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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.

Oleeo Hidden Talent in the Finance Industry

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.

Why Portfolios Could Be a Game Changer for Recruiters

The hiring process has evolved significantly over the years, and recruiters are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to identify the best candidates for a given role. One tool that has become increasingly popular in recent years is the portfolio. A portfolio is a collection of a candidate’s work samples and accomplishments, and it can be a game changer for recruiters. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of portfolios in the hiring process, how they showcase skills and experience, and the impact they have on candidate selection.

The Importance of Portfolios in the Hiring Process

In today’s job market, it’s not enough to simply submit a resume and hope for the best. Recruiters receive hundreds, if not thousands, of applications for each job opening, and they need a way to quickly identify the most qualified candidates. This is where portfolios come in. A portfolio is a curated collection of a candidate’s best work and accomplishments, and it can be a powerful tool for recruiters. Portfolios allow candidates to showcase their skills and experience in a way that is much more engaging and informative than a traditional resume.

Portfolios provide recruiters with a more comprehensive understanding of a candidate’s abilities and potential. They demonstrate a candidate’s creativity, initiative, and attention to detail. They also provide a glimpse into a candidate’s personality and work style, which can be invaluable in determining whether they are a good fit for a given role and company culture. In short, portfolios help recruiters make more informed decisions about which candidates to move forward in the hiring process.

Showcasing Skills and Experience

One of the biggest advantages of portfolios is that they provide candidates with a platform to showcase their skills and experience in a way that is much more compelling than a traditional resume. Portfolios allow candidates to demonstrate their abilities through tangible examples of their work. For example, a graphic designer could include samples of logos and website designs they have created, while a writer could include samples of articles they have published.

Portfolios also allow candidates to demonstrate their range of skills and experience. They can include samples from a variety of projects, highlighting different aspects of their expertise. This is especially valuable for candidates who have a diverse skill set or who have worked in a variety of industries.

The Impact on Candidate Selection

Portfolios can have a significant impact on the candidate selection process. They provide recruiters with a much more comprehensive understanding of a candidate’s skills and experience, which can help them identify the most qualified candidates for a given role. In some cases, portfolios can even be the deciding factor between two equally qualified candidates.

Portfolios also help recruiters identify candidates who are a good fit for a given role and company culture. They provide insight into a candidate’s personality and work style, which can be invaluable in determining whether they will thrive in a given work environment. This can lead to more successful hires and lower turnover rates.

Examples of Successful Usage in Hiring

The use of portfolios in hiring is not a new concept, and there are many examples of successful implementation. For example, Airbnb requires candidates for design roles to submit a portfolio as part of the application process. The portfolio is then reviewed by a team of designers, who evaluate the candidate’s skills and experience based on their work samples.

Another example is the hiring process at IDEO, a global design firm. IDEO requires candidates to submit a portfolio that showcases their design process, including sketches, mockups, and prototypes. This allows the hiring team to evaluate a candidate’s problem-solving skills and creativity, as well as their ability to work collaboratively with others.

The Role of Technology

Technology has made it easier than ever for job seekers to create and share their portfolios. There are many online platforms and tools available that make it easy to create a professional-looking portfolio, even for those with limited design skills. These tools also make it easy to share your portfolio with recruiters and potential employers, increasing your visibility and reach.

Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Behance also allow job seekers to showcase their portfolios to a wider audience. By sharing their work samples and accomplishments on these platforms, job seekers can attract the attention of recruiters and potential employers who may not have otherwise found them.

Incorporating Portfolios into Recruitment Strategies

Recruiters can also benefit from incorporating portfolios into their recruitment strategies. By requesting them as part of the application process, recruiters can gain a more comprehensive understanding of a candidate’s skills and experience, and identify the most qualified candidates for a given role. They can also be used as a screening tool, allowing recruiters to quickly identify candidates who are a good fit for a given role and company culture.

Recruiters can also use portfolios to build relationships with candidates. By reviewing a candidate’s portfolio and providing feedback, recruiters can demonstrate their expertise and build trust with candidates. This can lead to more successful hires and stronger relationships with candidates in the future.

Conclusion

Portfolios are a game changer for recruiters and job seekers alike. They provide a more comprehensive understanding of a candidate’s skills and experience, and allow candidates to showcase their creativity and personality in a way that is much more engaging than a traditional resume. By incorporating portfolios into the hiring process, recruiters can identify the most qualified candidates for a given role and build stronger relationships with candidates. Job seekers can use portfolios to stand out from the competition and demonstrate their value to potential employers. With the right approach, portfolios can be a powerful tool for both recruiters and job seekers in the hiring process.

Why Do Employees Need Reskilling?

To understand the importance of reskilling in today’s workforce, we asked professionals from various industries to share their insights. From managing staff changes effectively to meeting industry benchmarks, these CEOs, HR directors, and other experts reveal the top reasons employees need reskilling.

