To overcome this challenge, top recruiters in 2022 are tracking offer acceptance rate. Using this metric, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your recruitment process and how jobseekers view you in the market. Offer acceptance rate is expressed as a percentage.

It’s the number of offers accepted by candidates divided by the total number of offers made.

In a perfect world, this number would be 100 per cent, with every offer made accepted. But we all know that doesn’t happen, so what does good look like and what should we be aiming for?

The best organisations average an offer acceptance rate of 99 per cent year in, year out.

Why does it matter?

You might be asking yourself why you should care. If an applicant rejects your offer or disappears at the final hurdle, were they really right for the job?

Sadly, it’s often fantastic candidates turning down job offers. With cost per hire in 2022 skyrocketing upwards of $23,000, it’s crucial to track and measure your offer acceptance rate to identify areas for improvement. Tracking this metric can help you understand how candidates are experiencing your company—and examine what you can do better.

What does a good acceptance rate look like?

According to PageUp data, the average acceptance rate in Australia is 95 per cent —meaning for every 100 offers given, 5 people are saying ‘no’. In industries such as finance and hospitality, this has dropped even further recently, with only 92 per cent of candidates saying ‘yes’ to offers in 2022. The best organisations achieve offer acceptance rates of 99 per cent —showing a sizable gap between the top performing organisations and industry benchmarks.

How to improve your offer acceptance rate

1. Focus on candidate experience 

A key factor in whether a candidate accepts an offer is their experience throughout the recruitment journey. A bad experience can have a huge impact, with 49 per cent of jobseekers stating they would reject a job offer after a bad hiring experience.

Giving candidates a great experience can be as simple as asking the right questions in the interview. Get to know candidates on a personal level, and make an effort to understand their needs and goals for their career. This personalisation can have a huge impact on the interaction —and the outcome of your job offer.

2. Become an employer of choice by building your employer brand

Candidates are more likely to accept an offer if they feel aligned with your company. Creating a strong, tangible employer brand can be a great way to increase your offer acceptance rate. Take some time to review your careers site —is it engaging? Does it promote all the company’s perks and benefits? Can jobseekers clearly see your DE&I initiatives? Positioning your company as a place people want to work will only benefit your offer acceptance rate.

3. Provide an authentic view into your company

Jobseekers crave authenticity and transparency —and modern hiring practices need to reflect this. Consider ways to increase transparency in the recruitment process, such as: disclosing salary, benefits or flexible working arrangements upfront. Give candidates the opportunity to ask questions, and connect with current employees.

Tools like employee-generated content allow candidates to interact with current employees, ask questions and receive authentic responses from their peers. They can gain insight into things like company culture, day-in-the-life stories, and the team dynamic.

4. Speed up your processes

It’s important not to waste time in the recruiting process. Candidates in 2022 are juggling multiple offers, and long, drawn-out hiring processes mean you risk losing your first choice, and your silver medalist, too.

Utilise tools like Text Engage to speed up your time-to-hire, and to reach candidates where they are. Streamline your processes with automated communications, and keep your hiring journeys fast and efficient.

Knowing what’s working and what’s not is critical to successful recruiting. Tracking your offer acceptance rate, along with other metrics, means you can fine-tune your recruitment activities and stay ahead of the competition.

This article originally appeared on PageUp as 4 ways to improve your offer acceptance rate and was republished here with permission.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of clients first-hand. 

The post Four ways to improve your offer acceptance rate appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

The demand for talent is greater than the supply, and talent shortages are at a 10-year high. By 2030, it’s predicted more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled because there aren’t enough skilled people to fill them. At the same time, we’re dealing with a Great Resignation boom that’s seen 38 per cent of workers plan to look for a new job in the next 12 months, and a further 39 per cent open to new opportunities.

Against this backdrop, talent teams are getting creative: they’re prioritising candidate experience, employer branding and alternative sourcing channels. It’s no longer enough to sit back and expect candidates to find you: every organisation has to be proactively recruiting if they want to find enough people to fill roles. That means embracing recruitment marketing tactics like targeted careers sites and employer branding content to build robust talent pipelines ahead of hiring demand.

As we head into 2022, companies need to move beyond the pre-pandemic status quo. Here are our top 4 recruitment trends to watch in 2022.

