Category Archives: ATS

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Facebook Partners with ATSs to Bring Jobs to Your Company Page!

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Today on The Weekly Dose I let you know about some changes coming to Facebook and how Facebook is partnering with ATSs to make it easier for employers to get your jobs posted on your Facebook company page.

Facebook has long been that one person we’ve always wanted to dance with us, but they seemed uninterested in having anything to do with the recruiting community. The reality is, FB has more active users than any other social network and that means the potential for us to some serious hiring on FB has always been a dream of most TA pros.

Recently Facebook announced some partnerships with ATS providers SuccessFactors/SAP, JazzHR, Talentify, and Workable. While SuccessFactors, JazzHR, and Workable are all in the ATS space, Talentify is more of a CRM-like, programmatic job posting tool. Both Workable and JazzHR are strong SMB value ATS providers, while SuccessFactors wasn’t originally designed to be an ATS, but because of the acquisition by SAP has built out that functionality, although I think most using it probably feel that recruiting still isn’t its strongest point.

I’m not sure exactly why Facebook choose this group to start, but like most things, my guess it’s probably a combination of relationships being leveraged (hello, SAP), and just scrappiness by the smaller players mentioned to find a way to get this done.

So, what’s actually being done?

“Jackie Chang, head of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, said the social network will “continue to identify strategic companies” in order to help businesses hire and people find work. “We’re looking to grow these partnerships,” she said. “We know many businesses are already working with HR solutions providers to manage their hiring needs and we want to make it easier for businesses to tap into the tools they already use, and help more people find jobs.”

Also, from Chris Russell:

There are two ways that the new integrations will work – an onsite, “native apply” experience and an offsite “redirect” experience. In the native apply experience – the messenger popup will still occur.

Onsite, “native apply” experience:

    • We have a Jobs XML Feed, which enables partners to publish job posts on behalf of employers directly on Facebook.
    • Job seekers can apply to those roles directly on Facebook, and the application information is sent back to the partner.
    • This allows employers to reach qualified candidates while staying connected to the systems they already use.
    • Employers can also create jobs in their ATS, and publish that job to Facebook.

Offsite “redirect” experience:

    • We have a Jobs XML Feed, which enables partners to publish job posts on behalf of employers directly on Facebook.
    • Job seekers are redirected to the employer’s career site and can apply to the role on the employer’s career site.
    • Employers can also create jobs in their Applicant Tracking System, and automatically publish that job to Facebook.

Very cool stuff, as Facebook has been one of the hardest nuts to crack when it comes to recruiting, and these integrations should make it easier for employers to start getting their jobs in front of FB users more easily. Facebook won’t be the holy grail for everyone, just as LinkedIn isn’t the holy grail for every employer either, but the potential is there for it to be a very good source for so many that don’t see the pools of talent they need on sites like LinkedIn, or other job boards.

Does your ATS have this integration, or are they working to make it happen? The only way to find out is to actually give them a call and ask that question!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Pocket Recruiter (@pkrecruiter)

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the recruiting technology, Pocket Recruiter. Pocket Recruiter drastically reduces the time it takes to screen, source and evaluate candidates, helping recruiters achieve a higher interview to placement ratio. 

Pocket Recruiter is one of these new recruiting technologies built around the concepts of Machine Learning and A.I. Basically, it integrates with your ATS and will automatically scrap every new job (or you can manually put in jobs as well) and then it will go out and source candidates for each job you have from both your internal database and external data as well.

Where Pocket Recruiter stands out is it’s ability to match candidates to your job, and it’s ability to learn and get better. The recruiter gets a list of matching candidates that are scored out and ranked based on, pattern recognition, the internal algorithm, etc.

Your recruiter gets a shortlist within minutes to go out and start connecting. Organizations are seeing savings of up to 60% in time to source and screen, because most of the heavily lifting of sourcing is done, and the matches are of higher quality, so you’ll need less screens. They are also seeing improvements of 90% from resume submitted to the hiring manager to request for interview. So, the quality is definitely improving.

