From fostering remote engagement to crafting optimized job listings, here are 12 responses to the questions, “Hiring leaders, can you provide strategies you are following to help best prepare for hiring in 2023? Why should others follow this tip for hiring preparation in the new year?”

• Focus on Fostering Remote Engagement
• Keep Up with Shifting Candidate Priorities
• Consider Reaching Out to People Who Left
• Offer More Remote Work Options
• Build a Talent Network
• Leverage Sponsored Employment to Stand Out
• Explore More Hiring Processes with New Tech
• Look for Someone Who Fits Your Company Culture
• Engage in Social Media Recruiting
• Automate Screening for Better, Cheaper Hires
• Develop a Strong Employer Brand
• Craft Unique and Optimized Job Listings

Focus on Fostering Remote Engagement

Despite a push from hiring and talent acquisition leaders to return to some semblance of “normalcy,” it’s likely that businesses will be forced to contend with a largely decentralized, distributed, and remote talent pool in 2023.

In order to stand out in the current talent market, companies should prioritize engaging potential candidates in a remote setting, meeting them where they’re most comfortable. By inspecting how your company engages with both current and prospective staff, you can identify ways to improve employee loyalty and show your business’s ability to function smoothly in a remote environment.

Promoting an engaging company culture through this remote engagement should be less about physical perks, such as in-house ping-pong tables or artisan coffee, and more about the steps that will be taken to onboard and support new employees — regardless of location. Businesses that can demonstrate a commitment to remote engagement are highly appealing to top talent.

Teresha Aird, Chief Marketing Officer & HR Lead, Offices.net

Keep Up With Shifting Candidate Priorities

Your candidates’ priorities are shifting, so your focus must move with them for the best success. Overhaul your hiring practices, compensation, and perks to give candidates more of what they want, like fair compensation, flexibility, and work-life balance, and less of what they don’t.

With inflation increasing living costs, compensation is even more important than balance and flexibility — increase salaries to account for higher expenses. While work-life balance priorities dropped as financial pressures grew, it’s still high on the list of importance. Clearly communicate company values during the hiring process and provide better pay transparency — both have become differentiators in the current job market.

Watch how candidates’ priorities shift in 2023 and make swift moves to keep open roles as attractive to them as possible.

Ruben Gamez, Founder & CEO, SignWell

Consider Reaching Out to People Who Left

Consider a powerful re-hiring strategy for 2023. Given today’s talent scarcity and the demand for A+ talent, why not remember the top performers who left your employment over the past several years and invite them to return? 

Think about launching a “We Want You Back!” campaign in Q1 2023. Inviting and rehiring top performers can be equivalent to adding the productivity of several B and C performers.  

These re-hires also know the business culture, have relationships with present staff, and can start strong.  Their return also shows to current employees how company leadership is enlightened and committed to a positive and productive work environment.

Bill Gunn, Principal Consultant, G&A

Offer More Remote Work Options

Remote work has increasingly become a normalized part of the work culture. From remote cybersecurity jobs to work-from-home UX design roles, every industry that is gunning to be relevant and attract top talent in 2023 has had to succumb to this trend. 

Only some employees are eligible to work remotely, but a lot of roles have made the switch to make many candidates wary of in-person roles. This trend has led to candidates favoring organizations offering remote options. Organizations not offering them are set up for a challenging 2023 in the recruitment market. Offering hybrid schedules or flexible options will attract candidates and make the hiring process far more accessible and more robust.

Yongming Song, CEO, Live Poll for Slides

Build a Talent Network

It is important to build up a network of potential candidates who are interested in working with your organization. This includes identifying high-potential individuals, engaging with them through social media or other digital platforms, and maintaining relationships with them. 

Doing so will help you stay ahead of the competition in hiring for 2023 by providing access to a larger pool of qualified candidates. Moreover, it will help you create a more diverse hiring pipeline, allowing for greater flexibility when filling positions.

Tzvi Heber, Founder, CEO, & HR Head, Ascendant Detox

Leverage Sponsored Employment to Stand Out

Since thousands of jobs are uploaded every day, your job listing’s visibility may eventually decline. A sponsored job is one of the finest strategies to guarantee that your job ad remains distinctive. 

In any relevant search results, these premium postings will be more prominent and won’t drop in prominence over time, like free job listings, which can draw in more qualified applicants. 

As soon as you pay to post a position, you’ll also gain access to Instant Fit, which provides you with a list of applicants whose resumes match your job requirements on Indeed right away.

Kurt Uhlir, Chief Marketing Officer, Kurt Uhlir

Explore More Hiring Processes With New Tech

I’ve always used data for recruiting purposes, but as technology progresses, the possibilities are growing. I’m no longer limited to hard skill evaluations; I’m now better able to consider a candidate’s holistic suitability for any position.

Soft skills, like emotional intelligence, team cohesion, and effective communication often determine how well an employee adapts to a new workplace. By combining psychological and sociological surveys with data collection techniques, I’m placing candidates in their ideal work cultures. 

This is a crucial metric for long-term success because inefficient hiring processes can lead to work stoppages and delayed projects. 

Rob Reeves, CEO & President, Redfish Technology

Look for Someone Who Fits Your Company Culture

In my experience, the most challenging aspect of hiring for senior or executive positions is finding someone who not only has the skills and experience, but also fits the culture the company strives for. 

These higher-level employees often already have a well-established style of leadership, and any attempts at shifting it to fit the values of the new workplace can be a real challenge. That’s why, in 2023, I’d recommend trying to look for someone who already fits your approach. 

Make it a year to build the recruitment process around company culture. This way, you’ll ensure that the values you want to uphold at your workplace aren’t just words written somewhere on the wall; they’re real guidelines according to which employees function daily.

Piotrek Sosnowski, Chief People & Culture Officer, HiJunior

Engage in Social Media Recruiting

As the world of work continues to expand, we are increasingly using social media to recruit and hire employees. 