4: Appeal to the new generation of workers

This article originally appeared on PageUp as 9 Recruitment trends for 2022 and was republished here with permission.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of clients first-hand. 

The post Four recruitment trends for 2022 appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

If your goal is to capture high-quality talent, it’s not something you should leave to chance.

More jobseekers than ever are considering DE&I as an important factor in their decision-making process. And organisations that don’t have an inclusive online presence are losing the best talent. In fact, 39% of candidates reject a role or do not proceed with a job application due to a perceived lack of inclusiveness.

If you’re struggling to find the talent you need, it could be that jobseekers don’t think your organisation is supportive of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The solution? Increase your organisation’s ability to hire great talent by authentically showcasing DE&I at each stage of the candidate journey. Positive imagery through your job ads, careers site and other channels will help you tell your DE&I story.

What is DE&I (diversity, equity and inclusion) and why does it matter?

More than a “set and forget” talent acquisition objective, companies with strong DE&I strategies create conditions where creativity, productivity and empathy thrive.

Truly diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces are those with fair processes and an employee value proposition (EVP) that supports all people – regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education, disability, beliefs and other attributes.

The benefits are clear. Gender-diverse companies are up to 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability than those that aren’t. Culturally-diverse companies are up to 33% more likely to outperform their less diverse counterparts. Inclusive teams have also been shown to make faster, better business decisions up to 87% of the time.

So, let’s talk about how the job search has changed and what this means for employer branding.

Today’s jobseekers do their homework

More than 75% of jobseekers state diversity is an important factor for them when evaluating companies and job offers.

Jobseekers search company channels for content that prioritises diversity, like:

• Videos, images and quotes on your website and careers site
• Employee-driven content, including social media posts and profile stories
• Statements about DE&I commitments and policies

That’s right. To attract DE&I jobseekers and diverse employees, companies need to share content that celebrates diversity and is inclusive of all people. Being deliberate with your imagery and language and showing how your company is committing to DE&I can help reinforce your identity as a company for diverse employees.

But remember: if your content doesn’t feature diverse perspectives and representation across all your channels, you run the risk of deterring high-quality candidates from applying. To ensure your content approach is authentic, rather than performative, use real photos of your employees instead of stock images. Candidates want to see content that’s true to a company’s core values and the initiatives it supports.

Are your job descriptions turning away certain applicants?

Often, a few word choices in a job description can unintentionally create bias and limit the size and diversity of your talent pool.

For example, underrepresented groups including women and BIPoC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) workers are less likely than others to identify as “experts” regardless of their experience or seniority. These demographics are also less likely to apply if they feel they don’t meet 100% of the listed role requirements.

The good news: there are plenty of modern solutions and tools available to assist. Online tools like Textio, can produce gender-neutral job listings. These flag areas for improvement by identifying problem spots in your word choices. (Think words like “competitive” which can be skewed towards males.)

While it’s great to use these tools and limit your list of “must haves”, it’s up to recruiters and employer brand specialists to review job ads carefully.

Does your website and careers site celebrate diversity?

Inclusive job descriptions are an important piece of the puzzle in the candidate experience. But the content on your website, homepage and careers site creates the bigger picture.

Let’s consider companies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Women are doing incredible things in these industries and the number of females taking up these careers is on the rise. But a common question we hear from hiring managers is, “How can I attract more women to STEM roles?”

Share employee profile stories and other content that features women in STEM roles. This is a great tactic to organically attract women in these fields.

At the end of the day, there are many content pathways you can take to feature underrepresented groups. (Videos, images and stories all work well!)

Can you share employee quotes from BIPoC C-suite leaders on your careers site? What about a careers video featuring diverse team members in different roles?

Be authentic and creative in choosing the types of content you want to share. The possibilities are endless.

Doing the work is just as important

It takes time, effort and attention to build a diverse workforce. Yet diversity is only one part of DE&I. It’s only meaningful if you have the recruitment process and workplace culture to back it up. Providing employees with a sense of belonging, respect and support helps you retain the diverse talent you’ve worked so hard to recruit.

If there’s work to do, you might need to instil conscious inclusion efforts, like bias training, throughout your workplace. Or, embed diversity practices into your culture and everyday learning experiences. Programs, events, celebrations and mentoring are great avenues for this.

