Category: Candidate Experience

Virgin Media: Hiring More Women Technicians

Posted on by akessler
Virgin Media: Hiring More Women Technicians

Virgin Media: Hiring More Women Technicians

Virgin Media asked their RPO partner PeopleScout to improve diversity for their field technician roles.

94 % of applications came from women
2 x growth in female workforce
37 % reduction in candidate drop off

Situation

Addressing gender diversity imbalances is a priority in organizations of all types. But, for roles that enter people’s homes, that need is even more pronounced. The personal nature of that connection makes having a workforce that reflects the customers and communities served even more important.

Virgin Media goal was a 50/50 male to female employee ratio. At that point, their workforce was 73% male. so they turned to their RPO partner PeopleScout for help.

Our first move was to set up a working group to tackle the problem head on. The group immediately identified its first priority: the residential field technician (RFT) role. Out of nearly 1,300 RFTs working across the UK, only 1.9% were women.

Solution

Research

In the research stage, we analyzed application numbers from previous campaigns, and identified that applications from women amounted to less than 2% of those received.

To get clear on the role’s realities, we hosted focus groups with Virgin Media’s current female RFTs. With the insights gathered from these conversations, we built a profile of the ideal female candidate, which informed our “Women in Field” recruitment strategy.

Strategy

Our strategy was simple; celebrate female role models across Virgin Media, and transform the organization’s recruitment communications to address the motivations of our target audience. In short: surprise female candidates who hadn’t considered the role before.

We started with a pilot program launched in four key UK locations. We set the target of five women RFT hires in each of the locations with just 12 weeks from go live to offer. This was hugely ambitious, given that Virgin Media had recruited only four women RFTs across the whole of the UK in the previous year.

We transformed the campaign’s collateral, language and imagery to showcase the amazing women already doing the job. Alongside the advertising, we produced films and written profiles of current female RFTs, showing experiences, challenges and triumphs. This was supported throughout social media with hashtags such as #levellingthefield and #becausewhynot.

Ultimately, our approach was to show outstanding women doing a brilliant job so that our target audience would respond: “I’d love to do that!”

Results

The pilot was a total success. The campaign received 945 applications, with a staggering 94% of applications coming from women. We achieved the hiring target of 20 outstanding new RFTs across the four locations, and in the process, we doubled Virgin Media’s entire female RFT workforce.

Candidate engagement throughout the full recruitment process was massively improved. Drop out decreased by 37%, and more candidates than ever reached the final assessment stage.

We sent surveys to all candidates, successful or not, and overwhelmingly, responders said they found our advertisements disruptive, direct, empowering and welcoming.

Now, we’re working with Virgin Media to roll out a wider campaign, UK-wide. Our ambition is to recruit five female RFTs in every region, attracting 60% more women to these roles. Everything we achieved during the pilot will strengthen this drive, particularly as we’ve created a group of enthusiastic brand advocates—female RFTs happy to help promote referrals, reduce attrition and tell compelling stories to future applicants.

The campaign has also laid the foundations for a strong female management pipeline. As a result, Virgin Media has an emerging population of engaged women RFTs to develop into the leaders of the future.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Virgin Media
  • INDUSTRY
    Telecommunications
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ABOUT VIRGIN MEDIA
    Virgin Media is a telecommunications company, providing telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. It is owned by Virgin Media O2.
Let’s Connect

Improving Retention and Diversity for Leading North American Tire Brand

Posted on by Kate
Improving Retention and Diversity for Leading North American Tire Brand

High-Volume RPO

Improving Retention and Diversity for Leading North American Tire Brand

A leading North American tire brand partnered with PeopleScout to facilitate more than 10,000 annual hires for automotive technician, management and sales positions and standardize its retail recruitment processes company-wide.

10,000 annual hires
40 % improvement in hiring diverse employees
5 % reduction in technician turnover

A leading North American tire brand was experiencing an alarming rate of attrition in key retail positions, making it difficult to provide the level of service excellence the brand’s customers have come to expect. To help solve its unsustainable employee attrition issue, the client partnered with PeopleScout to efficiently facilitate more than 10,000 annual hires of automotive technicians, management and sales positions and standardize its retail recruitment processes company-wide.

Scope and Scale

Full-life cycle recruiting services needed for 10,000 U.S. hires annually. Skills and positions included: technicians, customer service, sales and management.

