Category: Talent Technology

Managing Candidate Volumes During the Great Rehire

Posted on by nfuqua

As employers continue their recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, many face the same two challenges: Applications are up and talent acquisition teams are lean, which leaves a smaller team to sift through mountains of job applications.

At the same time, the pressure to find and hire the best candidate is high. After all, top talent can help speed a recovery. And, while the hiring process needs to be fast, it can’t leave out top candidates. So, let’s examine strategies for managing high candidate volumes that can help employers stand out during the Great Rehire.

HR Outsourcing

Challenge: Our organization needs to scale quickly to make a large number of hires, but our team doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle the volume.

One key pillar of value for HR outsourcing solutions – like RPO; on-demand or project based RPO; or Total Workforce Solutions – is the ability to scale seamlessly as hiring demands shift. Conversely, in an internal talent acquisition team, it can be difficult – if not impossible – to scale up quickly to handle a higher number of hires and then scale back down when hiring volumes shrink. Consequently, many organizations find themselves initially making a large volume of hires to staff up new locations or during a peak season, but then hiring volumes return to normal.

What’s more, businesses in industries hard hit by COVID-19 will see especially high numbers as the economy continues to recover. For these organizations, RPO providers – specifically, on-demand or project RPO solutions – can help fill the gaps by providing focused support based on the needs of individual organizations.

For instance, at PeopleScout, we bring expertise and insights from across our client base, as well as the people needed to handle hiring spikes. Our industry-specialized flex team of recruiters can be activated on short notice, and our global delivery centers provide 24/7 support and recruiting capabilities that enable a faster recruitment process.

An RPO provider can also provide broader solutions – like bringing technology expertise to add automation or virtual interviewing solutions; or providing talent advisory services to improve employer branding, assessments or job posting strategies.

Technology Solutions

Challenge: Our team is too bogged down in repetitive work; the process of screening candidates and scheduling interviews takes too much of our recruiters’ time.

COVID-19 has exposed technology gaps for many employers. In the early days, many scrambled to implement virtual hiring solutions so that they could keep their talent acquisition functions moving. Now, as the pandemic passes the one-year mark, employers face a different challenge: Is their technology built for scale?

When facing high candidate volumes, recruiters can easily get bogged down in repetitive administrative tasks. For example, they might get caught in a game of phone tag trying to schedule interviews; answering simple questions from candidates; sending emails to keep their talent communities warm; and sourcing candidates for hard-to-find skillsets. As a result, that leaves little time for higher-value activities, like communicating with top candidates.

However, robotic process automation (RPA) can lift some of the load. This technology utilizes bots to replicate human actions for time-consuming, but straightforward administrative tasks. And, while it can be used to screen résumés, it can also go far beyond that.

For example, RPA can be used to deploy chatbots to answer simple questions from candidates 24 hours a day. A chatbot can also be used in automated candidate screenings to ask questions about a candidate’s skills, education and experience – either online or via text. Best of all, in addition to saving time for the recruiter, this technology also improves the candidate experience by allowing them to get answers more quickly and feel as though they’re driving the recruitment process forward.

RPA can also be used to automate emails, social media posts and other employer branding campaigns. Right now, many organizations are building candidate pipelines and keeping talent communities warm as they prepare to make hires. In this way, RPA can be used to send messages to these communities – keeping candidates engaged and keeping your company top of mind.

Interview scheduling tools can also prove to be a significant time-saver for recruiters. As an example, with Affinix – PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology – recruiters can avoid the back-and-forth of scheduling interviews with candidates by automating the process instead. Specifically, a recruiter can sync their calendar with the tool and provide candidates with a link to schedule the interview at a time that works best for them.

These tools can then be combined into a virtual solution that spans from recruitment marketing tools all the way through onboarding. And, as the recovery continues, many employers are finding lasting benefits from adopting these strategies.

Candidate Generation & Assessment Strategies

Challenge: We’re seeing high applicant volumes, but we want to make sure the people we hire are interested in the role for the long-term; we’re worried about high turnover as the economy improves.

As employers hire in 2021, they face a mountain of applications. This includes both candidates who are excited about the role and see it as a long-term step in their careers, as well as candidates who are looking for the role now, but don’t necessarily want to stay in the role or at the organization for the long haul. But, how do you differentiate between the two?

One option is to adjust your candidate generation and assessment strategies to attract and hire the employees with the passion, purpose, and mindset that best match for the organization and the role. For instance, to showcase an honest and authentic employer brand, write honest and authentic job postings. By tailoring your employer brand and job postings to attract only candidates who are truly qualified and interested in the role, you’ll save recruiter time by eliminating the résumés of candidates who aren’t qualified or aren’t excited about the role.

As an example, one PeopleScout client previously wrote job descriptions with an overly positive view of their open positions – without mentioning the more challenging elements. And, although they received a high number of applicants, as those applicants moved through the process, many realized that they didn’t want the job. Meanwhile, others accepted the job, but the turnover rate was high, which was expensive and wasted time for both the recruiter and the hiring manager.

In response, PeopleScout worked with the client to make the job postings more realistic about the challenges, in addition to providing a real preview of what the job would look like. In the end, the client received fewer applicants, but turnover in the role dropped significantly. The client also saved hundreds of hours in hiring manager and recruiter time.

Employers can also adjust their assessment process to identify candidates who can succeed and grow in the role by evaluating their passion, purpose and mindset. This means assessing candidates to find out if the candidate has the enthusiasm for the work; finds purpose in the role and at the organization; and has the right mindset to grow and learn.

Bringing It Together

Combining these strategies in the right way for your organization can help manage the high candidate volumes we expect to continue during the economic recovery from COVID-19. Furthermore, many of these tools and strategies will continue to show their value when unemployment is low. RPO providers and on-demand or project-based RPO can help manage yearly hiring spikes; technology tools will continue to free up recruiter time; and job posting and assessment strategies that guarantee the right cultural fit will continue to result in better talent and higher-performing teams. And, for talent leaders in 2021, solutions that deliver immediate results and lasting benefits will drive success.