Navigate Changing Job Markets

One reason employees need reskilling is because of rapid advancements in technology and changes in the job market. Many jobs that were in high demand in the past are now becoming obsolete because of automation and other technological advances. This means that employees who have been in the same job for a long time may find that their skills are no longer relevant or in demand.

Reskilling can help employees stay competitive in the job market and adapt to changing industry trends. It can also provide opportunities for career advancement and higher earning potential.

By investing in reskilling programs for employees, organizations can ensure that their workforce has the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the rapidly changing job market. This can also help to retain talented employees and create a more engaged and productive workforce.

Brittney Simpson
HR Operations Manager, Walker Miller Energy Services

Manage Staff Changes Effectively

The best reason to create an employee reskilling program is because it’s a very effective way of handling staff changes and managing personnel. It’s easier and safer to invest in an employee that could fill a vacant role than to spend resources on finding a perfect candidate. That way, you know what you’re working with, and you can instead focus on replacing a less crucial vacancy.

Natalia Brzezinska
Marketing and Outreach Manager, ePassportPhoto

Become a Forever Student

The current version of yourself might work for today but not guarantee success for your tomorrow. Many businesses now have various different generations in the workplace. So what does this mean?

Various talent at different levels exist no matter what level you are at work. One should challenge oneself to always stay in the posture of a student. A forever student, as I like to call it. Willing, open, curious, and passionate about learning.

There is a development principle called p: 70.20.10. One should learn on the job, which equals 70%, and 20% is the coaching and feedback. The last is 10%, which is learning through courses or training and development.

A lack of knowledge is just too expensive. So reskilling, learning, and unlearning are a part of staying relevant. New skills open new doors and more opportunities. Your gifts and talents will make room for you! Don’t be afraid to learn and seek out a person who you know is good at what you need to get skilled in.

Tanya Turner, MBA, SHRM-CP, PHR
HR Director, SALTO Systems, Inc

Adapt to New Technologies

Employees can’t return to school every time a new technology comes out, so the responsibility is on leaders to retrain and reskill employees. Not only will leaders be able to retain valuable institutional knowledge, but employees who’ve experienced a career shift or reskilling are better prepared for the change inevitable in today’s workplace.

Vlad Dzhidzhiyeshvili
CEO, Ventive

Stay Employed, Enhance Skills

Employees need reskilling because of the emergence of new technologies. With the rise of automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, many jobs are becoming obsolete.

However, new jobs are also being created that require different skill sets. Reskilling can help employees to acquire these new skills and stay employed. Moreover, it can also help employees to enhance their existing skills and become more proficient in their current job.

With the relevant skills, reskilling can help employees to broaden their horizons and become more versatile. This can open up new job opportunities and increase their chances of getting hired. In addition, employees can negotiate for better salaries and benefits.

In the end, reskilling can help employees gain new skills, enhance their existing ones, and remain engaged and motivated at work. By investing in reskilling, they can increase their employability, negotiate better salaries and benefits, and enjoy a fulfilling career.

Joe Coletta
Founder and CEO, 180 Engineering

Boost Employee Retention Rates

Employees do not want to stagnate any more than a business owner does, and reskilling employees through a comprehensive succession plan is one of the best ways to maintain a high employee retention rate. Over 90% of managers feel their companies’ skill development programs are lacking in quality, and nearly half of all workers state this deficit played a major role in their decision to leave a position.

Having a reskilling program that includes mentoring, continuing education, and quarterly check-ins to monitor progress is essential to ensuring that your employees feel they are moving forward along with the business. By including a quality succession plan, you will satisfy your employees’ desire to reach their goals and better maintain high retention rates.

Matt Miller
CEO, Embroker

Increase Productivity and Teamwork

When employees learn new skills, they become better at their jobs, and the entire team works more efficiently. By providing opportunities for growth and learning, companies help their employees feel more motivated, engaged, and satisfied in their roles.

This, in turn, contributes to a positive work environment where employees can reach their full potential. As a result, organizations benefit from increased productivity, enhanced teamwork, and reduced turnover rates.

Furthermore, a workforce that continuously develops new skills and expertise can better adapt to change, fostering a culture of innovation and resilience that benefits the company in the long run.

Corrie Duffy
CEO and Founder, Corrie Cooks

Evolve Your Problem-Solving Skills

One of the biggest reasons employees need reskilling is to make sure their working tactics and problem-solving skills sharpen and evolve. Employees in this remote, digital workplace tend to go through countless tasks and projects a week, and their already developed skills and prior knowledge may not always be the key to success as time goes on.

If your employees stay stagnant and do not expand upon their work knowledge, then they won’t have the skills and tools needed to succeed in times of change in your business. It’s important for every employee, including upper management, to keep learning new things in their workspace so they can utilize their new knowledge for uncertainty or when some projects need a different approach to them!

Chris Hunter
Director of Customer Relations, ServiceTitan

Advance Your Career

Learning new skills means you won’t have to look over your shoulder and worry about new employees who are familiar with new technologies taking your job or moving past you up the ladder.

