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How Wellness Companies are Driving Innovation in 2021

The “deep tissue transformation” of the wellness industry started long before the COVID-19 pandemic. For more than a decade, wellness companies have been competing for the most innovative product award.

In the meantime, the cottage industry of corporate wellness started offering novel services like mindfulness meditation to a new generation of millennial startups.

How Wellness Companies are Driving Innovation in 2021

As a $52.8 billion industry (with a CAGR of 7.0 percent from 2021 to 2028), one might say that corporate wellness companies were foresighted when the world came to a halt. Even though remote work and social distancing acted as catalysts for new technological and creative solutions, the industry’s innovative nature gave companies an edge.

Thus, in 2020 and 2021, we can see how the changes in consumer behavior and the new set of challenges and priorities inspired growth in this sector.

 

Virtual Corporate Wellness Solutions

The aftermath of COVID’s mental-health toll is still way away.

And the data pulled by the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom shows that we’re at the beginning of a mental health crisis. Because of the social restrictions, virtual solutions became the safest option.

However, it’s not only a question of safety but also one of well-being. And the data is showing us that these corporate programs are not only trends but a necessity. Thus, we saw the development of:  

  • Pinterest & Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation launched the Compassionate Search Project.
  • Fuseproject launched Dreem, an application that provides users with a drug-free, custom-tailored solution for better sleep.
  • Sweat Force started offering virtual fitness as the central pillar of its corporate wellness program. Companies like Peloton, ClassPass, Wellbeats, BurnAlong, Movement Rx, and many others jumped on the bandwagon.

The expansion of virtual solutions exploded in the past year because wellness companies push the limits on immersive experiences. The key is a high level of customization for each employee or team. The goal is overall wellness.

 

Wellness as a Game Experience

Another avenue wellness companies are exploring is the concept of wellness as a game experience. Or, as SonicBoom put it, gamifying wellness.

The notion might not be as novel as tracking COVID-19, but the methods and the strategies are because they are driving engagement. Using any app that tracks wellness goals and asks users to fulfill specific objectives (game jargon: quests) is a form of gamification.

Users are “tricked” into incorporating healthy habits into their lifestyles through the power of fun and exciting activities. Moreover, they get brownie points and a rush of dopamine every time they fulfill an objective.

Video games (at least the good ones) use this basic model to attract players, and wellness companies borrow it to help users lead healthy lives.

 

Telemedicine

The rise of telemedicine in the past year has been unprecedented, with 9 million users receiving a telehealth service from mid-March through mid-June alone.

The reasons for this growth might be obvious: the pandemic, the social distancing rules, or the cost. However, flexibility and convenience might hold the keys to the castle. Not only for the users but for the providers.

Telemedicine services can be easily adapted into the workflow, and more importantly, the quality of the service remains high. Wellness companies that develop telemedicine platforms focus on seamless integration within the EHR system.

Hence, since the pandemic, the list of companies working in the telemedicine field got bigger – the expected CAGR is shocking 25.2 percent. The industry’s key players are Teladoc, MeMD, iCliniq, Amwell, MDlive, Doctor on Demand, and soon many others.

 

Tracking Covid-19

A textbook example of how a company can step up during a difficult time with an innovative solution is Fitbit.

In May 2020, Fitbit announced a COVID-19 study to build an algorithm that detects COVID-19 before symptoms start. According to its findings, and with more than 100,000 Fitbit users analyzed, the company can detect nearly 50 percent of the cases one day before the first symptoms.

The benefits of this research are obvious. Moreover, the company is also tracking changes in heart rate and breathing rate connected to COVID-19. All of the gathered data is publicly available.

 

Digital Wellness

Another valuable byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic is the recognition of digital wellness.

As people spend more and more time integrating technology into their lives, the effects of that integration are not always positive. Social media is more addictive than cigarettes, and the average U.S. adult will spend 44 years staring at screens.

Hence, the goal of digital wellness is to achieve balance with technology and social media. Moreover, apart from the wellness companies, even big corporations like Google started developing digital well-being toolkits.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the overall dependency on technology, and because of that, wellness companies started developing digital wellness programs that offer modern solutions to modern problems.

Wellness companies are in a unique position to drive innovation for the next decade because the market has rapidly shifted its focus on health and well-being. Moreover, with the development of blockchain technology and AI, the possibilities for new and extraordinary products and services are massive.

It’s going to be fascinating to see where the wellness industry will take us in the next few years.

Replace Connectifier with this Hiretual Chrome Extension Update

It’s ironic how we sometimes discover some of the most talented individuals at the least expected of times. A random link on some forum can lead to an impressive project on GitHub. A simple search on Google can put you across an incredibly thoughtful post on Stack Overflow.

Taking full advantage of moments like that can put you ahead of recruiters looking in the same place as everybody else. And the latest Hiretual Chrome extension update is made to help you do exactly that!

Remember Connectifier? That great sourcing tool that LinkedIn dimmed the lights for last April? Well, Hiretual’s latest update is here to scratch that itch with everything that made Connectifier great and more!

We’re talking about a one-click solution that puts all this data at your fingertips for every lead:

  • Email addresses
  • Phone numbers
  • Social media profiles
  • Resume site links

So the next time you’re admiring someone’s commits on GitHub or posts on LinkedIn, just hit the Hiretual icon in your browser and you’ll get all the insightful data about that person in mere seconds.

You can even add them to a Hiretual project, assign some tags, leave notes, or even attach some files for future reference.

You have to experience it firsthand to see just how powerful this extension is. Here’s the download link if you can’t wait to try it out!

Getting Leadership Buy in For a Recruitment Marketing Culture Content Project

As a major connector between your company and candidates, you know the employee stories candidates need to hear. You’re ready to scale your messaging by investing in culture content that shows the real employee experience. Now it’s time to convince leadership.

In this post, we’ll walk through some of the ways the Stories Incorporated team has helped recruiters get buy-in for a culture content project.

 

What does your problem cost?

Sure, leadership needs to relate to you and the work you’re doing. They need to understand the obstacles you’re trying to overcome.

But more than that, they need to see and feel your problems as their problems. They need to realize ineffective or nonexistent employer branding and recruitment marketing efforts impact their bottom line, their ability to get work done, and even their reputation among buying and current customers. It damages the whole company.

