Browsed by
Tag: talent acquisition

It’s 2020: Are You Ready to Cross the Talent Chasm?

It’s 2020: Are You Ready to Cross the Talent Chasm?

The Reality of “Workforce 2020”

More than two decades ago, industry researchers and influencers – consultants, universities, the labor census bureau – made bold predictions regarding the massive changes our nation would experience in the next 20 years, referring to the phenomenon as “Workforce 2020”.  These thought leaders reported that the labor pool, which was dominated by white males, would become more demographically diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity and age, ultimately, creating a “minority-majority” workforce.

While these demographic projections have very much come to fruition, no one could have imagined the impact that technology would have on employment today, or could have predicted the effect of social, political, and economic influences on workforce models and behaviors.  Consider trends such as:

Historic low unemployment. Digital transformation. Skills gaps. Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA). Globally connected work communities. Cultural diversity. Gig economy. Millennial workplace demands. Workforce of the future.

To name a few.

These forces are very real and, as a result,  are keeping CEOs and CHROs up at night in this tight labor market. In the Conference Board’s C-Suite Challenge 2019™, more than 800 CEOs surveyed reported that talent acquisition and retention was their highest internal concern; while The Hackett Group 2019 CHRO Key Issues Study found that HR leaders have added the ability to address talent and critical skills shortages to their plate of top improvement priorities, but have not been able to give this crucial area the attention it deserves.

The Shift to Modern Talent Acquisition Approaches

As we enter a new decade, these talent challenges will quickly become more profound, since we will quickly move from trends to reality and organizations will feel the financial impact of unhealthy talent pipelines and unfilled critical roles. As HR, Talent and Recruiting professionals, we can no longer depend on the inefficiencies of a linear requisition-to-hire process. In fact, only 6 percent of respondents to the Deloitte 2019 Global Human Capital Trends survey believed their recruitment function processes and technologies were best-in-class, while 81% believed they were standard or below standard.

As a result, HR and Talent leaders are entertaining modern approaches to talent acquisition to broaden their talent pools; to better nurture candidate relationships and connect with prospective employees; to shrink the time-to-hire to avoid losing skilled talent to other opportunities and competitors during the recruiting cycle; and to build their employment brands.  As organizations compete for the same top talent, their recruiting tactics will need include next-gen execution strategies.

Watch-list of Talent Trends

 Some trends to watch out for in 2020 include…

  • Alternative interviewing techniques, incorporating live video and on-demand video interview technology to improve speed, quality and the candidate experience
  • Recruitment automation to eliminate waste and improve processes and productivity such as screening, scheduling, and feedback loops
  • Collaborative recruiting to identify candidates via a combination of traditional and new sources that build talent networks and communities to sustain a healthy and diverse pipeline
  • Online structured interviews to accelerate interviewer competence and consistency, while ensuring equity in the process
  • Blended workforce models, including accessing freelance talent, to allow for efficient scaling up and down
  • Personal assistants and chatbots that create an on-demand, personalized candidate experience

With the war for talent at its all-time peak, it is not enough to simply refresh existing processes; it is time for organizations to reinvent their talent acquisition strategies. By leveraging modern tools and technologies, recruiting organizations can identify, access, and engage the right talent with speed and agility.

Share Your Talent Acquisition Plans for 2020!

What plans do you have to enhance your talent acquisition process? What outcomes are you trying to achieve? Take our poll to build cross-industry knowledge of the top next-gen recruiting strategies!

Click here to take our quick poll

4 Ways to Increase Candidate Engagement in Higher Ed

4 Ways to Increase Candidate Engagement in Higher Ed

Don’t miss out on a Nobel because of bad process

Higher education institutes have always grappled with long hiring processes. Of course we’d like it to be faster, but we also recognize the search process as inherently longer because of the nature of the position. Each search is conducted with careful consideration and the hope that taking time to make the right decisions is mutually beneficial for new hires and the institutions. That said, it’s difficult to maintain candidate engagement throughout lengthy decisions. Here’s a few ways to cut down on the “black hole” effect. Don’t lose your hires because of bad processes because you’ll be kicking yourself if you lose a candidate and see them winning a Nobel prize at another school a decade down the road.

