Your company’s investment into a new hire can be measured by man hours, money, and time spent away from other tasks. But your commitment can’t stop at the job offer. The way you integrate new hires can be just as important as the recruiting process. A retention consultant suggests that replacing a newly hired employee can cost a business between 100 and 300 percent of their annual salary. The emotional costs may not be as easily calculable, but they are equally as impactful on flow and productivity.
According to a recent Gallup poll, almost half of workers are open to leaving their organization. The most common reasons cited fell under the categories of Engagement and Culture and Wellbeing and Work/Life Balance. Drilling down further into the list of reasons we can find some that might apply to new hires:
Unrealistic job expectations
The job was different than expected
Not treated with respect
Workplace culture
Coworkers
Insufficient training
Relocation
Physical working conditions
Here are some strategies to help get out ahead of some of the struggles new hires may face. A focus on employee retention is mutually beneficial to the company and the new members of your team.
Start Onboarding Immediately
During the hiring process, quick response times and open communication are vital to attract quality talent. It remains vital to maintain that level of attention to a new hire during the period before they start work and into their first days or weeks. Consider employing a variety of methods to introduce someone to your company and help them integrate, such as:
Pre-recorded video content or printed materials about company values and culture
Delivery of a welcome email and/or a package of company-branded items, office supplies, or a personal note
Quick turnaround on technology and office equipment requisition, especially if the employee is remote
Introductory meetings or video calls with immediate supervisors and HR
Assignment of a work buddy or mentor who can answer questions and help the new employee feel welcome
A plan or schedule of clearly defined benchmarks that will be part of their initial training period
Set Realistic Expectations as You Integrate New Hires
The hiring process is a time to sell the company to the candidate who’s selling themselves. Once someone is hired, the best way to welcome that new employee is through an organized onboarding process. This gives the employee, HR, and supervisors a chance to provide important details about job responsibilities and employee benefits.
After the blur of interviews and first-day jitters, it can be especially helpful to provide written documentation of everyday tasks, typical required work hours,\expected response times to emails, or how the company handles deadlines. Explaining the finer points of the employee’s new job can help clear up confusion before it leads to mistakes or frustration, helping to support your goal to integrate new hires more efficiently.
It’s just as important to shine a light on included benefits like vacation time, sick leave, holidays, retirement contributions, and health insurance. Show employees perks like coffee, snacks, or wellness initiatives. Giving equal time to available perks creates a culture of trust and acknowledges that a new employee’s health and contentment is valuable. These benefits are just as much a part of employment as work, and people want to feel like they are welcome to access any those perks.
Encourage Feedback
New hires take in information from a firehose in the first days and weeks of employment. They probably have more questions than answers at first, but seeking feedback about their onboarding experience can foster an environment of trust right away. Make sure new employees know the best people and methods for feedback. Should they go straight to HR? Will someone set up a meeting at a pre-planned time in the future? Is their immediate supervisor most open to an email or an in-person discussion? Does your company provide a survey or specific questions they’d like to have answered?
Showing you’re open to feedback right away indicates that this can be an open dialogue into the future. It says no matter how long a person has been with the company, speaking up is valuable. Wherever possible, responding to suggestions or ideas goes a long way in helping someone feel like a part of the team. Think of it this way: Bringing new talent can inject new ideas into daily tasks. There’s a learning curve for all new employees but it’s worth your time to encourage fresh insights.
Set New Hires Up for Success
If projects are languishing in a to-do pile, it might seem logical that the new person should take on the backlog of work. The new employee might feel eager to prove themselves and accept any work offered to them, even if they don’t understand what’s really involved. But evidence suggests otherwise.
“The manager’s job is to instead keep new hires focused on the essential work they should prioritize and by pointing them to ways they’ll make rapid progress on these goals.”
To integrate a new hire effectively, consider the following ideas as you consider the new employee’s first tasks:
Assign work that aligns with their skillset
Find tasks that have a clear start and end point
Pair them up with a mentor or smaller team so they don’t feel like they’re the odd man out in an established project group
Be intentional about offering praise, gratitude, and feedback
Create opportunities for frequent check-ins that aren’t specifically about deadlines
Be patient with early mistakes and offer gentle correction
Bringing new hires to an overburdened company can be a tremendous relief, but your investment into their success goes beyond the job offer. The onboarding tools in ApplicantStack let you turn candidates into new hires without all the extra manual data entry. Plus, you have a central location for the tax and company forms required and a detailed, consistent plan for onboarding. Take advantage of the onboarding solution and integrate your new hires to become crucial members of the team.
