The healthcare industry has long been known for its complex workforce dynamics, demanding requirements, and constant need for skilled professionals in both clinical and non-clinical roles. Healthcare recruiting faces an uphill battle as talent teams strive to attract and retain top talent in a market that is highly competitive and constantly evolving.

In this blog, we will dive deeper into the difficulties healthcare recruiters face in finding the right candidates, examine the impact of high turnover, and suggest healthcare recruitment strategies to overcome these challenges.

Challenges in the Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry is unique in that it requires a delicate mix of clinical and non-clinical employees, all working to care for patients and run the business side of healthcare. The healthcare recruitment process, as a result, is especially challenging due to factors, such as talent shortages, high employee turnover rates, and the competitive nature of job seekers in the market.

Recent Employ data indicate that nearly 83% of clinical employees and 77% of non-clinical healthcare employees are open to other job opportunities. Additionally, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, approximately 30,000 new APRNs (Advanced Practice Registered Nurses) will be needed each year through 2031 to meet the rising demand for care. This adds pressure on recruiters to not only hire top talent, but also retain existing employees.

High demands of the industry, the need for advanced skills, and the fast-paced nature of the job contribute to increased stress levels among healthcare professionals, which in turn affects employee retention. Understanding these challenges is essential for healthcare recruiters to develop effective strategies to attract and retain the best talent in the industry.

Pain Points in Healthcare Recruiting

In order to implement successful healthcare recruitment strategies, it is first essential to understand the unique pain points that this industry faces, which vary between clinical and non-clinical roles.

Clinical Healthcare Recruiting

Clinical healthcare workers are the backbone of any healthcare organization, directly contributing to patient care and outcomes. Despite their importance, the industry has struggled with employee retention and a shortage of qualified candidates, making the healthcare recruiter’s job all the more challenging.

With 83% of all clinical healthcare employees open to new job opportunities and 26% actively looking for another job, it’s clear that healthcare recruiters must focus finding candidates who are engaged and committed to the mission of the healthcare organization for the long-term.

Non-Clinical Healthcare Recruiting

The administrative and support personnel of healthcare organizations are equally important in ensuring the smooth functioning of daily operations. Even so, non-clinical staff members face their own challenges, with 77% of these employees open to new jobs and 35% actively seeking other opportunities.

In non-clinical healthcare recruitment strategies, it is essential for recruiters to identify candidates who are well-suited for such roles, while also addressing employee concerns and desires for greater flexibility and remote work options.

The Cost of High Turnover

The healthcare industry, especially post-pandemic, is known for its high turnover rates, with nearly 1 in 3 clinical healthcare workers and 4 in 10 nonclinical healthcare workers actively looking for another job.

This high turnover, combined with the stress and burnout associated with many healthcare roles, presents a continuous challenge for healthcare recruiters. High turnover can have several repercussions, such as increased labor costs, decreased morale, and compromised patient care.

Some reasons for high turnover in healthcare include:

• Heavy workload and demanding schedules
• Insufficient compensation packages
• Limited growth opportunities within organizations
• Workplace conflicts and fluctuating or inexperienced management

A Critical Talent Shortage

As the demand for quality healthcare continues to rise, staff shortages have become a significant issue for healthcare organizations. Many professionals within the industry are overwhelmed by long hours, leading to burnout and turnover. This vicious cycle makes it difficult for recruiters to fill gaps created by the departure of these professionals.

The healthcare industry faces a significant talent shortage, with a rapidly aging population in need of care and not enough skilled professionals to provide it. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the healthcare and social assistance sector is anticipated to generate 2.1 million new jobs, or around 45% of all new projected job gains from 2022 and 2032. This growth represents an incredible opportunity, but it must be met with strategic investment and prioritization for healthcare organizations competing for talent.

It is important for recruiting professionals in healthcare to consider their technology investments over the coming years, especially as the industry is projected to grow faster than other sectors at 1% annually over the next 10 years, according to the BLS. This indicates a constant need for recruiters to stay ahead of the talent gap and find qualified candidates to fill these critical roles.

To overcome the talent shortage in healthcare, your recruiting team must focus on several key strategies:

• Developing strong employer branding to attract potential candidates
• Leveraging intelligent technology and platforms to expand your candidate pool
• Offering competitive compensation and benefits packages that reflect the current market trends
• Supporting continuous learning and professional growth opportunities
• Fostering positive work environments that encourage collaboration and growth

Balancing Cultural Fit and Skills

The right candidates must not only have the necessary skills and qualifications, but they also need to be the right cultural fit for the organization. This is especially important in healthcare, where a strong team dynamic and collaboration are essential for providing quality patient care.

As previously mentioned, many clinical and non-clinical healthcare workers will leave positions based on poor company culture or lack of trust in leadership. It is imperative for healthcare recruiters to find candidates who will thrive within the organization’s unique environment.

Healthcare recruiting is a complex and demanding process that requires a strategic approach and a thorough understanding of the industry’s pain points. With talent shortages, high turnover rates, and the need for a delicate balance between clinical and non-clinical staff, recruiters must be equipped with effective healthcare recruitment strategies to attract and retain top talent.

From employer branding to compensation packages and fostering positive work environments, we will explore the best practices for healthcare recruiters to successfully navigate the industry’s talent shortage and find the best candidates for their organizations. Join us in our next blog for an in-depth look at healthcare addressing these recruiting pain points with 6 tried and true solutions to tackle those top challenges.

Learn more about how Jobvite’s Talent Acquisition Software for healthcare providers can help you attract, hire, and retain healthcare workers who will elevate the quality of care your organization provides.

The post The High Stakes of Healthcare Recruiting first appeared on Jobvite.

Recruitment and talent acquisition occur at different times — recruitment strategies focus on quick fixes, while talent acquisition focuses on developing a longer-term approach. Both approaches are important to consider, but recruitment is more tactical, while talent acquisition is more strategic.

In this guide, we’ll review how a basic understanding of talent acquisition and recruitment can go a long way in improving your enterprise’s hiring outcomes. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Comparing employee recruitment and talent acquisition
• Should your company recruit or acquire talent?
• How to strengthen your talent acquisition approach

Comparing employee recruitment and talent acquisition

Recruitment is reactive, focusing on filling vacancies as efficiently as possible by selecting the best-fit candidate based on job requirements and the applicant’s skill set. 

