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How To Make the Remote Hiring Process Less Painful

In today’s evolving work landscape, remote hiring has become a necessity for many companies seeking to access a wider talent pool. However, the remote hiring process can be challenging and overwhelming if not approached strategically.

This article aims to guide you through the steps of making the remote hiring process less painful, providing valuable insights and practical tips to optimize your recruitment efforts.

By leveraging technology, tapping into the right talent pools, crafting emotionally appealing job descriptions, and fostering a sense of connection and support, you can enhance the remote hiring experience for both candidates and your organization.

Take Advantage of Technology

Remote hiring may require recruiters to coordinate with various stakeholders, including hiring managers, interview panel members, and IT teams. Ensuring smooth communication and collaboration among dispersed team members can be demanding and time-consuming.

In the quest to make remote hiring a smoother and more fulfilling experience, technology becomes paramount.

What you can do:

  • Incorporating HR software solutions empowers organizations to efficiently manage applications and streamline candidate communication.
  • Harnessing the vast potential of professional networking platforms like LinkedIn enables recruiters to tap into a global talent pool.

Source Talent in the Right Places

To find the top remote candidates, it is essential to search in the right places. Explore online job boards and remote work-specific platforms that cater to individuals seeking remote opportunities.

These platforms often attract candidates with prior remote work experience, making them more likely to possess the necessary skills and adaptability required for remote roles. Additionally, networking on professional platforms and participating in industry-specific forums can help you connect with top remote talent.

Identify Qualities of Decent Remote Candidates

Successful remote workers possess specific traits that contribute to their effectiveness and productivity in a remote setting. When evaluating candidates, look for qualities such as:

  • self-motivation
  • strong communication skills
  • adaptability
  • ability to work independently

Prioritizing candidates with remote work experience can provide assurance that they have already acclimated to the challenges and demands of working remotely. That reduces the learning curve and enhances their potential for success in your organization.

Draft Emotionally Appealing Job Descriptions

Transform job descriptions into captivating narratives that stir emotions within remote candidates. By showcasing the emotional rewards of working remotely, you’ll capture candidates’ attention.

Use descriptive and engaging language to convey your company’s values, mission, and commitment to supporting remote employees. Illuminate the joys of your remote work culture, highlighting flexible schedules, work-life balance, and opportunities for personal and professional growth. Providing a glimpse into the emotional rewards of working remotely can make your job postings stand out.

Work Well on Pre-Interview Stage

Communication is the lifeline of remote hiring. Establish clear and consistent channels of communication to keep candidates informed and engaged at every stage.

Effective communication builds trust, reduces anxiety, and demonstrates your organization’s commitment to a transparent and supportive hiring process.

Before the interview, provide candidates with detailed insights into your company’s remote work policies, expectations, and team dynamics. Transparency is key to helping candidates envision themselves as integral parts of your organization.

Offer glimpses into your company culture, showcasing the warmth and camaraderie they can expect. By nurturing a sense of belonging and integration, you lay the foundation for successful employment and remote collaborations.

Evaluate a Talent’s Adaptability for Remote Work

Remote work demands emotional resilience and adaptability. During interviews, ask candidates situational and behavioral questions that gauge their ability to handle challenges, manage stress, and thrive in a remote work environment.

Look for indicators of self-motivation, self-discipline, and the ability to work autonomously. By assessing a candidate’s emotional fitness for remote work, you can identify individuals who possess the necessary mindset and skills to excel in a remote role.

Establish an Emotional Connection During Interviews

Virtual interviews can be impersonal, but it’s essential to establish an emotional connection with remote candidates.

What you can do:

  • Show genuine interest in their experiences, aspirations, and personal growth.
  • Assess not only their qualifications but also their body language and non-verbal cues.
  • Create a warm and welcoming virtual environment, making candidates feel comfortable and valued.

Building an emotional connection during interviews helps candidates envision a future with your company and enhances their overall candidate experience.

Conducting assessments and evaluating candidates remotely might limit recruiters’ ability to accurately assess certain skills or qualities. Hands-on tasks, group exercises, or presentations that are typically part of in-person interviews can be more challenging to replicate virtually, potentially impacting the overall assessment process.

Streamline Remote Assessment

Assessing candidates remotely can be made easier with the help of various technologies. Here are some approaches and technologies that can streamline the remote assessment process:

  • Leverage online assessment platforms
    These platforms offer a range of coding tests, psychometric assessments, or situational judgment tests. They can also enable recruiters to evaluate candidates’ technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and cognitive aptitude remotely.
  • Virtual whiteboarding and coding tools
    For technical roles, virtual whiteboarding tools can be used to assess candidates’ ability to solve problems, design solutions, or demonstrate their coding skills collaboratively. These tools provide a shared virtual space for candidates and recruiters to work together on visual tasks.
  • Online skill-specific tests
    Depending on the role, consider using skill-specific online tests or simulations to assess candidates remotely.
  • Recorded video interviews
    In addition to live video interviews, consider using recorded video interviews. Such platforms allow candidates to record their responses to pre-set questions at their convenience. Recruiters can then review the recordings at their own pace, enabling flexibility and efficient evaluation.
  • AI-powered assessment tools
    Explore AI-powered assessment tools that use natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to analyze written responses, coding samples, or video interviews. These tools can help recruiters assess candidates’ skills, personality traits, and cultural fit more objectively and efficiently.
  • Online reference checks
    Conduct reference checks through online platforms or email to verify candidates’ qualifications and work experience. Utilize professional networking platforms like LinkedIn to gather additional information about candidates and their professional connections.

Provide Emotional Support

Remote hiring and work can sometimes feel isolating. It poses challenges during the onboarding and integration of new employees. Without in-person interactions, it may be more difficult to immerse new hires in the company culture, establish relationships with team members, and provide comprehensive training and support.

As a compassionate employer, it’s crucial to provide emotional support to remote candidates.

What you can do:

  • Encourage open dialogue by creating channels for candidates to express their concerns, questions, and aspirations.
  • Offer resources for mental health and well-being, such as access to employee assistance programs or wellness initiatives.
  • Regularly check in with remote candidates to understand their emotional needs and provide the necessary support or assistance.

Demonstrating empathy and care fosters a positive employer-employee relationship from the very beginning.

Conclusion

Remote hiring doesn’t have to be a painful and disconnected experience. By embracing the emotional aspects of the journey, you can create a hiring process that resonates deeply with remote candidates. Leveraging empathy and emotional intelligence, you can forge genuine connections and elevate the remote hiring experience.

Should a Social Media Background Check Be a Part of Your Recruitment Process?

Social media has become integral to everyone’s professional and personal lives. Anyone can access a public account, so people must watch what they say and how they say it. Companies and organizations might be tempted to view applicants’ pages, but there are several things to consider before turning someone down based on their views.

Anything an employee says on social media, even their personal account, can reflect poorly on the company. However, refusing to hire someone based on their online comments and opinions might cross a fine line between protecting the business and infringing on personal rights.

Do Employers Use Social Media Screenings?

Performing social media background checks is well within the employer’s rights — many have reported using them regularly in hiring campaigns. Studies have shown that 43% of companies in the U.S. do this. Furthermore, 61% perform online screening to learn more about a candidate.

Facebook and LinkedIn are among the most frequently used for social media background checks. Employers use these as valuable tools to get insight into a candidate that they might not be able to glean from an interview. This allows recruiters to screen applicants more accurately to find the best match for each open position.

This is such a common practice that social media sites like LinkedIn were created to allow users to present a professional image to show employers. Job boards such as Indeed and Monster also enable candidates to develop professional profiles making it easier for employers to find them online. Still, some people close or delete their Facebook account and reactivate it after they are hired.

Can You Deny Candidates Employment? 

The biggest and most important question is: Can you deny candidates employment based on information found on their social media pages? The short answer is yes, but there are several legal risks. Using social media background checks as the basis for your recruitment campaign can cause the company to run up against many privacy protection and employment laws.

These regulations vary in scope and scale. For example, the U.S. has federal and state laws limiting how much information employers can use in hiring. They can vary depending on the state and circumstances.

The Employment-at-Will Doctrine

The employment-at-will doctrine is an agreement that states the job is indefinite and can be terminated by either the employer or employee. This is usually expressly included in the hiring contract.

The doctrine allows employers leeway when terminating employees who act or say things deemed offensive on social media — even if they are unrelated to their jobs. For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit case Ellis v. Bank of New York Mellon ruled that the institution did not violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it fired Lisa Ellis.

Ellis worked for BNY Mellon as a senior control analyst. She was fired after making racially charged comments on her personal Facebook account regarding a local news story about a councilman driving his car through a Black protest movement.

Her Facebook profile was public and showed she held a senior position at BNY Mellon. The bank’s Facebook page was soon flooded with complaints about Ellis’s online behavior, with comments making disparaging remarks about the company’s values.

After the bank determined Ellis violated BNY Mellon’s code of conduct, she was fired. According to the ruling, the termination based on her social media behavior was not unlawful and did violate BNY Mellon’s written policy regarding online presence.

Laws That Protect Against Discrimination

Several laws prohibit discrimination against potential employees based on race, gender and religious beliefs. Hiring professionals that use social media as part of their recruitment strategy should be wary of breaking these laws.

When looking through a candidate’s social media, the decision on whether or not to hire them should not be entirely based on personal information found online. The candidate can use this actionable legal offense against the company.

One case that exemplifies this is Gaskell v. University of Kentucky — which ended in favor of the plaintiff. It was proven that the candidate, Gaskell, was passed over for a position at the University of Kentucky because of his religious beliefs, which the university discovered through his social media profile.

The National Labor Relations Act

The National Labor Relations Act protects employees’ right to freedom of association. It provides people the right to seek better working conditions and representation without fear of retaliation.

For example, while screening a candidate’s social media, you find they have a history of discussing topics such as unions and wages online. The National Labor Relations Act would prohibit you from denying employment to that applicant based solely on his association with a union which you found on their personal social media page.

Take Caution When Conducting Social Media Checks

Social media background checks can be an excellent method to help screen candidates, but recruiters should be careful. Relying too much on social media information can lead to tripping over legalities that could cost the company.

