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Blog Post: Tips for Actually Getting the Job!

Getting the Job

The job seeking process can be both challenging and fulfilling. If you approach the job search as a “full-time job” you will find a sense of purpose and improved focus on…

Added by Jamie Amaral at 2:33pm on June 12, 2012

Blog Post: A Talent Hacker's Manifesto: Nick Marsh of Makeshift recently introduced the term …; Added by Matt Buckland at 12:28pm on July 16, 2014

Blog Post: Stop Falling Down in 3 Easy Steps: Turn Job Loss into Opportunity!: Are you playing it safe, but feeling trapped in the life you have created for yourself? How do you know when it's time to move on from a job, a…; Added by Christopher McCann at 11:38am on May 5, 2009

Blog Post: Why Employer Branding?: By David Kippen

Brands are fascinating. Search Google and you get 525 million hits. Search your home and you’ll find…; Added by Featured Writer Series at 12:01am on November 20, 2009

Blog Post: How to Buy HR Tech: Sales Leaders’ Advice: Buying new software for your HR tech stack is difficult. From discovering a need to vetting vendors to making a final decision, there are a lot of bumps in the road that can lead to costly…; Added by Phil Strazzulla at 11:14am on January 11, 2021

Topic: Insights from the Candidate Experience Awards (#theCandes) at #HRTechConf: things in thinking about what they need to do to improve the candidate experience. By really focusing on their recruiting processes to create an environment for better communication, more transparency and easier information exchange. With double the number of participants from last year, the awards and soon to be published Benchmark Study (will be available on their website) are going to be extremely valuable to what we know about the candidate experience and how we approach trying to make it better as organizations. While they haven’t provided all the data from their study yet, here are some data points they shared that are very interesting (and included on their fact sheet): 90% of employers use an ATS to manage the applicant / recruiting process. Through this process they receive an estimated 45,000,000 applications or nearly 130 applicants / job. Employers are always balancing how to create a positive experience for candidates while being able to share the message “you’re not qualified” with appropriate candidates. Of the 17,500 candidates that completed the full survey, 73% would definitely tell their inner circle about a positive apply experience (60% would share negative) and 32% would share a positive experience on Social Media (22% would share negative.) A number of candidates were frustrated by the “black hole”, with 47% citing receiving a “do not reply” automated response and 23% receiving no response at all. These are just some of the data points that will ultimately be shared in the final benchmark study. However, the data to me is not the most powerful part of this session as the company stories are always the most intriguing and insightful. So let’s get to the award winners. Overall there were 37 winners out of 90 total company entries and 62 call-backs. Of this 37, 7 of the companies were recognized “with distinction” for what they are doing with their candidate experience. You can see a full list of the winners here. These companies were: PepsiCo (@PepsiCoJobs) Adidas (@adidasGroupJobs) Deloitte (@LifeatDeloitte) ADP (@ADPCareers) CH2MHill (@CH2MHillJobs) RMS Case-Mate (@CaseMate) Intuit (@IntuitCareers) Let’s take a look at some of the innovative ways that these companies are improving the experience of their candidates. Here are their stories: Open Communication with Candidates A common theme with PepsiCo in their interactions with candidates is to be as open and transparent as possible throughout the process. This led PepsiCo to be a stand-out at this year’s Candidate Experience awards with nearly twice the number of completed candidate surveys than every other company that participated. In order to get so many candidates to complete the feedback survey, they did a few things of note that were different from their peers. First, instead of sending the survey to candidates immediately after they applied for a position, they sent the email 3 days after. This allowed for a wide variety of feedback as many of these candidates received a response (both positive and negative) about their application. Second, they also took the bold step to include the contact information and a personal note from Chris Hoyt (@TheRecruiterGuy). From which they got a lot of interesting responses of the good and bad variety. And was definitely worth the extra data points on their process. To go along with this open communication theme, they also use Kenexa to provide candidates a portal with the status of their application. This enables candidates to easily keep up to date with their status on their own and gives recruiters a simple way to communicate to candidates when they ask about their status. Candidates are your Customers Adidas, whose brands include TaylorMade and Reebok, sees candidate experience not only as a recruiting goal but one that’s integral to their entire organization as a whole. They understand the fact that any candidate that applies for a position at their company probably has had a positive interaction with their marketing brand as well (and are probably a customer.) With this realization, they know that any negative experience in the recruiting process could reflect poorly on the brand itself and hurt it’s core business. Since it’s so important to the organization, they go out of their way to include the candidate experience in their corporate policy. For every candidate that applies to the organization, it is mandated that they need to get back to every single one with a final response to their