Category: Candidate Attraction

Bombardier: Moving the World’s Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

Posted on by akessler
Bombardier: Moving the World's Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

Bombardier: Moving the World’s Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

PeopleScout helped Bombardier Transportation with a global employer brand and toolkit to help them recruit hard-to-fill roles and meet diversity objectives.

Situation

A worldwide leader in rail technology, Bombardier Transportation had no global employer brand presence. They approached PeopleScout and our in-house creative to develop a employer value proposition (EVP), not only to be used to push out the overall brand message, but also to underpin specific propositions for, and support recruitment activity in, each of their territories around the world. Launched initially in the UK, and now rolling out to other territories,

The new employer brand needed to tackle a negative market misperceptions of redundancies and lost orders. The truth was that they had a full order book and some new and exciting contracts to deliver in the future. With this positive story to share, they realized they had a great opportunity to enhance their position within the market.

Solution

Research & Discovery

We began with extensive research in all key Bombardier Transportation global territories. We conducted interviews with a mixture of senior stakeholders and employees from the main talent groups they needed to recruit from and also carried out external sessions with relevant talent groups.

Foundation & Framework

Using the insights we’d gained, we developed a set of EVP pillars capturing the key themes from the research. This provided the framework for creating our global messaging platform and design.

Guidelines & Toolkit

Working closely with Bombardier Transportation’s Branding and Communications teams, we produced a set of guidelines and a toolkit of materials that could be used globally and tweaked for each individual territory.

Results

Initially launched within the UK, the EVP was rolled out to other territories around the world.

Bombardier Transportation launched its first-ever media campaign using the EVP, using a combination of digital and outdoor media in key hiring locations in the UK. Across the whole campaign, they received over 500 applications and made hires into critical roles that they had struggled to recruit for previously. They were also able to recruit several women into these positions addressing their global diversity objectives.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Bombardier Transportation
  • INDUSTRY
    Manufacturing
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT BOMBARDIER
    Bombardier Transportation is a global leader in rail technology, with headquarters in Berlin, Germany. They specialize in rail vehicle and equipment manufacturing and servicing.
Let’s Connect

Virgin Money: An Executive Search Experience Like No Other

Posted on by akessler
Virgin Money: An Executive Search Experience Like No Other

Executive Search

Virgin Money: An Executive Search Experience Like No Other

Finding a Head of Innovation through “the world’s most creative job interview,” an immersive executive assessment experience.

Situation

Virgin Money turned to PEopleScout and our industry-leading creative team to find them a new Head of Innovation.

Their brief to us:

Find us Harry Potter, a creative genius who can come along and change banking. Someone from outside the financial services sector that we wouldn’t attract through the normal processes.

Solution

How do you recruit an executive from a completely different sector? And how do you reach them in the first place?

Above all, by making the front pages, just not in the finance section.

So we set out to create a headline-grabbing experience that would generate publicity and noise in the right places.

And that experience was, “The world’s most creative job interview,” a hybrid of immersive theater and robust job assessment. Building on psychological principles, it set candidates tasks that engaged as thoroughly as they tested.

Results

Alongside coverage in the usual HR publications, we earned high-profile media coverage in The Evening Standard, City A.M., Campaign, Marketing Magazine, Brand Republic and more, reaching a combined circulation of around 30 million people.

Ten outstanding candidates were chosen for the “interview,” which led to the discovery of the successful applicant, Dhiraj Mukherjee, a founder of the music application Shazam, and a truly creative entrepreneur.

The new assessment approach has ushered in a legacy beyond a new Head of Innovation. From one niche role, we’ve now scaled up the approach to be used nationally across all volume hiring.

“The thing I love about PeopleScout is they have that really interesting blend of a robust approach to assessment and the creative ability to think differently.”

Head of Resourcing, Virgin Money

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Virgin Money
  • INDUSTRY
    Telecommunications
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT VIRGIN MONEY
    Virgin Money is a financial service company disrupting retail and business banking with a digital-first model.
Let’s Connect

IMI: Delivering a Tech-Charge Early Careers Recruitment Solution

Posted on by akessler
IMI: Delivering a Tech-Charge Early Careers Recruitment Solution

Early Careers Recruitment

IMI: Delivering a Tech-Charge Early Careers Recruitment Solution

Delivering an end-to-end RPO solution for early careers engineering talent.

Situation

IMI is an engineering company, specializing in the design, manufacture and service of highly engineered products that control the movement of fluids. They employ some 11,000 people, have manufacturing facilities in more than 20 countries.

When they needed a comprehensive global recruitment campaign to support their early careers talent strategy, IMI approached PeopleScout.

Solution

We delivered an end-to-end talent solution, covering everything from website design, attraction and sourcing, through to candidate management. The resourcing procedure included online application, a detailed qualification screen, sifting of written motivational responses, online verbal and numerical reasoning testing and a telephone interview.

Knowing just how valuable human contact is in the recruitment process, our recruiters in the delivery center were always accessible to candidates by phone. For email enquiries, applicants could expect responses within 24 hours. Meanwhile, assessment centers were regionally administered.

Results

We supported IMI’s graduate recruitment program for over two years with a global end-to-end talent solution designed to deliver an excellent candidate experience, maintaining consistently high satisfaction levels for our client and their candidates.

“Moving to PeopleScout was the best decision I ever made.”

