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Trends in Recruiter Pay: New Data on Demand and Increases

In the last 12-18 months, employers have increased pay scales for all kinds of hard to fill jobs. However, one of those is more critical than the rest: recruiters. The talent who find the talent are uniquely skilled individuals who are sometimes taken for granted, but over the course of recent history they have been appreciated (and sought after) like never before. 

As the talent crunch increased, employers started to notice that their talent teams weren’t immune to the wave of resignations that were plaguing other areas of the business. In fact, word of offers that were wildly above market rates for recruiter talent were being shared more and more often as fast-growing companies scooped up recruiters to keep the pace of business from slowing. 

In the new Lighthouse Research & Advisory 2022 Talent Acquisition Trends study, which pulled data from over 1,000 employers and 1,000 candidates, we found eight in 10 employers said that hiring had risen from an HR/talent priority to a business/operational priority. One way organizations are elevating the priority of talent acquisition within the business is higher recruiter compensation. 

New Data on Recruiter Hiring Volume
and Pay Increases

According to new data from labor market intelligence company Greenwich.HR, pay rates for recruiting talent have continued to increase over the last 24 months, and job postings for recruiters have spiked off the charts. 

Below is a time-based comparison of three common recruiter job titles (recruiter, senior technical recruiter and talent acquisition director), how the demand for those individuals has changed over time and how pay has fluctuated as well. 

Recruiter

The basic role of a recruiter can vary widely depending on the company, industry, hiring cycle and more. We see a wide dispersion in the pay rates for recruiters as low as $20,000 and as high as $100k-plus. 

Median salary as of July 2022: $56,500. There has been a steady increase in the median since November 2020.

Job posting volume: Stands at 275,207 since January 2020, with massive spikes in the 12-month period from July 2021 to July 2022. These jobs were posted by 42,000 companies. The number of postings peaked in April 2022 but has remained high since. 

Remote Work: Interestingly, more of these jobs are for in-office roles than other comparison roles below. 

Senior Technical Recruiter

Technical recruiters have been in high demand as more companies have grown their technology team. Even with some recent stories of layoffs and/or hiring freezes, job posting volume for senior technical recruiters is still about where it was through the first quarter of 2021, before it began spiking. 

Median Salary as of July 2022: Was $102,500. For comparison purposes, the median rate was $78,500 in June 2020 and $82,500 in June 2021.

Job Posting Volume: Some 8,479 listings since January 2020, with the similar July 2021 to July 2022 elevated volume we’re seeing across all recruiting roles. The number one hiring entity for these roles? Amazon. 

Remote Work: More than half of these roles were remote in nature. 

Nearly three-fourths of these positions listed a four-year degree requirement, despite recruiting not being a college degree program focus area. That could be a way for companies to distinguish among “senior” recruiters and their more junior peers. 

Talent Acquisition Director

Every team needs direction and leadership, and these leaders help to build strategy and align recruiting operations for maximum efficiency and effectiveness. 

Median Salary as of July 2022: Was $134,375. Companies flooded the market with openings in July and August of 2021, but overall the median has continued to rise for these positions, especially in the most recent quarter. 

Job Posting Volume: 5,525 jobs were posted by more than 2,500 companies.

Remote Work: Nearly 60% of these jobs were remote in nature. 

What happens next with pay for talent acquisition professionals depends on a variety of factors, including:. 

  • How fast can companies grow/develop new recruiters
  • What the technology can do to fill gaps and augment the hiring process
  • Changes in overall demand for talent (recessions, industry growth, etc.)

Side Note: Recruiters Owning Their Jobs

It’s harder to tease out, but the data shows that immediately after the pandemic began, the number of companies starting up (at least in the U.S.) jumped higher than any period on record. Some number of those companies are focused on recruiting, and based on the amount of demand in recent years, that number may be higher than the average number of recruiting businesses in any random sample of companies. 

Overall, this analysis was meant to help uncover what’s happening with recruiter pay over time as well as highlighting just how much demand actually exists for those individuals with high-quality recruiting abilities. 

If there are other data points you’re curious about, please feel free to reach out! Thanks again to Greenwich.HR for supporting the research with their live data feed.

When Layoffs Hit Recruiting – What to Do… And What Not To

Given the disproportionate hit that recruiters take during market fluctuations, what can you do when the table turns on you? 

Let’s face it. The current job market is basically anyone’s guess. The Great Resignation continues despite fears of a recession, with certain sectors seeing mass exits while others reel from mass layoffs. It’s a total mess, and every time you open LinkedIn…chaos.

For every person posting about their new job, three people post that their entire team got canned over Zoom or worse, had their email shut off unceremoniously. It’s nearly impossible to keep up with all of the back and forth, save for the viral moments (I’m looking at you, crying CEO guy), but overall, it feels like the Wild West out there.

Anything goes. 

Unfortunately, for those in the recruiting world, moments like this often hit them the hardest. Sometimes, you’re tasked with watching the fantastic candidates you worked so hard to hire lose the jobs they so desperately wanted.

In others, you’re at the receiving end of the bad news of layoffs. Given the disproportionate hit that recruiters take during market fluctuations, what can you do when the table turns on you? 

1. Don’t Panic.

I’m kidding. That’s terrible advice. You can – and should – absolutely panic. People don’t work for free. There are bills to pay and mouths to feed (including your own). Give yourself a chance to freak out a little bit. Let it out. Feel your feelings for as long as you need to; just don’t let the panic consume you. Tell the world what happened and embrace the care others show you. Revel in the nice things people say about you. Layoffs suck. It’s a shot to the pride even when it’s outside your control, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise (especially some suit getting high and mighty on his socials – what’s up with those guys?).

2. Assess the Situation.

Most of the time, recently laid-off recruiters rush to get back out there. They pop that little green “Open to Work” banner up on their profile before the severance check even clears. I get it, again, people don’t work for free. But before you put yourself back on the market, take a beat and think about what happened in your last role. What was behind the layoffs? Was it your industry? Your organization? Every executive’s favorite excuse about “over-hiring?” Before you jump into a new role, figure out what went wrong with your last one first. 

3. Size Yourself Up.

You, as a recruiter, know way more than the average job seeker. Review your career history and materials with a fresh perspective. Analyze what’s helped you get jobs and what’s hurt. Look at yourself from the outside in. If you were receiving your application, what would you think? Any glaring issues to address? This is your opportunity to start fresh. Maybe now is the time to bring in some outside support. Not everyone is a resume writer, nor should they claim to be. 

4. Tap Your Network.

One of the great things about recruiting is the community that surrounds it. Have you met #RecruiterTwitter? If and when you find yourself laid off, reach out to your peers. Everyone goes through this at some point in their career, and almost everyone has a story to tell, a shoulder to cry on, or a piece of advice to offer. Use this to your advantage. Don’t be a hero! Just because you know how recruiting works doesn’t mean you can’t learn something new or benefit from the power of a referral.  

5. Do Your Homework.

Often, when we get into the groove of a given job, we start to block out the rest of the world. We hyper-fixate on the task at hand and stop seeing what’s happening around us. This is especially true of some organizations over others. If this experience sounds familiar, or you’ve spent a lot of time in the same role, now is the time to step outside your routine and get caught up. Talent acquisition, especially TA tech, moves quickly and the platform you used at your last job might be out of vogue at your next. 

Look, at the end of the day, getting laid off feels awful. It’s a gut punch to your ego, makes you question your skills and abilities, and worst of all threatens your livelihood.

I wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone, but reality tells us that most recruiters will get laid off at least once during their careers. Sometimes you will know it’s coming; other times, you won’t.

When it happens, let yourself freak out some before you refocus. If there’s anyone who can land a better job, it’s you. Make yourself proud. 

5 Ways Businesses Can Thrive Amidst The Talent Crunch

According to the Korn Ferry “Future of Work Talent Crunch” report looking at the talent-supply gap in 20 developed countries, the United States’ financial services sector will miss out on $435.69 billion in projected unrealized economic output. 

On the startup front, the US is projected to be surpassed by India in the Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking, all due to India being the only country projected to have a labor surplus by 2030 in the financial and business services.

“A global talent crunch could cost nations trillions of dollars in unrealized annual revenues by 2030.”