Embrace the learning. Understand that learning new skills and familiarizing yourself with new technologies will be good for you. It will be good for your standing at the company you work for and will be good for your professional career, even if you decide to go elsewhere

Marcus Hutsen
Business Development Manager, Patriot Coolers

Show Value and Potential

To show them you value them and recognize their potential to positively impact your business. Upskilling programs are only effective if they lead to employee growth. Investing in training and development programs gives employees opportunities within the existing business but also helps them see their future career potential.

I’ve worked for several organizations that had strong learning and development programs and successful internal career advancement numbers. They were great places to work because they prepared employees for future career opportunities.

Showing employees you care about them as individuals and want to see them succeed long term and not just day to day in the hours they’re giving to your business leaves a lasting impression. And, while it doesn’t guarantee an employee will stay with the organization for years and years, it typically equates to that person being an ongoing advocate for your business, both as a career opportunity and as a customer.

Amy Jenkins
Director of Client Strategy and Success, theEMPLOYEEapp

Grow and Seize Opportunities

A growing company needs a team that can rise to the occasion when opportunity calls. It’s natural for some companies to turn down bigger projects when their employees aren’t prepared for them.

And this is why reskilling is so important. It allows employees to excel at their current role while preparing for something bigger to come. This enables the company to grab an opportunity when it comes and is crucial for growth.

Adam Wright
CEO, Human Tonik

Save Costs, Foster Loyalty

Reskilling is cheaper than hiring new talent every time there is an industry change in tools, technology, and methodology. Keeping staff around and continuing to improve their skill set also creates a team that feels positive and loyal to the company.

Lindsay Duston, CPRW
Chief Human Resources Officer, Find My Profession

Enhance Adaptability, Achieve Success

Through reskilling, employees can enhance their adaptability, increase their value within the organization, and ultimately contribute to the company’s overall success.

Besides fostering personal growth, reskilling also equips employees with the tools to tackle new challenges and seize emerging opportunities, thereby ensuring their career longevity and professional progress.

Michael Lazar
Executive, ReadyCloud

Maintain Relevance in Industry

Industries change, businesses change, and employees need to learn to roll with those changes, which is where the art of reskilling comes in.

The skills that an employee once brought to your business may not be entirely applicable anymore, and reskilling might be required in order to maintain both efficacy and efficiency. You want to keep your business relevant without having to overhaul your team every time trends change, and reskilling is the most productive way to achieve that.

Erin Banta
Co-Founder and CEO, Pepper Home

Meet Industry Benchmarks

Like everything else, our skills too come with a shelf life. The average shelf life of our skills ranges between 1-2 years. Simply put, the skills that were relevant in 2015 might differ largely from those relevant in today’s day and age.

In the information age, skills require faster upgrades than ever before. Most millennials joining the workforce consider continuous professional development as a key feature to staying longer in an organization. When employees realize their learning has become stagnant, they feel the need to transition out.

Changing times demand upgraded skills for most professionals to stay relevant. Therefore, companies must take active steps to enable their employees to acquire new skills and stay relevant to the industry benchmarks. This enables companies to nurture talent, retain top performers, and also bring employees closer to achieving the company’s goals and objectives.

Tanisha Guin
Deputy Manager, Social Impact Consultant, and Career Coach, ICICI Foundation

How Employer Branding Can Grow Your Business

In today’s candidate-centric job market, it is crucial for companies to stand out in every aspect possible. This includes not only their products and services but also their employer brand. Companies need to build their reputation in a way that it establishes their organization as the best employer and helps them attract top talent. This process of building your brand as an employer is collectively termed as employer branding.

Employer branding refers to the reputation a company has as an employer, as perceived by its current and potential employees. It is the way in which a company presents itself to the job market and how it differentiates itself from other employers.

According to a study conducted by Universum Global, 97% of the employers around the world admitted that employer branding is their topmost priority. With recruitment becoming more like marketing, it is crucial for employers to invest in employer branding for acquiring and retaining top talent.

What is Employer Branding?

Employer branding is the process of creating a unique identity for a company that sets it apart as an employer of choice. It helps you promote your company to the job seekers and your existing employees thereby helping you attract and retain the best talent.

This identity is built through a combination of factors, including company culture, employee value proposition, recruitment, and hiring process, employee benefits and perks, and social media presence. By showcasing your company’s unique offerings, you can portray yourself as  the best place to work. Remember a strong employer brand is one that is able to attract and retain top talent, foster employee engagement and loyalty, and enhance the company’s reputation and brand image.

Importance of Employer Branding for Businesses

Employer branding is important for businesses for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it helps attract top talent. In a job market where the best candidates have their pick of job opportunities, a strong employer brand can be the deciding factor for candidates choosing between multiple offers.

Furthermore, a strong employer brand helps retain employees by creating a positive work environment that fosters engagement, loyalty, and job satisfaction. This, in turn, can lead to increased productivity, lower turnover, and a positive impact on company culture.