Situation

The client was facing a 50% turnover rate at retail locations and lacked a uniform hiring procedure, resulting in a disjointed process and poor quality of hire. Without the appropriate staffing of technicians, customer care suffered, causing a reduction in the client’s revenue in their retail operations. 

Solution

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

  • Screening & block interview scheduling efficiencies
  • 10,000 hires in the first year of the engagement
  • Reduced employee turnover
  • Hiring diversity
  • Transparent Reporting

A STANDARD HIRING MODEL

The partnership was designed to improve turnover rates for technician and retail positions, create a standardized retail recruitment model and provide consistent OFCCP compliance and standardization.

AN EFFICIENT PROCESS

PeopleScout deployed a time-efficient screening process focused on the quality of the candidate, with a guaranteed response from recruiting teams within 48 hours of application.

HIRING DIVERSITY

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

IN-REGION RECRUITERS

Collaborative relationships between our retail 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.

Results

REDUCED EMPLOYEE TURNOVER

The client’s technician turnover rate has improved by 5% and retail turnover by 6%. 

10,000 HIRES IN FIRST YEAR

PeopleScout hired 10,000 employees in the first year of the engagement.

HIRING DIVERSITY

Hiring diversity improved by 40%, including an increase of 2% for veterans and 6% for female hires.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Leading North American tire brand
  • INDUSTRY
    Consumer Goods
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
Let’s Connect

High-Speed Hiring for Key Professional Roles

Posted on by Kate
High-Speed Hiring for Key Professional Roles

Travel & Leisure Recruitment

High-Speed Hiring for Key Professional Roles

A major international airline faced time-to-fill challenges in key professional roles within the organization including finance, purchasing, legal, IT, technical operations and human resources. PeopleScout partnered with the client to implement a full-cycle, end-to-end RPO program focused on hiring speed and agility to improve time-to-fill metrics for professional hiring across multiple key positions.

44 % reduction in the time between offer acceptance and clear-for-hire
OFCCP compliance standards maintained in the heavily regulated airline industry
OFCCP compliance standards maintained in the heavily regulated airline industry
100 % class fill rates for customer service hires

Scope and Scale

A major international airline faced time-to-fill challenges in key professional roles within the organization including finance, purchasing, legal, IT, technical operations and human resources. PeopleScout partnered with the client to implement a full-cycle, end-to-end RPO program focused on hiring speed and agility to improve time-to-fill metrics for professional hiring across multiple key positions.

PeopleScout’s solution provides additional hiring support for union roles and manages airport frontline hiring at all airport stations, above and below the wing, including conducting in-person interview events, making hiring decisions, onboarding and campus hiring.

Situation

PeopleScout partners with a major international airline to manage the airline’s multifaceted and unique hiring needs. PeopleScout supports the hiring of all professional hires in the U.S. and conducts on-site hiring events that include interviewing, selection and onboarding to meet the client’s hiring requirements in short timeframes.

Solution

STREAMLINED RECRUITMENT PROCESS

PeopleScout’s full lifecycle RPO program streamlines the recruiting process to meet the client’s needs.

FULL-SERVICE EXECUTION

PeopleScout executes each phase of the recruitment process from screening candidates, candidate notification, scheduling and submitting written offers to onboarding new hires.

CAMPUS HIRING PROGRAM

PeopleScout manages the client’s campus hiring program. PeopleScout oversees event coordination, travel arrangements, relationship building and brand positioning to recruit undergraduate and MBA students.

OFCCP COMPLIANT

To help the client remain compliant in the heavily regulated airline industry, PeopleScout maintains OFCCP compliance standards.

PROGRAM DATA ANALYSIS

PeopleScout sends regularly updated status reports and analyses of program data to deliver insights into performance metrics and identify areas for improvement.

Results

Optimized Screening Process

PeopleScout optimized the initial candidate screening process, resulting in improvements in the interview-to-offer ratio, time-to-fill and overall quality of hire.

Reduced Acceptance Time

As a result of PeopleScout’s RPO program, there was a 44% reduction in the time between offer acceptance and clear-for-hire for union frontline positions.

Engaging Onboarding Experience

PeopleScout’s delivery team enhances the client’s candidate experience and provides the company’s new hires with an engaging and thoughtful onboarding experience. This resulted in the client’s Candidate Experience Awards wins from 2016 to 2018.

