Candidates continue to put higher salaries at the top of their requirements list for seeking new employment, and continued turnover has put employers in a tough position. Recent Employ data reported that 37% of job seekers were looking to switch employers to seek higher wages. So, what exactly is the phenomenon that’s happening to loyal employees and how does it affect your employer brand?

What Is Loyalty Tax on Employees?

Loyalty tax occurs when current employees are penalized for staying in their existing roles by receiving less than new hires for the same position, or not receiving market adjustments to their salaries. According to a recent LinkedIn article, new hires are often paid seven percent higher for the same role, while another study puts loyalty tax on employees even higher at 10 to 15%.

Qualified candidates have seen that by moving to another company, they can often realize a significant raise compared to their current role. These are typically employees who should qualify for annual raises, but were potentially denied one for larger organizational reasons, including to avoid layoffs, to make up for poor performance, or the company has decided to stay a laggard compared to the rest of the market in its approach to pay.

Not giving out market-centric annual raises can significantly hurt both employers and employees who stick with a company for multiple years, while getting minimal (if any) raises or bonuses. Miscommunication and poor salary budgeting can force employees to pay this detrimental tax for staying at the organization, but candidates are quickly figuring this out and finding companies who also know this.

If turnover is high and quality employees aren’t properly compensated, it could mean that executive leadership is not on the same page as HR and TA leaders. This can create a challenge for recruiting quality candidates, and cause a vacuum of talent leaving the organization in search of higher pay, greater benefits, and greater recognition for their contributions.

How Can Companies Avoid Loyalty Tax?

A loyalty tax can harm an employer’s brand during such a critical time in a highly competitive job market. But loyalty tax on your employees is not a given. Getting company leadership, HR executives, and talent acquisition teams on the same page when it comes to priorities and budgets for the year can help ensure current and new employee contributions are valued and rewarded appropriately. Strategic HR teams analyze key metrics like employee retention and engagement, and salary rates to track overall satisfaction with the company and find areas of improvement.

Prioritize Employee Support & Enablement

One of the biggest ways to avoid charging employees a loyalty tax is to have executive and TA leadership consistently communicate about the state of hiring in the company. Top talent teams use advanced analytics to better understand and improve the recruiting experience for candidates. Remember, job seekers want to find a company that values employees, prioritizes DE&I, enables workplace flexibility, and leverages automation to improve communication, feedback, and time-to-hire.

Drive Internal Mobility

Candidates today want to work in a place that invests in their professional and personal growth. In fact, a recent Lighthouse Research & Advisory Report shared that 83% of candidates ask about future career opportunities during the hiring process. Many recruiting teams have pivoted their strategies this year to focus more on internal mobility and employee networking to fill positions. The benefit of prioritizing internal mobility is giving employees the chance to expand and grow in their careers within your company, and not at a competitor.

Actionable Strategies to Reduce Loyalty Tax

Employers that want to build a more robust employer brand, provide a strong employee value proposition, and pay competitive salaries to employees leverage strategies to ensure retention is rewarded rather than penalized. While a loyalty tax can’t be eliminated overnight, there are ways to help reduce it and improve engagement. HR and talent teams invest in the technology to keep a pulse on employees, and to find, hire, and retain top talent for their business.

Here are some actionable steps to reduce loyalty tax on your employees and retain top talent this year.

#1: Ensure TA leadership, HR executives, and company executives meet regularly to analyze and ensure budgets are prioritized for talent raises, merits, and incentives for current employees.

#2: Create and develop an employee referral program that incentivizes employees to refer their networks to open positions.

Include incentives for managers to refer employees for promotions or internal developmental career moves.

#3: Regularly analyze the labor market and economic reports to determine fair wages for existing employees doing the jobs that they already do.

Find companies that publish their salary ranges for similar roles to get an idea of the benefits offered by competitors.

#4: Send out quarterly company surveys to get feedback from current employees and find areas of improvement before they turn into pain points.

Get Started Building Value for Employees and Candidates Alike

With top talent in short supply, it’s crucial for companies to prioritize their employer brand and employee value proposition. High turnover in the market shows that candidates know what they want and are willing to switch companies to find it. Be sure your TA team is equipped to combat high turnover and recruit qualified employees with the Employ 2023 Recruiting Effectiveness Planning Kit.

The post Are Employees Paying You a Loyalty Tax? (And How It’s Hurting Your Employer Brand) first appeared on Jobvite.

Public forums such as Glassdoor, Indeed, and the like allow current employees, former employees, or even interviewees to post about their experience with your company, for better or worse. These reviews are a key part of your online presence and play an integral role in your recruiting effectiveness.

What Is Your Employer Brand?

An employer brand refers to the way organizations differentiate themselves from competitors in the market for candidates and 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 those job seekers who have options when it comes to seeking new roles. 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:

● It impacts the quality and quantity of applicants.
Positive reviews will draw applicants to your business, simplifying your hiring efforts and helping to attract top talent and build a more robust talent pool. Negative reviews will do the opposite: drive away candidates who are seeking better job opportunities and work environments.

● It influences customer perception.
Prospective customers are also looking at your online presence to assess company values. So while a positive online brand will encourage customer loyalty, negative reviews will likely disrupt their trust in your company.