Workforce Recovery Strategy: Total Workforce Solutions & the Great Rehire

Posted on by edyson

Human capital is both the most important asset and the single largest operating expense for most organizations. It’s also a constant concern for talent leaders who fear that they don’t have – or can’t acquire – the right mix of top-tier talent.

What’s more, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused employers to increasingly turn to a mix of contingent and permanent labor.

That’s because this allows them to expand their talent base quickly, provides greater cost savings and delivers a more flexible talent acquisition strategies for navigating the Great Rehire.

However, talent acquisition strategies have different meanings depending on whether you’re a procurement professional, talent acquisition specialist or business stakeholder.

These disparate points of view stem from the fact that organizations have largely leveraged distinct talent strategies, systems and processes for different classifications of workers, with each worker classification existing in its own talent silo.

So, how can organizations overcome the complexities of their talent management program to recruit the right mix of contingent and permanent hires they need during the Great Rehire and post-COVID-19 recovery?

In this article, we’ll explore how Total Workforce Solutions (TWS) as a talent acquisition strategy can help your organization: streamline the talent acquisition process for all labor categories, provide greater workforce visibility, improve talent flexibility and drive cost savings.

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Data and the Great Rehire: Using Analytics to Power Your Recovery

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What is a Total Workforce Solution?

Total Workforce Solutions provide a centralized view and model for obtaining necessary talent across an organization – both full-time employees and contingent workers (including temporary workers, independent contractors, freelancers and statement of work [SOW] providers).

With a Total Workforce Solution, organizations can improve value and compliance, as well as reduce risk with full-cycle, scalable RPO and MSP programs, or select specific services under each offering to meet specific talent acquisition process needs.

Integrating RPO and MSP talent management into one program also provides organizations with a competitive edge when it comes to understanding their talent needs and their ability to fulfill them.

The Case for TWS as a Talent Acquisition Strategy During the Recovery 

talent acquisition strategies

COVID-19 has altered the calculus for hiring contingent workers, as well as laying off permanent employees.

For example, in the United States, during the months in which the government paid additional unemployment benefits, some organizations hiring for low-skill, blue-collar jobs found that it was more challenging to find talent at the right cost because unemployment benefits could put more money in candidates’ pockets than the job opportunity.

These factors may also be compounded by the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 going forward, which is forcing many organizations to recalibrate their labor management.

And, with less certainty of future demand, employers are less likely to hire permanent positions; so, they may use contingent and contract workers instead to meet their current labor needs.

Therefore, the case for TWS as a COVID-19 talent acquisition strategy is built upon its ability to view your talent program holistically – rather than by its individual components – which, in turn, provides the following benefits.

Efficiencies Through Standardized Processes

A well-executed TWS program unifies and improves the entire chain of previously disjointed hiring practices for permanent and non-permanent workers alike.

For instance, a TWS provider works with procurement, hiring managers, recruiting teams and stakeholders to piece together a holistic view of your entire talent program.

Then, the information gleaned from exploring your talent ecosystem better enables the TWS provider to design standardized processes for everything from employer branding to posting jobs, interviewing, screening, verifying and onboarding.

Furthermore, the centrally managed talent program designed by a TWS provider concentrates knowledge of talent acquisition strategy, practices and business requirements in one place.

This allows the TWS partner to serve as a dedicated adviser on all sourcing and hiring matters, as well as offer better guidance on standardization and quality practices across the board.

Greater Compliance

When an organization begins to bolster its contingent workforce, it opens itself up to increased compliance and liability risks associated with non-permanent employees.

The most common risks include worker credentialing, worker misclassification, co-employment issues, unemployment claims and workers’ compensation claims.

Without a doubt, avoiding costly compliance violations is essential to recovery as the economic uncertainty from the pandemic continues. 

However, TWS providers are experienced in tackling these compliance issues.

Specifically, TWS providers have proven compliance procedures for independent contractor qualification, worker classification, exempt versus non-exempt policies, Statement of Work management and more.

As a result, organizations that enlist a TWS partner gain instant access to these resources and can better navigate the complex – and often difficult to manage – compliance landscape across multiple geographies.

Improved Analytics & Visibility

employee recruitment strategies

Meanwhile, TWS partners with the right technology can also consolidate your talent tools – such as applicant tracking systems, candidate relationship management systems and vendor management systems – into one view. Integrating these tools into one solution provides views into internally available talent and recruiting needs, as well as the efficiency of hiring and sourcing processes.

Likewise, predictive analytics should be a part of any TWS program.

This technology can process data about time-to-fill, cost-to-fill, quality of hire and more to determine whether the best talent for a role wants to work full-time or as a contingent worker, as well as finding talent and reaching those people.

Similarly, predictive analytics can also provide an early warning system to alert organizations that they may have issues finding a certain type of talent in a certain location.

This is especially valuable for organizations that are short-staffed due to business disruptions brought on by the pandemic.

Better Workforce Planning & Demand Management : Finding Talent

Total Workforce Solutions also drive financial advantages – like cost savings from better workforce utilization, improved demand management, and lower service and vendor management costs – than previously decentralized programs.

Strategic benefits include increased access to global expertise; cross-trained and fully integrated implementation teams; and insights and advice across your entire talent spectrum.

And, because Total Workforce Solutions consolidate permanent and contingent talent pools into one program, organizations are better able to source the right talent in any situation.

For example, a manufacturing company may need data specialists to pinpoint emerging markets.

In this case, a Total Workforce Solutions provider can help with finding talent– as well as determine if the role is best suited for an FTE, temporary workers, or project-based independent contractor or SOW provider.

Employer Branding

When permanent and contingent labor are managed under one program, it’s easier for organizations to portray a cohesive employer brand to all labor categories.

Now, more than ever, this is essential as candidates of all labor types want to know how organizations are handling workplace safety; if employers offer remote work options; and how the overall pandemic response has been.

Plus, a total talent program can help you retain a competitive edge by communicating your employer brand to candidates; improve candidate engagement; and increase brand recognition and reach among in-demand talent.

Strategic Talent Acquisition Brings Greater Workforce Flexibility

TWS providers can also help your organizations adjust and adapt – not only to current changes, but also to unforeseen changes in the future.