Successful DE&I programs don’t have an expiry date. But they are something to sustain and build on as an organisation. Not only will your continuous effort improve financial outcomes and business performance, it will enable you to attract diverse, high-quality candidates in a tight talent market.

This article originally appeared on PageUp, and was republished here with permission.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of clients first-hand. 

The post What jobseekers really think about your DE&I practices appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

The Great Resignation boom is upon us. After a tumultuous 18 months of layoffs and stand-downs, employees are the ones left holding all the cards. 

Job openings are soaring. According to PageUp data, there are 50% more open job ads than there were before the pandemic. 

At the same time, the number of Australian workers quitting their roles to pursue new opportunities is increasing. New research shows 38% of Australian workers plan to look for a new job in the next 12 months, and a further 39% are open to new opportunities.

There are a few reasons for this.

Faced with the prospect of returning to the office, many workers are simply quitting their jobs rather than surrendering the flexibility of their work from home lifestyle. 

Dissatisfied with pay freezes and burned out from increased workloads, employees are jumping ship for greener pastures. The best talent knows they have many options.  

But it’s not all bad news. For working professionals, there is optimism and hope for the future. It’s much-needed after a long year spent weathering a health and economic crisis.

For talent acquisition teams, resignations mean high turnover costs and business disruptions. But it also means more talent on the market, and more people searching for jobs better suited to their skills and interests. 

The opportunity lies with businesses that are quick enough to snap up this talent, and strategic enough to retain their most valued people.  

Rethinking rewards and benefits 

In an effort to keep a hold of talent, some employers are raising wages and offering bonuses. 

Wage conversations are always a factor in whether an employee takes a new role or stays put. But they aren’t the only reason a person leaves a job. 

COVID-19 has created a seismic shift in what employees and job seekers look for in a role – and it’s no longer just about the money. Organisations should be prepared to re-think their benefits and Employee Value Proposition for a remote-first world. 

For example: More than half of Australian working professionals would take a pay cut if it meant they could work from home 100% of the time.

Today’s workers are used to the flexibility and freedom of a work from home lifestyle, and they don’t want to go back. In fact, 34% of employees look for a new role if their employer didn’t provide remote work options.

But it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Three quarters of Australian workers say they’d like a mix of in-person and remote work. Instead of advertising a signing bonus to attract reluctant candidates back to the office, offering a mix of remote and in-person options could be a far bigger drawcard.

Engage employees with internal mobility opportunities

If your employees have an appetite for change, feed it. Internal mobility opportunities like cross-functional team assignments and secondments in new business units give employees fresh challenges and new perspectives. 

Internal mobility opportunities increase cross-company collaboration, which is crucial for keeping employees engaged, motivated and connected to the organisation. 

As PageUp wrote in our Top 60 Employee Engagement tips article, 

“Collaboration is important for employees to feel included and engaged. Studies show teams that share leadership responsibilities, interpersonal interactions and a cross-functional mentality have lower levels of conflict and stress, and higher levels of overall satisfaction.”

And remember: if you don’t offer employees opportunities for growth and career development within your organisation, they won’t hesitate to find it elsewhere. 

Get onboarding (and re-boarding) right the first time 

Perhaps an inevitable trend to emerge from the pandemic is high turnover among new employees. Most of these workers were onboarded remotely, and many have never met their co-workers in person. 

Sustaining a relationship remotely is difficult. Building a relationship remotely is even harder. 

But it’s something organisations need to do if they are to hold on to their hard-won talent. 

20% of employee turnover occurs within the first 45 days, and 90% of employees make the decision to stay at their company within the first six months. 

Considering how much it costs to replace an employee (up to 60% of their first-year salary) it’s clear that it pays to invest in proper onboarding. 

Onboarding sets the tone for a new starter’s time at an organisation, and is particularly important when welcoming remote hires. If that first impression isn’t a great one, new hires can become disengaged, overwhelmed, and leave. 

When onboarding remotely, it’s imperative to make new hires feel supported, seen and connected to their coworkers online. You want to maximise the “employee honeymoon” phase, and minimise anxiety and disengagement. 

When organisations get onboarding right, new hire productivity increases by 62% and retention of new hires increases by more than 50%. 

Just as important is “re-boarding” employees who return after time away. Whether it’s an ex-employee who has been re-hired, a staff member returning from maternity leave, or a furloughed worker you’ve brought back on board, taking the time to get them up to speed will ensure they hit the ground sprinting. 