 

1. Be thoughtful when building an application process.

Ensure your application process is flexible and includes only the information necessary to make a decision. Too much information required upfront can discourage some of the best candidates from applying. For example, references are often not required during the initial round of review. Requesting more information from candidates who are qualified later in the process will keep them engaged if they see your process as logically sequenced and relevant. Essentially, don’t push away smart candidates with dumb process setting.

 

2. Manage Expectations!

Be upfront with your candidates about the timeframe. You may have a period of when applications are accepted before anyone at all gets reviewed. You may have expected delays such as breaks or other known periods where the hiring team will be busy or unavailable. Look at your calendar, assess, and establish a realistic timeframe for your candidates by attaching dates (or date ranges) to each application step and review.

 

3. Communication is your friend!

According to a recent hiring survey conducted by Robert Half, “when faced with a lengthy hiring process, 39 percent of survey respondents lose interest and pursue other roles, while 18 percent decide to stay put in their current job.”

Use your institutions marketing software or the thousands of free or paid tools you can find on the internet to set up an email sequence. Letting candidates know you are still interested in them as well as providing more details about your Institution and community to keep them engaged. In the final rounds or if it comes down to the candidate choosing your institution rather than you choosing them, hosting events and tours can be another great way of keeping candidates engaged.

 

4. Have a personal touch

Sending updates via personal secured video messages are easy and cost effective – sometimes free! Vidyard Go Video for example is sleek and simple way to communicate with candidates or employees via a personalised video.

Simply record a quick video that personal and effective. This tool also tracks when candidates or employees actually watch the video and how many times viewed.

 

Check out EasyHire.me – by far the best platform for integrating video interviewing, live or recorded, into your hiring process for faster acquisition times and consistently higher quality candidates.

 

Jeremy Hoffman
Vice President, Sales
EasyHire

Human Resources Today


Scaling Fast? 3 Questions HR Can’t Afford to Forget

Scaling Fast? 3 Questions HR Can’t Afford to Forget

Don’t forget the essentials – especially in times of fast-and-furious growth

Job interviews can be a jarring, if not a downright anxiety-provoking event for many, especially when it’s not for a mere ‘job,’ but for the brave next step in a candidate’s career. Depending on the position, interviews can be high stakes for candidates and hiring managers alike. With recruiting agencies, advertisements, time spent on training, cost of low productivity, possible upfront moving costs and even hiring bonuses, the wrong decision on a hire can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Unstructured interviews with a lack of consistent questions can sometimes have HR and hiring managers forgetting the most basic questions:

 

-Can you do the work?

-Will you like the position and bring your best in every day?

-Will you fit in with the company?

 

These are, of course, the very basics. There are thousands of articles and blogs containing the words: “Top Interview Questions” and most questions do assess one of these things. However, companies of every size need to be cognizant that gaps can start growing if they lack quality HR processes. Make sure to having screening tools, consistent interview techniques, and collaboration processes. For example, an enthusiastic ‘thumbs up’ from the department head should not be the ultimate decider in the hiring of a candidate.

Finally, I’d be an irresponsible blogger if I didn’t mention EasyHire. Which, by total coincidence has sponsored this blog space (too weird!) This software is used by HR departments and staffing professionals to screen large pools of candidates with intuitive video interviewing technology. 

 

One last thing: for job seekers reading this, I think these questions are just as valuable. If you don’t know the answers to these questions with regards to companies you’ve applied for, maybe you should find out!

 

–The EasyHire Team

Human Resources Today

3 Surefire ways to ensure candidate drop off

3 Surefire ways to ensure candidate drop off

Who are you? What do you do?