application. While some of those responses are never fun to make, they’ve heard from candidates based on feedback that by closing the loop on every application, it results in a much better experience for them to at least know where they stand with the organization. Small and Growing Fast CaseMate, who makes custom cases for smartphones, was by far the smallest organization on the panel but is growing rapidly. With this rapid growth, there are a number of challenges and opportunities that they see in their recruiting process. As you can see from their Careers page, they have a fun and vibrant culture that they recruit for. In addition to this their recruiters are easy to contact especially through social media where each recruiter has their own Twitter profile (follow @alexputman) for which to interact with candidates. They also do monthly anonymous surveys with employees to begin to understand what they need to work on from a recruiting and on-boarding perspective. High Touch Candidate Experience For RMS, a risk management company, this is the second year in a row that they’ve won this award. They take a very different approach from their peers. They understand that their business and the jobs they recruit are not for everyone and they need to find and engage with a targeted group of individuals that really fit what they are looking for. On top of that, once they attract these candidates, it’s important for them to make sure they remain engaged in the recruiting process. This has resulted in a recruiting process that is very high touch with candidates. From dedicated office hours where candidates can communicate directly with a member of the recruiting team every day to sponsoring social games that fit the skills and interests they are looking for in candidates, RMS strives to ensure that once the right candidates find them, there should be few reasons for these candidates to fall off in the recruiting process. Creating a Better Referral Process At Deloitte, they stood out from the pack with their focus on referrals. This is not a new strategy by any means for companies but at Deloitte they take it a step further. With nearly 50% of their hires coming from referrals, they’ve made it a priority to make submitting referrals as easy and transparent as possible. Every referral that comes into their organization will know their status within 48 hours of it being submitted. On top of that they will inform not only the referral candidate of status but the referee as well so they can make sure that they are in tune with the process. All of this makes for a process that encourages employees to refer their connections. Better Candidate Experience for the Large Enterprise Much like Adidas, ADP understands the importance a candidate’s experience can have to the larger enterprise. They know that many of the candidates that apply may be a future employee but also understand they may be future (or current) customers as well as potential acquisition target in the future. So ensuring a positive experience with their brand is first and foremost in their recruiting process. One way that they do this is by continuously surveying candidates that go through their process and asking them for input on their experience as well as input on the recruiters that they interacted with in the process. They compile these surveys and in turn tie incentive bonuses of their recruiters to positive survey findings (among other variables) for each recruiter. By doing this, they are able encourage positive interactions between their recruiters and candidates. A Better Candidate Experience While the candidate experience will be important for most organizations, the way that it is best structured will change and differ based on the inherent goals and challenges you have in your process. As an industry, we are still trying to figure out the best ways to ensure candidates as a whole have a good candidate experience and will continue to try new things to improve it. As it stands, however, there are a few things that stand out to me that can help your candidate experience today: Better more open communication with candidates: Whether you use live chat, social recruiting, application status portals or direct emails to recruiters, if you can provide a direct way for candidates to interact with your recruiting organization, it should help. Close the Loop: I’ve adopted this term from Ed Newman (@newmaed) but for every person that applies they need to receive some final communication (good or bad) about their application. The more personal you can make it the better but we need to begin eliminating the “black holes” that exist in many of our ATS. If you want to take this a step further, Elaine Orler (@ElaineOrler) suggests that you look at it from a time perspective. You should spend the same amount of time evaluating a candidate as they have to do in your process. Thought this way that should get rid of any of those 45 minute application processes that currently exist. It’s not just a recruiting issue: As many of the winners mentioned, candidates having a bad experience with your recruiting organization can affect your core business as well. Your employer brand is inexplicably tied to your marketing brand and you need to protect it with a process that is thoughtful and makes sense from both sides of the equation. This is not the last we’ve heard of the candidate experience and I look forward to sharing other great stories about how companies are improving it in the future. Use the insights above to help shape and mold your process so that it works for your organization and I would venture that the more you do to improve your candidate experience, the more positive results you will see in your recruitment marketing strategy.…; Added by Chris Brablc to HR Tech Conference at 12:22pm on October 16, 2012