● It affects current and future employee satisfaction.
Even if a current employee has a mostly positive outlook on their experience, those negative reviews or discussions about them in the workplace can be detrimental to productivity, focus, and retention. Negative impressions of how you hire their coworkers (and how it impacts the quality of their coworkers) can decrease work performance by up to 30%. So the quicker they are addressed and remedied, the better.

The impact of your employer brand is significant. But the overall hurdle most leadership teams face is how to address and improve their candidate experience and, therefore, improve their reviews online. Here are two key ways to approach your employer brand online to attract top talent.

#1: Recognize Your Employer Brand Is for More Than Just Hiring

A well-developed employer brand makes current employees proud of their positions and the company they work for. And it makes them more likely to refer others in their network towards open positions in your company. But did you know that your employer brand can also support your bottom line? It’s simple: devoting resources to the brand and its maintenance can reduce costs elsewhere.

Companies that have stellar employer brand images don’t have to spend as much on recruiting costs because they don’t have to recruit as hard. When your employees love their job, they’re telling people about it. Or, at the very least, not running your good name down in an after-work rant. This also means retention is improved because your strongest employees are more likely to stay for the long run.

Current employees act as ambassadors if they’re proud of where they work. The attitudes of current employees, positive or negative, further develop the company’s brand; strong branding creates a cycle where the brand gets stronger, which makes employees prouder and more content in their work, which makes the brand stronger, in turn.

#2: Make Sure to Optimize Job Seeker Experiences

Start laying the groundwork for positive candidate experiences now. When seeking to create positive candidate experiences, communication is key.

● Keep Candidates Informed Every Step of the Way
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.

Solutions like candidate texting and automated intelligent messaging make providing candidates with real-time, helpful feedback easier. Communicating details of the next steps job seekers need to take or just acknowledging when their application has been received and reviewed leaves fewer unanswered questions and room for competition to sneak in.

● Let Your Candidates Know What to Expect
Hand-in-hand with keeping candidates in the loop during the hiring process, it’s equally important to let candidates know what to expect if they are hired. That means offering them a clear and detailed glimpse of their new role’s responsibilities and your company’s unique culture.

More than 88% of surveyed job seekers said they believe that good company culture is essential to business success. Demonstrate what makes your company culture stand out, and you will be ahead of the game.

● Maintain Relationships with Candidates
When does your candidate experience end? After you decide not to hire them, right? Wrong. Just because a candidate isn’t right for the position you currently need to fill doesn’t mean they won’t be right for a different role in the future.

A good way to improve candidate experience is to keep in touch with all high-quality candidates, not just the ones you hire. Instead of starting over from scratch, you may already have dozens of prime candidates sitting in your recruitment pipeline.

● Continue Into Onboarding
Communication shouldn’t stop once the candidate has accepted an offer. To ensure a smooth onboarding process, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is your onboarding experience seamlessly connected to your hiring experience?
2. Are all of your new hire forms digital so that new hires don’t have to fill out forms by hand?
3. Do you have an onboarding portal that prioritizes all of a new hire’s tasks?
4. Does your onboarding portal work on mobile?
5. Do you offer pre-boarding? In other words, is your onboarding portal available to candidates before they start, so they can get a head start on the process?

Go Deeper on How to Attract Candidates with a Solid Employer Brand

Download our eBook and learn how you can build a better candidate experience with a step-by-step approach to enhancing your employer brand. Get valuable insights into auditing your employer brand and see how you can improve the quality of hire with a better candidate experience.

The post Your Employer Brand Online Is Costing You Hires (Here’s How to Fix It) first appeared on Jobvite.

But with historically low unemployment, recruiting professionals are still struggling to source qualified hires. Candidates also have higher expectations than ever before and want to work for mission-driven companies with a strong workplace culture that aligns to their own values.

When it comes to staying competitive in the labor market, one of the best tools companies have is leveraging their culture and their organizational mission for talent attraction. Your culture reflects what it’s like to work in your company; it’s the shared values, practices, beliefs, and attitudes that guide the way work is accomplished and employees behave. A strong culture and purpose-driven mission are invaluable tools for both recruitment and retention, and have been linked to higher levels of business performance.

How Culture and Mission Impact Talent Attraction

Job seekers are clear that a company’s mission and culture are highly important to them. In fact, based on Employ data, more than 1 in 5 workers (23%) say they would accept a job offer because of company values, mission, and culture. Beyond this, more than two-thirds of employees (65%) believe it takes less than one month to determine if they are a good match for the organization’s mission and culture, and 55% say they would leave a job if the organization was not aligned with their expectations or values. Recognizing the value that a transparent culture and intentional mission have in attracting — and retaining — employees is paramount to your recruiting efforts.

Candidates Are Still Shuffling

Although notable layoffs have occurred in the tech sector, candidates in other industries, like healthcare, manufacturing, and professional services, are still on the move, seeking positions that better align to their demands for higher compensation and a stronger culture. This has led to employee turnover, creating pressure on recruiting teams to quickly fill empty positions. And as many talent professionals have found out, a strong employer brand and clear mission propels a more positive recruiting experience and can help talent teams stand out and convert applicants into qualified hires.

Looking at What a Candidate Wants

With high turnover still common, recruiters see first-hand that candidates want a company that cares about their professional and personal growth. According to a recent Lighthouse Research & Advisory Report, 83% of candidates want to know about future growth opportunities during the hiring process. Even more telling, building deeper connections with managers, peers, and the core values of the company is one of the top-rated priorities for candidates.