This labor and skill deficit is with us today and is going to intensify over the next decade. How do we prepare for it and how can companies mitigate these risks?

Why is There a Worldwide Talent Shortage?

While the Great Resignation in the US (a.k.a the “Big Quit”) was making headlines, when adjusted and put into perspective we can see that it follows a pattern: more and more people quit their jobs over the last 15 years.

However, this phenomenon was overblown in the media, over one in four people who quit their previous job (26%) regret their decision, amidst the upcoming recession announced by interest rates hike and massive layoffs this leaves a lot of workers anxious to settle for a stable job.

So if the Big Quit is over, why aren’t we able to hire enough talent to sustain growth? The report cites four main reasons:

    1. Global growth requiring more skilled workers
    2. Demographic trends with a decline in births over the last decades
    3. Underskilled workforces unable to address the skills deficit
    4. Tightening immigration from countries with a talent surplus

“The impact of the talent crunch is so significant that the continued predominance of sector powerhouses is in question, from London as a global financial services center to the United States as a technology leader to China as a key manufacturing base.”

Achieve Recruitment Excellence to Hire and Onboard Faster

To overcome the talent crunch, organizations must become agile even in the most traditional areas such as candidate sourcing, candidate assessment, onboarding and performance management. That’s where HR tech platforms and recruitment operations kick in. 

Recruiting is moving away from being sales centric and requiring talent teams to spend most of their time on outreach and coordination. Recruiting in 2022 is about building a streamlined talent pipeline. The focus is on removing bottlenecks and intermediaries to reduce wait time, measuring results and improving to achieve recruitment excellence.

New platforms have been built to allow companies to hire in full trust and transparency. Experiences led by humans and supported by algorithms are the way forward.

The HR tech ecosystem is thriving, this signals an unprecedented supremacy for organizations that are able to hire and onboard faster, sustainably and at scale. Businesses looking to meet their growth targets in the next 5 to 10 years should look at recruitment as an opportunity for digital transformation.

Remote Work Enablement Leads to Border-Free Hiring

India is projected to have a skilled-labor surplus of around 245.3 million workers by 2030. It was the only country found in the KF study expected to have a surplus, owed mainly to its vast supply of working-age citizens and government programs to boost workers’ skills.

One way employers must adopt a balanced stance and do their part is to consider building a borderless company culture allowing experts in other countries to complement and support the local workforce. Hiring abroad has never been simpler thanks to global employment platform solutions.

Final Thoughts

The future of work isn’t just limited to temporary trends such as remote work or a 4-day week. 

HR leaders, founders and CEOs must look ahead at the next 5-10 years to sustain their growth strategy without taking talent availability for granted. It’s now or never, the HR function needs a seat at the table and to be held accountable to high standards of growth enablement and cost optimization.

A Free and Easy People Search Tool with No Nonsense

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of all these crummy people lookup websites. You type in someone’s personal information only to get hit with that classic “pay 3 dollars to see the full contact card” nonsense. Or just as frustrating, you can search the first person for free but subsequent searches are blocked by a subscription.  Why can’t everything just be free? Luckily, Dean found an easy people search site without any of that bad business. Just good old fashioned data without any bloat or scummy sales tactics.

Easy People Search by name address or phone number

Getting the most out of this easy people search tool

There’s a couple noteworthy ways to get the most out of this tool. You can look someone up using three different methods: (Full Name, City, and State), Phone Number, or their Address.  While testing this site on some friends I no longer parlay with (don’t judge, we all do it even if nobody admits it) it seemed to be quite accurate. I was able to successfully find everyone that I could remember their information for. Some addresses were a bit out of date, but other than that everything was accurate.  I highly recommend checking out People Search Now and adding it to your bookmark suite!

We certainly don’t need to beat the horse to death here, its a fairly straightforward tool. We hope you find some use for this easy people search tool, and if you like the sort of search sites that Dean Da Costa finds we highly recommend checking out his other tutorials on our site!

Other Dean 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.

Dean will also be presenting at our upcoming live sourcing event #HRTX!

September 28 – 29 #HRTX is also a great learning experience for sourcers and recruiters of all skill levels. Besides Dean Da Costa, we have over fifty additional industry leaders all giving their two cents about how to be a better recruiter, sourcer, or just a more effective human being.

It’s no cost to register and is spanning over 2 days. so whether you attend for one particular speaker or the entire time, you’ll definitely be learning a lot and having a good time. Register now!

5 Best Incentives to Motivate Recruiters

What incentives motivate internal recruiters to hit their hiring objectives?

That’s what we asked recruitment and business leaders to get their best incentive ideas. From points-based recognition to teamwork, there are several incentives that work best for recruiters. Here are five of them.

Points-Based Recognition

Points-based recognition is a great way to motivate internal recruiters to hit their hiring objectives. By awarding points for every successful hire, you create a system of motivation that encourages your team to work hard and achieve results. Points can be redeemed for prizes, bonuses or days off, providing a tangible way to reward your top performers.

Additionally, points can be used to create leaderboards and friendly competition among your team members. By tracking progress and publicly sharing results, you create an environment of accountability that ensures everyone is working toward the same goal. Points-based recognition is an effective way to motivate internal recruiters and help your business reach its hiring goals.

Antreas Koutis
Administrative Manager, Financer

Vacation Days

Tightening purse strings makes incentives for internal recruiters a hot debate topic for many businesses. However, most agree that incentives do much to improve retention, although they may not have much of an impact on target goals. Good internal recruiters are likely going to hit those without incentives, but one possible incentive is to add an extra vacation day for hitting quarterly targets or some extra time at the end of the year for meeting goals.

Baruch Labunski
CEO, Rank Secure

Bonuses

As any HR professional knows, finding the right candidate for a job can be a challenge. Not only do you need to find someone with the right skills and experience, but you also need to make sure they’re a good fit for your company’s culture. That’s why it’s important to have a strong team of internal recruiters who are motivated to find the best candidates for each role. One way to incentivize internal recruiters to hit their hiring objectives is to offer a bonus for every successful hire.

Bonuses not only provide an incentive to find the best candidates, they also help to ensure that your company is getting the talent it needs to be successful. In addition, you can also offer other incentives such as free lunch or tickets to a ball game for each successful hire. By offering these incentives, you’ll motivate your internal recruiters to find the best candidates for each role and help your company find the talent it needs to be successful.

Jim Campbell
Founder, Wizve – Digital & Affiliate Marketing Agency

Competition

I’ve led my share of recruiters over the past several years and I’ve tried out numerous individual and team initiatives to entice people to hit their goals. Some were successful and most failed miserably. What most people are seeking in this post-Covid — I mean present-day Covid – era is freedom and flexibility. Why not try out something new to incentivize your team? Maybe something like the first recruiter to hit their hiring objectives will be able to create their schedule for the following month? Could be a two, three, four or five-day work week. Hey, test it out and see what happens.

Michelle Pasqual
Partner, Marjon Advisors, LLC

Teamwork

The best incentive for recruiters is a close collaboration with the hiring manager to enable the recruiters to do a great job. Too often I see hiring managers having a transactional relationship with their internal recruiters. However, if you invest the time in coming up with solutions together, their work will be more satisfying and you will have better search outcomes.

Atta Tarki
Founder & Author of Evidence-Based Recruiting  

Dean Da Costa’s Free Sourcing Tool Tutorial – Databases, Sites, & Tools

We’re at it again with another deep dive into Dean Da Costa’s all-in-one Sourcing tool.  Each training is self-contained, so you’re welcome to jump in on any video. Before you get started, we recommend you download Dean’s free sourcing tool. Follow along with him while he teaches you the ins and outs of this fantastic tool. It was made by the best sourcer, for the best sourcers.

In this particular video, Dean will be going through a few sections of his free sourcing tool. The focus will be on Databases, Sites & Tools, Word Lookup, Salary Info, and Work Email Lookup.

He has links to quite a few interesting databases: FEC government employees, Microsoft employees, college alumni, and more.

We hope you get as much out of Dean’s tech as we have!

Pro Version? Isn’t this a free sourcing tool?