Talent acquisition, on the other hand, is an ongoing approach to finding your company’s top specialists, individual contributors, leaders, or future executives. It focuses on long-term human resources planning by investing time and resources in building relationships with potential candidates, promoting employer branding, and developing a talent pipeline for future organizational needs. This approach considers not only applicant skills and competencies but also potential fit within the company’s culture and long-term growth goals.

Let’s explore some more characteristics of talent acquisition and recruitment:

• Talent Acquisition:
  • Is a strategic process
  • Focuses on long-term human resources planning
  • Includes workforce planning, employer branding, and building talent pools
  • Often involves internal mobility and succession planning
  • Seeks to attract and nurture candidates for future needs
• Recruitment:
  • Operational process
  • Focuses on filling current vacancies
  • Involves sourcing, interviewing, and hiring candidates
  • Typically concludes once a candidate accepts an offer
  • Aimed at meeting immediate hiring needs
• Talent Acquisition and Recruitment:
  • Are part of the broader hiring process
  • Involve engaging with candidates throughout the hiring process
  • Use job descriptions and postings
  • Require candidate assessment and selection

The bottom line is, to execute a talent acquisition strategy, you need to identify, attract, and nurture potential hires proactively for future positions often before these positions become available. Niche markets, technology skills, highly specific experience, and leadership roles call for a thoughtful, long-term approach to talent acquisition, so ask yourself which positions will be difficult to fill when a vacancy or need arises. 

Should your company recruit or acquire talent?

Some professionals may believe that every company in all industries should focus on talent acquisition rather than recruitment because acquiring talent typically builds a stronger company, fosters teamwork, and boosts productivity. 

But remember, as an enterprise, you likely have extremely diverse hiring needs across your company and within certain departments, so you shouldn’t use a one-sided approach. These strategies can both be used intentionally in different circumstances. 

Here are a few questions that can help your company decide whether to prioritize recruitment or talent acquisition:

• Do we have a turnover problem? If your enterprise experiences high turnover, you can transform hiring by building a more robust talent pool through strategic talent acquisition. But if you only hire a few people each year and have low turnover, your focus is likely more on recruitment. 
• Is our industry experiencing rapid growth or innovation? As markets evolve and new skills become more important, you’ll need to adapt your hiring practices to keep up. For example, in manufacturing, a push towards green technology leads to a greater need for reskilling and hiring non-traditional backgrounds, such as environmental science.
• What is the competitive landscape for talent in our industry? If top talent is scarce in your industry, taking a long-term talent acquisition approach can help you stand out as a leading employer.
• What are our business goals? If your most pressing goals are aligned with addressing immediate needs versus long-haul growth, perhaps recruitment should be your priority. 

Whether you prioritize recruitment or talent acquisition, having a passive talent pool ready will save you time and give you a leg up on your competition. Use your applicant tracking system (ATS) to note interested applicants who aren’t the best fit right now, but could be a promising candidate in the future. Then, when it comes time to fill roles, you have easy access to people who have already expressed interest in your enterprise.

How to strengthen your talent acquisition approach

Attracting the best and brightest employees to your company is a continuous process of networking and engaging top talent. Your talent acquisition function can be one of the drivers of candidate relationship management success, allowing your company to thrive.

If you’ve been focusing on recruitment, try these tips to help your talent team zoom out and look at the big picture:

• Upgrade your HR tech stack. Invest in an applicant tracking system (ATS) and a candidate relationship management system (CRM) to nurture candidates at scale and build a robust talent pool.
• Emphasize employer branding. Is your company known for its corporate social responsibility initiatives or social culture? Play to your unique strengths, while developing a talent acquisition strategy to stand out. 
• Implement a proactive talent sourcing strategy. As previously mentioned, keeping a passive talent pool ensures you always have candidates that you can engage to influence your long-term talent strategies.
• Assess your benefits. Whether it’s implementing DEI initiatives, offering competitive compensation and benefits, or examining your internal mobility programs, understand what makes applicants want to join your enterprise and what you can implement in the long term to improve your hiring potential.

As you start putting this information together, it can be helpful to structure important information in a SWOT format. By listing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you can understand the internal and external factors impacting your talent acquisition success. Take a look at this example template you can use to get started:

How to jumpstart your talent acquisition efforts

By taking a purposeful look into your enterprise’s strengths for potential candidates, you can craft a meaningful talent acquisition strategy to serve your entire organization and align to your business strategies. However, navigating such a big task can seem daunting. Don’t worry — we’re here to help you get started. 

Jobvite’s EVOLVE Talent Acquisition Framework assesses your organization’s maturity in 17 process areas across the three pillars of talent acquisition: recruitment marketing, applicant management, and talent acquisition operations. 

Our framework helps you optimize not just the process areas, but also the connection points between process areas to see real business results. Based on your current maturity level in the identified process areas, we’ll provide tailored action plans to evolve your processes, people, and technologies and track your progress.

The post Recruitment vs. Talent Acquisition: What Is the Difference? first appeared on Jobvite.

• A good candidate experience not only increases the likelihood of securing top talent, it also strengthens your employer brand, leading to an enhanced reputation and an edge over competitors looking to extend job offers to the same pool of qualified candidates. 
• A poor candidate experience — whether it’s due to a clunky job application process, an overly lengthy interview experience, and/or some other funnel-related issue — can turn off potential hires, damage your brand image, and even negatively impact your bottom line.

As candidate expectations continue to shift, enterprise talent teams are working hard to ensure they provide a consistently top-tier candidate experience by abiding by best practices followed by leading employers today.

Improving the candidate experience: 5 expert tips

Every organization wants to find good-fit individuals to join their companies and help contribute (directly or indirectly) to growth in one form or another — and quickly.

That said, today’s enterprise businesses can’t afford to provide a bad candidate experience to prospective hires of interest simply for the sake of advancing leads in the recruitment cycle and hiring them faster.

Speed is important — but not as important as ensuring a memorable, satisfactory experience to job seekers, many of whom could end up being ideal for future roles, if they’re not extended offers and hired today.

The answer? Start with these five focus areas.

