Integration partner Verified First featured ApplicantStack in a case study of Angels Care Home Health and Angels Care Hospice. The article explains how the companies are using ApplicantStack and Verified First to automate their hiring process to support accelerated expansion.
About Angels Care
Angels Care Home Health & Angels Care Hospice supports adult communities through nursing care, restorative therapy, and medical social services to patients in private homes, assisted living facilities and retirement communities.
Rapid Growth Required Hiring Automation
Angels Care Home Health & Angels Care Hospice has operations in nine states and has been growing and evolving rapidly. While expansion is beneficial, the accelerated growth rate was creating a new type of problem: Its manual pre-hire process was no longer efficient. The companies needed a new automated hiring system to replace their current manual recruiting process.
As a multi-state provider in a highly regulated industry, their hiring process needed to meet stringent compliance standards and maintain quality patient care.
The companies had been relying on Verified First for pre-employment screening services and Verified First’s integration with ApplicantStack was one of the many reasons they were drawn to ApplicantStack.
ApplicantStack and Verified First Provided the Comprehensive Solution
ApplicantStack was the ideal solution to handle Angels Care Home Health & Angels Care Hospice’s applicant tracking needs. Electronic document management, collaboration tools, location-based application tracking and customizable filtering questionnaires were some of the features that solved the companies’ recruiting challenges. Just as importantly, Verified First continues to meet the companies’ needs for full-service employment screening. As mentioned previously, ApplicantStack integrates with Verified First – which enables the Angels Care hiring teams to access applicant tracking and background screening in the same easy to use platform.
Our Ask Me Anything webinars provide a forum for users to learn more about ApplicantStack from the ApplicantStack Account Management team and receive answers to their product questions. The webinars include a demo of a product feature(s) followed by question and answer.
AMA Recap: How to Configure Job, Candidate and Application Fields 11/10/2022
Ellen Benzine showed attendees how to customize fields to meet your specific needs.
How To Configure Job Fields in Recruit
Field configuration can be performed by account administrators.
From the Home page, open the Jobs tab on the top menu. The information in the Jobs tab is about the specific job – Job Title, Available Positions, Location, etc.
To create a new job field, click your picture in the upper right and choose Setup from the dropdown.
From the blue menu on the left, choose Configure.
From the Configure page, choose Job Fields.
A page will open that shows your current Job Fields.
Click Create Field from the gray right hand menu.
The Add Job Field form will open. Follow the prompts to add the necessary values in the form.
Select Save in the lower left hand corner.
In addition to the default fields, some ApplicantStack users add a field for Existing Job or New Position, Salary or Hourly, or Part-time or Full-time. You can create up to 30 Job Fields.
How To Work With Candidate and Application Fields in Recruit
Ellen explained that Candidate fields include: 1. Basic information about the candidate, 2. Documents and information you want to collect from the candidate and 3. Information you want to input about the candidate. She discussed customization options and showed how to edit the Application Disposition field as an example.
How To Edit an Application Disposition Field
From the Home page, open the Candidates tab on the top menu.
Your Candidate table will open showing Candidate Fields.
Click your picture in the upper right and choose Setup from the dropdown.
From the blue menu on the left, choose Configure.
From the Configure page, you can edit many types of fields.
To edit Application Fields, select it from the Configure page.
To edit the Disposition in an Application, on the Disposition row, choose Edit Options in the Type column under Dropdown.
The Configure Application Disposition page will open showing the options currently set up.
To add another option, click Add Option on the right.
Add one or more options in the window, each on its own line. These will be added to the existing options for the field.
Click Save in the lower left corner.
Account administrators can add up to 20 Candidate Fields and 40 Application Fields. Note that Application Fields are somewhat of a “catch-all.” Source (where the candidate saw your job) is an important option if you are paying for job boards and want to track performance to measure ROI.
How To Configure Hire Fields in Onboard
In ApplicantStack Onboard, select the Hires tab from the top menu.
Click your picture in the upper right and select Setup from the dropdown.
Select Configure from the left hand menu.