Here are a few employer branding and recruitment marketing problems you may be having:

Brand Awareness

We have a great culture… but no one knows about it. All of our talent efforts are outbound. Top talent would come to us if we had better brand recognition and recruitment marketing programs in place.

Employee Experience and Employer Brand Misalignment / Retention

We’re not doing a good job setting expectations of what it’s really like to work here. The reality doesn’t match the message. Our turnover is fast and high as a result.

Employee Advocacy & Storytelling

We have a highly engaged workforce, but we aren’t leveraging their experiences to attract others they’re connected to. Even though they are willing and enthusiastic, we aren’t asking them to tap into their networks.

Scaling the Story

Our recruiters are fantastic storytellers, but can only sell our culture on a one-to-one basis when we get someone on the phone. We need to scale our storytelling to reach and influence the right candidates faster.

Diversity, Inclusion & Equity

We can’t advance our diversity goals, because we have a terrible reputation among those that would be diverse to our company or our teams. We’ve done/are doing the internal work but we have proof of progress now.

We need to share the stories of how we support our employees so candidates can see all the work we’ve done to fix culture.

Talent Engagement

We have a talent community that only hears from us once a year. As a result, we have an unengaged database and a lot of wasted opportunities.

 

So, why should your leadership care? Ultimately all these things are tied to the ability to attract the right talent, hire them quickly and/or retain them for the medium and long term.

 

Data you can use

Quantifying the cost of your problem is important to get leadership attention, and for them to realize your problems are their problems: they can’t do their job as effectively when turnover runs rampant, for example. You want them to care enough so that they want the problem solved, too. Then they’ll be a champion of the solutions you propose.

So, how do you quantify the impact your work has on your company’s ability to attract the right talent, time to hire, and retention?  

There’s math you can do, using your company numbers that will make the financial impact of your work real for those you need to influence.

Broad HR Data

Setting the right cultural expectations for candidates is key to recruit employees who will thrive in your environment. Through effective and truthful recruitment marketing, employer branding and culture content, your work impacts quality of hire and other meaningful HR metrics.

Look at the cost of turnover, how much a vacant seat for a specific role costs the company every day it goes unfilled (ties to your time to hire metric), and what disengagement costs.

Your HR department should be able to help, but if you don’t have these numbers available to you, here are some industry stats you can use:

Turnover

The cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary (and that’s a conservative estimate). (Gallup)

Engagement

  • On average 17.2 percent of an organization’s workforce is actively disengaged. (Gallup)
  • Disengaged employees have 37% higher absenteeism, 18% lower productivity and 15% lower profitability. When that translates into dollars, you’re looking at the cost of 34% of a disengaged employee’s annual salary, or $3,400 for every $10,000 they make. An actively disengaged employee who makes $60,000 a year costs their company $20,400 a year! (Gallup, LinkedIn)

 

Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing as a Solution

Now that you’ve quantified how much your people problems are costing your company, apply how investing in recruitment marketing and employer branding can help. According to LinkedIn’s Ultimate List of Employer Brand stats, a great employer brand results in:

  • 28% reduction in turnover
  • 50% cost-per-hire reduction
  • 50% more qualified applicants
  • 1-2x faster time to hire

Great employer branding and recruitment marketing increases awareness, engagement, candidate conversions, and ultimately, quality of hire. Investing in good content to fill your channels and further engage your audience moves the needle on all your talent attraction and conversion methods.

 

Why Employee Stories as Recruitment Marketing Content

So, what is your big ask?

What investment increases employer brand awareness, helps define your culture and unique value proposition, targets specific talent, and gets your leadership excited and ready to fund?

An employee story content project accomplishes all of that and more.

The best recruitment marketing content is grounded in employee stories. It’s what is definitely true: you can’t argue with someone’s experience. And what your company has done to improve the personal and professional lives of your employees is powerful, memorable and engaging marketing content.

More than just testimonials, employee stories give candidates real insight into jobs they may have and the culture they’ll experience if they join your company.

And that’s what candidates are searching for when they visit your channels.

  • Candidates trust the company’s employees 3x more than other company statements in providing credible information on what it’s like to work there (Edelman)
  • 52% of candidates seek out the company’s sites and social media to learn more about an employer (LinkedIn)

 

It’s also the simplest employer branding concept to “explain” to leadership.

In its most basic form, you’re asking to create content (videos, blogs, etc.) that will communicate your culture. Most people have seen a “culture video.” And you can show examples of the types of companies whose culture most matches yours. That’s an easy way to get your leadership envisioning the final output.

But, for recruitment marketing efforts, it’s not just one video you need. It’s a suite of content, a library, a video series, campaign assets. It’s a storytelling project.

Your leadership understands that stories can educate, influence, emotionally impact, and entertain an audience. While its power is acknowledged, using it as a way to accomplish business objectives is less clear. Storytelling has become a corporate buzzword and lost its meaning, because of how accessible and ubiquitous the concept of a story is.

Sometimes leaders can get behind the concept of employee storytelling without much explanation. But for those who need to understand how “storytelling” turns into tangible results for your company, you have an advantage. In recruitment marketing ultimately a story is turned into consumable content for candidates, like videos, blogs, social graphics, and more.

You can ground the storytelling concept into how it will work for you. You can show your leadership a really great employee story video, instead of explaining its value or relying on generalities.

Here are a few examples to make good employee storytelling real for your leadership, with recruitment marketing and employer branding concepts attached.

 

 

This video recently won a Rally award for Best Use of Video in Recruitment Marketing. It features stories from twelve Dell women from all over the world.

These women tell real stories about their experiences at work. These stories support Dell’s bold pledge that by 2030, 50% of their workforce and 40% of global people leaders will be women.

 

 

Team storytelling, like these stories from AstraZeneca’s biopharmaceutical division, shows the impact of culture on a division of the company.

The stories introduce the team to candidates in key hiring areas before the interview and show how those team members connect their roles to their purpose.

 

 

Go for it: schedule the meeting

Your company leadership wants you to be successful. So, you need to show them how they can best support you.

When you approach financial stakeholders and project champions thoughtfully, using internal and external data to highlight the problem, and coming prepared with a solution and a specific ask for help, you have nothing to lose.