1) Create an engaging and informative career site

Your company’s career site is the ultimate gateway to attracting top talent.

As it’s often the first point of contact between organizations and potential hires, it’s crucial to make a good first impression. Career sites need to be modern and inviting while also providing clear information about the organization and open roles.

In addition to outlining company values, mission, and culture, employers should provide a deep look into their day-to-day operations by offering visual cues such as videos and photos — or simplified job descriptions that detail what it’s like to work at the organization.

The best way to grab candidates’ attention and encourage them to apply is to:

• Make your career site and published job listings visually stunning and easy to navigate.
• Provide crystal-clear insight into your company culture, values, and overall mission.
• Highlight employee experiences, success stories, and opportunities for career growth.
• Ensure each job opening has exhaustive details on requirements, benefits, and perks.
• Offer a straightforward, user-friendly application process to boost your completion rate.

2) Streamline and simplify the application process

In today’s market, talent teams can’t afford to lose their best applicants to an unnecessarily complicated process.

One way to streamline the process is by reducing the number of required fields on the application form. Get rid of any duplicate or irrelevant questions that might needlessly take up the applicant’s time.

It’s also crucial to ensure your platform is mobile-responsive, considering most candidates search for job postings on their smartphones or tablets. By doing this, you provide the necessary flexibility to candidates to apply from anywhere and at any time.

Allowing candidates to use their LinkedIn or other social media accounts for job applications also helps reduce the time and effort they have to put into manually filling up their profiles.

Overall, remember to communicate a clear timeline for the application process, letting candidates know what to expect at each step along the way.

Making the application process quick and painless increases the likelihood of the candidate completing the application process and improves the candidate experience overall.

3) Communicate with your candidates regularly and transparently

Effective communication is the cornerstone of any successful relationship, and the candidate-employer relationship is no different. As a recruiter, it is crucial to keep applicants informed about every aspect of the recruitment process, both for the benefit of candidate engagement and a positive candidate experience. 

Candidates who feel valued and respected by your organization are more likely to recommend it to their friends and colleagues and more likely to be happy and productive employees if they join your team. 

Additionally, transparent communication reduces anxiety and uncertainty for candidates, giving them a sense of control over their own job search and empowering them to make informed decisions.

Don’t underestimate the power of clear and frequent communication in building a stronger, more successful candidate experience and deeper relationships with each prospective hire you engage.

4) Adopt fair and effective assessment processes to eliminate bias

A fair and effective assessment process is crucial not only for the employer to make informed hiring decisions but also for the job seeker to have a positive and respectful experience.

When employers use standardized and job-relevant assessment tools, they are able to evaluate candidates based on their abilities and skills rather than irrelevant factors such as their appearance or background. 

This creates a level playing field for all candidates, including those who may have less conventional backgrounds or experiences (i.e., no college degree or particular certification in a given focus area). 

By collecting and analyzing data from various evaluation stages, employers can identify any potential biases or discrepancies in the assessment process, allowing them to make improvements for the future.

Ultimately, a fair and effective assessment process can improve the candidate experience by promoting a sense of respect, transparency, and equity throughout the hiring process.

5) Monitor your employer branding and work to continuously improve

An oft-forgotten component of the candidate experience is to seek feedback on your recruitment cycle and monitor your employer branding (i.e., external-facing messaging about your business).

The candidate experience is not just about the recruitment process itself, but also about how potential employees view your company as a whole. Securing insights from prospects you speak with (those who are hired, are passed on, and drop out of the process on their own accord) can help inform upgrades to your recruiting efforts.

Additionally, monitoring your employer branding can help you address any negative perceptions potential candidates may have of your organization, ultimately strengthening your employer brand and helping you attract and retain top talent. 

In an age where candidates have many options, taking these steps can make a big difference in your ability to attract and engage the best candidates. It’s clear that improving the candidate experience is key to attracting and securing top talent while strengthening your employer brand.

By investing in innovative recruitment technology like Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite, your talent team can leverage analytics to improve your entire hiring process.

The post How to Provide a Great Candidate Experience Every Time first appeared on Jobvite.

It’s how a candidate feels they’ve been treated throughout the recruitment process and how that treatment makes them feel about the organization.

Job seekers still feel fully in control

When it comes to the current labor market, more than half of all job seekers (51%) believe that finding a job is easy, and 58% believe the current job market favors candidates.

More than two-thirds (68%) believe their job search will take one to three months, and 41% would even feel comfortable quitting without having another job lined up.

Candidates feel confident that they are still in the driver’s seat of the job market, and organizations would do well to respond to these perceptions by focusing on areas that can speed the hiring process, better nurture candidates, and cater to worker priorities.

Here are the top reasons why candidates are starting the job search:

Candidate expectations through recruiting

Job seekers have high expectations when it comes to the candidate experience and their interactions with recruiters. An overwhelming majority of workers expect to work with either a recruiter working on behalf of the company (47%) or a corporate recruiter (34%) during the recruiting process.

In some industries, such as financial services, manufacturing, and retail, recruiters working on behalf of the company are more common than corporate recruiters (approximately 20 percentage points more likely than corporate recruiters). This is affirming news for organizations that outsource part or all of their recruiting process to strategic RPO partners.

Within the candidate experience, job seekers believe there are areas of the recruiting process that should be deprioritized. These may be areas candidates feel are unnecessary, don’t give an accurate picture of who they are, or even lengthen the hiring process. Job seekers believe recruiters and hiring managers should focus less on:

Candidates push back on the pain points of hiring

There are several areas of the recruiting process job seekers dislike. But for employers, this provides a list of opportunities within the job search, application, interview, and offer stage to improve, optimize, or transform.

Whether it’s a lack of transparency, a slow process, or outdated technologies, identify areas your company can seek to improve to bolster the candidate experience and connect with quality talent to drive your business forward.

Candidates say: Communication is key

Once a job seeker has applied for a job, they have expectations about what kinds of communication they should receive from an employer.

Nearly half (49%) believe they should either receive an automated email from the company or a personal email from the recruiter. Less than one in five job seekers have no expectations for communication.

Given many candidates prefer messaging from employers throughout the recruiting process, companies that prioritize timely, personalized messaging can better engage prospects for open roles.

Organizations must take the opportunity to improve their communication with candidates and deliver higher-quality experiences.