Job seekers also want to work for a company that prioritizes DE&I in its policies and hiring practices, and cares about their wellbeing. Candidates are also looking for better benefits (34.4%), career advancement opportunities (12.6%), and remote work flexibility (21.3%).

One of the biggest challenges in hiring today is retaining quality employees who are looking for more from their employer. Strategic talent acquisition teams are investing in their employees by developing internal mobility programs that provide career growth opportunities and referral incentives.

Prioritize Your Authentic Employer Brand and DE&I Activities

Remember, candidates are looking for an employer that provides a supportive culture, competitive benefits, purpose-driven mission, and internal mobility opportunities. They expect employers to be flexible with remote work and provide a workplace that represents a wide diversity of people in all position levels. And while employees leave their jobs for a variety of reasons, nearly five percent of job seekers admit they leave an organization in seek of a company with greater diversity.

To compete in today’s fast-paced market, recruiting teams must invest in making the workplace a better place for all. A promising 33% of HR decision makers plan to increase their investments in DE&I programs this year, according to Employ data. Put company culture, a clear mission, and DE&I at the top of the budget list, and you will see tremendous improvement in candidates that align to your values and drive workforce performance.

Get Started Building a More Robust Employer Brand

With qualified candidates in short supply, today’s job seekers continue to have the upper hand in the labor market. Start improving your ability to attract candidates with a strong employer brand and clear mission.

Get The Step-by-Step Guide for Enhancing Your Employer Brand and see how a great candidate experience builds a more robust applicant funnel for your business.

The post Does Your Company Culture and Mission Matter to Potential Candidates? first appeared on Jobvite.

Most people wouldn’t, and many enterprise leaders would be terrified to hear their business described this way. But that line is a real company review on Glassdoor, and there are many more just like it.

Glassdoor cautions: “A company’s employment brand is no longer owned by its HR or marketing team — it’s now owned by the employees, job seekers, and former employees.” Glassdoor, Indeed, and the like are public forums where current employees, former employees, or even interviewees can post about their experience with your company, for better or for worse. These reviews are a key part of your online presence, and it’s playing an integral role in your recruiting effectiveness.

What Is Your Employer Brand?

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:

It impacts the quality and quantity of applicants.

Positive reviews will draw applicants to your business, simplifying your hiring efforts and helping to attract top talent. Negative reviews will do just the opposite:  drive away candidates who are seeking better job opportunities and work environments.

It influences customer perception.

Prospective customers are also looking at your online presence to assess company values. So while a positive online brand will encourage customer loyalty, negative reviews are likely to disrupt their trust in your company.

It affects current and future employee satisfaction.

Even if a current employee has a mostly positive outlook on their experience, those negative reviews or discussions about them in the workplace can be detrimental to productivity, focus, and retention. Negative impressions of how you hire their coworkers (and how it impacts the quality of their coworkers) can decrease work performance by up to 30%. So the quicker they are addressed and remedied, the better.

We can all agree that the impact of your employer brand is significant. But the overall hurdle most leadership teams face is how to address and improve their candidate experience and, therefore, their reviews online. Here are three ways to approach your employer brand online to attract top talent.

#1: Evaluate Your Online Presence

Do Your Research

Now is the time to uncover the online reviews, review your online presence, and discover what’s being said for better or for worse. Luckily, Glassdoor reports that the majority of their reviews are actually positive. Going through this process could be an insightful way to discover your strengths as a hiring company, and you’ll be better prepared to lean into them when working to attract top talent.

Assess What Aligns with your Brand and What Doesn’t

What does your online presence say about your employer brand? Is it the message you hope to convey, or is it skewed slightly? This process could only entail a minor pivot to align with your brand goals, or it could involve a more thoughtful conversation internally. Either way, the importance of this step can’t be overstated.

Example: If candidates state that leadership tend to micro-manage, but you actually allow your team creative freedom or flexibility, consider highlighting that specifically in your conversations with candidates.

#2: Respond with Intention

Thank the Thoughtful Reviewer

Be gracious to those who took the time to leave positive feedback. This perpetuates your positive employer brand and encourages others to leave positive feedback as well.

Note the Legitimate Critiques and Suggestions

Respond humbly and thank the reviewer for the message. Make a point to mention how you’ll look into their concerns or suggestions and then follow through.

Demonstrate Tact When Facing Negative Reviews

Negative reviews happen, but candidates will put more stock in a company’s response than the review alone. The three critical steps to facing a negative review:

• Thank the reviewer earnestly for their feedback.
• State how seriously you take their concerns and suggestions.
• Make the offer to continue the dialogue through a private medium.

Example: “Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. We take all feedback very seriously and would like to learn more about your experience. If you’d like to continue the conversation, feel free to contact me directly at [insert company email here].”

#3: Create a Culture of Responsive Communication

Start laying the groundwork to avoid candidate complaints by improving your candidate experience. When seeking to create positive candidate experiences, communication is key.

Keep Candidates Informed Every Step of the Way

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.

Services like candidate texting and automated intelligent messaging make providing candidates with real-time, helpful feedback easier. Communicating details of the next steps they need to take or just acknowledging when their application has been received and reviewed leaves fewer unanswered questions and room for competition to sneak in.