The Role of Recruiters in Facilitating Successful Relocations

Companies are hiring from all corners these days. Have you recently expanded your recruitment efforts to try and attract talent from other cities, states, or countries?

Whether candidates are coming from across the state or the globe, relocations are tricky, to say the least.

Why Is Relocation so Challenging?

The more you know about the problematic aspects of relocating candidates, the easier it is to prepare and set yourself up for success. The following are some of the top challenges companies report when helping potential new employees move:

  • Candidates don’t always want to move.
  • Candidates aren’t enticed by the financial incentives and other perks offered in exchange for relocation.
  • Candidates can’t find housing, good schools, family resources, etc.

Employers face obstacles, such as the massive stacks of paperwork to complete and the research required to help new employees find housing, schools, etc.

These processes are time-consuming, but they can be worth it in the end, particularly if they help companies become more productive and profitable.

How to Identify Candidate Relocation Needs and Expectations

If a candidate has expressed that they’re on the fence about accepting a job because of relocation-related issues, do some digging to find out how you can meet their expectations and fulfill their needs. Here are some examples of questions you might ask:

  • What factors do you need to consider when moving? For example, do you have a spouse or partner who also needs to relocate?
  • What, if any, ties do you have to this area?
  • What characteristics do you look for in a new community?
  • Do you or your family have any specific recreational interests that will influence your decision?
  • Do your rent or own your current residence?
  • What are your expectations when it comes to relocation assistance from an employer?

Once you get answers to these questions, look for ways that you and your team can support a candidate during a transition and help them settle into their new role.

In some cases, you may need to sweeten the deal, so to speak, to encourage candidates to move forward with relocating. For instance, you may need to offer a greater sum to cover their moving expenses or provide a stipend to supplement their spouse’s income while they search for a new job.

How Can Recruitment Agencies Simplify Relocation?

Partnering with a recruitment agency is one of the most effective ways for companies to simplify the relocation process. The following are some benefits that recruitment experts can provide:

Fill in HR Gaps

Depending on the size of the company, they may not have the human capital needed to handle relocations on top of all their other responsibilities. In some cases, the HR department isn’t fully fleshed out yet, and one person is managing everything.

In these cases, outsourcing and working with a recruiting agency will lighten other people’s loads without leaving candidates hanging.

Streamline Relocation Processes

Recruiting agency employees often have the experience and know-how needed to confidently and efficiently facilitate relocations. To make the process as quick and straightforward as possible, an agency likely has the tools needed to make that happen.

Improve Communication

A recruitment agency can also help to improve communication between the hiring company and the new recruits. They may act as an intermediary, getting answers to essential questions, negotiating when needed, and making sure everyone’s needs are met.

Provide Expert Advice

Whether you’ve never relocated a new employee before or you just want help making this relocation easier, a recruiter can provide expert advice.

They can answer questions regarding incentives, moving expenses, reimbursements, finding housing, and more. One common question people have is about whether moving expenses can be claimed on their taxes.

Check-in with New Employees

A recruitment agency also provides an additional layer of support for new employees. Not only will they have their new management to ensure they’re settling in well and finding their footing in their new role, but they’ll also have a recruitment professional checking in regularly.

This extra support can be instrumental in supporting candidates and setting them up for a successful transition.

How to Stand Out as a Recruitment Agency

Recruiters know that the competition in your industry is fierce. To stand out and attract top clients, you need to offer something unique. Here are some key factors that will set you apart:

Specialized Relocation Services

To truly excel as a recruitment agency, you need to specialize in candidate relocation. This means having a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities that come with relocating for work. By offering comprehensive relocation services, you can help your clients attract and retain top talent.

Industry Expertise

Having a broad range of experience is great, but it’s also important to demonstrate expertise in specific industries. Clients want to work with recruiters who understand their business and can provide tailored solutions. By focusing on specific sectors, you can establish yourself as a go-to expert.

Local Knowledge

Knowing the ins and outs of your client’s location is crucial for providing effective recruitment services. By understanding the local job market, cost of living, and other important factors, you can help candidates make informed decisions about relocating. Being well-connected in the community is also a plus.

Personalized Attention

When clients work with a recruitment agency, they want to feel like they’re getting individualized attention. Make sure your clients have a dedicated point of contact who understands their needs and goals. Regular communication and transparency are key.

Positive Reputation

Finally, make sure you have a strong track record of success. Share testimonials and case studies from satisfied clients to demonstrate your value. By prioritizing the needs of your clients and consistently delivering results, you’ll earn a reputation as a trusted partner in the recruitment process.

Simplify Employee Relocation Today

Using a recruitment agency during an employee or candidate relocation can bring many benefits. Agencies that specialize in relocation can help ease the stress and challenges associated with the process. They can assist with everything from finding temporary housing to navigating local schools and healthcare systems.

Additionally, recruitment agencies often have access to a wider pool of qualified candidates, including those who may not be actively seeking new employment. This can save businesses time and resources when trying to fill a position in a new location.

Working with an agency that has industry-specific expertise can also help ensure a good match between the candidate and the job, leading to higher retention rates and greater success in the long run.

How Can You Add Empathy to Your Recruitment Strategy?

Incorporating empathy into your recruitment strategy is essential for attracting and retaining top talent. We’ve gathered insightful suggestions from CEOs, HR professionals and recruitment experts, ranging from asking open-ended questions to practicing empathic questioning. Discover how these industry leaders are making the hiring process more compassionate and effective.

Ask Open-Ended Questions

Ask open-ended questions for candidates. This shows applicants you care about getting to know who they are as a professional, and it’s a street where both parties can benefit. For example, ask them about the type of work environment they thrive in or the type of manager they prefer to work with. It shows empathy while also examining a good cultural fit.

Christy Pyr
Chief Marketing Officer, Paradigm Peptides

Craft Thoughtful Reply Messages

Recruiting with empathy means showing your candidates and teams that you understand their needs and are sympathetic to their current situation. This can be easier said than done, as recruiting through modern technology can make it harder for recruiters to form meaningful relationships with individuals.

To be successful, one suggestion is for recruiters to craft prompt replies in the same tone and style as the individual’s original message. For example, if a candidate has shared a courteous answer, then don’t use casual language or slang when making your reply.

Crafting reply messages in this way allows the recruiter to show understanding and respect and create an authentic connection, even from behind a computer screen. Doing so contributes great value to any recruitment strategy by demonstrating care for people regardless of application outcomes.

Tasia Duske
CEO, Museum Hack

Use Job Fit Assessments

One way to add empathy to your recruitment strategy is to help candidates understand how well they will do in the job before they begin. Job fit assessments help identify the tasks, work environments, and competencies that are most aligned with their strengths.

This shows that you care about their success and career development and want to help them find the right fit. Assessments also provide feedback on areas for improvement, increasing self-awareness, and understanding of growth opportunities. By reducing job dissatisfaction and improving career decisions, job fit assessments can benefit both the candidate and the company.

Linda Scorzo
CEO, Hiring Indicators

Embrace VR Technology

One effective way to add empathy to the recruitment process is to put yourself in the candidate’s shoes. Virtual reality (VR) technology presents a unique opportunity to do just that, as it enables recruiters to gain an immersive experience and truly empathize with candidates on a deeper level.

When HR professionals use VR technology, they are better able to understand what it’s like for a candidate during the recruitment process, helping them foster better engagement and create an overall more inclusive recruitment process.

This can lead to higher-quality hires due to improved candidate engagement. VR technology enables HR professionals to understand their potential hires better and make more informed decisions during recruitment.

By emphasizing empathy and using innovative tools such as VR throughout the recruitment process, organizations can attract talent that brings value through their skill set and unique perspectives and contributions.

Vivian Acquah
Certified Diversity Executive, Amplify DEI

Prioritize Transparency

The key to empathy in recruiting is transparency. At ECA Partners, we find that being as transparent as possible throughout the hiring process builds trust and also allows candidates to understand what to expect, preventing unnecessary disappointment further down the road.

As an example, we don’t tell candidates they are a perfect fit for a role if their background isn’t exactly what a client is looking for. Instead, we signal that while they have a great profile and we’ll be happy to put them in front of our client, there may be certain areas that could be a sticking point for the client.

I firmly believe it is possible to keep a candidate engaged while setting expectations and letting them know why, despite their impressive background (and all the candidates we interview are impressive), they may not move forward to the next stage. That transparency goes hand in hand with setting expectations and keeps candidates from taking possible rejections personally.

Tony Topoleski
Project Manager, ECA Partners

Personalize the Recruitment Experience

In order to add empathy to your recruitment strategy, it is important to consider techniques such as customizing the recruitment experience for individual applicants. For example, instead of sending a generic automated email or message after an applicant submits their paperwork, you could reach out with thoughtful personalized communication.

This communicates respect and consideration during a vulnerable time in an applicant’s life when they are searching for a job, while also personalizing the process and creating an open dialogue between them and your team.

By genuinely investing in candidates’ experiences throughout the recruitment process, employers can build trust and develop relationships with those they want to join their organization.

Amy Ling Lin
CEO, sundays

Offer Interview Support

Many people find interviewing to be both intimidating and exhausting, especially if it’s been a while since they’ve looked for a new job. By providing interview prep resources to candidates, you can acknowledge these challenges while signaling that you want to see them succeed.

Document the interview process, including interviewer profiles and the questions or topics for each session. Provide candidates with guidance on how to speak to their strengths and accomplishments. Give tips for how to succeed with presentations, case studies, and technical sessions. Offer prep calls before important interviews to answer questions and boost confidence.

Not all candidates will need these resources, but the ones who do will be grateful for the extra support. Even if someone doesn’t get the job, they’ll remember your empathic and fair approach and be more likely to refer other candidates to your company in the future.

Alex Lahmeyer
Founder and DEI Consultant, Boundless Arc

Implement Video Interviews

In today’s world, empathy is a vital aspect of any recruitment strategy. According to a LinkedIn survey, 96% of recruiters believe candidate experience is critical in the recruitment process. One way to add empathy to your recruitment strategy is by using video interviews.

Video interviews offer a more personalized experience for candidates, allowing them to showcase their skills and personality in a comfortable environment. They also eliminate the need for travel, which can be stressful for candidates. Recruiters can use this opportunity to showcase the company culture and values, making candidates feel more connected to the organization.