The positive candidate experience checklist

A great candidate experience means providing active and passive job seekers with engaging content, a fast application process, streamlined communications, consumer-grade technologies to answer questions quickly, and prompt feedback throughout their experiences.

Whether it’s making them feel valued during the application process, providing helpful feedback or communication, or treating them with professionalism and respect after their candidacy has ended, the candidate experience encompasses every interaction a job seeker has with an employer.

By nurturing each individual and prioritizing candidate engagement at every step of their journey, you’ll be well on your way to building stronger relationships with top talent that will deliver results for your business.

Top candidate experiences include:

• Consistent employer brand messages
• Automated messaging with recruiters
• Personalized job recommendations
• Feedback loops at each hiring stage
• AI-powered chatbots to optimize candidate interactions
• Easy to schedule interviews
• Mobile-optimized career sites
• Seamless job application process
• Tailored content and experiences
• Easy to find information

Make the candidate experience a priority

Providing a quality candidate experience allows companies to find and recruit top talent to impact the success of the business. A solid candidate experience also ensures organizations can build a robust talent pipeline and employer brand that strengthens their reputation relative to competitors.

For employers today, understanding job seeker mindset and behavior is critical to connecting with them more effectively and staying competitive in a tight labor market. Based on the findings from Employ’s research, candidates are likely to fall into one of four quadrants in their job-seeking behavior.

See the full Job Seeker Quadrant and get other valuable insights on the job market in the Employ Quarterly Report: Examining Employer and Job Seeker Realities in the Current Job Market: How Employers Can Respond to Candidate Preferences, Perceptions, and Personas.

The post Candidate Expectations You Need to Know in 2024 first appeared on Jobvite.

Just as your business leadership adjusts the workforce plan for your organization quarterly, you and your talent acquisition team must modify your hiring strategy just as often (if not more so) to ensure you source, nurture, and convert the right talent for your company.

From better engaging remote candidates to writing highly optimized job descriptions, here are 12 expert ways you and your TA team can take your hiring strategy to new heights in the years ahead — and, in turn, improve your hiring speed, quality, and efficiency.

1) Focus on fostering remote engagement

Despite a push from hiring and talent acquisition leaders to return to some semblance of “normalcy,” it’s likely that businesses will be forced to contend with a largely decentralized, distributed, and remote talent pool for the foreseeable future.

In order to stand out in the current talent market, companies should prioritize engaging potential candidates in a remote setting, meeting them where they’re most comfortable.

By inspecting how your company engages with both current and prospective staff, you can ID ways to improve employee loyalty and show your org’s ability to function smoothly in a remote environment.

Promoting an engaging company culture through this remote engagement should be less about physical perks, such as in-house ping-pong tables or artisan coffee, and more about the steps that will be taken to onboard and support new employees — regardless of location.

Brands that can demonstrate a commitment to remote engagement are highly appealing to top talent.

Teresha Aird, Chief Marketing Officer & HR Lead, Offices.net

2) Keep up with shifting candidate priorities

Your candidates’ priorities are shifting, so your focus must move with them for the best success. Overhaul your hiring practices, compensation, and perks to give candidates more of what they want, like fair compensation, flexibility, and work-life balance, and less of what they don’t.

With inflation increasing living costs, compensation is even more important than balance and flexibility — increase salaries to account for higher expenses. While work-life balance priorities dropped as financial pressures grew, it’s still high on the list of importance.

Clearly communicate company values during the hiring process and provide better pay transparency — both have become differentiators in the current job market. Watch how candidates’ priorities shift, and make swift moves to keep open roles as attractive as possible.

Ruben Gamez, Founder & CEO, SignWell

3) Consider reaching out to people who left

Consider a powerful re-hiring strategy. Given today’s talent scarcity and the demand for A+ talent, why not remember the top performers who left in recent years and invite them to return? 

Think about launching a “We Want You Back!” campaign Inviting and rehiring top performers can be equivalent to adding the productivity of several B and C performers.  

These re-hires also know the business culture, have relationships with present staff, and can start strong.  Their return also shows to current employees how company leadership is enlightened and committed to a positive and productive work environment.

Bill Gunn, Principal Consultant, G&A

4) Offer more remote work options

Remote work has increasingly become a normalized part of the work culture. From remote cybersecurity jobs to work-from-home UX design roles, every industry that is gunning to be relevant and attract top talent has had to succumb to this trend. 

Only some employees are eligible to work remotely, but a lot of roles have made the switch to make many candidates wary of in-person roles. This trend has led to candidates favoring organizations offering remote options.

Organizations not offering them are set up for a challenging next few years in the recruitment market. Offering hybrid schedules or flexible options will attract candidates and make the hiring process far more accessible and more robust.

Yongming Song, CEO, Live Poll for Slides

5) Build a talent network

It is important to build up a network of potential candidates who are interested in working with your organization. This includes identifying high-potential candidates across sources, engaging with them through social media or other digital platforms, and maintaining relationships with them. 

Doing so will help you stay ahead of the competition in hiring in the coming years by providing access to a larger pool of qualified candidates. Moreover, it will help you create a more diverse hiring pipeline, allowing for greater flexibility when filling positions.

Tzvi Heber, Founder, CEO, & HR Head, Ascendant Detox

6) Use sponsored employment to stand out

Since thousands of jobs are uploaded every day, your job listing’s visibility may eventually decline. A sponsored job is one of the finest strategies to guarantee that your job ad remains distinctive. 

In any relevant search results, these premium postings will be more prominent and won’t drop in prominence over time, like free job listings, which can draw in more qualified applicants. 

As soon as you pay to post a position, you’ll also gain access to Instant Fit, which provides you with a list of applicants whose resumes match your job requirements on Indeed right away.

Kurt Uhlir, Chief Marketing Officer, Kurt Uhlir

7) Explore more hiring processes with new tech

I’ve always used data for recruiting purposes, but as technology progresses, the possibilities are growing. I’m no longer limited to hard skill evaluations. I’m now better able to consider a candidate’s holistic suitability for any position.

Soft skills, like emotional intelligence, team cohesion, and effective communication often determine how well an employee adapts to a new workplace. By combining psychological and sociological surveys with data collection techniques, I’m placing candidates in their ideal work cultures. 