Engaging with potential candidates and gaining a sense of their skills, personality, interests, and qualifications in order to ensure an overall company fit is becoming increasingly possible and effective via social media.

In 2023, identify top talent and build relationships with candidates more aggressively through social media rather than going through employment agencies. Learn about prospective candidates through their profiles and pursue them personally by establishing a rapport.

This enables us to interact with our creators, marketers, developers, and writers directly, engage with their content, introduce them to other employees online, and establish a friendly but professional rapport.

Kyle Kroeger, Founder, Via Travelers

Automate Screening for Better, Cheaper Hires

With such a tight hiring pool, you can’t afford any recruitment downtime. Adopting new AI-powered headhunting tools gives you 100% up-time as you search and screen new candidates hands-free. 

It also greatly helps reduce the biases that human recruiters unwittingly bring into the screening process, thanks to advanced machine learning that’s becoming more intelligent daily. With 35% lower employee turnover, AI’s unbiased processes help find a better fit for every role.

AI screening reduces traditional costs by up to 75%, giving your team more money and time to invest in wooing and landing great hires when they have countless other job options available.

Maximilian Wühr, CGO & Co-Founder, FINN

Develop a Strong Employer Brand

One of the best things we are doing to prepare for hiring in 2023 is developing a strong customer brand. I believe that in the new year, employers are going to be increasingly focused on finding candidates who are not only technically qualified, but also a good fit for their company culture. 

By developing a strong customer brand, we are showcasing our ability to not only be the best training group, but also to build relationships and contribute to a positive team dynamic. 

I think this is an important attribute that will become even more valuable in the new year, and I would encourage other businesses to work on their own brands as well.

Derek Bruce, Sr. Director, Skills Training Group

Craft Unique and Optimized Job Listings

As more and more jobseekers search for open positions online, businesses are turning to content marketing to make their job listings stand out. Crafting a unique and attractive job listing can have significant benefits, such as ensuring that you stand out to notable candidates and improving your overall business brand.

In addition, writing an optimized job listing that touches on relevant keywords can help employers reach a broader audience, as these types of listings will be more likely to appear near the top of relevant search engine results. 

Furthermore, job seekers may be more likely to apply if they are presented with a well-crafted summary of the position’s expectations and requirements, as opposed to vague generalizations. Ultimately, despite the time and effort required, writing an engaging and optimized job listing will often pay dividends by providing your business with the best possible chance to hire the ideal candidate.

Jessica Munday, People & Culture Manager, Custom Neon

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.

The post 12 Ways to Get Ready for Hiring in 2023 first appeared on Jobvite.

The number of job openings stayed above 10 million in the latest JOLTS report, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and several sectors saw key gains in total jobs open. Employ data reveals the total number of open positions in the healthcare industry grew by 5.2% between Q2 and Q3 2022, and professional services also saw an increase of 5.6% during the same period.

Companies that recognize the challenges of the current hiring environment proactively monitor key recruiting metrics to improve their recruiting programs and to stay competitive in finding top talent.

The Recruiting Metrics You’ll Need to Succeed This Year

The most strategic employers use recruiting analytics software to measure their hiring programs from job requisition to onboarding and beyond. And they gain valuable insights into the candidate, recruiter, and hiring manager experiences to optimize their processes. Take a look at the top 10 key recruiting metrics that can help you drive improved hiring outcomes in 2023 and beyond.

#1: Source of Hire

Many recruiting teams are tracking the source of their hires to understand where their best candidates come from and to further focus on more strategic recruiting initiatives, like DE&I, in the new year. This metric identifies where new hires come from and helps recruiters to expand the diversity of talent pools by looking for different sources for candidates.

#2: Source of Application

Applicants can come from a variety of channels, so it’s essential that recruiters know where their most common sources of applicants come from to improve their recruiting ROI. This allows talent teams to prioritize time and ad spending for different job requisitions to target more applicants like those who have applied and best met their job requirements.

#3: Applications Per Requisition

Measuring the number of applicants per requisition is a valuable way to see which roles are the most difficult to fill and which are most popular among candidates. Every company and industry have positions that always take longer and more effort to fill than others, so measuring number of applications for each open role can help to remedy this. It’s also a valuable metric for improving recruiting strategies like seasonal hiring.

#4: Candidate Conversion Rate

The candidate conversion rate is the number of candidates that view a job posting, fill out, and apply for a role versus the number that started to apply and left. This metric is useful for talent teams to analyze the candidate experience through communication channels like job boards, social media, and even email.

#5: Candidate Engagement Score

Use metrics like the candidate engagement score to identify candidates that are highly engaged with the employer brand during the job-seeking and hiring process. Candidates with high engagement scores respond quickly to messages, apply for multiple roles in the company, and even engage with the brand on social media.

#6: Onboarding Program Completion

With high turnover in companies today, up to one-third of all new hires in the first 90 days, according to Employ data, employers are focusing on retaining their talent from the very start of the hiring process. Companies that recognize the strategic role that onboarding plays understand how to better retain new hires. Onboarding analytics that determine areas of success and improvement in the current onboarding program should be considered an important part of your hiring process.

#7: Quality of Hire

This metric has been a hot topic for recruiters in recent years, and the definition has changed since talent teams started measuring it. Quality of hire is the value that a new hire brings to the organization, and it can be determined in several ways. From hiring manager satisfaction to meeting the requirements of the job to retention in the organization, overall quality of hire and can be very useful to improving the types of candidates you recruit.

#8: Employee Turnover Rate

High turnover and low unemployment in the market has put a strain on organizations that are looking to grow this year. Strategic recruiting teams are closely monitoring metrics like employee turnover to see where they’re losing valuable talent.

#9: Internal Mobility

To keep talented employees within the business, your company should prioritize internal mobility programs over the next 6 to 12 months. It’s crucial to create career pathways for top talent in the organization; otherwise, you may risk losing them to competitors. Incentivize management to refer employees for promotions or help them with other lateral career moves within the company.