COVID-19 has proven that this additional flexibility is crucial as pandemic-related work stoppages and interruptions can be better managed for greater business continuity. 

Moving from decentralized talent acquisition strategies – with siloed decision-making and a lack of visibility across employees and non-employees – to a holistic view of the entire talent spectrum will also allow you to be more flexible and adaptable.

Then, you can engage the talent you need for any role within your organization and decide whether full-time, contingent, freelance, contractor, remote or on-site employees are the best options to get the work done. 

TWS & Talent Acquisition Strategies for Evolving Workforce Dynamics

In response to the pandemic, the global workforce saw an incredible surge in remote work as organizations’ permanent and non-permanent employees looked for safer alternative work arrangements.

However, even prior to the pandemic, full-time and contract employees were already embracing flexible work options that allowed them to work remotely, as opposed to on-site. Now, it’s unlikely this trend will subside as more workers are used to these arrangements.

Meanwhile, in the shuffle of layoffs, reorganizations and remote work following the pandemic, both well-being and inclusivity became priorities.

Stress about health and job security – along with potential 24-hour work cycles due to remote arrangements – forced organizations to become more intentional about the well-being of their workforce.

Consequently, the availability of mental health resources; flexibility for family and childcare; and a focus on communication are now widely practiced strategies for maintaining engagement and productivity across all worker categories.

To that end, organizations now need to ensure that isolated workers don’t fall through the cracks in a physically isolated virtual work environment.

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IMPROVING DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN THE WORKPLACE

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At the same time, a widespread social and cultural shift toward diversity and social justice has compelled organizations to become more active in building inclusion in the workforce and in establishing a presence in the community.

A TWS partner can assist your organization in meeting these new and overdue shifts in the workplace by: deploying strategic talent acquisition technology to help reduce unconscious bias in hiring; communicating with and engaging all portions of your workforce; and consulting on employer branding to ensure your organization connects with the evolving needs of workers.

TWS represents the next wave of progression in the world of work. In the pandemic talent landscape, it’s not just workers who must be agile and adaptive to stay competitive.

Moving forward, merging permanent and contingent talent strategies will become a priority as more organizations begin to consolidate processes to better compete for scarce workers.

From total talent visibility to the optimization of total labor spend, the multifaceted effect of a Total Workforce Solution program is a powerful concept that represents the future of talent acquisition strategies and process post-COVID-19.

Women in Manufacturing

Posted on by suhlarik
Women in Manufacturing

Women in Manufacturing

A leading manufacturer turned to PeopleScout for a unique, technology-powered candidate attraction campaign to increase women in their workforce.

A PeopleScout manufacturing client operates in an industry that has historically been male-dominated, but the client wants to change that perception. The manufacturer partnered with PeopleScout with the goal of increasing the number of female applicants and hires.

PeopleScout worked with the client to develop the Women in Manufacturing campaign. PeopleScout interviewed nearly 20 women who work in roles across the company and who love their jobs. Using this information, PeopleScout built out candidate personas to target women interested in the industry, and created a campaign featuring real women who work for the client.

Using Affinix®, we built a dedicated landing page and talent community for female candidates. On International Women’s Day, the four-week campaign, Women in Manufacturing, launched to showcase the woman-friendly, inclusive culture at the company. The campaign features employee spotlights, videos and stories to showcase how women are integrated into the culture of the company and integral to the company’s success.

The campaign features profiles of women who work in a range of manufacturing positions.
Employee profiles feature advice and insights for female job candidates.
The customized, targeted landing page was created with Affinix. 
The campaign is featured on the company’s social media accounts.

“To make a lasting change, you need to consider both your stakeholders and the sustainability of your effort. Throughout the process of brainstorming, designing, and executing our Women in Manufacturing recruiting campaign, the team has balanced the technological, brand consistency, and tactical challenges to produce a thoughtful program of materials to support us. Through rapid, data-based decision making, they have quickly adapted to the fluid needs on an ongoing end-to-end recruiting campaign.”

– Matt W.

Director – HR Strategy, Analytics, & Talent Acquisition

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Manufacturer
  • INDUSTRY
    Manufacturing & Industrial
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory, Affinix
Let’s Connect

Talking Talent Leadership Profile: Anna Turner, SHRM-CP, PHR

Posted on by nfuqua

In her role as PeopleScout’s Vice President of Product, Anna Turner isn’t technically sitting in the seat of an HR leader – but you wouldn’t know it. With a long list of human resources certifications, a career that started in recruiting and experience in leadership at multiple HR technology companies – her résumé is a successful marriage of HR and technology.

Operating with the philosophy that innovation is driven through teamwork, Anna leads the vision, strategy, and roadmap for PeopleScout’s product and service portfolio. We spoke with her from her home in Charleston, S.C., to learn what she expects out of HR technology in 2021.

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IMPROVING DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN THE WORKPLACE

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What is the role of technology in solving the talent acquisition challenges of 2021?

One of the biggest challenges for employers is that things are moving faster in this digital world, and that has an impact on candidate experience. Our expectations as consumers have changed drastically over the past few years. We expect things to be personalized; we expect things to be transparent; and we expect things to be on-demand.

I can pick up my cell phone right now and have groceries delivered to my house in time for dinner. I can see how many stops the delivery driver needs to make before arriving at my house. Now, employers face increasing pressure to have a candidate experience that matches those consumer expectations. We need to bring the right technology to create that experience.

One way we’ve seen the candidate experience transform over the past year is the accelerated use of virtual interviewing solutions, like on-demand or live video interviews. How will that continue to influence the candidate experience going forward?

Before the pandemic, many employers were already focused on digitization. Now, that’s been put on fast forward. Within just a matter of weeks, a virtual process became a necessity – and that’s not going to change.

In this market for talent, employers need a virtual process that’s not only fast, but also has a really strong candidate experience. More people are working remotely than ever, which means employers aren’t facing the typical geographic boundaries for sourcing talent. It also means that candidates have more options. Once those constraints are gone, you transform both the way you compete for talent and the strategies you need to implement to bring in that talent.

Over the past year, we’ve all seen our relationships with technology get a lot tighter. We’re using new tools in almost every aspect of our lives. How will this deeper relationship affect talent acquisition?