Finding the right person to fill an open role with your company can be a challenge. But even when you locate them, you might need to sell them on the organization. The latest generation of workers wants to feel like the company they work for aligns with their values and that they can make an impact.
So, that means you always have to be ready to sell your company and show how it benefits society as a whole. This concept can help you generate more interest in open positions and attract candidates who really care about the work they do. Explore our five tips to craft a candidate pitch that appeals to all who hear it.
What is a Candidate Pitch?
A candidate pitch, also known as a recruitment pitch, is a clear and succinct statement offered to a prospective new hire to inform them of the position and company. The goal of this pitch is to capture their interest. It should also encourage them to submit an application or consider an offer. By crafting and using a recruitment pitch regularly, your team can emphasize the value of the company and what it contributes.
Ways to Improve Your Candidate Pitch
As you consider how to pitch the company and open roles to a potential candidate, you can incorporate these five tips.
Tell a story
People respond more effectively to stories, as the information presented in this way is more memorable and relatable. As you craft your recruitment pitch, think about the narrative you could weave around the start of the business and how it has reached the point it is at today.
You might also think about incorporating elements of existing team members’ stories. For example, if you have an employee who has moved up from a lower level to a higher one, tell that person’s story. Demonstrate the opportunities for professional growth and development and investment in each individual’s potential and skillset.
Highlight unique selling points (USPs)
Every business has its own unique selling points. Your candidate pitch should emphasize these clearly. Describe what sets your company apart and what members of the workforce get to experience as part of the organization. You could also highlight some of the elements of your business that align with candidate values. Examples include any investments into inclusion, environmental sustainability or opportunities to advance.
Take advantage of resources
In today’s tech-heavy world, it’s worth taking advantage of all available resources. Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms are ideal for creating first drafts of content, including a pitch to sell potential candidates on open roles within your business. Input the information you have and see what you get. It’s easy to make adjustments where needed, and you’ll likely save some time on the first go-around.
Customize the content to your audience
As you craft a candidate pitch, consider the people who might apply for open roles. What do these individuals have in common with one another? Do they share certain skills or experience? Customize your pitch to what those people might be interested in hearing about the company.
Include a call to action
Make sure candidates know what the next steps are in the process with a clear call to action at the end of the pitch. If you’re discussing open roles, provide information about where to find additional details and how to submit an application.
Are you looking for additional resources to streamline your hiring efforts? ApplicantStack is your go-to, offering applicant tracking and candidate management tools that keep everyone on the same page. Whether you’re building a new time, backfilling an open role, or hiring regularly, you can count on this solution to make it easier to find and bring on talent. Give it a try (it’s free)!
Attracting, hiring and retaining top talent is not a game of chance — it’s all about strategy. In fact, there are right ways, wrong ways and optimal ways to go about hiring that can increase your chances of attracting the right people for your open roles.
When completed with care, you can:
Get your job listings in front of the most qualified candidates.
Attract passive candidates.
Engage job seekers.
Improve the candidate experience.
Retain top talent.
In this blog, we’re discussing some of the most important and lucrative hiring best practices that can help set you up for recruiting success in 2024 and beyond.
The Benefits of Getting Your Hiring Process Right
At the end of January 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported approximately 8.9 million job vacancies nationwide. This figure is down from an all-time high of 12.2 million in March 2022, but there’s still some work to be done to fill these millions of open roles.
And, while hiring best practices can change significantly from one industry to another, we believe there are a few core principles and strategies that provide value to recruitment and retention across the board.
Before diving into those best practices, let’s first understand some of the benefits that a focused and well-balanced recruitment process can provide for your organization.
Higher Quality Talent Acquisition
A well-executed hiring process can increase your chances of attracting the most qualified candidate for your open role — someone who possesses the skills, experience and cultural fit necessary to excel at your company.
Well-executed, of course, means a genuine, optimized and fair hiring process. Unfortunately, this is something that employers need to be reminded about. A recent study revealed that a surprising 36% of hiring managers admit to lying to potential candidates. Even more surprising, a whopping 80% of hiring managers believe that lying is “very acceptable” during the recruitment process.