Let Your Candidates Know What to Expect

Hand-in-hand with keeping candidates in the loop during the hiring process, it’s equally important to let candidates know what to expect if they are hired. That means offering them a clear and detailed glimpse of their new role’s responsibilities and your company’s unique culture.

More than 88% of surveyed job seekers said they believe that good company culture is essential to business success. Demonstrate what makes your company culture stand out, and you will be ahead of the game.

Maintain Relationships with Candidates

When does your candidate experience end? After you decide not to hire them, right? Wrong. Just because a candidate isn’t right for the position you currently need to fill doesn’t mean they won’t be right for a different role in the future.

A good way to improve candidate experience is to keep in touch with all high-quality candidates, not just the ones you hire. Instead of starting over from scratch, you may already have dozens of prime candidates sitting in your recruitment pipeline.

Continue Into Onboarding

Communication shouldn’t stop once the candidate has accepted an offer. To ensure a smooth onboarding process, ask yourself the following question:

• Is your onboarding experience seamlessly connected to your hiring experience?
• Are all of your new hire forms digital so that new hires don’t have to fill out forms by hand?
• Do you have an onboarding portal that prioritizes all of a new hire’s tasks?
• Does your onboarding portal work on mobile?
• Do you offer pre-boarding? In other words, is your onboarding portal available to candidates before they start, so they can get a head start on the process?
• Here are some final takeaways:

Focus on the Little Things

It’s the small interactions and personal touches that make candidates feel valued, respected, and appreciated. And those are the things they’ll remember long after the recruitment process is over.

Keep Your Promises

If you say you’re going to do something, make sure you do it — whether it’s sending a follow-up note after an interview or providing feedback in a timely manner.

Be Human

Job seekers are people, too, so treat them as such. Show empathy and understanding, and be genuine in your interactions.

Go Deeper on How to Attract Candidates with a Solid Employer Brand

Download our latest eBook and find out how you can build a better candidate experience with a step-by-step approach for enhancing your employer brand. Get valuable insights into auditing your employer brand and see how you can improve quality of hire with a better candidate experience.

The post How Your Employer Brand Online Impacts Recruiting Effectiveness first appeared on Jobvite.

Technology has enabled a nonstop job search. According to the 2022 Jobvite Job Seeker Nation Report, 45 percent of employees surveyed are actively looking for a new job or plan to within the next year.

Because of this, HR professionals are always looking for ways to keep employees engaged and curb wandering eyes looking out for better opportunities in the peripheral.

Here are five P’s you can use to prevent current employees from searching for a new job:

#1: Provide New Growth Opportunities

“Career growth” is a vital concern for today’s top talent. But 54% of those that said they’re searching have not looked internally at their current company for a new position.

Check-in with employees regularly to find out what about their job they enjoy the most. Ask what else they’d like to learn. Allow them to shadow you or others in the company from whom they could learn desired skills. Trumpet opportunities for promotions and leadership roles into their ears. Provide a visible path with tactical steps they can take to earn those roles.

#2: Pay Employees What They’re Worth

When workers feel underpaid, they will leave. According to the Jobvite Job Seeker Nation Survey, 27% percent of job seekers are actively looking for higher compensation.

Start with a fair base salary for everyone. Give monthly bonuses to top performers so everyone is paid according to the work they do. Even a small amount, like $100 or $200, makes a difference.

#3: Prioritize Employees’ Health and Well-Being

If your employee is happy and healthy, they’ll perform well for your organization. That might be why 30% of workers expect mental health benefits from their employers. That percentage isn’t a surprise after the pandemic of 2020. 63% said the pandemic has caused them to focus more on their mental health.

Aside from offering therapy and medication coverage in your benefits package, there are several ways you can encourage healthy lifestyles among employees. Offer a gym membership as part of a benefits package. Allow employees to come into work late or leave early once a week for a yoga or group exercise class. Work with employees’ schedules to balance their personal health initiatives with office hours.

#4: Put Yourself in Employees’ Shoes

People are quick to make judgments about how “easy” someone’s role is or compare what they do to what others do. Clear up any misconceptions by giving employees first-hand experience in leadership roles, and vice versa.

Once a year, schedule leaders to switch roles with each type of employee so each can get a feel for the other’s job. Employees will experience how challenging it is to lead people, and leaders will gain a new perspective working with challenges employees face everyday. It will create empathy and understanding between the two roles.

#5: Praise Employees Regularly for Great Work

Employees need to know what they do for your organization matters. If you don’t communicate to them how they make a difference, they’ll go somewhere that will. Make time throughout your day to say “thank you” to employees for their work, remind them of what a great job they’re doing, and explain how they’re a valuable part of the team.

With technology providing us access to tons of information, employees will only become more elusive to retain. Your employer brand is on the front line against other companies that threaten to take better care of your talent than you. So don’t let them. Mind the five Ps, and prevent your talent from going elsewhere. Interested in what else Jobvite can do for your team? Watch the on-demand Jobvite Product Tour or request a live demo.

The post How to Prevent Your Employees from Leaving: The 5 P’s first appeared on Jobvite.

Or maybe seasonal hiring initiatives are more focused on end of year holiday high-volume hiring, looking for those part-time workers who can help drive sales, support holiday travel, keep shelves stocked, or ship and deliver packages around the clock. No matter where your seasonal hiring efforts take you, there’s one thing that hiring teams have in common. They need to tackle the list of open requisitions to fill those seasonal roles as fast as possible. Check out our top five ways to improve your seasonal hiring efforts and find the best employees for your business fast.