What’s the worst that can happen? Your project doesn’t get funded. They say no. You will have learned a ton about how to better approach your stakeholders the next time. And who knows, the timing could be better next quarter or next year.

But I don’t have to tell you this. As a recruiter, you already know that timing is sometimes everything. You’re used to handling objections, to “Nos” and “Not right now.”

You’re resilient, you’re bold, and you’ve got this.

Should You Consider a Candidate’s Credit Score in the Hiring Process

Credit checks are a common boogeyman of the hiring process. Many recruits see a review of their credit score as an invasion of privacy. Still others wonder why a credit check is needed in the first place and how it really impacts their ability to do their jobs.

If you’re a recruiter, it’s important to understand why credit checks matter, as well as when they are beneficial compared to when they are unnecessary or even harmful.

It’s also wise to consider the impact that credit checks can have on finding and hiring the best candidate for a position.

Below are some questions that help to highlight both the pros and cons that come with including a candidate’s financial history in the hiring process.

What Should You Look for in a Credit Check?

One of the first questions that should be asked is what you’re actually looking for when you conduct a credit check. After all, you’re not interested in what local bank the candidate opted to use. Typically, credit checks allow employers to see things like:

  • A candidate’s ability or inability to handle their money.
  • Whether or not they can make major financial decisions like making payments on time.
  • How they have managed one of life’s biggest responsibilities.
  • Links between derogatory marks and potential criminal behavior.

There are quite a few factors that a credit check can quietly reveal about a candidate.

What Are the Benefits of a Credit Check?

The natural follow-up question to what employers are looking for is what benefit they’re getting from conducting a credit history check or reviewing a candidate’s credit score. Going off of the previous list of factors, the benefits of a credit check help an employer gauge the following:

  • Whether an employee can handle the company’s money as part of their professional responsibilities.
  • If they can be trusted to execute important tasks correctly and promptly.
  • Knowing if they have either good credit that reflects a track record of being a responsible individual or fair to poor credit that highlights an ongoing struggle to come through on financial commitments.
  • If they have any unsavory background behavior that should be noted before a decision is made whether or not to hire them.

While they may seem unrelated, a recruit’s financial and professional track record are often — though not always — closely aligned. Checking a prospect’s credit score can help you know exactly who you’re hiring.

When Does a Credit Check Make the Most Sense?

It’s also important to realize that there are some positions where a credit check either makes a lot of sense or may even be essential.

These include areas like:

  • Military occupations
  • Government jobs
  • Positions in finance
  • Legal employment

If a candidate applies to a job in a field like this, there will be a certain sense of normalcy to requiring a glimpse of their credit score. However, if you don’t work in law, finance, the military, the government, or similar industries and fields, asking to review financial history can quickly look out of place.

Can Credit Checks Hinder Finding Good Candidates?

While it’s easy to make the case for using credit checks at times, it’s important to realize the risks, as well. One of the biggest of these is the fact that it can lead to missing out on the best recruits.

On the one hand, knowing that a credit check is required can deter qualified candidates from applying in the first place. On the other hand, someone who may be supremely talented and responsible may have gone through bankruptcy due to something unrelated, such as a partner’s behavior or an unfortunate medical bill, and may be filtered out of your screening process unnecessarily.

The current business climate is already desperate for skilled laborers, and the last thing that you want to do is reduce your chances of landing top talent. Including a credit check on your job advert can have a similar effect to the stigma that surrounds a trade school education, psychometric testing, or even age.

It’s important to only utilize credit checks when they have a clear purpose and benefit. If instead, they act as a discriminatory barrier to being hired, it can become just another cog in an over-bloated and undereffective recruiting process.

Using Credit Checks in the Hiring Process

There’s no clear formula for using credit checks in the hiring process. If you work in an industry that requires intense background checks or a particular job involves handling company cash, it may make perfect sense to do a credit check before hiring someone.

At the same time, if you’re looking for someone to work in your restaurant or you’re hiring a writer, asking to check their financial history may look invasive and even scare away potential prospects.

It’s important to gauge each situation and decide based on the circumstances.

As a final word of warning, if you do decide that a credit check is a good idea, always make sure to follow state and federal regulations as you go about looking into a candidate’s credit score or requesting their credit report.

Seekout update adds 150 million new profiles to their database

Guess which software is back with another update? Yes, we’re talking about Seekout. And in case it wasn’t your favorite tool for sourcing talent already, this update is about to change your mind.

We’re not talking about an ordinary update here. The folks at Seekout just dropped a bombshell of an update on us by adding 150 million new profiles to their database. One hundred and fifty million!

With the tally for total profiles coming out to 530 million now, it’s a safe bet to say that your next favorite candidate is in there somewhere. The only thing that remains is filtering through all those profiles to find the ones that can make a difference for you and your clients. The 2021 update has you covered with that too.

 

Search Like You’re Working for the NSA

Now there’s a ton more data for every profile. The team has updated the profiles to reflect the most up-to-date information and added a bunch of extra details on top of it.

For example, if you look at a developer with an active GitHub presence, you’ll see all their highlights without opening any tabs or clicking any links. It shows below the rest of their usual details. And you’re going to see these a lot more now as there are 4 million new Coder Score verified software engineers in the database!

That’s not all, though. Now you get 20% more African-American, 38% more female, and 58% more candidates with a security clearance. Not to mention the expert prominence tracker, a nifty feature that lets you see how many papers someone was the first or last author on. This way you know these people were major contributors to those projects.

So if any of those parameters are important to you, you can create a quick boolean string and let the enhanced search algorithms do all the sifting for you.

See for yourself by requesting a demo today!

The Growing Demand for Continuous Workforce Monitoring

It is common and well understood that most businesses perform initial background checks on potential employees, during the hiring process. However, the need for screening does not always end there.

workforce monitoringFor many organizations, the conduct of their employees is vitally important to mitigating risk to their business, leading to the use of workforce monitoring. Since the start of the pandemic, the demand for continuous workforce monitoring is on the rise. This may be, in part, due to the massive shift of work to a remote model, giving companies less visibility to the actions and conduct of their employees.