So, Dean likes to be a big ole tease when it comes to his advanced version of the tool. It’s not a paid resource, and we doubt you could even get it from him by throwing bills in his face. He only offers the more complex version every 3 or 4 months at various live events he attends.

He updates and adds to this pro tool, so every public release has new features.  The next release window will be hosted by RecruitingDaily, coincidentally!  Our virtual September 28-29th #HRTX event has a segment dedicated for Dean called Hacking Tech Talent.  Definitely check it out if you’re enjoying his tool but want more out of it!

We recommend starting with the free version, however. The pro version has so many additional options that if you aren’t familiar with how Dean’s tool works, you might just get a little lost in the sauce. It’s an overwhelming amount of extra options that might intimidate someone who just wants to use it for simple searches. But just like with a wild black stallion, once you tame this tool you’re basically the coolest person ever.

Links and other goodies

Dean Da Costa provides a lot of amazing sourcing tools and techniques for the community, check out all the articles he’s featured in on our site Here! If you just want to see all of the training videos about his sourcing tool we have that here as well!

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.

Here’s the Google Drive link to Dean’s downloadable Level One Sourcing page.

September 28 – 29 #HRTX is also a great learning experience for sourcers and recruiters of all skill levels. Besides Dean Da Costa, we have over 50 additional industry leaders all giving their 2 cents about how to be a better recruiter, sourcer, or just a more effective human being.  It’s no cost to register and is spanning over 2 days. so whether you attend for one particular speaker or the entire time, you’ll definitely be learning a lot and having a good time. Register now!

Connecting Talent Intelligence with Enterprise Talent Optimization

Last year, 61% of organizations struggled to hire and retain talent, and the trend seems to have continued well into 2022, despite the post-pandemic hiring boom. Without a new talent strategy, organizations will struggle to solve for talent shortage. In KPMG’s 2020 Future of HR survey,  57% of HR executives said that if HR doesn’t reform its approach, it will become irrelevant within the modern organization.

Increasing focus on data and analytics marks the beginning of a data-driven HR approach. Deloitte’s report found that 52% of surveyed companies planned to invest in data collection and analysis within the year. One way for HR leaders to get that much-awaited seat at the table is leveraging talent intelligence – using talent data to make business decisions.

This article talks about talent intelligence and how you can utilize it to develop an enterprise talent optimization strategy. 

What is Talent Intelligence?

Talent intelligence is the application of data, both internal and external, on people, skills, jobs and functions to drive business decisions. Organizations collect and analyze data to uncover talent patterns to understand company culture, employee engagement and commitment and to enhance their business strategy. In addition to your employee data, you will also collect data from your competitors, such as their candidate pool, skills, functions, workforce composition, open roles and compensation package. 

Adopting a data-driven approach allows you to leverage your most important asset: your people. HR professionals can analyze data granularly for faster hiring decisions with talent intelligence platforms, connect with the workforce throughout the employee life cycle and obtain a competitive advantage.

While talent intelligence emerged as an innovative approach to the recruitment process, its impact is far reaching for an organization. You can use the combination of internal and external data for workforce planning, employee learning and development and workflow optimization. Here are some ways talent intelligence benefits and impacts your organization and workflow: 

    • Improve employee productivity with automated feedback and reports 
    • Promote a collaborative work environment through efficient communication tools 
    • Understand your hiring needs from the recruiting and talent data 
    • Bring down talent acquisition costs
    • Boost employee engagement and retention 
    • Improve recruiter productivity

But that’s not all. Talent Intelligence can also enrich your business strategy, help you predict talent outcomes and maximize business impact with enterprise optimization.

What is Enterprise Talent Optimization?

Businesses have scores of organizational data but often overlook using their people data when designing strategy. But with data and analytics assuming the center stage in HR and talent acquisition, talent intelligence, people analytics and enterprise optimization have come to the forefront. 

Enterprise talent optimization is the process of aligning your business strategy with talent strategy using people data. It ties people data and analysis to business strategy, and it can help elevate employee engagement, drive better business outcomes and even improve transparency and communication.

The key is identifying the right data sources, understanding the most important patterns and supporting your internal talent mobility. 

Connecting Talent Intelligence with Enterprise Talent Optimization

  • Identify Data Sources 

Identifying the right sources of data is fundamental to talent intelligence and enterprise optimization. HR leaders tap into a variety of data to analyze and derive actionable insights. If you already have a talent intelligence strategy, you can start optimization by sorting your data. Even if you don’t have a plan yet, use this list as a starting point to identify the most important data sources. 

Talent intelligence data sources can broadly be categorized into two types: 

Internal Data – Data from the existing workforce and the recruitment funnel such as your HRIS.

External Data – Data from sources outside the organization. It typically includes information about competitors, past employees and job candidates.

Some of the common sources of people data include: 

Recruitment Funnel – Obtained from the applicant tracking system (ATS), recruiting data includes candidate applications (quantity), candidate characteristics, sources of applications and other interactions.

Demographic Data – Employee records including employee name, gender, residence, position, department/team, joining date, termination date and other variables. 

Social Network and Communication Data – Data from social media apps, email and collaborative work communication apps.

Employee Surveys – These measure employee attitude, engagement, commitment and satisfaction in their workplace.

Migration Report – Provides information about where your previous employees went after leaving the organization and what roles they acquired now. This helps in understanding the competitor’s talent acquisition and retention plan.

Skills Gap Analysis Data – Organizations conduct a skill gap analysis to get an idea about current employees’ skill levels, knowledge and organizational capacity. You can use the skill gap analysis report to devise reskilling plans, promote learning and development opportunities and support the internal mobility of your employees.

Labor Market Analysis – This external data source keeps you abreast with the labor market’s current happenings, allowing you to modify and adapt your business strategy.

Since enterprise talent optimization uses data to support your business goals, your data sources will be based on your goals. For instance, if your purpose is workforce planning and productivity, you will benefit from the recruitment funnel, demographic and competitor data. If you want to increase productivity, data from employee surveys and communication apps might be useful. 

  • Understand Talent Patterns 

Collecting and analyzing employee talent data provides a comprehensive report of your organization’s current skill and knowledge level. These reports will help you set up learning and development programs for employee growth. Moreover, observing talent trends can help you identify employees who can be promoted to better positions with upskilling or reskilling. 

With employees demanding hybrid work environments in 2022, the use of technology has increased, requiring upskilling and adaptability. Reskilling is useful, especially during unprecedented times, like the pandemic. Optimizing your workflow by skills improves flexibility and performance. 

  • Support Internal Talent Mobility 

In a tight labor market where hiring new talent is challenging, internal mobility is an effective way to overcome talent shortages. It is also rewarding for existing employees looking for growth opportunities and helps with long-term employee retention.

According to LinkedIn research, employees who move jobs internally are 3.5x more engaged than those who stay in the same roles. With this in mind, it’s easy to see why 62% of learning and development professionals prioritize internal talent mobility. 

Talent mobility is a great way to optimize your existing talent based on employees’ past performance data. What’s more, talent mobility has a significant impact on engagement and productivity levels while boosting employee morale. Employee talent data, such as a skills gap report and labor market analysis, could highlight the skills and trends most essential for an internal talent mobility program.

It could point out, for example, that modern application development skills are in-demand and in short supply, while also surfacing internal employees who may be perfect candidates for upskilling in this area or tapping into existing employee skills that are not being leveraged. However, many organizations don’t have access to this data and that’s where talent intelligence comes in. It enables talent teams to mobilize skills and capabilities by identifying gaps in current talent inventory.

Transitioning to Enterprise Talent Optimization  

Talent intelligence is the process of using internal and external people data to enhance your recruitment process and employee retention. Enterprise talent optimization aims to take that same people data, augment it and begin to derive new insights capable of informing the broader business strategy.

Organizations using talent intelligence can easily make the shift to enterprise talent optimization by taking a fresh look at their people data, identifying and understanding talent patterns and supporting internal talent mobility.

And finally, make sure you make the most productive shift you can by leveraging your talent intelligence platform to its fullest, helping you find new data sources, reveal new patterns and mobilize internal talent faster than ever.

The Most Googled Interview Questions in 2022

With the World Economic Forum recently reporting that The Great Resignation is probably far from over, many are reconsidering their employment options and seeking out new avenues to pursue. This has led to a steady 22% rise in searches for interview questions over the last twelve months.

