Jonathan Duarte's Posts - RecruitingBlogs2024-03-28T13:01:43ZJonathan Duartehttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/JonathanGDuartehttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1526839361?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=JonathanDuarte&xn_auth=noMeasuring Candidate Experience – You need to measure if you want to improve!tag:recruitingblogs.com,2019-12-07:502551:BlogPost:21607612019-12-07T03:04:53.000ZJonathan Duartehttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/JonathanGDuarte
<div class="section"><div class="container"><div class="row vc_row"><div class="col-md-12"><div class="wpb_text_column wpb_content_element"><div class="wpb_wrapper"><p style="text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://gohire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/peterdrucker-CandidateExperience1500x700.jpg" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img height="246" src="https://gohire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/peterdrucker-CandidateExperience1500x700.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="527"></img></a></span></p>
<p><a href="https://survale.com/candidate-experience-surveys/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Candidate Experience</a><span> </span>is a…</p>
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<div class="section"><div class="container"><div class="row vc_row"><div class="col-md-12"><div class="wpb_text_column wpb_content_element"><div class="wpb_wrapper"><p style="text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://gohire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/peterdrucker-CandidateExperience1500x700.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://gohire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/peterdrucker-CandidateExperience1500x700.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="527" height="246"/></a></span></p>
<p><a href="https://survale.com/candidate-experience-surveys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Candidate Experience</a><span> </span>is a term being used quite a bit in talent acquisition and recruiting teams, but what exactly is a “candidate experience”?</p>
<h2><span>What is Candidate Experience?</span></h2>
<p>Candidate experience is the sum of interactions that an individual has with a company, or the company brand, where they might seek employment. These experiences might come from word of mouth referrals, search results from a job board, a couple of visits to the companies career site, good or bad mentions in social media, or from disgruntled candidates who applied and never received a response. Anyone of these interactions could be positive or negative for a company, but most companies don’t know what candidates think of them. In many cases, employers don’t have a way to measure or survey their candidates or applicants.</p>
<h2><span>So Why does Candidate Experience matter, and why now?</span></h2>
<p><span>Candidate experience matters because candidates have more employment options than ever before. With job aggregators and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=google+for+jobs" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="mozbar-highlight-no-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">Google For Jobs</a> posting nearly every job online, it’s common that online job boards are going to show not just your companies jobs, but your nearest competitors. I’d argue that prior to job aggregators and “All Jobs Everywhere”, candidate experience wasn’t as important, because there were fewer employment choices during the “Hidden Job Market” days. With more job options, candidates can look beyond just pay. They want to know more about hours, shifts, flexibility, PTO, company culture and of course working with companies they are attracted to or align with.</span></p>
<p><span>Candidates now have multiple ways to share their experience working at a company, or how they were treated during an interview. They have access to insider employee ratings through sites like Glassdoor, with CEO scores and employer benefits ratings.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>To Understand your Candidate Experience, you have to understand your Recruiting Funnels.</strong></span></p>
<p><span>Recruiting Funnels are the processes, or steps, or interactions, that occur between a potential employee and anyone that might influence a potential employee; including, the company’s brand reputation, career site, job descriptions, job application process, employer branding, interview scheduling, offer process, rejection process, and possibly onboarding.</span></p>
<p><span>While each department in your business might have its own recruiting process, there are often a lot of similarities. In smaller companies, the recruiting process is often left up to someone in human resources, a recruiter, or a hiring manager. In recruiting, many of the steps are manual, creating no consistency, and therefore producing inconsistent results. With inconsistent processes and no way to measure a candidate's opinion, it’s impossible to know what’s working and what’s not.</span></p>