So, what is the cherry on top of all this fibbing? About 35 percent of prospects that were lied to and then hired ended up leaving the company within one month, and 31 percent within three months.
Finding and retaining good talent needs to start off on the right foot: the honest one.
Improved Performance and Productivity
Hiring the right people can enhance team dynamics and productivity, which can lead to improved performance and better business outcomes. McKinsey calls this employee archetype the “thriving stars.” And, based on research, they say that employees belonging to this archetype “bring disproportionate value to the company” and “have a hugely positive impact on performance and productivity by, among other things, creating psychological safety and trust in a team setting.”
Cost Savings
Hiring the right candidates from the outset can help reduce recruitment costs associated with turnover, training and onboarding. No study is required to discern that hiring is an expensive mechanism of the modern workplace.
Job advertising and interviewing aside, high turnover sometimes means higher severance pay for fired employees, while onboarding new ones may mean more signing bonuses and relocation assistance.
Beyond the cost of the recruiting process itself, there are plenty of other expenses that can strain your budget quickly.
Enhanced Company Culture
Hiring individuals who embody your company’s core values and contribute positively to the workplace culture can strengthen your organizational ethos and foster a sense of belonging among employees.
The result? Oftentimes, hiring individuals who are a good cultural fit results in higher employee engagement, reduced turnover and better performance all around. By consistently hiring and retaining top talent, organizations position themselves for long-term success, growth and sustainability in today’s increasingly competitive business landscape.
The Negative Impacts of Hiring the Wrong People
We’ve discussed a few benefits of hiring an ideal new employee, but what about some of the less obvious, negative impacts associated with poor hiring practices?
Have a look:
Wasted resources: Unoptimized processes take longer, are more prone to error and may unnecessarily extend your time-to-hire, which costs money.
Missed opportunities for innovation, growth and achieving strategic objectives: With a drawn-out recruiting process, you risk losing the interest of qualified candidates.
Reputational damage: Poor practices are pretty evident — especially to prospective hires who have no stakes in your organization. An unideal process may warrant criticism, which can harm your brand image.
5 Hiring Best Practices
Hiring isn’t easy—but it also doesn’t have to be rocket science. Employ these five recruiting best practices to get the ball rolling in your organization’s favor (while also appeasing prospective employees).
1. Define Clear (and Honest) Job Descriptions
Harkening back to the research done on employer honesty, you absolutely should not lie to a potential candidate at any point throughout your recruitment strategy. Not in the job description, during the interview process or onboarding.
For curiosity’s sake, here are the top five things that employers lie to candidates about — so you can do the opposite:
The role’s responsibilities (40 percent)
Growth opportunities at the company (39 percent)
Career development opportunities (38 percent)
Company culture (31 percent)
Benefits (28 percent)
Be honest about the responsibilities and expectations of each role in your job postings, and your new hires may just stick around for longer.
Workplace culture is at a bit of a strange juncture these days. With an increase in remote/hybrid working arrangements, employees say that feeling less connected to their organization’s culture is a major challenge.
For organizations, some believe that hybrid work has negatively impacted their workplace culture. So, what’s the solution?
Both of these revelations communicate that culture is still important, even if employees are going into the office less and less as time passes. So, when hiring new employees, it may be more important than ever to assess cultural fit and how a candidate could positively contribute to your hybrid atmosphere. Here are some questions to ask during the interview process to glean good cultural information:
Can you describe your ideal work environment?
Tell me about a time when you successfully collaborated with a team.
How do you handle ambiguity or change in the workplace?
Describe a situation where you had to resolve a conflict with a colleague.
What do you value most in a workplace?
4. Invest in Your Employer Branding
According to Universum’s 2023 Employer Branding NOW study, employer branding is a top priority for organizations right now and a critical HR investment.
What’s influencing this investment? Well, 86 percent of surveyed employees revealed they are likely to research a company’s reviews and ratings when deciding on where to apply. Moreover, half of all candidates say they wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation. Here are a few ways to improve branding to optimize the hiring process:
Create consistent brand messaging
Provide growth opportunities
Emphasize employee well-being
Welcome, monitor and respond to employee feedback
5. Promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
DEI in the workplace is a bit of a difficult topic these days. There’s a strong political divide between those who support DEI efforts and those who believe having strict race requirements for certain roles, grants or opportunities is iffy.
