But, not so fast! Before you leave your desk and turn off your phone, consider how a little bit of planning can set you up to nail your talent strategy in 2021.

December is a key decision-making time, even for businesses who close down over the Christmas holiday break. This is time for you to relax but to also contemplate what the year ahead will look like. As an employer, planning for 2021 means understanding what you want your employer brand strategy to look like and how this is a key time for potential candidates to consider career or role changes. (I know I get my best ideas after a glass of wine by the pool, especially when I’ve had a good break!)

Having a strategy for the Christmas period is not just for retailers and other industries that need to hire Christmas casuals. This is prime time for recruiters, because as January rolls around, many people have a new job on their New Year’s resolutions list. So, it is up to you to capitalise on it.

What should you be considering?

Don’t turn off fully

If you’ve set up ad campaigns prior to going on leave, then ensure you have automations to respond to applications. Include information about in the advertisements itself. If someone is available to monitor and respond to enquiries over the break, even better.

Candidates can lose track of applications they submit, only to get crickets in response. It’s not a great experience of your brand and it certainly doesn’t inspire candidates to want to work in your organisation.

You’ve just spent a small fortune on ads to get me to submit an application? What The Facebook! Talk about wasting money…

Build that list

Use the break and take advantage of the fact that “change of year” means “change of jobs” for many (yes even in the year of COVID).

Focus on building your talent pool. Prioritise your owned, not rented channels. Consider what you need to put in place to make this work. This could be something as simple as a candidate video series. Your lead magnet should be all about your candidates, NOT YOU!

Schedule content

While you’re sipping pina coladas and getting caught in the rain (or perhaps just binging on Netflix), your content can be working for you. Remember the other important C word – CONSISTENCY. With the many free tools available you have no excuse to not stay visible. Use a scheduler look Publer, Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule social content. Automate your email marketing in whatever cloud-based platform or ATS you’re using. Schedule blogs to be shared on your website. Many things can be automated, which means they’re working while you’re not.

Where to start with your Christmas employer branding content?

Before-Christmas planning

• Get in early to create your Christmas expression of interest forms, employer branding content and campaigns. (That means you should’ve probably started a month ago, but better late than never.) Get creative and think about how you can tie in your employer brand with the festive season.
• Schedule your content using scheduling tools like Buffer as mentioned above. Potential candidates are online even more over a holiday period so put your employer brand in front of them.
• Segment your database – try not to blast your entire talent pool with the same content. Break it into smaller relevant segments so you can share highly relevant content with him. That is what will convert higher. The more relevant, the more likely they are to open and engage with your content.
• Plan your marketing campaigns across all channels – take a holistic approach and consider what traditional and digital channels you need to include in it your marketing.
• Context of content is so important. Make the content seasonal and highly relevant. Think about what people are doing during December and January and create content to suit. Provide value by offering seasonal advice based on your industry.
• Do it now!!! Don’t leave it until 24^th December and do half a job.

During your break

• Determine who or how to respond to candidate applications during the holiday period – this is a period when people are relaxing, applying for jobs and planning for the year ahead. Don’t miss opportunities by not responding to DMs.
• If you’re running social media or other ads, RESPOND to candidates’ direct messages and enquiries in a timely manner (for the record, 3 weeks later when you are back from holidays is NOT OK)
• Respond to candidates, even if it is with an autoresponder. Common courtesy doesn’t have a Christmas holiday. Provide candidates with a timeline to establish expectations about when they might get a response from you.

After your holiday

• Candidate enquiries should be responded to quickly – make it a priority
• Review your campaigns and assess metrics so you can analyse the results
• Consider what you can change to make your efforts even more successful next year.

Other Considerations

• Use Christmas hashtags
• Use relevant keywords to be found
• Use humour in your employer branding to stand out
• Use an expression of interest form to capture candidate details if they don’t see an opportunity they’re interested in
• Share your love of your employees and promote them in your employer branding content. A bit of gratitude can go a long way.

Christmas and New Year is the best time of the year for you to capitalise on the emotional changes that bring a surge in new candidates to the market.  Consider how you can leverage this festive season to boost your employer branding and recruitment marketing efforts.

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, and she is a Social Amplification Specialist with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets, find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget and amplify your internal champions to increase your visibility. Her goal is to make the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post The holidays are not the time to go silent with your employer branding appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

During economic downturns, many organisations focus on cutting costs to survive. When there’s no growth, hiring is typically the first thing thrown out the window. Then, after a few months when things turn around and it’s back to business as usual, hiring becomes a number one priority!

