranging from social justice to inclusive leadership, social media recruiting, gender equality, cutting edge AI deployment and more, it’s hard to imagine a more inspiring conference than Hiring Success. Over 1,200 attendees will share in the insights of veteran recruiting and talent acquisition leaders from companies like Amazon, Visa, IBM, LinkedIn, Bosch, and more.

Below you’ll find seven profiles of speakers presenting at this year’s conference. A preview of coming attractions! 

Dr Steven Jones: JONES, Traveling Monk

Nationally known as one of “America’s Top Experts on Diversity” (Diversity, Inc., 2005), Dr. Jones’ philosophy is to lead with listening to support clients in finding a strategy and solution that works for them. 

Dr. Jones holds a Bachelor’s in Computer Science, a Master’s in Multicultural Counseling, and a Ph.D. in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology. He is the author of Journey to Excellence, a transformational book helping people define and achieve excellence in their lives.

In the global arena, while he was studying business practices in Chang Mai, Thailand, Dr. Jones became the first person of African descent to be ordained as a Buddhist Monk at a 700 year old monastery called Wat Umong.

Jones will be leading a session on Inclusive Leadership.

Carlos Fernandez: Houston Methodist, Manager of Talent Acquisition

Carlos Fernandez currently oversees talent acquisition strategy, employer branding, and sourcing outreach for a system of eight hotels and a workforce of 23,000+ employees.

Fernandez has over 10 years experience within talent acquisition, project management, learning development, and change management, and has led several technology implementations and processes to enhance the candidate experience. He led the redesign of Houston Methodist’s career site and social media recruitment efforts, increasing overall application volume by 40% since 2016.

Fernandez will be co-leading a roundtable discussion on Candidate Experience.

Gerry Crispin: Principal, CareerXroads

Gerry Crispin founded CareerXroads in 1996 to encourage the transformation of hiring into the 21st century. Today, with his business partner, Chris Hoyt, CareerXroads is in its second decade as a member driven community of Talent leadership teams from 130 major firms who are devoted to learning from and helping one another improve and succeed.

Among other achievements, he has co-authored eight books on the evolution of staffing, and has written hundreds of articles and white papers on similar topics. His career spans fifty years and includes Consulting, Recruitment Advertising, HR leadership positions with Fortune 100 employers, Executive Search and Career Services at the University where he graduated with his BE and in Engineering and IO/Psychology degrees.

Crispin will be leading the following session: What Keeps You Up At Night?

Jonathan Mears: VISA, Head, Global Executive Talent Acquisition

As a global HR and talent executive, Jonathan Mears is known for driving innovation in developing markets. He is currently responsible for Visa’s Global Executive Talent acquisition and delivery across all markets, leading Executive Talent teams to deliver internal and external talent, and Visa’s HR Leadership team.

Mears previously led large cross geographic and functional teams for IBM in 14 countries supporting LATAM, North America, Europe, MEA and Asia Pacific. His areas of expertise include leadership of high performance teams, employment branding and strategic sourcing, contract negotiation, business development, retention, redeployment, and more. 

Mears will be co-leading a roundtable on Interviewing Skills.

Lawrel Aufmuth: Advantage Solutions, Vice President, Talent Acquisition

Lawrel Aufmuth is Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Advantage Solutions. She is an innovator and HR professional with extensive experience in the private and public sector with growth organizations.

Lawrel is well known for delivering measurable results through creative, “out of the box’ solutions that build best in class measurable human capital strategies. Lawrel Aufmuth knows TA in and out, and is an expert in using Artificial Intelligence (RPA & ML & NLP) to bring organizations to new heights. 

Aufmuth will be leading the following session: Turning Recruiting Into a Profit Center.

Sarah Yang: Former Talent Brand & Diversity Lead at Getaround

Sarah Yang is the former Talent Brand & Diversity Lead at Getaround. She crafts and nurtures compelling stories on why Getaround is a wonderful place to work and has over fifteen years of experience in creating videos, blogs, and social media that are critically acclaimed. Yang is the recipient of the prestigious MarCom Platinum Award, which she won for the global recruiting video she co-produced for Workday. 

In addition to being a TA leader, she is a professional drummer, filmmaker, poet, comedian, and improv actor, and a magnetic and animated speaker on creativity (the #1 soft skill according to LinkedIn), diversity, and storytelling to global audiences (i.e. Grace Hopper, Cisco, Workday, Oracle, CoderDojo, Lesbians Who Tech, and Women Who Code).

She will be leading the following session: Convincing Your HMs to Value Diversity Hiring.