What we do know for certain, however, is that everyone—no matter their background—deserves an equitable chance at success in their work.
As we progress further into 2024, the way organizations approach DEI may change, so it’s important to stay abreast of hiring trends to determine the most beneficial path forward for everyone—job seekers, employees and organizations included.
Here are a few ways to help promote that success:
Foster inclusive leadership: Train managers and leaders to promote inclusivity in their teams, to actively listen to diverse perspectives, advocate for underrepresented employees and create an inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued.
Review and address pay equity: Regularly review your organization’s compensation practices to identify and address any disparities based on gender, race or other characteristics.
Create employee resource groups (ESGs): Establish employee resource groups or affinity groups where staff from diverse backgrounds can connect, share experiences and advocate for positive change.
Optimize Your Hiring Process With a Purpose-Built ATS
Curious how an Applicantstack can take your hiring process from bad to best? Take a tour of the platform to see for yourself!
With solutions for recruiting and hiring, candidate management and onboarding, ApplicantStack is an end-to-end recruiting solution that streamlines, automates and optimizes the traditional, time-consuming tasks of hiring to help you find better candidates, faster.
Cast a wider net, communicate promptly and onboard quickly in today’s ever-evolving job market. Want to see it in action for your organization? Try it for free today, no strings attached.
The job market is a dynamic, living thing that demands adaptability. For businesses of every size, intuition and personal connection are vital for finding ideal candidates. But they are only part of the hiring puzzle: analyzing recruitment metrics gives a more accurate picture of where your hiring process is succeeding and where you could stand to improve.
Understanding Recruitment Metrics and Why They Matter
Recruitment metrics refer to the data that provide insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of your company’s hiring process. Metrics are individually insightful but the data is also symbiotic, informing the other. For example, if the most expensive recruitment source you use yields the highest quality candidates, it may be a mistake to reduce that budget because an overall budget metric suggested cost-cutting.
Analyzing hiring metrics gives companies ideas on how to work more efficiently, which hiring methods work the best for your type of business, and can even anticipate growth to generate a long-term hiring plan before it’s critical. In small businesses where employees may wear many different hats—including participation in hiring—collecting and reviewing these metrics is essential to focus and coordinate your efforts.
Recruitment Metrics to Track
Consider tracking these important recruiting metrics:
Time to Fill
Simply put, “time to fill” indicates the number of calendar days it takes to find and hire a new employee. The Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) offers a few different starting points:
A hiring manager submitting a job requisition
A job requisition’s approval
A job posting going live online
The end date is typically when a candidate accepts a job offer. This metric can show internal delays in approvals or posting.
Time to Hire
While “time to fill” analyzes the company’s time efficiency, “time to hire” is a more candidate-centered metric. This number indicates the time from when the candidate applies to accepting an offer. It can show lags in company response time, a leading reason for losing out on a potential hire.
Cost Per Hire
This is a metric that accounts for all the costs your company incurs while hiring new employees. It may include:
Internal hiring administrative and legal costs
Cost of job postings
Advertising costs
External recruiter fees
Travel expenses
Recruitment or hiring bonuses
Relocation costs
To calculate cost per hire, add up all costs in a time frame and divide it by the number of hires. This metric helps the company know how effective the hiring budget is being used, and where to make adjustments if the cost per hire is limiting the number of new employees you can add in a year.
The average cost per hire is $4,700, according to SHRM data. But some estimates come in as high as three to four times the total salary of the position your company is seeking to fill. It’s worth identifying areas to trim the overall cost.
Application Completion Rate
If your company uses an online application system, this metric can show how many candidates start but never finish the process. It can indicate bottlenecks in the application, or note if candidates consistently leave sections blank or seem to have insufficient space to answer questions. This metric allows you to make the appropriate edits so the application process is smooth for the applicant and provides the right amount of data for the company.
Offer Acceptance Rate
This metric helps you know the percentage of offers accepted by prospective employees. Considering that it always costs you something to make an offer, this metric is valuable in analyzing each step of the recruiting, interviewing, and offering process. If your company has a high initial response rate but a low offer acceptance rate, this may indicate:
Your job descriptions may be misleading about actual job responsibilities
Your interview process could be too long or too demanding
Your communication has some lag time that’s causing you to lose out on desirable hires
Quality of Hire
Once a prospective employee has been hired, analyzing metrics doesn’t need to stop. In the first few months of a new employee’s tenure, you can evaluate whether they are meeting the company’s standards. If you have a trial period, this can be a useful metric to determine whether you and the new employee are a good fit after all.