#1: Try Texting with Candidates

Candidates are busier than ever and expect quick, easy, responsive communication from recruiters. Job seeker expectations are high, especially when it comes to the candidate experience during the seasonal hiring process. One of the most impactful ways you can prioritize candidate communication and engagement is by leveraging intelligent messaging. According to Jobvite research, there is a 98% open rate for mobile recruiting texts versus a 20% open rate for recruiting emails. Texting is simply a more effective way to reach candidates today.

For seasonal hiring, try candidate texting and intelligent messaging to automatically engage with candidates, answer questions, provide additional information, and even screen applicants. If they’re hired, automated text-based communications can even help facilitate the onboarding process as well, so new hires can jump into work on day one.

#2: Build Your Employer Brand on Social Media

Candidates want to know what it’s like to work at your company before they start there, even those that may just be there for a short time. Create a communication strategy for your employer brand that includes a social media presence targeted specifically toward seasonal workers. Seasonal hires are bound to check our your social content and see how a company supports temporary hires and features them as part of the organization. Share content and posts that highlight seasonal workers and their impact on the business.

Then make sure you are using social media to expand your talent pool and find qualified seasonal candidates who are engaged and actively looking for their next short-term opportunity. Using social media to source, screen, and engage seasonal candidates can help you better connect with this niche audience even faster.

#3: Engage Your Talent Network with Targeted Seasonal Campaigns

Maybe some good candidates were recently interviewed for a role, but weren’t selected. These silver medalists have actively engaged with your company before and could be interested in future open roles, particularly those that may be available for a seasonal opportunity.

Consider creating targeted campaigns to engage these candidates specifically, highlighting seasonal roles and keeping them interested until the right seasonal position opens up. Remember, seasonal hiring is all about keeping candidates warm and ready to join your business at the ready, so try some of these proactive strategies to keep talent networks engaged:

• Send surveys out to candidates about their experience with your recruiting process. Ask them specifically their interest levels about working in a seasonal capacity.
• Share seasonal employee stories with your talent network on social media or through monthly newsletters. Keep content fresh and engaging.
• Broadcast job openings to your talent network based on candidate profiles and invite them to apply in advance of seasonal hiring periods.

#4: Update Your Career Site

Your career site reflects your employer brand and company culture. It should show potential candidates what it’s like to work for your company. Tailor sections of your career site specifically for seasonal hires. Share stories of these types of roles, featuring experiences in their own words, and even showcase a temporary hire who went on to join your organization full time.

Share your company values, answers to frequently asked questions, and even give company updates on your career site. Think of it as a strong recruiting tool that gives potential applicants, especially those seasonal hires, the value proposition of working for your company. Be sure to include links to open job requisitions, company social media accounts, and recruiter contact information on the main page.

#5: Deploy Automation and AI Technology

If your talent team is expecting an extra busy seasonal hiring period, make sure that you are leveraging a holistic talent acquisition suite that can help you streamline the entire hiring process. Using automated tools to save time in your seasonal hiring efforts will help your teams find better seasonal candidates. Use automation and AI to perform manual tasks and keep up with high volumes of seasonal applicants. Technology like automated sourcing can help recruiters maximize hiring outcomes and decrease the time to fill open roles.

Start Connecting with Top Candidates for Peak Hiring Seasons

Obviously, the best time to plan your seasonal hiring efforts are before they start. So whether you’re just coming off of the busy summer hiring season or are gearing up for holiday hiring, make sure you have the people, process, and technology you need to tackle the influx of seasonal hires. Want more insights on finding and hiring top talent? Subscribe to the Jobvite blog or check out our resource library to stay up-to-date on the latest recruiting insights.

The post Five Things You Can Do to Improve Your Seasonal Hiring Efforts first appeared on Jobvite.

For talent teams that are looking to hire the best candidates, evolve recruiting processes, and improve key recruiting metrics, it might be time to upgrade talent solutions. Because a fully integrated, end-to-end TA suite, with a wide breadth and depth of capabilities, can transform talent acquisition and maximize hiring outcomes. That’s why we are thrilled today to introduce you to the Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite.

The Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite Is Recruiting Reimagined

What companies need most today is a unified talent acquisition suite that addresses the entire talent acquisition lifecycle and is fully dedicated to the talent acquisition function. That understands recruiters, supports hiring managers, and enables the widest range of functionality ever provided in a single solution. A system that goes far beyond the capabilities of an ERP just trying to check the box for recruiting. That embraces the full scope of recruiting beyond single-point or standalone solutions.

The breadth and depth offered in the Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite are what your TA team needs now to be competitive in the most difficult hiring environment in history. It’s time to move beyond where you are. To evolve your talent acquisition function. And to start transforming how you find and hire the best talent. It’s recruiting reimagined.

How Your Organization Can Benefit from a Holistic Talent Acquisition Suite

Looking for more reasons to supercharge your talent acquisition solution and evolve your recruiting efforts? Here are the biggest impacts that an end-to-end recruiting solution, like the Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite, can have on your business:

1. Enhancements to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives

Today’s candidates expect a workplace that’s diverse in representation, offers equitable internal opportunities, and supports all employees. TA teams have been working hard to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion within the company to better attract quality talent. The journey to creating this culture is no accident — it takes time and effort from everyone. But talent teams can easily encounter roadblocks trying to focus on DEI recruiting, while also filling several open requisitions and improving processes all at once.