Finally, a strong employer brand enhances the company’s reputation and brand image. In today’s world where customers are increasingly concerned about the social and environmental impact of the companies they do business with, a strong employer brand can differentiate a company from its competitors and help build trust and loyalty with customers, says Mike Miller, Research Director at AQUTE

Top 5 Benefits of Employer Branding

Let us now understand how employer branding can help companies in growing their businesses.

Attraction of Top Talent

One of the primary benefits of a strong employer brand is the ability to attract top talent. In a job market where the best candidates have their pick of job opportunities, a strong employer brand can be the deciding factor for candidates choosing between multiple offers, says Bruce Mohr, Vice-President at Fair Credit By creating a positive and engaging work environment that aligns with the values and goals of potential candidates, a strong employer brand can attract the best and brightest talent in the industry.

Improved Employee Retention

A solid employer brand can also help retain employees by creating a positive work environment that fosters engagement, loyalty, and job satisfaction. By clearly communicating the company’s values and goals, providing competitive compensation and benefits packages, and fostering a culture of open communication and feedback, a strong employer brand can help employees feel valued and invested in the success of the company.

Increased Employee Engagement

A strong employer brand can also lead to increased employee engagement. When employees feel that they are part of a company that values their contributions and supports their professional growth, they are more likely to be engaged in their work and committed to the company’s success. This, in turn, can lead to increased productivity, improved job performance, and a positive impact on company culture.

Positive Impact on Company Culture

According to Hamza G. Digital Marketing Expert at Outreaching.io “Employer branding can have a significant impact on company culture. By clearly communicating the company’s values and goals, and fostering a culture of openness and feedback, a strong employer brand can help create a positive and supportive work environment. This can lead to increased collaboration, innovation, and employee satisfaction, all of which contribute to a positive company culture.”

Enhanced Reputation and Brand Image

Finally, a strong employer brand can enhance the company’s reputation and brand image. By presenting the company as an employer of choice that values its employees, fosters a positive work environment, and supports professional growth, a strong employer brand can differentiate the company from its competitors and build trust and loyalty with customers.

5 Ways to Build Your Employer Brand

There are a number of strategies that companies can use to build their employer brand, including the following.

Define Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Your employee value proposition is the unique set of benefits and perks that your company offers to employees in exchange for their time and talent. Defining your EVP is a critical first step in building your employer brand, as it helps communicate the value proposition of your company to potential and current employees. Some of the elements that can make up an EVP include work-life balance, career development opportunities, a supportive and inclusive work environment, competitive compensation and benefits, and a clear mission and purpose.

Foster a Positive Company Culture

A positive company culture is essential for building a strong employer brand. This includes fostering an environment of open communication, collaboration, and feedback, as well as promoting work-life balance, diversity and inclusion, and a commitment to personal and professional development. Alison Lancaster, CEO of Pressat.co.uk says “By prioritizing employee satisfaction and well-being, companies can create a culture that attracts and retains top talent and fosters employee engagement and loyalty.”

Invest in Employee Development

Investing in employee development is another key strategy for building a strong employer brand. This includes providing opportunities for training, professional development, and career advancement, as well as supporting employees in achieving their personal and professional goals. By prioritizing employee growth and development, companies can create a culture that fosters continuous learning and improvement, and helps employees feel invested in the success of the company.

Leverage Social Media and Online Platforms

Social media and online platforms are powerful tools for building employer brand. By creating engaging and informative content that showcases the culture, values, and mission of your company, you can build a strong online presence that attracts and retains top talent. This includes creating a company page on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as sharing employee stories, company news, and industry insights through blog posts, videos, and other content

Engage With Employees and Candidates

Tom Miller, Director of Marketing at Fitness Volt says, “Engaging with employees and candidates is essential for building a strong employer brand. This includes soliciting feedback from employees through regular surveys and focus groups, as well as providing opportunities for open communication and dialogue. Additionally, companies can create opportunities for candidates to engage with the company through events like job fairs, campus recruiting events, and informational interviews.

Building a strong employer brand requires a combination of strategies that prioritize employee satisfaction and well-being, promote a positive company culture, invest in employee development, leverage social media and online platforms, and engage with employees and candidates. By prioritizing these strategies, companies can create a unique identity that sets them apart as an employer of choice, and attracts and retains top talent in their industry.

Wrapping Up

Employer branding is a critical aspect of any successful business strategy, as it helps companies attract and retain top talent, improve employee engagement, and enhance their reputation and brand image. By defining their employee value proposition, fostering a positive company culture, investing in employee development, leveraging social media and online platforms, and engaging with employees and candidates, companies can create a strong employer brand that sets them apart as an employer of choice.

Build a talented and engaged workforce and position yourself for long-term success in your industry with employer branding.

How to Attract Employees in A ‘Free Agent’ Labor Market

New research reveals that employees today are willing to go to even more drastic lengths to find the best career fit for them. According to the 2023 Career Optimism Index® study—an annual survey of 5,000 employees and 500 employers across America conducted by the University of Phoenix Career Institute®—30% of Americans would quit their job today without having another lined up and 46% would leave if their current employer offered them a severance package of 3-months pay.