I think it impacts both candidates and employers in different ways. On the candidate side, it reinforces those expectations for a consumer-like candidate experience. They want the transparency. Going back to the grocery delivery example, I can track the delivery driver on GPS, but many candidates don’t understand where they stand after they submit an application and are frustrated by the ‘black hole’ of the recruiting process. Are they still being considered? If so, when will they hear back?

Another way it has impacted candidates is their openness to trying new technology. As an example, if you look back a year ago, my mom had never even been on a Zoom call. Now, she’s an expert. That’s happening across all types of workers, and it means that candidates will respond more positively to new hiring technology solutions.

For employers, we’re seeing this deepened relationship with technology accelerate their embrace of new solutions. In a way, employers have been forced to try new solutions. But now, they’ve seen how those solutions can speed up and improve their processes. The biggest opportunity to expand on that will be around insights and data. With all of this technology, you have increased visibility into your process. You can start to see friction points and opportunities to improve the candidate experience. These insights are one of the exciting things that will definitely carry on from leveraging more and more technology as a result of what we’ve been through over the last year.

There’s a lot of hope for 2021. We’ve heard it called “The Great Rehire,” and we know that employers will need to start bringing on more workers. However, many talent acquisition teams are still very lean. How does technology help solve that issue?

Each employer is going to have a different plan and a different story, but we are seeing employers start to get ready. One of the most interesting things that employers can do is to look at their current systems – whether it’s their current ATS or CRM – to see who they have in their network and how they can have a talent pool ready when it is time to make hires. That means finding ways to amplify your employer value proposition, engage talent in your network and keep talent warm.

Once employers are ready to start making those hires, they can leverage technology as part of the recruiting and hiring process. But, right now, I think it’s most important for employers to focus on how they can nurture talent to make the eventual hiring process easier.

We’ve talked a lot about challenges. What would you say are the biggest opportunities for talent leaders in 2021?

I think there are three buckets. One I mentioned earlier, and that’s insights through data. There’s a huge opportunity to become more data-driven, and we’ve been talking about it for years in HR. The challenge has always been tying together all the disparate systems. We’re moving into a realm now where technology partners are able to bridge those gaps and make that happen.

The next one is diversity and inclusion. This is obviously a huge area of importance. We know that, as we have more diverse teams, we will offer better services, deliver better products, come up with better ideas and design better solutions. Now, we can use data to revisit messaging, employer branding, hiring campaigns and more to ensure that they appeal to the diverse candidates that employers want to hire.

The final area is one we’ve talked about a lot, and that’s candidate experience. How do we evolve the experience of our processes to create a ‘wow’ experience for candidates? Does the recruiting process meet candidates where they are – for example, in a mobile-friendly way? Does every candidate know where they stand? For example, the candidates you aren’t moving forward receiving communication is a huge step forward for closing the loop and providing transparency. There are big opportunities in 2021 for employers that can provide a candidate-first experience.

Building a Tech-Enabled Internal Mobility Platform for a Government Agency

Posted on by jpatel
Building a Tech-Enabled Internal Mobility Platform for a Government Agency

Government Talent Solutions

Building a Tech-Enabled Internal Mobility Platform for a Government Agency

This government agency in Australia partnered with PeopleScout to develop and launch a technology platform that facilitates internal mobility for government workers.

Employees manage their profiles showcasing employee demographics, education, work history, skills and competencies 
Employees manage their profiles showcasing employee demographics, education, work history, skills and competencies 
AI technology matches candidates to open opportunities across the government and provides alerts to candidates on open job opportunities
AI technology matches candidates to open opportunities across the government and provides alerts to candidates on open job opportunities
Employee engagement increased, while the use of expensive contingent labor resources went down 
Employee engagement increased, while the use of expensive contingent labor resources went down 

Situation  

As a result of COVID-19, the client was operating with a lean workforce and limited resources. They required a solution that allowed them to leverage the skills and competencies of their existing workforce so they could save the time, cost and resources it takes to access the external candidate market. 

They partnered with PeopleScout to develop and launch a platform which facilitates internal mobility for workers who are potentially impacted by the economic downturn due to COVID-19 or looking to move within their department or other government agencies. This allowed the client to engage their workforce through enhanced workforce mobility, skills development and career opportunities within the department and across the government. 

Solution

PeopleScout created an internal mobility platform using our proprietary talent technology, Affinix®, to give the client insight into the scope and experience of their internal talent. By utilizing candidate profiles, hiring managers are not only able to see employee demographics, education and work history, but also specific skills and competencies.  

When an employee creates their profile, they have the opportunity to rate their own competencies and leaders within the organization can rate and leave comments about their performance as well. This gives recruiters a strong sense of what other positions may be a good fit for internal employees, based on hard and soft skills—such as strong cross-functional collaboration abilities. 

PeopleScout’s Affinix Internal Mobility platform gives the client a holistic view of candidates, and when a requisition is posted within the platform, Affinix automatically looks for employees who may be a good fit and proactively recommends candidates based on their profile. 

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Australian government agency
  • INDUSTRY
    Government & Public Sector
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Affinix
Let’s Connect

Sourcing Candidates in 2021

Posted on by edyson

Sourcing candidates—even in the best of times—can be quite a daunting task. Sourcers and recruiters can spend weeks and sometimes months searching for the perfect candidate for a job opening and sometimes the person you want unfortunately may not exist. As the job market quickly recovers and candidates are now considering a move, organizations need to look to new and innovative ways to source, recruit and hire talent.

While you cannot wish the perfect candidates into existence or fast-forward past the pandemic, there are a number of candidate sourcing strategies you can deploy to help ensure that you have a quality talent pool at your fingertips as soon as you are ready to hire. In this article, we outline tips and strategies for sourcing candidates in 2021 that will help you improve your talent sourcing.

Sourcing Candidates Begins with Your Employer Brand

Your employer brand could be the difference between a candidate responding to your strategic sourcing and outreach or ignoring it. Candidates may not respond to your outreach messaging if they think poorly of your employer brand, so make sure you communicate your employer value proposition.

