Tag Archive: Candidate Engagement

  1. How to Improve Candidate Experience in a Tight Talent Market

    Engaging top candidates today isn’t easy. Blame Millennials or Gen Z if you like, but the fact is, the candidate market is completely different than is was 10 years ago. All of us (yes, you included) now have incredibly high standards for the experience we have when doing something, be it streaming TV or applying for a job.

    Whether your candidates are ‘digital natives’ or ‘digital immigrants,’ everyone in today’s workforce expects and appreciates a simple, personalized hiring experience. If you want to be a competitive employer, you need to give them that.

    Your next challenge is to find a way to get the data you need for sharp, unbiased decision-making without sacrificing the experience. Do that, and you create a win-win for everyone. Here’s how:

    Tell a good story

    You can’t expect candidates – who enjoy rich, vibrant experiences online and nearly everywhere they go – to raise their hand for a less-than-exciting job opportunity. Generalities, like saying, “This is a great place to work!” won’t cut it anymore. (Did it ever?) To get candidates to click APPLY, you must first give them a taste of your company, the job, and the team they might be working with. Do this by telling stories.

    First, craft a narrative about your company’s history, vision, or culture, and weave it into every experience through the hiring process. Then, look for ways to spotlight company wins and employee success stories. A video about an employee’s growth within the company, a great relationship with a client, or a community outreach event are just a few ideas. Whatever it is that makes your company interesting or unique, that’s the story you should tell.

    Make it feel easy

    Because everything is on-demand, the days of applying and waiting are nearing their end. Candidates need to be nurtured, gratified, and kindly escorted from one step in the process to the next. Your job is to make the job of applying for a job easier than ever.

    That means all the great storytelling videos you create should be accessible and easy to find up-front. After than, think about how to architect a seamless workflow that will keep candidates engaged and moving forward – such as, auto-launching an assessment at the end of the application, or providing the option to schedule a video interview immediately after the assessment.

    It goes without saying that everything should be mobile-optimized. And, the more flexibility you give candidates to complete steps when it’s convenient for them, the better.

    Improve your interviews

    Interviews are your chance to get to know candidates on a deeper, more personal level. They’re also a chance for candidates to get to know YOU. So make sure your interviews give back to the candidate as much as they take – which can be easy to forget when using technology.

    For example, if you use pre-recorded video interviews, you can help make the experience feel two-way by having real employees on screen, introducing themselves before asking an interview question. This way, candidates will have ‘met’ a handful of team members in your company, and will be able to put faces to names.

    Ask the right questions

    Candidates can tell the difference when hiring managers are prepared with questions, and when they’re winging it. By providing on-demand interview guides with questions that are tailored to the candidate and job, you ensure the interview is a good experience for busy managers and potential hires.

    Ideally, you want interview guides to be structured and align with your company’s core values, and at the same time, be relevant and personalized to the candidate. Asking the right questions leads great job-related conversations, and makes the most of everyone’s time.

    Add a personal touch

    If you’ve implemented a good hiring workflow, then you’re nurturing candidates throughout the process. It’s important to have built-in touch points to let candidates know they’ve successful completed a step and what’s coming next. Much of this can be automated. But, you don’t want your process to be completely robotic.

    Make sure at least some of your candidate outreach or follow up comes from a real recruiter or hiring manager. Savvy candidates know the difference and will appreciate a little undivided attention. Your goal should be to automate the mundane, repetitive tasks so that hiring teams have more time to personally connect with candidates.

    To learn more about innovative recruitment…

    See how Verisk, a Forbes’ Best Employer, is attracting and engaging top college grads.

  2. Strengthen Your Employer Brand Strategy Through Storytelling

    Storytelling is becoming the crux of employers’ brand strategy. Because it works.

    Storytelling has been a part of the human experience for 30,000 years – or longer, if we assume that people were telling stories before the advent of writing.

    From ancient mythology to the latest Netflix original, the draw of storytelling is so powerful that it cuts across age, gender, race, culture, and all other demographics. Brain scans show that stories activate important social and emotional processing centers in our brains. Marketers and advertisers know that storytelling is the key to connecting with consumers. It works for connecting companies with candidates, too.

    Here are 5 effective strategies to strengthen your employer brand and attract more candidates:

    1. Be authentic.

    It may be tempting to paint the perfect picture of your company, but be careful not to oversell it. Your brand is how people build trust with you, and with sites like Glassdoor, the truth will quickly come out.

    The best way to present an authentic brand is by showcasing your employees. Use short videos as a way for employees to talk about their experiences and explain why they like working with your company. Then you’ll have compelling stories to share, and by listening to employees, you’ll also understand your brand’s strongest selling points.