This is a crucial metric for long-term success because inefficient hiring processes can lead to work stoppages and delayed projects. 

Rob Reeves, CEO & President, Redfish Technology

8) Hire those who align with your brand mission

In my experience, the most challenging aspect of hiring for senior or executive positions is finding someone who not only has the skills and experience, but also fits the culture the company strives for. 

These higher-level employees often already have a well-established style of leadership, and any attempts at shifting it to fit the values of the new workplace can be a real challenge. That’s why I’d recommend trying to look for someone who already fits your approach. 

Make it a year to build the recruitment process around company culture. This way, you’ll ensure that the values you want to uphold at your workplace aren’t just words written somewhere on the wall; they’re real guidelines according to which employees function daily.

Piotrek Sosnowski, Chief People & Culture Officer, HiJunior

9) Engage in social media recruiting

As the world of work continues to expand, we increasingly use social media to recruit and hire. 

Engaging with potential candidates and gaining a sense of their skills, personality, interests, and qualifications in order to ensure an overall company fit is becoming increasingly possible and effective via targeted social media recruiting, particularly on LinkedIn.

Identify top talent and build relationships with candidates more aggressively through social media rather than going through employment agencies. Learn about prospective candidates through their profiles and pursue them personally by establishing a rapport.

This helps us interact with creators, marketers, developers, and writers directly, engage with their content, introduce them to other employees online, and establish a friendly but professional rapport.

Kyle Kroeger, Founder, Via Travelers

10) Automate your screening process

With such a tight hiring pool, you can’t afford any recruitment downtime. Adopting new AI-powered headhunting tools gives you 100% up-time as you search and screen new candidates hands-free. 

It also greatly helps reduce the biases that human recruiters unwittingly bring into the screening process, thanks to advanced machine learning that’s becoming more intelligent daily. With 35% lower employee turnover, AI’s unbiased processes help find a better fit for every role.

AI screening reduces traditional costs by up to 75%, giving your team more money and time to invest in wooing and landing great hires when they have countless other job options available.

Maximilian Wühr, CGO & Co-Founder, FINN

11) Develop a strong(er) employer brand

One of the best things we are doing to prepare our hiring strategy is developing a strong customer brand. I believe that in the new year, employers are going to be increasingly focused on finding candidates who are not only technically qualified, but also a good fit for their company culture. 

By developing a strong customer brand, we are showcasing our ability to not only be the best training group, but also to build relationships and contribute to a positive team dynamic. 

I think this is an important attribute that will become even more valuable in the new year, and I would encourage other businesses to work on their own brands as well.

Derek Bruce, Sr. Director, Skills Training Group

12) Craft unique and optimized job listings

As more and more job seekers search for open positions online, businesses are turning to content marketing to make their job listings stand out.

Crafting a unique and attractive job listing can have significant benefits, such as ensuring that you stand out to notable candidates and improving your overall business brand.

In addition, writing an optimized job listing that touches on relevant keywords can help employers reach a broader audience, as these types of listings will be more likely to appear near the top of relevant search engine results. 

Furthermore, job seekers may be more likely to apply if they are presented with a well-crafted summary of the position’s expectations and requirements, as opposed to vague generalizations.

Ultimately, despite the time and effort required, writing an engaging and optimized job listing will pay dividends by providing your business with the best possible chance to hire the ideal candidate.

Jessica Munday, People & Culture Manager, Custom Neon

Discover how you can enhance and optimize your enterprise hiring strategy with Evolve, our unified Talent Acquisition Suite. Schedule a demo with a Jobvite representative today.

The post 12 Ways to Amplify Your Hiring Strategy This Year first appeared on Jobvite.

When it comes to priorities for HR leaders and recruiters today and in the coming years, improving the quality of candidates, increasing the speed of hiring, and getting more applicants for each open role ranks highest, according to recent Employ data.

These priorities, however, are contingent upon recognizing what job seekers want in the midst of a challenging labor market. Understanding job seeker motivations today is critical for companies seeking to more effectively attract, hire, and retain talent. 

Let’s dive into what HR decision-makers and recruiters perceive as the top motivations for why candidates are seeking new jobs, why employees are leaving their current roles, and the types of positions most likely to encounter challenges along the way.

The top motivations for today’s job seekers

Based on Employ’s recent survey of more than 1,200 HR decision-makers and recruiters, the top motivation for employees leaving a job is pursuing more money or seeking a more flexible work arrangement. This is followed by seeking career advancement, unemployment or fear of unemployment, and leaving a bad manager or culture.

Seeking a new challenge, looking for a more diverse or inclusive work environment, and finding an office to work from regularly comprised just under 15% of all responses. 

• Getting more money: 34.4%
• Ability to work remotely: 21.3%
• Career advancement: 12.6%
• Unemployment or fear of becoming unemployed: 9.6%
• Leaving a bad manager or bad company culture: 8.5%
• Time for a change or new challenge: 4.2%
• Find a more inclusive / diverse workplace: 4.9%
• Ability to work in an office: 4.7%

Interestingly, unemployment or fear of becoming unemployed was rated by one in 10 employees as a top motivator for moving jobs and proactively seeking out other career opportunities.

As talks of recession continue to dominate the hiring and business landscape, it will remain to be seen whether more employees leave their positions in search of something more stable or stay put in their roles longer than they would have based on economic headwinds. 

Primary motivations for employees who quit

When determining why talent leaders and recruiters believe employees are exiting their current org, the top three responses were similar to the motivations in general for finding a new role:

• Getting more money: 37.1% 
• Ability to work remotely: 18.6% 
• Career advancement: 13.4%

However, one in 10 HR decision-makers think that current employees are looking for a change or new challenge and just five percent are leaving because of a bad company culture or manager internally. 

• Time for a change or new challenge: 12.4% 
• Leaving bad manager or bad company culture: 5.2% 

Looking for a more diverse and inclusive workplace was higher when evaluating why employees were leaving their current company, but the fear of unemployment was almost half of those human resources leaders who believe it was a top motivator for finding a new role overall. 

• Find a more inclusive / diverse workplace: 5.1%
• Unemployment or fear of becoming unemployed: 4.2% 
• Ability to work in an office: 4.0%

Job seeker challenges in the current climate

When it comes to challenges for job seekers, experienced professionals may find more difficulty than entry-level candidates in finding the right roles.