Other organisations may experience similar abrupt changes in hiring due to their industry (such as construction, mining or engineering). This can be due to the need to apply for grants, bids or tenders and have a steady flow of talent ready for work that may or may not be secure.

In either case, recruitment stops and starts can be jarring and tricky to manage. Here’s how to build your talent pipeline so you have access to the high-quality candidates you need, when you need them. Don’t get thrown off by recruitment freezes and thaws.

Invest in recruitment technology and talent pooling

A Candidate Management System (CMS) is vital to surviving recruitment stops and starts. Why? In addition to saving you precious time and allowing you to work collaboratively with your hiring managers and recruitment team, a CMS grants you increased visibility and facilitates easy communication with candidates.

Every candidate you’ve attracted to your recruitment campaigns can be viewed and managed in a single location and grouped into talent pools. This allows you to send timely communications, engage with candidates and keep them updated. It also allows you to promote your employer brand by sending targeted recruitment marketing content.

A recruitment system also protects your organisation from other challenges, such as changes in your HR or recruitment team. If a key member of your HR team leaves, candidate contact information and the relationships you’ve built remain intact.

Strengthen your employer brand

Maintaining a strong employer brand is another critical strategy to manage recruitment stops and starts.

Organisations with a strong employer brand see 50% more qualified applicants and are 1–2x faster to hire (LinkedIn, 2020).

Organizations that invest in employer branding are three times more likely to make a quality hire (Brandon Hall, 2020).

Ensure your careers site is attractive, engaging and up to date. Continue to share employer branding targeted with potential candidates content across your key channels. For example, you could encourage candidates in your talent pool to stay in touch with you on social media, and keep these channels updated with fresh, relevant photos and article links.

If your recruitment is stuck in a “freeze”, showcase the other things happening in your organisation.

Use great communication  

For some organisations, you may advertise a role, only to find the role is no longer needed. You may lose a contract, lack the budget or discover the responsibilities can be shared among others. Should you simply close the role and throw your candidates on ice?

No!

The best way to manage tricky situations like this is to thank candidates for their application, provide honest information about what the role is no longer available, and ask to keep in touch with them for future opportunities (if you intend to do so). Helping candidates understand the “why” keeps the door open.

Good communication ties in well with having a Candidate Management System and strong employer brand. There’s no excuse for poor communication with a CMS, as branded templates are easy to create and send. Also, honesty and transparency is the foundation of great employer brands.

If you know you’ll need to create another candidate shortlist again in 2-3 months’ time (when work ramps up again or you win another bid or contract) you’ll have a better chance of winning those high-quality candidates back.

Use situations like this as an opportunity to demonstrate what your organisation stands for, your values and culture. If you’re not honest and transparent, how will candidates trust and perform their best in your organisation?

Whether you’re experiencing the pinch from the economic downturn or are in a unique industry that impacts your hiring process, recruitment stops and starts (freezes and thaws) can be a challenge or an opportunity. Use the right technology – a Candidate Management System is vital! – to provide great communication and manage candidate applications. Incorporate talent pooling and a strong employer brand as part of your long-term strategy.

Holly is a Recruitment Specialist and Leader for global recruitment software and services organisation Scout Talent Group. As a dedicated specialist, her areas of expertise include sales, employer branding, talent acquisition and recruitment software. She has spent the past five years of her professional career focused on business development, and recruitment software and services. She loves having the versatility to tailor different solutions for her clients, particularly in the NFP and community services industries. 

The post Freezes and thaws: How to deal with recruitment stops and starts appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Recruiters and HR team members were already becoming more tech-savvy before COVID-19, but recently, there’s been a fresh sense of urgency for the industry to continue to evolve technologically. We’ve been forced to innovate and embrace the “new normal” of remote hiring. Although the job market has turned in favour of employers, increased application rates mean that organisations have no choice but to manage their time wisely and make prudent decisions. Otherwise, an unprecedented influx of applicants can lead to errors, inefficiency, and chaos.

 You’re in a position to thrive by creating better virtual hiring processes where you can attract top talent from around the globe. It’s time to streamline how you vet, hire, onboard, and train your candidates digitally. However, it’s easier said than done. To succeed, you must maintain the human, personalised side of hiring while crafting a seamless digital experience. Follow leading HR departments that are doing it right by following these three tips.