Pairing new data with expert insight, Frank Recruitment Group has created a list of the most googled interview questions alongside suggestions on how to answer them. They’ve also collated some new questions that they predict will become increasingly common as a result of the pandemic.

Question Average monthly no. of searches
Tell me about yourself 301,000
Why should we hire you? 201,000
What are your strengths and weaknesses? 74,000
Where do you see yourself in five years? 60,500
Why do you want this job? 33,100

Tell Me About Yourself

This question can be overwhelming because it’s difficult to know where to start and how much depth to go into. Try to give an overview of where you’re at in your life and career currently but emphasize the qualitative over the factual. Talk about your career interests and passions, what motivates you, what you care about.

Why Should We Hire You?

There are probably two reliable ways to handle this question. If you know you have the skill set to fit the role, speak confidently to that. Show that you understand the position and that you have a clear sense of how you would apply yourself to it. If you’re applying for a position that would be entirely new to you or you don’t have the exact skills or experience they’re asking for, answer this question by talking about your willingness to learn and grow. Express that it’s a role you want to take on.

What Are Your Strengths and Weaknesses?

Don’t overthink this one or try to be too smart with it. Honesty is likely to be the best approach here. With your strengths, claim them with confidence but not arrogance. And with your weaknesses, acknowledge them without being totally self-deprecating. Framing your weaknesses in terms of “things I’m working on” might be a good way to strike that balance.

Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?

While it’s important to be able to project a possible trajectory when you’re asked this question, try not to be too clinical, unless that feels right in the conversation. Don’t answer this in precise terms of salary or position, but more holistically. You might talk about aspiring to a more senior position with more responsibility, or you might include something about your ideal work-life balance or being comfortable enough to support your family.

Why Do You Want This Job?

Like answering “why should we hire you?” this is a chance to highlight how you’d approach the work with confidence or how you’d be excited to take on the new challenges the role presents for you. Best of all, if you feel like this particular opportunity resonates with you, share that with your interviewer and explain why. Think about what drew you to applying and how you feel about the prospect of working there on the basis of the interview experience.

Although interview prep is an essential part of the process, it’s essential to be authentic. Try to respond genuinely in the moment. Aim for real connection and lean on your prep when you need to.

Below are two further interview questions that experts believe will become increasingly common as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How Did You Adapt to Hybrid or Remote Working? 

Your interviewer is probably looking for you to illustrate your capacity for adapting to change. By all means, discuss your experience of any flux you’ve navigated, but this question is a definite opportunity to detail any tangible practices and strategies you’ve developed over the past few years. These could be big or small, from cultivating the right environment in your home workspace to revising how you map out your day or week entirely.

How Has the Pandemic Affected How You See Your Career?

There are definitely no right or wrong answers to this one as the impact of the pandemic has been wide-ranging and affected different sectors very differently. You might have experienced a kind of existential crisis, re-evaluating the spaces you choose to work in and looking to change careers entirely.

You might have found yourself re-committing to your line of work with a firmer belief in its importance or meaningfulness. And of course, your experience could lie between these two poles. If you feel safe doing so in the conversation, share your reflections honestly with your interviewer.

Equally, you don’t owe somebody your innermost truths at first meeting.

Methodology

This data was collected using a keyword research tool, pulling and comparing Google search volume data for the last twelve months (July 2021 – July 2022). The data represents English-speaking Google users globally.

Can Coding Tests Help You Overcome Bias in Recruiting?

Despite welcome moves to adopt inclusive practices, the tech industry struggles to implement fair and unbiased hiring processes. According to Fortune data, women make up roughly 25% of the workforce in the tech industry. Yet, the rate for women quitting high-tech jobs is at 41%—more than twice that of men. In Silicon Valley, men earn 61% on average more than women.

Research by Deloitte found that 68% of respondents reported that bias had a negative effect on their productivity, and 70% reported that experiencing bias negatively impacted their work engagement, while 84% said that bias affected their happiness, confidence and well-being. 

To reduce bias in recruitment, companies have turned to objective skills-based assessments to ensure a fair chance for all candidates. Even when companies use coding tests, however, technical recruiting is susceptible to bias and unfair practices that can hinder inclusive hiring.  

Here are some of the most common unconscious biases and how they can impact hiring at your company. 

What are Unconscious Biases? 

Unconscious or implicit biases are social and cultural beliefs about certain groups or individuals that exist outside of your conscious awareness. These biases are formed through an interaction of environment, media, life experiences and social relationships. They influence your attitude towards others and can cause you to form harmful assumptions about them. 

Since these biases are implicit, you have to actively look out for and address them. Some of the most common unconscious biases impacting hiring include: 

Gender and Race Bias – Unconscious racial or gender bias leads to unfair treatment of women and individuals from minority groups. 

Appearance and Age Bias – Hiring teams often characterize candidates based on their appearance, i.e., how they dress and age. For example, young professionals are considered to be lacking experience, while older professionals are considered outdated. 

Affinity Bias – A tendency to gravitate towards people like ‘us’ based on appearance, experiences, or beliefs. In hiring, affinity bias affects organizations trying to hire someone exactly like them. It is essential to recognize the importance of ‘culture add’ vs ‘culture fit’ here. Look for professionals who add value to your organization rather than those who simply ‘fit.’ 

Education Bias – Recruiters often prefer individuals from certain elite educational institutions. 

How Biases Impact Your Organization and Recruiting 

Due to specific skills requirements and fewer tech professionals, tech recruiters are limited to smaller candidate pools. Add to this the undue emphasis placed on formal educational qualifications, such as a bachelor’s degree in computer science, and you narrow the funnel even further.  

But formal education and work experiences are often available to a limited number of people and can cause recruiters to reject non-traditional applicants. Implicit biases also impact how you attract and review applicants from historically underrepresented groups.

For instance, research reveals that white people have higher top-of-the-funnel pass-through rates, while Black and Hispanic/Latinx talent have better pass-through rates during other stages. The finding indicates that top-of-the-funnel hiring practices like resume review are greatly impacted by unconscious biases. 

Unconscious gender and racial biases keep women and individuals that belong to minorities from receiving job offers, equitable pay and work satisfaction. As of 2021, the gender pay gap research finds that women earn only 82 cents per every dollar a man earns. 

So, how can you use objective coding assessments to overcome bias? 

How To Use Coding Tests to Eliminate Bias  

  • Assessing Job-Relevant Skills

Assessing a candidate’s skills using validated coding assessments shows you how they will perform on the job. “Job relevant” means that the evaluation is associated with their prospective job role and responsibilities. Validated hiring assessments use different tasks to evaluate a candidate’s skills realistically. 

Relevant assessments also ensure that you are evaluating your candidates fairly and not based on arbitrary standards of what they ‘should’ know.  

For example, while hiring a mobile developer, you may want to give them a task to develop a mobile app. With a job-relevant task, the candidate also becomes acquainted with duties they will encounter during their work. 

  • Recognize that Your Solution is Vulnerable to Bias 

When companies adopt coding assessments or other automated solutions, they may assume that their recruitment process is now free from bias. They often fail to validate their assessments or conduct adverse impact analyses to ensure fair practices. Many commonly-used coding tests can include discriminatory language that provides an unfair disadvantage to certain groups. 

But you must remember that just as humans are susceptible to biases, your technology solutions are prone to bias, too. Recognizing potential pitfalls of your hiring processes is essential to designing a fair hiring practice. 

Conclusion 

Bias in recruiting, especially in the tech industry, has caused businesses to reevaluate and improve their hiring practices. With the popularity of skill-based hiring, organizations have turned to objective coding assessments to overcome hiring bias. While coding assessments are great at widening the talent pool at the top of the funnel, assessments must be validated and analyzed for adverse impact to avoid introducing bias.

How Talent Intelligence Can Solve Your Employee Experience Problem

In April this year, employers added 428,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate remained steady at 3.6% – matching its lowest level since the start of the pandemic. While the economy has recovered nearly 95% of the jobs lost during coronavirus, employers are still keen to hire. 

With changing workforce dynamics, candidates want more than just better pay. Employees are eager for organizations that value well-being, support work flexibility and support their career development. 