The country has also seen a huge increase in the need for gig employees – delivery drivers, warehouse workers, customer service call center operators. On top of that, the pandemic has created greater turnover, with businesses fluctuating between furloughs, layoffs, and rehires, triggering an increase in the need for ongoing screening and monitoring.

As we enter into a post-pandemic world it is vital for businesses to plan beyond their traditional pre-hire practices, including creating greater protection for their organizations, employees, and customers.

Workforce Monitoring Benefits to Business

There is no doubt pre-hire background checks are a critical piece of the hiring process. However, this initial screening only serves as a brief snapshot into a candidate’s conduct and can’t determine what may occur during the rest of that individual’s time as an employee. Workforce monitoring allows businesses to mitigate risk of workplace violence, fraud, theft, and liability.

Where permitted by law, it can provide immediate alerts of employee conduct, such as arrests, convictions, changes in motor vehicle records, accidents or misconduct, medical sanctions, license status, and more. This type of workforce monitoring is critical to protecting the safety and integrity of your employees and customers.

Consider the healthcare workers who interact regularly with patients, ride-share drivers who transport hundreds of people every day, financial institutions with access to clients’ sensitive financial information, and educators who work with children.

Your organization needs real-time knowledge if an employee has violated the conditions of their employment.

Workforce Monitoring Benefits to Employees

Not only does continuous workforce monitoring benefit the business and its reputation, but it is also beneficial for maintaining a safe environment for employees. It serves as an important step to ensure that crucial information, such as driving records and criminal activity, are monitored and reported regularly.

However, to loyal and trustworthy employees, it may not always feel that way. So how do you communicate monitoring protocols so employees feel comfortable, in turn, build trust and demystify preconceived perceptions?

Transparent communication is critical. Well-documented policies, so employees understand what you intend to implement and the reasons why.

Compliance is Key

In order to implement a successful workforce monitoring program, you want to make sure you comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and any other applicable local, state, or federal laws.

Please confer with legal counsel to assess your organization’s potential risk. In addition, when implementing any new employment screening policy, it is a best practice to review your current background check policy, consent forms, and processes, etc.

In the end, the benefits of continuous workforce monitoring can be substantial and go a long way to demonstrate your commitment to the safety and integrity of your workplace, customers, and communities.

 

5 Good Reasons to Quit Your Job in 2021 and Change Careers

reasons to quit your job

Are you considering reasons to quit your job and change careers? You aren’t alone.

Working in an amazing company is a wonderful, fulfilling feeling, and can help you thrive both professionally and personally.

But that’s if, and only if, you’re working in positive company culture, surrounded by a supportive collective.  In that environment, you’re much more likely to thrive at your job. 

It’s important for leaders to build the right workplace culture and invest in their employees. It’s also important to have ample opportunities for growth instead of getting stuck.

Does this sound familiar to you? The truth is that there are many reasons why we stick with a job even if there are better opportunities out there, but now might be the time to take the next big step in your professional life.

Here are some of the most important reasons why you may want to quit your job in 2021, and what to look for in your new career.

Look at the company culture

The COVID-19 pandemic has flipped the business world upside down. People are worried about their job security and have had to adapt to a new work model to maintain productivity and output. Remote work has become the norm nowadays. It has its benefits, but it can also have some drawbacks.

For one, the first thing that starts to deteriorate in a remote team is culture. If you have good leaders in your company, then they will do their best to preserve the company culture that once nurtured a productive work environment.

If you notice any toxic behavior in the workplace and that the values of your company are fading, then make sure to speak up and bring this issue to the attention of the management.

If, on the other hand, the management isn’t doing much to remedy the situation, then it might be the right time to find an employer that actively invests in their company culture.

Too much work for too small a pay

You may have heard how millennials and Gen Z don’t care about financial compensation so much as they care about the culture, to be respected and acknowledged, and the overall vibe in the company.

While it is true that they care about all these things, let’s break the illusion and state it clearly: financial stability is important.

The right employer will balance financial compensation with an adequate workload that allows you to build a work-life balance and provide for yourself without too much stress. The wrong employer, on the other hand, will pile work on your desk and give you more responsibilities for the same pay.

If you feel like you are underpaid for the work you’re doing, talk to management. You can stick around if they’re willing to give you a raise, but if not, it’s time to find more lucrative opportunities.

You have discovered your true passion

reasons to quit your job

There are many ways we can find our true calling in life, something we’re fascinated by and feel very passionate about. Some of us know from early childhood, but many of us wake up one day and realize that we want to devote our time and energy to a different career path.

The thing is, nowadays you can do that, you can change career paths because you can get the right training and certification online.

For example, if it has dawned on you that your calling is to care for and treat children, then you can get the necessary PALS certification for pediatric advanced life support online and kick-start a new career in a matter of months.

The digital world allows you to upskill and cross-skill with relative ease, and it doesn’t matter if you want to get into medicine or become an IT specialist or anything in between – understand that you have the opportunity to do it.

You don’t have to stick to a job you’re not passionate about because it is never too late to change careers.

Management is working against you

It should go without saying that nobody should have to endure poor management in the workplace. If you have great leaders in your company then you should feel inspired to stay and thrive together, but if your boss is holding you back and working against your best interests, then the time has come to leave.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that things will change or that you’ll be able to win them over.

A boss differs from a leader in many ways, and one of them is the inability to hear others out, and change their own opinion and mindset.

A true leader, on the other hand, will care for you as an individual, tend to your needs at work, and welcome feedback from their employees in order to help everyone succeed.

Limited or zero opportunity for growth

Lastly, you should start looking for a new job when you realize that there is no more room for professional growth. The best leaders and employers invest heavily in employee development plans that empower and engage the individual and allow them to ascend to new professional heights.

Before quitting your job, talk to the higher-ups about your professional goals, and ask if they are willing to invest in you as an individual.

If the answer is no, and you’re not happy with the idea of getting stuck at the same job forever, then you know what you need to do.

Wrapping up

Quitting your job is scary, and it’s definitely not something you should do on a whim. Take these tips into consideration, assess your strengths, discover your true passion, and take a methodical approach to change your career in 2021.

