White Paper Recruiting Game- Changing Talent Target the Best in an Ever-Changing Talent Landscape
Talent acquisition continues to be one of the most urgent issues for companies, and the pressure to have the right people in place has created an intensely competitive hiring environment. Yet, hiring initiatives continue to suffer because, in many companies, talent acquisition is an afterthought. The talent acquisition industry has evolved and, with this evolution, candidate behavior has changed as well. Not convinced? Take a look at the evidence. The high adoption of social media skyrocketed over the past 10 years, with Facebook now topping 1.4 billion users, LinkedIn with nearly 350 million users, and Twitter with over 280 million users. Additionally, the proliferation and continued adoption of smartphones and tablets has impacted the way job seekers behave as well, with nearly 60% of job seekers using their mobile device to search for jobs. This suggests that recruitment is undergoing a fundamental shift, and the companies that don t keep up with technologies like social and mobile and adapt to this new landscape risk missing out on game-changing talent. In this white paper, icims lays out the most important trends, their impact on the hiring process, and best practices for hiring in an ever-changing recruiting landscape. Engaging Today s Job Seeker Make the Application Process Short and Sweet Job seeker drop-off due to lengthy and complicated applications or unclear job descriptions reached an all-time high in 2014. Over 68% of job seekers who have abandoned a job application have done so because the application process was too long or required too much information. 1 Specifically, 30% of applicants abandoned the job applications because the application was too long, and 38% abandoned the application because the required information was not readily available. In order to decrease application abandonment, it is important to make sure that the job descriptions on your career portal are engaging, yet short and to the point. Further, when an interested job seeker begins to fill out an application, the application process should not require lengthy steps that will cause them to lose interest halfway through the process. Employment Branding Should Play a Key Role in Your Recruiting Strategy In another icims survey, 78% of candidates agreed that the professionalism, look, and feel of a company s career portal is at least moderately if not highly important in their ultimate decision to apply for the job in question. 2 In short, your career portal becomes an extension of your organization s specific brand identity and provides candidates with easy access to information about your organization and access to currently-open positions. 1. icims Candidate Experience Playbook 2. icims Candidate Experience Playbook
Take into Account the Proliferation of Mobile and Tablet Devices The rise of mobile adoption by job seekers presents a new set of challenges for employers. In order to engage today s job seeker, making sure your career portal is mobile-optimized and candidate-friendly is key. For example, job seekers that visited icims-hosted career portals on a mobile or tablet device increased by 60% in 2014. 3 Fortunately, leading applicant tracking system providers like icims provide career portals that automatically accommodate the most appropriate viewing experience whether the candidate is on a desktop, smartphone, or tablet. This ensures that more candidates will actually stay and apply, versus moving away from the site very quickly. Furthermore, to guarantee a streamlined process for smartphones and tablets, icims allows the candidate to upload resume files from cloud-based storage solutions such as Google Docs and Dropbox. If employers want to win the war for top talent, they must provide a seamless experience between their online site and their mobile presence to attract potential candidates. Companies not already providing a mobile application experience are potentially losing fantastic talent! Now that we ve identified some of the most impactful aspects of the job seeking process, let s explore best practices on how to attract and recruit top talent. How to Recruit Game- Changing Talent Recruiters actively using the best tools and tactics available to them will find themselves in the best possible position to win the war for talent. However, it s important to consider what recruiters should do to achieve this goal. The recruiter s job is to find the best candidate possible, and in order to do that, they will need to understand how to appropriately target their recruitment efforts. For example, nearly half of today s candidates prefer an online application process through a company s career portal over all other means of applying for a job. 4 Means by Which Candidates Prefer to Apply for Jobs 3% 16% 36% 42% Complete an online application or upload a resume Email Traditional Mail In-store Kiosk But in most cases, candidates aren t aware of your company and its openings, and need a little extra help to discover available opportunities. Once you feel confident that your company s career portal offers the best possible candidate experience, you should consider how the candidate will reach your career portal in the first place. The following are the best channels to help drive top talent back to your career portal. Job Board Posting According to icims proprietary research, job boards are the source of the majority of a company s candidates. Therefore, not having a presence on major job boards and job aggregators like Indeed, CareerBuilder, and Monster cuts off a huge pool of potential applicants. 3. icims Top Talent is Mobile. Are You? ebook 4. icims Candidate Experience Playbook