#10: Recruiting Channel Response

The most strategic employers deploy recruitment marketing campaigns to grow their employer brand and make it easier to convert top talent. Monitoring key communication metrics, like email performance, text message response rates, and career site engagement can give a detailed picture of the candidate experience.

Get Moving on Hiring in 2023 and Beyond

As your company finishes up recruitment planning for 2023, and prepares for more expected turbulence in the labor market, make sure your organization is ready to find, hire, and retain top talent. Download the 2023 Recruiting Effectiveness Planning Kit for actionable strategies and guided direction to recruit this year.

The post The 10 Key Recruiting Metrics You Need to Track in 2023 first appeared on Jobvite.

The latest talent acquisition data reveal that HR leaders and recruiting teams believe hiring will be difficult into the near year. In fact, 61% of talent leaders believe it will remain challenging to attract, engage, and hire new employees going into 2023. And 77% of HR decision makers indicate their organizations have not reduced hiring plans, despite talks of a recession and worries about layoffs.

With recruiting teams working harder than ever to find, hire, and onboard qualified candidates in this highly competitive market, it’s critical to find ways to optimize talent acquisition activities in 2023. And that starts with planning.

Introducing the 2023 Recruiting Effectiveness Planning Kit

The 2023 Recruiting Effectiveness Planning Kit features nine worksheets across all areas of the talent acquisition lifecycle that you can use together or separately to optimize talent acquisition programs for the coming year.

Filled with hands-on worksheets to help you improve your talent acquisition strategies, you can take stock of your current programs and make data-driven plans to drive your talent acquisition strategy in 2023.

What’s In the Planning Kit? 

The 2023 Planning Kit is a downloadable bundle, filled with labor market insights, actionable recruiting strategies across the series of nine step-by-step worksheets to plan your talent acquisition strategy in 2023.

Get guidance and direction to enable your teams to work smarter, not harder. Work towards streamlining your talent acquisition activities and optimizing hiring activities with a solid plan for the new year, without the end-of-year panic.

Confidently build your hiring strategy with guidance on:

• Developing a data-driven recruiting strategy
• Creating candidate personas for better role matching
• Expanding talent networks with targeted audience planning
• Building greater focus on DE&I into recruiting programs
• Other critical focus areas for talent acquisition in 2023

Plus, get the free 2023 HR Calendar featuring Federal Holidays, important dates and deadlines, and HR Conferences all throughout next year.

Make Next Year Your Best Year with Help from Jobvite 

With the guidance in these worksheets, we know that whatever happens in 2023, you will be more prepared to face what comes your way. In the meantime, if you’re looking to learn more about Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite, get started by watching the product tour here. Or stay informed on the latest product and recruiting insights by subscribing to our blog.

The post Kick-Start Hiring in 2023 with the Step-by-Step Recruiting Planning Kit first appeared on Jobvite.

As the talent landscape continues to evolve and challenges arise, recruiting teams have had to get even more nimble and learn how to analyze talent data in real-time to adjust and improve their processes. From the number of open reqs to application source to candidate conversion rates, time-to-fill, quality of candidate, source of hire, DEI data, and internal mobility, there is virtually no end to the recruiting data you can track. So it’s critical to find out the most important metrics to your business and then keep a clear pulse on that data.

When you leverage a data-driven approach, you can more easily deliver better candidates faster and continuously improve how you hire talent for your company. Let’s dig in a bit further on some of the latest data from Employ across its 18,000 customers to provide a broad perspective of how companies right now are preparing for 2023 and to give insights into how you can optimize your function for success in the coming year.

The post Use Data-Driven Recruiting to Improve Scalability for 2023 first appeared on Jobvite.

Recruitment metrics are designed to measure successes and bottlenecks in the recruiting process. Metrics include key performance indicators (KPIs) that help measure progress in your recruiting strategy. These metrics allow for agility in recruiting, pointing out trends and potential issues as they happen.

As the talent landscape continues to evolve and challenges arise, recruiting teams have had to get even more nimble and learn how to analyze talent data in real-time to adjust and improve their processes. An analytics platform that automatically reports on key metrics can empower your company to make those data-driven decisions in real-time. In fact, leveraging recruiting analytics to drive greater visibility, smarter automation, and more predictable hiring results is the ultimate goal of using a data-driven approach.

From the number of open reqs to application source to candidate conversion rates, time-to-fill, quality of candidate, source of hire, DEI data, and internal mobility, there is virtually no end to the recruiting data you can track. So it’s critical to find out the most important metrics to your business and then keep a clear pulse on that data.

When you leverage a data-driven approach, you can more easily deliver better candidates faster, and continuously improve how you hire talent for your company. Let’s dig in a bit further on what data-driven recruiting is, examine the benefits for your organization, and give you some examples of the types of recruiting metrics to measure.

What Is Data-Driven Recruiting?

Data-driven recruiting is an approach to hiring that uses analytics specifically for talent acquisition to inform and improve the recruiting process. For talent acquisition professionals, getting a handle on their analytics, creating visibility, and shining a light on the most vital aspects of their performance is critically important. By tracking metrics, such as funnel, source performance, quality of talent pool, satisfaction scores, and diversity you can see how your recruiting strategy is performing, fine-tune what’s broken in the hiring process, and continuously improve.

Interestingly, seven percent of a company’s total operating budget is spent on talent acquisition, and the average cost per hire is about $4,000. According to Aptitude Research, 82% of companies say data plays a critical role in driving talent acquisition decisions. Yet despite these big numbers, only about 50% of companies measure their recruiting effectiveness at all. Not being on top of your data in today’s technology-enabled world is a disaster waiting to happen. And it gets more pronounced when you think of the perceptions, or misperceptions, of your key stakeholders, including your hiring managers.

The right talent acquisition suite offers the capability to collect critical talent insights and provide real-time information on key recruiting metrics, making the hiring process more efficient for recruiters, more impactful for hiring managers, and more desirable for candidates.