A real-life example of this is Unilever, which shifted to video interviewing during the pandemic. As a result, they saw a 50% reduction in time-to-hire and an increase in candidate satisfaction.

Himanshu Sharma
CEO and Founder, Academy of Digital Marketing

Create Empathetic Job Descriptions

Candidates today are looking at dozens of job descriptions, some of which can sound too technical and intimidating. By adding empathy to job descriptions, an employer can make their jobs sound much more inviting and show that they care and value their employees’ contributions. Taking a step back to understand what candidates are looking for is a step in the right direction.

If they are looking to grow in their career, but the job requires a highly specialized skill set or certification, adding more empathetic language can make your company seem more personable. For example, “This requirement may be challenging, but we’ll be here to support you on your journey” lets applicants know that this is an organization that not only understands how difficult it is to meet every requirement but is a company that will support them in their career growth.

Ultimately, adding empathy to your job descriptions can help you attract and keep top talent while taking a more human approach.

Grant Smith
Global Employer Branding Specialist, TD SYNNEX

Address Educational Biases

Many companies still carry educational biases that cost them to lose suitable candidates. Here’s how I tackle this issue by adding empathy to my recruitment strategy. Collect the candidate’s resumes and provide them with a separate form with more specific questions related to the job role. The questions can be about the candidate’s knowledge of certain tools or their approach to solving specific problems.

This process would allow the applicant to show their skills, enabling the employer to assess their proficiency more effectively. During in-person interviews, I enjoy allowing the candidates to explain why they could not meet the academic criteria. I maintain an open mind and a positive attitude while receiving the candidate’s response.

Finally, it is crucial to compensate candidates based on their skills rather than their degrees. Doing so would encourage individuals to upskill, creating a more inclusive and unbiased work environment.

Raju Thammala
Founder, WebPipl

Provide Honest Feedback

Candidates can deal with not getting a job. What frustrates and disheartens people is the perception that they didn’t get a fair shake.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of heartless ATS-driven form letters that coldly inform us that, “while we were impressed with your skills and experiences, we elected to move forward with other candidates.”

They are useless. Sure, they are better than being ghosted, but they tell the candidate nothing about why they missed the mark.

Instead, give feedback. If you know during the interview that the candidate will not be selected, cut it short and tell them why. If it’s after the fact, personalize your rejection by adding a line about where they fell short. Yes, it’s hard and uncomfortable. But most often, people respect honesty and appreciate insight.

Tim Toterhi
CHRO, Plotline Leadership

Practice Empathic Questioning

Irrespective of their confidence level, candidates experience feelings of judgment and apprehension throughout the recruitment process. Therefore, showing empathy is crucial in alleviating their anxiety. The pinnacle of the recruitment process takes place during the job interview. It is thus crucial for HR professionals to show empathy during this critical moment.

The meeting should not take on the tone of interrogation but be an interesting dialogue. Rather than asking questions like “Why do you want this job?” it is much more effective to inquire about the individual’s driving force. Similarly, instead of asking how one handles stressful situations, it is better to show interest in the emotions experienced when faced with an obstacle.

So the key to success is in the art of asking the questions. This approach not only puts the candidate at ease and encourages them to open up, but it also benefits the company in the long run.

Martyna Szczesniak
Community Expert, MyPerfectResume

Diversifying Talent Acquisition: Recognizing Potential Across All Candidates

Here’s a difficult reality: White men are often judged on their potential, while women and people of color are judged on their past performance. This discrepancy acts as a barrier for individuals from underrepresented groups because most hiring, promotion and investment decisions are centered on potential. The good news is that talent acquisition professionals can make a huge difference with a simple intervention during the interview stage.

The Disparity in Assessing Potential vs. Proof

An illustrative example of the potential vs. proof bias comes from a study conducted at TechCrunch Disrupt involving 189 prospective founders. Researchers found that two-thirds of questions asked to men (by men and women) asked about potential. These were questions like:

  • How do you want to acquire customers?
  • How do plan to monetize this?

On the other hand, two-thirds of all questions asked to women demanded proof. These were questions like:

  • How many active users do you currently have?
  • How predictable are your cash flows?

The study found that when founders got to talk about their dreams and plans (i.e. their company’s potential), they got more funding. But not everyone gets to talk about their potential—because they aren’t explicitly asked to.

4 Steps for Fostering Equality in Potential Evaluation

Recruiters and talent acquisition leaders play a vital role in creating a better, less-biased hiring process. One important way to do this is by raising awareness about the bias between potential and proof during candidate evaluations, and recommending strategies to improve interview techniques. Here’s how:

1. Encourage consistency: Challenge interviewers to consistently ask questions focused on potential when evaluating all candidates, especially those from underrepresented groups. It’s vital to consciously apply the same evaluation criteria to all candidates, regardless of their background.

2. Provide interviewers with potential questions: Make it easy for interviewers to ask questions that allow every candidate to discuss their potential. These could include:

  • What is your vision for this role?
  • What is your vision for our product/service?
  • What are your career goals?
  • What kind of obstacles have you had to overcome to get to where you are today?

If your company employs a structured, competency-based interview process (an essential component of inclusive hiring) incorporate “potential” questions into that process.

3. Align on evaluation metrics. Bear in mind that potential-based questions can be challenging to score and compare across different individuals. Therefore, it’s essential that hiring teams establish what differentiates a good response from an average one before posing these questions.

4. Review interviewer feedback: Lastly, review the feedback provided by interviewers for potential biases. Are interviewers discussing potential for some candidates but not for others? Are they holding some candidates to more stringent standards?

As partners in the hiring process, recruiters play a vital role in ensuring fair and effective hiring practices by helping the hiring team spot and address biases. For too long, potential has been applied selectively and unfairly. As we seek to optimize talent acquisition, fully embracing the potential of all candidates, especially those that have been historically overlooked, can lead to a more inclusive and successful recruitment process and a more creative, high-performing company.

Exploring Skymem: A Powerful Email Validation and Domain Search Tool

Are you tired of playing detective and struggling to find someone’s email address? Fear not, Skymem is here to save the day! Skymem is an email validation tool that can assist you in discovering emails and domains effectively. In this article, we will delve into the features and functionality of Skymem, so you can stop playing hide-and-seek with emails and start connecting with your prospects.

Unveiling Skymem

Skymem is like a superhero for email validation, offering a plethora of possibilities for emails and domains. By simply inputting someone’s name, Skymem generates a comprehensive list of potential email addresses associated with that person. It even goes a step further and provides information about the domains and the usage history of these emails. Move over Sherlock Holmes, there’s a new detective in town!

Harnessing the Power of Email Validation

Let’s explore some key features and functionalities of Skymem that make it a valuable tool for email and domain search:

  • Email Possibilities: Skymem presents you with a wide array of email validation options connected to the entered name. It not only identifies the correct email address but also suggests other potential emails that may or may not be associated with the individual. It’s like a genie, but for emails!
  • Domain Insights: Alongside emails, Skymem also provides domain information. By utilizing this feature, users can gain valuable insights into the domains used by the person of interest. This information can be useful in various scenarios, such as business outreach or research purposes. Skymem is like your personal domain expert!
  • Effortless Search: Skymem excels in simplicity. With just a few clicks, users can access a wealth of information about emails and domains. The user-friendly interface ensures a smooth experience, making the search process quick and convenient. It’s so easy, even your grandma can do it!

Putting Skymem to the Validation Test

To truly understand the email validation capabilities of Skymem, let’s examine a few scenarios:

  • Complex Names: Skymem proves its effectiveness even with complex names. For instance, if a name consists of multiple words, like in the case of “Dean Da Costa,” Skymem successfully breaks it down and provides accurate email results. It’s like a language expert, but for names!
  • Alternative Identifiers: Skymem goes beyond name-based searches. It can also utilize usernames to uncover associated emails. By inputting a username like “star4343,” users can retrieve relevant email addresses linked to that username. It’s like a social media expert, but for emails!
  • Partial Matches: Skymem handles partial matches intelligently. In the example of using “find email” as the search query, it successfully identifies email addresses containing the phrase but recognizes that they may not be directly related to the user’s specific email. It’s like a word magician, but for emails!
  • Multiple Email Sources: Skymem acts as a valuable resource for finding and validating emails across different platforms. Whether it’s Hotmail, Gmail, or other email providers, Sky Mem offers a comprehensive database to assist users in their search endeavors. It’s like an email genie, but with unlimited wishes!

Conclusion

In conclusion, Skymem is an impressive email validation tool that can make your life easier. Its ability to generate a wide range of email possibilities, provide domain insights, and simplify the search process makes it a valuable asset. Whether you are trying to find someone’s email, validate an email, or explore domain associations, Skymem is a reliable companion in your quest for information. Next time you find yourself in need of email-related assistance, give Skymem a try and may the source be with you!

Other Dean Da Costa Content:

Dean has a free page of sourcing tools, links, and other recruiting resources that we highly recommend you check out! That page has an overwhelming amount of stuff, so you gotta really love sourcing to appreciate the infinite hours of work Dean has put into it. For all of the Dean Da Costa resources on RecruitingDaily, click here!

Should You Use AI-Powered Candidate Screening in Recruiting?

Artificial intelligence can take over many functions of the screening process to relieve recruiters of some of their workload. In addition to freeing up their time, it can save an organization money and potentially select better candidates. However, ethical and legal concerns may not make it worth it despite its benefits. Should you use AI-powered candidate screening in recruiting?

How Can You Use AI in the Screening Process?

Artificial intelligence (AI) can operate with little human support to screen candidates. Recruiters can use it to automatically look through resumes, assess applicant qualifications, direct interviews or choose the best person for the role.

There are four main ways you can use AI-powered candidate screening:

  • Review resumes: AI can review massive amounts of data to handle reviewing resumes. It can scan them for keywords and detect relevant information to inform recruiters of good potential hires.
  • Evaluate candidates: AI can recognize patterns and evaluate candidates based on their qualifications. It goes beyond simply filtering resumes since you can train it to make decisions.
  • Conduct screening interviews: Many AIs can mimic human language and process data quickly, so they can conduct screening interviews. For example, ChatGPT can virtually interact with applicants in real-time, providing immediate feedback to recruiters.
  • Select candidates: Some AIs can make decisions through pattern recognition and analysis. With enough data, they can assist recruiters in candidate selection because they can make informed choices based on factors that may not be apparent to humans.