Mari Docker, Global Graduate Development Manager, IMI

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    IMI
  • INDUSTRY
    Manufacturing
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ABOUT IMI
    IMI is a global specialist engineering company headquartered in Birmingham, England.
Let’s Connect

SSE: Recruiting Engineers with Project RPO

Posted on by akessler
SSE: Recruiting Engineers with Project RPO

SSE: Recruiting Engineers with Project RPO

PeopleScout helped SSE hire hundreds of engineers with project RPO.

Situation

As part of the UK government’s smart meter rollout, energy company SSE needed to hire 1,500 Smart Meter Engineers in a short time-frame—in direct competition with all the other energy companies looking for the same talent. SSE turned to their RPO partner PeopleScout to help with this project.

Time was of the essence. The hiring process needed to be transformed, streamlined and made more consistent, as the existing process was time-consuming for hiring managers and candidates alike. Hiring managers were incredibly busy so we needed a process that required minimal commitment.

The next challenge we faced was the limited talent pool of candidates. So it was essential that SSE made an impact with highly targeted communications.

Solution

The occupational psychologists on our Assessment Team designed a new online application process that removed the need for SSE hiring managers to interview candidates. Now they would only need to meet the candidates on their first day of training. Our newly designed online 3D model and multiple-choice tests allowed us to assess candidates much more efficiently. And along the way, our Bristol-based delivery center supported candidates at each stage, ensuring that they remained engaged and satisfied.

“We’ve been really pleased with the speed of project set up, the PeopleScout team and the value that they continue to provide.”

Lee Newbold, HR Business Partner – Metering and Smart Transformation, SSE

Results

In the first year, PeopleScout recruited over 900 Smart Meter Engineers with the number of women hired into these roles increasing by 800%.

The average time-to-offer was reduced to 69 days, and new joiners now start after 104 days on average.

We have also increased the quality of the candidates, with 90% of trainee candidates attending the assessment center and 64% passing. 

The application process was nominated for an Innovation Award by the Association of British Psychology.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    SSE
  • INDUSTRY
    Energy & Utilities
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ANNUAL HIRES
    1,500 engineers
  • ABOUT SSE
    SSE is a FTSE 100 energy company operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. SSE energy services became part of OVO Energy in 2020.
Let’s Connect

High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

Posted on by Kate
High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

Global RPO

High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

An international hospitality brand—and longstanding PeopleScout client—was experiencing growing pains after an acquisition. The client needed to source, screen and hire an additional 20,000 staff for both corporate and on-site positions at hotel properties across multiple continents—bringing the annual headcount to 65,000 new hires. PeopleScout’s global RPO solution proved agile enough to seamlessly scale up to absorb the increased hiring volume, while hitting target service levels across regions.

90 % Customer Satisfaction Scores Among Hiring Managers
84 % Time-to-Fill Targets Achieved for In-Market Roles
100 % Time-to-Fill Targets Achieved for Corporate Roles

Situation

PeopleScout facilitates more than 65,000 hires annually for the hospitality brand, delivering RPO through a 350-member team across continents. Roles include management and hourly hiring needs in both corporate and in-market environments, including sales, accounting, technology, e-commerce, infrastructure, risk management, engineering, architecture, property management, customer service, housekeeping, culinary and more.

In addition to corporate hiring in the U.S. and Canada, we’ve recruited for their operations centers in the UK and India and hospitality properties spanning North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC.

Solution

Starting with a small pilot in 2007, our relationship has developed into a strategic partnership over 15 years. At the start, the client had disjointed hiring processes across regions. PeopleScout’s RPO team streamlined their recruitment processes and developed robust, standardized compliance practices across the entire recruiting program.

Following an acquisition in 2017, the client gained nearly 1,300 properties across over 100 countries. PeopleScout scaled our global talent acquisition program to ensure the established standardized processes and compliance practices were applied to the newly acquired properties, while keeping costs down.

PeopleScout seamlessly absorbed a 20,000-position increase and easily increased resources to meet a 50% increase in the scope of services. This included scaling our RPO solution to cover the end-to-end recruitment process for management positions for all hotel locations and the U.S. and Canadian headquarters. This allowed the in-house HR team to focus on training, workforce planning and employer branding.

PeopleScout also supported the client through three talent technology transitions over the course of the partnership, creating new levels of efficiency through automation. Plus, our in-house creative agency TMP assisted the client with their recruitment marketing efforts, creating attraction content in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Results

In just two months, PeopleScout was able to achieve the same level of performance at the newly acquired locations as they had at the legacy locations.

  • Created standardized recruitment processes and robust compliance practices across all in-market locations resulting in significant cost savings through efficiency
  • 84% time-to-fill targets achieved for in-market hires
  • Nearly 100% time-to-fill targets achieved for corporate hires
  • 90%+ customer satisfaction scores hit for both in-market and management hires
  • Achieved nearly 100% consistency in SLAs thanks to standardized operations across PeopleScout’s global delivery centers.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    International hospitality brand
  • INDUSTRY
    Hospitality, Travel & Tourism
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ANNUAL HIRES
    65,000
  • LOCATIONS
    Hospitality properties, corporate offices and operational centers across North America, Latin America, Europe and APAC
Let’s Connect

Legal Services Recruitment with Full-Cycle RPO

Posted on by akessler
Legal Services Recruitment with Full-Cycle RPO

Legal Services Recruitment with Full-Cycle RPO

How we helped this long-term legal services client revamp their talent acquisition program

Solution

PeopleScout has been RPO partner to this client for over 10 years. The relationship started as a co-sourced solution, where our recruiters partnered with the client’s internal talent acquisition team. As our partnership deepended, PeopleScout has taken responsibility for fully outsourced recruitment program and now also acts in a talent advisory capacity.