Choose Hire Fields from the Configure Account menu.
Select Create Field from the right hand menu.
Follow prompts to complete the form and save.
Bottom line, ApplicantStack Recruit and Onboard are highly configurable. The platforms allow you to collect the information you want to mirror your hiring process in order to hire most efficiently.
Q & A
How can I use text messaging?
We offer Basic ($35/month) and Premium Texting ($95/month).
In the Candidates tab, if Texting is enabled, you’ll have a column labeled P (for Phone).
If the candidate has provided a cell phone number, there will be a phone icon in their record.
You can text candidates individually or in groups.
To text a candidate(s), select their record by checking the box to the left of their name.
Select Text Candidate from the right hand menu.
The Text to Candidate(s) window will open with the recipient(s) listed at the top.
To create a new message, type it in the window.
If you have created a template, select it from the dropdown menu.
Add an accompanying message if desired.
Click Send on the bottom left.
To create templates, select the Library tab from the top menu.
Select Messages from the left hand menu.
You can create email and text templates.
How do I set up Text-to-Apply?
In the Jobs tab, select the Job.
From the Job page, select Summary.
From the Summary page select Launch.
In the Launch tab, the Text-to-Apply is the top section.
The phone number associated with the ApplicantStack account is the phone number applicants will use to apply by text.
Ellen gave an example of a customer using ApplicantStack Text-to-Apply. The hiring team posts jobs on their company Facebook page and includes the phone number and job code word to apply by text.
How do I text two candidates?
Select two candidate records > Text Candidates. > select a Text Template > Send.
Research reports open rates for texts at 90% compared to open rates for emails from 40-60%
Candidates will respond to texts far faster than emails.
How do I create a Job ID to track the source where the candidate saw the job posting?
This requires two functions: Job ID setup and Source option. Note that ApplicantStack tracks the source of candidates without any setup on your part.
Home page > ID column. ApplicantStack can populate the ID or you can override the default with your company naming system. In the Create Job tab, enter the desired ID in the Job ID field.
To track the Source: Click your picture > Setup > Configure > Application Field > Source > Edit Options. The Source Options page will show existing sources.
To add a Source, click Add Options on the right. Enter the Source(s) in the window and Save.
You can access source information here: Candidates > All Source dropdown > click each Source to see candidates that applied from the source.
When a candidate doesn’t receive a Paperwork Started stage email, what’s the easiest way to resend?
First of all, you have to let a hire know that their Hire Portal is ready with an email that contains their username (email address), password and link to the portal.
The best practice is to trigger all emails in a workflow. However, if the candidate says they didn’t receive an email, you can resend it manually and not trigger duplicate paperwork. (Note that you need to populate their onboarding portal first.)
Hires > Choose Hire > Email Hire (on right) > Choose Message Template > Send
Ask your hire to check their spam folder and/or whitelist emails from ApplicantStack.
Another option is to text the hire.
How do I reset a new hire’s password to their Hire Portal?
Send the welcome email again, it will generate a new password. In the candidate record, Edit > Portal Password
My Onboarding email has stopped, how do I make it automatic again?
Click your picture > Setup > Configure > Hire > Edit > View Email in various stages > Edit Workflow Stage > Message Settings > Message Template > Choose Email > Submit.
In conclusion, don’t underestimate the power of automations in ApplicantStack. For example, you can automate nurturing texts in any stage of the process and strengthen your outreach to candidates who haven’t finished their application, or great candidates who submitted a general application.
Upcoming ApplicantStack Webinars
We invite you to join us for our upcoming events. To register, click the following links:
Are you looking for ways to cut hiring costs? If you haven’t automated the hiring process with recruitment software, this is your low hanging fruit for meeting budget goals.