This is great news for employers looking to recruit top talent. However, employers should know employees are seeking more – they want real support in their professional development and are eager to be challenged. Many employers are not meeting this desire for growth, leading to a “free agent labor market” where employees feel empowered to leave their current positions in search of something better. Employers have been challenged to offer more benefits than ever before – but empty workplace perks like free snacks and Happy Hours aren’t cutting it when it comes to attracting employees seeking a long-term fit.

Employees are facing fundamental holes in their connections with work; sentiments of dissatisfaction, stagnation, and a lack of fulfillment are prevalent. To turn the tide, employers must be more intentional in their approaches to integrating and communicating career development opportunities and support. If employers can tap into the workforce’s desire for growth and spotlight meaningful pathways to advancement available internally, they have a real shot at attracting the market’s “free agents.”

Specifically, here are three critical areas where job seekers are looking for their future employers to act.

Investment in Employee Skilling

According to the Career Optimism Index, most employers (46%) cite a lack of well-qualified applicants as the greatest challenge their organization faced when finding talent. Simultaneously, 70% of American workers say if their company gave them more opportunities to apply new skills, they would be more likely to stay throughout their career. This points to an immense mutual benefit to be had through investment in continuous learning opportunities.

By tapping into workers’ desire to be challenged, learn new skills, and take on new roles, employers can create opportunities to fulfill talent needs. Additionally, in providing ongoing, flexible, formal and informal skilling programs, employers foster the development of more knowledgeable, agile talent pipelines. Concurrently, they increase employee investment in their organization by paving clear paths for career growth; when employees can envision their future at a company and know the precise steps they need to take to get there, they are more likely to stay long-term. This is why any existing work in this space or intended further expansions of offerings should be highlighted within job listings and throughout a candidate’s interview process. Potential employees want their professional development to be expressed as a priority before they even reach day one.

Making Mentorship Mandatory

The proliferation of remote and hybrid work brought new productivity and flexibility benefits to the workforce, but a lack of in-person connection has posed real threats to professional development opportunities – particularly mentorship.

Mentorship is necessary for ensuring employees are aware of career paths available within an organization and that they have the one-on-one support needed to get there. Mentors provide valuable guidance in terms of setting goals, career mapping, networking within a company to gain new perspectives and are a great sound-boarding for ideas.

Critically, the Career Optimism Index finds that 56% of American workers say they do not have a mentor, and 42% of Americans say they do not even have an advocate at work. This lack of support does not go unnoticed by employees, and unfortunately, a third of Americans say lack of mentorship/advocacy/support from a professional network has held them back in their careers (34%). Importantly, American workers with mentors are more likely to say they feel confident (93% vs. 86%), fulfilled (89% vs. 75%), and enthusiastic (90% vs 77%) about their career or job than those without a mentor.

When these sentiments are fostered in the workplace, employee interest and engagement is bound to increase. Employers must take action to meet the workforce’s drive for connection and career pathing through formal mentorship programming, which can include activities like speed-dating to connect mentees and mentors, internal lunch and learns and collaborative goal-setting sessions. Explaining such offerings during the recruitment process is critical to job seekers’ understanding of how they will be individually supported once they join an organization.

Nurturing Workplace Wellness

Employees are experiencing burnout and stress at all-time highs. Employee engagement is decreasing while mental health challenges mount – existing employer tactics to curb these barriers are not cutting it. Per the Career Optimism Index, 47% of workers are experiencing burnout at work, and 50% of those experiencing burnout say it has gotten worse in the past year. Job seekers desire future workplaces that are actively working to buck this trend.

With 39% of Americans looking for mental health resources to help manage their work-related stress, it’s essential for employers to showcase how they nurture employee wellness for the whole employee, reinforcing the importance of mental health and workplace wellness hand-in-hand with offering concrete mental health and wellness-related benefits.

Companies need to embrace top-down communication to ensure the prioritization of mental health is baked into company culture, ensuring benefits and options for additional support are known and embraced, empowering employees to voice their wellness needs and find appropriate solutions. In turn, interviewees should be able to see how these values proliferate a company throughout their recruitment process, whether it be through explicit benefits included in the job listing or in context of interview conversations. This is important because when workers feel seen for their whole selves, they are more likely to envision a long-term fit and leave their “free agency” days behind them.

Improvements in SeekOut’s Smart Search Capability

Hey there, folks! Are you tired of spending hours scrolling through endless job candidate profiles? Well, SeekOut has got you covered with their new and improved Smart Search Capability. SeekOut has made significant improvements to its smart search capability, and let me tell you, this AI assistant is smarter than your average bear!

Gone are the days of struggling with Boolean search terms. Now, all you have to do is copy and paste the job description into the search box, and voila! The SeekOut smart search assistant creates a search string that can be modified as needed. You can add or remove requirements and preferred qualifications like it’s nobody’s business.

How the SeekOut Smart Search Assistant Works

To use the SeekOut Assistant, users can simply paste the job description into the designated search box. The AI assistant will then create a search based on the requirements. Users can add or remove requirements as needed. Once the search is complete, the results will be displayed in a list. SeekOut’s smart search can match job descriptions with candidates who have the required skills and experience.