1. Use an AI-powered Applicant Tracking System (ATS) 

Use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to optimise your resume review processes while also reducing bias. Applicants are beginning to understand the importance of creating AI-friendly resumes, and HR professionals have a responsibility to make sure they know how to write for an ATS.

Artificially intelligent resume scanners are not just convenient, they’re becoming more and more important in narrowing down your applicant pools quickly.

Using an ATS likely isn’t a new concept for you, but it’s important to ensure you’re using the right one for your organisation’s unique needs. Is your ATS outdated or overpriced? Does it include background checks and special features to track a candidate’s progress through different the hiring stages? Can you take advantage of AI as part of your ATS? Now is a great time to step back and examine the bigger picture to ensure you’re capable of dealing with current market changes (such as increased application rates and the need for new digital processes). 

2. Invest in the best HRMS solution

Many hiring teams need to invest in a human resource management system (HRMS) as much as they need a high-quality ATS. An HRMS features a centralised database, automates menial admin tasks, makes recruiting easier, decreases turnover, and includes a self-service portal for employees. Save your team a ton of headaches by figuring out which type of software is the most user-friendly and suitable for you, your recruits, and your current employees.

Cloud-based solutions are great options. These create a smoother hiring experience for users overall, leaving you to focus on fostering relationships with candidates and employees rather than worrying about administrative processes.

3. Optimise your video interviewing process

Video interviewing can be more efficient and less restrictive geographically than face-to-face interviews. Even if you’re not operating/hiring remotely, you can still obtain a lot of benefits! Facilitating a smooth video interview process takes finesse and skill. Don’t underestimate the associated challenges. (Check out these tips on how to successfully recruit via video interview.) 

Have you considered implementing a virtual interview prep call for candidates? Does your hiring team rely on Zoom, or another video conferencing/interviewing software? Be sure everyone in your HR department is equally comfortable troubleshooting virtual interview tech issues.

A poor video interviewing process can mean qualified candidates opt-out of your application process. Map out the process as best you can, use good communication to ensure your candidates are fully prepared and comfortable for their interview, and give them the chance to demonstrate their knowledge/talent by setting clear expectations.

In the world of remote hiring, from choosing the right ATS and HRMS, to implementing video interview processes, lean on technology to create a better experience for you, your team and your candidates. In changing market, you may be receiving more applications than you can handle and narrowing down a list of qualified applicants can be increasingly challenging. Lean on good technology and processes, and consider this word of caution: prioritise personalisation and empathy throughout your candidate experience. Relying on technological advancement is great! But technology should never compromise the authenticity of human connection throughout your hiring processes.

 

Gabrielle Gardiner is a Manhattan-based writer who is passionate about sharing her insights to empower recruiters and job seekers to succeed. She specializes in creating content with actionable tips about professional development, most recently for websites like LiveCareer.

The post 3 ways recruitment and HR teams are leaning on tech post-COVID-19 appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Google says it will shut down Google Hire, its G Suite tool built for recruiters at small and midsized companies, on 1st September 2020, despite launching only two years ago. Google did not give a specific reason as to why it’s shutting down the tool beyond saying that it’s “focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio.”

Andrea Davey, CEO of Scout Talent recruitment software and services company, states without value-added services like recruitment marketing, employer branding and support services, most companies struggle to get value out of software-only vendors.

The company’s Product Management team recently released 5 questions for internal recruitment to ask when exploring software providers to avoid getting stung.

1. What is your product roadmap and where is this product going to be in the next 6-12 months? 
2. Is this product going to help me now? If not completely, will it in the short term?
3. What is the vision and what problems will the software solve? (Look for roadmap items that link directly to solving those problems.) 
4. What are my options for feedback?
5. What does your release schedule look like? (Some companies will have longer release cycles than others. So if you don’t see a feature, but it’s “coming soon”, it’s good to find out rough timelines).

Hire is the latest of several Google products that have shut down recently, joining social network Google+, chat app Allo, and email app Inbox in the Google graveyard. It’s good that Google is trying to hone its product offerings, but it’s getting hard to trust that new Google services will stick around for more than a couple of years.

In 2017, when Google launched Hire, it also launched Google for Jobs, which filters third-party job listings based on search criteria you set, signaling big ambitions to make tools that would help users find jobs. Two years later, those ambitions may be stalled as Google for Jobs faces antitrust complaints in the EU and Hire is shutting down.

Source

Google Hire is the next Google tool to be shut down

The Verge 

The post Recruitment management systems don’t make the coffee: Google Hire shuts down appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.