Employ data shows that 49% of recruiters believe experienced workers have the biggest challenge in finding a job today. By comparison, only 15% of talent professionals said those individuals re-entering the workforce saw the biggest challenges. 

When broken down by industry, the gap becomes more drastic. In fact, 57% of recruiters in the construction industry said experienced workers saw more challenges in finding new roles, while 61% of recruiters filling healthcare roles believe this is true. 

Key takeaways when it comes to job seekers

Connecting with job seekers and understanding their motivations will be more important than ever next year. Take care to invest in the needs of candidates and deliver positive experiences for them.

If it is challenging to compete on salary in your company, compete on speed, benefits, and remote work. Ensure you are promoting a diverse workforce, flexible work arrangements, and overall benefits packages to highlight the total rewards package of working at your company. 

If applicable, focus on engaging with gig workers and nurturing relationships with individuals who are in revenue-generating roles. Ensure the hiring process delivers positive experiences that enhance your company’s employer brand.

Faster recruiting processes and more attractive, hybrid work environments will result in fewer good candidates withdrawing and fewer rejected offers for your talent acquisition function.

Most of all, speedier sourcing, nurturing, and interviewing processes will help meet your priorities for increasing the quality of candidates and improving overall time to hire in your business. 

Get more labor and hiring market insights

Planning during times of uncertainty is one of the biggest challenges companies face when it comes to guiding the future of their organization. Pursuing a scalable hiring strategy will be essential to attracting, hiring, and onboarding quality talent that will drive organizational performance.

The insights available in this article are only a starting point. For more data, key takeaways, and actionable insights, download the full Employ Quarterly Insights Report here.

Find out how your enterprise TA team can elevate your recruiting and hiring performance in the years ahead with Evolve, our complete Talent Acquisition Suite.

The post What Job Seekers Want from Employers Today first appeared on Jobvite.

Companies that streamline hiring with recruitment software have been more effective in speeding time to hire and providing a more consistent candidate experience that bolsters their employer brand. With tools like candidate texting or chatbots to improve the responsiveness and quality of conversations with candidates, employers that recognize the importance of engaging candidates and ensuring a seamless experience are more effective in finding candidates in a challenging labor market.

Remember, It’s Still A Candidate’s World

With record-level rates of unemployment, more than 10 million open jobs, and significant turnover, companies have been left to rapidly fill positions with qualified talent. Because employers are competing for top employees, they often still encounter candidates in the driver’s seat who are looking for more in every aspect of their employment.

Candidates currently have their pick of opportunities when it comes to roles. In fact, companies of all sizes are seeing candidates entertaining multiple job offers during the recruiting process. They’re looking for an employer that can provide the best hiring experience as well as more competitive benefits than in previous roles.

The challenge and opportunity to succeed in recruiting requires delivering a standout candidate experience by flawlessly engaging with candidates at every touchpoint in your hiring process. Because when you make it as easy as possible for candidates to interact with your employer brand and apply for your open roles, you can elevate your recruiting function and ensure you deliver a high quality of candidate that outpaces your competitors.

The Most Terrifying Part of Recruiting: Employers That Ghost Candidates

Even in light of the current hiring environment, one of the most frightening parts of recruiting is that employers are leaving candidates hanging. Known as ghosting candidates, it seems that some employers believe that not engaging or offering a streamlined candidate experience is acceptable. Employers should not take candidates for granted and cannot afford to turn off applicants for open roles. Yet many job seekers still regularly experience ghosting from employers.

Connecting the right candidates to the right job, providing an engaging career site experience, offering an easy application process, and ensuring obstacles are removed is essential in streamlining the hiring process. If you are not agile to respond to the challenges in the current labor market, if your hiring team is unresponsive, or you take too long to interact with candidates, you are doing damage to your own company and face an uphill climb in filling roles and hiring talent for your business.

“What is the most frightening part of recruiting? Employers that ghost candidates and think it is acceptable. ” -Jobvite

Stressed recruiters with inadequate tools are far more likely to let candidates fall off in the process with outdated hiring practices, making it even harder for companies to fill roles with qualified talent. So what are the top reasons that recruiters and employers ghost candidates? Let’s take a look:

Here are some of the top reasons candidates are ghosted by companies today:

• Lack of automated messaging tools to engage candidates and keep them informed in the hiring process
• Slow internal communication between the hiring team and decision makers
• Unable to keep up with the volume of candidates for open roles
• Employer expectations are not aligned with candidate expectations
• Inability to re-engage silver medalists to keep them informed of other hiring opportunities
• An out-of-date ATS that doesn’t allow recruiters to effectively track and manage applicant flow

In today’s competitive labor market, recruiting teams need to create the best possible experience to capture and convert top candidates during the early stages of the hiring process. This means that they must keep communications with applicants and hiring teams efficient, helpful, and transparent.

With the labor market continuing to favor candidates, each moment counts in the fight to convert candidates into applicants. Leveraging the right tools, having the right strategy, and ensuring you follow best practices when it comes to your career site and application process can increase your candidate conversion rates significantly.

Keep Candidates in the (Shorter) Loop

Companies that recognize ghosting candidates is a scary proposition instead adopt recruitment software to help with the heavy lifting of communicating with candidates. They’re avoiding candidate ghosting by setting up automated messaging at all points of the hiring process to ensure timely responses, accurate answers, and efficient meeting scheduling. Because without it, companies will lose out on the ability to attract talented candidates that will move their business forward.

One of the ways you can stop ghosting candidates is to leverage communication tools that keep candidates in the know. Some of the top tools businesses of all sizes are using include:

• Chatbots: Applicants can engage with a chatbot early in the hiring process to learn more about a role and even apply with a few simple clicks.
• Candidate texting: Automated messaging saves recruiters hours per requisition by automatically engaging with candidates during the application, interview, and onboarding processes.
• Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) software: Advanced recruiting teams are adopting a CRM platform to centralize their talent pools and easily set up automatic communication campaigns for passive candidates.
• Asynchronous video: Video interviewing is a favorite tool of busy recruiters who are hiring in high volumes. Allow applicants to record interview answers and submit on their own time, avoiding the need for a live meeting to screen every candidate.
• Automated interview scheduling: No more manually coordinating schedules between hiring teams and candidates. Automatic scheduling tools allow candidates to pick a meeting time from a pre-selected list of times that work for everyone.