100% fill rates

PeopleScout delivers 100% class fill rates for customer service hires.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Major international airline
  • INDUSTRY
    Travel & Tourism
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
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

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.

Attitude is the New Experience

Posted on by epadmin

There have been numerous studies on turnover rates in multiple industries, and they all land on a similar conclusion: a high proportion of staff fail within the first 18 months of starting a new job. In fact, one study found that figure to be 46 percent of 20,000 new hires in America. When you look at the reasons why, 89 percent of those who failed did so due to cultural misalignment or attitudinal reasons, rather than technical capability.


To try and buck this trend, I’ll share with you a few tips on why it’s so important to attract and retain the right people, rather than the right skill set and how you can adopt this approach in your organization.


First, you need to have a great culture, which is essential to keeping people in the building. Each company’s culture and mission will be unique, and you need to make sure you have values that you stand by. Secondly – and this is the main area that I’m going to focus on in this article – you need to have a recruitment strategy that is aimed at finding the right people for the organization rather than the right skill set at every opportunity, from graduate roles through to senior management. At our client PHD Media Worldwide (PHD), we’ve focused on hiring people that align with our values of collaboration, courage and curiosity with conviction – and it’s really, really helped!


“Hire for attitude, train for skills” is a phrase that every HR professional has uttered once or heard being uttered from colleagues. However, unfortunately, only a small number of businesses apply it (like, actually apply it) to their recruitment strategy. Whilst a lot of job advertisements will focus on the soft skills and cultural alignment piece, often the interview process can revert to focusing purely on the hard skills and capability a candidate has from day one.


We work in an ever-changing industry, with the constant emergence of new technologies, new software and increasing shift in focus from traditional channels to more sophisticated digital channels. Change takes place now at a faster rate than ever before, and what you knew yesterday might not necessarily prepare for you tomorrow. So, with that in mind, why do some businesses focus on purely trying to tick skills boxes? The candidate who feels fully aligned with their organization’s strategy and beliefs and is a part of its continued success will be more motivated to learn the necessary skills for tomorrow than someone who only has today’s skill set and not the buy-in.


Here is how we can go about finding those right candidates in various levels of the organization:


Graduate Roles


For so long, the media industry, for example, has only considered candidates from a media/advertising/marketing-related field and often opt for interns who have gained first-hand experience working with their particular agency. When interviewing candidates with a specific degree and asking them what they know about a media planning and buying agency, their knowledge levels are comparable with that of any other degree – very little!


A huge amount of the first 12-18 months in a media agency is about learning as much as possible. A very small amount of what you learned in university actually applies to what you are now working on in terms of real briefs with real multi-million-dollar budgets attached. With that mind, at PHD we’ve had a lot of success in opening up our doors to entry-level staff from any degree/non-degree background.


Zac and Tiffany, two great coordinators who joined PHD in the last 12 months, even wrote an article recently on how university prepares you for your first job in media. Notice how throughout the article, it never mentions that it’s the marketing theory they were taught in school or the principles of advertising that has helped them succeed. Instead, it’s the focus on meeting deadlines, presentation ability, working under pressure and as part of a team. These are the skills that you need to succeed in your first job, and when you couple them with the right attitude, you can really learn anything, relatively quickly.


More Senior Roles 


Believe it or not, it’s those same soft skills that apply to the more senior roles that we look to fill. Let’s face it – at one point or another, we have all had to “fake it ‘til we make it” in our careers. A little white lie in an interview, a little oversell of our abilities and BANG, we’ve landed ourselves a gig without a clue of what we’re actually going to do. When faced with this situation, those with a good attitude, flexibility and the ability to learn quickly will be able to adapt and succeed in their roles better than those without these critical skills.


Additionally, no one knows exactly what they are doing on day one. We all have our own systems, processes and ways of doing things. At PHD, we have our proprietary planning tool, SOURCE. Unless you have worked on it before, there is a learning curve for everyone to pick it up, and it’s the pace and ability with which people pick it up that matters, as they would have zero experience in using it before. All companies have their own processes and tools, which they will expect you to learn over time.


Yes, you need to have a fundamental understanding of what you are talking about and the more senior the role, the more of an understanding we expect you to have. But we want to talk to someone about their attitude towards certain situations, learn how they act when everything goes wrong (because it does sometimes) and what they would do in the difficult times and how they bring a team along on the journey with them. Ultimately, someone who ticks the attitude box will get the job, and we will often wait until that person comes along, rather than simply fill a role with a candidate who doesn’t fit.