According to Indeed, “The basic calculation for quality of hire would work as follows: job performance score + social engagement score + productivity score / total number of factors = quality of hire.”
These criteria will vary from company to company, but a noticeable decline in quality of new hires can motivate you to examine the factors that lead to low productivity, for example. Can they be attributed to a point in the hiring process that could use some scrutiny? It’s better to address those issues long before hiring, onboarding, and a period of lesser quality work.
New Hire Turnover Rate
While analyzing quality of hire comes from the company side, turnover comes from the employee side. This metric shows how many new hires stay on for some defined period of time. If you’re seeing an unexpectedly high turnover rate, this can indicate:
Problems with onboarding
Confusion about or dissatisfaction with job responsibilities
Mismatch of employee to supervisor
Interview mistakes regarding skills or experience
Analyzing Hiring Metrics
Modern software makes gathering hiring metrics a breeze. A tool like ApplicantStack offers reports for a whole suite of data, allowing your company to track recruitment metrics with ease. These reports can provide great insight before a hiring push puts you in a bind.
A budget-conscious company is always looking to save on the bottom line, but the right metrics can do much more than just encourage an overall slash and cut. This data can give you insight if your recruiting spending is in the right places, and offer guidance to reallocate resources to actions offering you the most quality hires. Get access to the reports your company needs to track hiring metrics when you start your free trial.
In most cases, and for most job openings, recruiters want to secure top industry talent for their open roles. Why? Beyond being the most qualified or suitable person for the position, top performers come packaged with an array of benefits that can give organizations a competitive advantage, improve company culture and help develop organizational leadership.
But attracting and retaining the most befitting employees is easier said than done. So, what exactly are the best ways to ensure you’re attracting the most qualified individuals? And, what does an effective and successful recruitment strategy look like?
Here, we’re breaking down the basics required of a solid recruitment strategy to ensure you’re getting your money’s worth not just out of your newly recruited, talented employees but your hiring efforts, too.
The Basis of a Strong Recruitment Strategy
There’s more to attracting, sourcing and securing top talent than simply posting a job listing. Even if it’s well-written and alluring, there are always others that are more so. This can be especially challenging for smaller organizations looking to get on the same playing field as their larger corporate counterparts.
Hiring managers must not only curate their job listings to a tee but also their strategies to identify and attract those most suited for a particular role. If you’re unsure where to start, or where it went wrong for your organization, start with these seven recruiting basics and get them right:
1. Identify Your Needs
You can’t fill a ravine with water and expect it to be as easily traversed on foot then if there were a bridge instead. Before you go looking for candidates, you first need to identify what you need to help your organization succeed.
This involves collaborating with relevant stakeholders to:
Define job requirements and expectations.
Clearly understand the specific skills, experience and qualities desired from the ideal candidate.
Once everyone is aligned on the best way to proceed, you can start building the hiring bridge.
2. Attracting Qualified Candidates
To attract the right people, you need to create compelling job descriptions and employer branding strategies. This includes, but is not limited to:
Clearly stating the company’s values.
Effectively communicating your culture.
Identifying and making evident the growth opportunities with your organization.
Doing these three tasks the right way will help you attract high-caliber candidates.
3. Sourcing Qualified Candidates
In a perfect world, highly qualified candidates seeking employment would deliver themselves straight to your front door. Unfortunately, hiring isn’t that easy and, oftentimes, top talent needs to be head-hunted. Hiring managers should leverage various sourcing channels, including job boards, social media platforms, professional networks and even industry-specific events, to proactively seek out qualified candidates. A passive candidate is someone who isn’t actively searching for new opportunities but would be happy to entertain an attractive offer.
What Do Top Candidates Want From Organizations?
Before jumping into more concentrated efforts that will help you land top talent, let’s take a look at what job seekers actually want from their prospective organizations. While fair and just compensation is still highly important for a lot of candidates, especially top talent, other elements are equally, if not more important.
For example, a recent study revealed that 91 percent of new hires who received quality culture training felt more connected to the organization than those who didn’t—underscoring the importance of a healthy, active culture for new and prospective hires. Culture training involves educating and familiarizing new hires with the values, norms, beliefs and behaviors of your company’s culture. It’s not just about learning the job tasks or responsibilities; it’s about understanding the organization’s ethos and how to thrive within it.