<p><span>In bigger companies, there’s often a handful of existing software solutions that don’t talk to each other but are required for recruiting and HR compliance. Are these technical issues causing candidates to drop out of the recruiting process? Is the process, from finding a job to applying, and hearing back from a recruiter, taking too long?</span></p>
<p>The typical Recruiting Funnel might start at job posting on a job board, with interested candidates then applying on the employer’s website.</p>
<p>When was the last time you searched for your own companies' jobs on Indeed or Google for Jobs, and tried to apply with the mindset of a candidate who has never seen your company before?</p>
<p><span>Whether you’re marketing on job boards like <a href="https://indeed.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="mozbar-highlight-no-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">Indeed</a>, or <a href="https://gohire.com/port-a-potty-recruiting/" target="_self">putting ads in a porta-potty</a>, it’s important to understand every aspect of the candidate journey. How many clicks does it take to apply? How long does it take? Is the process easy to complete on a mobile phone?</span></p>
<p><span>From the initial first interactions to the completed application, the scheduling of an interview, to the uncomfortable rejection email”, what was the experience like for the candidate?</span></p>
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<div class="col-md-9"><div class="wpb_text_column wpb_content_element"><div class="wpb_wrapper"><h1><span><strong><em>“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”</em></strong></span></h1>
<h3><em><span>– Peter Drucker</span></em></h3>
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<div class="section"><div class="container"><div class="row vc_row"><div class="col-md-12"><div class="wpb_text_column wpb_content_element"><div class="wpb_wrapper"><h2><span>If your Candidate experience isn’t up to par, what do you do?</span></h2>
<p>If you think your candidate experience needs work, and that’s probably everyone, the first thing you have to do is document the process and the weaknesses, or problems. One way to measure how your candidates feel about the process is to survey them with a<span> </span><a href="https://survale.com/candidate-experience-surveys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">candidate experience survey</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to improve something and get senior management to support your plan, you need to speak their language. In many cases, that means data and numbers. You’ll need to define the problem in measurable terms. You’ll need to measure the cost of fixing the problem and the return on investment. Creating an ROI for recruiting and fixing the candidate experience isn’t always going to be plain and simple, but there are ways. If you’re going to sell your idea to a VP of HR, or CFO, they want to see how you plan on tracking the results of the investment.</p>
<p>Consider alternative, or “out-of-the-box” solutions, that can make it easier for candidates to apply, while integrating to your existing tech stack. Consider adding a<span> </span><a href="https://gohire.com/apply-by-text/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">text to apply</a><span> </span><a href="https://gohire.com/top-11-ways-to-use-a-recruiting-chatbot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">recruiting chatbot</a>, that can pre-screen candidates. Look at your recruiting funnels for areas where you can introduce<span> </span><a href="https://gohire.com/recruiting-automation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">recruiting automation</a><span> </span>solutions, to remove manual tasks, or speed the hiring process.</p>
<h2><span>The Economic Cost of a Bad Candidate Experience</span></h2>
<p><span>A couple years back the <a href="https://hros.co/case-study-upload/hros-case-study-virgin-media-candidate-experience-revenu-stream" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="mozbar-highlight-no-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">Director of TA </a> at </span><span>Virgin Media</span><span> in the UK, released one of the first P&L affects of poor candidate experience on the overall companies bottom line. The negative impact of Virgin Media’s poor candidate experience was costing the company more money than the entire recruiting annual budget. After some exhaustive financial analysis, they could prove to the CEO and CFO that a bad candidate experience was actually costing the company money because those poorly treated applicants/customers were canceling their cable subscriptions. </span></p>
<p><span>Like most things, it does take time for companies to understand the problem, adopt solutions and then create and manage solutions to institutionalize change to the new normal.</span></p>
<h3><span>Benchmark your Candidate Experience against the Best.</span></h3>