Such trends require organizations to restructure their talent strategy to prioritize employee experience. 

Why Employee Experience Matters in 2022

Employee experience (EX) indicates the opinions employees hold about their organizations and is shaped throughout the employee lifecycle from recruitment to retirement. The pandemic caused employees to reevaluate their priorities and work choices, fundamentally changing how they look for jobs. Moving beyond traditional packages, employees are demanding better work-life balance, compensation and benefits, and an inclusive work environment.

Prioritizing employee experience makes employees feel valued and respected, improving engagement and performance in the long run. According to McKinsey’s survey, people with positive employee experience have 16 times the engagement level than those with a negative employee experience. They are also 8 times more likely to stay at the company. 

Enhancing employee experience is a proactive shift towards focusing on employee journeys and identifying opportunities to improve performance, engagement and productivity. These allow you to design an inclusive and collaborative organization maximizing its most important asset: the people. 

How Talent Intelligence Impacts Employee Experience 

Until now, HR managed the burden of dealing with candidates and employees to ensure a meaningful experience. But talent intelligence solutions combine HR expertise and technology to drive innovative employment practices. 

With a data-driven approach, you can optimize employee experience throughout the lifecycle. Talent insights allow you to hire faster, engage with candidates and enhance workforce planning.

Leveraging Talent Insights for Better Employee Experience 

Let’s look at how you can use talent insights at every step to ensure an excellent employee experience. 

  • Talent Sourcing and Recruitment 

There’s no doubt that candidate sourcing is the hardest part of a recruiter’s job. Add to that technical and diversity requirements, and the problem becomes more complex. Talent intelligence platforms make this significantly easy by combining various sources to aggregate relevant candidate profiles. 

Talent intelligence tools integrate with your existing ATS and CRM to identify previous candidates or retrieve updated candidate information. Powered by AI and machine learning, these tools match relevant candidates to your job description to only highlight candidates who fulfill the requirements. 

The AI learns from your responses and can clone profiles to source similar candidates. Here, the risk of perpetuating existing unconscious biases remains. You may end up with a homogenous workforce while talented and diverse candidates get systematically removed from the pool. 

But, you can overcome the challenging biases with talent intelligence. With AI, you can remove bias from hiring by introducing blind parsing methods (hiding identifying information), skills-based hiring, targeting niche job boards and writing inclusive job descriptions.

Talent insights also show diversity representation in your organization, other similar companies and your candidate pools to help you improve representation and develop a diversity hiring strategy. 

By targeting candidates based on skills and capabilities, you match the right candidate to the right job, enabling job satisfaction and employee experience. 

  • Talent Retention and Development 

Following the pandemic and the Great Resignation, retaining talent is a major concern for organizations. Employees quit due to low pay, lack of opportunities and disrespect in the organization. 

But what makes employees stay? Talent insights can help you answer this question. 

While working on a hiring strategy, organizations often overlook their current employees, who eventually leave, feeling neglected and lacking development opportunities. This also negatively impacts their employee experience. On the other hand, learning and development opportunities boost employee engagement, commitment and positive employee experience.

In a survey, respondents reported that one of the biggest motivators for staying in a position is internal mobility (13%), after pay (46%), and paid time off and work flexibility (21%). 

Talent data can reveal essential skills gaps and patterns you can use to develop customized employee training programs. The data can also help you gauge an overview of your organization and maximize your existing talent base. AI-based talent solutions can be a key ally for TA leaders looking to optimize enterprise talent.

With a talent solution, you can combine skills and experience information from internal and external sources to obtain a complete picture of your existing employee base. Take SeekOut’s Internal Talent Optimization solution for example. You can use  data uncovered with ITO to: 

    • Creatively route employees to open roles, avoid layoffs and preserve talent
    • Identify growth opportunities within your organization
    • Match existing employees to potential roles

  • Talent Transition or Turnover 

Your relationship with your employee does not end when they leave the organization. Their experience in their role and while exiting will influence how their opinions. In addition, alumni can be a wonderful resource and maintaining a good relationship with them is key. 

Insights from departing employees about their experience, unaddressed problems, or areas of improvement can be helpful. Exit interviews are a great way to obtain feedback from exiting employees. Incorporating their inputs makes the employees feel heard and valued for their time in the organization. 

In addition, talent intelligence solutions can consolidate information about departing employees from your and other organizations and where they went. You can easily access this network for future hiring, projects and collaborations. You can leverage these insights for strategic workforce planning, identify similar candidates and inform your retention strategies. 

Conclusion 

Organizations struggling in the tight labor market are turning to talent intelligence and centering employee experience for talent acquisition and retention. Following the pandemic and its aftermath, employees have reassessed their priorities and expectations, especially about their work lives. In the wake of a hiring surge, organizations must adopt a people-centric strategy to retain talent. Talent intelligence solutions are crucial in elevating employee experience throughout the employee lifecycle.

12 Tips For Leveraging a Conversational Recruiting Assistant

How do you leverage a conversational recruiting assistant as part of the sourcing and hiring process? We asked hiring managers and C-Suite executives to share their best ideas.

How do you leverage a conversational recruiting assistant as part of the sourcing and hiring process?

We asked hiring managers and C-Suite executives to share their best ideas. From gaining actionable insight to keeping passive talent engaged, there are several ways you can leverage a conversational recruitment assistant to help find the best candidates for your needs.

Here’s a sampling of what we heard

Use AI To Gain Actionable Insights 

Incorporating a conversational recruiting assistant into the hiring process can help you gain actionable insights that hiring managers might miss during the first or even second screening. This kind of technology effectively qualifies candidates on its own, then gives you the details to make a more informed decision. If your talent pool is very large, conversational assistants can help you find the best candidates for your needs, and more quickly, from among all potential candidates.

Ryan Nouis
Founder and CEO, TruPath

Be Clear and Concise in Messaging and Setup

It is important to be clear and concise in your messaging and setup. This will help the AI to understand your objectives and target candidates more effectively. Additionally, you should keep up with industry trends so that your messaging remains relevant. And finally, make sure to always have current job postings available for review so that the recruitment assistant can find the best matches for you.

Paw Vej
Recruitment Manager and Team Leader, Financer.com Ltd

Compile a Robust FAQ for the AI

When training an AI-based conversational recruiting assistant, compiling a robust and complete FAQ is hugely important. Recruiting AI is most helpful and effective when you’ve fed it all of the information it needs to properly guide candidates through the sourcing and hiring process. Research the most commonly asked questions – in general and industry-specific – and be sure to thoroughly train your recruiting assistant with everything you’ve gathered.

From interview details to remote work policies to company culture, the more data you can feed your robot, the more truly helpful it’ll be – especially if you can include some less obvious questions. That’s the major thing to remember about AI: It’s incredible technology, but you have to set it up for success.

Stephen Light
CEO and Co-owner, Nolah Mattress

Schedule Hands-Off Interviews 

Scheduling appointments and interviews is a simple yet time-consuming process that slows down every recruiter’s day. Rather than focusing more on finding the right individual, they must split their time between critical tasks and the day-to-day “housekeeping” that comes with the job.

Use a conversational recruiting assistant for hands-off interview scheduling, especially if you’re interviewing several applicants in a short timeframe. Give the AI access to your calendar, enter a few parameters regarding your availability, and it will handle the rest. When a candidate inquires about setting up an interview, the assistant can successfully walk them through the process without your involvement.

John Li
Co-Founder and CTO, Fig Loans

Optimize Conditional Logic Function for Pre-Screening

Use “Conditions” blocks in your recruitment chatbots to pre-screen applicants and find top candidates for better efficiency. One mistake companies often make when using conversational recruitment assistants is not setting it up to quicken decision-making. To improve your process and speed up hiring, pre-determine the fundamental qualities you want for an applicant to qualify as a top candidate. Set up a conditional logic function for the chatbots to identify those that match your qualifications.

Kris Lippi
Founder, I Sold My House

Gain Insight into Candidates’ Media Engagements 

The recruiting and hiring process is now able to be automated in all ways except for the intangible assets a person possesses – how do the candidates actually interact?