So, What is Attitude?


Attitude, for me, is a collection of soft skills that you can apply to every job. It’s not necessarily something that someone has been taught (or could be taught) but more an approach to work, an approach to learning and the way someone conducts themselves personally and professionally.


What does one look for when gauging attitude?
  • People who look for solutions to problems rather than people who find problems without resolve.
  • People who raise their hand rather than point their fingers.
  • People who make mistakes and have a sense of humility but then focus on what they can do next time to improve.
  • People who, when times get tough, dig in and rally everyone to achieve the same, rather than openly complain to others.
  • People who genuinely love their job and are interested in joining the organization – this is half the battle, finding someone who wants to be on the same journey as you.
  • People who genuinely seek development/career growth opportunities.

Too often, and it’s so easy to, we get bogged down by the immediate needs of our new hire. It may be replacing someone who has left, or it might be a new role that has popped up because of workload increases. However, it works, every time, to be cautious and focus on hiring the right person for the organization, because the longer-term impact of having the right person will really pay off and the struggle of having to dig a little harder to find them will soon be forgotten.


Read the original article on AdNews.au.

Talking Talent Leadership Profiles: Andrew Wilkinson, Group Managing Director, Europe and Asia Pacific

Posted on by epadmin

There are a lot of new perspectives and British accents around PeopleScout since our acquisition of TMP Holdings LTD (TMP UK) in June 2018. For Andrew Wilkinson, who was the CEO of TMP UK prior to the acquisition, it’s been a whirlwind. He has crisscrossed the globe visiting PeopleScout operations in Chicago, Krakow and Sydney, meeting with PeopleScout clients in the U.S. and Australia, speaking at the Candidate Experience Awards (CandE) Awards in Orlando and HRO Today Forums in Amsterdam and Hong Kong, and attending the PeopleScout NEXT Talent Summits in Chicago and Sydney.

I caught up with Andrew in PeopleScout’s Central London office to get the scoop on PeopleScout’s UK operations, talent advisory practice and his insights after six months in his new role as PeopleScout Executive Leader, Group Managing Director, Europe and Asia Pacific.

How has our acquisition of TMP Holdings LTD changed PeopleScout?

I believe that we significantly expanded PeopleScout’s on-the-ground capabilities and expertise in the UK with an EMEA HQ in London and a highly effective RPO delivery center in Bristol. Since June, we’ve begun to have a lot of collaboration as a global leadership team talking with clients that want to expand their program to new geographies as well as starting new conversations with global prospects.


The deal not only established a European PeopleScout footprint, it also significantly enhanced PeopleScout’s talent advisory capabilities in employer branding, assessment and recruitment marketing. Our RPO model was built on our 25-year legacy in the UK as an award-winning employer brand and recruitment marketing agency and is a huge differentiator. Whilst underpinning our RPO business, we also offer talent advisory services directly to clients to help them tell a compelling story to their target audiences and create a positive candidate experience.

Why are talent advisory services becoming increasingly relevant in today’s market?

With talent shortages in virtually every global market, the candidate is in control. For that reason, helping our clients bring their employer brand to life to give them an unfair advantage in attracting critical talent is very timely. Additionally, there is a growing awareness of the positive and negative impact that employer brand experiences can have on your bottom line.


For instance, one of our clients – a telecom company – studied the cost of having a bad candidate experience and found that candidates that had a negative experience were inclined to change providers. Given their candidate volume, this equated to millions of dollars in potential lost revenue annually. Global research from the CandE Awards aligns with this – showing significant positive and negative revenue correlation with candidate experience.

How does employer brand relate to creating a compelling candidate experience?

Every company has an employer brand – intentional or not. This brand is based on their reputation, how they communicate, what others say about them and the candidate experience that they deliver. As they say, perception is reality.


To that point, having a managed employer brand is critical. For us, that begins with helping our clients understand what they want to achieve and who they really are through insights gathered from current senior leaders, employees, exit interviews and existing corporate materials.