This often involves training about how to effectively handle challenges within the organization and be a strong leader, as well as expectations for collaboration; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and more.
Beyond culture training, here are a few more nice-to-haves in today’s market that can bolster your organization as one worthy of employing the most talented candidates in your industry:
Evident opportunities for professional development
Strong work-life balance
Open and honest communication
How To Attract Top Talent
Great, so we know how to get the basics right and what job seekers truly want from their prospective companies. Now, let’s streamline, optimize and condense everything we’ve learned into one actionable checklist that will surely help you secure the right people for the jobs at hand.
You attract what you exude. When your brand communicates enticing qualities like excellence, transparency and drive, you’ll inevitably entice like-minded people who wish to work for such a strong, reputable company.
In terms of recruiting, here are a few to-do’s:
Define your employer value proposition (EVP): Identify what makes your company unique as an employer.
Craft a brand message: Develop a clear, concise and compelling message that communicates your EVP to potential candidates.
Build a strong online presence: Leverage social media platforms to share employee stories, company achievements and behind-the-scenes glimpses of your workplace.
Provide an exceptional candidate experience: Ensure a seamless and positive experience for each and every potential candidate throughout the recruitment process — which translates into a better employee experience if you play your cards correctly.
Invest in employee well-being: Prioritize employee well-being by providing work-life balance initiatives, mental health support and wellness programs.
2. Write Compelling and Detailed Job Descriptions
No one wants to be left guessing after reading a job description. Clear, compelling posting should include:
A clear title that’s representative of the role.
An engaging overview of the job.
Key responsibilities.
Requirements and necessary qualifications.
Salary information.
Expected working hours.
Information about company culture.
3. Use More Than One Sourcing Channel
Casting a wide net is key to attracting more talent. The larger your sample size, the more likely you are to catch qualified candidates. This is especially important for small businesses that, by default, aren’t on the same playing field as their larger counterparts.
To do this effectively, post your job openings on popular job boards, industry-specific websites and social media platforms to maximize visibility. But, instead of doing all of this manually, use an applicant tracking system that can cast the net for you.
4. Offer Competitive and Creative Benefits
According to research by the Harvard Business Review, 60 percent of employees say the cost of going into the office outweighs the pros. That being said, one of the most important benefits employers can offer in 2024—beyond insurance and the like—is a well-balanced hybrid working model.
This and other creative benefits, such as student loan assistance programs, more paid time off and funding for professional development are all attractive incentives for today’s workforce.
5. Emphasize Career Development
According to a 2023 study by LinkedIn Learning, providing learning opportunities is the number one strategy for retaining top talent employers can use. This is important because, when you secure top talent, you want them to stick around.
For recruiting, this means:
Highlighting growth opportunities from the get-go
Building attractive and effective training and career development programs
Actively encouraging continuous learning
Providing adequate mentorship and coaching
Conducting performance reviews and providing actionable feedback
6. Commit To Continuous Improvement
You don’t have to get recruiting right on the very first try. Each organization is different, and depending on the type of industry you’re operating in and what your ideal candidate looks like, your recruiting strategy can change. But that’s the beauty of it!
The easier you can make the hiring process on yourself, the quicker you can adapt your recruiting strategy to fit the needs of diverse candidates — no matter where they are in the talent pipeline.
Streamline Your Hiring Process For Success in Securing Top Talent
From candidate sourcing to retaining top talent, Applicantstack makes it easy to quickly scale your team or fill niche roles without any of the hassle associated with traditional, drawn-out hiring practices. Text-to-apply functionally puts control back in candidates’ hands: While they continue their job search, you can start reviewing resumes.
These features, and many more, are what make Applicantstack the premier choice for streamlining your hiring process to attract the most high-quality candidates for your team. Interested? Try it for free today.
Connecting job seekers with hiring managers happens in a variety of ways. Word-of-mouth, networking, promoting from within, cold calling: these are all tried-and-true methods to find candidates for open positions. The speed of technological advancement has changed the hiring landscape and demands that hiring managers look to new methods to reach a wider audience.
According to a survey done by The Cambridge Jobs Board, 85 percent of job seekers reject the popular recruiting websites that bombard with relentless messages and impersonal communication. Those disenchanted job seekers may be uniquely prepared to be reached by thoughtful and powerful recruitment marketing.