And let’s not forget about the perks, people! SeekOut’s AI matching capability ensures that the search results are on point. Plus, you get insights into the candidate’s experience, which is always a plus. And if that’s not enough, SeekOut has other amazing features like messaging templates and AI connections. Who needs human connections when you’ve got AI connections, am I right?

Additional Features of SeekOut

In addition to the smart search capability, SeekOut has a variety of other useful features. Users can create templates and messages for outreach to job candidates. SeekOut’s AI connection can even create emails for users. SeekOut also has GitHub integration, team connections, and a healthcare part. Users can search multiple networks simultaneously to find the best job candidates.

So, if you’re looking for the perfect candidate, SeekOut’s Smart Search Capability is a no-brainer. It’s fast, efficient, and more accurate than a sharpshooter in the wild west. SeekOut’s smart search capability is a highly recommended tool for anyone searching for job candidates…But don’t give us the final say. Try it out yourself and see what you think!

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!

Pre-Interview Survey Questions to Enhance Job Fit and Reduce Employee Turnover

Recruiting is challenging at the best of times, but in a time of high uncertainty it can be even harder for employers to ensure that their candidate of choice is the right fit for the organization. Pre-interview surveys can not only save time during the recruitment phase, but they can help you to determine critical information that will allow you to make an informed choice about the talent that is the best fit now, as well as in the future.

Why Invest in Pre-Interview Surveys?

When it comes to filling tech jobs, a pre-interview questionnaire is a useful tool for clarifying the employer’s and candidates’ expectations and motivations, and helps to increase staff retention by determining how likely a candidate is to stay with the organization in the longer term. But a pre-interview survey can do far more than that. It can help you to:

  • Determine a candidate’s broader fit within the organization
  • Ascertain greater detail about their skills and experience, beyond that given in their resume
  • Gain an understanding of their challenges, expectations and frustrations in and beyond the workplace

One of the biggest advantages of the pre-interview survey is that it allows you to determine vital information before an interview. This not only allows you to utilize your interview time for more organic questions, and getting to know the candidate, but it enables you to filter out candidates that don’t fit your essential criteria, but whose lack of suitability was not picked up during initial long-listing.

When considering which questions to ask within your pre-interview survey, it is useful to divide your questions into categories: candidate skills, company culture, and practicalities.

Candidate Skills Questions

  1. Based on the job that you have applied for, do you have any skills or knowledge that may be useful but which are not on  your resume?
  2. What elements of the role would you most enjoy undertaking, and which would you find less appealing, and more challenging?
  3. If you had to name one area where you require development, what would it be?
  4. Rate your confidence in X skill from 1-5, with 1 being less confident and 5 being 100% confident.

Company Culture

  1. Please describe your ideal work environment.
  2. How would you describe your working style?
  3. What motivates you to be productive at work?
  4. What management styles do you find most difficult to work with?
  5. Please describe a time that you have experienced conflict in the workplace, and if and how it was resolved.
  6. What are your career goals?
  7. Do you feel that the position you have applied for, and the organization, are aligned with your career goals?

Practicalities

  1. How soon would you be available for interview?
  2. When would you be able to start the job if successful?
  3. What baseline package would you require in order to accept the job (salary expectations, leave, office based, hybrid or remote, etc)

When To Use Pre-Interview Surveys

Surveys are not infallible. In the rare event that you are an employer struggling to attract applicants to a .Net job, you may make the decision to dispense with the pre-interview survey on the off chance that they will eliminate potentially suitable candidate. However, if you have a relatively large shortlist (or a long list), and you are not in the position to interview every candidate on that list, a pre-survey questionnaire is an excellent way of helping you to review candidates with minimal drain on resources.

Other Ways To Streamline Improve Staff Retention

Surveys aren’t just useful pre-interview to determine whether a candidate’s work ethos and skills are aligned with the post and organization in question, they can help you to ascertain staff satisfaction and aid retention of existing staff, too. Surveying a department at a time can help you to understand how effective management are, how happy employees are with their jobs, whether they feel valued, and what you can do to improve their working life.

Optimizing Your Recruitment Processes

Whilst it is important that recruitment processes are effective and robust, they don’t have to be arduous. A combination of online recruiting, and making use of the resources available, such as social media networks, company website and professional forums, can help organizations to attract the right candidates. By implementing a virtual recruitment strategy, you can pre-screen candidates before investing a significant amount of resources.

If your organization is struggling to employ or retain staff, a pre-interview survey is undoubtedly a useful tool. However, it can also help to engage a professional tech recruiter, who will be able to apply their wealth of industry-specific experience to help find talent that is the best fit for the position in hand. Investing in recruitment may seem like a luxury when it is possible for recruitment to be led entirely in-house, however with the rising costs of recruiting and onboarding, for organizations looking to find, hire and keep the best staff, outsourcing the task to a recruitment agency may be a luxury that you can’t afford not to have.