The screening process involves a lot of tedious work, so most companies use AI as support to handle such tasks. After the initial training period, it can take over many aspects of the process and run with little to no human interaction.

You must thoroughly train the algorithm before you implement it so it can accurately carry out its purpose. Model tuning is an essential part of the training process for machine learning, so your AI will require a lot of computing power. It can be time-consuming, but the result is an efficient tool capable of screening candidates for you.

Pros of Screening Candidates With AI

Evaluating every applicant is often time-consuming, so using a tool that drastically increases their free time can be beneficial. It can streamline the process and produce better results while remaining affordable.

1. Increased Efficiency

Recruiters spend up to 23 hours screening candidates on average, which is why around 52% of them state it’s the most challenging part of their job. Reviewing resumes, evaluating potential hires and selecting the best one is typically time-consuming, but AI can automate most aspects. For example, recruiters can use it to narrow down resumes to only qualified candidates.

2. More Affordable

The tool is typically affordable, but savings usually come from increased productivity. Employees spend less time on tedious tasks like reviewing resumes, which lets them focus on more important things.

They get more done with more free time, which can translate to a more affordable business model. Some companies reported a 75% reduction in screening expenses per candidate after implementing AI-powered recruiting software.

3. Better Results

A job posting receives around 250 resumes on average, with as much as 88% of applicants being unqualified. AI can provide better results by extracting only qualified individuals from a pile of resumes.

It can analyze the language and specific words in their resume or cover letter to understand their qualifications. You can instruct it to only search for specific skill sets or experience and filter out the rest, which leads to better options.

4. Reduced Human Bias

Despite most recruiters trying to stay impartial, everyone has some bias. During the screening process, they may subconsciously judge someone based on their appearance or personality rather than their qualifications. Unintentional prejudice can lead to qualified candidates being disregarded.

AI can eliminate such issues because it relies purely on data and doesn’t make inferences based on its own opinion. Many recruiters feel optimistic about its applications, with nearly 68% agreeing AI will reduce human bias in the recruitment process.

Cons of Screening Candidates With AI

While there are many benefits to using AI-powered candidate screening, nothing is perfect. The cons arguably don’t outweigh the pros, but it might not be worth it for some organizations. Algorithms are prone to unique biases and errors that could disqualify great applicants or lead to noncompliance issues.

1. Algorithmic Bias

Typically, most algorithms are black box AI, which means humans can’t determine how it reasons or comes to its conclusions. You can give it metrics and tell it how to operate, but you’re still essentially blind to how it works. It might make decisions based on patterns you didn’t intend for, meaning the results may be biased.

AI typically produced biased results based on errors during training. For example, Amazon input a decade of its hiring information into an algorithm thinking it would streamline its hiring process, but it ended up discriminating against women since fewer women had been hired in the past. An algorithmic bias can quietly disregard qualified candidates.

2. Overlooked Candidates

Although it’s a relatively minor issue, AI can’t reason as humans do. While the technology has made incredible improvements, it’s still simply artificial intelligence, not true intelligence. When reviewing resumes, it might disregard candidates that are completely qualified simply because the language in their paperwork doesn’t align with its reasoning.

It may overlook potential hires if they use odd language, or have uncommon skillsets or characteristics. Recruiters can usually see the connection of unique abilities to the role they’re screening for, but AI might not be able to.

3. Potential Noncompliance Issues

Potential noncompliance issues arise from using AI in the screening process because it may contain bias. Although it’s usually because it trained on prejudiced information or made minor errors in pattern recognition, that doesn’t stop discrimination lawsuits from being brought forth.

The government is stepping in, as they’re concerned about how it affects compliance. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warns employers risk violating federal law when using AI because it might unfairly discriminate against applicants with disabilities. Organizations should strongly consider the possibility of fines and legal repercussions before implementing it in the screening process.

Is Using AI to Screen Candidates Ethical?

It’s challenging to definitively say if using AI-powered candidate screening in recruitment is ethical because there are a lot of variables to consider. For example, while it may unfairly judge applicants based on data, it removes most human bias from the process. With proper training and testing, it can evaluate and select candidates better than humans.

That said, there’s no way to eliminate all bias and potential errors from its algorithm entirely. Although there’s general uncertainty around the ethics of AI screening, it may be beneficial. Recruiters might take more care when training and using it to ensure fairness.

Using AI-Powered Candidate Screening in Recruiting

Although there are some ethical issues surrounding bias and discrimination, the same problems exist without AI. It has flaws but provides many benefits that appeal to many recruiters. Still, each organization should weigh the pros and cons before deciding.

Workers Today Prioritize Well-being & Employers Should Meet Their Expectations

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic caused emotional distress on a global scale and brought the topic of mental health to center stage. Three years after the pandemic, the residual effects —inflation, layoffs, and an unpredictable labor market—continue to have a negative impact on people’s mental well-being. With employers working to recalibrate their culture and benefits to meet changing expectations, offering mental health services stands out to job seekers who want to work for organizations that take mental health seriously.

Today, to attract talent, employers are offering benefits that go beyond the basics; they are incorporating mental health resources into their benefits programs – destigmatizing mental health and adding flexibility that allows employees to prioritize their well-being.

Cultivating an Environment That Prioritizes Well-Being

Over the last year, over 80% of talent has actively sought jobs with organizations prioritizing mental well-being. Employers are offering benefits that align with these trends to support the retention and recruitment of talent.

While historically viewed as a taboo subject at work, open conversations about mental health in the workplace and offering specific benefits have proven advantageous for the long-term success of an organization and its employee base, with the added benefit of being a strong tool for recruitment. At DeVry University, our intentional culture of care promotes the importance of both physical and emotional health in equal parts. Creating a space where stories and relevant issues can be openly discussed and mental health breaks are encouraged, we empower colleagues to take the steps they need to be at their best for themselves and our students by destigmatizing the topic.

By setting a standard to prioritize personal well-being across your workforce, organizations create an environment that employees and potential new talent want to be a part of. For example, employers that provide benefits and support for employees to navigate family matters like child or elder care, pet care, moving, and college planning – along with resources geared toward financial planning and budgeting – help equip their talent with the resources they need to successfully address some of life’s most challenging issues that greatly impact wellness.

Implementing Benefits That Meet Employee Needs and Expectations

Recent studies show that a large percentage of employers have introduced mental health programs into their employee benefits packages, which an overwhelming majority of employees deemed extremely helpful, highlighting how important it is for employers to be in touch with their workforce. In doing so, they are able to align work and benefits to employee needs, retain a strong workforce and attract new talent with similar priorities and expectations.

There is no one-size-fits-all when implementing any type of benefits program, but providing easily accessible and truly supportive resources— such as coverage for virtual mental health and wellness support services, employee assistance programs, mental health breaks, and greater work schedule flexibility— is a great first step in the right direction, including from a talent acquisition and retainment perspective.

Taking mental health support a step further, organizations can advance their offerings by developing plans that also account for an employee’s family. While an obvious consideration for some, this added benefit is not necessarily universally available. At DeVry, for example, we introduced a comprehensive employee assistance program, which includes unlimited, online health assistance 24/7 not just for our colleagues but also for their families. Developing programs designed to serve the greatest number of people with exceptional resources supports employees as they navigate external challenges.

No doubt, Covid-19 transformed our society and the nature of work. We are at a crossroads as organizations reconsider their offerings and culture to meet the changing expectations of employees. Prioritizing mental health resources, in addition to benefits that support physical and financial health, can be a strong differentiator. With access to the right resources in a positive environment, we can all go further in our journey to be our best selves in and outside of work.

Why ChatGPT Just Increased the Value of Human Capabilities in the Workforce

Advanced AI models, like the sensational ChatGPT that was released into the wild by Open.AI last November, are quickly making themselves indispensable in the modern workplace.

According to Business Insider, 43% of working professionals admit that they employ AI tools such as ChatGPT to accomplish tasks at work, with another 68% saying they haven’t told their bosses. This demonstrates, despite any skepticism or resistance, that just like the computer, and then the internet that came after it—so too will AI become an instrument we can’t live (or work) without.

In fact, MIT predicts that ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy, but it is up to us to decide what that looks like. This will call on business leaders across industries to start sculpting a new narrative with AI for the future of the work world.

In lieu of this, the context for humans in the workplace is about to radically transform—but not in all of the negative ways that many workers are imagining.

To keep pace with the rapid evolutions occurring in the workforce, talent acquisition (TA) and HR leaders need to consider how human capabilities can help determine where to employ men, and where to deploy machines. There are three key steps that leaders can take to ensure that  2023’s “great transformation” will ultimately be the positive restructuring of the workforce that is so desperately needed.

Step 1: Dial Out the Term “Soft Skill”

Hard skills, which have been resume boosters in the past, are increasingly being replicated by AI’s expanding technical abilities. This in turn will make it so that human capabilities—otherwise known as the skills that set us apart from machines—gain new traction in the career marketplace. Historically labeled as “soft skills”, human capabilities have often been overlooked.

In the modern workplace, uniquely human abilities have the potential to be determinants. These are things such as interpersonal skills or critical thinking and have been proven indicators of how workers fit into companies’ professional roles as well as cultural frameworks. In fact, research conducted by the SHRM in 2020 showed that 89% of the time a new hire failed, it was due to a mismatch in human capabilities. The same research showed that 97% of employers agree that capabilities are equally or more important than technical skills.

​​“I think of human capital as a workforce’s ability to create value,” said Jake Prince, Director at Elevos, a human capital consultancy. “Leaders want to know what their employees are capable of today and what they’ll need for the future. With that knowledge, an organization can proactively invest in its workforce.”

Leading the way in redefining what “soft” skills mean in the workplace are companies that are recording and capturing “skill taxonomies”. These are frameworks that provide an objective skill hierarchy within an organization’s employee ecosystem. Constructing skill taxonomies usually starts with pinpointing a broad sweeping skill, such as “communication”, and then drilling that skill down into more digestible bits like written communication, spoken communication, or technical communication.