Leveraging a conversational recruiting assistant allows you to gain insight into how the candidate engages over several different media forms (email, in-person, chatbots, phone calls, social media, mobile, etc.) rather than just a question-and-answer format with hiring docs.

Use the conversational recruiter to give insights into response time, familiarity with common tools the company uses or willingness and ability to learn them. In short, use the automated tools for qualifications for the job duties and leverage the conversational recruiting assistant for the intangible assets your company requires.

Jason Reposa
Founder and CEO, Good Feels

Use Conversational AI for Candidate Attributes 

There’s more to a candidate than just their skills and experience. Hiring based on these factors alone can skew your decision-making process and bring turbulence into the workplace. Ill-suited onboards may find it harder to assimilate, leading to increased rates of employee churn.

To best leverage a conversational recruiting assistant, equip them with a set of attributes that you’d like to see in your next onboard. This may include descriptors such as “talkative”, “analytical” or “extroverted.” These terms can be greatly beneficial during the screening and sorting process, providing plenty of context as to the kind of worker you’re looking to attract. While the list doesn’t have to be long, providing at least three separate descriptors should ensure that the conversational recruiting assistant fully understands which qualities you prioritize. This makes them more likely to source the right type of candidate, helping you hire and retain workers that innately fit your company culture.

Aaron Gray
Co-Founder, Agency 101

Create Human-Level Discourse Through Chatbots

Using a chatbot is the most efficient way to provide conversational recruiting, but there is still discussion about how “human” a chatbot should be. Your chatbot cannot come across as robotic and cold because that type of chat creates a negative candidate experience. A chatbot should not be deceptive and lead candidates to believe that they are speaking to a real person. If a candidate asks if they are talking to a chatbot, they should receive a truthful response. Candidates are usually comfortable interacting with chatbots, especially if they have questions they need answered right away and don’t want to wait to talk to a person. The right level of discourse will keep candidates interested in your company, and using technology for conversational recruiting should not be a disadvantage.

Ouriel Lemmel
Founder and CEO, WinIt

Use AI for Pre-screening Interviews

With the average role attracting 118 applications, conversation recruiting assistants can help cut down the candidates you’ll manually sort through later. Using conversational AI for pre-screening interviews can help you filter out applications based on the language they use. By setting up natural-language interactions with the candidate, the AI communicates with them and then processes the responses they give. By inputting the criteria most important to the role, you help the assistant determine which applicants to move to the top of the list and which aren’t a good fit.

Scott Lieberman
Owner and Founder, Touchdown Money

Connect Applicant To a Live Person for Unique Questions

The one thing those using a conversational recruiting assistant should do is either have it be able to sort through all kinds of problems or have it directly connect the applicant to a live person when there is a problem it can’t solve. Applicants get frustrated when they get stuck and ask a question the assistant can’t answer. The assistant then offers choices that don’t match the question at all, and that frustrates the candidate further. Either the assistant needs to be able to identify all types of questions or problems or immediately and seamlessly connect to a live person who can. Telling the candidate to call HR in the morning during working hours will lose the company’s good applicants in a heartbeat.

Tanya Klien
CEO, Anta Plumbing

Get a Feel of Candidates’ Personality and Demeanor

A conversational recruitment assistant can be used to get a better feel for the candidate’s personality and demeanor. As hiring managers know well, there’s more to a person’s applicability than their qualifications and work experience. More than that, it’s important that this person is a good culture fit for the rest of the team. This allows for more meaningful communication and makes it easier to collaborate — both of which are great for rapport-building.

By using a conversational recruiting assistant, which hinges upon a more “informal” style of recruitment, recruiters can engage candidates in a more personal and authentic manner. This allows candidates to simply be themselves, and to let their personality shine through.

To best leverage a conversational recruiting assistant, be sure to request these kinds of insights. Learn more about what candidates are really like beneath the staunch professionalism, and you’ll find it that much easier to source and hire quality candidates.

Max Wesman
COO, GoodHire

Keep Passive Talent Engaged 

Keeping up with passive candidates in a talent shortage market is a crucial but often ignored step, mainly because organizations don’t have the resources or capacity to keep up with them. With a conversational recruiting assistant, you don’t need to sacrifice time with active candidates when you reach out to passive ones. You can reach out to passive candidates with the right qualifications for an upcoming role using conversational AI.

By regularly reaching out to passive candidates, your AI can check in with them, gather updated contact information, and learn more about their changing career goals. Given that the effort on your end is almost nonexistent and passive candidates may still be interested in working for your company, it’s a great way to keep your candidate pool fresh and full of hirable, engaged talent

James Diel
CEO, Textel

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published. 

How Recruitment Firms Can Establish a Remote Cybersecurity Policy

The last few years have seen a significant rise in the adoption of remote operations. Even with the necessity for distancing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic subsiding, many companies have made remote work a permanent feature. After all, there’s the potential for lower overheads and a more satisfied and productive workforce. Indeed, many recruitment professionals have found it empowers them to strengthen businesses with a truly global talent pool.

Yet, there are certainly challenges that go along with these advantages. One of the core hurdles is remote operations can expose companies to greater cybersecurity vulnerabilities. When employees aren’t in a shared office environment, there often aren’t control measures in place to keep everyone safe. Therefore, it’s vital for recruitment firms to devise and establish a remote cybersecurity policy that maintains security no matter where employees happen to be working.

This in itself can be a difficult task. So, let’s explore how firms can establish a remote cybersecurity policy.

Identify the Risks

Before you can develop robust remote policies to avoid being hacked, you need to have a clear idea of what the prevalent risks are. Each business has a different approach to remote working, so it’s important to take a tailored approach to establish to what extent each can be a factor in your company. 

Some of the common issues to consider include:

Mobile Network Use

Remote work can mean employees may feel able to work wherever they like. This might include public spaces such as coffee shops and libraries. Unfortunately, if employees use public networks in these areas, this can present security risks for potential network breaches. It’s important to establish whether their free-roaming behavior is appropriate.

Camera Hacking

Camera hacking is one of the newest threats for those who utilize video conferencing applications both on laptops and phones. As such, hackers could gain valuable data from remote employees discussing sensitive company matters. Criminals can gain access to a camera either from the user downloading a virus from a phishing email or through unsecured networks and devices. It’s important for employees to keep their antivirus up to date, maintain strong password practices, and be clear on what suspicious links look like.

Unsecured Home Wi-Fi

While the network in the office may be secured, the same isn’t always the case for home networks. Employees may not have secure password or encryption practices on their home internet connection. Indeed, they, their partner or children may have shared the family password with visitors and other parties. This could be problematic for company security and it’s important to focus on this as part of your policy.

Consider Appropriate Resources

It’s certainly understandable to focus a portion of your policy building on the behavior of your employees. However, the company’s security shouldn’t be their responsibility alone. Indeed, it’s not unusual for businesses to feel switching to remote practices is a good way to reduce overheads by passing equipment purchase and internet service costs to workers. You need to consider how this is putting your company at greater risk. You have a responsibility to all stakeholders to create a quality remote cybersecurity policy that include providing your workers with the resources they need to protect data. 

This may include issuing company laptops for business use only. You’ll also find this approach supports a more secure policy on limiting the use of personal devices at work. Indeed, it can be a good way to restrict the types of applications and files employees can download onto the work device. This also ensures your information technology department has remote access to monitor all activities of the laptop’s user and to update security patches frequently. 

Alongside equipment, it can be wise to include other provisions in your policy. If you’re happy with workers operating from public spaces, providing access to virtual private networks (VPNs) can reduce vulnerabilities. Indeed, in some instances providing a separate secure internet connection at home for each of your remote workers may be appropriate.

Adapt Training and Offboarding

Cybersecurity policies can’t just be a set of standards and rules for your employees to follow. It’s also about making sure your workforce has the knowledge to behave both to the letter and in the spirit of the protocols. The policies should empower workers to behave safely rather than simply demand they do so. As such, your approach should include providing cybersecurity training and effective offboarding. 

Educate your workers on how to independently spot and handle potential cybersecurity risks. For remote workers, a combination of e-learning modules and video lectures can be effective. Simply dictating what to do isn’t enough, though. They need to understand why their actions matter. You don’t need to go too in-depth, but give them explanations for the actions you want them to take. Your training should also be refreshed and updated every 6 months or so.