Hung Lee: Recruiting Brainfood, Curator

Hung Lee is the founder and CEO of WorkShape.io – the revolutionary recruiting platform for Software engineers and Editor of leading industry newsletter Recruiting Brainfood. He is an industry professional with over 15 years experience as an agency recruiter, recruitment manager, Internal Head of Talent, recruitment trainer and strategic advisor for rapid growth businesses.

With the new year comes new plans, opportunities, and challenges. However, for businesses there’s one challenge that remains unchanged—finding top talent. 

As the recruiting landscape becomes increasingly competitive, companies that wish to succeed have to make talent acquisition (TA) a top priority. What can your organization do to stay ahead of the curve in 2020? You can begin by following the recommendations outlined below from our in-house team of TA experts.

1) Treat Talent Acquisition Like Sales and Marketing

At the end of 2019, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 1.4 million more job openings than unemployed Americans. In such an economy, skilled workers hold the upper hand. In many respects, they’re similar to prospective customers with buying power and plenty of options.

Therefore, to capture the interest of their prospects, recruiters must begin to act and think like marketers and sales reps. Here are a few examples of how they can do so, just to name a few.

Start proactively sourcing by promoting an attractive employer brand

More than 75% of job seekers carry out research about a company’s reputation and employer brand before applying. Companies need to take the time to assess what will engage and build trust within potential talent communities. 

Optimize hiring through data analytics

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. TA teams need to focus on using data to uncover actionable insights. Acting upon these insights will allow organizations to be on the forefront  of TA, as opposed to playing catch up. 

2) Modernize Your Recruiting Efforts With a Modern Applicant Tracking System

Today, there’s an abundance of recruiting software and applicant tracking systems (ATS) for companies to choose from. Making the right choice isn’t necessarily easy, though. Especially when you consider what’s at stake. A robust ATS—key in attracting the talent your company needs to be competitive—can mean the difference between success and failure. To ensure the former, it’s important to know exactly what to look for during the selection process.

Decrease time-to-hire with candidate relationship management

Candidate relationship management (CRM) systems allow recruiters to develop and nurture qualified prospects before jobs are even posted. Lead capture forms and field recruiting apps gather valuable candidate information at career fairs, live events, or online campaigns.

This data is fed into the CRM where sourcers can build databases that can be automatically updated and enriched with relevant—and specific—candidate information. Past experiences, current location, education, age, and seniority level can all be stored in the CRM to build custom talent communities.

Make sure your CRM is within the same platform as your ATS. This will allow you to work with seamless data flows, and make managing regulatory compliance a breeze. 

Improve decision-making and candidate engagement with artificial intelligence

Candidates that look great on paper don’t always make great employees, and assessment tools struggle to test for important traits like work ethic, reliability, and ability to work well under pressure.

Utilizing AI in your hiring process will allow your team to sort through applications quickly and effectively. AI can help analyze resume data, and present you with the most qualified candidates from your pool. AI can also help curb implicit bias that often is present throughout the hiring process. 

Accomplish more in less time with automation

An ATS with the ability to automate job advertising, drip campaigns, and interview scheduling will free up your hiring teams to focus on other important tasks like personalized candidate engagement, employer branding, and process optimization. 

Collaborate and communicate more efficiently with intuitive UX

Make sure your ATS is intuitive and employs great UX. Having a user friendly ATS will encourage user adoption, drive engagement and efficiency, and foster cross-team hiring collaboration. 

Embrace customizability by connecting to HRIS and third-party vendors with open APIs

No product can satisfy all of an organization’s diverse and complex needs. Therefore, be sure that your ATS has open APIs and can connect to large ecosystems of third-party vendors like Slack, G Suite, Outlook, and other productivity tools. This will allow your ATS to keep hiring managers up-to-date on hiring tasks with push notifications and reminders wherever they are.

3) Prioritize Investments Based on Value / Time to Full Benefit

When investing in new software, it’s important to determine which products and features will deliver the highest return on investment (ROI) in the shortest amount of time. Focus on getting these up and running as soon as possible. 

We extrapolated a Time-to-Value matrix (based on research from Gartner) to help you understand the different levels of potential value of emerging recruiting technologies and the relative effort required to realize their full potential.

Innovations at the upper left of the matrix should be prioritized, while ones at the upper right are worth exploring since these innovations can potentially give you significant competitive advantage over a longer period of time.

Interested in learning more about what you can do to craft the best possible TA strategy in 2020? Then be sure to check out The Definitive Guide to Hiring Success—the most comprehensive resource available on how to build a modern recruiting strategy from the ground up. 