The onsite PeopleScout team is responsible for managing the end-to-end recruitment process for all fixed term and permanent hires. This includes strategic and innovative sourcing approaches, competitor mapping for key job groups, process enhancement through technology automation, candidate and hiring manager engagement and satisfaction, onboarding and induction.

PeopleScout achieved some key business-critical initiatives including:

  • Reducing turnover through improved quality-of-hire
  • Delivering a positive candidate experience and employer brand reputation
  • Taking over the end-to-end recruitment campaign for graduates and early careers from a different outsourced provider
  • Building talent pipelines for hard-to-fill positions including auditors, economists and lawyers
  • Recruiting senior executive and specialist roles
  • Project recruitment for recruitment intake following new law reforms

Talent Advisory Services

As part of this solution, PeopleScout has delivered a number of additional services in order to drive continuous improvement. The following is a summary of some of the services that have been successfully implemented:

  • Redesigned and promoted the employee referral program (ERP)
  • Developed hiring manager interview guides and conducted interview training
  • Developed microsites for a recruitment campaign for lawyers
  • Conducted D&I consulting
  • Supported the client’s internal mobility program leveraging the Affinix talent acquisition suite
  • Automated recruitment reports
  • Developed a company LinkedIn profile and alumni page to promote candidate attraction

Results

The solution continues to achieve positive results for the business including:

  • Reducing agency spend by over $3 million
  • Achieving an average time-to-fill of just 29 days including for senior level positions

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Law firm
  • INDUSTRY
    Legal Services
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
Let’s Connect

The Importance of an Employer Value Proposition and Employer Brand Strategy

Posted on by skatz

As employers face increasing competition for the best talent, a well-defined employer value proposition (EVP) and employer brand strategy have become more important than ever. In a candidate-driven market, employers need to stand out to their target talent audiences through a unified EVP and employer brand. High-quality candidates know what they want out of a future employer, and organizations that don’t effectively show their value to candidates risk losing them to the competition.

If you google EVP and employer brand, you’re likely to find thousands of definitions. At PeopleScout we define EVP and employer brand as the following:

  • Employer Brand: The perception and lived experiences of what it’s like to work for your organization.
  • Employer Value Proposition: Captures the essence of your uniqueness as an employer and the give and the get between you and your employees.

Both concepts revolve around the qualities that make a company a great place to work, as well as the benefits, career growth opportunities, work-life balance and company culture that attract top talent.

EVPs are particularly important in today’s job market, as a majority of candidates heavily evaluate companies before they even consider applying for open positions, and it can be a critical differentiator in a company’s ability to attract talent.

Key Elements of a Successful EVP

As HR Technologist explains, “An employee value proposition must be thoughtfully designed since it has a direct impact on behavior. It must look into the tangible and intangible elements of the psychological contracts between the employer and the employee. It must start way before the employee joins, even before the person is a job candidate; it must appeal to the person irrespective of whether the person intends to work with the organization or not.”

A successful EVP articulates the value that you offer to your employees. At PeopleScout, we establish three elements to support a successful EVP:

  • Pillars: Pillars are the core components of your EVP and are informed by insights into your cultural DNA and your audience’s motivations. Pillars are used to define the relevance of your EVP and are based on research.
  • Narrative: The narrative is usually a single, manifesto-style paragraph – it’s the emotive “sell” of what you offer. The narrative defines consistency throughout your EVP and employer brand strategies.
  • Strapline: Finally, the strapline is a concise phrase that summarizes your overall offering – it focuses on being memorable rather than detailed. The strapline defines a point of focus throughout your EVP materials.

By creating pillars, a narrative and a strapline to support your EVP and employer brand strategy, employers will be set up for a successful deployment both internally to current employees and externally to candidates and the broader marketplace.

For example, we recently completed an EVP and employer brand project for a global law firm based in the UK called Linklaters. Here are the pillars, narrative and strapline that we created to bring the project to life.

Linklaters employment brand pillars
Linklaters employer brand narrative
Linklaters employer brand strapline

Benefits of a Well-Managed Employer Value Proposition and Employer Brand Platform

Organizations that effectively deliver on their EVP can enjoy a host of benefits, including decreased annual employee turnover and increased new hire commitment, according to Gartner research. Other benefits include improved brand sentiment, increased reach to target audiences, a greater sense of commitment from current employees and cost savings related to compensation.

Improved Brand Sentiment

Organizations with effective EVPs are more attractive to candidates and are considered employers of choice – organizations where candidates want to work. In order to make yourself an employer of choice, you have to be able to appeal to your ideal candidates by differentiating your company from your competitors.

A compelling EVP and employer brand can move your brand sentiment in a positive direction. A clearly defined EVP creates the foundation on which to build your internal and external employer brand messaging, which allows you to have greater influence over what you are known for and how you are perceived.