Data on employees’ skills can break down enormous “capability” slabs into more relevant and digestible bits—offering a way to manage and identify the abilities that make your business and workforce successful.

“Understanding skills can feel like the wild west,” continued Prince. “Ideally, an organization would understand the skills needed for each role, the skill levels of its employees, and the best way to close any gaps. How an organization does that depends on its complexity, priorities, and appetite for investing in skills.”

Despite well-documented labor and skills shortages spanning many industries, most organizations (75%) aren’t using employee data to inform staffing needs, according to an Employee Relations Benchmark Study by HR Acuity and Isurus Market Research. This shows a need to dial out the term “soft skill” so that organizations can start to access the contextual data that is clearly needed to proactively address employee acquisition, retention, and engagement at scale.

Step 2: Dial in Automation (With Mindfulness)

With the backdrop of increasing AI in the workplace, it is more important than ever for organizations to identify and map their human capability data.

By employing human capability data and automation in tandem, skill patterns, gaps, and hotspots can be recognized within a company’s talent framework. This will provide some much-needed insight for those in the HR and TA space who have been trying to balance bottom lines with employee engagement in a dire workforce landscape. “The life of a recruiter has become increasingly difficult as they are being asked to do more than ever with less support to do it,” said Rob Savette, Co-Founder and CEO of Almas Insight, a company that uses game-based analytics to identify human capabilities in the workforce. “Human Capabilities can help individuals in HR and TA improve their metrics, present more comprehensive data to management and, through the effective use of human capabilities assessment products, glean better data with less interview time.”

There are a few major ways that AI can transform an organization’s processes and procedures so that they can move towards talent-focused models—both with the talent they seek as well as talent that already exists within their infrastructure.

Wielding the power of employee data, AI can be deployed to track patterns, showing which skill sets are in surplus and which are in short supply within an organization. This can help TA leaders identify where skills gaps exist so that they can more strategically recruit. It can also help companies to skill match internally, either across an organization or within certain departments to see if any people in their already existing talent pool are a good fit for open positions.

AI can also recognize skill gaps on an individual employee basis, providing data to help address missing capabilities through training. Providing the opportunity to develop within an organization can help improve employee performance, prevent future issues, and expand the worker’s value—all things that increase the chance of retention. On the flip side, AI can also help identify high-performing employees, evaluating the ways that an organization can foster that individual’s progression within their company.

Finally, on an operational level, AI can transform the harmony of the workplace. With skills mapped, companies can delegate tasks that workers find meticulous to automation—both improving employee morale as well as operational efficiency. On a cultural level, it can help to enhance evaluation tactics through more standardized processes, providing an objective view of candidates’ capabilities and potential without bias.

“Organizations and workers must navigate this new world of work together and focus on creating mutual value,” said Sona Manzo, Managing Director for Deloitte Consulting Human Capital Practice, Workforce Transformation. “For workers, this includes honing their fundamental human skills and finding creative ways of delivering results. For organizations, this means meeting their people where they are and supporting them in delivering business goals while meeting their professional development expectations.”

Advanced AI models like ChatGPT excel at tasks that require vast amounts of data processing and content creation, but they still lack the creativity, empathy, and critical thinking abilities of humans. As such, leaders need to focus on how AI capabilities can complement vital human skills, rather than compete with them.

Step 3: HR and C-suite Leaders Must Adapt

The biggest challenge for integrating non-technical skills into the workplace dialogue has been that these abilities and behaviors are hard to quantify, measure, and then extrapolate into hard data that businesses can use. Leveling up this challenge is the fact that no employee, employer, organization, or industry is alike.

Adaptation starts with HR and C-suite leaders moving away from cookie-cutter evaluation methods. Companies need to find ways to look at the attributes of the people who are filling roles successfully within their organization, and not just the black-and-white requirements listed in the job description. In fact, according to Deloitte’s 2023 Human Capital Trends Survey, 93% of organizations felt that moving away from a focus on jobs was important to their organization’s success. Yet only 20% felt very ready to do so.

“The construct of jobs had been the defining characteristic of our working world for centuries, while businesses and their needs evolved at a slower pace,” continued Manzo. “Today’s competitive, ever-changing world demands more. A skills-based approach (to the workplace) can improve people and business outcomes by empowering workers and driving agility.”

Necessary skills for a role, both “hard” and “soft” or technical and non-technical, should be integrated into the hiring process from the get-go. This ensures that those in TA can help bolster their workforce’s operational needs while still hiring for intentional culture. Some bright examples of innovation that are helping steer companies towards “skills-based” models and away from rigid job frameworks are:

  1. Machine learning (ML) can help to screen candidates, providing an efficient and objective approach to match candidates with the preferences of the employer. ML algorithms can help HR teams to evaluate thousands of candidates in the time it takes for an individual recruiter to assess one. ML algorithms can also provide a more standardized approach to candidate selection—mitigating bias and more inclusively hiring.
  2. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies can be effective as they simulate real-world scenarios, helping employers understand how workers deploy skills in real time. This is a game changer for industries that require specialized skills, such as manufacturing or healthcare, where mistakes can have serious consequences. Additionally, AR and VR can be used to automate interviews, which can lower the impact of an interviewer’s biases while also providing actionable data that can save hours of work for interviewers at a company.
  3. Skills assessment and development tools can use data analytics to identify skills gaps within an organization, helping companies integrate an applicable capability test when hiring for open positions. Additionally, these platforms can help workers track their individual progress and identify areas for improvement, creating targeted training programs that address the specific needs of the workforce they are a part of while also keeping TA up-to-date with the latest employee data.

The 2022-2023 SHRM State of the Workplace report found that labor shortages were still a top concern for 80% of HR professionals in 2022 and that allocating good job candidates and employee retention will be the key priorities for organizations in 2023. By incorporating groundbreaking technology that can provide value to HR and TA, leaders can start to move towards skills-based models and adapt to the needs of modern business.

Changing the Narrative

Employees who feel that their skills are not being put to good use in their current job are 10X more likely to look for a new job than those who feel that their skills are being put to good use.

By leveraging human capability data and AI technology simultaneously, organizations can start to move towards a skills-based business model. This will ultimately give companies an edge during the “great transformation” as they acquire and retain employees more effectively and efficiently.

“Businesses that welcome change and position themselves and their teams to react to changing market conditions are more likely to succeed in a market that is undergoing rapid evolution,” continued Savette. “We need to stop treating flexibility in the workforce as a bolt-on feature and start building it into the very way we work and build teams.”

When companies understand their talent DNA, they don’t have to choose one or the other with man and machine. Instead, they can utilize authentic human skills and automation concurrently. This will help organizations manage their workforce intentionally, equitably, and robustly—ultimately helping to build new symbiosis for the future of the workforce.

Benefits of Employee Retention for Recruiters

It’s no secret that recruiters are often left scrambling to find the best fit for their clients, as the top candidates are few and far between. Although recruiters now have more tools than ever to filter top-of-the-cream candidates, it’s certainly not cheaper than retaining trophy employees.

In fact, as per the survey by Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS), 4.0 million employees quit by the end of February in 2023. Here the role of recruitment and employee retention programs comes into play. An effective employee retention program can help you, the recruiter, in more ways than one.

Here are a few benefits you can enjoy with well-thought-out employee retention initiatives.

5 Benefits of Employee Retention Programs For Recruiting

Let’s look at these powerful benefits of implementing an employee engagement and retention program.

Retention of Top Performers Leads to Low Hiring Costs

Hiring new employees is not a task anymore; it’s getting lucked out on star performers that’s rare. Strong retention programs can help recruiters retain their top performers, saving money and time that would be spent recruiting and training new employees.

A high employee attrition is concerning for recruiters for so many reasons. For one, it means employees are leaving faster than they are getting hired. This means the recruiters require twice (or more) the cost of hiring to fill that one vacancy along with the cost of continuous training programs. According to a report from 2020, the average cost of training new employees can cost between $924-$1678 per employee, depending on the number of candidates recruited.

Even so, it still doesn’t guarantee if the new candidates could fit in the shoes of former top performers.

So, if you can retain your employees, you can save the cost of recruitment and onboarding training. Besides leaving, employees that stay but are quiet quitting instead can also prove costly for organizations long-term.

Access to Valuable Networks

When you successfully retain employees, they become valuable resources for finding potential and equally excellent candidates. Retained employees are likely to recommend qualified professionals to recruiters or recommend an organization to their own networks of former colleagues, friends, industry peers, and other connections.

Top-performing employees’ recommendations are even more valuable since they are likely to have connections with similarly high-performing individuals. Tapping into such networks allows recruiters to discover potential candidates who are not actively searching for a job change but are still open to considering new positions. Now, this candidate segment may not be available through other recruitment channels.

Promotes a Positive Brand Image to Attract Talent

Sometimes, no matter how many best practices recruiters employ, they can’t seem to find candidates for specific positions. In truth, it may not have to do anything with their hiring process but the company itself.

If you’re recruiting for an organization infamous for its employee attrition for various reasons, you might struggle to lock in even decent candidate profiles. It’s because every candidate wants to work with a business known to value its employees. A positive brand image gives recruiters a hiring edge.

So, strong employee retention programs help companies boost their image and be considered as desirable workplaces that can help recruiters attract higher quality candidates. A high retention rate establishes positive word-of-mouth from current employees, which works as an employee value proposition and plays a big part in helping you score the top talent.

Saves Recruiters Their Time

Hiring for a single position can take hours for recruiters. Think of the waste of resources if this happens every few months. Thus, having robust employee engagement and retention strategies saves recruiters time and makes the recruitment process more effective.

Not to mention, onboarding and training new employees to adjust to existing processes is time-consuming, leading to inefficiency and gaps in the system.

Enhanced Succession Planning

As a recruiter, one should be open to the possibilities of a potential hire from different sources, especially for leadership roles. One example is succession planning.

It is the process of identifying existing employees with the potential to fill key leadership roles within an organization.

When recruiters successfully retain employees, they can identify top performers ready to move up in the organization and take on more responsibility in the future.