Starting with those insights we begin to identify the themes that allow them to tell their story, one that allows them to “own” a space in their target talent groups’ minds and ultimately draws this talent into their pipeline. This is their employer value proposition (EVP) and we use that as a compass point from which we design their whole employee experience. The EVP defines what you deliver to your employees but also what you expect in return. This last point is critical, in that you don’t want to be a magnet for all talent, you want to be a magnet for talent that will thrive in your organization.


Clearly, this is a balancing act between authenticity and aspiration – you’ve got to deliver from the inside out on your EVP through the entire candidate and employee lifecycle.

How do you help create positive employer brand experiences – whether the candidate gets the job or not?

Creating great employment experiences begins long before a candidate joins an organization. The typical candidate journey has upwards of 25 touch points. These touchpoints inform a candidate’s opinion of your organization and ultimately their decision to join.


When you consider a candidate’s experience as they explore multiple job opportunities, they are sorting through a lot of messages. To stand out, your employer brand message must be compelling and consistent because candidate attention spans continue to decrease for anything but the most compelling engagement tactics.


Our goal for every interaction is to enhance the candidate’s perception of our client’s brand. We’ve done our job when a candidate doesn’t get the job but walks away from the experience thinking “that’s a great company.”

What’s next?

2019 looks like another exciting year. We have now completed the key integration project and I believe that the opportunities for PeopleScout next year are huge as we start to unlock our true global potential. We are already having so many different conversations across geographies as we better link our total capabilities to clients’ needs. We are bringing to the UK the scale and resources of being part of the PeopleScout team which will benefit our existing RPO customers as well as dramatically change our offer to potential new customers.


In addition, for me, that also means supporting Guy Bryant-Fenn, our new Managing Director for Asia Pacific operations, and strengthening our global ties with each region. I am excited to be working together with some amazing talent on the global team to develop synergies across regions and build on our current success to continue to drive growth in Asia Pacific and around the globe. Traveling is back on the agenda with visits to Chicago, Washington D.C., Sydney and India all on the itinerary but not before a ski break to relax!

2018 In Review: PeopleScout Thought Leadership

Posted on by epadmin

Throughout 2018, we’ve written about some of the biggest trends in talent acquisition and workforce management. As we head into 2019, we’re looking back on some of the most important topics of the past year.

RPO, MSP and Total Workforce Solutions

Total Workforce Solutions in Practice
Drivers and Benefits of Total Workforce Solutions
Four MSP Trends to Make your Program More Effective
Hospitality Staffing: RPO and Hospitality, a Perfect Blend
Positive Global Economic Growth and Its Impact on Talent Acquisition
The Value of Globalizing your Recruitment Strategy
A look into the Gig Economy
Contingent Employment Arrangements: The Implications of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Survey
The Contingent Workforce Landscape: Trends and Strategies
Considerations When Sourcing Talent Globally
Expanding the Talent Landscape by Recruiting Virtual Employees
How the Skills of the Future will Impact Enterprise Recruitment Teams
How to Create a Workforce Equipped with the Skills of the Future
Wages and Recruitment: The Pressure is Building
Prospects for the Class of 2018
Changing Workforce Demographics: Aging Talent

Candidate Experience

How to Improve Your Candidate Experience
How to Create and Provide a Positive Candidate Experience
Four Factors Impacting the Way Employers Interact with Candidates
How (And Why) to Effectively Recruit Recent Graduates
Removing Barriers to Employment for the Long-Term Unemployed
Through the Grapevine: How to Create and Manage an Employee Referral Program
Rethinking Candidate Generation Strategies
Employee Retention: Combating Turnover
Ghosting in the Workplace
Strategies for Building an Effective Talent Community
The Long-Term Unemployed: Your Untapped Talent Pool

Healthcare HR

Healthcare Workforce and Recruiting Trends to Watch
Six Things to Expect from your Prospective Healthcare RPO Partner
Paging All Doctors: Effective Physician Recruiting Strategies and Tactics
Rural Healthcare: How to Recruit and Attract Clinical Talent in Rural Areas
How to Use Pre-Employment Assessments and Testing in Healthcare Recruiting
Leveraging Recruitment Marketing to Attract Healthcare Talent
Healthcare HR Technology To-Do List
Healthcare Recruiters: How Technology is Improving Healthcare Recruiting
How To: Sourcing Healthcare Workers
Healthcare Recruiting Lexicon
Medical Staffing: How to Engage and Retain Healthcare Workers
Recruiting a Traveling Nurse: What You Need to Know
Healthcare Workforce Planning: What You Need to Know
Finding the Right RPO Provider for Your Healthcare Staffing Needs
Six Tips for Healthcare Recruiting
Talking Talent Podcast: Navigating the Talent Acquisition Challenges of a Major Hospital Expansion
Talking Talent Podcast: How HR Technology Can Combat Staffing Shortages in Healthcare
Talking Talent Podcast: Addressing the Workforce Gap in Nursing
Talking Talent Podcast: How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition
Ebook: How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition
Ebook: Healthcare Recruiting Lexicon