To improve your sourcing techniques and overall recruiting success, here are some tips on both repairing and building a better employer brand:

Respond to Reviews

Regularly check review sites like Glassdoor and respond to the feedback to let people know you appreciate their input and will take action where it’s necessary. This will generate goodwill, and help your employees feel engaged and heard.

Tell your Story

Engaging your employees in storytelling, encouraging them to personalize their LinkedIn profiles, starting a company blog, being active in the press and speaking at conferences are just a few of the ways employers can spread awareness about their brand.

Partner with your Marketing Team

The strategies and methods needed to help spread your employer brand to job seekers are similar to the ones marketing is using to promote your organization’s brand. Partner closely with your marketing team on both employer-branded content creation and distribution channels. 

Start Sourcing Candidates for Jobs Before You Are Ready

candidate sourcing

Sourcing candidates for jobs takes time, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. To get ahead of the candidate sourcing curve, start sourcing talent even if you do not have open positions. Typically, sourcing goes like this: “I have X job to fill, I’m going to source people for X job.” But smarter sourcers get even more proactive with their sourcing efforts and get ahead on roles they will need to hire for in the future.

First, take a look at your business growth plans. Then, build a corresponding workforce hiring strategy that gives you insight into when hires need to be made across the year to sustain your organization’s goals.

Once you have a picture of which teams need to grow, you can work with department leaders and HR to identify the level and skillsets required. Aggregate those skills and what you know about your company and team culture so you can begin to strategic sourcing for specific profiles candidates in a focused and on-ongoing way.   

Social Sourcing Tools and Platforms

sourcing tools

If you want to find and connect with the best talent, you should create a comprehensive social media sourcing strategy.

Social media channels provide strategic sourcing professionals an opportunity to share targeted job content and details about their organization, mission statements and hiring process to keep candidates warm, and better source talent.

Social talent sourcing tools and technology like PeopleScout’s Affinix technology solution help sourcing specialists and recruiters narrow their search and identify qualified candidates quicker. Here are some social media tools and platforms that will streamline your sourcing:

  • LinkedIn with 760 million users has been the social network of choice for sourcers and recruiters alike and for good reason, as professionals share their career history, advertise accomplishments and interact with industry experts. A LinkedIn Recruiter license lets you search profiles and send personal messages (InMails) to potential candidates, making LinkedIn an essential sourcing tool.
  • With 2.8 billion users, everyone is on Facebook, making every user a potential candidate. What’s more, users frequently research potential employers, look for job opportunities and apply for jobs through Facebook. Consider using paid job ads and Facebook groups to help you source candidates
  • Twitter has 330 million users and offers various tools, like search, lists and chat that help recruiters source candidates. Get the most out of your sourcing efforts by being active on Twitter. Engage in Twitter discussions, advertise conferences you sponsor and follow industry-related hashtags to find the talent you are looking for.

While the most popular platforms for social sourcing are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, if you want to expand your sourcing efforts to non-traditional social channels, consider the following social platforms:

  • Slack is a platform that allows group communications between professionals with similar interests. You can use Slack to source candidates by joining channels relevant to the job candidates you are looking to source in a more casual setting.
  • Meetup is a website that facilitates meetings and groups for people with common interests.
  • Reddit is an online community forum where members (Redditors) discuss a range of topics and interests. Reddit is not a traditional sourcing channel, but Reddit’s communities (called subreddits) are great places to post job ads and engage with potential candidates, especially in the professional communities you are searching for talent in.

Creative Ways For Sourcing Candidates: Leverage Your Employees’ Networks

sourcing strategies

According to LinkedIn, organizations can expand their talent pool by 10 times by recruiting through their employees’ networks. Run sourcing sessions and employee referral programs with your team to see if anyone in your employee’s networks would be interested in one of your open roles. Your employees can help you reach more untapped talent pools, and improve response rates with warmer candidates. 

Facebook, for instance, will display to your team, different job candidate search results based on their social graph, so you can uncover passive job candidates you would not have otherwise discovered. Job sourcing sites such as Sourcing.io allow your employees to connect their social media accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and GitHub so you can view candidates who are connected to your team members. When you find a qualified job candidate, you should encourage your team to send warm introductions to increase your candidate engagement and response rate.

Perfect Your Outreach Messages When Sourcing Candidates

sourcing techniques

You and your talent acquisition team have worked hard to source the qualified candidates, but that does not matter if you fail to create a real connection. A few rules of thumb: Lead with a subject line that will stand out and make the candidate want to open and read your message; always personalize your recruiting message with the relevant information you found about them; paint a brief picture of the role and your organization; and explain how you think they could contribute to your team.

Narrowing down and building a targeted audience is a way to create a strong and more personalized outreach message. According to Glassdoor, 78% of sales professionals said they would accept less money to work at a company selling something compelling, 66% of healthcare professionals are likely to accept less money to work at a company with a great culture.

Improve your response rates by personalizing and focusing on the issues that matter to candidates of all categories. Your goal is to give your pool of job candidates just enough content and engagement to pique their interest and respond to your outreach messaging, you want to be careful about overloading them with communications. Ask your recent hires for feedback on your outreach messages, and use that feedback to test different messaging to improve your response rates.

If your talent team invests the resources to sourcing a robust talent pipeline, you will find more candidates in your talent pool qualified for open roles in the future. Re-engaging prospects is a missed candidate sourcing opportunity for many organizations, you should remind your recruiting team to source from silver medal job candidates first because they are qualified and vetted.

Remember Strategic Sourcing Begins with Reexamining Your Program

Despite setbacks caused by the pandemic, the best candidates will always be in high demand, making it more important than ever to reevaluate your talent sourcing strategy in 2021. Attracting top talent is essential to your organization’s ability to recover and keep pace during the great rehire. These strategic sourcing methods can help you fill your pipeline with qualified talent so you can choose the best hire for your team.

PeopleReady: Increasing Reach, Candidate Engagement, Conversion and Automation

Posted on by jpatel
PeopleReady: Increasing Reach, Candidate Engagement, Conversion and Automation

Talent Acquisition Technology

PeopleReady: Increasing Reach, Candidate Engagement, Conversion and Automation

PeopleReady, one of the top industrial staffing agencies in North America, required a digital recruitment solution powered by PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology, Affinix®, to attract and engage candidates.

