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Getting Candidates to Fall in Love with You: Part 2
In part 1 http://recruitinggeek.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/get-candidates-to-fall-in-love-with-you/ of this blog post, I covered the 5 of the 10 ways to get candidates to love you. Here is the 2nd part of this installment…enjoy!
Show candidates the jobs you hire for even if they are not open
If your company sells a product and you are currently out of stock, do you stop marketing that item or offering it to customers? NO!!!! It’s time for us in recruiting to do the same. Today, the only time most companies are marketing jobs is when they are open. Develop job profiles and put them on your career site. This keeps candidates interested in your organization and allows you to pipeline talent!
Make it easy for candidates to learn about your organization & roles
Most Career sites are updated every 6 months. This leads to old, stale content being used to entice your candidates to apply. Here are just a few ideas which you can deploy at little to no cost.
Video – “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million.” You can use video to highlight your company culture, employee testimonials, video job descriptions and fun events.
Blog – Companies that blog in recruiting have increased the traffic to their Career site by 38%! There is no better way to keep your recruiting content fresh than that of a blog. Things to speak to are culture, events, projects, special initiatives, featured hiring managers, etc.
Facebook – Get the word out and have conversations. Let people ask questions, feature your special projects, contests & events, highlight new jobs, etc.
Career Site – Take a look at your Career site…is it lacking graphics? Video? Now take a look at what marketing has done with your website to sell your products or services. Much of that can be leveraged in recruiting…why reinvent the wheel when you can partner with marketing.
Career Chat – This is an interactive webinar featuring one of your employees speaking about themselves, projects they work on, culture, etc. This is a great way to allow your employees to sell candidates and for candidates can ask questions that may turn them from tire-kickers to action-takers.
Being in more channels makes your more visible
Why are Microsoft & Taco Bell are such recognized brands? Because everywhere you turn they are in front of you. Most companies I speak with only advertise jobs on their career site and a couple job boards. It’s time to identify where your key demographic of candidate is spending their time online and build a multi-channel strategy. Being in more places makes you more visible, relevant and increases your brand awareness. As the old saying goes, it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
Candidate experience = Your Brand
Candidates who have a good experience interacting with your organization online are more likely to come back and refer their friends. Things to look for are…
- If I find your job, is it a 1 click apply process?
- Are there other actions I can take to engage with you besides applying for a job?
- Is your career site all about me the candidate, and not about you? (i.e. Candidates are busy and want to find a job that fits them and quickly apply…they won’t read about your benefits, culture, etc. until after they are selected for an interview)
- If I apply, will you keep in future contact with me? (This is what a Talent Community is for!)
Enable candidates to engage directly with recruiters
The biggest complaint amongst candidates is that applying to a job is a black hole. When I apply to your job, I have no idea who’s going to look at my resume, what the next steps are and in many cases I may not hear from you for weeks. Candidates are not able to connect with recruiters because they cannot find their contact information on your Career site. Why do we as companies hide our recruiters?! That’s like hiding our sales people from our clients or prospects. Let’s start by making it easy for candidates to connect with recruiters. Our clients create landing pages for the recruiters. These pages highlight what roles recruiter is responsible for, their contact information and ways for the candidate to connect with them with a click of a mouse. Don’t worry about your recruiters being bombarded by candidates…we have not seen this happen with our clients who have created “Recruiter Pages.” The advantages to you are happier more connected candidates and will turn “tire kickers” into “action takers.”
Get Candidates to Fall In Love With You: Part 1
I always find it interesting when clients say, “We want to be on Twitter, Facebook, etc.” When I ask them why, the reasons vary : “Because our competitors are”, “My candidates are on these sites”, and “I want to enhance my branding” are all popular answers. Rather than belabor why you need to be on these sites or how to launch your strategy, I want to speak to you about how to get candidates to fall in love with you. These tools are a really a means to an end which is to…Acquire Talent!!
As your reading this, I imagine that your marketing department is cooking up new ways to win your customers’ hearts and minds, and thus turn them into raving fans of your company and brand. The strategies and solutions they are deploying can be used in recruiting. I’m going to cover this topic in depth and help you turn your candidates into raving fans of your organization. The best part is, many of the strategies I discuss can be deployed at minimal cost!
This blog is the subject of a webinar we are hosting on May 18th: 10 Ways to Get Candidates to Fall in Love with You. To Register, click here! https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/830566784. Heres a sneak peak at what you’ll learn on the webinar:
Make it easy for candidate to apply to your jobs
This means both on and off your Career Site. I want you to go to your main careers home page and find & apply a job and count the clicks. Within 3 clicks candidates should be able to apply. Did this happen for you? Most likely, no. But if it did, congrats, you are half way there!
Next, go to where you post your jobs online (i.e. job boards, job aggregators, etc.). Find a job and see how many clicks it takes you to get to the screen in your ATS where you either login or start the application process. What was the process like? Did the job board make you give them your information before getting to your career site? If the process was less than desirable, think about how your candidate feels!
Stay tuned! My next blog will cover the remaining ways to get candidates to fall in love with you . To hear the rest sooner than later, register for the webinar. See you then!
