In a candidate-short market, getting to candidates first is business critical for recruitment agencies. Wave‘s Emily Buckley looks at how recruitment technology can play a vital role in speeding up the candidate sourcing process so that you can be the first to have those candidate conversations.
Time. It’s a recruiter’s most precious commodity. Recruitment is a fast-paced industry and anything that makes the process more efficient, helping recruiters get their jobs in front of candidates faster and source candidates more quickly, is a winner. And the pace by which a recruiter can get a job ad in front of a talented candidate and encourage them to apply is more vital than ever right now.
The need for speed
The combination of a near-50-year-low unemployment rate, a holding back on the job search driven by economic and political uncertainty, Brexit and skills shortages have all contributed to candidate shortages in nearly every sector. At the same time, jobs are not diminishing. The WaveTrackR September 2022 Recruitment Trends Report showed that jobs aren’t falling – in fact they’re continuing to increase. It’s therefore more important than ever before to find candidates quickly. How? Investing in the right recruitment tech stack is one way to significantly speed up the candidate sourcing process.
All recruitment tech should save recruiters time
Speeding up the entire recruitment process, from candidate sourcing to placement, is one of the biggest wins recruitment tech should gift you with – and if yours doesn’t, you should be looking around for a different tech supplier! All technology should make life simpler and speed up whatever process it is designed to help. Recruitment tech is no different and should always provide the magic pairing that is speed and simplicity. It should make recruiters’ lives easier because if it doesn’t it won’t be saving them time and it simply won’t get used.
Recruitment technology can help consultants to reach talented candidates more quickly in a number of ways. Here’s how to…
Save time when posting jobs
If you’re advertising jobs on job boards, you need to know which job boards are most likely to provide you with talented candidates. You also need to know when is the best time to post them. Without the knowledge of where and when to post, it will take longer for candidates to find your job ads and longer to receive quality applications. Armed with that knowledge, you then need to be able to post those jobs quickly to multiple job boards.
A multi-poster driven by data can do all of that. Data-powered multi-posters can take live data and make recommendations on the job boards that are likely to generate the largest number of quality applications based on your job ad. They will also recommend the best day of the week and even time of day to post to help ensure you are getting your jobs in front of candidates while they’re actively searching. Of course, they also do the vital time-saving job of posting to multiple job boards and your website with a single click.
Save time by creating jobs ads that candidates see…
What’s a guaranteed way to rapidly increase the time-to-apply rate? Writing a job ad that a huge number of candidates don’t even lay their eyes on. How can you avoid this catastrophe? There are a handful of great tech tools that will analyse the copy in your job ads for SEO and to avoid bias. You should also follow best practice when it comes to creating your job adverts. Job ad copy is crucial – it can literally be the difference between candidates even seeing your job, let alone deciding to apply for it.
To begin with, the job title should be standardised or suitable candidates might not even find it. Avoiding alternative, quirky titles is recommended as candidates search for titles they know and that are commonly used in the industry. Someone searching for a Retail Assistant role may never get to see your Merchandise Ninja job ad. Ensure the copy is compelling, makes the role sound exciting and with plenty of chances to grow and progress but also pepper it with keywords. The key is ‘pepper’ not ‘stuff’. Relevant keywords naturally weaved into the copy will again help candidates find your jobs when they perform searches on the job boards.
When it comes to driving candidates to your job ad on your website, you need to ensure your ads are optimised for Google for Jobs. As the function allows for more targeted searches, it will help you attract more motivated candidates who are actively looking for your type of job. As well as utilising your website’s in-built SEO tools, you’ll need to include job posting structured data and include salary, location, job title, skills, responsibilities, and qualifications.
… and apply for
Now to increase your chances of candidates applying for your jobs once they are in their radar… in a nutshell, keep the word count to 150-350 words, include salary and location (or remote/hybrid status), benefits that match current candidate expectations (flexible work options, etc), cover skills, experience and qualifications but spell out which are essential and which are nice-to-haves, and make it clear how to apply. And remember – a job advert is not a job description. You’re selling the job, not writing a detailed description of every responsibility of the role.
Save time when searching for CVs
For urgent jobs you may want to go down the CV search route. It reduces the time taken to get jobs in front of candidates and saves time wasted on managing applications from candidates unsuitable for the role. Job board CV search tools can be incredibly valuable when you need to fill a vacancy urgently and want to bypass traditional advertising to take a straighter path directly to relevant candidates.
However, given CV search is often the route taken when time is even more pressing than usual when filling a role, the process can be a drain on recruiter time. Searching the databases of individual job boards one by one as well as your own database can be a lengthy process. Tech such as WaveTrackR’s new CV Search feature that allows you to search multiple job boards and within your own database from one platform and in one search solves that problem, ensuring that a time-saving solution saves time from the very beginning.
Save time by curating and managing a talent pool
Talent pools can save both time and money, allowing recruiters to directly source suitable candidates quickly and reducing the cost that other search methods incur. Curating, nurturing and managing your own talent pool is enormously valuable – and it doesn’t need to take years to build. Having qualified, talented candidates – whether passive or active – that you can call on when suitable jobs arise is a gold mine. The ability to dip into a rich database of candidates that you have vetted, fostered relationships with, and can easily contact gives you the upper hand in the race to source the right candidate for the right job.
Store any relevant CVs that come your way (whether that’s from a CV search, previous applications, or careers fairs and other recruitment events) in your CRM and then turn your candidate pool into a talent pipeline by nurturing that talent. This is key – don’t just leave those CVs lingering in a forgotten database but build relationships with those candidates so that when a job comes in that they are perfect for, you can immediately pick up a phone and you already have that relationship.
Save time when managing applications
You’ve written a killer job advert, got it out to candidates ahead of the competition and have received a number of great applications – the worst thing you could do right now is to lose those candidates by mis-managing those applications and, more importantly, the people behind those applications.
An applicant tracking system is hugely helpful here, especially if it is integrated with or part of your multi-posting tool. This allows you to keep all your recruitment workflow in one place and after you post your jobs you can easily manage the process from application all the way to placement. Essentially, you need a central place in which to manage all the applications coming in from different jobs. A system that allows you to easily preview CVs, rank applications, make notes and updates and quickly email candidates will help to ensure that you don’t lose candidates unnecessarily during the process.
You need to look at each stage of the candidate sourcing process and analyse where you could be more efficient and how. Anything that will get your job ad in front of quality candidates quickly is like gold dust right now – and that is exactly where recruitment tech can and should help.
Wave aims to create a world where talent is never missed by providing recruitment solutions through a mix of cutting-edge technology and creativity, via WaveTrackR (data-powered multi-poster, analytics tool and CV Search), RecWebs (tailored recruitment websites) and WaveMedia (strategic recruitment media buying).