 

Tools to Support High Volume Hiring

Whether you’re filling hundreds or thousands of positions throughout the year, high-volume hiring presents a unique set of challenges for recruiters. With each job application potentially bringing in hundreds of applications on its own, high-volume hiring processes rely on a suite of dependable, flexible tools.

Here are my four favorite tools for high-volume hiring: 

 

1. HoneIt Interview Software

Looking to speed up the screening and review process? Honeit’s interview software is the answer. Honeit takes phone calls and video interviews and turns them into insights to inform your hiring. No more spending hours taking and reviewing notes.

Honeit helps you schedule calls with easy links that you can add to emails and messages, plus it gives you the ability to talk from anywhere with no software to install. Forget notes and share Interview Sounbytes via Slack, email, or in your CRM instead. Talent intelligence along with D&I tools will help make the hiring process faster and simpler.

 

2. Talkpush Conversational CRM

Talkpush allows you to get the repetitive tasks off your plate with basic automation and turn your hiring decisions into conversations. This CRM software unlocks instant and personalized communication with your job candidates.

Chatbots and workflows help you automate the next steps while insights allow you to jump in when appropriate to further personalize the conversation and make decisions when sorting, pre-screening, and scheduling.

Talkpush says their software enables 3x more hires per recruiter with a 70% shorter hiring time overall.

 

3. Arya AI Talent Acquisition

If you’re seeking new and effective ways to bring Artificial Intelligence (AI) into your hiring process, Arya’s talent acquisition system may be just the answer you’re looking for. The tool promises to help you identify top talent faster than your competitors can and bring in the power of automation without losing the human touch.

Personalized messaging helps you to automatically engage candidates while pipelines help move them along to the next steps in the process. Whenever you make a successful hire, you can instantly find similar candidates, too, helping you feel like positions in a whole new way, all while reducing the amount of touch work and hours you put into the recruiting process.

The company has put a greater focus on D&I and reducing bias in hiring decisions, too, which helps companies meet the marks. Overall, the intelligence-driven decisions of Arya have helped source over 40 million candidates across all of Arya’s users.

 

4. Eightfold Talent Intelligence

The AI-powered Eightfold platform brings “talent intelligence” to every stage of the talent process. From acquisition to diversity, management, and experience, Eightfold helps inform a company’s recruiting and HR decisions at scale.

With all of the tools combined, Eightfold can help you attract and hire new talent while keeping your existing team members happy. This well-rounded approach brings AI into new spaces for recruiting and HR teams, all while keeping the focus on building a diverse, skilled, and powerful team.

Legendary Onboarding – What It Is and How to Get It

Most employers want to offer a great onboarding experience, one that welcomes new hires into the organization and makes them feel like part of the team, but outdated processes and out-of-date technology have stopped them – until now.

During a recent webinar, William Tincup, President and Editor-at-Large for RecruitingDaily, joined Socrates to talk through common challenges within onboarding and how employers can overcome these obstacles to create a streamlined process that feels personalized.

Here are some key findings from our discussion:  

Onboarding requires alignment 

Legendary Onboarding – What It Is and How to Get ItThe employee experience starts with recruiting, not on day one. Tincup shared that pre-COVID, “Onboarding was the line of demarcation between talent acquisition and human resources.”

He explained that TA finds the candidates, gets them to apply, does the interviews and assessments, and delivers the offer letter before passing the baton over the HR. Then, all of a sudden, it’s up to HR to carry the baton and take this newly minted hire on through the employee experience.

For companies to take onboarding to the next level, they need to align stakeholders and activities from pre-boarding on.

It’s more than a checklist 

There are the perfunctory parts of onboarding. The forms to fill out, trainings to complete, a laptop to set up, and so on. But at some point, Tincup said, companies depersonalized the employee side of the business, implementing master checklists on the front end and the back.

That means learning more about candidates and, in turn, employees – beyond their birthday. The cake in the break room is table stakes.

Companies need to consider family structure, anniversaries, hobbies, career goals, and the line, and then use this information to create an experience that supports the whole person coming into work.

Moments matter most 

Eventually, whether it’s two months or two years in, there comes the time to reflect on the hire, from the company and employer perspective, as well as the employee perspective.

When this happens, most of us gravitate towards the moments that mattered most – the ones that stuck out – good or bad. To make onboarding part of the good, think about how to make the transition smoother for a new hire.

Tincup gave an example from a recent conversation with a company that sends an “office in a box.” Everything from the desk and mat to microphone and lighting. Imagine if every day was that easy.

Digital experiences are people’s experience

Technology success means more than having a working computer. As Tincup said, “it’s bi-directional,” meaning that the company wants to give employees the opportunity to learn about the organization as they start, and employees want the chance to get to know the company and its many nuances throughout their tenure.

Employers must recognize the value of digital experiences from every day to those moments that matter most. That means giving employees straightforward answers to questions about corporate values, healthcare and benefits, paid leave options, and safety policies, to name a few.  

Collect feedback

In our conversation, we tackled the potential for increased turnover on the other side of the pandemic. Here, Tincup offered multiple takes, floating the idea of “stay interviews” as a way to understand what keeps employees retained within a company and how their experience might inform onboarding for others.

Like an exit interview, a stay interview gives the company to hear about how processes function in terms of user experience. It’s also the chance to connect or reconnect with employees who might otherwise weigh their options or think about finding a new job.

Reframe the narrative

Tincup posed the question, “What should we stop doing in onboarding?” which opened the discussion up to the elephant in the room: what will the world look like post-COVID? By now, most will agree the pandemic has reframed the way we think about life, but no one is quite sure what that means for work.

Tincup urged attendees to take this to heart and begin to process the experience. He gave the example of business travel, something he did almost constantly in the before times. Tincup openly admitted that wouldn’t be the case anymore, adding, “It’s going to have to take something really, really compelling to get me on a plane.”

These slight shifts will add up to significant changes.

That’s just scratching the surface of what got covered. Lucky for you, there’s still time to access the webinar recording, on-demand, and soak in all the other pearls of wisdom Tincup offered – and if your company is thinking now’s the time to improve onboarding, that’s a lot of knowledge to leave on the table.

Poor Marketing Strategy is Why Employee Referrals Fail

Paul Maxin, previously Global Resourcing Director at Unilever, now talent acquisition consultant at MaxinTalent and advisor to the employee referral platform Real Links, gives us his insight into one of the primary reasons businesses struggle to make referrals work.  