Talent acquisition technology can bring the data together all in one place so you can see up-to-date candidate experience metrics, sourcing effectiveness metrics, and overall hiring metrics. Tracking recruiting benchmarks can also help your business understand where their best sources of talent come from, so you can deliver more predictable hiring outcomes and get even more agile in your recruiting approach. Remember, recruiting is all about speed and knowing how to make faster, smarter decisions is the name of the game.

Top Benefits of Data-Driven Recruiting

When an organization is dedicated to increasing agility by leveraging recruiting data and analytics, it can benefit greatly. Here are a few of the most common benefits:

#1: Improved Sourcing Effectiveness

For too long, recruiters and hiring managers have had to find candidates based on feel and previous experience. But the sheer volume of open positions and time required to source quality candidates requires a better approach. What worked previously may not work any more. And finding the right talent for your business requires a more informed approach.

Data-driven recruiting can help you uncover more quality candidates by specifically understanding source effectiveness and measuring items like number and quality of sourced hires. Having the ability to measure, analyze, and refine your sourcing function is a key component to optimizing your entire recruiting operation. With solid strategies, defined processes, capable CRM and sourcing technology and thoughtful analytics, sourcing can become a core competency for any organization. This means you can find more talent from the places that deliver better hires consistently for your business.

#2: Enhanced DEI Initiatives

Leveraging data-driven insights and analytics can also enhance agile recruiting by better supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion. When you are laser focused on expanding the inclusiveness of your workforce, recruiting analytics can help you track and report on the diversity of your hiring funnel based on key DEI data. With insights to help identify top DEI candidates, you take the time and guesswork out diversity hiring, while also eliminating unconscious bias. And that helps ensure you hire candidates who will widen the perspectives of your organization and contribute to higher performance levels in your business.

#3: Decreased Hiring Costs

By focusing on the best sources for talent and streamlining the hiring process using data-driven insights, your business can help decrease overall hiring costs. Ensuring you identify and tackle roadblocks to hiring, you can decrease time-to-fill or the elapsed time between a job opening is posted and when it’s filled.

Measuring time-to-fill can help you understand the real cost of filling a role, especially since productivity and revenue can both suffer the longer a job remains open. Plus, starting with more qualified candidates allows you to save time and resources on talent that may be a poor fit for the role. Having those key insights into where you should post your jobs and identifying which channels bring the highest quality candidates takes the guesswork out of hiring, helping you reduce hiring costs and empowering you to fill positions more quickly.

#4: Improved Candidate Experience

When you collect data regarding your hiring process, it can help you identify pain points for candidates and create a more positive candidate experience overall. Identifying candidate conversion rates along the recruiting journey helps you identify candidate engagement levels, especially as you encourage candidates to apply.

Perhaps you are not converting at the point of application or you are seeing candidates fall off after the interview process. Or maybe candidates are not accepting offers and your offer-to-acceptance ratio has decreased. Whatever it is, understanding key areas throughout the candidate experience can help you pinpoint areas where potential hires are not receiving an optimal candidate experience so you can work to improve their interactions.

What Recruitment Data You Should Measure

It’s clear that data analytics yield powerful insights, but which of those insights should you focus your efforts on? Assess your current situation by first measuring specific items in these three categories. Examples are provided for each type below:

• Speed-based recruitment metrics: Time-to-fill, time to disqualify, time to offer, time to acceptance
• Quality-based recruitment metrics: Source of candidate, source of hire, applications per requisition, application completion, submission to acceptance rate, quality of hire, hiring manager satisfaction
• Cost-based recruitment metrics: Cost per hire, cost per channel, cost per applicant, cost per job board, cost per candidate conversion

With leading talent acquisition technology, you can accurately capture and analyze recruitment data and take charge of identifying where you can improve your hiring process and deliver an optimal candidate experience.

Get More Agile with Data-Driven Recruiting

To get the most value from your recruiting data, you need real-time analytics that will improve your responsiveness and ability to make better hiring decisions. When you leverage the right recruiting data for your business, you can become more in tune with the performance of your talent acquisition function and also outperform your competition in connecting with candidates.

Ready to learn more? Download our Recruiting Metrics Toolkit or stay up-to-date with the latest recruiting insights by signing up for our Jobvite Blog Digest.

The post How to Achieve Agile Recruiting Using a Data-Driven Approach first appeared on Jobvite.

Recruiters can spend hours manually screening candidates just for one open requisition — job seekers they may never see or interact with — and still not find the right person. Multiply that by the number of open roles within the business, and remote candidate screening is one of the most time-consuming, repetitive, and detached tasks that recruiters or hiring managers have to perform.

So how can hiring teams effectively screen remote candidates and instill confidence in the hiring process? The good news is that there is a better way — no matter your size of company — to find a high volume of candidates and to evaluate the most qualified individuals. Let’s break down five strategies that can help your company screen remote candidates.

Five Ways to Screen Remote Candidates More Effectively

The tight labor market has made it more difficult than ever for recruiters to source, screen, interview, hire, and onboard remote talent. Employers are hard pressed to increase efficiencies and to compete on speed. Yet the most agile teams have found ways to save time and find more qualified remote candidates at the same time. These best practices empower recruiters to deliver more predictable hiring results:

#1: Let Candidates Help You Screen

A favorite time-saving screening tool of recruiters is asynchronous video. This software lets hiring teams send interview prompts to remote candidates where they can record and submit their answers on their own schedule. No need to spend days aligning hiring manager and candidate schedules for a screening call. Recruiters can even provide a deadline for completing the video screening, allowing the automated system to send out reminders.

#2: Limit the Deal Breakers

With today’s highly competitive labor market, candidates have their pick when it comes to employers and job offers. Long gone are the days when recruiters could screen out hundreds of applicants with a job description’s wording or long lists of required skills for a role. Encourage hiring managers to limit their list of “essential” skills that they list under requirements when screening candidates. This helps keep the candidate pool larger and more diverse past the screening stage and through onboarding.

