How Technology Can Be Used to Implement the Best Practice Recruiting Recommendations from the 2013 Candidate Experience Awards.

As the global economy continues to emerge from the recession, many employers face a new struggle: finding qualified talent who can advance business goals and deliver competitive advantage. With top performing employees in greater demand than ever, companies must be able to leverage the best practices and proven strategies that can help them attract and engage right-fit talent. Yet, to meet this goal, employers must work to

Elevating Talent Acquisition Through An Engaging Candidate Experience

A PeopleFluent® White Paper

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attract qualified talent across a growing number of venues and platforms, utilizing the latest technology innovations that can deliver an effective talent acquisition process.

Today, one of the most crucial aspects in engaging talent is to deliver a positive candidate experience, which increasingly has become a major competitive differentiator in attracting and building relationships with promising individuals. The importance of a strong candidate experience is highlighted by the Candidate Experience Awards, an annual awards and benchmarking program designed to recognize excellence in recruiting processes and show participating companies how they can improve their current candidate experience practices.

According to “Candidate Experience 2013,” the report highlighting key findings from the 2013 Candidate Experience Awards, there are several areas in which organizations can improve the candidate experience they deliver to ensure recruiting success.1 The report contends that courtesy and recognition of the time candidates spend applying are much greater factors in candidate satisfaction than just delivering a speedy or simple process alone. Also important is the ability for candidates to present their qualifications to the employers in a meaningful way.

As 2014 progresses, candidates will continue to expect – and demand – a more rewarding and insightful experience when they seek a new job, rather than being left in the dark once they submit their applications. To account for this reality, it is necessary to recognize the tools, strategies and solutions that can enable companies to meet expectations, deliver a positive candidate experience and set themselves apart as employers of choice.

Improving Candidate Experience with Relevant Video Content

One of the fastest growing trends in the recruitment space is the use of video-enabled technology to connect with candidates and bring greater efficiencies to the hiring process. The usefulness of video is highlighted in a study by Aberdeen Group, which found that 81 percent of organizations that use the medium in the recruitment process were better prepared to achieve organizational KPIs and more likely to improve recruiting in a range of metrics, including time to fill, cost per hire and hiring manager satisfaction. 2

With more than half of the 2013 Candidate Experience Award winners citing the use of video in the recruiting process, the impact of the technology in improving candidate experience is clear.

With video-enabled technology becoming more pervasive in all aspects of life, it has become more common in the workplace as well, offering numerous benefits to the candidate and employer alike. In particular, one of

One of the fastest growing trends in the recruitment space is the use of video-enabled technology to connect with candidates and bring greater efficiences to the hiring process.

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the best ways to leverage the power of video in the recruitment process is to add relevant video content to the company careers site.

Rather than providing text-based job descriptions, the company can post engaging videos to offer a more visual experience of what it will be like to work at the company. The videos can cover a wide range of aspects and vary for each position, including vivid descriptions of the job itself and the larger the department or location, a welcome video from the executive team or videos from current employees explaining what they like about working for the company. Providing such key aspects about the job, office location and company culture can help contribute to a positive candidate experience. Not only does this provide a more interactive and engaging way to learn about the job, but the candidates can also determine if the job is right for them before they even apply.

There are also numerous benefits when video is used internally during the recruitment process. Equipped with the technology to easily create videos, the HR team can foster an environment of continuous, collaborative learning and knowledge transfer. By providing easily consumable, instructional videos for recruiters and hiring managers, the company can offer best practices to facilitate the process, such as tips for conducting a phone screening or proven interview techniques. When hiring managers have such a visual experience, they are likely to be more engaged in the process and able to access key information when they need assistance. What results is a robust and relevant recruiting experience, where hiring managers and recruiters can locate the pertinent information they need when they need it, thereby enabling them to process candidates faster, book interviews more efficiently and improve the overall candidate experience.

Key Considerations for Utilizing Video-Enabled Technology

Despite the numerous benefits of using video in recruitment, there is still some resistance to the technology and particularly the use of video interviewing, which is used by more than 50 percent of employers who participated in the Candidate Experience Awards. Detractors have concerns that the use of video interviewing can violate the regulations of the EEOC or OFCCP, or that video interviews will hamper diversity hiring and unfairly discriminate against protected classes.

While companies can be at significant financial and reputational risk if they violate any of the above regulations, video-enabled technology can actually help to improve compliance. For instance, by providing interview questions up front, the company can ensure that all candidates are asked and respond to the same questions, a key aspect of OFCCP compliance. As video interviews enable a more collaborative process, by which recruiters, hiring

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managers and other key stakeholders can review and share video interviews, the company can ensure all parties involved can provide their input in the hiring decision. As a result, the company can eliminate the chance that an individual’s unknown bias could impact the selection process, ensuring that candidates are advanced on their merits and the strengths that they can bring to the company.

Using Social Collaboration to Speed Up Recruitment

Another way to leverage technology in the recruitment process, and create an enhanced candidate experience, is to utilize social collaboration tools. While most companies today utilize the big social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter or a number of niche, industry-specific sites to source candidates, the use of social networking shouldn’t be limited to interactions with candidates; it can also be helpful when communicating and collaborating internally.

With the assistance of a configurable platform for driving conversations throughout the hiring process, the company can ensure that all stakeholders, whether recruiters, hiring managers or executives, can review candidates and share their feedback. This way, the company can be better prepared to select the right applicant. Such an approach also enables recruiting teams to set up separate groups based on position type, allowing them to view candidate profiles simultaneously and compare candidates side by side.