Whilst referrals are much acclaimed as a great source of talent attraction and engagement, in fact, 82% of employers rated employee referrals as having the best return on investment, research shows that organizations rarely achieve more than 7% of total hires through referrals.

There are multiple variables affecting the success of referrals.  Lack of clear strategy; unmotivating rewards; manual and time-consuming processes; stigma of poor referrals.  

The list goes on, but in my experience, there’s one variable that if overlooked, will single-handedly impact the success of referrals in every organization regardless of size, and that is your internal marketing strategy.

With an internal marketing strategy, employees are treated as “internal customers” who must be convinced of a company’s vision and worth just as aggressively as “external customers.”

In this case, the goal of internal marketing is to align the value of a company’s referral scheme to the values of its employees, and communicate that shared value consistently over time in order to achieve long-term engagement and results.

These days internal marketing has moved on from desk drops and posters in the toilets (though don’t ignore those traditional offline techniques – they will still carry value once we can get back to the office).  The way we communicate has become more complicated.  

It’s important all businesses, regardless of size, take internal communication seriously when launching something as significant as a new piece of referral technology.  Take stock of all stakeholders; available communication channels; employer brand messaging; target audience behaviour and the overarching short, medium and long term goals of your referral scheme will help build a good foundation for creating your internal marketing and communications plan.

 

Planning internal marketing for employee referrals

There’s a lot to think about when embarking on this journey, but here are a few considerations you should look at as part of your planning process:

  • Key Stakeholders – Identify and engage with all stakeholders as soon as possible.  In particular, if you have an internal marketing and comms team, involve them at the beginning of the process.  Other stakeholders include the management team; referral champions in each department and HR or talent acquisition team members responsible for the delivery of this project.  They will all be critical to how your scheme is communicated  
  • Focus Groups – Talk to your workforce pre-launch to find out what motivates them (money, time-off, restaurant vouchers, etc.) and identify their preferred communication channels (Slack, email, webinar, Microsoft Teams, etc.) and bear in mind this may not be the same for every department.
  • Develop Messaging – Messaging should create a common understanding of the referral scheme goals and rewards and help employees understand what is expected of them.
  • Set Objectives – Set short, medium and long term goals for referrals success and align your internal marketing plan to these.
  • Select Communication Platforms and Formats – Vary the format of your referral scheme messaging to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.  Video, webinar, emails, podcasts, short guides.  How your workforce engages with different content formats will vary.

 

There are many other considerations when writing your plan but one thing to remember is the importance of consistency.  

Your message needs time to embed with your audience so be patient and continue to push these messages over time.  Don’t forget to regularly check in with employees to evaluate what’s working.  

However, if there’s one piece of advice I’d like you to take away — and this is especially true of enterprise organisations — it would be to engage your internal marketing or communications team as early in the process as possible.  

If you can, I’d advise including them as part of pre-sale discussions with your referral platform provider so they are made aware of the mutual benefit of the platform and have the opportunity to take an active role in the communication strategy which will take the pressure off HR and Talent Acquisition.

If you’d like more detail and a structure to help you plan your internal marketing strategy for employee referrals, I have written a whitepaper outlining a step-by-step process and lots of practical guidance.  Download here.

5 Tips on High-Volume Hiring For Startups

High-volume hiring refers to the process of recruiting for many positions, usually more than 50, within a short timeframe. This is a challenge even for larger organizations, let alone a scaling startup trying to identify top talent that will support its growth.

There’s no room for error under such circumstances because hiring strong candidates is what can make or break your business and determine its future.

Although high-volume hiring is similar to regular hiring, some specific strategies and best practices can help you handle an extraordinary number of applicants.

 

Hire for Culture Fit

Strong company culture is the bedrock of every successful business.

That’s why hiring for culture fit should be your guiding principle, especially when you’re about to bring a number of new people into your organization.

In other words, it’s crucial to establish the structure of your ideal team and start with key roles and the must-have skills for people in each of these roles. If there are some secondary positions, deal with those later in the second wave of hiring.

By prioritizing the required, non-negotiable skills and identifying non-essential ones, you’ll prevent driving off good candidates. Think about whether there’s a minimum of years of experience that a certain position requires or holding particular degrees or certificates, as well as what criteria you are flexible on.

This way, you’ll attract a number of potential hires to the initial screening, during which you’ll be able to leave your job description aside for a moment and see how some of these people fit into your desired company culture.

And now comes the most important part – how would you describe your company culture? What are your main principles and core values? Are you looking for team-oriented people or individuals who prefer to work by themselves and are ready to handle pressure and tight deadlines?  

All these soft skills play an important role when it comes to team dynamics, so take them into consideration during the high-volume hiring process.

 

Leverage Referrals

Don’t expect that posting a job on your company’s website or job boards will be enough for high-volume hiring. The best way to fill a number of positions concurrently is by leveraging referrals. That way, you’ll be able to ensure a steady stream of good and reliable candidates.

According to 55% of companies, referrals reduce hiring costs, while 49% report that employees who are hired through referrals stay longer. It’s also worth mentioning that referred candidates can be vetted and hired after two weeks, while the entire process usually takes between 4-5 weeks.

It’s only logical that your best and hardest-working employees know other similar people who would be great additions to your startup. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a referral strategy is 100% flawless – there will be occasional misses. But, in general, the odds of finding top talent through employee referrals are high.

You can even incentivize not only your top performers but all your employees with monetary rewards to refer their friends and former co-workers.

 

Simplify Communication with Your Applicants

When it comes to the initial screening process, you should speed it up using a text campaign.

Instead of asking your applicants to fill out long forms, it’s much better to screen and vet them using simple questions that reflect your needs and requirements.

For example, questions such as “Do you have a driver’s license?” or “Do you have a Microsoft Office Specialist certificate?” can help you narrow down your pool of applicants and eliminate those who don’t have the necessary qualifications.

This is a great way to accelerate the screening and hiring process significantly and allow your recruiters to focus on those who passed the first hurdle.