#3: Save Time with Skill Matching

Candidate skill matching is a strategy that helps companies to find the right qualified talent without eliminating too many candidates early in the process. It’s an efficient way to ensure applicants have the necessary skills or certifications for a role — and recruiters are focusing more than ever on hiring for soft skills like leadership and communication. Recruitment software enables hiring teams to screen this way, while reducing unconscious bias in the hiring process.

#4: Change the Screening Game with Automated Sourcing

Imagine opening your laptop in the morning and having dozens of qualified applications ready to review. Employers looking to streamline remote candidate screening do this with automated sourcing software. Automated sourcing software takes a list of job requirements and actively recruits qualified candidates in the background. Effective sourcing tools can save recruiters dozens of hours per requisition, leading to improved recruiting metrics like time-to-hire and even improved quality-of-hire.

#5: Stay Engaged with Passive Talent

Some of the best candidates in a talent network are ones who have previously interacted with your company. Make sure to keep interacting with and engaging previous applicants or passive talent as a great place to source quality candidates. Use automated messaging tools to communicate with candidates, provide updates, engage with “silver medalists” and invite new applicants to roles.

Start Hiring with More Confidence

Ready to find a higher volume of quality remote candidates, while saving hours of time in the screening process? Learn how you can navigate the hiring market and get strategies that will help you hire more confidently even in a challenging environment. Get the Employ Quarterly Insights Report for the latest in recruiting strategy and labor market insights.

The post Use These Five Strategies to Screen Remote Candidates first appeared on Jobvite.

Startling data from the latest Employ report reveals that 63% of recruiters have had new hires leave in the first 90 days after starting a new job, and one in every three new hires will leave a job during that period. With this data in mind, it’s clear that employee retention efforts should start before the candidate is ever hired. Here are five ways to get employee retention right through recruitment:

#1: Define What Employee Retention Means for Your Company

Employer branding refers to the way organizations differentiate themselves from competitors in the market for employees. What is your company’s reputation among your workers? How is it as a place to work? Do your employees feel cared for? Taken care of? Would they recommend you to their friends? These are all important questions that contribute to your employer brand.

According to LinkedIn research, more than three-quarters of people seeking jobs look into the company’s employer brand before applying. This means that most of the candidates you interact with will already have an image of your company, especially candidates with the most employment options. They’re also likely to leave a review after interviewing or interacting with your company during the hiring process. How does your online presence impact business? Here are three ways:

The first step to getting employee retention right is to define what it means for your company.

• What are your goals and objectives when it comes to employee retention?
• What does success look like?
• How is that different from your current retention analytics?

Answering these questions first will help you develop the strategies and policies you need to make employee retention a reality.

Data Driven Results: Three Ways Data-Driven Recruiting Leads to Talent Acquisition Success

#2: Make Sure Your Recruitment Process Is Solid

Your recruitment process is the first opportunity you have to engage potential new employees and express what it’s like to work for your company. If your recruitment process is disorganized, dysfunctional, inefficient, or otherwise off-putting, it will be difficult to convince candidates that your company is any different. Remember, you can only make a first impression once, so make it count. Ensuring your recruitment process is as smooth and engaging as possible sets the tone for a positive employee experience.

Use key metrics like these to learn about your candidate, hiring manager, and recruiter experiences:

• Sourcing effectiveness
• Candidate conversion rates
• Hiring manager satisfaction
• Recruiter satisfaction
• Candidate satisfaction
• Quality of hire
• Overall time to fill
• Diversity of talent pipelines
• Employee retention rates

#3: Onboard New Employees Effectively

The onboarding process is crucial for employee retention. This is the time when new employees are learning how to operate in your organization, being trained and finding footing in their roles, taking on new responsibilities, and getting their first experiences as an employee with your company culture. If they have a positive onboarding experience, they’re more likely to stay with the company long-term.

The most successful HR teams have clear and comprehensive onboarding objectives. They include:

• Easy access to new hire paperwork (eSignature capabilities are table stakes today)
• Onboarding checklists for new hires to refer to as they move through the onboarding process
• Introduction to the company’s mission, vision, and values as an extension of employer branding
• Facilitating introductions to department colleagues to begin team-building efforts
• Offering resource centers for “everything you need to know” starting on Day 1 and beyond
• Beginning the learning & development process; if there are critical skills or certifications required, make training available
• Providing a resource center for all questions
• Giving a clear roadmap of a 30-60-90 day plan for all new hires

Ensuring that new workers catch on to how things are done and assimilate with your company culture is paramount to their success in your organization.

Avoid Common Blunders: Top 5 Onboarding Mistakes to Avoid

#4: Communicate Regularly

Open communication with your internal team, as well as the candidate, is essential for employee retention. Employees who feel unsure of what they’ll be walking into within the company are more likely to look for opportunities elsewhere.

When seeking to create positive candidate experiences, communication is key. No candidate likes to be kept in the dark; they want to stay informed and updated regarding where they are in the hiring process. Unfortunately, too many recruiters and employers treat the hiring process as a one-way street, requiring prompt answers and updates from candidates without offering the same thing in return. Make sure you’re communicating regularly with your team about company news, changes, and developments.

#5: Offer Competitive Benefits and Compensation

Employees who feel they’re being paid fairly and have good benefits are likely to stick around. High levels of turnover in companies have shown that candidates expect more when it comes to salary and benefits. Employees are no longer accepting lagging wages and benefits from companies, and they’re still in a strong position to get what they want.

Talent acquisition teams are staying agile by articulating compensation on job postings and adjusting compensation for existing employees to increase retention. If you want to retain the best talent, make sure you’re offering competitive salaries and benefits. Regular raises and bonuses can also help employee retention.

Further Reading: Five Key Insights from Today’s Job Seekers

Jobvite Offers the Ultimate Candidate Experience Solution

From prompt, transparent feedback and communication to a clear explanation of responsibilities and company culture, your organization can invest in multiple areas to ensure excellent retention. With the Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite, you can ensure the entire talent acquisition lifecycle delivers optimized candidate experiences for better recruiting results.