<p><span>The <a href="https://www.thetalentboard.org/cande-awards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="mozbar-highlight-no-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">CandE</a> awards started out of the passion of some of our industries’ most thoughtful leaders, like </span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerrycrispin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="mozbar-highlight-no-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS"><span>@GerryCrispin</span></a><span>,</span><span> </span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/elaineorler/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="mozbar-highlight-no-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS"><span>@ElaineOrler</span></a><span>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwgrossman" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="mozbar-highlight-no-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">@KevinGrossman</a> </span><span>with the intention of measuring and understanding companies who were tackling the problem head on, and then making those best practices available for other TA teams to learn from and replicate.</span></p>
<p><span>Some of the tools used to measure candidate experience, include </span><a href="https://survale.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS"><span>Survale</span></a><span>, a survey tool, that helps survey candidates about their experience with the company and the recruiting process. While many recruiting teams know about Glassdoor ratings, it’s also important to note that there are lots of employee review sites, and companies like </span><a href="http://ratedly.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS"><span>Ratedly</span></a><span>, founded by long-time industry insider </span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelcheesman/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="mozbar-highlight-no-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS"><span>Joel Cheesman</span></a><span>, (also a co-host of one of the best HR and Talent acquisition podcasts (<a href="https://www.chadcheese.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">Chad&Cheese</a>) aggregate employer reviews from multiple sites, making it easier to track and manage.</span></p>
<p>No matter what tools you use, it is possible to document and measure your candidate experience. Only then, can you start making measurable improvements.</p>
<p>This article was originally posted on GoHire - <a href="https://gohire.com/measuring-candidate-experience/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Measuring Candidate Experience</a></p>
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</div>Port-a-Potty Recruiting – What’s behind Door #2 will shock you!tag:recruitingblogs.com,2019-11-10:502551:BlogPost:21542602019-11-10T03:00:00.000ZJonathan Duartehttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/JonathanGDuarte
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<p>So, what do Port-a-Potties have to do with Recruitment…</p>
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<div class="entry-content"><div class="section responsive-content"><div class="container"><div class="row vc_row"><div class="col-md-12"><div class="wpb_text_column wpb_content_element"><div class="wpb_wrapper"><p>Over the summer, I was taking my high school daughter to band camp and found one of the best recruitment marketing ads I’ve seen in a very long time.</p>
<p>So, what do Port-a-Potties have to do with Recruitment Marketing and Employer Branding?<br/> You’ll be surprised!</p>
<p>With US unemployment at a 50 year low, job seekers have lots of options, and talent acquisition leaders have to get creative and learn from their marketing colleagues.</p>
<p>What this means to the employers, of course, is that what worked last year and the year before, might not be working anymore. If you’re still having the same hiring problems you’ve had for the last 5 years, it might be time to start thinking creatively, or looking at new solutions.</p>
<p>And to do that, you have to think and act like your ideal candidates.</p>
<p><strong>So back to the Port-a-Potties.</strong></p>
<p>Well, after a long, yet beautiful drive in the Redwoods of the San Francisco Bay Area, I needed a bio break when we got there.</p>
<p>So, I headed over to the port-a-potty, and my wife tells me…</p>
<blockquote><h2><b><i>You won’t believe what’s in the port-a-potty!</i></b></h2>
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<p>Of course, I’m intrigued.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-9097 alignright" src="https://gohire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/United_Site_Service_portapotty_adStraight-425x629.jpg" alt="USS Ad" width="425" height="629"/></p>
<p>When I open that flimsy plastic door, and take a seat (if you dare), and then look up… I see this…</p>
<p>It’s a glorious “Now Hiring” sticker on the inside door of the door.</p>
<p>At first, I don’t know what to think.</p>