Hiring Success is where the future of talent acquisition is decided. With an unparalleled lineup of speakers—from the fastest growing startups to Fortune 500 companies— the conference boasts something for everyone’s interests and professional ambitions.

After a successful run this past September in Amsterdam, the Hiring Success conference has landed back in the heart of technology—San Francisco. HS20 will take place this coming February 11th-12th at the Marquis Marriott Hotel, drawing over 1,200 attendees and 100 speakers from around the world.

Industry leaders from companies like Lowe’s, Visa, Deloitte, Accenture, and Optimizely will bring thought provoking perspectives on talent acquisition to help take your game to the next level.

We’ve carefully curated a smorgasbord of sessions that will focus on a wide range of topics including social justice, inclusive leadership, social media recruiting, gender equality, and cutting-edge AI deployment.

Below, we’ve handpicked the profiles of seven speakers presenting at this year’s conference to pique your interest. Enjoy!

Gary A. Bolles: Chair for the Future of Work

Gary A. Bolles is widely renowned as an expert on the future of work. His expertise and focus is on guiding organizations, communities, as well as individuals in the transition to the digital work economy.

Bolles serves as the chair for the Future of Work for Singularity University and works to make sure leaders understand the disruptive changes that come with the digitalization of work. He believes these changes need to be managed in a way that ensures people are still able to participate in meaningful work and learning opportunities. Bolles has consulted and lectured for big name clients such as Intel, Google, the UN, and the New Zealand Government.

He will be leading a session on What’s the Next Big Disruption in TA.

Ronda Sheffield: Vice President – Human Resources

Ronda Sheffield is a veteran in the world of HR. With over twenty years of experience, she’s held senior level positions at companies like Walmart, Rite Aid, Starbucks, and Sprint; currently she’s the former Vice President of Human Resources at Lowe’s. She has considerable experience building teams in labor-intensive organizations including retail, healthcare, and consumer products, just to name a few.

Sheffield will be leading a session on Designing a Great Candidate Experience.

Manish Asnani: Senior Vice President Human Resources

After spending eight years in HR at Hewlett-Packard, Manish Asnani moved on to join Visa, eventually becoming the Senior Vice President of Global Human Resources.

Asnani is a key stakeholder in employees happiness, focusing on benefits, perks, and ensuring low churn. His prior experience with technology, business strategy, and operations makes him an agile executive. Asnani specializes in TA, workforce strategy, and aligning HR with business strategies.  

Denise Moulton: Vice President, HR & Talent Research

Denise Moulton leads human resources and talent research for Bersin, Deloitte Consulting LLP. An accomplished professional in the fields of human resources and talent acquisition, Moulton draws on over fifteen years of industry.

Heralded by some as a recruiting maverick, Moulton is an early adopter of cutting edge talent pipelines including cross-functional campus recruiting and recruitment ambassador programs. 

Denise will be leading a session on Recruiting in a Recession

Steven Urban: Managing Director, TA and HR Transformation

Steve Urban started at Accenture in 2001 as a human performance consultant, eventually climbing the ladder to the rank of managing director in 2017.

Urban is a seasoned pro in helping his clients navigate complex transformations by providing positive experiences throughout the change/implementation process, paying close attention to employee experience at all seniority levels. 

He will be leading a session on Reimagine Recruiting in the Age of AI.

Sandi Lurie: Vice President, Global Recruiting

Sandi Lurie is the Senior Director of Global Recruiting at Optimizely, where she manages full cycle recruitment, talent acquisition programs, analytics and initiatives. After spending the first eight years of her career as a Contingent Recruiter, she transitioned into an in-house recruiter role before moving to the Bay Area in 2000.

Lurie led product and technology recruiting at Salesforce and joined LinkedIn as an executive recruiter for sales and GA before heading up their marketing and GA Recruiting teams. She is extremely passionate about building recruiting organizations that are true partners to the business and making sure every candidate leaves their interview wanting to get a job offer.

Lurie will be leading a session on Gender Equity. 

Sondra Dryer: Global Head of Brand & Experience

Sondra Dryer is the Global Head of Brand & Experience at Alexander Mann Solutions. She’s passionate about creating authentic candidate experiences, knowing that they’re key to building strong talent pipelines, and often utilizes her background in communications and media studies to develop brands that attract talent through a melting pot of social, digital, and traditional media.

Dryer will be leading a roundtable on Employer Branding.

Recruiting is a challenge for any company, but seasonal recruiting is a whole other beast. The key to being successful at it is having a bulletproof strategy in place. 