Watch our product tour on-demand or subscribe to our blog to stay in the know on the latest insights in talent acquisition.

The post Employee Retention Begins At Recruitment: Five Ways to Get it Right first appeared on Jobvite.

It used to be that the highest-quality candidates would seek your company out, giving you the upper hand in the labor market. These days, it’s challenging to find qualified candidates, where the number of open jobs outnumbers job seekers about two to one. Finding high quality talent with the right mix of knowledge, experience, qualifications, personality, drive, diversity, and skills seems virtually impossible.

And even after you have identified a high performing candidate, how do you attract and engage them? Not to mention retain them. How do you ensure they end up working for you and not for your competitors?

One way is by leveraging centralized talent acquisition technology, like Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite, designed to streamline talent acquisition activities, eliminate bottlenecks, and tackle the complexities of hiring. Let’s take a look at the five biggest TA challenges this year, so you can see where Jobvite supports you in your talent acquisition efforts:

The Five Biggest Obstacles to Talent Acquisition in 2022

#1: Volatility

The effects of the pandemic are still being felt in today’s job market, creating an ever-changing environment that can be difficult to predict and even more difficult to keep up with. Not only are your own hiring needs and capabilities subject to change, but so are the conditions of the market and the expectations of job-seekers. In a sea of volatility, Jobvite provides a solid foundation to guide your recruitment process. Best of all, it’s completely scalable to your talent acquisition needs.

#2: Competition

One of the biggest challenges within talent acquisition is that your company isn’t the only one investing a lot of time and effort into it. Your competitors are working just as hard to attract the same high-quality candidates. Differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack by communicating a positive brand identity and company culture. Win top talent with social media recruiting to boost your signal and reach out to candidates directly.

#3: Speed

Talent acquisitions teams often want to find the perfect candidate for a position. A noble motivation, with one little problem: there’s no such thing as the perfect candidate. If your team is taking too long to choose the right candidates, not only are you wasting countless resources, but you also risk losing high-quality applicants to more decisive, fast-acting competitors. Remember, hiring is a game of speed. So it’s essential that you streamline and eliminate manual processes by automating as many tasks as possible with the right talent acquisition technology.

#4: Bias

We all have biases, whether we’re aware of them or not. That’s just as true for recruitment teams and hiring managers as it is for anyone else. You might be inclined to hire one candidate over another because of their age, their name, the school they graduated from, or if they previously worked for a competitor. Eliminating bias through the use of Jobvite’s built-in AI processes ensures you can quickly, easily, and accurately identify the most qualified, appropriate candidates.

#5: Digitization

Hiring process digitization represents one of the biggest and most promising innovations in talent acquisition today. For businesses that are unprepared for it, though, keeping up with the technological demands of an ever-changing marketplace can be a major challenge. Fortunately, Jobvite is designed to be comprehensive, versatile, and easy-to-use, allowing you to source, engage, interact, and onboard candidates easily and efficiently.

Jobvite Makes Talent Acquisition Easier

Talent acquisition has never been more challenging than it is right now. Whatever your industry, from healthcare and technology to manufacturing and financial services and more, Jobvite is designed to deliver predictable outcomes, create exceptional experiences, and empower streamlined hiring, scalable to your TA needs.

With the Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite, you can ensure the entire talent acquisition lifecycle delivers optimized candidate experiences for better recruiting results. Watch our product tour on-demand or subscribe to our blog to stay in the know on the latest insights in talent acquisition.

The post What Makes Talent Acquisition So Difficult? first appeared on Jobvite.

To help you navigate this challenging hiring environment, we asked CEOs, business leaders, and recruiters what changes they have made to candidate requirements. From getting rid of cover letters to including candidates willing to relocate, there are multiple strategies that can help you fill vacancies in a tight labor market.

Here are 15 recommendations from business leaders on changes you can make in candidate requirements:

• Getting Rid of the Cover Letter
• Allowing Outside-of-Industry Experience
• Hiring Based On Referrals and Recommendations
• Focusing On Potential for Growth
• Widening the Pool of Candidates
• Entertaining Applicants With Resume Gaps
• Making Pledges for Accommodation
• Offering High Salaries
• Prioritizing Soft Skills
• Changing Education Requirements on Job Descriptions
• Hiring Overqualified Candidates
• Focusing On Skill Set More Than Experience
• Expanding the Search Area
• Considering Juniors
• Including Candidates Willing to Relocate

Getting Rid of the Cover Letter

Many companies across industries have done away with the archaic requirement of a cover letter and still attract top talent. Cover letters are an unnecessary pain and a waste of time for both the applicant and recruiter. Instead, we focus on initially screening through resumes, then exploring questions of motivation, thought process — things originally described in the cover letter — during interviews.

Adam Shlomi, Founder, SoFlo Tutors

Allowing Outside-of-Industry Experience

At one point, my law firm solely considered applicants with former experience in the legal industry. However, due to recent labor shortages, we have widened our administration and marketing applicant pool to anyone with applicable experience. They do not need to have experience specifically working for a law firm, though that is preferred, and we are willing to interview candidates who can apply previous professional knowledge to our open positions.

So far, taking this risk has worked to our benefit. Although our new hires may not have former experience in law, they still have the skills needed to excel in their positions. This has opened our candidate pool to include more potential employees with extensive experience and terrific work ethics.

David Aylor, CEO & Lawyer, David Aylor Law Offices

Hiring Based On Referrals and Recommendations

One way we’ve not only taken more risks in recruiting but also made the time-to-hire a lot shorter is by hiring based on employee referrals and customer recommendations. As there is someone to vouch for them in terms of character and work ethics, we believe the rest can come with time and the skills can be easily taught. Instead of wasting time going through the hiring process, we check referrals and ask why the employee recommends them, and based on their responses, we’re willing to hire new candidates and teach them the skills they need.