Topic: Posted by: Chris Brablc: What I learned in Chicago: #HRTechConf 2012 Wrap-Up: dee. Not only was this the biggest collection of attendees at the conference to date but the breakout and main panel discussions provided real value for practitioners to bring back to their organizations. From the main / breakout sessions to the people I met, here are my thoughts and observations on a great few days in Chicago: OK now on to the sessions…. My 3 Favorite Sessions of the Conference There were a lot of good sessions at HR Tech but these really stood out to me as the best of the event. “The 2nd Candidate Experience Awards – #theCandes!” by Gerry Crispin (@GerryCrispin), Elaine Ohler (@ElaineOrler) & Ed Newman (@newmaed) Building on the success of last year’s Candidate Experience awards, Gerry, Elaine and Ed were able to take the awards program to a whole new level this year. With 90 companies applying for the awards this year (more than twice the amount as last year), there was even more to learn from the organizations on how to improve the candidate experience. For a more detailed look at the learnings from this year’s Candes awards, please check out my blog article “Insights from the Candidate Experience Awards from #HRTechConf“. Just like last year, the best part of the breakout session was the insights from the 7 main winners. Here is a synopsis of some of the great things they are doing to enhance candidate experience & other insights from the panel: 2012 Candes company stats overview: 90 completed the process, 62 call-backs, 44 launched surveys, 37 winners, 7 with distinction. 17,500 candidates completed survey for this year’s Candes. Trending upward from last year! 53% of applicants said they had some relationship with the company they applied to. <–Important to maintain these relationships. Majority of candidates are likely to share their experience, positive or negative, with their inner circle. Company insights: RMS sets up office hours for candidates to live chat with candidates at certain times every day. RMS also advertises on social games that promote skills and interests of their target candidates. Due to the popular brands of Adidas, it’s a company policy to make sure to get back to every candidate. @ADPCareers thinks similarly. A candidate could be a current customer, future employee or potential acquisition target. It’s important that their experience is positive. 50% of @DeloitteJobs are filled by referrals. They get back to candidates and referees in 48 hours @Casemate uses personal Twitter profiles of recruiters to engage with candidates instead of a corporate profile. CaseMate also has monthly employee surveys to determine gaps in their hiring and on-boarding processes. @TheRecruiterGuy provided his contact info & personal message to candidates for PepsiCo surveys <–Brave Move but worth insight @PepsiCoJOBS got double the response rate than other company for Candes <–Sent out emails to candidates 3 days after they applied PepsiCo also conducts status reports in ATS to measure candidates that have been on same status for 30, 45, 60 days. It definitely was a panel of recruiters & companies that get that candidate experience and their employer brand is important! Informatica Modernizes Recruiting and Takes it to Russia by Brad Cook (@brcook2006) This was a really cool and interesting look into Informatica’s transformation of their recruiting and technology. Brad Cook shared how they first defined what they wanted their recruitment strategy to look like and then went about implementing technology and processes to make it a reality. Here are the snapshots from the presentation, most are sound-bytes from Brad Cook: “It no longer matters just who you recruit but also how you recruit” – @bobhohman Recruitment CRM is not about capturing data to use today but data to use in finding the right candidates tomorrow. Strategic Differentiators to Recruiting: Employer Brand, Operational Excellence, Candidate Experience, Recruitment CRM, Technology, Intelligence SEO is extremely important. That means focusing on Job Descriptions and Titles with rich keywords. Get recruiters to act as your 1st brand ambassadors. One example is using SlideShare in LI profile for higher SEO rankings. So candidates find your recruiters easier. Understand your core vs. context activities and try to automate where it makes sense Figure out how candidates are finding you through “reverse engineering”. How could you find jobs for your organization as a candidate? Understand boomerang effect. How candidates are interacting with your sites before apply such as Indeed, Glassdoor, Career Site <–Important to track Source of Influence! Brad and Informatica have done a great job of implementing technology to take their recruitment strategy and move it forward. They use SEO Career Sites and CRM technology in accordance with their ATS to improve their strategy