Does Advertising Jobs Online Work?
Online job marketing is a $36 billion dollar industry. The sector has seen a 15 percent increase in growth since 2015. So how can your business claim a piece of that hiring pie? Go where the people spend a huge majority of their time.
Online advertising for recruitment requires a diverse skillset: some marketing knowledge, some recruiting knowledge, and the ability to sell your company to a wide variety of eyeballs. Done well, your ad may reach an active job seeker and a disenchanted worker who becomes inspired to make a job switch.
Kepios estimates that 62.3 percent of the global population are active consumers of social media. That’s an astronomical pool to pull from. Even if your small business is really only looking to cover a smaller region of job seekers, that stat suggests your recruiting pool will be active social media users.
Statistics to Know About Your Recruiting Pool
Before you jump headfirst into creating paid advertising, consider defining the non-negotiables for your recruiting pool. This way your ads can be sure to reach out to the right candidates. You can identify metrics with market research, surveys, and analytics. In the modern world, personal data is valuable currency. Here are some of the many metrics to identify and tailor your ad dollars to the right pool.
Where are they located? Is the position remote? Is it in-person? You might want to tailor your ad to specific time zones or even cities to reach candidates who are able to meet this criteria.
Education level required. This metric can help you choose which social media platforms to use; ones tailored mainly to teenagers won’t give you candidates with a required Bachelor’s degree.
Where do they spend their time online? Tools like the Pew Research Center can give valuable insight into where various demographic groups spend time online.
Specific interests associated with your brand. Knowing candidates’ interests can help you parlay that positive association and experience into work.
How to Craft a Compelling Recruiting Ad
Follow these steps to craft a more appealing ad for recruiting.
Start with this question: What does the job seeker want to know? This requires understanding some basic metrics which you can acquire from each individual social channel you’re using.
Choose the right platform. Use statistics and demographic information to make sure you’re targeting the ideal candidate.
Deliver a punchy message within the first 10 seconds of the ad. Use graphics and word choices that define the value proposition for the viewer immediately. Give just enough information about your company to inspire further engagement.
Focus on SEO. What keywords will put this ad in front of the right eyes?
Define the Call to Action: “Click to learn more” or “Click to apply” for example.
Link the ad to a landing page that is also easily scannable and inviting. Include clear descriptions of requirements, instructions for applying, and information about company culture.
Critically evaluate your conversion data to figure out where you need to make tweaks to the ad itself or to the platforms where you share it.
Online Advertising Platforms to Consider
When you’re trying to stretch your advertising dollar, it’s important to know the pros and cons of the popular online platforms for reaching your targeted audience. Pew provides some important insight:
LinkedIn is more popular among those with advanced degrees. 51 percent of adults said they have a Bachelor’s Degree or higher, compared to 10 percent with a high school diploma or less.
Pinterest is used by more women (46 percent) than men (16 percent).
YouTube is the most widely used app by people of all ages: 95 percent of adults age 18 to 29 use it, 91 percent of those age 30 to 49, and 83 percent of those age 50 to 64.
Facebook has the lowest usage from adults age 18 to 29 at 70 percent, with the highest engagement coming from the 30 to 49 age bracket at 77 percent
Instagram users in America are 52 percent Hispanic, 49 percent Black, and 35 percent White.
Snapchat is almost entirely the domain of young people, with 65 percent of adults age 18 to 29 compared to 24 percent of those 30 to 49.
YouTube and Facebook are nearly equally used by urban, suburban, and rural Americans.
The data suggests that the majority of users visit their platforms of choice every day.
Demographics are a great place to start. After that, most social media sites provide very robust report options that can be customized to the specific metrics that are most helpful for your hiring process. Meta offers stats like reach, impressions, frequency, and clicks among many others. On YouTube, metrics include view rate and if the video was played to 25, 50, 75, and 100 percent.
Manage Your Applicants With ApplicantStack
The sheer volume of reported metrics can be overwhelming to parse and sort. A tool which ties these important metrics to individual candidates helps connect this important work with humans that can fill your open positions. Within ApplicantStack, you can record the results of your marketing recruiting efforts. Each metric becomes a potential valued member of your team. You can also take advantage of the integration with Indeed to utilize the Sponsored Jobs feature and get in front of a wider audience.
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