Increased Reach

A thoroughly researched and tested EVP is designed to speak more effectively to your target talent audiences. When you are able to tailor the core of your message to individual audiences, while keeping your narrative and strapline consistent throughout, more diverse groups of candidates will respond favorably. This has real business impact. According to a Morgan Stanley study in The Atlantic, there is a positive relationship between equity returns and the gender composition of an organization’s employee base, as an example.

We work with an organization in the UK that was once an online automobile magazine but is now a digital publication. The organization struggled with brand perception. Many candidates thought the company was old-fashioned, and they struggled to attract women to their open positions. We developed an “adventures in awesomeness” EVP that spoke to the digital transformation that had already happened at the employer. This EVP not only increased brand attractiveness and shifted sentiment, but also increased the number of women visiting the careers site by 300 percent.

Greater Employee Commitment

Organizations with strong EVPs enjoy significantly higher levels of engagement from employees. In one example studied by Cornell University, a beverage bottling and distribution company launched an initiative to develop an integrated employer brand. Around the same time, the company decreased headcount by more than 6 percent and maintained tight control over salary raises. Despite these difficulties, employee engagement grew at the company from 36 percent to 55 percent over a five-year period.

This study suggests that when you clearly articulate your EVP and the behaviors you’re looking for from employees, it can be a factor in successfully attracting and retaining employees with the right cultural fit for your organization. This yields more engaged employees.

Compensation Savings

Organizations with effective EVPs are able to reduce the compensation premium required to attract new candidates. Another example highlighted in the Cornell paper found that organizations with a well-managed employer brand had a 26 percent economic advantage in terms of labor cost.

Key Considerations When Creating an EVP and Employer Brand Program

There is ample data that shows that effective EVPs generate real business benefits. To realize those benefits, there is a lot of work that goes into creating a successful EVP and employer brand. Before launching an EVP internally or externally, it’s critical that companies spend time researching, defining, developing, optimizing and deploying an EVP that accurately represents the company’s value to employees.

Recruitment for Retention

Posted on by skatz

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” It is perhaps the most time-worn question in a job interview. But if the candidate answers that if they are hired, they will be happily working in your organization, the odds are against this ever happening. Why? The average time workers in the U.S. remain in one job is just 4.2 years. And in other leading economies, the average single job tenure can be similarly brief. In the UK, workers change jobs every five years, while in Australia, the national average job tenure is just three years and four months. In Canada, the average length is 8.5 years, but the averages vary widely depending on the industry.

For those hoping to attract and retain top talent, these figures can be familiar – and a cause for concern. When human resource professionals look inside their organizations and identify employees who have defied the statistical average, staying with the company far longer than five years and contributing significantly to its success, they wonder “how do I get more of them?” With low unemployment making many job markets the most challenging in recent memory, there is genuine urgency not only to retain the best talent but to find a way to attract talent that will stay with an organization for the long-term. In other words, there is a need to recruit to retain, but how?

Know Your Talent: Why They Leave and Why They Stay and Thrive

Like many organizations, your company may already have an employee retention program in place. Enterprises are making considerable efforts to retain talent, and the processes they deploy to improve employee retention can also be incorporated into your recruitment process.

For example, it is relatively common to have exit interviews with departing workers to better understand why they are leaving the organization. When a sufficient number of exit interview results are available and evaluated, trends can emerge that can lead to actionable items to improve employee retention. Certain common traits or characteristics may also appear among those who voluntarily leave their jobs.

Less common, but potentially just as valuable, is the “stay interview.” These interviews with current employees allow them to express their concerns before they are in a position to leave, which can help leaders address issues and take steps to retain top talent.

And just as exit interviews can bring into focus the characteristics of those who quit, the stay interview can help identify the traits of those who remain and thrive. Once a group of long-term successful employees is identified, a stay interview can be designed for this group with the goal of identifying why they have remained with the company, what factors have contributed to their success and what characteristics many or most of them have in common. Identifying these characteristics in your candidate pool during the recruiting process could be an indicator of future success.

In today’s tight job market, if you are not working to identify candidates with the characteristics that have been proven to lead to long-term achievement in your company, your competitors probably are. SHRMreports that “Many organizations are seeking more of a ‘whole person’ gauge of candidates, experts say, assessing not just skills or intellectual horsepower but also personality traits, cultural fit and motivational drivers that can prove the difference between candidates who thrive over the long run and those who quickly derail.”

Predictive Analytics: Unlocking the Key to Recruitment for Retention

Predictive analytics is a type of data analytics that uses data to find patterns and then uses those models to attempt to predict the future. Consider the most basic data you likely have about a single employee who worked for your organization and left after five years. A sample of data points could include:

  • How they were sourced
  • Their addresses over their tenure at the company
  • Their education and certifications
  • Previous employers

These data points alone may not provide insight into why this employee joined your organization and why they left. But, if just these pieces of information were aggregated for all your employees, both past and present, here are a few insights which could be determined:

  • Is there a correlation between how an employee is sourced and their tenure at the organization?
  • Do employees who live far from the workplace quit sooner than those who do not?
  • Do employees from certain schools or that have particular certifications stay longer with the company than others?
  • Are there previous employers which produce more long-term employees than others?

The information found in even one of these examples could be built into your recruitment strategy and have a meaningful impact in recruiting talent that will remain with your organization.