Direct sourcing solutions with increased reach via SEO 
Direct sourcing solutions with increased reach via SEO 
100 % automated application, selection and onboarding process
Mobile-first, easy application complying with all North American state and province laws
Mobile-first, easy application complying with all North American state and province laws

Situation 

PeopleReady, a TrueBlue company (NYSE: TBI), specializes in quick and reliable on-demand labor and highly skilled workers. PeopleReady supports a wide range of industries, including construction, manufacturing and logistics, retail and hospitality. Leveraging its game changing JobStack staffing app and presence in more than 600 markets throughout North America, PeopleReady served approximately 83,000 businesses and put approximately 226,000 people to work in 2022.

PeopleReady has invested heavily in innovative, mobile-first work scheduling and dispatching technologies but lacked a digital online sourcing solution to attract and engage candidates. 

PeopleReady selected PeopleScout’s Affinix® recruitment technology platform to replace its existing solution. Affinix enhances the online candidate experience and increases conversion rates by solving the following challenges:  

  • Simplify the previously complicated job posting process by distributing job openings to multiple sourcing channels immediately by creating just one post in Affinix  
  • Implement direct sourcing to channels such as Indeed, Google for Jobs and niche platforms 
  • Improve email integration with assessment vendors that previously had high drop off rates 

Solution 

  • An engaging, mobile-optimized apply experience that guides candidates through application, online selection, employment form completion, WOTC, W4 and I9 processes via a safe, remote process 
  • Direct integration with four external vendors to ensure the entire application process can be completed within the browser, with no interruptions from external emails or links 
  • Highly localized job recommendations 

Results

TARGET LAUNCH ACHIEVED

Solution launched within 15 weeks, on time and under budget

RECEIVED MAJORITY OF MOBILE APPLICATIONS

80% of candidates apply via a mobile device

INCREASED CONVERSION RATES

15% increase in conversion rates within the first two weeks of go-live

“The PeopleScout team allowed us to design a candidate flow that met the needs of our business. The team was quick to pivot and solution as areas of opportunity were identified for improving the candidate experience. Launching a solution with operational reporting allowed us to immediately monitor candidate flow to allow for quick adjustments of sourcing strategy. Very positive partnership with the entire implementation and technology teams.” 

Tina Radosti, VP Talent Acquisition, PeopleReady 

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    PeopleReady
  • INDUSTRY
    Business Services
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Affinix
  • ANNUAL HIRES
    1 million candidates for staffing and short-term labor positions
  • ABOUT PEOPLEREADY
    PeopleReady, a TrueBlue company (NYSE: TBI), specializes in quick and reliable on-demand labor and highly skilled workers. PeopleReady supports a wide range of industries, including construction, manufacturing and logistics, retail and hospitality. Leveraging its game changing JobStack staffing app and presence in more than 600 markets throughout North America, PeopleReady served approximately 83,000 businesses and put approximately 226,000 people to work in 2022.
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Talking Talent: Talent Technology for 2021

Posted on by nfuqua

In this episode of Talking Talent, we’re continuing our look at 2021 and what it holds for talent leaders. This time, we’re looking at technology.

We know that talent tech is going to play a large role in the upcoming recovery, and employers that implement and use the right technology are going to have an advantage.

So, what are the biggest technology opportunities for 2021? And what has the past year changed about our relationship with technology?

Joining us to talk about these questions is Anna Turner, PeopleScout’s new Vice President of Product. Anna is responsible for leading the vision, strategy and roadmap for PeopleScout’s product and service portfolio.

Anna joins PeopleScout from HR software and payroll solutions provider UKG—formerly Ultimate Software. At UKG, Anna was responsible for product development strategy, delivering new features and products to the market, and setting organizational practices and standards for product excellence.

She has deep B2B software product management leadership experience, with previous roles at high-growth tech companies, and she is also a recognized expert on HR technology, serving on the national SHRM expertise panel for Technology and HR Management since 2016.

In this episode, Anna talks about the biggest challenges and opportunities in talent technology over the upcoming year, including the role tech will play in the upcoming “great rehire,” how our growing comfort with new technologies will impact talent acquisition going forward and ways the technology landscape will continue to evolve.

Sourcing Beyond 2020: Building Global Pipelines for Adaptive Work

Posted on by edyson

This year, many organizations have had to rethink the strategies and methods they leverage to source and recruit talent. As the year ends and good news regarding vaccines brings us all new hope, you might be wondering what talent acquisition success looks like post-2020?

One of the first steps in preparing for the changes ahead in the talent landscape is to establish an efficient method of sourcing talent. Building a global talent pipeline strategy is an effective way to source and recruit the talent you need.  

More technology is available than ever before, designed to making global sourcing and talent acquisition more efficient. Video interviewing makes it simple to interview candidates remotely, virtual reality technology can provide candidates a realistic look at your office without ever stepping foot inside and a variety of solutions for remote work mean that candidates can work from anywhere.  

I recently had the opportunity to join Hiretual for their webinar Sourcing Beyond 2020: Building Global Pipelines for Adaptive Work. During the live Q&A, I discussed how to tap into the global talent pool, ways to attract talent faster during the Great Rehire and how to go about engaging with candidates for current or future roles.

In follow up to the webinar, I wanted to provide some additional insights, observations and takeaways from the current talent sourcing landscape and provide you with actionable advice to help you source talent in 2020 and beyond. You can also watch the recorded webinar on the Hiretual website.

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My Three Biggest Sourcing Takeaways from 2020

Maximize Your Investments

At the onset of the pandemic, many organizations had to make hard personnel decisions. As a result, teams are lean, but sourcing systems and contracts are still in place, so companies are looking for ways to use what they have. When you have a lean team, it is really important to invest in sourcing tools that allow them to produce more with fewer people. And, if your team is in a position to have any downtime, they can use it to get the most out of the current systems, processes and plans they have today.

It is becoming more important to reach out to passive job seekers who possess the skills you need, as relying on those actively applying cannot be your only channel. At PeopleScout we have invested heavily in technology and sourcing tools with our proprietary Affinix™ platform. Specifically, it has AI sourcing to find passive candidates through various online channels and match skills against your internal databases as well. This augments your existing team and frees up people to handle the most important tasks.