This helps returnees reintegrate into the workplace culture more easily, introducing them to new processes and technologies instead of throwing them in the deep end. 

This article originally appeared on PageUp, and has been republished here with permission.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of clients first-hand. 

The post What the Great Resignation means for recruiters appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Once, people teams had the luxury of time to plan, test and tweak approaches. Now, many of us are taking it day by day: ten-year plans have been scrapped, and ‘business as usual’ is a distant memory. Many TA teams and HR leaders are looking for guidance.

In times like these, we look to the experts for advice and predictions in an unpredictable landscape. Industry commentators like Hung Lee have their finger on the pulse of what it means to recruit in 2021, and can help make sense of a landscape that’s shifting every day.

Speaking in a recent PageUp webinar, Hung Lee outlined his 8 key talent acquisition trends for the new year. This is by no means an exhaustive list – but it is a good way to check that your organisation is on the right track.

Here’s what we know so far about what matters in recruiting in 2021:

• Everyone is an international recruiter
• Digital transformation and automation take centre stage
• There are new challenges and considerations for diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I)
• Alumni (former employees) become an organisation‘s greatest asset
• Employer branding becomes a non-negotiable
• Internal mobility evolves into a key source of quality talent.

2020 was the year that HR truly stepped up and took a seat at the table. In 2021, it’s time to continue that momentum and take the lead in transforming workplaces for the new world of work.

Talent acquisition trend 1: The global talent pool

COVID-19 has accelerated once-distant trends and forced the world’s biggest work-from-home experiment. Even laggards have been forced to adopt remote tech – and organisations are realising it can work. In spite of organisational complexities and the challenges of remote work, up to 37% of jobs can now be done fully remotely. In the US, there was a 150% increase in remote jobs from 2019 to 2020. In the UK, there was a 342% increase in the same period (Iain Moss, Adzuna, 2020). In Australia, there was more than a 200% increase in remote work in some states (NSW, ACT and Victoria).

Organisations are getting into the groove of remote work, and this has opened up possibilities for a global network of talent. No longer constrained by brick and mortar offices, organisations can hire the best people in the world – not just their city. In 2021, everyone is an international recruiter.

“Moving the job to where the people are is increasing,” says Hung Lee, curator of recruitment industry newsletter Recruiting Brainfood. Lee observes that “remote means anywhere” – and with technology improving and C-suite leaders enjoying the cost reduction of work-from-home arrangements, TA will shift from on-premise to remote hiring.

This brings about major changes:

• Moving away from the traditional full-time hiring cycle, remote workers can be freelancers and contractors. This trend lends itself to a “try before you buy” approach, according to Lee.
• There is zero friction for talent to move from company to company – which means the employee experience is more important than ever
• Compensation is set by elite organisations. No longer confined to local salary benchmarks, smaller players may struggle to compete with salaries offered by large organisations. For many jobseekers, the ability to live in their hometown but get paid a New York-level salary is appealing – and makes it hard for local organisations to compete
• Competition for top talent is global.

Talent acquisition trend 2: Digital transformation and automation becomes a priority

In a year of constant disruption, even the most progressive companies have had to think on their feet. They’ve achieved this agility through workforce automation. Research shows that 92% of senior executives agree that the lockdown period has made digital transformation a priority.

COVID-19 has forced the automation of in-person human roles, where possible. At the same time, remote working has flourished and given way to a raft of digitisation and automation. RPA (recruitment process automation) has delivered unparalleled efficiencies in the recruiting process, spurred on by reduced TA headcount and recruiters simply having to do more with less. What was once paper-based, manual and resource-intensive (multiple recruiters and interviewing rooms, onerous rounds of shortlisting and assessments) has become streamlined and fully digital.

Talent acquisition trend 3: Alumni form part of the talent community

“Retain the relationship, not the employee” recruiting guru Bill Boorman advises. This year, cash-strapped and time-poor recruiting teams are turning to the ‘talent community’ – alumni, silver-medalists and internal talent – as a source of pre-vetted, quality hires.

The return of the talent community creates a new job for recruiters – engaging talent even after they’ve left the organisation. In the past, once someone walked out the door they were often gone for good. Now, HR teams are acquainting themselves with the concept of ‘Boomerang employees’ – those that leave the business then eventually return. These people are an invaluable source of qualified talent, external referrals and, when treated well, should become lasting employer brand champions.