Start Making Your Candidate Experience Less Spooky, More Engaging

Looking to improve your candidate experience and stop scaring job seekers in the process? Get more insights on how your company can respond to the current labor market. Be sure to download the Employ Quarterly Insights Report for strategies your business can use to better connect with and nurture candidates.

The post Here’s Why Ghosting Candidates Is So Spooky first appeared on Jobvite.

You keep hearing about record job openings as the country heads back to work. Yet here you are, sitting at your desk, looking at your ATS and wondering why it isn’t overflowing with applicants. You’ve exploded your budget for ads, slapped a new banner on your company home page, and begged staff to refer past colleagues. This all should be working. Your career site visitors are up. Candidates were interested in your jobs, but why didn’t they apply?

Sounds like you have a candidate conversion problem. It’s time to put yourself in your candidate’s shoes and see what your candidate experience is like firsthand. Here’s how:

Show your Employer Value Proposition

Now that job seekers are on your career site, are you showing them a place where people would want to work? They’ve seen the job description, but before they apply, they want a glimpse into daily life as an employee. And with the increase in hiring this year, they can wait to choose a flexible employer that takes care of their needs and promotes diversity, equality, inclusion, and belonging.

Remove Barriers to Apply

If you’ve done this well, candidates will next look at how to apply. Candidates want application processes that are easy from start to finish and without barriers to entry. Some of the most frustrating career sites make candidates:

• Search through too many job postings to find the one they were interested in
• Create a login (with a complex, unique 8-character password) and create a profile
• Go through an overwhelming amount of clicks to access the application
• Manually enter their resume into text boxes (despite uploading a pdf copy)

If the application process isn’t quick and straightforward, candidates will not complete their applications. Industry averages show that only 30% of applicants who start the application process actually complete it. That’s seven of every ten candidates that you have already invested in who are choosing to walk away and not complete the application. Successful organizations should break down the barriers of entry for job seekers. Eliminating registration requirements as the first step when a candidate applies is an easy way to improve candidate conversion and give your employer brand a boost while you’re at it.

Eliminate Technical Issues

Next, think about what a candidate would do if they encountered a technology issue or had a question about the application process. Companies spend so much time and budget on driving candidates to the career site to apply only to lose those job seekers to technical issues and a lack of help options, leading to lower conversion rates and increased candidate frustration. Think about adding a chatbot to answer frequently asked questions or elevate the issue to someone who can help the candidate and, therefore, your candidate conversion rate.

Optimize for Mobile

Are you mobile-optimized? Jump on your phone (we know it’s near you) and look at your application process via mobile. Mobile phone usage has been steadily increasing over the years, and you should make sure your application process is smooth on any platform. Better yet, remove more barriers to the application by providing text options to apply and communicate with candidates.

Shorten the Feedback Loop

Lastly, think about how it feels as a candidate to hit that submit button and wait for a response. Think about how often you need to wait for the status of anything today. We expect to know, almost demand, to be kept informed on where we are in the process of fulfilling a purchase or inquiry. Whether that is tracking where your Lyft driver is in real-time, what stage of delivery your Amazon purchase is in, or even when your Grubhub food delivery will be at your doorstep. This is the expectation candidates have as well with employers.

Provide a Better Experience

The bottom line is, if you want to hire top talent, it doesn’t matter how pretty your career site is or how many available jobs you’re offering if your candidates are frustrated and left in the dark. Are you providing an experience where they can easily apply for positions? Or are you forcing them to jump through unnecessary hoops? Are you keeping them informed of their application status? Or are you letting them wait by the phone until they give up and apply elsewhere?

Let Jobvite Help

Whatever hiring challenges you’re facing, from candidate conversion and beyond, having the right tools and technology in place will help you streamline workflows, increase operational efficiency, and improve the candidate experience. Looking to learn more about what Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite can do for your team? To see Jobvite in action, watch the on-demand Jobvite Product Tour or request a live demo.

The post How to Solve Your Candidate Conversion Problem first appeared on Jobvite.

Ensuring your hiring team collectively provides a positive candidate experience to each and every individual you reach out to and speak with for open roles is one of the most critical areas of your company’s recruitment strategy today.

In short, if it was evident before reading this guide, improving your candidate experience efforts regularly should always be a top priority for recruiting staff, hiring managers, and interview panelists.

How to provide a consistently positive candidate experience to every job seeker you engage

Of course, saying you want to take action to create a positive candidate experience for all prospects in your funnel is one thing. It’s quite another to actually put a plan in place to improve your CX approach.

With that in mind, here are five expert ways you can go above and beyond to make sure your candidates enjoy every aspect of the recruitment process — even if they don’t end up being hired.

Keep candidates informed every step of the way

When seeking to create positive candidate experiences, communication is key. No candidate likes to be in the dark. They want to stay informed and updated about where they are in the hiring process.

Unfortunately, too many recruiters and employers treat the hiring process as a one-way street, requiring prompt answers and updates from candidates, without offering the same thing in return.

Let them know when their applications have been received and are being reviewed.

Even send rejection letters to let them know they will not be moving forward in the hiring process, offering insights into the reasoning behind your decision instead of a form letter.

Let your job candidates know what to expect

Hand-in-hand with keeping candidates in the loop regarding their place in the hiring process, it’s equally important to let candidates know what to expect if they are hired.

Today’s job candidates understand the importance of company culture. In fact, 88% of surveyed job seekers said they believe that a good company culture is essential to business success.

Demonstrate the things that make your company culture stand out from the crowd (read: other employers) using Jobvite’s fully customizable, premium career site building toolkit.

Reduce unconscious bias using AI software

One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of improving any hiring process is unconscious bias. Even when we tell ourselves we’re not being biased during candidate selection, there may be ways our bias peeks through even without us knowing it.

Not only can perceived bias negatively impact your candidate experience, but it also is very likely preventing you from making the best hiring decisions to benefit your business.