The right technology using predictive analytics can provide effective recruiting insight, as PeopleScout’s Allison Brigden explains:

“In this tightening talent market with unemployment rates at record lows, predictive analytics is emerging as an essential AI tool for employers looking to stay ahead of the competition. Predictive analytics allows employers to use the power of data to make predictions about candidates and drive efficiencies throughout the entire talent acquisition process…

Predictive analytics can’t tell you what will happen, but it shows what is likely to happen based on past trends. It’s as close as employers can get to predicting the future.”

Solving for Retention

The dilemma faced by a major auto retailer was challenging but not surprising. The annual turnover rate in the retail sector is much higher than the national average in the U.S. With a 50% turnover rate and a need for 10,000 annual hires, there was an immediate need for drastic improvement

PeopleScout partnered with this automotive retailer and was able to rapidly address their turnover challenges by implementing the following solutions:

A Standard Hiring Model

An uneven hiring process was replaced, and a standard hiring model was put in place that included consistent OFCCP compliance and standardization across the company.

An Efficient Process

PeopleScout deployed a time-efficient screening process which focused on the quality of the candidate, with a guaranteed response from recruiting teams within 48 hours of application. To quickly present candidates to hiring managers, PeopleScout implemented block interview scheduling with great success.

Hiring Diversity

To help source and engage more diverse candidates, PeopleScout developed a comprehensive network of community organizations for partnered recruitment.

In-Region Recruiters

Collaborative relationships between recruiters and the client’s area managers were fostered by in-region placement of PeopleScout recruiters.

Transparent Reporting

Continuous improvement was driven through transparent reporting and analysis for the client’s executive and field leadership.

The Results:
  • PeopleScout hired 10,000 employees in the first year of the engagement.
  • The technician turnover rate improved by 5% and retail turnover by 6%.
  • Hiring diversity improved by 40%, including an increase of 2% for veterans and 6% for female hires.

Through The Grapevine: How to Create and Manage an Employee Referral Program

Posted on by epadmin

A well-managed employee referral program may be the single most powerful weapon in an organization’s recruitment arsenal. In fact, employee referral programs continue to be a top source for hires. By encouraging employees to refer contacts in their professional networks for open positions you can reduce recruiting costs, improve candidate quality and increase employee engagement.

In this article, we explore the case for employee referral programs, some of the top considerations organizations should be mindful of and how to properly manage a referral program.

The Case for Developing an Employee Referral Program

employee referral program

Intuitively, developing a formal employee referral program makes sense.

After all, who better to refer great candidates and sell those candidates on why they should join your organization than your own employees?

Employee referral programs make good business sense. Some of the benefits your organization may reap from an employee referral program include:

  • Faster time-to-hire: A LinkedIn study uncovered that it takes an average of 29 days to hire a referred candidate compared to 39 days to hire a candidate through a job board.
  • Less impact on your talent acquisition budget: An employee referral program is an inexpensive sourcing strategy that relies primarily on word-of-mouth and internal communication. You don’t have to pay to advertise job posts. Due to the faster time-to-hire, organizations can cut internal costs as well, since recruiters won’t be spending as much time sourcing and interviewing candidates for open positions.
  • Top talent begets top talent: Another LinkedIn survey revealed that star employees tend to refer other star employees. Tapping into your top talent can help organizations source and hire high performers more effectively.
  • Better employee retention: Not only are candidates hired via an employee referral typically of higher quality, they also tend to stay at their jobs longer, with 46 percent remaining in their position for at least three years.

Employee Referral Programs as an Extension of Employee Engagement

With employee referral programs, saving time and money is just the beginning.

Employee referrals also add value through improved employee engagement.

Using employee referrals to hire candidates builds a more robust corporate culture by intersecting performance and engagement to drive business success through tapping current employees for qualified candidate referrals, thus simplifying the sourcing process.

Employees who recommend a new hire have a vested interest in onboarding and retaining that person, as many referral programs include a requirement that the referred employee must be with the organization for a specific period of time before the referring employee can get a referral bonus.

What’s more, employees who refer candidates will feel a sense of commitment to ensure their referral’s success because they recommended the position.

Moreover, employees who are involved in the recruitment process may feel a greater sense of purpose towards the future of your company.

By encouraging employees to submit referrals, you are letting them know you value their input and contribution.

What to Consider Before Implementing an Employee Referral Program

Set Program Objectives

Before implementing an employee referral program, organizations should outline objectives in order to set a clear goal.

Defining objectives early on in the process helps ensure your team is on the same page and knows exactly what is expected and when.

Setting objectives can be achieved by holding planning sessions with key stakeholders where you share the vision for the program, develop strategies to achieve success and find solutions that are mutually agreed upon.

Objectives for an employee referral program might include:

  • Improving quality-of-hire
  • Increasing new hire retention
  • Boosting employee morale and recognition
  • Lowering overall recruiting costs
  • Increasing diversity within the organization
  • Sourcing candidates with a specific skill set
  • Reducing the time-to-hire for external candidates
  • Better targeting and sourcing of passive job seekers
  • Deepening the pipeline of potential applicants

Leverage Technology

Technology can help make the employee referral process better for both employers, employees and referrals. Using your technology tools can streamline processes and minimize inefficiencies and missed opportunities in the referral program.

In an article with SHRM, Jennifer Newbill, Director of Global Employment Brand, Dell explains that Dell uses a combination of “white glove” and automated communications to manage its more than 40,000 annual employee referrals, making the process more manageable for the organization’s talent acquisition teams.