<p>“<strong><em>Holy Crap</em></strong>” (right?), that’s the weirdest thing ever. I’m kind of shocked.<br/> I’m trying to make sense of it. Is this a good thing? Does it work? Is this good branding? Who are they trying to hire? What’s their target market?</p>
<p>And since I’m in the Thinker pose, sitting on the plastic throne, I start wondering about the campaign.</p>
<p><b><img class="size-full wp-image-9091 aligncenter" src="https://gohire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Thinker-500x500.jpg" alt="Thinker" width="296" height="171"/></b></p>
<p><b>Who is United Site Services trying to hire?</b><br/> Drivers, hourly workers, equipment technicians… the same people who are working at construction sites or delivering materials to construction sites. The same people who would be frequenting a port-a-potty! Bingo!</p>
<h2><b>It’s Highly Targeted Recruitment Marketing Ad! </b></h2>
<p>United Site Services is one of the largest construction services companies in the US. They rent and deliver construction equipment, including port-a-potties.</p>
<p>Placing stickers, on the inside of their hundreds of thousands of port-a-potties is cost-effective, highly-targeted, campaign. Additionally, their target market is probably sitting down, and has a moment to read! (Just saying…)</p>
<h1>K<b>udos to the United Site Services team</b></h1>
<p>They’ve done a great job of targeting their potential workforce. When you’re going to do something different, there will always be risk, and this was definitely a risky move.</p>
<p>Now, just because I think the target marketing is great, it doesn’t mean the entire campaign is great, though.</p>
<p>For a campaign to be great, it’s got to work. It’s got to generate qualified candidates to be a success.</p>
<p>This is a really important point for all talent acquisition leaders, recruitment marketers, recruitment ad agencies, recruiters, and employer branding individuals and team members.</p>
<h2><b>In a tight employment economy, Rule #1 = Make it easy for candidates to apply!</b></h2>
<p>Take a look at the ad again. It’s great!</p>
<p>It has a picture of someone doing the job. Check!<br/> The “Now Hiring” text really stands out. Check!<br/> They include benefits, in simple text. Check!<br/> They highlight “Full Time/ Permanent Positions” (job security is probably really important for their workforce). Check!</p>
<h2><b>But, what about the call-to-action?</b></h2>
<p>Look way down at the bottom right-hand corner of the ad… in the smallest font on the entire ad:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9079" src="https://gohire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/USS-CTA.jpg" alt="USS call to action" width="570" height="96"/></p>
<p>Here’s a great, attractive ad, highly targeted, uniquely placed, but the call to action isn’t highlighted, and unfortunately, I don’t think it works.</p>
<h2>It’s time to check the Candidate Experience and journey.</h2>
<p>So, now, I pretend I’m a job seeker and follow the call to action.</p>
<p>I take out my phone and start typing away, while sitting on the plastic throne, trying to get to the career site.</p>
<p>Remember it’s also really small print, so I have to look up at the sticker, and then back to my phone. And then up to the sticker and down to my phone. I have to do this a couple of times, and finally, since I’ve known the brand “United Rentals”, I give up looking up and down and simply start typing.</p>
<p>I type “careers.unitedrentals.com”<span> </span><b>Fail #1</b>.</p>
<p>Ugh. After squinting and looking really hard because it’s one big run-on string of 30+ characters with no capitalization, I notice… Oh, it’s not “UnitedRentals” it’s “UnitedSiteServices”. They were probably one company and split into two brands, but I didn’t know that.</p>
<p>I type “careers.unitedsitesedvices.com”<span> </span><b>Fail #2</b>.</p>
<p>What? Ugh!!! Damn it… I typed the letter “d” instead of “r”… start over again.</p>
<p>Remember,<span> </span><strong>Rule #1 is Make it Easy for Candidates to Apply.</strong></p>
<p>It’s the <a href="https://survale.com/candidate-experience-surveys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">candidate experience</a> that counts. If you don’t make it easy for the candidates to apply, they won’t. To understand the candidate journey you have to test it as exactly as possible. We can assume candidates aren’t going to the port-a-potty with their laptops, so we need to test the call to action on a mobile phone.</p>
<p>A little frustrated, I took a picture of the ad, and went back to the car.</p>
<p>I<span> </span><b>failed 5 times<span> </span></b>until I finally got to the career site.</p>
<p>By then, I was pretty frustrated. I can’t imagine what a job seeker would have though, but it’s probably not good.</p>
<p>Typing 30 characters in exact order, on a mobile phone is NOT easy.</p>
<p>As a result, instead of getting candidates excited about opportunities, my guess is many candidates got frustrated and never make it to the career site at all. And, if they did make it to the site, they were frustrated.</p>
<p>Once I do navigate to the career site. It’s great. It’s mobile-friendly, lots of info, and probably cost $100,000 or more to build and maintain.</p>