Many of our clients are sophisticated technology buyers and they are also investing in some best in breed AI sourcing tools. In fact, many of them use Hiretual and so our recruiting teams have had access to use that as well, augmenting our strategy and providing the lift needed as we prepare for continued increases in hiring (The Great Rehire).

Get Ahead Where You Can

Focus on best practice building of consistent, authentic and meaningful communication, identifying talent locations and managing to keep former employees, alumni and prospects engaged. Use the sourcing tools you have, maximize your CRM potential, and keep the conversation going. This will ensure that when you are ready to hire candidates are aware of you and open to talk. On the call, Stockpiling was mentioned. Take a page from Executive search firms – research, map and have your ‘first 50’ calls or communication candidates ready to be engaged. Start with drip marketing on the ones you can.

Push relevant, authentic content to them around the company, its future, plans and opportunities. Make it engaging and not just ‘here’s a job.’ Talk about the company, it’s vision, plans for recovery or success. Looking for a job is a lot like looking for a home – when you decide it’s on, it’s on. It’s not often a constant search. Something triggers it and companies want to be top of mind when it does. Drip marketing and candidate engagement go a long way when the pipeline becomes hiring.

Be Flexible in Your Approach

With uncertainty in the talent market due to COVID-19, recovery efforts and just general unease after a big life-changing event – recruitment has become more unpredictable.

Most companies aren’t providing guidance on revenue and hiring initiatives because of this. Company goals are going to change, and so will hiring efforts to meet those goals. Your sourcing engine needs to be adaptable and ready to go as quickly as you can, but also be nimble enough to flex.

Using automation tools (like those for AI sourcing or lead generation) as well as easy to update marketing and drip marketing campaigns can take the weight off of your sourcers, who can focus on strategy and research for future needs and on how to go to market for these candidates.

How Should Enterprise Hiring Teams Structure Their Global Sourcing Process?

candidate sourcing tools

Processes will need to be nimble and teams will need to be tuned in closely to hiring needs. Just like sales teams need clear goals and a plan to execute successfully, the closer talent acquisition is to an organization’s strategic objectives, the ‘tip of the spear’ sourcing team can be ready and focused on building early talent communication and networking.

Now, with the pandemic upending a lot of the traditional norms of work – physical locations, workplace flexibility from home, less commute, and a broader candidate pool for most industries, sourcing has to shift from their traditional method of ‘going where they know’ to rethinking where great candidates are and how to adapt and qualify them. Having more candidates doesn’t make sourcing easier; while it sure helps, it also presents new challenges for teams and organizations.

On the flip side of this coin – companies that cannot have virtual employees – face a different type of challenge. First, combating the notion that work from home is for everyone and sourcing candidates that will want to work onsite. Second, the competition for these individuals will intensify as the ‘Great Rehire’ kicks into full steam. Getting ahead of this and doing everything you can to map that talent and build rapport early will go a long way to getting ahead of a rapid upswing in hiring volumes.

Both scenarios also present a unique opportunity for recruitment and sourcing teams. Often, we source where we know – we look for carbon copies of the person we are replacing or the last people we hired (which is a lot to unpack for another time – diversity, inclusion and attraction anyone?) but with this, there will be large talent groups displaced that have skills and abilities but will not return to their previous roles.

An example of this is Flight Attendants. All major airlines, worldwide, have reduced their staff by enormous numbers. There are hundreds of thousands of candidates looking for work in a new area. For the savviest of sourcing and recruiting teams, there’s a huge opportunity here to bring a new candidate type to the table for roles. Knowing where to find them, how to engage them and how to bring them to the table for your hiring community will be extremely important and a massive opportunity for them.

How Enterprise Recruiters Can Set Themselves Apart from the Competition  

We’re all on the edge of what’s being called the ‘Great Rehire.’ We know that an average of 70% of the workforce has and will continue to work uninterrupted both virtually and in the office. That leaves a large, displaced group of candidates that will either return to their current careers or new ones. When that happens is anyone’s guess.

What teams can do now is a lot of the above – optimise your recruitment channels, build compelling drip marketing and attraction packages, leverage smart scouring tools, and start your research now to be sure you are ready when the hiring begins. To the TA leadership, if you aren’t already involved in future planning, get ahead of it now. This has the potential to be a massive rehire, at least we all hope, and we don’t have a precedent in modern hiring to compare. Be ready to be nimble.

Choosing the Right Scouring Tools and Technology

There has been a lot of debate in sourcing about how technology will either eliminate the need for sourcing (just like it will eliminate the need to interview) or will it augment. I’m firmly in the camp that technology, for the near to mid-future, will be an augmentation of human efforts.

So, now is the time to look at your sourcing tools and tech stack and eliminate waste and optimize your process and efforts. Take your sourcing tools and position them for the future, look at your organization and your needs and choose the tools that will help accelerate your hiring teams through the process.

We have to assume, as we always do in recruiting, that hiring will come faster than we can prepare for. Choose and implement tools that maximize your sourcing ability and help the team be faster, better and smarter. Tools have the ability to augment your team, integrate with your CRM to ensure you can automate attraction and marketing, and report back on the success rate of your efforts.

Look at your reporting state now – can you measure each key piece of the process to see where you can tweak, adjust, or shift to get better results? Best in class TA teams have learned to measure the entire funnel – not just for speed of process but also for efficiency or ‘friction.’ The faster you can get to market, identify and/or attract, and bring that candidate through an impactful experience will help you both hire and retain great people. To do that, you need to focus on the holistic view of your process and be sure you can measure it effectively.

Planning Your Future Workforce and Building Robust Talent Pipelines

At PeopleScout, we see it across our client base and I’m hearing it from friends and former colleagues; we know we need to prepare; we know we need to get ahead, but how? What are we hiring for? When does it start?

The best practices we’ve seen and some of the lessons we learned after the Great Recession in 2008 was that the closer recruiting is to sales and to executive planning, the better we can be prepared to not just find candidates but to strategise on what roles are needed to help the business rebuild, and then where to find them and how to engage them.