Tim White, Founder, milepro

Focusing On Potential for Growth

In the current labor market, we have been very focused on identifying potential in new hires. Where a candidate may lack experience, we focus on where they see themselves growing best. The fact of the matter is that the experienced labor force continues to retire faster than it replenishes. Investing in the future ensures fresh ideas, room to grow, and a strong sense of loyalty from giving them a good place to start.

Kevin Callahan, Co-Founder & CEO, Flatline Van Co.

Widening the Pool of Candidates

No, we have not loosened our candidate requirements. We have, however, become more flexible in our approach to recruiting and hiring. For example, we have increased our use of social media and online job boards to reach a wider pool of potential candidates. We have also worked with staffing agencies to identify qualified candidates. We have been willing to consider candidates who may not have all the traditional qualifications for a position but who demonstrate the potential to be successful in the role. As a result of these changes, we have seen an increase in the number of candidates who apply for our openings. In addition to this increased volume, there has also been an increase in quality among candidates, which has helped us deal with the tight labor market.

Shaun Connell, Founder, Writing Tips Institute

Entertaining Applicants With Resume Gaps

While it’s risky to hire applicants who have been unemployed for quite some time, our business is open to working with them if they’re the best fit for the job. In terms of recruiting, resume gaps are not a big deal for us. What we need are people who have the right personality and skills to perform the role they are about to play.

Keep in mind that the past few years have been difficult for many people, especially in looking for a job when most businesses are shutting down. We don’t know how many talented people out there deserve a chance, so it’s fair to give everyone the opportunity to apply and prove themselves, regardless of their employment history. Only then can we find someone who embodies our company values and has no problem working with us in the long run.

Adam Garcia, CEO & Owner, The Stock Dork

Making Pledges for Accommodation

At the time of the tight labor market, it is quite impossible to find a good employee who can fulfill all the requirements of our company efficiently. At our company, we have to promise different attractive benefits in order to attract candidates. One of the biggest risks that we have taken was the pledge for accommodation. We already knew that it will be difficult for us to manage and it will create different problems for us in the future, but we had no other choice and we took this risk to fill the gap of employees in our company.

Joe Troyer, Chief Marketing Officer, ReviewGrower

Offering High Salaries

One of the biggest risks that we have taken while recruiting in a tight labor market was offering handsome salaries to the candidates so that they would join our company. But this affected our profit level pathetically because the salaries we offered were totally out of budget. We didn’t have any way out of the employee shortage, and that was the reason why we took this risk. Our decision was totally in the favor of employees, but it was against our betterment and long-term benefit.

Robert Warner, Head of Marketing, Virtual Valley

Prioritizing Soft Skills

It’s not that we’ve loosened our grip, but we started to approach recruiting and candidate requirements differently due to the tight labor market. Instead of looking at the technical skill set we desired, we started looking at the soft skills we valued as a company, which widened our search and strengthened our team. For example, your search will be pretty long and pretty limited if you are looking for a specific skill set. If you instead look for a candidate with great communication, teamwork, and leadership skills who’s eager to learn and grow with your company, you can invest that time and energy into teaching them – it’s a win-win. By searching for candidates with strong soft skills who can learn exactly what the job requires, you are building a company whose team is specifically trained and whose top priority is teamwork.

Susan Shaffer, President, Pneuma Nitric Oxide

Changing Education Requirements on Job Descriptions

Requiring a degree for a job position significantly slashes the scope of applicants to recruit. Removing this requirement from our job descriptions is one tactic I went for to cope with the tight labor market. In my niche, I believe that skills and experience are heavier credentials than a diploma. I don’t want to lose potential best employees because they are lacking in technicality.

I started to value self-learners who have amassed a great amount of experience or have grown their portfolio because of their resilience. I don’t want to miss the opportunity of working with some of the industry’s best just for the reason that they’re missing a piece of paper because of its price tag. This goes without saying that we equally value candidates who worked hard to earn a degree, but it’s more of we don’t discriminate against those who were not able to do so.

Josh Tyler, CEO, Tell Me Best

Hiring Overqualified Candidates

Recruiters typically view it as a risk to hire overqualified candidates for a position because there is a high probability of turnover. This was a calculated risk my management had to take in the tight labor market of late. To mitigate our risks, we conducted more thorough applicant interviews to give us deeper insights into the reason why an overqualified applicant is applying for a job that is below their level. Candidates with reasons that make valid and reasonable arguments are often considered. For example, we are willing to take a risk on accepting an overqualified applicant who is seeking a lower job offer for a reduced workload or those opting to shift career tracks.

Claudia Gancayco, Chief Marketing Officer, Leg Master

Focusing On Skill Set More Than Experience

In today’s job market the ideal candidate is either unwilling to leave their current company or gets counter-offered by another company. This means we’ve had to take more risks and adjust who an ideal candidate is depending on who is available. For example, instead of hiring people based on overall experience, I’ve been focusing more on their skill set in the most important functions in a role, not how long they’ve had that experience, but more on their knowledge, their ambition or passion about that skill, and improving on those skills and others they don’t have that much experience in. I’ve also seen a lot of candidates moving industries, which we saw less of in the past, and the key to a successful transition is focusing on the candidate’s transferable skills from their old industry to the new one.

Heather Scott, Recruiter, Sojourn Solutions

Expanding the Search Area

Previously, some clients who had an office in Ukraine were ready to consider candidates only in certain locations, for example, only Kyiv, Lviv or another city of Ukraine where an office was located. The work schedule included some days of work from the office and the rest could be done remotely. After the start of the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, many engineers went abroad or changed their location within Ukraine. Therefore, clients are ready to work with IT specialists remotely from different locations, regardless of where the IT specialist is currently located.

If a company has built a workplace where employees can work remotely, it doesn’t really matter where the person is. Some clients have switched to the format of international teams, where specialists from different countries and different nationalities work. In this case, we search all over the world. This helps to quickly close important vacancies with good candidates.