<h2><b>TIP: Follow the actual candidate journey, as a candidate would. No short-cuts.</b></h2>
<p>If your workforce is “mobile-first”, you have to give them an easy to use, mobile-first experience. A 30 character career site url isn’t easy for the mobile workforce. Neither is a 20 character url, or even 15 character url.</p>
<p><strong>Another Super Important Fact:</strong></p>
<h1><b>91% of career site visitors leave without completing an application!</b></h1>
<p>Think about that for a minute. Since the evolution of applicant tracking career sites, about 20 years ago, the “default candidate journey” has been to send candidates to your corporate career site.</p>
<p>At the time, that made a lot of sense. Candidates were plentiful. The ATS helped with compliance and workflow processes for the recruiters. Employers could add videos and other content to encourage the right candidates to apply.</p>
<p>But,<span> </span><strong>less than 1 in 10 visitors complete an application</strong>. (The average visitor to application conversion rate was 8.52%, per Jobvite and Appcast application surveys).</p>
<p>If you’re wondering how you can generate more qualified candidates, without increasing your recruitment marketing spend, this “90% Applicant Drop-off” is a great place to start looking.</p>
<p>If you’re sending candidates to your corporate career site, you’ll want to track your “Visitor to Application” rate. (The total numbers of<span> </span><strong>unique visitors</strong><span> </span>to your career site, divided by the number of<span> </span><strong>unique completed applications</strong>?<span> </span><a href="https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">Google Analytics</a><span> </span>is free and most ATS or career site or CRM should support this.)</p>
<p>A lot of large companies spend $100,000+ on their “career site”, or “talent network”, making them look really pretty and engaging, but if you don’t know if more candidates are applying, and if your attracting the right candidates, ie (qualified applicants), maybe what you have isn’t working.</p>
<h2><b>So, What can you do differently? Use a chat bot!</b></h2>
<p><strong>Instead of losing 91%</strong><span> </span>of prospective candidates, what if you<span> </span><strong>captured 90%</strong><span> </span>of those mobile visitors?</p>
<p>What if you could capture their name, phone number, location, email address, as well as some pre-screening and qualification questions?</p>
<p>That could be transformational, not just another “tool”.</p>
<p>You could massively increase your candidate experience and engagement while increasing the number of qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Well… You can!</p>
<p>And you can do it today, through an automated text messaging conversation or<span> </span><a href="https://gohire.com/top-11-ways-to-use-a-recruiting-chatbot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recruitment chatbot!</a></p>
<p>Would that generate<span> </span><span>more qualified candidates</span><span> </span>for recruiters and hiring managers? Absolutely!</p>
<p>It’s called a<span> </span><a href="https://gohire.com/apply-by-text/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Text to Apply</a><span> </span>chatbot.</p>
<p>And, with the candidates in your chatbot, you can add recruitment automation, by<span> </span><a href="https://gohire.com/automated-scheduling/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="mozbar-highlight-followed-wGA7MhRhQ3WS">automatically scheduling interviews</a><span> </span>for candidates that meet your qualifications, saving your recruiters and hiring managers from the multiple back and forth emails and phone calls, while adding those candidates to your existing ATS via an integration.</p>
<p>Instead of trying to recruit with a call-to-action that isn’t easy, and a candidate journey that sends candidates to your career site, that fails to convert job seekers to applicants, 90% of the time, you could try something like the below.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9085" src="https://gohire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/United_Site_Service_portapotty_adStraight_ApplyByText-600x921.jpg" alt="Apply By Text example" width="600" height="921"/></p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>Which campaign do you think would more qualified applicants?</strong></em></p>
<p>The 30 character alphanumeric career site URL, or a simple and easy-to-use text messaging application?</p>
<p>So, while I think the United Site Services targeting and ad copy was amazing, unfortunately, like so many candidate journeys, the call-to-action and applicant tracking system apply process often kills what could have been a great campaign.</p>
<p>For more information about recruitment marketing, <a href="https://gohire.com/recruiting-automation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recruiting automation</a>, chatbots, for career sites, or Apply-by-Text, please contact us.</p>
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