Let’s discuss how you can not only save money but improve your quality of hire in the process:
One type of recruiting platform is an applicant tracking system (ATS). It is a type of HR software that manages the hiring workflow from job board posting to onboarding. With recruitment software, a small team can manage multiple job openings simultaneously. Importantly, recruiting software shortens time to fill which minimizes costly lapses in productivity. With an applicant tracking system, you can:
Manage recruiting anytime, anywhere with cloud-based access and mobile tools
Simplify recruitment marketing with employer branding on all job ads, emails and other assets
Let’s discuss how to save money on hiring. We’ll start with candidate screening.
1. Hiring Software Saves Money With Better Screening
Evaluating candidates is one of the most time-consuming hiring tasks. However, a structured screening process is key to hiring success. Let’s discuss how software makes screening faster and more effective.
Screening can be divided into two stages – immediately upon receipt of the application and post-interview evaluation. Hiring software can automate 100% of application screening and up to 80% of post-interview screening. Applicant screening is a first-pass filtering of job applicants. Separating unqualified applicants quickly is key. With the process of elimination, you create a smaller pool of promising candidates.
Application Screening Questionnaires
Though you begin filtering as soon as you start receiving applications, you prepare earlier. Create your prescreening questionnaires before you post your job, once you have created your job description.
Once you post a job you are competing with other employers to find great candidates. Take the time up front so you don’t slow yourself down after the applications start flowing in. Another advantage to creating your filtering questions before posting the job is that you can make changes to your job description if necessary.
In your hiring software, create an application questionnaire based on the job description. Following that, determine the scoring system for the questionnaire and assign point values. In addition, identify elimination questions that will knock out the applicant. For example, if you are hiring a CPA, you may want to eliminate job seekers without the certification.
Resume Keywords
You can also use the applicant’s resume for first-pass filtering. You assign points based on resume keywords. For example, if you are looking for an accountant, you can add points to their score if their resume includes “CPA.” Consider how knock-out questions, weighted scoring, and resume parsing can separate qualified candidates from the applicant pool.
Once you have screened the questionnaires and resumes, your hiring system can sort your applicants by score. Contrast this process with reviewing applications and resumes by hand.
Interview Evaluations
The interview evaluation process is a critical time. At this point, you’ve invested many hours engaging and interviewing your finalists. But for many recruiting teams, it’s challenging to get useful feedback from all decision makers. No matter how many employees you engage in the hiring process, it’s important that you have a structured, thought-out process. This is where candidate scorecards are an invaluable recruiting tool. With your ATS or hiring platform, create interview evaluation scorecards. These are similar to the filtering questionnaires, except each member of the interview team fills them out.
Based on the job ad, use multiple choice, star ratings or scale questions in the evaluation form. This prevents vague “gut feelings” from introducing bias into your decision. When each member of the interview panel gives feedback, you improve the evaluation process. Each person’s perspective and expertise improves the scoring.
Finding a great hire requires a well thought-out structured interview evaluation process. Yet if the process takes too long, the best candidates have already taken positions with employers that have a faster process. The best recruiting software helps with both speed and effectiveness. First, it gives you the tools to screen strategically. Second, it automates where possible to compress the timeline. The result is a high quality hire poised for success.
2. Hiring Software Saves Money by Shortening Time to Hire
A long recruitment process increases the chance that you’ll make a bad hire. High quality candidates are being recruited by your competitors. They aren’t going to wait weeks or months for a job offer.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a bad hire can cost you up to 30% of the employee’s wages for the first year. Let’s do the math for both an entry-level and senior employee. ZipRecruiter tracks the average entry-level salary by state, with a range of $25,712 to $35,793. Let’s take the lower number: 30% of $25,712 is $7,713. A minimum wage employee – say a fast-food or retail worker – costs their employer enough to employ a great hire for four months. On the other end of the spectrum, the cost of a bad hire in a senior position can be astronomical. A bad hire in a $200,000/yr executive position would cost $60,000.
Recruiting software doesn’t just speed up filtering and interview scoring. It shortens every step in the hiring process.
Job Posting
As mentioned previously, hiring platforms with job posting software integrate with job boards like Indeed and LinkedIn as well as job marketplaces like JobTarget.