Vadim Lobarev, CEO, MindHunt

Considering Juniors

Consider juniors as investments. With the unemployment rate we are facing in our labor market, we have to seek different ways to work with candidates. We can’t wait for 100% fit candidates. They might never appear. The trend that I see and support is an investment into junior candidates’ potential and internal training & development programs. It’s risky, and it takes time and money, but if you do it well, they return it to you. In a business case where this model is NO GO, we try to revise requirements in comparison with real use in daily operations. Most of the time we find English as a mandatory criterion, but in reality, employees never use it in business.

Barbora Školaudy, Head of Recruitment, Talent’em

Including Candidates Willing to Relocate

Most of our clients are looking for candidates already living in the area of their workplace, and of course, people who already have an in-force work permit.  Due to the lack of candidates fulfilling all their requirements lately, we are widening our pool, including people who are willing to relocate to the area considered. We focus mostly on EU citizens, though, since that makes the paperwork much easier.

Javier de la Morena, Co-Founder, NBS IT Recruitment Consultants, S.L.

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.

The post 15 Candidate Requirements That Are No Longer Required first appeared on Jobvite.

Companies that streamline hiring with recruitment software have been more effective in speeding time to hire and providing a more consistent candidate experience that bolsters their employer brand. With tools like candidate texting or chatbots to improve the responsiveness and quality of conversations with candidates, employers that recognize the importance of engaging candidates and ensuring a seamless experience are more effective in finding candidates in a challenging labor market.

Remember, It’s Still A Candidate’s World

With record-level rates of unemployment, more than 10 million open jobs, and significant turnover, companies have been left to rapidly fill positions with qualified talent. Because employers are competing for top employees, they often still encounter candidates in the driver’s seat who are looking for more in every aspect of their employment.

Candidates currently have their pick of opportunities when it comes to roles. In fact, companies of all sizes are seeing candidates entertaining multiple job offers during the recruiting process. They’re looking for an employer that can provide the best hiring experience as well as more competitive benefits than in previous roles.

The challenge and opportunity to succeed in recruiting requires delivering a standout candidate experience by flawlessly engaging with candidates at every touchpoint in your hiring process. Because when you make it as easy as possible for candidates to interact with your employer brand and apply for your open roles, you can elevate your recruiting function and ensure you deliver a high quality of candidate that outpaces your competitors.

The Most Terrifying Part of Recruiting: Employers That Ghost Candidates

Even in light of the current hiring environment, one of the most frightening parts of recruiting is that employers are leaving candidates hanging. Known as ghosting candidates, it seems that some employers believe that not engaging or offering a streamlined candidate experience is acceptable. Employers should not take candidates for granted and cannot afford to turn off applicants for open roles. Yet many job seekers still regularly experience ghosting from employers.

Connecting the right candidates to the right job, providing an engaging career site experience, offering an easy application process, and ensuring obstacles are removed is essential in streamlining the hiring process. If you are not agile to respond to the challenges in the current labor market, if your hiring team is unresponsive, or you take too long to interact with candidates, you are doing damage to your own company and face an uphill climb in filling roles and hiring talent for your business.

“What is the most frightening part of recruiting? Employers that ghost candidates and think it is acceptable. ” -Jobvite

Stressed recruiters with inadequate tools are far more likely to let candidates fall off in the process with outdated hiring practices, making it even harder for companies to fill roles with qualified talent. So what are the top reasons that recruiters and employers ghost candidates? Let’s take a look:

Here are some of the top reasons candidates are ghosted by companies today:

• Lack of automated messaging tools to engage candidates and keep them informed in the hiring process
• Slow internal communication between the hiring team and decision makers
• Unable to keep up with the volume of candidates for open roles
• Employer expectations are not aligned with candidate expectations
• Inability to re-engage silver medalists to keep them informed of other hiring opportunities
• An out-of-date ATS that doesn’t allow recruiters to effectively track and manage applicant flow

In today’s competitive labor market, recruiting teams need to create the best possible experience to capture and convert top candidates during the early stages of the hiring process. This means that they must keep communications with applicants and hiring teams efficient, helpful, and transparent.

With the labor market continuing to favor candidates, each moment counts in the fight to convert candidates into applicants. Leveraging the right tools, having the right strategy, and ensuring you follow best practices when it comes to your career site and application process can increase your candidate conversion rates significantly.

Keep Candidates in the (Shorter) Loop

Companies that recognize ghosting candidates is a scary proposition instead adopt recruitment software to help with the heavy lifting of communicating with candidates. They’re avoiding candidate ghosting by setting up automated messaging at all points of the hiring process to ensure timely responses, accurate answers, and efficient meeting scheduling. Because without it, companies will lose out on the ability to attract talented candidates that will move their business forward.

One of the ways you can stop ghosting candidates is to leverage communication tools that keep candidates in the know. Some of the top tools businesses of all sizes are using include:

• Chatbots: Applicants can engage with a chatbot early in the hiring process to learn more about a role and even apply with a few simple clicks.
• Candidate texting: Automated messaging saves recruiters hours per requisition by automatically engaging with candidates during the application, interview, and onboarding processes.
• Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) software: Advanced recruiting teams are adopting a CRM platform to centralize their talent pools and easily set up automatic communication campaigns for passive candidates.
• Asynchronous video: Video interviewing is a favorite tool of busy recruiters who are hiring in high volumes. Allow applicants to record interview answers and submit on their own time, avoiding the need for a live meeting to screen every candidate.
• Automated interview scheduling: No more manually coordinating schedules between hiring teams and candidates. Automatic scheduling tools allow candidates to pick a meeting time from a pre-selected list of times that work for everyone.

Start Making Your Candidate Experience Less Spooky, More Engaging

Looking to improve your candidate experience and stop scaring job seekers in the process? Get more insights on how your company can respond to the current labor market. Be sure to download the Employ Quarterly Insights Report for strategies your business can use to better connect with and nurture candidates.

The post Here’s Why Ghosting Candidates Is So Spooky first appeared on Jobvite.