Is Pay Day Going Away? What The Rise In Earned Wage Access Means For Recruiters

Payroll is one of those vital business tasks that’s easy to take for granted. Many assume it’s like breathing and happens almost without thinking. In reality, it’s incredibly nuanced and requires considerable thinking and skill.

In fact, the work of payroll teams is becoming increasingly more complex and critical to attracting and retaining talent, which begs the question, “Should they have a more strategic seat at the table”? A recent Everest Group report reveals programs such as earned wage access and financial wellness solutions have the greatest impact on a positive employee experience.

The traditional bi-weekly or monthly pay cycles just do not cut it anymore. Employees crave something different. They want more control, and they’re choosing jobs that offer it. This means payroll and pay benefits can no longer remain in the shadows. It’s now front and center in the war for talent.

What Is Earned Wage Access?

Earned wage access (EWA) is another term for on-demand pay and it’s offered as a low-cost, high-value benefit from employers to employees that works seamlessly with a company’s existing payroll system. It allows employees to access a portion of their accrued income ahead of payday using a mobile app.

EWA allows employees to choose their payday. Instead of receiving pay at fixed intervals, like every two weeks, they can draw down wages as they earn them.

The benefit can be employer-sponsored, meaning there are no fees to the employee, it can be a split cost between employer and employee, or employees pay a transaction fee every time they withdraw wages.

Why is Demand Growing?

The pandemic ushered in a tidal wave of changing employee expectations. Employees now demand flexibility in the hours they work and the location they work in, along with flexibility in how and when they get paid.

Younger generations, especially Gen Z, are more motivated by financial security, used to instant everything, and believe it’s only fair they have access to wages they’ve earned. As digital natives, millennials and Gen Zers have on-demand access to nearly everything else in life and want the same for their pay.

But it’s not just a matter of preference, financial worries play a role too. Research finds 51% of employees are more stressed about finances today than they were during the height of the pandemic and spend 25% of their workweek dealing with financial issues. EWA can provide a financial safety net and reduce the stress associated with unexpected costs.

Additionally, the overall talent mix has shifted to include more freelancers, contractors, and gig workers. Payroll operations that are hassle-free or more frequent are often better suited for these segments of the workforce.

How It Benefits Employees

Plain and simple, EWA puts employees in control of their pay. They have the freedom and ability to align pay dates with their financial commitments.

EWA is expected to eventually replace costly cash-advance or payday loan services. These services often exploit workers during difficult times and leave them worse off. On-demand pay can also help prevent unnecessary debt by offering an alternative to credit cards.

There’s a psychological benefit to EWA too. When employees can see the impact of a day’s work in numbers, it motivates them. They actually want to come to work because they understand how it impacts their bank account.

EWA As A Recruiting Tool

The talent shortage in the U.S. and around the world is real. Unemployment remains low and there are still nearly two job openings for every unemployed person. As a result, employers are paying close attention to changing talent expectations and looking for ways to provide an improved experience.

Offering EWA or other financial wellness benefits can help recruiters gain a definite edge in drawing talent in. It’s another valuable tool in their toolbox. Just as remote work, flexible hours, and hybrid options attract employees, so do pay-related benefits. It can be included in job postings as a differentiator.

Right now, there is still only a small percentage of employers who offer EWA, and an even smaller percentage offer it internationally across their entire workforce. By offering EWA as a benefit to all employees, irrespective of geography, organizations brand themselves as fair-opportunity workplaces that provide instant access to earned wages on a global scale. As an employer, this benefit will set you apart from competitors, help you stand out to talent, and put you ahead of the curve.

The adoption of flexible payment methods can not only improve your chances of recruiting new employees but also make it easier to motivate and retain your existing workforce. When employees don’t feel financial pressure in their personal lives, they feel happier, less stressed, and more valued by their employer. This motivates them to stay and can contribute to higher rates of productivity and lower levels of absenteeism.

Fast, Flexible Payroll Will Define The Modern Pay Experience

A staggering 63 percent of U.S. workers are living paycheck to paycheck. For those individuals, EWA wouldn’t just be a nice-to-have, it could change their life for the better.

As a recruiter, your job is easier—and frankly more fun—when you have the tools to give talent the life and the career they want. The more diversified and meaningful benefits recruiters have to work with, the better their chances of capturing the attention of talent.

The modern pay experience has arrived. Employers that want an engaged and motivated workforce must adopt fast, flexible, and certain pay practices that enhance the employee experience.

It’s time to rethink payroll and see it as a recruitment asset and not an afterthought. EWA solutions could prove to be the next big step in recruiting the workforce of today and tomorrow.

Silicon Valley Has a Hiring Problem, Here are Four Best Practices to Fix It

There’s a heavy atmosphere at the moment in Silicon Valley. Some of the industry’s biggest names, including Meta, Google, and Salesforce have been making significant layoffs and acknowledging the fact that they over-hired during the most recent growth period.

