Recruit the Best Candidates with New Web Tools
Everything from Facebook to Happy Grasshopper to Interview4
With the relentless evolution of technology, Canadian employers have a fresh crop of web tools to track down the best recruiting prospects in cyberspace and grab la crème de la crème before they get away. The new tools come at an opportune time: The economy is heating up and skilled workers are harder to come by.
Only 35% of jobseekers think it’s tougher to find a job this year than last year, according to the “Jobvite 2015 Job Seeker Nation” survey. The rest believe it’s about the same or easier. Not surprisingly, mobile devices are being viewed as ever-more convenient tools for job hunting — 21% of those surveyed say they look for mobile-friendly websites when looking for a job.
The figure is even higher with Millennials — 47% say they use their mobile devices regularly when hunting for a job. All digital recruiting tools considered, social media is especially hot with 93% of companies surveyed saying they’re currently using or planning to use the medium.
The reason is that social media is paying off — 14% of recruiters say they’re able to fill job openings more quickly using social media. And 13% say the calibre of candidates they find on social media is superior to those they find via other channels.
“Social recruiting provides a way to quickly and easily find those under-the-radar candidates — people who might not be actively looking for a role, but who are a perfect fit for open positions at your company,” says Dan Finnigan, President and CEO of Jobvite.
Facebook is the number one platform that jobseekers turn to when looking for a job. A full 83% of jobseekers cruise Facebook regularly when scouting for a new position, according to the survey.
Recruiters are also using Facebook, as well as other social media sites, to better size up job candidates. A total of 55% of recruiters say they’ve reconsidered a candidate based on what they gleaned from that person’s presence on social media.
Fortunately for Canadian employers looking to up their game in web recruiting, many of the tools have received major upgrades during the past year, making it even easier for employers to win that prime candidate. These include social media sniffers, mobilized career websites, drip email marketing and video interviewing tools.
Moreover, given that everyone and their grandmother is walking around with a smartphone these days, many employers would do well to make their online career pages mobile-friendly.
“Companies are losing potential candidates simply because they are not equipped to receive candidate submissions from mobile devices,” says Mike Pauletich, Vice President at Jibe, a recruiting solutions provider. Essentially, Jibe’s mobile job search and apply solutions rectifies the problem quickly, as does a similar solution from iMomentous.
The beauty of both solutions is that their mobile-friendly career sites are designed to interface seamlessly with the most popular recruiting software — including much of the recruiting software that employers are already using on their PCs or via other services.
Meanwhile, recruiting via email has also been given a facelift with automated drip email programs, like the one offered by Happy Grasshopper. It is designed to court desirable prospects with professionally written pitches that can be released on a timetable.
More employers are also saving valuable time in the recruitment process by relying on video interviewing services that enable them to get their first look at a candidate via smartphone, tablet or desktop PC.
Using the online service Interview4, for example, businesses can conduct a live video interview with a candidate on virtually any computerized device. Or they can leave questions for a candidate, which the candidate then answers with video responses that can be reviewed at the recruiter’s leisure.
Starting at $15/interview using Interview4, similar video solutions are available from Montage interview, InterviewStream, Jobvite Video and Zoom.
“Business communications are typically conveyed by email or printed messages and they typically lack any kind of personal touch,” says Steve Throneberry, InterviewStream’s Chief Revenue Officer. These platforms “make it possible to humanize such messages”.
Of course, many employers may also want to do digital recruiting the old-fashioned way — directly from their company website. For these businesses, there are a plethora of web-based recruiting software solutions — more than 200, in fact. All can be found in a directory on Capterra’s website. Capterra specializes in advising businesses in many countries, including Canada, on software that best fits their needs.
One easy way to sort through the morass of offerings is to check out Capterra’s excellent, free, 20-page eBook, “The Essential Guide to Buying an Applicant Tracking System”. This researched-based guide quickly enables companies to zero in on a handful of highly recommended web recruiting solutions that are perfect for their needs.
Such web recruiting packages can save your business significant time by automating job board posting, resume submission and pre-screening,” says J.P Medved, author of Capterra’s eBook and a specialist in web recruiting solutions.
Most of the solutions enable a company to rank applicants side-by-side, track and schedule interviews, integrate a jobs board/career domain into their website, do pre-employment testing and assessment, and more, Medved says.
Plus, some of the more advanced solutions offer the ability to do candidate background screening, manage referrals and integrate social-media recruiting on the same dashboard as website recruiting.
Here’s a quick peek of what you’ll find in the Capterra directory:
Jobvite Engage: This allows recruiters to use social media to tap into and collect information on “passive job candidates,” or candidates who may not be looking for a job, but are of prime interest to the business. The software collects info on prospects from all over the Internet including a candidates’ Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles, as well as anything they’ve posted on blogs and personal websites.
The software then collates all this info and creates talent profiles for each candidate, which can be referred to time and again. All data is stored in the same format and updated in real-time, saving employers the trouble of having to visit individual social media networks to update the social media profiles they’ve already captured on potential candidates.
Essentially, the package gives employers the ability to maintain talent pools updated in real time, greatly increasing their chances of finding the perfect recruit.
It also comes with a recruitment advertising tool, which enables employers to create custom messages for the tone and feel of each social network. Using the tool, they can create a recruiting message on LinkedIn, for example, that would be much different from the relatively informal message they would want to create for Facebook.
iMomentous Mobile Talent Engagement Platform: This recruitment tool enables employers to quickly create mobile career websites so they can reach out to the mobile phones of prospects.
The resulting mobile websites offers a candidate the convenience of applying for a job using his or her profile on Facebook or LinkedIn and then uploading a resume that is stored on Dropbox or Google Drive.
iMomentous also took great pains to enable its mobile websites to integrate seamlessly with other recruitment packages that employers may already be using, including Taleo, Success Factors, PeopleSoft, Cornerstone, Silk Road and Kinexa.
The service also enables an employer to analyze a candidate’s use of its website, so the employer can find what’s working design-wise on the site — and what needs to be improved.
JIBE Apply App: JIBE creates and hosts mobile recruitment sites for businesses. All JIBE mobile career sites feature large, easy-to-tap buttons and an easy signup process, which enables job applicants to apply via mobile phone. Resumes can be uploaded via Google Docs, LinkedIn or Dropbox.
Like iMomentous, JIBE Apply App serves as an employer’s mobile face on the world and is designed to interface with a business’s already existing, internal recruitment software.
Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan, N.Y.
Originally published in volume 17 issue 6 of Your Workplace magazine.