 

Automate the Process

New technologies can be of tremendous help to recruitment specialists, especially when they have to deal with high-volume hiring. Automating certain parts of the workflow can facilitate their job and assist them in finding the right candidates quickly and effortlessly.

Given that most people are on social media, it’s only logical to look for your next hires on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. You can use automation tools to source candidates by scanning your existing employees’ connections or creating a lookalike audience and targeting it with ads on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Besides social recruiting, you can use AI-powered tools for screening resumes and identifying the candidates that are fit to be interviewed.

Chatbots are another great addition to your recruitment team, as they can be used to collect relevant information from your candidates, notify them about the latest developments, answer the most common questions, and schedule interviews. These algorithms significantly improve the way companies engage with and nurture candidates.

 

Don’t Neglect Retention

When you’re expanding and increasing the staff size, it’s crucial not to neglect retention.

First of all, you should make sure to keep your existing employees happy and satisfied. It’s them who enabled your startup’s growth, so it’s important to show them your gratitude and debunk the dangerous “everyone’s replaceable” cliché.

Offer them training programs, corporate consulting and coaching, and other perks that could additionally boost their motivation and help them adjust to the change in the workplace.

In other words, treat your existing employees with respect as they also contribute to your hiring efforts when they share their work experiences with others on social media and promote your corporate culture, which in turn attracts suitable candidates.

Similarly, the climate in your startup is a key factor in how your new hires will adjust, so it’s important to obtain regular feedback from existing employees and find out what they think about company expansion as well as whether your company culture is changing for the worse.

Finally, properly onboard your new hires because that’s how you’ll reduce staff turnover, which is expensive both in terms of money and time.

High-volume hiring is tough, especially for startups, but besides sticking to the best practices for finding and attracting top talent, follow these tips to help you assess and vet your candidates more efficiently.

 

Search over 10 million+ Healthcare and Medical Professionals with Heartbeat.ai

We have a brand spanking new tool for you to look at — that has only been out for a few days at this point. This tool focuses on recruiting from the medical, healthcare, and dental industry which is something we are really in need of.

Sure, there are a lot of tools already out there that “can” do it – but this may be the only one that focuses specifically on Healthcare.

One thing to keep in mind – since this tool is brand new, they are still in the process of adding candidates. As of today there are already 5 million healthcare professionals listed, and they are adding 4 million more registered nurses — and another 4 million doctors and dentists.

That’s going to give you about 13 million healthcare professionals, plus 1.5 million facilities across the US.

 

What it looks like

Each candidate has a contact card with information that includes: their specialization, years of experience, what state they are licensed in, and their license#. You get a list of medicines they prescribe as well. Not to mention all their contact information, including their personal number, email addresses, and more to come.

 

 

You can create lists and then download the list with all the contact information.

If you’re already using the Swordfish Chrome extension – Heartbeat.ai works with that as well! That means you can pull contact information from LinkedIn, Facebook profiles, and Facebook Groups.

So if you’re in healthcare recruiting, medical recruiting, dental recruiter, nursing recruiter, whatever the case may be within the healthcare field, this might be the best thing in the world for you. It might be legitimately one of the best on market already, only 5 days in.

This tool has incredible potential. Right now, Heartbeat.ai has a free trial. Go check it out!

Get Anyone’s Phone Number with Easy Leadz

As a recruiter, your clients rely on you to help them source some of the most talented individuals out there. With your impressive set of headhunting skills, you know how to track them down.

Top talent may not actively apply to online job posts anymore, but most still keep an account on LinkedIn, giving you a gateway to reach those passive candidates.

However, what stuns many recruiters new to the world of LinkedIn is how hard it is to get a response.

The big, shiny blue Message button makes it seem all too easy. But if you’ve ever tried reaching out to passive candidates on there, you know it’s a sea of uncertainty, with no way of knowing when or if someone will ever get back to you.

That’s what makes Easy Leadz such a game-changer for recruiters.

Whether you’re trying to reach out to potential clients or sourcing top talent for the clients you have, this straightforward plugin lets you jump over the hoops and land directly onto the phone screens of your target audience.

How it works:

All you need is to load up a profile in your browser and click the “Click to get contact” button on the right side. Doing so will instantly bring up the cell phone number of that person, at a cost of one credit.

Speaking of credits, you get 5 for free every month. If you need more, which you obviously will, you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription of $29 for 40 credits or $139 for 300 credits.

While their data is usually accurate, it misses the mark sometimes and you end up with a contact number that’s either incorrect or long dead. But the good news is that you can get your credits back if the data turns out to be wrong.

This way you’ll only pay for the correct phone numbers.

Furthermore, the credits work on a roll-over basis, which means any credits left unused will be added to next month’s quota.

All in all, Easy Leadz is a no-nonsense extension that does what it claims with zero frills that might bloat up the interface. You can check it for yourself with the 5 free monthly credits before opting for the premium subscription.

Download from the Chrome Web Store to get started.

6 Steps To Hiring More Diverse Candidates

Skill has no limits and boundaries. The same applies to talent.

Both of these are the top two domains that you as a company should assess potential candidates–apart from the basic academic qualifications. 

Now, if your company approaches the hiring process in an overly specific manner, it creates unnecessary boundaries. Thus, making the process all the more difficult and keeping your company from availing of the diversity of skills and talents out there in the market.

Some argue against this, claiming that a specific approach towards the hiring process makes it easier for them to lay out a pathway to the ideal candidate. Perhaps it may take time to find this ideal candidate, but once done, they could prove of great value to the team.

It may be true to some extent. But we must not forget that business needs and trends change all the time. You cannot create a concrete strategy and dedicate all your time and effort to that. Instead, you need to be flexible, open to changes, and make decisions as quickly as possible.

The Basics

Let’s explore the process and methodology of the diversity hiring process. By definition, diversity hiring refers to the recruitment of team members and employees irrespective of any details that do not concern the job. It aims to hire candidates solely based on merit and particularly avoids any favoritism or ignorance based on race, gender, personal characteristics, religion, gender, etc.

According to the surveys conducted by McKinsey, teams with gender diversity on their executive teams had 21 percent chances of generating better profits. Along the same lines, ethnic & cultural diversity in teams promised a 33 percent increase in profitability. 