What do I like about Pocket Recruiter:

  • Your recruiters can override the algorithm within Pocket Recruiter to bring back different results almost immediately, if something isn’t coming through like it should. This might seem small, but it’s huge as we that recruit usually quite a bit more than the algorithm in terms of what we are looking for.
  • You can add your internal employees into the mix, making Pocket Recruiter a great tool for internal mobility.
  • The Performance Metrics might be one of the best I’ve seen in any recruiting tool, as it basically replicates your recruiting funnel for you on each individual recruiter. So, not only are you finding talent faster, but you also now have this great performance management tool for your team. I also loved the ROI tool built into Pocket Recruiter.

For me, technologies like Pocket Recruiter are the future of recruitment and how I see A.I. having the biggest early impact to how recruiting evolves in the near future. Pocket Recruiter ensures you are utilizing all of your candidates to the fullest, and it speeds up the entire process to get to hires quicker. Well worth a demo!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Jobvite goes shopping!

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Big news out of the world of the Talent Acquisition technology. Jobvite, with a major investment from K1 Investment Management, went out and bought three best of breed recruiting technologies:

  • Talemetry – CRM, Recruitment Marketing technology
  • RolePoint – Employee referral and internal mobility technology
  • Canvas – Text-based screening and interview technology

All four of these technologies, separately, I’ve recommended that TA pros and leaders should demo. They are all top rated recruiting technologies on their own.

I think these acquisitions are just one more signal in what we see is a growth of the Talent Acquisition Suite, away from core HRIS suites. The TA Suite of the future is a stand alone tech stack that can become a competitive edge for organizations.

The one part of this acquisition that confuses me, a little, is Role Point. While I love them as a point solution, Jobvite already has Jobvite Refer, so this acquisition seems a bit redundant. I mean Jobvite invented Employee Referral technology. While I’ll agree RolePoint is better than Jobvite Refer, I’m not sure they are that much better tha I would spend millions of dollars to acquire.

I will say that that Internal Mobility is a hot topic in almost every organization, so I’m assuming this is the main reason for the acquisition.

Regardless, I believe this positions Jobvite uniquely in the space to be able to offer an advanced Talent Acquisition suite that no one else in the space can put forth, at this point.

One thing to consider is how other ATSs like iCIMS and Greenhouse (we also see Ultimate Software/UltiPro doing this on the HR suite side) are building out their stacks for their customers. Both have taken the App/Marketplace concept. Think of this like your Smartphone. You buy your base iPhone, and then add the apps you want.

That’s the big question! Will the market want a suite or will they want a marketplace of pre-built integrations that you can select and plug and play?

Both buyers are in the market. We already see the suite buyers who want one enclosed technology that does almost everything they need under one umbrella – what it looks like Jobvite is building with these acquisitions. We also know some buyers love to select specific technologies and somewhat build their own stack, based on their own unique needs. It’s really just positioning, I’m not sure we’ll see one strategy win out ultimately.

Definitely an aggressive move by Jobvite. They were falling behind the market a bit and this will definitely thrust them back into the lead pack. I think we all felt like 2019 would be a great year for acquisitions and Jobvite has come out of the gate making a giant swing!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: HR Tech Vendor Fatigue is a Real Thing!

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You know how milk and employees have an expiration date? Come on! We all have that one employee who been with us way past their expiration date and we just can’t take them any longer. They might actually have great skills and knowledge, but they still need to go! They’ve gone past their employee expiration date!

I get to talk to a lot of HR and Talent executives about the technology they use. The majority are fine with what they have. They take the positive leadership stance of this is what we have right now and we’ll make the most of it. If we get to a point where our technology is working against us, we’ll push to upgrade or change. Some are in love with their tech. I find most of these are in the honeymoon phase and were the ones who choose the tech. Some hate their tech.

What I find with most executives who hate their tech is the tech isn’t the issue, it’s usually Vendor Fatigue.

What’s Vendor Fatigue? 

HR Tech Vendor Fatigue is when you are probably having some problems with your tech stack, it’s not doing exactly what you need it to do. You’ve been going back and forth with your main vendor to try and make the changes you need, but it seems to be just more headache after another. You’ve been there, right? We all have!

So, instead of just going the last ten yards and getting it done, you decide it’s best to just move on and start over! You’re too fatigued to continue to work with this vendor, even though if you sat down and thought about it logically you would come to the conclusion staying with your current vendor is really the wisest solution and what’s best short and long-term for the organization and your resources.