Interview Scheduling
The best recruitment software integrates with scheduling calendars. This allows interviewees to self-schedule their interview slot. This can shave days off time to fill because it eliminates back-and-forth texting, emailing or calling to pin down a time.
Background and Reference Checks
Background checks are essential for due diligence in the employment process. With the one-click integrations, hiring managers can order background checks from their recruitment software.
Candidate Communications
Keeping applicants informed of their status is critical, though time-consuming. If you’re doing high-volume hiring, however, it’s nearly impossible. An applicant tracking system automates this with templates and triggers. Stage change triggers automate candidate updates, for example. This is how it works:
Build your hiring workflow using hiring stages (applicant status): Application Received, Do Not Pursue, Schedule Interview, Interview Confirmed, Make Offer, Background Check, etc.
Create an email or text template for each stage in your applicant tracking software (these can vary by job title or other criteria)
Enter merge fields in the templates to personalize the message with the candidate’s name, address and the job title
Imagine the time you can save with automated recruitment texting. Ghosting candidates is a surefire way to lose them. With auto-communications, your top candidates will always know their status and be less likely to abandon the process.
3. Save Money on Hiring With Lower Administrative Costs
What are the labor costs associated with your recruiters and hiring managers? Let’s say you have five people who earn an average of $30 an hour. Now suppose it takes your team 20 hours to hire one employee from job opening to onboarding. That’s $600 in labor.
What if automation could shorten the time to five hours? This would reduce the labor cost to $150. Now we’re not encouraging you to let anyone go, but you could delay hiring a new recruiter as your company grows. Or you could lessen your dependence on an outside staffing agency. In addition, your talent acquisition team and hiring managers could spend more time on revenue-generating activities.
Improve Efficiency with Mobile
Modern recruiting software is cloud-based can be used with any connected device. Mobile recruiting software is another key efficiency booster. It allows your recruiting team to work from anywhere. In other words, your recruiters can work 100% remotely or have a hybrid work schedule. Giving your employees flexibility in where and when they work is a powerful retention tool. Higher retention saves money as well.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, we’ve made the case that hiring software is a savvy investment – especially when you are trying to cut operating costs. To try our award-winning small business recruiting software for free, visit ApplicantStack Free Trial.
Background checks are an important part of an employer’s due diligence when evaluating job applicants. Thorough background investigations protect the business, the employees, and the customers. For some job roles, they protect public health and safety.
1. Delays Are Easing Up–So Don’t Stop Doing Background Checks!
However, some small business owners are considering whether to stop doing background checks because they have become more complicated and time-consuming in the past two years. Hurdles include pandemic-related court backlogs and a patchwork of regulations. In addition, many small businesses are limited by short-handed hiring teams. Fortunately, courts and other government agencies are working to get their records up-to-date. And while some new laws delay the process, some states (like California) are considering bills designed to make things easier.
Recruiters and hiring managers that don’t have the resources to perform them on their own should consider a professional service. It does make the hiring process more expensive, but the cost is far less than making a bad hire.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that a bad hire costs the employer up to 30% of their first-year earnings. In a CareerBuilder survey, 3 in 4 small business respondents reported having hired the wrong employee for a position, with costs ranging from $1,000 to $10,000.
2. A Negative Background Check Experience Can Drive Candidates Away
Despite economic uncertainty, the talent market is still ultra-competitive. Job seekers have many options. The companies that win the war for talent have an attractive employer brand and a candidate experience to match.
Any bottleneck or inconvenience in the hiring process–including a lengthy or confusing background check process–increases the risk of the candidate withdrawing their application.
There are two main ways to prevent delays in the background check process. First, if the employer and candidate work together diligently to complete the required release forms and authorizations, the process can proceed more smoothly. Second, candidates can prevent delays by ensuring all submitted information is accurate and correct to the best of their knowledge.Indeed
According to LinkedIn, the average time to hire is 41 days. How does your company compare? Is your background screening stage a bottleneck in your process?