Alongside training, your remote cybersecurity policy needs to include practices for when workers are leaving the company. A consistent offboarding process helps your workers transition from your company in a smooth and secure manner. The policy here needs to include processes for reclaiming company assets, like laptops and external hard drives. This is as important for the employee as it is for the company, as good offboarding prevents potential legal issues resulting from breaches occurring when they’re no longer employed by the business. Help them to understand how to act in interim periods and collaborate on effective security procedures.

Conclusion

Remote working can be positive for both businesses and employees. However, it’s important for recruitment firms to establish practical policies that mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities as a result of staff actions. This should be guided by a good understanding of the specific risks your business faces. Incorporating protocols to provide workers with appropriate resources and solid training can also reduce the potential for breaches. No company can be 100% safe, but it’s important to take consistent steps so all stakeholders can benefit from the advantages of remote ops. 

12 Best Productivity Tools for Recruiters in 2022

At the outset, a recruiter’s job seems easy. You just need to hire the best candidates for a job. But one look at their day-to-day responsibilities: writing and posting jobs, reviewing hundreds of resumes, filtering the best ones, conducting background checks, negotiating over salaries and you know that it’s far from easy.

But what if there was a way to get all these tasks done more productively so that you can spend your time on activities that are important? Let’s look at twelve such productivity tools for recruiters that will help save a lot of time. We have divided them into five different categories like recruiting, project & task management, email management, automation and other tools.

Let’s start with recruiting tools first.

Tools for Recruiters 

Jobsoid

Jobsoid is an Online Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that offers you a complete recruitment system for all kinds of recruitment needs. It comes with a host of features—each designed to simplify every step of your hiring process. From posting jobs on various job boards to managing the candidate applications you receive, from communicating with your candidates to collaborating with your team—Jobsoid provides you an all-in-one platform.

Jobsoid lets you automate the hiring process. It allows users to create their own career site or page with a professional look that promotes their brand. You can also post job advertisements on different social media channels and job platforms.

Key Features

    • Built-in ATS
    • Application management
    • Candidate tracking
    • Job management
    • Onboarding
    • Interview management
    • Resume parsing
    • Communication management

Folks ATS

Folks ATS is built to optimize every step of the recruiter’s workflow. By integrating Folks ATS to career pages and job sites, centralizing candidate profiles and adding them automatically in the proper hiring process without moving a finger, recruiters can focus on the best candidates, not on tedious tasks. 

With Folks being a collaborative tool, every recruiter can build personalized templates like interview questionnaires or emails that can be reused by everyone on the recruiting team.

Key Features

    • Centralized candidate profiles
    • Powerful keyword search
    • Hiring processes within the platform
    • Integration to career pages and job sites
    • Interview templates

factoHR

factoHR is an entirely HR-centric platform that helps managers streamline different HR processes. It helps boost a recruiting team’s productivity by automating the hiring processes and assisting them in different critical functions. 

The platform offers a centralized database wherein the recruiters can store candidates’ information and get it whenever needed. It also assists hiring professionals in candidate screening, so they can have a better idea about the potential employee.

Key Features

    • Bulk document upload
    • Duplicate resume detection
    • Applicant tracking
    • Interview scheduling

SpringRecruit

SpringRecruit is a free-forever ATS built for startup recruiters. It helps in organizing and keeping track of job openings, resumes, candidates and contacts.

Key Features

    • Built-in reports and visually appealing dashboards
    • Tracks every stage of the recruitment process
    • Provides a funnel view to track the candidates
    • Creates multiple job postings and customize the career page
    • Customizes your recruitment stages
    • Offers social media integration

Adaface

Adaface helps recruiters find qualified engineers by automating screening interviews with a conversational chatbot, Ada. Ada engages candidates with a friendly chat involving relevant challenges instead of asking trick questions on a test. For each role, subject matter experts design a custom assessment based on the role’s requirements.

The platform aids recruiters in figuring out the best-suited candidates for job roles while still being humane with the interview process. And candidates figure out if they’d be a good fit.

Key Features

    • High-quality, non-Googleable questions
    • Friendly candidate experience
    • 500+ skills assessment tests library
    • Granular scoring
    • No trick questions

Project & Task Management Tools

SmartTask

SmartTask is an online project & task management platform built for recruiters and HR professionals. With so many tasks, you can easily miss out on some and risk losing out on the perfect candidate. SmartTask lets you set reminders for your tasks. You can even make use of tags to bifurcate your tasks like interviews, resumes, salary and so on. 

The time tracking feature lets you see which tasks take up most of your time and make strategies for the same. It also has a voice calling feature with which you can connect with your shortlisted candidates for interviews.

Key Features

    • Stores all the candidate information in one place
    • Manages tasks with the list, board, calendar and timeline views
    • Activates time tracking
    • Sets up templates for onboarding
    • Keeps track of all communication
    • Makes use of custom tags
    • Video conferencing and voice calling
    • Write down comments on tasks

Trello

Trello is a Kanban-style project management software that helps recruiters manage hiring projects. It allows you to move tasks from one phase to another. You can easily see which candidates have moved towards the screening phase, which candidates are yet to submit their assessment tests and so on. You can even use color-coding to mark important tasks.

For tracking time in Trello, you need to opt-in for third-party plugins as it does not have a built-in time tracking feature. Other than that, you can add small descriptions to tasks and attach documents such as resumes, test scores and more.

Key Features

    • Divides your tasks into separate phases (Kanban Boards)
    • Uploads candidate documents
    • Makes use of color code and labeling
    • Records feedback and remarks in comments
    • Makes use of checklists

WebWork Time Tracker

WebWork is a time tracking and task management platform that can help recruiters organize the hiring process. It automatically tracks the time spent on work and creates detailed reports. The reports simplify the work of recruiters by acquitting them with extra manual work.

To keep track of employee attendance, recruiters can use the attendance tracking feature. It records the time employees start and finish work, and asks them to write the reason whenever they clock in late.

Key Features

    • Time Tracking
    • Task Management
    • Productivity Tracking
    • Attendance Tracking
    • App and Website Usage

Email Management Tools

Right Inbox

Right Inbox is an email productivity tool that can be used with your Gmail account. It allows recruiters to use email templates, schedule emails, send recurring emails, use email sequences and much more within Gmail. One of the best features of Right Inbox is the ability to add various signatures at the end of each email.

Key Features

    • Mail merge for personalization
    • Email reminders
    • Email sequences
    • Recurring emails
    • Email templates

Mailbird

Mailbird is an email client that helps recruiters manage multiple email accounts from different email providers including Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. It’s not uncommon to have different folders and filters to take care of incoming emails from different employers. What makes it even easier to manage is giving yourself the option of a Unified Inbox to check in on all incoming messages, no matter which email address they’re coming from. 

Mailbird also integrates with Slack, Whatsapp, Facebook messenger and Twitter, so you’ll never have an email or message get lost in the shuffle again.

Key Features

    • Unified inbox 
    • Unified calendar
    • Linkedin Lookup
    • Contacts manager
    • 47+ integrated apps

Automation Tools

Zapier

Zapier integrates with over 5000 tools such as Evernote, Slack, Gmail, SmartTask, Trello and more so you can enable automation for all your recruiting tasks. All you need to do is set a trigger that kicks off the automated process between your apps. These actions could be to send emails to candidates, deploy assessment tests and so on.

You can even go a step further and automate your entire recruiting process with Zapier.

Key Features

    • Automates up to 100 actions with a single Zap
    • Makes use of the If/Then logic
    • Set certain conditions to have your Zaps run exactly when you want
    • Choose from many formatting options

Other Tools

Grammarly

Why waste time proofreading your emails and job descriptions when Grammarly can do that for you? That’s not all. It can help you use the right tone, keywords and let you know if your content is easy to read.

The tool also provides context-specific suggestions so that your writing stands out in front of your clients and candidates.

Key Features

    • Notices potential issues in your writing
    • Detects language and grammatical errors
    • Makes use of the plagiarism detector
    • Displays synonyms when you double-click on a word
    • Chrome extension

Final Words

You can make use of these tools to collaborate with your teammates, automate tasks, manage projects and recruit effectively. All of this combined can help you save a lot of time and money as well.