The best candidates are aligned with your mission but how can you ensure the candidate is on board with your goals if they don’t know what they are. The term elevator pitch is often used indicating you have 30 seconds to tell someone what you do and why it’s important and what’s in it for them. Too often you have job descriptions that are written by the legal department. In that case, the candidate is going to judge you not a great place to work and move on. Your brief statement of who you are and what you are trying to do and how the candidate will play a role should be the first paragraph vs. can lift 50lbs, can work weekends etc.

Broken Connections

A link that takes the candidate to your home page of your website or at best /careers is a surefire way to ensure some of the best candidates to abandon. The candidate ideally should be able to go directly the application process right from the source for the job advertised. You should be tracking how many views you are getting vs. applicants. This will give you an idea if you are hitting your conversion benchmark or if something is off the will give you a heads up that something may need to be tweaked.

No credit needed!

An expression of interest in a job is not a mortgage application. You need to ensure you convert the best candidates as soon as possible. The best candidates don’t have an afternoon to fill out their full employment history (which should never be required if the candidate has a resume), the reason for leaving and their home address for the last 7 years. Ideally, you should capture their Linkedin profile and a few questions to qualify. With a combination of smart precise screening and on-demand video interviewing you can have high-quality candidates for the manager to review in no time.

EasyHire.me Job Link

EasyHire.me Job Link

We have taken on the challenge of simplifying the workflow for prospecting candidates and further improve your easy hire experience.

Our approach combines two distinct ideas that we have been hearing from you –  provide actionable content for candidates and set up self-service workflows to deal with scale.

You can now create a public link to your EasyHire.me job posting and use it in all your job board postings, social media campaigns, and even email messages. Candidates will be able to click to take an On Demand interview immediately and not have to wait for you to schedule one. You also get notified on your Slack channel and Email when candidates submit their interviews.

Automate candidate prospecting and pre-screening
Automate candidate prospecting and pre-screening

Candidates visiting your job page can take interview right away!

EasyHire.me Job Link makes prospecting and pre-screening of candidates extremely easy! Cut down time and effort spent on prospecting candidates for your next job and streamline your interview process with EasyHire Job Links!

On-demand video interviews

On-demand video interviews

We’re excited to announce the on-demand video interviewing capability to our EasyHire.me Interview Management Platform. With EasyHire.me on-demand interviews, you can streamline and accelerate your pre-screening process.

On-demand interviews provide significant benefits to the hiring team. By creating a concise list of job-specific questions and inviting a number of promising applicants to record responses on their own time, the hiring team could get valuable pre-screening data to visually compare. This allows the hiring team to shortlist the most qualified applicants, much faster. The hiring team saves valuable time as no scheduling of interviews is required and the same interview recording can be shared and viewed multiple times.

On-demand interviews significantly simplify the hiring process for both the companies as well as the candidates. It is well-suited for even passive candidates as they can fit it into their busy schedules without taking time off work.

Check out our latest press release for more details.

Reclaim your lunch break

Reclaim your lunch break

Have you spent one too many “working lunches” at your desk, just to make time in your schedule for Skype and phone interviews? Have you spent half an hour watching a candidate struggle through your questions, wishing you’d taken a proper lunch and seen the light of day for once during the week instead? Time is money, time is a proper meal. Let EasyHire’s new on-demand interview feature put interviews on your time.

Let EasyHire.me do the hard work for you in the initial screening of candidates. Once you’ve selected a pool of candidates that match your criteria, an email goes out to each interviewee with a link to take EasyHire on-demand interview. There, the candidate will record themselves answering a pre-selected set of questions. You’ll get notified upon the completion of their interview and you and your team can watch at your convenience. You can fast forward and rewind. You can watch early or you can watch late, not having to work around the candidates schedule or different time zones.

Use EasyHire’s interview management to complete the interview process, whether it’s video, phone, or in-person, with those you’ve decided to make it onto the next step in your interview process. Hire great people. Reclaim your lunch break.