Luckily, unified talent acquisition technology can step in to reduce the workload of tasks like sourcing and scheduling, while also improving things like the diversity of talent pools and candidate experience. An evolved talent acquisition suite can do everything from grading job descriptions and building diverse talent pools to automatically sourcing and matching candidates.

2. World-class candidate, recruiter, and employee experiences

Gone are the days when a company can win and retain the best talent while providing a poor experience to candidates and employees. The Great Reshuffle demonstrated that TA teams must adapt their processes and technology to meet growing expectations from candidates and employees, or risk losing talent in the short- and long term to competitors.

Automation and AI are helping TA teams create intuitive candidate, recruiter, and employee experiences at every touchpoint in the organization — from job broadcasting all the way to internal mobility opportunities and employee referral programs. Leverage holistic TA technology to free up time for recruiters by automating tedious daily tasks like scheduling interviews, screening candidates, or answering candidate questions. This extra time can be used to build and refine the recruiting process to maximize results while providing a better, more personalized experience for candidates and employees.

3. Improvements to key recruiting metrics

As we all know, a great recruiting process takes time to build. And it takes even longer to get right. Unified talent acquisition technology, like that offered in the Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite, enables a robust analytics platform that can dive deeper into data to inform decision-making. In order to be agile, recruiting teams should consistently monitor key metrics in their hiring process and use the data to make improvements.

An advanced analytics portal helps transform recruiting by allowing TA teams and leaders to learn about roadblocks in their processes in real-time, making it easier to adapt to changes. It offers unique, customized reports and dashboards that automatically put important data in front of key stakeholders like leadership and hiring managers. Use data to reimagine recruiting strategies and create a better candidate, recruiter, and employee experience.

4. More robust employer brand and recruitment marketing strategies

In a tight labor market that favors candidates, recruiters have had to add another role to their growing list: recruitment marketer. Talent teams must build a strong employer brand to attract and hire top talent before they get snatched up by a competitor. In general, an employer’s brand should reflect their values and company culture, and tell candidates why they should come and work there.

An elevated employer brand will stand out to job seekers and show off a strong value proposition for working at the company. Here are some more elements of a strong employer brand:

• Demonstrated commitment to improving DEI in your organization
• A career site that shares a variety of employee stories and information about working for the company
• Makes the most of social media by engaging potential candidates and posting about work opportunities
• Engagement campaigns to keep candidate and industry connections warm, using social, email, and text

The Evolve Talent Acquisition Can Transform Your Talent Acquisition Function

The entirely reimagined Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite can move you beyond where you are now. And transform how you find the best talent. Find out to evolve your talent acquisition function and deliver better recruiting results. Curious to learn more? Watch our product tour and see how our end-to-end suite is built for modern recruitment.

The post The Top 4 Ways Your Business Will Benefit from a Unified Recruiting Solution first appeared on Jobvite.

Here we will examine some of the biggest themes from Talent Acquisition Week alongside other recent thought leadership from Jobvite and industry insights to give you key takeaways for improving your own recruiting strategies in 2022:

Lesson #1: Addressing the Growing Disconnect Between Business Leaders and Talent Acquisition Professionals

This year, more than ever, it’s clear that the gap is widening between recruiters and business leaders. In fact, recent Aptitude Research found that nearly 73% of recruiters say it’s hard to find candidates, while only 39% of leadership at those same organizations have the same feeling.  This could explain why despite additional investment on technology, sourcing applications, and services, many recruitment professionals have found it challenging to expand their overall budgets.

Connecting with business leaders requires meeting them where they are. Peggy Anderson, Head of Talent Acquisition at Shutterfly, suggests leveraging The EVOLVE Talent Acquisition Framework to:

• Identify how mature your recruiting processes are
• Develop a clear goal for where you need to be
• Request a well-informed increase in recruitment spend

This sentiment is further supported by Lori Sylvia, Founder and CEO of Rally Recruitment Marketing, and a recent presenter at Talent Acquisition Week. She provides a committed, uncommitted, contingency budgetary framework for how TA teams can prioritize recruitment marketing in 2022.

Lesson #2: Optimizing Talent Acquisition Technology

Getting the most out of your talent acquisition technology — no matter the size of your organization — requires careful planning and adoption of your recruiting tech stack based on available resources. Again, according to Aptitude Research, only three percent of companies leverage all the functionality in their ATS and just two percent of their recruitment marketing platforms.

For smaller organizations trying to make the most out of a few good tools, Kristal Shropshire, Director of Talent Acquisition at Achievement Network, recommends looking at which aspects of your TA tech stack have delivered best historically and then maximizing how those tools can help you streamline your hiring process. For example, she references the use of video screening by paring it down from a full screen to just three key questions.

For larger organizations, leaning into AI-powered tools may make the most sense in optimizing your tech stack. Josh Jones, Manager of Talent Acquisition at Jobvite, recommends organizations take advantage of award-winning Zero-Click Intelligent Sourcing from Jobvite, which automates sourcing efforts when a job requisition is first opened. This solution saves valuable time, up to 30%, providing a full list of candidates who fit new jobs as they open up and the perfect starting point to connect with candidates.