1. Craft an All-embracing Job Post

Your job post determines the fate of your hiring process. Yes, that small description that you write for the role determines who will stop to apply for the opening, and who will scroll past the job post. Hence, you need to pay great attention to its formulation. You may be including language that inadvertently excludes qualified applicants.

Rule number one when crafting a job post is to prioritize and list your most important goals. Include only necessary prerequisites and expectations. Keep in mind that a great candidate can be trained, and a specific degree or certification may not be necessary. 

2. Reach Out to Diverse Pipelines of Skills & Talent

Next, ensure that you take your all-embracing job post to all meaningful and potential platforms. Advertise using job boards, social media platforms or print media, whichever suits your industry best. The key is to determine which amongst all these hold the most relevancy for your industry or domain and where your candidates are likely to visit.

3. Diverse Candidate Screening

Two ways of eradicating biased candidate screening are conducting a blind hiring process or conducting a pre-hiring assessment. Blind hiring involves blurring out the specifics, such as name, age, etc. Remove bias by focusing on hiring solely based on capabilities. The pre-hiring assessment allows you to rank candidates without bias and increases accessibility to more diverse candidates.

4. Check your Company Culture

How’s your reputation? Are you marketing your company as an inclusive place to work? Look at your website, your social media, and how you portray your company culture. Also, check for incorrect data by searching your company online, and remove negative search results that damage your online reputation.

5. Intelligent Shortlisting

When you have an abundance of resumes waiting for review, do not settle for manual checking. Repeat, do not do that. It will not only waste heaps of your time but may as well result in inaccurate decisions based on bias.

Instead, I recommend using relevant apps and platforms for ranking applicants as per your basic prerequisites, i.e., a certain skill or academic requirement. This essential step is the one that performs the filtration process of the entire diverse hiring strategy. 

6. Continuously Evaluate Your Process and Outcomes

Lastly, your diversity hiring strategy is never final. You will need to continually assess your process based on the outcome. From creating an inviting environment for employees of all backgrounds, making adjustments to your outreach style, to welcoming skills and people of all spheres to your office after critical analysis. 

Sure, the process can be intense and demanding, and likely will never be perfect. But look at your achievements and keep pushing toward improvements. A complete analysis for future guidance can help you determine how to broaden or change your approach.

Final Words

Summing up, devising a diverse hiring process may not be difficult at all. However, abiding by it and making the most out of it may take quite a lot of input from your end. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, the resulting profits and skyrocketing success will be thoroughly worth it.

The Joy of the Search: How to Support Diversity Recruiting

With diversity recruiting at the top of the priority list for many companies, those involved with talent acquisition are continually looking for new ways to discover diverse candidates. But there’s more to finding diverse candidates than searching LinkedIn.

Think about how you buy airline tickets. Back in the day, people typically went to a given airline’s website that offered the route they needed. Now, search engines and aggregators (like KAYAK & Travelocity) make it possible to see all the airlines flying to your destination, plus their schedules and pricing. You’ve got options and the ability to filter through the results.

SeekOut takes a similar approach to diversity sourcing. LinkedIn is like that airline you always went to before the advent of sites like KAYAK and Travelocity. Just because it originated the professional network doesn’t make them the best way to access and unpack information about potential candidates.

Likewise, if you’re keen to ensure diverse recruiting, you shouldn’t need to go to the same spot over and over again. There are other ways to promote diversity, something I talked about in a recent episode of Sourcing School with Brian Fink and Ryan Leary. (Listen below!)

Here are my best tips for discovering diverse candidates:  

 

Establish who is responsible for diversity

Diversity means way more than hiring people who look different from one another. And yet, many organizations get stuck on this foundational aspect.

Many things need to happen to move the needle on diversity, and one of the first steps an organization should take is determining who is responsible.

Is it HR? The leadership team? Who is going to do the work and speak for the outcomes? Know your role first.

 

Leverage recruiting adjacent resources

There are plenty of great recruiting-related resources – this is one of them. Going to my point above, looking in the same place will yield the same results.

One of my favorite books to give recruiters (and one that Fink also knows and loves) is The Joy of Search: A Google Insides Guide to Going Beyond the Basics.

Is it about recruiting? Not really. Is it about being a great online searcher? 100 percent. And that’s what great recruiters are – great online searchers.

 

Look beyond the obvious

We need to challenge ourselves to think beyond what we know and how it shapes our worldview. This runs the gamut from the obvious to the not-so-obvious, like preferring candidates who went to Ivy League universities or California colleges because that reminds us of where we’re from and who we relate to.

With SeekOut’s Blind Hiring Mode, you can focus your sourcing on experience and skills by hiding information that would reveal a candidate’s gender, race, or ethnicity so recruiters and hiring managers can minimize unintended bias.

 

Practice mindful sourcing

Mindfulness underpins so much of this conversation – especially as we put searches into action. That means reviewing keyword selection, incorporating gender-neutral or otherwise non-biased language.

When it comes to finding diverse candidates, every word matters down to the letter. You need to not only look for diverse populations, but you also need to think like them. Our language is evolving, and recruiting needs to too.

 

Pay extra attention during review

As you start to engage diverse candidates, pause and think about how you interact. The raised focus on diversity and inclusion might mean you make additional attempts to connect, even with active job seekers.

You will likely need to adjust your outreach by working to understand this talent pool and demonstrating patience, persistence, and politeness. Respect the value they offer.

 

Data doesn’t lie

While it’s true that recruiting is about making connections, it’s also important to understand how and where you’re most effective in these efforts.

Data can be a powerful ally, and SeekOut’s Diversity Talent Analytics will help set targets, drive conversations with hiring managers so you can create diversity-friendly job descriptions, and hone your sourcing strategy.

The overlay of technology works to ensure you’re on the right track and making progress with the candidates you’re looking to engage.

 

In Closing

With diversity recruiting, there are a few critical factors to keep in mind: sourcing goes beyond filters, bias comes from all directions, and headcount is just the start.

Long-term change doesn’t happen overnight. You will make mistakes.

You will probably even repeat some of them. It’s a process, one that benefits from thoughtfulness and intention – and thinking outside of the proverbial box as much as possible.

Learn how SeekOut can help you recruit hard-to-find and diverse talent. Request a demo.