One con to using job boards, however, is the familiar sense of being bombarded with unqualified applications that must be sifted through before reaching top talent, a time consuming and expensive process when recruiting departments try to become more efficient and strategic. What is the source of the majority of your candidates? 39% Job Boards 27% 17% Corporate Employee Career Site Referrals Other Social Media Talent Pools Often, the best way to target specific candidates is by leveraging niche job boards. Niche job boards are generally dedicated to a specific industry or location and often attract higher quality and potentially game-changing candidates. Source effectiveness reports within your applicant tracking system (ATS) also provide extremely helpful insight regarding the job boards that have been most successful for your company in the past. By continuing to post to job boards that have historically been high-performing, and using a job board discovery tool to identify good-fit niche and specialized boards, you will be well positioned to get your posts in front of candidates. 8% 6% 3% Additionally, job boards are one of the most influential sources in capturing candidate attention, and exposure to job board posts often influences the candidate s decision to apply. Today s top talent may see a job post on a job board and feel inspired to do further research. Once a candidate has seen your post, they are far more likely to interact with your career portal, social media pages, and other potential application sources. Social Recruiting in Action In addition to searching on job boards, job seekers are also checking social media sites to research their next career move. With the social media landscape becoming increasingly crowded, automated job distribution tools expedite the social media job posting process. The best automated social job distribution tools also enable your company to leverage employee social networks in addition to your corporate ones thereby increasing valuable referrals. This creates a win-win situation. By automatically sharing jobs to their networks, your current employees effortlessly inform their talented friends about open positions and, depending on your organization s referral programs, may qualify for additional referral incentives. Meanwhile, you benefit from increased visibility with these talented friends; employee referrals are recognized as one of the highest quality sources of hire. 5 5. icims Hiring Insights Proprietary Research
What is the source of your best candidates? 42.5% 32% Employing a recruitment marketing automation tool will engage and nurture those passive candidate relationships. Recruitment marketing automation is an easy way to let candidates express interest in your organization without applying for a specific job. Once you have collected the candidate s contact information, you can use automated email campaigns to nurture a relationship with these talented individuals. These email campaigns help you to build relationships with passive candidates and keep them invested in your company. As they receive ongoing information and attention from your company, candidates will form positive impressions of your employment brand and will be more likely to think of you when they are ready for their next career move. 9% 6.5% 5% 5% Employee Referrals Job Boards Other Corporate Career Site Social Media Talent Pools Recruitment Marketing Automation By constructing tactics to drive interest via social media, job boards, and optimized search results on popular search engines, your organization will ideally drive more qualified, interested applicants to your career portal. However, according to icims proprietary research, approximately 93% of job seekers don t make it past viewing the job description. Often this is because the candidate does not find an open job fitting their skill set or because the candidate is not ready to apply at the moment. Example of an email campaign to passive candidates designed to keep icims top-of-mind for future career moves.
Using Video in Recruitment In recruiting, video is an emerging technology that is providing significant value to companies who choose to take advantage of its benefits. Companies who utilize video in their recruitment process are seeing reduced recruitment travel costs, and higher quality new hires. Better hires means better business results and 81% of organizations with video integrated in their recruitment process improved new hire quality and achieved their organizational goals. 6 Additionally, potential candidates believe in the value of video recruitment solutions. 7 The Value Candidates Perceive in Video Screening 13% 20% 42% 25% Help me stand out among applicants Save time/money Show Creativity Show my work/portfolio Game-changing talent will appreciate that your company is invested in an engaging candidate experience that utilizes the latest and greatest technology. Offering candidates the opportunity to engage in a video screening process will not only save you time, but will also allow game-changing talent to rise to the top. In short, video in the recruitment process has been demonstrated to provide significant value to employers, and candidates agree that video technology will allow them to stand out from the crowd. Best Practices for Targeting the Best Talent There s a revolution in recruiting. The old tools and the status quo no longer work. The disruptive force of technology has permanently changed the way people apply for jobs, forcing employers to change how they approach hiring as well. To get game-changers in front of HR, put better technology and processes behind HR. 1. Engage candidates with attractive employment branding on multiple channels, a simple and pleasant candidate experience, and the ability to accommodate mobile devices during the job search. 2. Utilize multiple channels to attract quality talent to your organization. Sophisticated recruiting strategies incorporate social media, job boards, search engine optimization (SEO), and video. 3. Connect with candidates that are interested in your company but not ready to apply to a job with a recruitment marketing automation tool. These tools can be used to nurture potential applicants with specific company messages around new open jobs, events, employee testimonials, and more. 6. Video Technology and the Modern Recruiting Process 7. icims Candidate Experience Playbook
How icims Can Help icims is the leading provider of talent acquisition solutions that help businesses win the war for top talent. icims empowers companies to manage their entire hiring process within the industry s most robust Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Built on the foundation of a best-to-market talent acquisition software suite, icims PaaS framework, UNIFi, allows employers to expand the capabilities of their core talent acquisition technology by integrating with the largest partner ecosystem in talent acquisition to help them attract, find, screen, and manage candidates. Offering scalable, easy-to-use solutions that are backed by award-winning customer service, icims supports more than 3,500 contracted customers and is one of the largest and fastest-growing talent acquisition solution providers. For more resources visit icims.com/hiring-insights Connect with icims on social media!