Lesson #3: Enhancing the Talent Acquisition Process

Once you have developed a strong sense of how to best use your talent acquisition technology, you will want to apply it across your hiring process. Another takeaway for 2022 is to enhance your TA processes by leveraging appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs). This will give you an accurate picture of where you are succeeding and where you can improve.

A recent Jobvite panel shared their priority KPIs:

• Diversity of Finalist Candidate Pool: With DEI serving as the central focus to many organizations, keep a close watch on this metric to ensure your processes are inclusive.
• Pipeline Flow: Watch for the average time a candidate may spend in each stage of your recruitment cycle to identify the bottlenecks and roadblocks in your hiring process.
• Time-to-Fill/Close: While it may be the most contentious KPI, ensure you are self-aware of how long it takes to fill or close a requisition. Make sure to measure against industry benchmarks rather than internal records and ensure you don’t focus on this metric exclusively, especially at the expense of DEI efforts.

Lesson #4: Continuously Improving the Candidate Experience

Humanizing the recruiting process is one of the most important takeaways from Talent Acquisition Week. This was especially apparent during the session presented by Jacqueline Ricciardi, Solutions Engineer at Jobvite. Her spotlight session on Candidate Centered Communications reinforced how technology should augment human ability and seek to deliver a better experience for candidates.

Recruitment marketing is a powerful tool. Targeted messaging to candidates helps meet them where they are and then guide them to your career site, where you have more control over your employer brand. Once there, you can even create custom landing pages with information relevant to selected roles that will give a great first impression to candidates. In combination with human touch along the candidate journey and an empowering onboarding experience, you will be ready to compete with the best in a competitive recruiting space this year.

Remember, whether a candidate is ultimately accepted for a position or not, it is our duty as TA professionals to ensure the experience is as positive as it can be. One great way to start moving in the right direction is to send out candidate surveys to both new hires and rejected candidates. This can be very enlightening for your team, and it will provide areas within the candidate’s journey that were either enjoyable or painful.

Lesson #5: Focusing on Improving the Employee Experience

Last, but not least, focus on the employee experience in relation to internal mobility. Encourage current employees to make both lateral and vertical moves throughout the organization. This will not only improve retention rates for hard-won new hires but also serve to improve overall morale as recruiters can share success stories with candidates and leaders can see the growth potential within their teams.

Start Moving Your Talent Acquisition Strategy Forward

Gone are the days of just competing for customers. Now you have to go after candidates with just as much intensity. With the lessons provided in this blog, you are primed and ready to keep the momentum of 2022. Take the next step and see what makes Jobvite one of the most loved and best HR products around by watching our product tour. Or you can view our resource library or subscribe to our blog to stay up to date on the latest in TA tech.

The post How to Apply Lessons Learned From Talent Acquisition Week Throughout 2022 first appeared on Jobvite.

Writing an effective job description is critical not only to selling your brand, but attracting talent to open your ad.

At Jobvite, we specialize in hiring and talent management. As a leader in our industry, we’re always looking for ways to help our clients succeed. If you’re unsure about what to write in a job ad, consider these six tips for writing a great job posting.

Be concise and use bullet points

You might be the best writer in the office. However, your penmanship won’t land you the ideal candidate if they aren’t willing to read your ad. To get potential candidates to read through your entire job description, we recommend bullet points. Bullet points are beneficial for several reasons, such as:

• Being easily digestible
• Drawing the eye
• Containing clear information
• Encouraging curiosity

Job seekers might skip your entire ad and skim the title and the bullet points you use. Think about writing your ad like writing the news. Give them an attention-grabbing title and a quick recount of the facts.

List correct details and double-check your job ad

Whether posting to job boards or social media platforms, your job ad needs to contain correct information. From spelling and grammar to details on pay and job role, if you mix up your facts, it could mean trouble.

Modern job seekers are savvy and they’re quick to catch mistakes. If your brand makes a simple error in your job ad copy, it could reflect poorly on your company. Nobody wants to work for a company that makes a typo on your pay stub, and that’s just what an incorrect job post advertises. To avoid errors, be sure to:

• Plan your ad
• Read it back to yourself out loud
• Edit your ad twice
• Ask somebody else to read your ad for errors

Check your ad again after posting to be sure it is correct and includes all the details you need to find an appropriate candidate. You might be surprised at how many businesses leave something out in the final stage of posting. This will save you some awkward questions later and ensure job seekers get all the information they need up front.

Ask your employees for input while creating the job ad

Nobody knows your business better than your current employees. If you’re hiring for a department that already has a few staff members, ask them to help write your ad. At the very least, request their insight on why they love their job or their favorite part of coming to work.

Including real-life examples of tasks a new hire will complete, or office etiquette they’ll encounter is attractive to job applicants. People want to know what to expect when they come to a new job.

Reading a job ad from a current department employee shines a light on the working environment and staff relationships. Don’t be afraid to be a little bit personal with your ad as you and your staff write it. There’s nothing wrong with humanizing your job posting.

Mention limited job openings

Everybody wants what they can’t have, and posting a job ad that makes your position seem almost out of reach could light a fire. As you create your job description, mention the limited job openings, or the limited time the ad will run for.

If a potential applicant sees a job post that doesn’t end for 30-days, they might wait until day 29 to send an application.