Employee Retention Strategies You Can Leverage as a Recruiter

Employee retention starts with an effective hiring process.

So, now that you are familiar with the benefits of recruiting and employee retention programs, let’s look at the employee retention strategies and examples you can employ as a recruiter.

Gather Employee Feedback

Employees only remain with an organization if they are satisfied with their experience. After several complaints from employees, if a company doesn’t take action, they are bound to look for a company that does care.

You can catch this discontent in time and intervene as a recruiter by using surveys to collect customer feedback and intimate the organization on all grave issues employees face.

Look for Potential, Not Experienced Employees

If you only focus on the years of experience a person has in a role, you may miss out on some budding talent as a recruiter.

Understandably, it can be tempting to focus on candidates with higher numbers of years in the industry while recruiting, but it doesn’t always mean a quality hire.

Hiring for potential gives you candidates with the right skills, aptitude, attitude, and work ethic to succeed in the role, irrespective of the lack of a long track record. Some other additional benefits are:

  • Recruiters can cast a wider net when searching for candidates based on skills and capability.
  • Candidates with experience require higher pay compared to fresher talent.

Evaluate Your Hiring Process for Improvement

You wouldn’t expect a marketer to launch marketing campaigns but never track them, would you?

Similarly, you should also track the performance and results of your hiring process as a recruiter to see if it requires improvement to hire quality candidates that don’t add to attrition.

Here are some things you can do to keep track of your hiring process:

  • Consistently analyze recruitment metrics such as applicant-to-interview ratio, time and cost-per-hire, etc. For example, if the time-to-hire is longer than it should be, recruiters can reevaluate their screening process to reduce delays.
  • Collect feedback from selected candidates on the recruitment process to find improvement opportunities.
  • You can streamline and automate your recruiting process with applicant tracking systems (ATS) and other tools.

Ensure the Job Descriptions Are Elaborate

One of the best practices you can leverage to ensure you hire effectively is creating elaborate and clear job descriptions. Doing so can help you attract a larger pool of qualified candidates and increase the likelihood of finding the right fit for the role.

An accurate and elaborate job description helps candidates set clear expectations and see the accurate representation of the role they are trying for. Providing details around allowed work arrangements – remote, hybrid or in-office is also helpful for setting expectations.

This way, you don’t hire employees who may switch because they have different expectations of the role and their responsibilities.

Make Employees Stick With Effective Recruitment

With the knowledge of how to benefit from employee retention and recruitment programs and what employee retention strategies to leverage as a recruiter, seeing high retention rates won’t be a far-fetched dream for you.

You can start by identifying departments with high attrition rates, launch employee feedback surveys to understand the root cause, and implement your employee retention initiatives.

Effective strategizing and an efficient recruiting process will ensure you have top-performing employees with high levels of job satisfaction to make them stay.

Why Is It Important to Upskill Workers?

To understand the significance of upskilling workers, we gathered insights from industry professionals, including a Certified Diversity Executive and a Co-founder and Professor. From benefiting the employees and the organization to reducing turnover, discover the top reasons it’s crucial to invest in the development of your employees.

Creating a Win-Win for All

Investing in upskilling your workforce is critical to ensuring an organization’s success; it creates a win-win situation for both employees and the organization itself.

Upskilling not only gives employees a chance to increase their skill set and expand their knowledge base, but it can also lead to greater job satisfaction, which leads to enhanced productivity, motivation, creativity, and retention.

Providing access to upskilling opportunities can positively affect diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the workplace—research shows that companies with diverse teams are more innovative and productive than those that lack diversity.

In addition, companies who invest in such training build strong relationships with their employees, allowing them to grow as individuals alongside the business. Not only is this beneficial for employee morale, but it also helps keep the company competitive in an ever-changing market.

Vivian Acquah
Certified Diversity Executive, Amplify DEI

Fostering a Growth Mentality

Because it creates a “growth” mentality. Upskilling your workers is great for your business in several ways and it doesn’t just have to involve a formal accreditation required by your industry. Encouraging your employees to learn about a topic that is completely disconnected from their work helps you create and nurture a love of learning and personal development in them.

You want employees who are always looking to learn and grow because if that becomes instinctive, it will inevitably affect all areas of an employee’s life and bleed into their work ethos, too.

You will then have an employee who naturally wants to develop professionally, grow within their role, and move things along in the business. This kind of “growth” mentality can have enormous benefits for your business in the long run, improving employee engagement and increasing productivity.

John Everton
Technical Director, Bravo Benefits

Enhancing Engagement and Purpose

Engagement is an essential prerequisite to shaping the future of work. Ask your employees to consider their own fundamental purpose and direction, the values they wish to embody in their work, and the impact they wish to have in their careers.

Addressing these questions will not only form a reliable and sustainable foundation for building skills but also ensure that your employees will show up, stand out, and breakthrough in the workplace and beyond.

Rachel Bellow
Co-Founder, Bonfire Wome

Staying Competitive and Retaining Talent

In today’s fast-paced business environment, upskilling employees is becoming increasingly important for companies of all sizes. One reason upskilling employees is important is that it can help businesses stay competitive in their industry. This means that businesses must ensure that their employees have the skills to keep up with the latest trends and developments.

Upskilling employees also has a positive impact on the overall morale and productivity of a business. When employees are given the opportunity to learn and develop new skills, they feel valued and engaged in their work. Upskilling employees can also help businesses reduce turnover and keep top talent.

When employees feel they are continuously learning and growing within their role, they are more likely to stay with the company long term. Therefore, upskilling employees is crucial for businesses to stay competitive, keep top talent, and boost productivity.

Brittney Simpson
HR Operations Manager, Walker-Miller Energy Services

Promoting Internal Growth and Retention

When workers are offered upskilling opportunities, this expands the potential roles they can fill and the responsibilities they can take on within your organization. This gives them more mobility and ways to grow a career with your company, which improves retention in multiple ways.

Knowing that internal promotions are available means fewer employees will feel the need to look toward other employers when they’re ready to move their careers to the next level.

It also means employees can take on a wider variety of tasks and responsibilities, preventing them from feeling stagnant or “in a rut” and maintaining a higher level of job satisfaction. Finally, investing in upskilling shows employees you want to support their growth and increases employees’ feelings of being valued by leadership.

Matt Erhard
Managing Partner, Summit Search Group

Uplift Confidence and Morale

Upskilling your people means you’re investing in them, and everyone wins in this situation. You get more qualified talent in your organization, and your people get multiple benefits. Obviously, they learn something new, but you’re also showing that you value this person enough to invest in their professional (or personal!) well-being. I don’t believe upskilling always has to have a direct benefit to the company, either.

The confidence and morale boost people get when they are supported in their professional growth will benefit your company, even if the specific skill set isn’t necessarily something you have a burning need for right now. “But what if they leave?” So what? They leave with the message that your company is a place that invests in its people. That kind of brand impact is crucial to attracting future talent—let them evangelize your culture for you!

Sarah Ratekin
Chief Happiness Officer, Happiness Is Courage

Maintaining Relevance and Competitiveness

As a business owner or project leader, if you need to support the professional development of your workers, you must help them take on more responsibility. It is important to upskill your workers’ knowledge to enable them to stay relevant and competitive in their respective fields.

As technology and automation continue to transform the workforce, workers must gain new skills to remain employable. By providing opportunities for professional development, businesses can help their workers learn new skills and gain knowledge that can help them take on more significant responsibilities.

This‌ will lead to increased job satisfaction and engagement, as well as improved productivity and performance. Workers are more likely to stay with an organization that invests in their growth and development.

Yemisi Iyilade
Founder and CEO, YemisiIyilade.com

Adapting to Technological Advancements

One reason upskilling workers is important is that it helps to ensure that they have the knowledge and skills to keep up with technological advancements and changes in the job market.

As technology continues to advance at an unprecedented rate, many jobs are becoming increasingly automated and require workers to possess new or enhanced skill sets. By investing in upskilling, employers can help to future-proof their workforce and ensure that their employees are equipped with the knowledge and abilities needed to remain competitive in the job market.

Upskilling can lead to increased employee satisfaction, as workers are given the opportunity to grow and develop their careers within the company.

Jonathan Hedger
Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, OnlyDataJobs.com

Preventing Stagnation and Encouraging Growth

Most roles allow workers to improve “on the job” over time.

Repetition creates familiarity, optimizations are created organically, and performance will marginally increase. But workers can get bored and lose interest over time if their role either stays the same or feels easier than before.

This is where upskilling can play an important role.

Choosing to upskill workers in a skill set above or next to their current role will give them untold opportunities to either move into more senior positions or expand the range of responsibilities they can take on. This can provide more opportunities to promote from within when job openings in the team occur, or if the company expands.

Workers will gain a sense of achievement in themselves for learning a new skill, plus will feel valued because their company has invested in providing them with relevant training to achieve more in their role.

Kayvan Moghaddassi
Business Strategist, Kayvan Consulting

Debunking the Turnover Myth

What if I train them and they leave? Many managers wrongly believe that training employees leads to an increase in turnover. They assume that as their skills increase—they have more opportunities to leave or to be poached.

This is wrong. In my doctoral research, I looked at the different utility employees derive from work and their relationship to voluntary turnover. The three factors are material (pay), social (relationships), and transformational (growth and meaning). Of the three, the transformational utility has the biggest influence on turnover.

People quit because they are not growing on the job. This is true, especially for the newer generations (millennials and Z) but also for the older ones. So aside from the obviously improved productivity, the development of skills also leads to employee satisfaction, motivation, and retention. A growth mindset is important to be efficient in a fast-changing world. So your genuine worry is: What if I don’t train them and they stay?

Dag Flachet
Co-Founder and Professor, Codific

3 Emerging Tools that Can Streamline Recruitment

Recruiting new team members is in a very challenging place.

We’re seeing some major upheaval when it comes to the technology that we use to recruit new team members and this means that there’s a lot of complicated technological overhead. The pandemic, remote work, and distance onboarding are just some of the challenges faced by recruitment and HR in the new work environment.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way. We’ve got three emerging tools that can help you streamline your recruitment process.

1. Start Recruiting on Social Media

Your company is likely using social media for advertising and engaging with your customers, but are you using social media to recruit new employees?