In a CareerBuilder survey, 38% of respondents reported losing a candidate because they had a negative experience with their background check; however, less than half of HR managers who conduct background checks (44%) have tested their background check experience themselves. When employers do test their process, they identify a less than ideal candidate experience, with around 1 in 6 (14%) rating their background check candidate experience as fair or poor.
3. There Are New Background Check Laws
Employers need to stay abreast of the employment laws in the locations where they have employees working–including remote employees. Multiple hiring laws impact background checks, including criminal records checks, drug tests, driving records, and credit reports. Let’s discuss some of them.
According to the National Employment Law Project research, 37 states, the District of Columbia, and numerous cities/counties have recently enacted or modified laws that affect employment screening in general and various types of background reports.
Cannabis Screening Laws
In 2022, Virginia,Connecticut and Philadelphia modified cannabis screening laws. Connecticut’s new employment regulations went into effect July 1, 2022. The law prevents employers from penalizing a job applicant who used marijuana prior to being hired. If an existing employee tests positive for cannabis, the employer can’t take adverse action unless they had a written drug policy in place before the test. Note, however, that there are exceptions for drug background checks for positions that affect public health and safety.
As with Connecticut, the Virginia law also went into effect July 1, 2022. The Virginia law prohibits employers from taking adverse action against applicants for the legal use of cannabis oil. The law also requires current employees to obtain a written certification from a medical provider verifying that cannabis oil use is prescribed to treat a health condition.
Effective January 1, 2022, Philadelphia employers are prohibited from requiring job applicants to undergo pre-employment tests for cannabis use. Visit the City of Philadelphia website for more information on how this impacts background checks.
State and City Fair Hiring Laws
Some states and cities have passed laws that expand on federal regulations that affect background checks..
Effective August 2021, Louisiana restricts employers from considering an applicant’s arrest record or non-convictions in hiring decisions. If an employer believes criminal history could affect job performance, they can get an individual assessment from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to obtain permission to conduct a criminal background check.
As of October 2021, Maine prohibits recruiters from asking about criminal history on applications. The law also bans job applications from saying candidates with criminal histories should not apply or will be eliminated. However, federal or state laws require criminal background checks for certain employment.
Effective April 2022, an amendment to Philadelphia’s Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards (FCRSS) broadens the scope to cover both independent contractors and gig workers. Philadelphia’s FCRSS prohibits asking job applicants about their criminal history on applications and/or in interviews.
Changes to the New York City Fair Chance Act became effective July 29, 2022. The law requires employers to conduct all non-criminal background screenings prior to making a conditional offer. In contrast, companies can only conduct criminal employment background checks and driving history checks after making an offer.
Note also that California employers are subject to the California Fair Chance Act which went into effect in 2018.
Date of Birth (DOB) Laws
Both Michigan and California added restrictions regarding using an applicant’s date of birth and other information during background screens. Note, however, that California’s provisions have been challenged and are working their way through the courts. If you are based in California or have employees working in the state, stay apprised of the latest rules.
Michigan previously had a DOB redaction rule, but as of April 1, 2022, employers can use an applicant’s DOB with their permission to access criminal databases or for confirming identity.
Salary History Bans
While not directly applicable to employment background checks, be aware that at least 14 states have laws that prohibit employers from asking job candidates their salary history, and 20 states and Washington, D.C. offer protections for employees to discuss compensation.
Fair Credit Reporting Act
Though not a new law, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) applies when employers hire a third-party service agency to conduct employment consumer credit reports and other investigative reports. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces the FCRA.
When in the Recruiting Process Should I Do Background Checks?
The size of your company, the job role you’re hiring for and your industry influence the timing of both background screening and reference checks. If you field hundreds of applications, there are advantages to doing reference checks before the interview stage. It will help you narrow down the applicant pool earlier in the process.
For higher level positions, it’s customary in most industries to delay a background check until the final stages. This could be immediately prior to the formal job offer – and some companies don’t do a background check until they’ve extended a conditional offer.
Verified First Integrates With ApplicantStack for Streamlined Background Checks
Verified First is known for their speedy turnaround times and excellent service from a U.S.-based team of specialists. In fact, Verified First has a 96% client satisfaction rate!