Seasonal recruiting isn’t easy. Trying to anticipate how many workers you’ll need to source for short periods of time is far from an exact science. Do it right, and you’ll conquer holiday rushes. Do it wrong, and you’ll be explaining to higher-ups why you’re either way understaffed or way over budget. It’s a complex process, but we’ll break it down into easily digestible segments so that you can attract, select, and hire seasonal talent—on demand and on budget. 

Budget Wisely

It goes without saying that if you need to rev up your recruiting efforts, you’ll have to allocate additional money to make it happen. To ensure that your ledger doesn’t end up in the red, consider the following tips:

• Interviewing is a resource-intensive, expensive process. Every time you interview a candidate, it takes time—and money— away from other tasks. This can add up quickly, especially if your company conducts interviews with multiple steps. For seasonal workers, it might make sense to adopt a shorter, expedited interview process. 
• Online targeted ads can be a fantastic way to attract seasonal employees. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is advantageous because, as the name suggests, businesses only pay for ads when someone clicks on them. Careful, though: depending on the ad type, the competition for PPC ads can be fierce. Find out more about creating seasonal campaigns with Google ads.
• Print advertising can be a simple and cost-effective method for reaching candidates. By putting up posters in stores or droppings flyers/leaflets into shopping bags, you can directly target an audience that’s likely already an advocate for your brand—your customers.
• Technology costs—job postings, applicant tracking systems, video interview software, etc.— are likely one of the biggest recruitment expenses. Do your research first to determine what’s essential and see if there are any tech hacks that might save you money. Point in case: McDonald’s recently launched a SnapChat hiring campaign in Canada allowing job seekers to apply through the popular social media platform.

Plan Ahead of Time 

Organizations should start planning their campaign and advertising strategy for seasonal hiring 3-4 months out. It is important to build ample time to define your target audience, messaging strategy, and channels to meet your hiring demands.

Jared Best, Hiring Success strategist

As the saying goes, timing is everything. This is especially true when it comes to seasonal recruiting. Make sure to develop your strategy well in advance. This will allow you to anticipate and plan accordingly for all of your needs and expenses. Here’s how to stay ahead:

• Start early! According to SmartRecruiters Hiring Success strategist Jared Best, “Organizations should start planning their campaign and advertising strategy for seasonal hiring 3-4 months out. It is important to build ample time to define your target audience (past seasonal workers, 2nd place finishers, college students, etc.), messaging strategy, and channels to meet your hiring demands. In the ideal scenario, you have 85-90% of your seasonal hiring completed with 30-45 days to go and can spend the last month leading up to seasonal peaks filling in the remaining 10-15% through applicants and referrals.
• Source year-round by using field recruiting apps and lead capture forms on in-store kiosks to target shoppers and brand enthusiasts who might be interested in part-time work. Depending on the industry, try targeting students since they are typically off school when seasonal workers are needed most—holidays and the summer months.
• Maintain an alumni network to stay in touch with former employees. Depending on their circumstances, they might be open to part-time work or be in a position to recommend worthy candidates.
• Ask for referrals from your current employees early and often. When asked what the best source for new hires in terms of return on investment (ROI) is, 82% of employers ranked employee referrals above all others.

Have a Winning Technology Stack

It’s probably safe to assume that you use one or a variety of recruiting applications in your day-to-day work. How up-to-date they are might be another story. Can your tech stack accomplish the following?

• Source candidates by placing job advertisements across various job ad boards. This will allow you to significantly cut back on the time you spend researching and posting on various websites.  
• Field recruiting at events like college fairs, hiring conventions, retail kiosks, etc. via the use of mobile apps or tablets. This will allow you to broaden your reach as a recruiter and interact face-to-face with candidates as you receive their applications.
• Use AI or application filters to sort through thousands of applications in a matter of minutes, picking out the best and most qualified candidates for your position. This will help you drastically cut hours spent pouring over irrelevant or ill-fitting candidates. 
• Maintain contact with employees you’ve worked with in the past through the use of a CRM. This will allow you to easily reach out to candidates you know and trust when your company needs additional staff.  

Streamline Your Onboarding Process

• Given that the majority of seasonal workers won’t stay on board for long, taking the time to onboard them may seem like a sunk cost. But, if they aren’t sufficiently knowledgeable about your company or products, it could negatively impact their ability to drive sales.
• Additionally, this could place unnecessary stress on management if they’re put into a position where they have to micromanage or correct mistakes that could have been avoided in the first place with proper training.

Conclusion

Seasonal recruiting is not something to leave to the last minute. Utilizing an effective seasonal recruiting strategy that employs effective budgeting, talent pipelines, modern technology, and streamlined processes will help you cut costs while still helping your business to deliver the best possible outcomes.