Traditionally, social media use has been the bucket of the marketing department. It’s come to only be seen as the purview of advertising, but the potential of social media is so much more than just that.

There’s a good chance that your company is already recruiting on a social media site like LinkedIn. However, this is really just the tip of the social media recruitment iceberg. You need to go where prospective employees already are. This means checking out other social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

This is especially important if you plan on recruiting talent that are in public facing, creative positions. If you’re looking to recruit new graphic design talent, artists, or even community managers, you’ll find them active on social media sites. There’s a good chance that prospective employees are already looking for work on social media. It’s not uncommon for employees to send a direct message over a social media platform to try and engage a prospective employer.

Making sure that your business is ready to handle lease engagements on social media means that you’ll be able to connect with the most eager and motivated new hires.

We’re always looking for the go-getters who are willing to go the extra mile. However, this means we also need to go the extra mile to make sure that we can find and support this talent. Consider the social media platforms your company is already active on, and see what you can do to fold your marketing and HR efforts together. You’ve already put a lot of effort, and likely a lot of money, into making your social media platform work for you.

Why not make sure it works for your recruitment as well as it does your marketing?

2. Streamline Onboarding With A Company Wiki

One of the most powerful tools at your disposal for streamlining recruitment is a company wiki.

A company wiki, also known as a business wiki, is essentially a Wikipedia-style platform that acts as a central source of information for your organization. Think about your business from the perspective of a new hire employee. Where would they go to find information to help them streamline their onboarding process?

In a conventional system, a new hire would likely be given a ream of documents to go over and several new employees to shadow and network with. Over time, this is going to leave the information that new hires need scattered across countless employees and documents that may or may not be up to date.

A company wiki creates a central storehouse of information that new hires can turn to. These wikis are reliable and can be kept constantly updated by your entire team. This is arguably the fastest and most efficient way to onboard a new employee. They will have instantaneous access to the most up-to-date training information as well as internal policies.

Company wikis are also incredibly consistent. This creates a single source of truth for your business so there’s no conflict over what the correct process is or other typical problems that new hires face.

It’s easy to start a company wiki if you don’t already have one. Wikis are sourced by the community which means that team members from across your business can add information to the wiki. This helps to eliminate unnecessary duplication and ensures that everyone has access to the most correct information available.

Start your next recruitment effort off on the strongest footing possible by giving new hires access to a company wiki to help with their onboarding.

3. Take Advantage of AI Technology

The latest buzzword across every industry is AI technology. It’s no surprise that one of the most potent tools for streamlining recruitment is making the best use of AI.

Recruiters are already using AI for a variety of tasks including handling both content generation, networking with prospective clients, and managing their recruitment analytics.

Recruiters have access to a variety of AI tools that can help them connect with the best potential hires for open positions at their company.

AI tools like Paradox allow new hires to simulate interviews to land their next job. Employers can set up accounts to facilitate connections between potential hires and their HR department. Websites like Aiola are taking AI recruitment to a whole new level. This platform is using AI to facilitate the entire process of recruiting. You can think about it as a traditional web-based job board like Indeed, but fueled with AI software.

There are also AI tools that allow you to screen hundreds of applications in the time it would take a person to screen through a single application. These do have a few limitations like occasionally missing excellent hires that simply missed keywords, but overall they can help improve the efficiency of your recruitment process.

Final Thoughts 

Recruiting and onboarding new team members has never been more dynamic, exciting, and challenging. The new technology available to us, and new ways of using established technologies, have fundamentally reinvented how we recruit new talent for our teams.

These three tools are going to streamline recruitment and give you a leg up when it comes to finding the best and most competitive employees for your business.

Maximizing Recruiting Efficiency with SynapsInt’s Email Validation and Social Media Analytics

Are you tired of being a slowpoke in the recruiting and sourcing world? Well, SynapsInt is here to help! This remarkable tool is designed to facilitate various tasks such as domain and IP searches, email validation, and social media analytics. Whether you are a recruiter, researcher, or sorcerer, SynapsInt offers powerful features to boost your recruiting efficiency. In this article, we will explore the tool’s key functionalities and assess its effectiveness in the recruiting and sourcing realm.

Recruiting Efficiency through Validating Emails

Email validation is as crucial as staying hydrated during a marathon. With SynapsInt, you can easily determine the legitimacy and quality of an email address. By inputting an email into the tool, you receive comprehensive information about its status. SynapsInt checks for blacklisting, malicious activities, and leaked credentials associated with the email. Additionally, it provides details on the email’s age, ensuring you can assess its reliability. Furthermore, the tool confirms if the email is deliverable, making it an invaluable asset in verifying candidate contact information.

Social Media Analytics

We all know that stalking candidates’ social media profiles is a recruiter’s favorite hobby. SynapsInt extends its recruiting efficiency to social media platforms, particularly Twitter. By inputting a Twitter handle, the tool provides valuable insights into the associated user. This includes the absence of leaks and records on platforms like the Wayback Machine. The availability of such information can significantly aid recruiters and sourcers in gaining a better understanding of potential candidates, and give you more time to binge-watch your favorite show.

Analyzing Phone Numbers

While SynapsInt excels in email validation, its performance in analyzing phone numbers may be limited. Although it offers the option to search for both cell phone and landline numbers, the results may not always be accurate or available. It is advisable to explore alternative tools for comprehensive phone number analysis. However, considering SynapsInt’s proficiency in other areas, this limitation can be overlooked like that one time you overlooked your ex’s red flag.

 

Conclusion

In summary, SynapsInt emerges as a highly effective tool for recruiting and sourcing professionals who want to boost their recruiting efficiency. Its ability to validate emails and provide in-depth information about their legitimacy proves invaluable in ensuring reliable communication channels. The tool’s integration with Twitter offers additional insights into candidates’ online presence. Although the phone number analysis may not be as comprehensive, the overall performance of SynapsInt makes it a valuable asset in the recruitment process.

As a recruiter or sourcer, leveraging SynapsInt’s capabilities can enhance your efficiency and productivity, allowing you to spend more time on the things you love (like your dog) and less time on tedious tasks. While exploring other tools for phone number analysis may be necessary, SynapseAnt remains an excellent choice for email validation and Twitter analytics.

Remember, SynapsInt and its features are designed to optimize your recruitment efforts. So go ahead, harness the power of SynapsInt, and may the sourcing force be with you!

Other Dean Da Costa Content:

Dean has a free page of sourcing tools, links, and other recruiting resources that we highly recommend you check out! That page has an overwhelming amount of stuff, so you gotta really love sourcing to appreciate the infinite hours of work Dean has put into it. For all of the Dean Da Costa resources on RecruitingDaily, click here!

8 Recruitment Activities You Should Automate

The challenges of recruitment. So much to do, so little time.

Thankfully, automation allows you to focus on high-touch activities without wasting time on mundane and repetitive tasks, saving recruiters roughly 14 hours each week! Embracing AI also enhances the quality of hire (QoH) and talent retention. Luckily, we’re not alone in this belief, considering a whopping 96% of senior HR professionals agree with this statement.

And if all that’s not enough, automating your recruitment activities will also:

  • Increase HR productivity by streamlining the entire recruitment process
  • Improve the scalability and consistency of the recruitment process
  • Increase profits by lowering the cost per hire
  • Improve the candidate experience with better communication

HR activities are anything but monotonous, so we understand it may feel overwhelming to automate something as complex as the recruitment process. Where to even begin?

Not to worry, as we will walk you through the top 8 recruitment activities that automation will take to the next level. Buckle up and enjoy!

Posting Job Openings

So the journey begins – posting the brand new job offer for the first time. And right off the bat, we can start automating the recruitment process.

Rather than manually placing and optimizing the vacancy to multiple job boards one by one, Programmatic Job Advertising software allows you to choose which websites you’ll be targeting and post your vacancy with one click. Whether it’s the mighty Linkedin & Glassdoor, niche job boards specific to the role, or all of the above, automating this recruitment activity will create efficiency like never before. In fact, research shows that 60% of companies agree programmatic job advertising speeds up the average hiring timeline.

But wait, there’s more!

Rather than your candidates simply applying through those job boards (as they normally would for most vacancies), they will instead be redirected to your custom-made landing page to apply.  Create personalized fields to gather the information truly relevant to your vacancy and your firm, then just kick back and relax while all that data will be automatically migrated and stored in your recruitment CRM. First impressions matter, and it’s always a good idea to stand out from the crowd if you want to attract the best of the best. Well, creating a unique and capturing application process will do just that!

Finding Candidate Details

For those recruiters who can’t simply wait around for the perfect candidate to apply, headhunting becomes their next plan of action. Assuming the HR team has been around for some time, your candidate relationship management (CRM) system should be stacked with a pool of qualified candidates ready to be called upon when a new opening comes to life.

But let’s say you don’t have such a database at your disposal. That is still no excuse to spend countless hours scrolling through the thousands of resumes on all the different job boards.

Candidate sourcing software will automate this recruitment activity by discovering top talents at scale based on your specific criteria (e.g. skills and experience). Considering that nowadays almost a third of all new hires are proactively sourced by recruiters, it should definitely be on your priority list of tools. Afterward, this automation software creates a detailed digital dossier on those potential candidates by gathering their professional and contact details from multiple sources and storing them in your CRM.

Who knows, maybe your future dream candidate has already been sourced and qualified, with all their relevant details right in front of you.

Reviewing Resumes

Each job posting attracts 250 applicants on average. That’s 250 resumes that recruiters have to review and decide whether to qualify or not for every single job opening!

And this is where AI comes to the rescue once again.

Resume parsers are automation tools that extract, structure, and store the most relevant information from all the hundreds of resumes that come your way via email, job boards, websites, etc. Recruiters can then efficiently analyze those organized key criteria to pick out the most suitable talents for the specific job opening. Besides just saving your precious time, boosting productivity, and reducing overhead costs (as if all that’s not enough), a resume parser eliminates the margin of error when interpreting the data. Crucial information that may be poorly emphasized or simply overlooked by the human eye will not be able to slip through the AI.