Jobvite’s built-in AI capabilities are designed to help recruiters accurately identify the experience and qualifications they need most, then zero in on exactly which candidates best satisfy those needs.

Maintain relationships with “runner-up” candidates

When does your candidate experience end? After you decide not to hire them, right? Wrong. Just because a candidate isn’t right for the position you currently need to fill, that doesn’t mean they won’t be right for a different role in the future.

With Jobvite’s CRM, you can get ahead of new requisitions and make sure you have the right talent identified and engaged before your business needs them. Instead of starting over from scratch, you may already have dozens of prime candidates sitting in your recruitment pipeline.

Leverage automation to take care of some TA tasks

The days of having to manually execute every single recruiting- and hiring-related activity are (thankfully) over. That’s because talent acquisition automation software now can take care of (once-tedious) tasks for just about every member of your recruitment org.

“In automating these high-volume tasks, you’ll create a better candidate experience and be able to spend more time on strategic decisions,” Corey added.

Learn why so many enterprises leverage Jobvite’s Talent Acquisition Suite to improve their candidate experience efforts — and take their hiring strategies to the next level.

The post The Keys to Providing a Positive Candidate Experience first appeared on Jobvite.

The satisfaction level with the candidate journey and candidate experience quality go hand in hand.

By ensuring each active job seeker and passive prospect you engage seamlessly advances from one stage of the candidate journey to the next is your best bet to converting them into new hires (and, indirectly, retaining them for the long run). At the same time, your online and offline efforts during the recruitment process contributes to a positive experience for ideal candidates you interview.

But, you can’t simply focus on ensuring certain parts of the candidate journey are effective.

Instead, you and your enterprise hiring team must liaise closely during the entire full life cycle recruiting process — from the second a candidate applies for a job to when they’re onboarded by HR — to ensure each touchpoint has a purpose and helps you improve the candidate experience.

Only then will you see your candidate Net Promoter Score and conversion rates grow as desired.

7 important candidate journey touchpoints

From ensuring a seamless job application process on your careers page to making it clear who the points of contact with your company are at the onset of the TA process, there are several parts of the candidate journey “map” to focus on improving to appeal to your target candidate personas.

Seven industry experts share the distinct touchpoints they believe are the most vital for large-scale employers to nail — ones that can ultimately be the difference between filling roles with top talent quickly and efficiently and seeing critical requisitions go unfilled for months (or even quarters).

1) Impress candidates with your employer branding 

The pre-application stage is a crucial touchpoint in a nurture funnel because it is where the candidate journey begins. In other words, prospects’ first impression of your company is your employer branding. This informs their perception of your organization.

A well-planned pre-application campaign entices job seekers to take the first step in the funnel.

They can pull from their prior experience as a customer or simply with navigating your company website. These interactions ultimately motivate them to be part of the team and decide to apply.

Brogan Renshaw, Director, Modelers Central

2) Incorporate video in your recruitment marketing

Use compelling videos in your recruitment campaign to increase awareness among job seekers. Apply this when creating job advertisements, then post the content online to draw people’s attention.

Videos are essential candidate journey touchpoints that boost job posting views. Potential leads find it more exciting and relatable compared to ads that only display texts and static images.

Moreover, videos are great tools to showcase company culture. Your content must reveal how your business operates daily and how employees interact with each other. Showing clips of actual office scenarios allows the applicants to have a glimpse of their careers. It also ensures they know their future job roles and helps them assess if the workplace culture aligns with their values.

Lilia Tovbin, Founder and CEO, BigMailer.io

3) Leverage the top social media channels to interact

The funnel begins long before a job prospect applies for a role. Your first significant touchpoint with most recruits is on social media, where they’re interacting with your brand, and, if they’ve moved into the interest phase, possibly vetting your culture to see if it’s a good fit for them.

Every interaction on social media is an opportunity to impress potential candidates. Or disappoint them.

By crafting posts that describe your brand without over-hyping it, regularly interacting with followers, and quickly responding to comments/DMs, you’ll find better-quality candidates ready to apply for your latest job postings.

John Li, Co-Founder and CTO, Fig Loans

4) Communicate right after receiving applications 

During the application phase, candidates often reach out to dozens of opportunities at the same time. Timely responses help your org to stand out and keep the momentum for any future communication. Even if it’s just a short acknowledgment of receipt, a fast, thoughtful response makes a big difference.

Fortunately, some applicant tracking systems allow for this automated response after submissions.

Ben Travis, Founder, HR Chief

5) Automate SMS updates on the hiring process

Text messaging offers a great way to add more touchpoints to your sequence, moving the process along quickly and maintaining candidates’ interest without tying up your hiring manager’s time.

Automate interview requests and timeline updates so that candidates know they’re not slipping through the cracks of your hiring process. Though some businesses automate these messages via email, they can often be caught in spam filters or missed in a full inbox.

By harnessing SMS to send these messages, you’re creating more engaging and personalized candidate journey touchpoints and guaranteeing your messages are seen faster than ever.

Anthony Martin, Founder and CEO, Choice Mutual

6) Write engaging nurture email subject lines

If your subject line is not engaging, interesting, or enticing enough, the email may be deleted without even being opened. Moreover, if your subject line is not properly crafted, recipients may be turned off and hesitant to open the email, which could lead to them unsubscribe.

This can lead to a low open rate — and wasted time, effort, and resources for your talent team.

In short, it is highly important to ensure that your email subject lines are both engaging and concise so that you can connect with your potential candidates, as well as stay on their radar.

Farhan Advani, Co-Founder, BHPH

7) Create a Smooth Onboarding Process

Ensure a smooth onboarding process to positively condition the minds of the new hires.

Onboarding is as vital as the rest of the recruitment funnel. This is when all qualified candidates are introduced to their roles, including their workstations and the people they will be working with.

Remembering the names and faces of all employees is challenging for someone starting a new job.

That said, schedule short meetings for the newbies during their first few days. Let them use this time to introduce themselves to their colleagues, especially those with whom they will work closely.

Adam Garcia, CEO and Owner, The Stock Dork

Enhance your the quality of candidate journey job seekers experience with your brand by leveraging our ATS’s advanced recruiting capabilities. Schedule your Jobvite demo today.

The post The Candidate Journey: 7 Essential Nurture Touchpoints first appeared on Jobvite.