But we don’t do that!

Instead, we go out and buy a new system that is basically 90% the same as the old system, and we start fresh. It’s like a marriage. Some people work to try and make it better. Hey, at one point I fell in love with you. We went through some hard times and we can now get divorced or we can go to counseling and rekindle that great thing we once had. We already know each other’s deep, dark secrets, so maybe it’s best if we just figure this thing out!

The biggest mistake most HR and Talent Executives make around HR Tech! 

I constantly speak to executives who are using a really great system. Top 5 on the market and they tell me they’re moving to another Top 5 system because they just can’t take it anymore. The system they have isn’t working, “I mean, Tim, my team is only using 35% of the technology!” Then they look at me for approval…

I tell them you’re making a big mistake. The technology you have in place right now is being utilized by hundreds, thousands of organizations that are doing great things with it. You only using 35% is not a tech problem, that’s a ‘you’ problem. Guess what’s going to happen with your new system? Yep – 35% usage. Find out first how to use what you have 100% and then tell me why it’s not working.

HR Tech vendor fatigue is just like a relationship gone bad. But we tend to think about it way differently. “No, Tim, they are a vendor and they should bow down to us and make it right!” Well, sometimes, yes, sometimes, no, you’re being unreasonable!

But, there are also times when it’s time to get divorced from each other. Expectations have become unreasonable. You both are making each other stressed out. While it’s true that one of you is a buyer and one of you is a vendor, pointing that fact out doesn’t help, but it is a reality. I’ve fired some clients and I’ve been fired by clients. Both of those firings cost me money, but one probably eliminated a lot of stress!

If you’re feeling fatigued by any of your HR or Talent vendors ask yourself some questions:

  • Did I do everything I can to make this solution work?
  • If we became a super user of our current tech would this tech work for us like we need?
  • Can we live without this solution? Short and Long-term?
  • Am I making the best resource decision for the organization or just making my life easier?
  • Will the state I’m in right now, happen again with my next vendor? Why or why not?

We love to believe our vendor is the issue, and many times they are, but also many times they aren’t!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Oleeo_ – Talent Intelligence to Unleash Your Recruiting Potential

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the newly rebranded Applicant Tracking System, Oleeo. Oleeo is the former WCN ATS product and they have a long and successful history mostly working with European customers.

Oleeo is a global ATS designed for high volume hiring and has built-in event management which makes it an incredible ATS choice for those organizations that do a ton of campus hiring, or other types of high volume-type hiring events.

Oleeo has some great relationships within the banking and finance industry, and that speaks to how well the software works when it comes to working in industries where it’s critical to do well when competitively hiring on campus. I would foresee health systems and tech companies that do a bunch of hiring on campus would also have a high interest in looking at this ATS. Oleeo also has high-volume retail users as well that are finding success with the system.

Organizations that need to process a lot of potential candidates quickly, now have a system that helps filter the best to the top, and makes it a personal candidate experience. Oleeo delivers really well on all those factors.

What I like about Oleeo:

  • Oleeo is built for hiring events first and foremost. While most ATSs are weak at this, thus most organizations have to have a separate college hiring system, Oleeo delivers a top-notch experience for both candidates and recruiters in planning and executing career fairs.
  • Candidate self-service is a big piece of Oleeo allowing candidates to pre-register for events, schedule their interview time, etc.
  • Oleeo has a built-in CRM tool that allows recruiting teams to build out candidate campaigns by a number of criteria, track key information around these groups, and built automated actions based on the response.
  • Predictive screening technology is also built into Oleeo based on 120 different attributes Oleeo allows you to put an unlimited number of candidates through pre-hire screening, delivering the highest rated candidates immediately to your recruiters to continue on in the workflow.
  • Interview management is also another strength of Oleeo that allows you to customize an interview workflow based on if/then to automate much of the process and again allow candidates to manage some of this process on their own.

Oleeo is basically a new ATS to the U.S. market, but not new when it comes to its ability to know and understand all the complexities of global high-volume hiring, as WCN has been doing this since the mid-90’s outside the U.S.