These tools are constantly developing, and are now juiced up with machine learning capabilities that can analyze candidates’ data along with your company’s hiring trends to automatically suggest the most suitable matches. As the icing on the cake – most reputable resume parsers are pre-installed with your ATS (more on that later) and seamlessly integrate with your existing CRM platforms.

Engaging With Candidates

To begin with, why is candidate engagement essential?

Well, for starters, more than 50% of surveyed candidates had declined a job throughout their lives solely due to a poor hiring experience. And who can blame them? On top of that, candidate engagement maintains their interest & helps prevent ghosting by keeping them in the loop of the hiring process throughout its timeline, which 83% of candidates greatly appreciate. There are multiple stages of candidate engagement, most of which can be completely automated for efficiency.

Chatbots and automated Q&A systems have gained popularity over the years by ensuring that candidates’ questions or concerns do not go unaddressed (most tend to be repetitive). Next in line is creating some thoughtful, customized email templates for every stage of engagement. With email integration software, these template emails are then sent out on autopilot whenever a specific action occurs. For instance, the moment you push a certain candidate down the hiring pipeline – they instantly receive an automated email congratulating them and outlining the next step.

Whether your candidates turn out a good fit for your vacancy or not, they deserve to be communicated with and kept informed. In today’s fast-paced world, the right message at the right time can prove to be invaluable, be it in acquiring new clients or hiring the best candidate.

Scheduling Meetings

This recruitment activity was one of the first on the block to become automated. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given just how time-consuming it is going back and forth coordinating, checking availability, and scheduling meetings with numerous candidates all at once. Instead, you could save all this time and resources to focus on the high-value tasks, unleashing your full productivity. After all, HR is so much more than just recruiting.

For this automation, you will simply need a meeting scheduler of your choice, integrated with your already existing calendar, be it Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, etc.  To make things even better, you could sync your calendar with your CRM, email, and mobile phone to get constant reminders of upcoming meetings.

If we’re talking about online meetings, your new meeting scheduler will also generate and send out invitation links for Zoom or Google Meets. This automation also removes the barrier of needing to coordinate with one another, as the candidate has 24/7 access and freedom to choose their preferred date and time with recruiters’ availability in mind. This is great news for the 40% of candidates that book their meetings after business hours.

And hey, last but not least, it does create a much more enjoyable experience for the candidates with the convenience and pleasant visuals in place.

Assessing Candidates

There is so much to consider when assessing your candidates besides simply reading their CVs. Although AI can help with candidate screening, most of those factors will require a human touch to determine: whether the person would be a great cultural fit, how well they treat others, their willingness to learn, etc.

The preliminary assessment stage is usually an interview with the recruiter, where they can already filter out the ones lacking in skills or personal qualities. Next in line would be assessing the candidates’ skills, cognitive abilities, or situation behavior, which can and should be automated right away. Standardized assessment platforms can combine a few of these tests, customized to be directly related to the specific job at hand.

Although assessment and question overload result in candidate dropout, 89% of companies are utilizing some form of pre-employment automated assessments one way or the other.

Why, you might ask? They improve the QoH, decrease employee turnover rates, decrease hiring bias, and reduce the time-to-hire. At the end of the day, a candidate can oversell in their CV and interview, but there’s no faking in assessments.

The assessment results are integrated into the CRM, ATS, or database for easy management. These results are then automatically compared to industry/company standards to discover the best potential hires.

Tracking Candidates Through the Process

There’s no point in automating all these key recruitment activities if you have no way to track your candidates throughout their journey. Sure, you could use a simple Excel file to keep track of your candidates and their stages in the recruitment process, but when you’re dealing with hundreds of rows and columns – it becomes quite the challenge. As a result, 99% of all Fortune 500 companies incorporate an Applicant tracking system (ATS) in their overall recruitment strategy.

An ATS is one of the most popular recruitment automation tools in existence because it’s an all-in-one kind of software. For businesses whose recruiters go through thousands of applicants per year, investing in an ATS is really a no-brainer. It carries out numerous functions besides just candidate tracking, such as reviewing resumes, filtering applicants, setting meetings, engaging with candidates, and much more.

This solution has also proven crucial in tracking candidates and staying organized. All your potential hires will be grouped in your Applicant Tracking System, showing you exactly where every candidate is in the hiring pipeline for each open position.

Make your hiring decisions faster and better with an ATS, without ever losing track of a single candidate who could turn out to be a hidden gem.

Onboarding Successful Recruits

And Voila! You did it! You’ve successfully brought a new team member on board with some tough decisions along the way.

The recruitment process doesn’t fully end here as there’s one last vital step to tick off before the new hire can dive into their new role, and that is onboarding. The main goal of onboarding is to facilitate the new hires with the training and resources necessary to become their most productive selves, as well as settle into their new role, team, and corporate culture quickly and efficiently.

Employee onboarding software comes in different shapes and sizes, but most of it is heavily automated and cloud-based. This software often contains welcome letters, training guides, handbooks, videos, organizational charts, and much more, placing the onboarding process on autopilot. Recruiters will also create accounts, give access, and explain the firm’s tool stack, which is nowadays present in virtually every firm, remote, hybrid, or in-person.

In case there’s still debate on whether onboarding is necessary, research has shown that it skyrockets employee engagement and job satisfaction. In addition, it creates a standardized and consistent onboarding process for all future team members to follow. But perhaps most importantly, it improves the employee retention rate by 82%! Recruiters know the true cost of employee turnover, so you can also imagine just how much money saved we’re talking about.

Over To You

Both the candidates’ and recruiters’ time is too valuable to be wasted on recruitment activities that have the capacity to be automated.

With many countries facing record-high levels of unemployment and showing signs of talent scarcity, candidates are now placed at the core of recruitment, so the focus should be on making their journey as smooth, pleasant, and efficient as possible. It’s also in the best interest of the hiring company to identify and ‘close’ the best talents with minimum time and money invested, and that’s exactly what automation brings to the table.

Fun fact, Gen-Zs will soon make up the vast majority of all workforce worldwide, but over 50% won’t even apply for a job believed to have an outdated recruitment process. Yikes!

And since we have these modern tools at our disposal to make more precise, suitable hires – why not use them to your advantage?

Why Prioritizing Employee Mental Health is the Key to Successful Talent Acquisition

When thinking about traditional approaches to talent acquisition, the mental health of your existing employees may not be top-of-mind, and how the state of their mental health impacts your hiring process. Successful talent acquisition strategies often consist of leveraging data and marketing, emphasizing the company’s social responsibilities, designing competitive and comprehensive benefits plans, among other incentives and outreach strategies. While all that does aid in attracting quality talent to a company, it’s important to keep current employees in mind for a multitude of reasons.

Benefits of Prioritizing Employee Mental Health

The research speaks for itself: employees who take care of their mental health and feel supported are more productive, engaged and committed to their work. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 12 billion working days are lost globally each year as a result of depression and anxiety. That translates to one trillion U.S. dollars lost per year due to decreased productivity by those with poor mental health. By bolstering the mental health of your employees, you’ll see a positive uptick in productivity.

Moreover, engagement and employee wellness go hand-in-hand too. Engaged employees are less likely to quit and increase profitability. They are more motivated, which not only leads to a higher performance, but also fosters more motivation in their coworkers. Even helping one employee’s mental health can cause a positive ripple effect over the company as a whole.

If you think your employee’s mental health is already great without making it a priority, you may want to think again. ComPsych, the largest provider of employee assistance programs, surveyed North American employees on stress in the workplace. According to that survey, 62% have high levels of stress accompanied by extreme fatigue and feelings of lack of control.

How Employee Mental Health Translates to Successful Talent Acquisition

Better mental health directly correlates to increased workplace productivity, which means your company isn’t losing out on opportunities for growth. A study conducted by the American Institute of Stress discovered that U.S. businesses are losing as much as $300 billion annually as a result of workplace stress. The more mentally healthy employees feel, the better off your company will be. This means less work for talent acquisition specialists to find and recruit value-add hires; people want to work for a successful company.

Furthermore, true talent has a wide array of job offers to accept. Candidates are assessing you as much as you’re analyzing them during your interview process. It’s important that they see your workplace as one they can thrive in professionally, and so it’s important to show that your existing workforce is truly satisfied in their job instead of over-stressed and over-worked. Low employee morale is not easy to hide. If it becomes known that your employees are struggling, there will be an adverse effect on talent acquisition.

It’s also helpful to think about why someone may be leaving their current or previous role to start a new position at your company. Perhaps they felt their last company didn’t prioritize their mental health and were unsatisfied in their workplace.

Companies with active mental wellness initiatives are incredibly attractive to potential new hires; in today’s age, offering a basic benefits package isn’t enough. Employees need to know that their mental health will be important to their new workplace.

How to Prioritize Employee Mental Health

The World Health Organization published a fact sheet detailing risks to mental health at work, ranging from excessive workloads, long and unsocial hours, poor physical working conditions, discrimination and exclusion, unclear job roles, and conflicting home and work demands. It’s clear what the problems are, but the solutions can be harder to find.

First and foremost, it’s important to examine the workplace and workload. Make sure there are no employees being overworked, that their office space is comfortable and welcoming, and that they feel clear about their position and expectations. It’s crucial to set your employees up for success; if not, they will not only be less efficient, but they may also struggle to feel fulfillment and positive self-esteem.

It is also imperative to take into account some more personal factors. Pay special attention to employees who may be at higher risk of experiencing discrimination or exclusion in the workplace. Does your company have a diversity and inclusion initiative that offers protection and support? If not, consider investing money into that. Often, some of the best talent will come from a diverse background; if they see there is active discrimination at your company, they will want to choose somewhere else to work.

Perhaps your employees are struggling to find a work/life balance. In any case, you may want to improve employee mental health by offering workplace counseling. This form of organizational counseling enlists a third-party counselor to conduct interviews and research in order to find solutions to align the company’s interests with its employees’ needs and goals.

For employees who are truly struggling, consider providing access to therapy. In many situations, your employee’s mental health is suffering due to personal issues that have little to do with the workplace. These are not employees you want to give up on, as mental health struggles can negatively affect even the best of talent. While some may look down on attending therapy, there is an abundance of evidence showing that therapy really can work. Helping your employees feel more mentally healthy fosters a positive, loyal, and motivated work environment.