    2. Provide details.

    People are inundated with messages every day, so speaking in generalities – like, “This company is a great place to work!” – is nothing more than background noise. Instead, craft stories around a single element of your brand.

    Dollar General, for example, tells stories of career growth, showing how employees can move from sales associate to store manager and beyond. Your story might be about work-life balance, community involvement, mentorship programs, or something else. Whatever it is that makes your company interesting or unique, that’s the story you should tell.

    3. Create a narrative.

    The narrative arc is what makes a story a story. While you’re not writing a screenplay or a novel, your employer brand story should still have a beginning, middle, and end.

    Your company’s history is a story. There was a time before your company, then something that brought your company into existence (an idea, a discovery, a merger). You might chronicle the events that shaped your company into what it is today. Or, you might give the backstory of your company’s mission with give examples of how it’s fulfilling its purpose.

    4. Make experiences easy and enjoyable.

    Candidates will be more receptive to your company’s stories when they’re simple, stay on point, and easy to navigate through. The best experiences are those that follow a logical path or journey.

    You might have great employer brand stories, but are they easy to find? At the end of a story, which might be page on your career site or company culture video, is there a call to action showing the candidate where to go next? Think about how your stories fit together, and how candidates might consume those stories throughout the recruitment and hiring process.

    5. Give a taste of what’s to come.

    Employer brand stories will feature your employees, your culture, your benefits. You’ll have to find ways to help candidates see where they fit in, and how they can contribute to the story if hired.

    This starts by showing candidates how your company can help push them to the next level in their career. Through your stories, represent your brand as the bridge that gets them to where they want to be. You can do this by demonstrating your company’s growth, as well as the growth of employees within your company.

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    To learn more about how to tell compelling stories through video, check out the Ultimate Guide to Video Interviewing.

  3. Video Interviewing Makes Hiring Human Again

    In a tight labor market where job opportunities abound, competition for talent is at an all-time high. Attracting top candidates – and keeping them engaged through the hiring process – is a must for employers looking to stay competitive.

    To create the kind of employer brand that attracts and engages top candidates, Talent Acquisition teams are learning to operate like marketing teams. And marketers know, when it comes to engagement, there’s nothing more effective than video. Some quick stats on the power of video:

    • Video attracts 2-3X as many monthly visitors (Wordstream).
    • Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text (Wirebuzz)
    • Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and image content combined (Wordstream)

    Video is also incredibly powerful in Talent Acquisition. That’s what makes Outmatch’s acquisition of Wepow, a video interviewing solution, so timely. According to Greg Moran, CEO of Outmatch:

    The acquisition recognizes the importance of speed, engagement, and personal connection in today’s tight labor market.”

    Providing a much-needed upgrade to existing candidate screening and interviewing processes, Wepow’s video technology is a breath of fresh air for candidates, and an important differenatior for employers.

    In an era that’s highly focused on automation, analytics, and AI (all things we love, of course, as they are at the core of our business), video interviewing is unique in that it makes hiring human and personal again. According to one job candidate who used Wepow video interviewing:

    Video interviewing makes the experience more personal. It gives the hiring team a chance to see and interact with me in a way that can’t be done during a phone interview.”

    Not only does video interviewing humanize the hiring process, it connects employers and candidates all over the world, regardless of location. This gives employers access to nearly limitless talent pools without any travel expenses, making recruitment extremely productive and cost-effective.

    Adding video interviewing to its platform of predictive talent solutions, Outmatch strengthens its ability to identify and engage high-potential talent, which ultimately drives business performance and profitability for clients. Moran says:

    “With the added layer of video interviewing, we have the ability to humanize the hiring process in a way that’s never been done through a convergence of unparalleled data, AI and machine learning, IO science, and a more personal touch that matters to people seeking ideal jobs.”

    Imo Udom, co-founder and CEO of Wepow, is equally excited:

    “Wepow and Outmatch are a perfect match. We are thrilled to become part of the Outmatch family, who shares our belief that every hire impacts business success.”

    Read more about how Outmatch and Wepow are improving hiring outcomes together.

    Is your organization ready for video interviewing? Ask these 5 questions

    1. Is your organization growing or planning to grow by 50 new hires or more this year?
    2. Is your organization expanding across multiple regions or countries?
    3. Does scheduling interviews take too much time and resources?
    4. Do you need greater interview consistency and compliance?
    5. Do you want to be seen as innovative?

    If so, schedule a demo of video interviewing today!