I like Oleeo brings an enterprise level ATS feel to a marketplace that has been long dominated by an under-powered Taleo, primarily. While the CRM is still light on functionality, and SMS is only push at this time, the Oleeo team has shown it has the experience and knowledge to build out an end-to-end recruitment platform for the global market.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Talentegy – it’s Google Analytics for your Talent data!

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Today on The Weekly Dose I take a look at the talent experience management (TXM) technology Talentegy. Did you catch the new marketing phrase they created!? TXM? I love it. It’s just like the made-up marketing phrase Candidate Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) that have swept the world!

So, what the heck is Talentegy?

In simple terms, Talentegy is a technology that is constantly tracking and measuring the experience of those candidates, and employees, who are applying to your jobs, working within your talent and HR systems, etc. This is important because we tend to always have little things going on and we want to know about them as soon as possible.

Maybe it’s a broken link in a job description, or some part of your application process or pre-hire assessment is causing candidates to not finish, etc. Talentegy can show you where this is happening and instantly alert your team of what’s going on. It can also show you how to improve the entire experience so you get more people through the process.

The best piece is, like Google Analytics, there isn’t any integration needed and it can work with all of the major ATSs, CRMs, and talent management systems. It’s a pretty simple process of placing some tags in the pages being visited and you instantly start collecting data of what’s going on in your process in real-time (FYI – the dumbest person on your IT team can handle this, or your ATS/CRM provider can walk you through this!).

What I like about Talentegy: 

– The system will record video of the actual problem so you can see exactly what a candidate or an employee is experiencing. This is important because so often the explanation we get is difficult to decipher what is really happening. With Talentegy you get to see exactly what is happening.

– Talentegy built a ‘Slack’ like communication platform with the dashboard so you can instantly communicate both internally and externally with those who need to know. IT, HRIS, your vendors, are all on the same message flow so you can quickly diagnose the issue, decide who’s responsible, and follow up, all on one platform so nothing falls through the cracks.

– Talentegy also gives you the power to survey through popups at any point in your process. Find a friction point? Drop in a survey and find out how candidates or employees would make it better.

– Simplicity. While almost any technology you would use takes weeks, months to get up and running, Talentegy can be done almost immediately, and they’ll get you up and running for free so you can check it out! They do that because they know once you see what it can do, you’ll buy it!

Most of the technology I review is what I would call ‘Big Decision’ technology. It’s not something you’re going to demo and then just go “yeah, let’s do this!” You have to bring in other people, departments, etc. If you’re an HR or Talent Leader, Talentegy is one of those technologies that you demo and just make the immediate decision to start using, without consulting anyone!

Like most data driven technologies there is one thing you really need to make this valuable and that’s data! That means you probably have an organization of 1,000 ee’s or more, or you could be smaller but hiring a ton. Basically, you just need enough data to gain better insights. The cost isn’t really the issue, because I found Talentegy to be very cost effective for what you get.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Does This Sweater Make Me Look Fat?

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I’ve got a bit of a problem.

I love buying new clothes, jackets, and shoes. You see, I’m kind of built like a fire hydrant. Picture a fire hydrant in your mind right now. Not very sexy is it!

So, I compensate, not by eating a great diet and working out constantly! Hell, no! That’s really hard work. I compensate by buying more clothes that I think will make me look skinnier than I really am!

Do you do this?

We do this in HR and Talent Acquisition all the time!

Just replace ‘clothes’ with ‘technology’. Yeah, we suck at HR, so instead of going out and fixing our foundational issues, let’s go buy a new pretty technology to cover up all of this fat, err incompetence!

Yeah, baby, with this new shiny technology no one will ever suspect we really suck as bad as we do!

The new stuff we buy screws with our heads. Every new shirt and sports coat I buy, I look at myself, and go “oh yeah! you’re going to look so awesome when you wear this!” Then I get on stage and someone tags me in a picture and I want to starve myself for a year!

Buying new stuff to make us look better than we are is the biggest lie we tell ourselves, ever.

So, before you go buy that new technology to fix all of your problems of why you suck at HR or TA, you have to know one truth. That truth is technology doesn’t fix why you suck. If you suck, great technology will make you suck faster. Bad technology will still make you suck, you just won’t be as fast as sucking!

Just like clothes won’t make me skinnier, new technology won’t make your function perform better.