The technology that can automate recruiting communications can also bring significant improvement to the candidate experience. Since enhanced collaboration enables hiring teams to make their decisions faster, they can inform candidates of their status more quickly and thereby provide the transparency that is so important to a positive candidate experience. The use of social communication in the recruiting process can also facilitate conversations about current hiring methods to identify areas for improvement and further enhance the process.

Recognizing the Efficiencies of Mobile Technology

Mobile technology has brought a number of benefits to the way candidates learn about jobs, accessing key information from the mobile devices they use on a daily basis. Research from LinkedIn shows that 72 percent of active candidates have used their mobile devices to view a company’s career site, and 64 percent browse for opportunities on social and professional networks.3 Despite this growing use of mobile in the job search, the Candidate Experience Awards research shows that only 26.5 percent of organizations use a mobile career app as a central aspect for engaging with candidates, though more than half report to be currently exploring the technology.

Creating a Compelling and Configurable Recruitment Experience

To compete in today’s increasingly difficult hiring environment, companies must be able to adopt the tools and solutions that bring new efficiencies to the recruitment process, while providing a positive candidate experience to job seekers. For greatest success, the company will benefit from working with a talent management technology provider that can offer the most useful recruiting functionalities on a single comprehensive platform. These best-of-breed processes should include:

• Role-based collaboration to ensure a community where all critical players meet to collaborate and share information throughout the hiring process.

• Search-engine optimized recruiting so job postings are created with formatting and other elements that deliver the best results in Google and other search engines.

• Single solution for professional, hourly and contingent talent to enable seamless enterprise reporting across the organization through a common interface.

• Reporting and analytics to identify key recruiting metrics that enable continuous improvement of the hiring process.

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With an increased number of candidates expecting to be able to learn about jobs and apply directly from their devices, companies that lack a mobile-optimized careers site and application process won’t be able to meet one of the key requirements of a positive candidate experience for today’s candidates. And, if candidates find that they are unable to apply from their mobile devices, many may abandon the application and look for another opportunity with a different company. That’s why employment brand videos are so important for companies as well as being platform agnostic.

The companies that create an end-to-end mobile application process, combined with video-enabled technology, where candidates can search for jobs, view company videos, apply directly from their phones can provide a modern approach to recruiting today’s always-on-the-go candidates. In addition, the use of mobile in the recruiting process brings several efficiencies to recruiters as well. For example, all stakeholders can review candidate qualifications and share feedback with others involved in the hiring process directly on their favorite devices, whenever and wherever it is most convenient for them.

Consistent Employer Branding

All of the above strategies impact how the company interacts with candidates and projects its message and company culture. As such, it is crucial that companies promote their employment brands effectively and consistently through each of these interactions. The focus on employment branding is also highlighted in the Candidate Experience Awards research, which shows that 72.4 percent of winners invest in employer branding services to help them project their company culture and values to candidates. This is essential to building awareness and engaging and attracting top talent who may be unfamiliar with the company. This is where video is at its most powerful for awareness and branding.

To ensure a consistent message is presented to all candidates, and that it continues to attract and engage new candidates, all materials, collateral and video should be designed to convey the company’s unique employment brand. The right technology solution can facilitate the process and ensure that the company accurately portrays its brand across various social media profiles and job boards, as well as all interfaces used in the recruitment process, including mobile career sites and talent acquisition systems.

• Mobile device usage to allow managers to immediately react to an important stage in the hiring workflow on the devices they commonly carry with them.

• Continuous sourcing and assessment to ensure a steady inventory of ready-to-call qualified candidates readily available for evaluation when a position becomes available.

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A Best Practice Approach to Recruiting

To develop a truly innovative and effective approach to recruiting, the company must be able to leverage the tools and technologies that enable them to provide a relevant and transparent candidate experience. But rather than take a mix-and-match approach to finding the right combination of solutions, the company will benefit from partnering with a technology provider delivering a single, configurable platform that encompasses video, social collaboration and mobile tools that enhance the candidate experience and bring new efficiencies to recruitment.

The right end-to-end recruitment solution can be used for all stages of the talent acquisition process, from job postings and candidate sourcing through to interviewing and onboarding. And, when these processes include the use of the latest developments in video, social and mobile technology, the company can provide a fully branded candidate experience that keeps candidates and recruiters well informed and engaged throughout the process. Through this approach, recruiting teams will benefit from a more collaborative recruitment strategy that enables them to continually build and expand their candidate pipeline with engaged, qualified individuals with the skills and experience needed to advance business goals.

References1 Talent Board, “Candidate Experience 2013,” February 2014. (http://nam.thecandidate-experienceawards.org/2013-cande-results/ Accessed on 4/8/14).

2 Aberdeen Group, “Hit Play: The Value of Video in Recruitment,” March 2012. (http://aberdeen.com/Aberdeen-Library/7776/AI-video-talent-acquisition.aspx Accessed on 4/8/14).

3 LinkedIn, “Mobile Recruiting Statistics

That Will Give You Pause,” February, 2014. (http://talent.linkedin.com/blog/index.php/2014/02/mobile-recruiting-statis-tics-infographic Accessed on 4/8/14).

About PeopleFluent

PeopleFluent, the leading total workforce HCM technology company, redefines Talent

Management with an innovative Talent Engagement Cloud that is built around people and

not HR processes. By deeply integrating pervasive video, strategic analytics and collaborative

social technologies into its complete suite of Talent Management applications, PeopleFluent

redefines employee engagement to address productivity loss and diminished financial results

due to an increasingly disengaged workforce. With PeopleFluent, companies can change at

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