Social Media Referrals

Recruitment marketing technology can allow you to post jobs on your organization’s social channels in seconds. You can also leverage your existing employees’ social media networks – if your employees are willing to post on your behalf – to expand your reach.

Auto-Posting Open Roles

In order to get your employees more engaged in your employee referral program, you should consider sharing job openings on a regular basis. Instead of sending out emails manually every time a position opens, you can automate this process through your recruitment email marketing tools.

For example, gig-economy start-up Fiverr leverages employee referral software that gamifies the referral process by adding a competitive element to referring candidates. The software assigns points to employees and credit for all the actions they take. The software also keeps employees up-to-date on the status of their referrals.

Make Jobs Shareable Through Employee Portals

Make it easier for employees to share job opportunities through their social media accounts and email. Adding social links on job posts will allow employees to automatically share job openings with just a few clicks. The quicker and easier jobs are to share, the more likely your employees will participate.

Referral Tracking

Tracking and appropriately attributing a referral is crucial to the program’s success. To make tracking easier, a referral field should be added to applications. The referral field on the job application can be filled in with information about the referring employee, making referral tracking easier.

Managing an Employee Referral Program

When it comes to managing a successful employee referral program, there are a few elements to keep in mind. Ideally, every program includes the following:

  • Incentives
  • A simple process
  • Feedback

Below, we explain how your organization can manage each of these three elements within your employee referral program.

Employee Referral Incentives

According to a survey conducted by LinkedIn, 40 percent of respondents were motivated to refer candidates for a monetary reward. What’s more, 68 percent stated they submitted a referral because they wanted to help their organization. If you want to get the most impact out of your organization’s employee referral program, you should offer a combination of monetary and creative, non-monetary incentives for referrals.

  • Experiment with monetary reward amounts because there is no magic number that will motivate all employees. Periodically testing different amounts can allow you to optimize your financial incentives.
  • Employees who are more altruistic in nature may prefer the option of donating their referral bonus to a charity or cause close to their hearts.
  • An alternative to offering individual monetary incentives is to hold a quarterly prize drawing where every employee who has made a successful referral during the period is eligible to win.
  • While prizes and cash incentives can be great motivators, other perks can be just as effective. Non-monetary rewards can include reserved parking spots, extra time off or first choice of shifts and schedules.

For a PeopleScout client and multinational auto parts and accessories manufacturer, we encourage their store managers, area managers and team members to refer quality candidates, including friends and family, to current job openings.

Once the employee’s referral applies to a position, our client lets a member of our recruiting team know that a referral has applied.

In the system the candidate selects referral and the client lets us know. This ensures we do not miss a referral and/or they selected the wrong source code when applying. 

Our team then schedules an interview with the referral and if qualified, proceeds to extend a verbal offer. 

If the referral is qualified, they will be scheduled with the store/hiring manager for an in-person interview, unless the referral was a quality candidate from the store manager and they already met them in person.

To assist our client in tracking the referrals coming in, our recruiters maintain a digital log of the number of referrals that were phone screened and referrals that were hired.

Our client values this referral program because it yields quality candidates and results in a faster time-to-hire for critical positions. 

When a referral is screened the recruiter ensure the source code is correct in the ATS so we provide stats and results of referrals.

Program highlights include:

  • When we onboard and train our client’s new managers, PeopleScout emphasizes the employee referral program and its importance to the recruiting process
  • PeopleScout’s team has specific SLAs to ensure referrals are expedited
  • PeopleScout tracks time in status and conversion rates specifically for referrals
  • More than 25 percent of hires for our client come from referrals
  • More than 50 percent of referrals submitted are ultimately hired
  • PeopleScout hires between 9,000 and 11,000 people for this client annually

Simplify the Employee Referral Process

While 95 percent of HR professionals believe their employees fully understand how to submit referrals, 63 percent say they “very often or frequently” receive feedback that employees find it too complicated to refer someone.

When evaluating your program, ask yourself these questions:

  • Do employees know about your referral program?
  • Is it clear with whom or where an employee should submit a referral?
  • Is the technology used to submit referrals user-friendly?
  • Is it easy to track if the referring employee was given credit?
  • Is it easy to track the incentives that were earned?

If the program makes your employees jump through hoops to place a referral, you can be sure that it won’t attract many participants.

To simplify your program, start with the following steps:

Explain your employee referral program

Employees need to understand exactly how your referral program works to make it successful.

How you teach employees about the program depends on your size and how the workforce is dispersed geographically.

You might gather your employees together and give a brief presentation or create an online training course.

Or, you might do something as simple as sending an informational email or flyer for employees to review.

Set your requirements up front

If you want your employees to refer quality candidates, they need to know what traits and skills you are looking for.

Share the open positions you are hiring for and provide employees with the job descriptions, so they get a feel for the types of candidates that would be a good fit.

Provide regular reminders

You should periodically remind employees about the referral program. If you don’t, they may quickly forget about it.

InMobi, an Indian-based mobile technology company, offered a motorbike—a very popular vehicle in India—to any employee who referred a successful engineering manager candidate.

To keep the referral program top of mind, InMobi parked a motorbike right in front of their corporate headquarters so employees were reminded of the referral incentive every day while entering the building.

When you have an influx of open positions, send a reminder to your employees that explains how they can refer candidates and what the reward is for hired candidates.