Technology

Reducing Unconscious Bias with AI
How to Leverage Workforce Analytics in Workforce Planning
Virtual Reality: Enhancing the Candidate Experience
Workforce Planning: Leveraging Workforce Analytics for Deeper Insights
How Robotic Process Automation is Reshaping Recruiting
Predictive Analytics: A Powerful Talent Acquisition Tool
How to Use Chatbots to Improve Recruiting
Talking Talent Podcast: Using Robotic Process Automation to Streamline Recruiting Processes
Talking Talent Podcast: Using Predictive Analytics to Hire Best Talent Faster
Talking Talent Podcast: How HR Technology Can Combat Staffing Shortages in Healthcare
Ebook: Using Chatbots to Improve Recruiting

Talking Talent with PeopleScout, our Podcast

How Many Requisitions Should a Recruiter Carry?
How Employers Can Learn to Translate Military Resumes and Hire More Veterans
Addressing the Workforce Gap in Nursing
How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition
Using Robotic Process Automation to Streamline Recruiting Processes
Using Predictive Analytics to Hire Best Talent Faster
Navigating the Talent Acquisition Challenges of a Major Hospital Expansion
How HR Technology Can Combat Staffing Shortages in Healthcare

Military and Veteran Hiring

Military Spouses: How to Hire the Overlooked Talent Pool
Building a Veteran Onboarding Program
Talking Talent Podcast: How Employers Can Learn to Translate Military Resumes and Hire More Veterans
Ebook: Best Practices for Hiring Veterans

Ebooks and Whitepapers

Best Practices for Hiring Veterans
How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition
Using Chatbots to Improve Recruiting

Compliance Corner

Washington State’s Paid Medical and Family Leave Program
Sexual Harassment
Department of Labor Office of Compliance Initiatives
California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018
Ban the Box Update
Arbitration Agreements
Worker Classification in the Gig Economy
Salary History Update
CAN-SPAM, CASL and More
GDPR
HR Compliance Trends for 2018

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.

Four Factors Impacting the Way Employers Interact with Candidates

Posted on by epadmin

Across the globe, employers and candidates live in an accelerating state of change. Adapting is difficult for both workers and employers, but the process of changing strategies as an organization is more complicated. There are legacy systems in place – especially for large organizations – and traditions can become entrenched. Remaining nimble is a challenge. For that reason, it is important to watch the employment landscape and respond with smart and targeted strategies.

In this article, we will explore four factors driving changes in the way that employers interact with job candidates: the digital transformation, current global economic conditions, shifting trust and privacy expectations, and the changing landscape of job boards.

1. The Digital Transformation

In a study by Gartner, 80 percent of executives reported that they have a digital initiative underway and 69 percent believe that they need to become significantly more digital to remain competitive.

According to McKinsey, 51 percent of job activities can be automated, but fewer than 5 percent of jobs are can be completely replaced by machines. The report also determined that the pace of change is so rapid, that by 2030 as much as 14 percent of the global workforce could need to change occupational categories.

Employers need to respond by finding candidates who can lead through change and learn and adapt – rather than candidates who only excel at a job as it exists today. This is becoming even more difficult as top candidates are in high demand due to record-low unemployment rates in many major global economies.

Fast Company reports that in May 2018 employers posted 314,000 tech job openings and only filled 8,700 of them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also projects employment of software developers to grow 24 percent through 2026, faster than the average for all other occupations.

What does this mean?

Employers need to be able to attract and identify the candidates of the future – the people who have the skills and mindset needed to drive success into the future. That means developing an employer value proposition, or EVP, and an employer brand platform that is unique, authentic yet aspirational, and dynamic, sharing your EVP with your target audience, using innovative, data-driven strategies to attract candidates for the future and assessing candidates to identify those with a growth mindset.

