Digital Recruiting: a new ERA of talent attraction

As technology changes and more users are spending more time online, the recruitment world must adapt to those changes too.

Recruiters must be up-to-date knowing how to use the new platforms the web 2.0 is offering, and at the same time be on there. In fact, there have been a rising to an astounding 94% of recruiters using digital platforms to hire candidates over the last six years.

Studies show many shocking statistics on how social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are taking over the recruitment workforce.

• 73% of 18–24 years olds found their last jobs online through social networks.
• LinkedIn is the most popular social networking site used for recruitment purposes with 94% of recruiters maintaining profiles, in comparison to 66% on Facebook and 54% on Twitter.
• Although 94% of recruiters have LinkedIn profiles, only 36% of job candidates have their own profiles.

Changing Tech and the Impact On Job Seeking

Job boards are still a popular resource for candidates. However, research shows their utility and ROI are being challenged. As the way people access and use the internet has evolved since the 2000s, so has candidate journey has totally changed. The graphic below shows how the process has changed through the time.

Digital recruiting is not just about having a career site with job listings or posting jobs as update on social media.

Nowadays the talent acquisition’s success rely on optimizing the approach and increase the candidate conversions by giving value and innovation through the services a certain company is providing. Also, there are many factors to take into consideration.

#1. Google as a tool to answering questions

In fact, a study from CareerBuilder showed that 73% of job seekers now start their search on Google. Meaning that if they don’t find any information about you on Google, your reputation will drop down significantly and the chance to not convert them is very high.

#2. The mobile job seeker

Mobility has become so integrated in our daily lives that one might not even remember a time when there were no mobile devices. It definitely makes sense to understand and include mobile recruitment as an important part of a company’s digital recruitment strategy for reeling in the right candidates.

In his article on job search and mobile devices, Jorgen Sundberg (@jorgensundberg) mentions that 86% of job seekers claim to use their smartphones to look for a job, while 65% use it to seek available positions. Clearly, your digital recruitment strategy should ensure that potential candidates are able to easily access your company’s career site, job listings as well as any other content through any mobile device.

#3. Yelpification

Yes, because job seeker are not only looking for information regarding the company itself and whether it is present online or not, but they are also looking for reviews either about your clients or about your company. Job seekers now look to employer review sites like Glassdoor to guide their decisions over where to apply.

#4. Content Overwhelming

Digital marketing means also that to be competitive, and to stand out from the crowd, every company has to create their own content. The result is an incredible amount of content out there, also interesting ones, and of varying quality. In many cases, though, job seeker are more likely willing to opt-in and receive some targeted or personalized content rather than being pushed onto those contents via advertising or other means. The idea is to attract them by providing values and not spamming the internet with your brand without consistency in your online strategy.

The New Candidate Journey

The journey has changed and there are three distinct phases most job seekers experience today: discover, market, and convert.

There are several interesting factors and similarities between these three phases and how digital marketers think of the buyers’ journey and the concept of inbound marketing. Digital marketers are trying to create an experience that entices potential buyers to come to their sites or follow their social channels, nurturing them along the way until they’re ready to buy.

Recruiting is becoming very similar. This isn’t a coincidence — in fact, it coincides with the rise in the popularity of the term and practice of recruitment marketing.

It’s no coincidence that the rise of recruitment marketing as a discipline is closely following the concepts of inbound marketing

Discover

Job seekers, the same as the buyers, will start their journey on the web researching information on Google, social media, and rating sites. The variables that go into this phase alone have completely transformed organizations’ top-of-the-funnel recruiting strategies. Therefore, is more important than ever that companies consider and develop a proper strategy to improve the 7 points illustrated in the image above.

Market

After job seekers arrive at the career site, is time to think about how to make this visitor becoming a lead. Digital marketers understand they’re not going to convert every buyer in their first interaction, and recruiters need to think the same way about candidates. You need to strategize ways to be there for the best talent where and when they are, and know which device they’re using during their moment. This is where the nurturing phase of the new candidate journey comes into play.

Deploying tools like job alerts and talent networks on their career sites, enabling job seekers to organically become part of their talent pipeline and enter into their nurturing efforts. Also, opt-in is working well to nurturing potential candidates during their journey within the funnel. That’s where content and email marketing can deliver major returns to key metrics like cost-per-applicant, cost-per-hire, time-to-fill, and candidate quality.

Convert

When candidates are ready to apply, which could be on their first visit to the site or after visiting over time via nurture marketing, companies have to be prepared to impress them with:

• Responsive web design optimized for any device
• Simple search with filtering, geo-location, and type-ahead capabilities
• Apply flow progress bars and application saving capabilities
• Multiple resume upload options and social integration

The application process and the application experience are perhaps the most important areas of improvement because in the end if the candidate is not able to apply or he/she finds it too difficult, the chance to lose this candidate is quite high.

The benefits of using these social media platforms for recruitment:

• 73% of job applications have been successfully filled through the uses of social media.
• 42% of companies say that the quality of their candidates has improved.
• 20% of companies say that it takes less time to hire their candidates when using social media.
• 31% of companies that used social media to recruit saw an increase of employee referrals.
• 65% of companies that used social media to recruit compensate employees for referrals.

Conclusion

The candidate journey has changed and is keeping changing following trends and innovations. Job seekers’ changing behaviors and preferences for finding information.

This two factors alongside with all the above should completely change the way recruiters and talent acquisition leaders think about connecting with top talents. Also, the tools required to effectively pull in, nurture, and convert talent has evolved. With all of the changes mentioned above on both the candidate and recruiting sides of the equation, the idea of optimizing candidate conversions has taken on a whole new meaning. Talent acquisition leaders must be thinking about the new candidate journey from a holistic perspective.

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Originally published at www.adrianocorso.net.