Planning ahead will be critical but I would say more importantly, given resource constraints, cost constraints and the level of uncertainty, sourcing will need to ensure they have a clear understanding beyond just the number of hires and what’s in your funnel. This is a time for talent acquisition as a whole to show how strategic we really are. We have been solving company problems for a long time, and this will be a huge opportunity to get in the mix of future state analysis, building the plan for what type of candidate is both needed and available and then delivering on that plan.

Building future proof talent pipelines requires both a plan and sourcing tools to help you source, track and communicate with your Great Rehire talent. Starting earlier will be well worth it when it begins. It won’t be as simple as knowing where the right talent is when you need them. You will need to be sure you track and build rapport consistently given the uncertainty of the market.

COVID-19 Series: How the Pandemic Impacts Talent Program Implementation

Posted on by nfuqua

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and talent leaders around the world respond to the constant uncertainty, many are partnering with RPO and technology providers. Meanwhile, hiring and technology needs are changing quickly and frequently, which necessitates a nimble partner who can scale quickly. However, the days of implementing new programs in the traditional ways are over. Specifically, there are no days-long, in-person kickoffs or hands-on, face-to-face trainings. Now, it’s all virtual.

At PeopleScout, Emily Gordon has risen to the challenge of building partnerships and implementing new talent programs without even a handshake. She has more than 21 years of experience in talent acquisition and has overseen sourcing, continual process improvement and client implementations. In particular, her expertise is in transitions, process improvement, team building, client relationship development and operational delivery.

We spoke with Emily from her home in Michigan about what implementation looks like right now.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the RPO implementation process?

The first and most obvious change is that it has moved everything to a 100% virtual process. That was a big shift for us. We depended on in-person meetings and non-verbal cues. Implementation has been a human-to-human process. We’ve been really pushed to leverage technology and use new tools. We’ve also added an emotional intelligence expert, who is helping our internal teams and our customers adapt. We’re interacting with stakeholders in different ways.

We’re using a lot of video and doing lots of checking in, but we’re also taking more breaks. In a traditional implementation, we’d have a big kickoff that would take place over multiple days. We’d meet in person and get the butterflies and nervousness and excitement out. That’s difficult to manage now; because of video fatigue, people have a hard time spending a full workday on camera in a video meeting. So, we break our kickoff into more manageable chunks.

That means that while implementations during the pandemic have moved faster than they did before, it feels like we’re moving slower over the first few days as we get started. Relationships take longer to grow over video calls than they do in person. At the same time, we save a lot of time because we don’t need to build in travel or work as hard to coordinate schedules. This speed is important right now because a lot of customers want to implement new solutions faster because they had to scale down so quickly due to COVID. Now, they’re needing to ramp back up just as quickly.

What does the process look like now?

We’ve boiled the process down to four steps, and we use the acronym NEXT. It stands for Needs analysis, Engage and evaluate, eXecute and Transform.

In our needs analysis, we meet internally with our business development team and solutions architects, and we meet externally with clients to really understand their needs. We define what success looks like in this partnership and ensure that all their needs are met.

Then, we move into engage and evaluate, where we bring in even more stakeholders, including our PeopleScout client delivery teams. We go through every step of the client’s current process and look for ways to optimise and bring in our expertise. We make sure there aren’t any missed opportunities to accelerate success.

Then, we’re in the execute phase, where we add in our technology teams. We start to test and bring our new processes into practice. We bring the full delivery team into place, complete trainings and get ready for go-live.

Finally, we move into transformation. When you think about an implementation, it is really just the beginning, right? Our philosophy at PeopleScout is that implementation is a process and not an event. When we get to that last phase, we’re really at the beginning of our relationship with a new way of working established for both organisations.

What are the best virtual partnership building strategies you’ve developed – especially when it comes to communication?

Video is so important. At first, I think people were shy about being on video all day, every day. We broke up meetings to make it work for everybody. We also use collaboration technology to update our notes and project management tracking in real time so clients can watch everything happen. Building transparent communication virtually is difficult, so this has been an important step.

We’ve also learned not to be afraid to say, “I think we need to try that again.” Sometimes, we need to have another call to dig into an issue a little bit more, or maybe the right stakeholders couldn’t make part of a call. Sometimes, we ask the same questions two or three times throughout the process to make sure everyone is still on the same page.

A lot of talent acquisition teams are running lean right now. What advice do you have for organizations that are implementing RPO with a small internal team?

That’s the best part about RPO, right? Whatever you’re trying to implement – whether you’re trying to expand scope or add technology – that’s what we’re made for. Just be honest about the team you have and the needs you have. If you don’t have access to subject matter experts, let us know and be flexible. Maybe you previously had a reporting analyst, but now you can only provide access so that our team can find the necessary data ourselves. That’s okay. That’s our job. Our job is to bring the solution to you and to support you. It can feel overwhelming to start a new relationship. It’s a lot of work. To get through it, we need to acknowledge that and talk about the support you need so we can help you get there.

A lot of organizations find themselves needing to quickly implement a new technology solution, especially around virtual interviewing. What advice do you have for the process?

I recommend starting by selecting a technology solution that can be flexible and ramp up and down quickly. A best-in-class technology solution includes integrations, but that adds time and complexity when a lot of talent acquisition leaders are looking for speed. We encourage people to be flexible. We’ll pilot a new solution in a certain way and then decide what integrations we need to do and where we can best spend our time and effort. You have to design the process around your immediate needs and then build it from there.

At PeopleScout, we use Affinix™, and that’s always my recommendation. When a client needs it, we can just turn on our virtual interviewing solution. I just did this with one of my clients, a healthcare organisation, where we had to get video interviewing up and running really quickly at the start of the pandemic. If you need that, we can do it.

Are there any final thoughts you’d like to leave us with?

Remember that change is always difficult. Having a good partner makes it better, but there will always be bumps in the road. Communicate. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Be vulnerable. Admit what’s working and what’s not. As an RPO provider, we are here as a consultant. Our job is to come forward with solutions to problems you might not even be able to articulate yet. So, be open. Implementation is hard, but it doesn’t need to be painful.