and overall recruiting results through robust recruitment metrics. What’s Next? What Talent Acquisition Challenges are Seeking Technology Solutions? by Sarah White (@ImSoSarah), Gerry Crispin (@GerryCrispin), Mike Grennier (@mgrennier), Sheila Stygar (@SheilaStygar), Frank Whittenauer (@fwittenauer) and Allen Jenkins. Being a Wednesday morning session, a number of attendees may have missed this event but you wouldn’t know that by the packed room that formed to hear these four practitioners share their thoughts on recruiting strategy and technology. Representing companies Deloitte, PepsiCo, KeyBank and Lockheed Martin, these practitioners had a lot of insights to share. Here are my favorites: It’s important to support the tools that recruiters use, scale back in ones that they don’t – @SheilaStygar @mgrennier would like to see functionality where buttons not pressed for two months go away! Too much complexity in systems. @deloitte: it’s about having a global strategy that can be implemented locally. Let the market drive. Recruiting is local, even in a global organization. Awareness of local vendors, cultural differences, etc. help ensure success. (Thanks @pinstripetalent) Doing the math. With 2nd & 3rd degrees, Deloitte is connected to everyone on LI. Why isn’t every LI a referral? It’s all about making sure those discussions happen and finding ways to facilitate them – @fwittenauer Candidates that apply may be experienced candidates later. Need to capture social ID’s to keep data current I definitely agree. The “silver medalists” are a low hanging branch that should be used in your recruiting process. Best candidates are likely right under your nose in ATS or LinkedIn so key is to know how to contact them & sell your company You need to find a person in your Co that has passion for tech and recruiting to help you build out your innovation – @mgrennier How can we make the job search process easier and better. And how can we support it globally (mobile is a big trend). Wow, very small # of hands go up when @fwittenauer asks how many companies are engaging candidates for feedback. (Thanks @davisory) There was a lot to think about from this session not only as a recruiting professional but as a vendor as well. It has become increasingly important for both the technology and the people to work together to be able to drive innovation and solve problems organizations are facing in finding great talent. Scanning the Twitter-verse First and foremost, I loved the activity on the Twitter stream over the course of the 3 days. A lot of great info was shared by a variety of Twitter users. To check out some of the knowledge shared go to the#HRTechConf hashtag (hours of great content to peruse). My favorite part of these events is meeting Twitter friends in real life. Here are some people I was really excited to meet in person at HR Tech (you should follow and connect with these people!): @Blogging4Jobs, @KevinWGrossman, @JobBoardDoctor,@EWMonster, @mgrennier, @PeopleShark, @HRFishbowl, @ImSoSarah, @KyleLagunas,@StaceyHarrisHR, @TeelaJackson, @Havrilla, @RickRosario, @MJCarty, @GerryCrispin, @thelance,@JohnSumser, @ElaineOrler, @dennioravec, @RBCDude, @NovoMedical, @RyanLeary,@VendorPrisey, @SchoolCW, @vlastelica, @StephenRothberg, @newmaed,@Madtarquin and@kris_dunn. I also love these events to find other great Twitter users to connect and share content with. Here are more great Twitter people you should follow from the event: @RobGarciaSJ, @CornOnTheJob,@jasonaverbook, @fwittenauer, @TheRecruiterGuy, @brcook2006, @ToddRaphael, @BillKutik, @entelo,@TalentBinHiring, @TrishMcFarlane and @SteveBoese. Summary As always, the HR Technology Conference is the highlight of the conference season and is worth the price of admission. The knowledge and cool technology at the event are valuable and I look forward to attending next year when it’s back in Vegas. You can see my tweets during the conference @smashfly. …; Added by Ryan Leary to HR Tech Conference at 11:42am on October 16, 2012

Blog Post: Meet Tiffany Peery, Senior Technical Recruiter at Intel, Part 1: By Dave Mendoza, Master Cybersleuth, Affiliate Partner, JobMachine Inc.

(720)…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 5:14am on February 6, 2008

Blog Post: Employee Perks & Benefits: 20 Ideas, Types, & Examples: In today’s candidate-driven market, employee benefits and perks can be the difference between attracting and retaining top-performing talent and losing them to the competition. So you’re probably…; Added by Phil Strazzulla at 2:33am on October 21, 2022

Blog Post: How to Onboard New Employees in 2022 [With Checklist]: At some point, most business leaders have looked at their organization’s onboarding process and thought, “It would be great if we could welcome new talent more effectively and help them hit the…; Added by Phil Strazzulla at 11:59pm on October 18, 2022