 

The Talent Fix – My new book is now available to purchase! If your organization is having trouble hiring, this is a must buy! 

Talent Fix Review: My mom says it’s her favorite book that I’ve written!!! (I’ve only written one book!)

Purchase The Talent Fix now! 

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: CareerBuilder Partners with Google Cloud Job Discovery

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The week on The Weekly Dose I dig into CareerBuilder’s partnership with Google Cloud Job Discovery and let you know what it means to you as a Recruiting Pro and Leader!

CareerBuilder was one of the early partners with Google in a number of fronts. When Google for Jobs launched, CB was the first TA technology company to work directly with Googles team to build out their job schema and make sure that CB users who were posting jobs on CB would have those jobs show up high on GFJs search results.

CareerBuilder is pushing the relationship even farther with Google and they recently released a case study showing the advantages CB clients are receiving since CB started using Google Cloud’s Job Discovery A.I. and Machine Learning technology. Google wrote a great piece on this relationship and the advances CB users are seeing, check it out! 

What does all of this mean to us (Employers posting jobs on CB or employers thinking of using CB)? 

– Google knows what and how candidates want to search for jobs, so they built a tool to make this a better experience for candidates. CareerBuilder has also been in the game of wanting to deliver a great search experience for candidates coming to their site to look for jobs as well. When they both came together, it was pretty apparent that CB’s job seekers could benefit from Google’s Job Discovery search.

– CB started testing out Google’s Job Discovery as the backbone of their job search and some amazing things started happening:

  • 40% more views of jobs on CB’s Talent Networks
  • Candidate application quality increased by 18%
  • 41% increase on actions by candidates on their saved job search results

Why!? 

The A.I. and machine learning component of Google’s Job Discovery that is being used by CareerBuilder candidates actually improves the job search for candidates. Less false positives, the technology learns which jobs candidates are clicking on and applying for and then automatically will put more jobs that are closer to the ones you want in front of them.

What you see is less bad volume of candidates, but an increase in qualified candidates for your jobs. So, the partnership of CB and Google has reduced the amount of work it takes a recruiter on any given job by lowering the number of candidates who don’t fit your job and increasing the number that actually does.

One other driving factor around increased quality and relevance is CB’s and Google’s focus on mobile first location search. Most people want to be able to search for jobs based on commutable distance. Prior to Google’s Job Discovery search, this wasn’t as specific as most of us would want, but now people can easily search by very exact distances and times it takes to get to work.

CareerBuilder has been beaten up recently in the media with some moves they’ve made to focus themselves on the future and how things were handled, but in the end, it’s not show-friends, it’s show business, and CB is making the right business moves to ensure their clients are getting what they need.

Go read the Google Case Study, it’s a fascinating piece on why you might want to start looking at investing some of your job posting dollars away from Indeed and test out the Google Job Discovery tech that CareerBuilder is using!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

How Hard is it for Candidates to Find Your Jobs on your Career Site?

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The other day I got contacted by a large enterprise level TA leader. She had a major problem about to hit them. They had to hire thousands of people and she was hoping I could tell her which chatbot to use to help them.

Sweet! I love TA Tech, let’s talk about some of my favorites!

I pulled up their corporate site because I wanted to see what ATS they used and just check out the career site.

This is where I found her first problem! The first problem was I had to search to find out how to find their jobs! Like four clicks deep into the corporate website before I could even begin a job search, let alone apply.

There is only one right place for candidates to find jobs on your corporate website. It’s at the top of the page, the same exact place where you find things like: Home, Company, Products, Search, etc. If you’re making candidates scroll down to the bottom of your site, you don’t care about talent. If you’re making candidates search to find “Careers” on your site, you don’t care about talent.

You know who you are. “Well, Tim, we put “careers” under the “About” tab because we want our products front and center!” Nice! So, those candidates you desperately need now have to go on a snipe hunt to find out how to apply for your jobs!? How’s that working out for you? Or you make the scroll down fourteen feet to the bottom where you put things like “investor relations”, “contact information”, “press inquiries”, “Legal Notices”, etc.

The most innovative companies in talent acquisition have ‘finding’ their jobs down to one click. You pull up their page and it says something like “Jobs!” or “Apply Now” or “Careers” in the top right corner of the website. Sometimes there is even a button along in the corner to make it even easier for candidates to spot.