Nevertheless, the fact remains: the tech sector still has more job openings than candidates to fill them. For both hiring managers and job seekers, the current job market can seem like a Rubik’s Cube. How can fast-growing companies find the employees they need to fill their open positions? What do candidates need to do to get noticed if they don’t have the credentials and CV that leads to interviews? Traditional networks and biases continue to elevate some candidates over others while also preventing organizations from recognizing exceptional talent hiding outside their field of view. There are good people out there, but does the tech sector know how to find them?

Having spent more than a decade building high-performing teams in Silicon Valley, including for more than a decade at Google Cloud, I have developed a series of best practices for hiring — during both boom periods and downturns. Here are four suggestions for fast-growth organizations on how to scale on the right timeline without losing their soul.

Don’t Waste Resources on Those Who Won’t Roll Up Their Sleeves

Many tech founders come to a point in their growth when they feel they need to hire specific people to reach the next level — someone who has done the exact job before. This mindset can lead companies to hire someone who might have the right experience, but isn’t the right person for their company. Someone who has already done the hard work once may or may not not be willing to roll up their sleeves and start again from scratch. Or they may not be able to pivot to the changing needs of the company. Hiring isn’t a matter of finding what great looks like, it’s a matter of finding what great looks like for your company.

Learn to recognize not just what great looks like but what great looks like for your company. This can mean hiring someone who might not have done the exact job before but has the right mindset and intrinsic capabilities for your team, which may be of greater value in the long run.

Oleeo Hidden Talent in the Finance Industry

Avoid Boxing Yourself in With Hyper-Specific Resumes

Silicon Valley’s quest for the perfect hire is the wrong mindset for the current situation. We know there are more available jobs than there are people to fill them, so we need to avoid adopting processes that are going to filter out potential candidates. Is a master’s degree in computer science really necessary to fill an engineering position, especially when today’s tech sector is filled with self-taught coders? Is your requirement for five years of experience turning off highly talented people who’ve only just recently made a career change? I have learned when hiring for sales leadership positions that oftentimes the most qualified resume may not necessarily be the best candidate. Some of the strongest sales leaders I have hired have not had the exact experience I was looking for but the grit and tenacity to drive impact and the humility and openness to be coached — great leaders can, in fact, be made. Hiring managers should be looking to cast a wider net and then narrowing from there.

Expand Your Candidate Pool

A company that is trying to move quickly is going to fall back into bad hiring habits, relying on networks and recommendations that reinforce existing biases. It’s worth taking the time to be thoughtful and creative in evaluating new candidates. Instead of relying on resumes and referrals, organizations should look to diversify in terms of work experience, life experience, age, and background. Furthermore, many candidates with minor criminal records are automatically filtered out of hiring pools, despite the fact that their offenses may have occurred years ago or been completely unrelated to the position at hand. These candidates could fill open positions and bring in fresh perspectives, providing you the ability to hire quickly and give you a long-term advantage.

Recognize When It’s Time to Uplevel Your Best People

You don’t always have to look far to find the right person for the job. It’s a hard balance to know when you need to bring in external talent to uplevel a team and when you promote from within. I have gotten this wrong both ways – being too slow to uplevel and not realizing what great really could look like – and on the flip side, I have also made the mistake of being too quick to hire externally and layer talent. Challenge yourself not to put your employees in boxes, and give them the opportunity to test out assignments that may be beyond the scope of their current role. The proudest moments of my career have been when I have put someone in a stretch role and they excelled far beyond what I thought possible. And I get to see their careers soar. Once you’re able to recognize exceptional employees at every level and deploy a growth mindset, you’ll be able to more easily and effectively cultivate and grow talent within your organization.

An organization succeeds or fails as a result of its people. With smart, progressive hiring practices, growing companies can ensure they’re finding the best possible candidates for every position.

Source Architects Fast by Leveraging Archinect

If you’re looking for a platform that connects architects from around the world, Archinect might be what you need. Since 1997, the website has been offering a community for architects to showcase their work, find job opportunities, and connect with like-minded professionals. In this article, we’ll explore how to navigate the website to find architects and other professionals in your field.

Exploring Archinect and Its Features

When you first arrive on the website, you’ll notice that there are several options to choose from, including tutorials, job opportunities, and a community forum. However, if you’re interested in finding architects specifically, it’s best to head to the “People” section of the website.

One way to find architects on Archinect is by using specific keywords related to the profession you’re looking for. For example, if you’re interested in finding civil engineers, simply enter “civil engineer” in the search bar.

Using Common Names

Another strategy for finding architects on Archinect is by using common names in the search bar. According to the speaker in the original transcript, “John” is a common name used on the website, so you could try entering “John” to see what results come up.

However, keep in mind that using common names may result in a lot of search results that are not relevant to your needs. It’s important to filter through the results to find individuals who match your criteria.

Overall, Archinect can be a useful resource for architects and other professionals in the field. By using specific keywords or common names, you can find individuals who match your criteria and potentially connect with them for job opportunities or networking. Just remember to filter through the results to find the best matches for your needs.

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!