Have you updated your Employment Value Proposition (EVP)? If not, get it on your to-do list. It can help you attract and retain talent in a competitive labor market.
Don’t have an EVP? Today’s job seekers expect a prospective employer to showcase their employer brand front and center.
An Employer Value Proposition is also called an Employment Value or Employee Value Proposition. Your EVP should succinctly explain the value you provide to a potential candidate as well as your existing employees. This includes compensation, benefits, perks and, increasingly, your company’s commitment to causes your employees care about.
Why Is an EVP Important?
An Employee Value Proposition is a useful tool in any labor market. But it’s especially important now, because it’s never been more difficult to find top talent. Surprisingly, recession fears and rising inflation haven’t put a damper on hiring, at least in most industries.
Employer Value Proposition Example
You don’t have to be a large business to create and benefit from an EVP. Small businesses can (and should) articulate what they have to offer, specifically the benefits of working at a small company. Swipeclock, for example, is a 100-employee company. Here are some excerpts from our employment value proposition:
Our team casts a wide net across numerous locations, lifestyles and backgrounds. We celebrate the uniqueness and strength found in diversity and inclusivity. It’s our differences that make us interesting, and our shared belief in Swipeclock’s core values that bind us together. Resilient: We are a resilient group of individuals. We know the business environment can be unpredictable. Thriving means being able to pivot, respond to the unexpected and keep the focus on what’s important — our customers. Agile: Phenomenally agile are able to take a problem and work it into a success story. With our agile mindset, we seek to deliver solutions quickly and respond to customer inquiries with the same speed. WorkforceHub.com
How Has Your Value Prop Changed?
As reflected in the title of this piece, it’s time to update your value proposition. Your company and employees have changed dramatically. If your workforce is thriving, you have been successful at supporting your employees and adapting to the new world of work and life. In other words, you have a strong EVP.
Have you revamped your benefits package by adding mental health coverage or childcare? It’s never been more important to strengthen your commitment to work live balance. Do you provide hybrid working and flexible schedules to make life easier for your current employees? What causes do you support? Your ideal candidate shares your values.
How about career development? This has become increasingly important to candidates and employees. A work environment where employees understand their career paths is critical if you want to improve retention and find the right talent.
If so, update your Employer Value Proposition so you can convey these things to prospective candidates. Furthermore, it will help you unify your workforce which will, in turn, reduce employee turnover.
This evolution in thinking has undoubtedly been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which put immense pressure on leaders to not just communicate their values but also to demonstrate them. In the face of difficult decisions, employers suddenly had to decide whether their professed ideals and “north stars” were real and substantive or mere lip service. They gained a heightened awareness of the importance of organizational purpose, team cohesion, and employee experience. Bryan Adams, Harvard Business Review
What if I’m Creating Our First EVP?
It’s important to realize that your company’s EVP merely expresses the value of working for your organization. In other words, you already have an identity and culture. To write your value prop you need to figure out what it is.
Begin by identifying what makes your company special. An anonymous employee survey can help. In addition, you can check Glassdoor and other workplace review sites to see what current and former employees say. Customer testimonials and feedback from your support team can shed light on how your company is perceived in its space.
How Can We Improve It?
Once you understand your current value proposition, you can make a plan to improve it if needed. This is called your employer brand strategy.
If you have high turnover, it’s not just your EVP that’s weak, Unfortunately, it’s the company culture upon which it’s based. If this is the case, it’s time to re-evaluate the employee experience you provide as an employer. Create an ideal Employer Value Proposition to guide you as you work toward it.
If your employees are loyal, but don’t have clarity why, you have a communication problem. This is not the worst problem to have. It means you have a terrific culture and can create a strong Employee Value Proposition. As discussed previously, use focus groups to identify your company values.
Then, work to get your compelling Employment Value Proposition out to your team and potential candidates. Share it with employees in your HR portal. Have your talent acquisition team Include it in your job descriptions and discuss it in interviews. Talk about it in company-wide meetings.
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