As people flow through the company from candidate to employee and eventually alumni, someone has to own and track this experience to ensure it’s a great one. Some organisations are approaching this by having a community manager that manages and engages people outside of the company. Others are developing alumni networks and using their career site as a leveraging point to attract alumni back.

Hung Lee shares key ways to engage alumni:

• Make relationships the entire point
• Bridge community & company. Careers sites are a great way to do this
• Treat talent mobility the same as career development
• That development might exist outside the company
• Not a single career path but career optionality

Talent acquisition trend 4: DE&I

In a year that’s brought us a global pandemic, political unrest and a worldwide shift to remote work, it would take a lot to capture our attention. And yet in 2020, DE&I did just that. As Black Lives Matter protests spread awareness and action around the world, the importance of racial equality, diversity and inclusivity in our own organisations captured the spotlight.

Lee says “DE&I has gone from being de-prioritised to re-prioritised” as organisations do the work in “rebuilding institutions that have been historically unfair.” Technology is helping to attract diverse candidates and reduce systemic bias in the hiring process, helping organisations to meet their DE&I goals at-scale.

Remote working increases accessibility for roles, but it also presents new hurdles to overcome. Technology opens the door for people from different backgrounds, geographies and ability to land roles, but access to good technology is not universal. Digital inequality – poor internet connection or older tech – can introduce a new set of unconscious biases for candidates.

Lee points to a recent study by researchers from USC, who found that audio quality has a direct impact on perceived reliability and expertise. When they presented identical conference presentations in high and low quality and asked participants to evaluate the researcher and the research, people evaluated the researcher and research less favourably when the audio quality was low. As we enter a new remote world, new biases appear which require attention and awareness. According to Lee, addressing these issues of inequality requires “mitigating with more tech, not less”.

Talent acquisition trend 5: Employer branding becomes a non-negotiable

Where once a great employer brand was seen as a “nice to have”, it is now a necessity for organisations to compete for talent on a global stage. Lee says that “This is a once-in-a-lifetime period for organisations looking to fortify their employer brand.” The way organisations respond to this crisis will affect and define their brand for decades to come. This means providing a great experience: caring for employees with trust and transparency, and caring for your candidates with open and regular communication. Maintaining this level of care will become a core TA responsibility and expectation — and technology will help time-poor hiring teams to facilitate this at scale.

Talent acquisition trend 6: Internal mobility

With lockdown restrictions forcing widespread layoffs, and with reduced recruiter headcount forcing hiring teams to do more with less, organisations are redeploying staff to cut costs and keep valued skills within the business. According to LinkedIn insights, internal hires increased by 19% in April-August 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019. Internal hires now make up almost 20% of an organisation’s workforce on average.

But according to Lee, “COVID revealed we don’t do internal mobility well.” In a recent survey by HR.com, over a third of respondents say that no one owns the internal mobility process. And over a quarter of employees are unaware of available job opportunities.

In 2021, it will be up to TA teams to gain full visibility of their workforce and identify hidden skill sets or opportunities for development. Technology can help to provide this visibility, and a powerful ATS can even provide smart recommendations for redeployment opportunities.

Lee posits that “TA will be known as ‘Talent Access’ – they will ensure the availability of the entire talent universe to the employer.” Managers will transform into ‘career coaches’ and rely on performance management technology to facilitate everyday feedback and on the go learning opportunities. According to Lee, TA will take ownership of internal mobility and talent delivery, signalling a move away from hiring-manager led placements.

Final thoughts

These six talent acquisition trends point to a future of work that’s tech-enabled and automated, but that also uplifts the human aspects of Human Resources. With technology automating manual and repetitive tasks, TA teams are freed to do the real work: building meaningful DE&I programs, engaging valued alumni, raising up internal employees to greater heights. As we embark on this uncertain journey together, go safe in the knowledge that the HR world and your talent communities will always be there to share wisdom, support and guidance.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of our clients first-hand. Her experience ranges from sales and marketing, change management, consulting and people development.

The post Experts share 6 key talent acquisition trends for 2021 appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

2020 has been a challenging year for people around the world, regardless of age, background or geography. HR professionals have had it even harder, supporting teams in times of crisis, while also working through these challenges themselves.