2. Global Economic Conditions

In the decade since the start of the global economic downturn, many countries have recovered and now have competitive, candidate-driven markets for talent.

In the U.S., the unemployment rate is down to 3.7 percent. In the UK, it is down to 4.0 percent. There are strong employment numbers around the world. In a competitive market, employers need to be proactive about attracting both active and passive candidates.

Additionally, people are starting to feel more comfortable leaving their jobs, which is both an opportunity and a challenge for employers. It means that you have an opportunity to bring in strong candidates, but it also means that some of your strongest employees could leave for greener pastures.

With all of the press coverage about the state of the global economy, in-demand candidates will also recognize that the hiring landscape has changed. This, coupled with the potential for multiple offers, means that top candidates will have higher expectations – not only in regard to salary but also the purpose, mission and culture of the employer they choose.

What does this mean?

Employers around the globe should look for the best talent and use innovative assessment techniques to identify those who derive purpose from the work done by the organization and who are passionate about the mission. Employers should also ensure their offers and workplace culture lives up to and exceeds the expectations of the best candidates, and they should invest more in retaining top talent.

3. Shifting Trust and Privacy

Candidates are growing more cautious about which organizations they trust and who can have access to their personal data. Candidates in the U.S. and Europe have been exposed to political disinformation campaigns that left many reevaluating their sources of information. Additionally, privacy issues at Facebook have motivated many candidates to increase their social media privacy settings.

As a result, research shows that many people have grown to distrust traditional advertising from brands. Instead, more people are relying on recommendations from friends and relatives, according to Nielson. Forbes reports candidates are asking more about reviews on Glassdoor and issues that they read about online like turnover rates and layoffs. Consumers are also taking steps to avoid ads, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that 80 percent of adults in America use at least one ad blocking method.

While most candidates have some information available online for employers to find, some of the most tech-savvy are cutting back. According to Pew Research, 74 percent of American Facebook users have either taken a break from the site, adjusted their privacy settings or deleted the app from their phone. Another survey found that half of consumers in the UK don’t trust anyone with their personal information.

Beyond reactions from candidates, employers also face increasing regulations. The GDPR, or EU General Data Protection Regulation, took effect in May 2018. It requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. TechRepublic reports that 61 percent of compliance professionals say they’re concerned that the reduced data availability and new requirements of GDPR could impact future sourcing and recruiting. In the U.S., California recently passed the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. These laws are popular with voters, and employers should expect privacy concerns to be a continuing issue.

Despite these issues, Forbes reports that HR teams still have more data now than ever before. Employers benefit from the growing amount of data available, but they should keep in mind its limitations.

What does this mean?

Employers should work to build an authentic EVP and employer brand platform to gain trust and buy-in from candidates. This should include the development of brand ambassadors who can reach candidates who are skeptical of traditional information channels. By developing an employer brand platform that takes advantage of peer-to-peer networking, employers can break through the walls put up by ad-blocking software and ad-skeptical candidates. The authenticity of the message is key to appearing more trustworthy.

4. The Changing Role of Job Boards

The role of job boards is also changing rapidly. Google Jobs makes 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. According to Forbes, the second page of Google search results accounts for only 6 percent of all website clicks. This means that to ensure your target audience can find your available positions, you must have job descriptions optimized for search.

Inc. reports that Google’s preference for relevant text- and video-based content will also apply to Google Jobs results. Employers need to be SEO-savvy to get postings in front of candidates. Additionally, many candidates now search for jobs using the same search engines that supply information like Glassdoor reviews and news stories about your organization.

Job boards and aggregators have also changed in response to Google Jobs. Candidates no longer need to search a variety of job boards to find postings that match their skills. Because of this, for our UK client base, we are already seeing a decreased return on investment from job boards which has decreased our own spending.

What does this mean?

Employers need to be able to respond quickly as the job board environment changes. Google Jobs has only been available in the U.S. since 2017, and it was only introduced in the UK in 2018. This means there are still more changes to come. Employers should constantly evaluate which job boards bring in the most high-quality candidates in a cost-effective way and consistently adjust their strategy.

Where to Go from Here

In response to this rapid change, these four factors should be seen as challenges and opportunities, not barriers to success. Employers can use strategies like employer branding, new ways of generating candidates and assessments built for the future to set themselves apart.