By Bryan May, VP of Business Development, BirdDogHR
Why would an employee choose an employer that doesn’t consider the habits of its prospective employees? Candidates refuse to work for employers with anything less than a stellar image and reputation. Part of that image is the way the company presents its own adoption of technology. Instead of putting your business’ time and budget toward headhunters to source candidates to fill open positions, consider how you can present a leading-edge look and feel by implementing a more mobile-focused recruiting strategy.
Job seekers today demand an easy process to apply for jobs and socially follow and collaborate with employers. Let’s discuss how combining your recruitment approach with technology can make all the difference.
- Put a focus on mobile optimization and access.
Making the best first impression is crucial to hooking applicants online. Give candidates the opportunity to access your company’s job application via smartphone or tablet. Not only will a mobile-friendly apply process attract more applicants, but it guarantees that candidates won’t stray from your site to apply for another company’s open position.
Build your talent pool and provide a simple and easy-to-use application to draw future star employees to your user-friendly site. 2 out of 5 job seekers state that their view of a company is tainted if the company’s career site isn’t mobile-optimized. By featuring your jobs and apply process on your company website, you also start to leverage search engines that can drive more traffic to you as a relevant destination for career seekers. If you are not leveraging them, you are missing out on a major recruitment referral source, such as Google.
- Distribute your career postings throughout your company’s social media channels.
In today’s world, Millennials communicate and seek out information through social media sites. Therefore your company should be relevant and active on social media to ensure candidates choose you as their #1 choice for employment. To do that, drive traffic to your website by redirecting candidates from your listed job openings to your company site. Reversely, increase your social following by placing links on the position’s description to redirect them to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, encouraging them to follow the channels for updates on job openings/postings and other company happenings.
Did you know that, according to Capterra.com, 73 percent of Millennial job seekers have found their previous job through a social media platform? Candidates and job seekers who share your open positions on their social media profiles reach a wider range of diverse candidates and opens up a new audience to your message.
- Distribute job ads quickly and consistently.
Creating the best application experience for prospective employees means immediate feedback and active communication. Don’t use a clunky system that requires HR managers to tediously post all job openings individually and manually. A streamlined system which allows one-click postings on multiple job boards and career sites, in addition to your internal site and social accounts, will benefit your recruiting process by distributing jobs quickly and efficiently. Building in efficiency on the front end of the process results in getting candidates in for interviews quicker, which speeds up the hiring process.
By simplifying the job distribution process, we also provide our recruiters and hiring managers with more time to build relationships with candidates, rather than posting positions sporadically, which is not a very good use of their time in a tight market.
- Create a streamlined, user-friendly application process that doesn’t require a profile.
The time-consuming profile creation process drastically diminishes your job candidate pool by turning away impatient talent. Don’t turn away qualified talent. Job seekers conduct their job searches during their lunch hour or on a break, which is why they simply don’t have time to create or log-in to a profile and remember every password for each job site. Implementing a recruiting process that utilizes a simple, profile-free application gives you the upper hand against competing companies. A CareerBuilder study showed that the more clicks you put in between an applicant and their final application could assure you a 50 percent drop-off per click.
With a modern and mobile-friendly recruiting process in place, your company will attract top candidates that match your high performer profile and add more applicants into your recruiting funnel. At a time when we all need more applicants, these four tips can make a huge difference in the performance and productivity of your company.
BirdDogHR knows how hard it is to recruit and retain top talent in the construction industry. We’ve helped hundreds of companies across the nation automate and improve their workforce development strategy. To learn more, visit us at http://birddoghr.com/core-industries/construction
Bryan May joined BirdDogHR in 1999. Prior to becoming the VP of Business Development, he held numerous positions in account management and sales. Bryan has been instrumental in BirdDogHR’s product evolution from job boards to cloud-based integrated talent management software. Bryan specializes in working with large groups and organizations to help them simplify and overcome complex HR challenges. Bryan is the BirdDogHR expert on everything pertaining to recruitment, diversity outreach, applicant collection, tracking and affirmative action compliance reporting. A frequent speaker talent management evangelist, Bryan regularly contributes at the AGC of America National events as well as local state chapter functions. Bryan is a native of Chicago, IL and a graduate of the University of Iowa.