But hope springs from adversity, and this year HR has truly stepped up as a leader in the new world of work. Talent management has become everyone’s business, and talent teams are getting the attention they deserve from C-suite leaders that now fully appreciate their worth.

Old, outdated systems have been digitised, processes streamlined and centralised, virtual hiring and remote work practices accelerated overnight. Armed with the business buy-in and technology solutions to make it work, HR is ready to take a seat at the table as we forge ahead into the new decade.

As we look back at the year that was, we can see how closely HR trends and challenges mirror our society. From a global pandemic and economic downturn, to racial upheaval across the globe, HR is the first responder and the first line of defence organisations have to help their teams make sense of the world around them.

2020 will be remembered as a turbulent, tumultuous year. Let’s not forget how HR responded:

1. Employee communication and care

When the first wave of lockdowns rolled out around the world, many organisations were forced into remote working arrangements overnight. HR teams had to figure out how to make it work, developing policies on the fly and ensuring teams were supported during this tough transition. With so much uncertainty in the air, HR stepped up and showed real leadership, reminding us what the ‘human’ aspect of human resources stands for. Talent teams used different strategies to shift to remote work and support their teams in times of change.

2. Mastering remote hiring and onboarding

As organisations got into the groove of remote work, some hiring teams found themselves faced with a dilemma: how to provide a great, fully virtual recruitment experience. Even the most progressive organisations had probably met candidates in-person at one stage of the hiring process. Now, recruitment teams had to ensure a streamlined, fully tech-enabled experience that left applicants and candidates wanting more. No problem, right? There were 3 key considerations for organisations looking to find great talent in the time of COVID; these included understanding your video interviewing needs, adjusting your approach to screening and prioritising onboarding.

3. Addressing COVID-19 challenges

Our Head of Customer Insights and Market Research Rebecca Skilbeck and SVP Global Talent Deborah Mason tackled how HR could address COVID-19 challenges. They discussed supporting employees, encouraging engagement, redeploying staff, managing remote workers and shared their thoughts for the future.

4. Supporting internal mobility

With the pandemic ramping up and an economic recession looming, many organisations put a freeze on hiring. But that didn’t mean skills gaps went away. Roles still needed to be filled by skilled workers, and organisations started to look within to find this talent. Many organisations are leveraging internal mobility to meet their hiring needs, while also keeping employees engaged and developing in their careers.

5. Scaling up recruiting to meet COVID-19 demands

Not all organisations were halting their hiring. Some were ramping up recruitment to meet demand: many retailers providing essential products were inundated with customer demand as lockdowns dragged on across the globe. Some PageUp customers processed as many as 55,000 applications in one recruitment campaign. To quickly hire the staff they needed at-scale, organisations turned to technology to automate candidate care and process bulk applications. Talent teams needed to establish processes to set up and run effective recruitment campaigns at scale, while remaining agile enough to respond rapidly to change.

6. Proactively rebuilding recruitment strategies after COVID-19

As we adjusted to the new COVID normal, organisations started to look to the future and wonder how they would rebuild. A crucial component of this was their recruitment strategy: what would it look like going forward? As the business landscape shifted, what new skills should they be recruiting for? And what new roles would emerge? Many organisations began rebuilding, starting with their recruitment strategy. This required a step by step approach, examining how COVID has affected the business landscape, identifying emerging skills gaps, and targeting the crucial behavioural traits you should be looking for in a top candidate.

7. Virtual recruiting tools

HR processes have been accelerated years into the future thanks to the overnight shift to remote working. We shared 17 must-know tools to support online recruiting; from voice-based and text-based AI-interviewing and online testing, to online assessments, video interviews and reference checking.

8. Workplace diversity, equity and inclusion

This year will be remembered not just for COVID-19, but also as the year the world stood up, spoke up and took action on racial inclusivity, diversity and demanded equal opportunity for people of all backgrounds. With organisations around the world turning a spotlight to their own DE&I strategies, many began prioritising and establishing the building blocks of a successful DE&I strategy.

9. Data-based recruitment strategies

What recruitment metrics should savvy hiring teams be tracking in 2020 and into the future? A lot has changed in the past year, and many talent teams have started to review and revise the recruitment metrics they track in line with their organisational goals. The best recruitment metrics to track in now, in 2021 and beyond include offer acceptance rate, applicant-to-hire rate, candidate-to-hire rate, sourcing channel effectiveness, and mobile application and time-to-apply rates.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of our clients first-hand. Her experience ranges from sales and marketing, change management, consulting and people development.