When a candidate clicks on that top of the page, right corner link they are instantly taken to a page that allows them to search. No more clicking around, no more searching for how the hell they can find which jobs you have open. It’s right there. One click.

It’s pretty common for me to visit a large brand corporate homepage and it will take me 4-7 clicks before I can actually search their jobs. If you ever want to know where TA falls in the order of importance in your organization, just count the clicks. The more you click, the less influence TA has in your organization. It’s fairly unscientific, but I find this little measure almost always works out.

So, my new TA friend was looking for a chatbot but didn’t really need a chatbot. Well, at least not yet. Foundational blocking and tackling of TA can do wonders for helping you hire. If it takes me four or five clicks to find your jobs, you’re in trouble. If you make me search around your site on how the hell I apply, I leave and go someplace else.

I know that 90% of know this,  but almost 50% of organizations can’t figure this out. Why? Because we as TA leaders aren’t going to our executive team and telling them, “Hey, idiots! We are losing 67% of our candidate traffic because some moron in marketing doesn’t like how “Jobs” looks on our corporate website in the righthand upper corner! Can we stop being stupid and do the right thing?”

I know selling our stuff is important, but if we can’t fill jobs, we won’t have stuff to sell. I know putting our employment brand out front is important, but why are we creating a search game for candidates to solve to just apply for our jobs?

Simple Tip to Share with Your Executive Team: Hiding how a candidate can apply for our jobs, doesn’t actually help us fill jobs! 

So, where do candidates find your jobs on your corporate homepage?

Things I Learned at Greenhouse OPEN #ghOPEN

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Hey gang!

I’m on the road this week at the Greenhouse OPEN. What’s Greenhouse? It’s one of the top ATSs on the planet – but you already know that if you read my blog!

The Greenhouse OPEN is basically their user conference, where Greenhouse users and those considering using Greenhouse come together as Talent Acquisition Pros and Leaders to experience great recruiting related content from a corporate TA point of view.

I love attending conferences with great TA content, and Greenhouse has done a really great job growing this conference to 1,000 participants. You know it’s good TA content when it doesn’t matter if you use Greenhouse or not, to get a ton out of the sessions.

Also, being that Greenhouse is designed for corporate TA, and not having third-party recruiters in the room, you really get a ton of great sharing and conversation taking place between attendees.

Here’s some cool stuff I learned:

– Some organizations are using very specific, un-produced video, to source candidates! How? Instead of sending a candidate a blind email or text, the recruiter takes their iPhone and records a quick video to the specific person they want and sends them the link to watch. “Hey Tim, I found you and want to talk to you about…Here’s why you would be great…Etc.” The response rate from the organization using this is super high, as you can imagine.

– Organizations are worried about Recruiter Experience! You know what, you do not want your hiring process to suck for candidates. We all get that 100%! But, what about your recruiters? Does it suck to work as a recruiter in your environment? If it does, that might be worse for your organization in attracting talent, then if your CX sucks. We tend not to even give this concept of Recruiter Experience any thought at all, but we should!

– Across all industries, text response rates from candidates are running 70%-ish, in all kinds of roles from hourly to salaried, tech to healthcare. Texting candidates keep coming up as either something organizations can’t live without, or something they are not using, and don’t want to use. I find this really strange, as it seems like it’s a form of communication that everyone is using. Being able to have etiquette and rules of engagement are important.

– Not all employee referrals are created equal. Great employees are more likely to refer great referrals. Bad employees are more likely to refer bad employees. You don’t want bad referrals, so it’s best to have a program that allows you to segment and know who is providing you with your best referrals. Manually, this is difficult, but with technology like Greenhouse and Teamable, you can start to get a real sense of who should be referring more in your environment.

I’m going to keep advocating that you find ways to spend more time with other TA pros and leaders. We learn from each other when we are in safe, and encouraging environments to share. Does that have to be at a conference in New York? Nope. It’s great if you get the chance, but you can also start or find local outlets for groups of peers to get together.

I love that Greenhouse and others are showing the industry the way, and I thank them for bringing so many great and giving TA pros together. Such a powerful way to learn and develop as a professional!