You can always post a job ad again, so using a shorter hiring deadline works in your favor to encourage early applications. Who knows, you may find the perfect candidate in the first round of applications.

Be direct in what your job requires of staff

There’s nothing worse than a vague job ad. As you write your job description, think about the role you’re hiring for and what that position entails. Be sure to include everything the job requires in the ad.

You never know where somebody’s talents or passions lie until you get to know them. While a job you’re hiring for may mainly deal with filing, you could find that a potential candidate is most interested in the correspondence aspect of the role. When you leave out details of a position, even those you find unimportant, it can impact the number of applicants you see.

Writing a detailed, specific job description with all job requirements also guarantees that the people applying are aware of the role’s obligations. This reduces future job turnover, if something about the job was unclear in the initial ad but deters your new hire as the position commences.

Include the job application process in your job description

Having to re-read a job posting multiple times to determine how to apply is time-consuming and frustrating. Encourage applicants to apply by including the application process directly in your job description.

This is best left to the end of your job description by mentioning the best avenue to get in touch or linking an online application form. The fewer steps in your application, the more likely you are to get a match. However, if you’re hiring for a high-security position or one which requires multiple pieces of documentation, that’s fine. Simply be clear in your instructions to avoid confusion.

If a local competitor posts a job ad with simpler application instructions, it could be the tipping point in choosing your competitor. To attract the best and brightest talent in your area, ensure each step is outlined and easy to understand.

Contact Jobvite to learn more

Interested in learning more about Jobvite and how we can help you with your search for new talent? We’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch today with Jobvite to discover the benefits of our ATS (applicant tracking software) and other talent management services.

The post How to Write Effective Job Descriptions first appeared on Jobvite.

Hiring, even at a senior level, doesn’t have to be expensive these days thanks to advances in the recruiting process through automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Unfortunately, bad hiring practices are just as expensive as they’ve always been. Having a key position unfilled–or filled by the wrong person, which is even worse–is profit-margin poison.

It’s also unnecessary. Even though recruiting today is more competitive than ever before, it’s still possible to get the right people into your organization quickly. The trick is to have the best possible hiring process in place, and that’s something that companies should be constantly refining, even when they’re not recruiting.

Here is a checklist to ensure you’re doing all you can to get the best talent out there. 

Work on your employer branding

Whether you’re actively hiring or not, it is important to give thought and time to your employer brand. What does your company stand for? What are the values that new staff will be expected to share? What is your value proposition to potential employees?

Potential hires are watching and these days they are more likely than ever to assess your culture through social media, Google searches, online review sites like Glassdoor, and your company career page before applying for a job. Use polls to gather feedback on the effectiveness of your social output and use that data to guide your employer branding strategy.

Develop an effective mobile strategy 

In a world where beginning a relationship happens online at the swipe of a finger, why are we still trying to connect with talent over missed calls and crowded inboxes? Make a good first impression by meeting candidates where they are – on the phone that’s always in their pocket.

Stand out from crowded email inboxes with one-to-one or one-to-many recruitment text messages that empower candidates to send quick responses at their convenience. After all, text is the preferred communication channel for 60% of candidates and the open rate of texts is 98%!

Don’t forget silver medalists

In your journey to hire the right candidates, you’re going to have ones that didn’t make the cut for a role. But you may still want to keep them in mind for future roles. This is a great chance to engage these silver medalist candidates and keep them interested in your company for future recruiting.

The better a candidate’s experience, the more likely they are to apply for other open roles or even refer their colleagues to your company. Utilize your communication and recruitment marketing strategies to keep silver medalists engaged and updated on your company and open positions that would suit them. Staying in contact with these candidates will allow you to keep the door open with them as well as expand your talent pool – so invite them to subscribe for job recommendations, join a mailing list for your company newsletter, or follow you on social media.

Optimize the onboarding process for new hires

Recruitment doesn’t end with the acceptance of an offer. It’s an ongoing process that also involves looking at development and retention of existing staff. One of the weakest points in the chain is the on-boarding process.

You are assessing the new hire during the probationary period, but they are also assessing you. It is important to get them settled into their role as smoothly as possible, and that means having a robust strategy for training, mentoring, and offering support. If this strategy isn’t in place, you may find yourself putting the Help Wanted sign back up in the window and starting the recruitment process all over again. Work with the new hire’s manager to perfect the onboarding strategy, and perform regular reviews to ensure that targets are being met.

Gather feedback and recommendations from new hires

Each time a new staff member joins the team, you get a chance to gather vital information about the recruitment process they have just come through. Were they impressed by your branding and advertising? How did they find the interview process? Has the role met expectations? Having an open dialogue about this can give invaluable insight and highlight areas requiring improvement.

Also, the new hire will know lots of people from their old job who may be interested in joining you. If you have a staff employee referral program, be sure to make them aware of it. If you don’t have an employee referral program, get one.

Improve your hiring process before you need to hire

People are the heart of every business. Getting the best, brightest, most innovative, and the most committed can mean boundless success for a company. Conversely, bad hires or no hires at all can mean a loss of productivity and a costly cycle of hiring and training as you struggle to get the team right. Don’t wait until it’s time to start looking for people. Review your hiring process now and ensure that you’re set up for success.

The post The Essential Checklist to Improve Your Hiring Process first appeared on Jobvite.