The post 9 things HR cared about in 2020 appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the business landscape and forced many organisations to put their hiring on hold. But that doesn’t mean recruitment marketing strategies should go on hold too.

This is a critical time to nurture talent to ensure that when your organisation is ready to hire, you have a pipeline of suitable talent so you can make quicker and more effective hiring decisions. Recruitment marketing tactics, like nurturing talent pools, help keep star candidates engaged so that when you’re ready to start recruiting again, you have a rich talent pipeline to draw from.

In this article, I’ll discuss how to utilise your recruitment marketing strategy to its fullest potential, including:

• Leveraging expression of interest forms to identify top talent
• Creating nurture campaigns to establish relationships with top talent
• Curating personalised and relevant content to send to candidates.

1. Expression of Interest forms

A great career site is one thing – but does it convert visitors into applicants? And where can people go if there are no roles currently being advertised?

If your website doesn’t have a strong CTA, people will click away. It doesn’t matter if you have great content, a strong employer brand story and engaging videos: if people have nowhere to input their details and express interest in your organisation, you’ll lose them.

Expression of Interest (EOI) capture forms placed prominently on your career site encourages visitors to take the next step. They allow you to capture the details of people interested in working for your company – even if you have no open roles for them to apply for. EOI forms are an invaluable tool to capture those people who are engaged with your organisation and willing to self-select in to be considered for future opportunities.

2. Nurture campaigns

Recruitment marketing allows you to proactively tap into talent and build robust talent pipelines, even when you’re not hiring. Nurture campaigns are a great way to keep interested talent and ‘silver medalist’ candidates (people who weren’t quite right for a role – but may be suited for other upcoming openings, or after a time when they gain more skills and experience), engaged.

Recruitment marketing technology takes the manual ‘busy work’ out of nurture campaigns, allowing hiring teams to pre-set and automate personalised nurture flows that can be customised to each job category or target talent segment. Targeted nurture campaigns can perform actions based on real-time triggers – for example sending out relevant job alerts, recruiter outreach emails, interesting content and more to maintain candidate regular candidate touchpoints.

Keeping talent pools warm with relevant content is especially important when you’re not actively hiring – think of it as ‘what to say when you have nothing new to say.’ Taking the time to nurture these people now will pay-off when you’re ready to start hiring again: you’ll have access to a pool of pre-vetted, engaged talent that is ready to work for you.

3. Curated content

 When it comes to candidate engagement, content is king. If you regularly deliver personalised, relevant content to candidates, they’ll keep coming back for more. This is where recruiters should ‘think like a marketer’ and take a magnifying glass to their current career site content to find out what is resonating with visitors, then find ways to optimise their approach to drive ROI.

Here are three things to consider when developing a content strategy that keeps people engaged when you’re not hiring:

• Content and collateral needs to be relevant and timely – and you need to have an understanding of what converts. Identify your target audiences and craft personalised content to these audiences. Have you segmented your key talent personas and delivered content specifically targeted to each segment? Different segments may consume different types of content, and on different platforms. Some may prefer emails and blog posts, while others like to watch videos and interact on social platforms.
• Create videos: Video is the #1 consumed resource on the Internet and allows companies to easily highlight their unique selling points: social responsibility, career development opportunities, and culture. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend thousands on videos for your career site. In fact, the most authentic videos are often shot on a smartphone by recruiters or employees. This kind of off the cuff, informal content is valuable to jobseekers because it captures what it’s really like to work at your organisation.
• Don’t be afraid of Social Media: encouraging employees to share photos and stories of their work day on social media is an invaluable source of authentic employer branding. Candidates trust a company’s employees three times more than the company itself to provide credible information on what it’s like to work there. For example, Salesforce has the #SalesforceOhana hashtag, (which translates to ‘Salesforce family) where employees can share snapshots of their daily roles at the company.

The time to start thinking about your post-COVID recruiting strategy is now. The organisations that are making the most of this opportunity to re-evaluate and optimise their recruitment marketing strategy are the ones that will come out the other side stronger than ever.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of our clients first-hand. Her experience ranges from sales and marketing, change management, consulting and people development.

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