You can also promote the referral program when you aren’t actively hiring.

An employee might refer a candidate you do not want to miss out on. You should add those candidates to your talent pool.

Collect and Provide Feedback  

Measuring results is critical to evaluating the success of the program and to finding improvement opportunities.

While metrics can vary depending on the goals you’ve set for the program, here are some good metrics to track:

  • On-the-job performance of referral hires
  • Retention/turnover rate of referral hires
  • Program ROI or the cost/benefit ratio
  • Employee satisfaction with the overall process

Provide notifications after an employee referral is made

Referring employees may be nervous about whether their referrals were any good. The best practice is to notify employees immediately when their referral is accepted/rejected, if the candidate is invited for an interview and when the candidate is finally hired or not.

Employee Referral Program: The Gist

Employee referral programs remain one of the top sources for candidates because they are a cost-effective, engaging talent acquisition strategy.

To get the most out of your referral program, understand what motivates your employees to refer candidates, make the process as easy as possible and maintain good communication with both the referrer and referee.

Rethinking Candidate Generation Strategies

Posted on by epadmin

Candidate generation strategies are crucial. In this time of rapid transformation and high competition for talent, employers face the challenge of evolving their talent generation strategies to stay ahead. For years, employers focused on attracting as many candidates as possible with the hypothesis that generating more applications was the best strategy to yield better quality hires. That approach to talent attraction and the metrics used to measure success are changing.

The old goal: Attract as many candidates as possible.

The new goal: Attract the strongest candidates who are the best motivational fit for your organization.

In this article, we cover the changing landscape of candidate attraction and why employers should develop a new, data-informed way of looking at job postings. We also present some specific strategies employers can put in place now and explore the benefits of these strategies.

When Sourcing Candidates Change is Not Optional

Many organizations remain stuck with outdated candidate generation strategies. Job titles and descriptions can go years without being updated to reflect the reality of the position or the ways that candidates look for jobs. Long, expensive contracts with specific job boards are common, even though the return on investment may be decreasing. There are several reasons why the old way is no longer working.

1. Employers look at the wrong metrics when building candidate generation strategies.

Many employers assume that a large number of views, clicks and even applications indicate an effective strategy, even when those numbers don’t translate to strong hires. At the same time, candidates are left frustrated by applying to jobs that are different than advertised and then facing rejection because they don’t align with the true requirements of the position or with an offer or a job that isn’t a good fit.

If a job posting yields too many unqualified candidates, it creates the risk of harming an organization’s employer brand. This is because when there are too many unqualified candidates, there is the risk of poor communication. Those candidates could become frustrated with a lack of communication and form a negative opinion of the organization which they could share with their own networks.

Employers need to modernize their candidate generation strategies and metrics to keep up with changing candidate expectations and advancements in workplace technology.

2. Candidate generation strategies: The process is expensive.

The practice of attracting large numbers of applicants is expensive. Employers pay to attract and process candidates who aren’t good fits. At one UK organization, we found that a dismissal at the CV review stage cost £1.92. This organization hired 6,000 employees for every 67,000 applicants. This means the cost of just the first stage was £117,000.00. The process of dispositioning an applicant after an interview is even more expensive.

3. Job postings aren’t optimized for the changing landscape.

The changing role of job boards is also disrupting the traditional process. The rollout of Google Jobs, for example, has made it easier for candidates to search for job postings the same way they search for everything else on the internet – and candidates have grown to expect this. Because of this, employers need to optimize job postings and use SEO strategies to ensure candidates will see those postings.

Candidate Generation Strategies for the Future

Building a Centralized Recruitment Function

By centralizing the recruitment function, employers build a team that can adapt more quickly to change and works more efficiently to put new strategies in place. HR leaders find that a centralized function allows all members of the team better insight into the full hiring process and helps them better understand how each step impacts the broader candidate journey.

It is also easier to test new strategies and deploy successful ideas throughout the entire recruitment function. Because there is no need to get the buy-in of other offices or teams, a centralized function can deploy changes quickly.

A centralized recruitment team also helps maintain consistent metrics and employer branding. When multiple teams are accountable for different parts of the process, those teams can start to shift over time to the point where aspects of an employer brand or the metrics used to define success can look different from team to team.

When processes are siloed it makes it more difficult for leaders to get a full view of the recruitment team and maintain consistency throughout the process. When the entire recruitment team is accountable to the same leader, the process remains more consistent.

Benefit: An accountable and synchronized recruitment team that can more effectively share your brand message.

Sharing an Honest Employer Brand

An authentic yet aspirational, unique and dynamic employer brand is key for employers looking to stand out in the competitive talent market. This type of employer brand will speak to candidates who fit with the current company culture but can also be an effective way to keep current employees aligned with shifting organizational priorities.

According to a report by Cornell University, organizations with a strong employer brand experience less turnover, a higher level of employee commitment, more buy-in to the corporate culture and increased engagement.

Successful deployment of an employer brand will include the development of media toolkits, with language, images, videos, social media posts, emails and more than the recruiting team can use to disseminate brand communications. Materials like these can be used to make sure your employer brand consistently comes through in job postings and advertisements.

Benefit: A strong employer brand will generate applicants who understand and fit in with your culture and who are excited to work for you.

Swapping Vanity Metrics for Sanity Metrics

As your goal changes from attracting the most candidates to attracting the right candidates, you need to adjust what metrics you monitor to see if you’re achieving your goal.