From never missing out on replying to potential candidates to automating time-consuming tasks, technology has come a long way to making recruiting streamlined and a lot easier.

So, what are you waiting for? Try out these tools for yourself and see the results they bring.

Colleges Evolve Courses to Meet New Employer Demands

If educators are right, tomorrow’s candidates could be a whole lot more sophisticated in a whole lot of subjects. Colleges are giving AI, the metaverse, networking and personal branding a lot more attention as they strive to keep up with the needs of both businesses and the workers who make them run.

According to The Wall Street Journal, there’s growing recognition that students need to immerse themselves in a variety of new subjects if they’re going to be ready for the changing job market’s skills and dynamics.

For example, the Journal said, big tech companies are spending a lot of money to develop products and services for the metaverse. That, in turn, could open up new job opportunities for graduating students, and those new jobs will have new requirements.

That means some areas will evolve to keep up with the times. Studies of artificial intelligence, for example, will add courses on its ethical application, the Journal said. Engineers will need to decide how much risk can be built into machines, an especially fraught notion for applications involved with medical care.

Texas A&M and more than a dozen other schools are using grant money from Google to develop classes examining just such scenarios, the Journal said.

The Digital Approach

In the metaverse – or, we should say for the metaverse – colleges are instructing students to take fresh looks at areas such as pricing and cost of production. For instance, a digital New York City penthouse with views of Central Park isn’t nearly as exclusive as the real thing. You can only build one apartment, after all, but the digital property can be copied, and sold, any number of times. That means the penthouse in the metaverse is less exclusive than the one in Manhattan.

Networking is another area getting attention. Because of the pandemic, students operating from home missed out on learning the social skills that are important to finding and winning a job, and then progressing along a career path. Courses will spend more time on networking and professional ethics, the Journal said. At some schools, courses on basics like creating a resume or a LinkedIn profile will be included in the syllabus.

For students especially, it may be a relatively short leap from networking to the idea of becoming an influencer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In 2023, marketers will spend more than $4 billion on influencer campaigns, the Journal said, up from more than $3 billion last year. Colleges are responding by offering courses on media influence and personal branding.

All of this is good news for employers – and recruiters – who bemoan the way many universities don’t keep up with their needs. At the least, these efforts show, the schools are trying.

The Ultimate Guide for High-Volume Hiring

How many people do you usually hire in a month? While there may be enough to recruit 1 to 5 candidates, sometimes businesses need to multiply these numbers and opt for high-volume hiring. This term refers to the process of looking for numerous people at a certain period.

When does high-volume hiring come into play? A business may need many candidates due to several reasons, such as:

    • opening an office in a new location;
    • seasonal demands, such as the need to find customer service specialists in the online store before Black Friday and Cyber Monday;
    • the company’s growth and the emergence of new departments;
    • after company restructuring, optimizing processes and big turnover.

Whatever the reason, recruiters and HR professionals need to cope with the increased workloads. This article will outline the right strategies to manage high-volume hiring. These tips will help everyone involved in talent acquisition.

1. Create Applications Around Candidates

Candidate-first approach is essential for high-volume hiring. Why? Because you need to ensure a smooth experience for people to apply. It will streamline the recruitment process with more candidates coming to your company’s resources.

Begin with writing a thorough job description. Include the title, requirements, responsibilities and tasks for a person to do daily. You should also look at the piece through the candidates’ eyes. Why should people place your business above the competition?

List bonuses and perks, whether you accept remote working, whether the position is temporary or permanent. Candidates should also understand if they will have a fixed work schedule, shifts or even part-time or full day.

2. Explore Various Platforms and Optimize Content

High-volume hiring entails searching for people on various platforms. It may be a corporate website, job boards, social media, etc. Follow your target audience where you expect them to spend their time and offer a job. Chances are they’ll come to your website to see your services, team and even blog. That’s where website optimization comes to your aid.

Analyze the website’s mobile-friendliness and make the needed adjustments. The website should open fast with every part taking the right place. Visitors shouldn’t pinch the screen when accessing the website on the go from mobile devices.

The application process should be streamlined without the need to fill in excessive fields. It should take one click to finish the task in less than 20 minutes. According to statistics, 64% of applicants will tell others about their bad application experiences, diverting potential employees from the company.

3. Search Faster by Looking Through Your Database

This section revolves around searching for candidates in your database whom you previously rejected, lost or fired. This practice is known as talent rediscovery and returnship.

There may be several reasons you put some candidates on hold. Maybe you had more options to choose from at the time to take a role. Perhaps they got a job offer from another company and decided to go for it. Or they didn’t have enough skills and experience compared to what they possess now.

With this in mind, investigate your spreadsheets with whom you interviewed before. Some may be seeking a job now that fits your business needs. This way, you can speed up high-volume hiring by leveraging existing information.

Another source of candidates is your former and current employees. Returnship is beneficial as employees already know the company’s procedures and need less time for onboarding. You can prevent current employees from leaving if they’re unsatisfied with their tasks. Offer them another position, ensuring smooth internal mobility.

4. Adopt Recent Technologies to Speed up High Volume Hiring

Active talent acquisition implies reviewing thousands of resumes, inputting data into special software and deciding whether candidates are perfect fits. Recruiters spend their valuable time analyzing typical resumes. This process becomes a heavy burden, leading to fatigue, frustration and human mistakes. How do you tackle these issues?

Try recruitment automation and implement artificial intelligence. It performs repetitive tasks, leaving employees with functions such as interviewing candidates and making decisions. AI-powered tools run through resumes in seconds. By extracting keywords, they determine whether a person has the necessary skills and qualifications. Other techniques for utilizing AI in high-volume hiring include:

    • using chatbots to find candidates and schedule interviews;
    • scanning ATS (applicant tracking system) to process large data chunks quickly and identify patterns; 
    • analyzing body language, reactions, tone of voice, etc. during video interviews;
    • communicating and sending automatic responses to prospective candidates.

5. Measure the Success of High Volume Hiring

Another key point is performance analysis. How fast do candidates apply for a job? Where do you find relevant specialists who become your employees?

Recruiting KPIs and metrics help you optimize the hiring process by removing weak points and focusing on the working tricks. At the same time, they highlight the company’s benefits and weaknesses. You can eliminate them to attract more talents and improve the conditions for existing employees. Consider the following metrics:

    • Time to hire. These figures represent how fast candidates become your employees from the moment of applying for a job to the moment of accepting it. The shorter this period is, the more chances to hire the best candidates are. 
    • Source of hire. This metric helps you determine the channels bringing you the highest number of talents and return on investment. What acquisition channel drives more candidates? This information lets you reduce costs on underperforming channels and focus on the best ones.
    • Cost per hire. It’s a metric for showing how much you spend on each person. You can get it by dividing total expenses (everything invested from advertising to onboarding) by the number of hires. You can reduce costs with the help of hiring tools designed to automate processes.
    • Offer acceptance rate. This metric demonstrates how many people accept your offer compared to the number of made ones. No one wants to waste their time and get nothing in the end, right? Gather feedback from candidates on why they refuse your offer. Maybe, the reason lies in the proposed compensation or other conditions.

You can enrich this list with other metrics to leverage more data over time. Detailed reports will help you not only with the high-volume hiring but with enhancing your company in general.

Wrapping Up

The need for high-volume hiring is urgent like never before. As the Great Resignation showed, people are less eager to cope with unfavorable working conditions, lower wages and poor work-life balance. The number of resignations skyrockets, with people searching for better options. Your task is to reconsider your approaches, retain employees, boost their loyalty and deal with high turnover rates.

That’s why companies should always be prepared to substitute or recruit plenty of workers rapidly. How can you scale your hiring processes quickly and easily? We’ve analyzed actionable tips to win, including:

    1. optimizing applications and expanding venues where you can reach out to candidates;
    2. resorting to your existing database to rediscover previous candidates and former workers;
    3. leveraging AI to automate resume screening, spot trends and reduce errors;
    4. tracking KPIs to see whether you move in the positive direction.

By following them, you can be sure the right people will come to your business and work towards its stable growth.