Vanity metrics can include data like the number of clicks or views you have for a job posting and the number of applications. These metrics don’t tell you whether the people who are clicking on your job advertisements or the candidates who are applying are good fits for the position or enthusiastic about working for you.

Sanity metrics are numbers like the ratio of clicks-to-hires or applications-to-hires. Sanity metrics can also include data about the performance and tenure of your new hires. These metrics tell you whether or not the right people are finding and applying to your job postings.

If you are looking at vanity metrics, you cannot tell if you are attracting the strongest talent.

Benefit: A more clear measure of whether you are meeting your goal of attracting the strongest candidates who are enthusiastic about working for you.

Using Data to Inform Decision Making When Sourcing Candidates

Data should be central to the candidate attraction process. Your team should consistently ask these four questions and make alterations to your recruitment process based on the answers the data provides.

1. Are you marketing your job properly for the audience you’re looking for?

Sanity metrics will tell you if your tailored approach to candidate attraction is working well. The exact ratios will vary from organization to organization and position to position, but your goal should be to decrease the ratio of clicks-to-hires and applications-to-hires while increasing performance metrics and tenure numbers on those hires. If you aren’t already tracking this information, you should gather historical data on the relevant positions and continue tracking performance and tenure data.

If, for example, you spend a significant amount of time and money reviewing applications from unqualified candidates, you can revise your job copy to reflect the more challenging parts of the job. One of our clients had challenges hiring for a door-to-door salesperson. The job posting gave a rosy view of the position, without mentioning the tougher parts.

This led to a high number of applications, but as candidates moved through the process, many realized they didn’t want the position. The cost of processing these applicants was high, as was new hire turnover once candidates started in the role.

By making the job posting more transparent about the challenges, applications decreased by 11 percent, despite a 10 percent increase in the salary for the position. The client saved 305 hours of hiring manager time over a three month period, made the same number of hires as before, spent less on candidate attraction, held fewer phone and face-to-face interviews and new hire turnover in the role dropped significantly.

2. Is your job title optimized for your audience?

Often, job titles at individual organizations are informed by organizational culture and tradition. These can lead to titles that haven’t changed in years or new and creative titles, like “digital prophet” or “crayon evangelist.” While these titles may function well inside an organization, they can’t attract candidates who search online for positions like “business analyst” or “design director” because those candidates will never find the positions.

Regardless of the job title you use internally, the job title you use in a posting should be informed by data. Tools like Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner can help develop SEO-friendly job titles that will help put your position at the top of search results. Popular job boards also provide click data, and you can perform A/B testing with your recruiting team to determine which job titles bring in the best candidates fastest.

One client was struggling to hire for a position they called “help desk advisor,” although the position was customer service related. Data showed that more people in the client’s location searched for jobs like “customer service representative.”

By changing the job title in the external job posting, the client received the same number of applications in two weeks that it normally received in six to eight weeks. Because of this, the time-to-offer and time-to-fill both decreased, and the client spent less on attracting candidates.

3. Is the most important information in your job posting laid out in the best way for readers?
Candidate Generation Strategies

If your marketing and optimization efforts are successful at bringing job seekers to your posting, you also need to make sure they get the information they need to decide if the position is the right fit and they want to take the step to apply. According to research by The Ladders, job seekers spend an average of 49.7 seconds deciding that a job isn’t right for them and 76.7 seconds deciding that it is a good fit. This only provides a short window of time to provide the information you want them to see.

By developing a strong employer brand, marketing the position properly and optimizing your job title, you will be able to provide the type of information the candidate needs to see to decide if your role is the right fit. Your challenge is to make sure they can digest it in less than one minute. The Ladders’ study used eye-tracking software to determine that most job seekers follow an “F” shape as they scan job postings.

This means, as you write up and lay out a job posting, you need to put the most important information in the first places a candidate will look. Using headings can also help candidates identify key criteria.

4. Are you using job boards effectively?

The introduction of Google Jobs drastically changed the landscape of job boards. For our UK client base, we are already seeing a decreased return on investment from job boards which has decreased our own spending. To ensure you are spending effectively on job boards, you need to constantly evaluate which boards perform better.

To do this, you need to find out which job boards send an appropriate number of the right candidates. Some boards may send a lot of candidates but very few are qualified. Others may send fewer and fewer candidates altogether. By monitoring this data, you can invest your budget into the right job boards to attract the right candidates. You should also monitor whether the job boards you use integrate with Google Jobs and what impact that will have on your application data because it could vary among different industries.

More benefits of data-driven methods:

  • Increased candidate quality and decreased turnover because you are attracting candidates who are enthusiastic about the position and your organization and who understand the responsibilities and requirements of the role.
  • Decreased time-to-fill and cost-of-vacancy because candidates who aren’t a good fit self-select out of the process, so you don’t waste money evaluating the wrong people.
  • Increased ability to attract the candidates of the future because you’re speaking to them where they are and in ways they expect as they search for new positions.

Candidate Generation Strategies: Key Takeaways

  • Rather than attracting as many applicants as possible, employers should focus on decreasing the number of unqualified or uninterested applicants while increasing the number of strong applicants.
  • Employers should use a data-informed process to guide their candidate attraction strategies.
  • Employers should consistently evaluate their use of job boards to match the quickly changing job board landscape.