Archives for 2015

I can still remember how annoyed she sounded: “But we spent all that time and money interviewing and assessing you!”
The HR manager had called me the day after a successful interview and offered me a job. And I’d had to turn her down (I had a better offer elsewhere).

I’m not surprised she was annoyed. Interviewing and assessing candidates face-to-face is expensive. There are schedules to clear, rooms to book, and resources and people to pull together.

But help is at hand, according to an increasing number of recruiters. Dip a toe into the Google Ocean and you’ll find a lot of HR professionals talking about how more and more companies are using video interviews to hire the right candidates. But how many companies really are doing this? The answer is quite a lot.

In 2014, Monster.co.uk and University College London (UCL) surveyed the recruiters on Monster’s database to identify future hiring trends. Use of video interviews was one of their key findings, with 48% of respondents saying they were already using video as part of their hiring process. Other studies from the US suggest American recruiters are even more enthusiastic about using video, with one study suggesting 60% of recruiters regularly use video to carry out remote job interviews.

Still not 100% convinced, I sought out further evidence that big companies were embracing video, and I found it at the UK Post Office. Faced with thousands of applications for temporary Christmas roles, the Post Office worked with video specialists Sonru to incorporate video interviews into its hiring processes, and the results were pretty good to say the least.

“It saved around 80% year-on-year in terms of travel, venue and similar costs,” said Brett Davies, resourcing manager at the Post Office, “Previously, prospective candidates would have attended an assessment centre with up to 20 trained assessors hired for the day, so we could easily be spending £50,000 to run 10 assessment days.”

By this point, I was starting to feel convinced, but I wondered how a recruiter might use video for the first time. The one-way video is one simple approach. After initial role screening, the best candidates can be contacted and invited to answer a list of questions and tell their story by submitting a video. Recruiters can then get an early look at possible recruits from the comfort of their desktop. And if one of these candidates seems special, recruiters can then arrange a Skype call to ask more questions.

The video interview obviously offers advantages to business, but what does it mean for the talent pool? For a generation familiar with daily YouTube uploading and Skype, the video conversation may actually provide a more relaxing platform to sell themselves compared to a conventional interview. However it might not be quite so relaxing for candidates that haven’t grown up with YouTube, or for people who don’t feel comfortable on screen. One way of getting around this is to ensure that the video interview process also offers candidates clear advice on what the recruiters are looking for and easy mistakes to avoid.

Video obviously offers great time and resource saving advantages for business, but the key thing that sold it for me was a little more human. Recruiting process improvements can sometimes be impersonal and, in worst case scenarios, alienate candidates. But integrating video into the recruiting process offers a way to save time and money, and provide more opportunities for human interaction between recruiter and candidate.

Note: And finally…a quick thank to HR Magazine and Business Insider for inspiring me to write this post!

In today’s post we set sail for the shores of ASIA-Pac to find out what jobseekers are looking for in a hiring company.

Company prestige appears to be one major attracting factor. “Corporate reputation is something very important to people,” says Heather Thompson, Armstrong Craven’s Singapore-based director, “Companies that have been through a difficult time in terms of reputation may experience negative short term consequences but, we find that they can maintain their status as a great employer if they have made a long term commitment to, and investment in a market.”

And then there’s ethics as an attractor to consider: “Working with a major life sciences company moving into Asia,” Heather goes on to say, “we conducted some research on the best employers in the sector, and people told us they want to know they are helping people to live better and live longer. This association of doing something positive for society and making a difference carries a lot of weight in terms of what makes a great employer in ASIA-Pac.”

There appears to be a real jobseeker need to work for companies that command respect, especially with their peers. But respect and reputation alone aren’t enough for some candidates, and there’s growing evidence of an addition need to work for a “good” company.

Ernst and Young’s (EY) 2015 Asia-Pac fraud survey polled employees and management to see if good corporate governance had any influence on hiring. And the results were very interesting, if not that surprising.

A majority of respondents said good company ethics were a key factor in their career decisions, while an impressive 80% of respondents said they wouldn’t work for a company with a record blemished by corruption scandals. With major anti-corruption drives in parts of ASIA-PAC, this really shouldn’t come as a major surprise, but the strength of this response makes this desire to work for a “good company” something that employers can’t ignore.

So what can corporates do about this desire to work for “good companies” that command respect?

We think corporates can respond to these needs by providing plenty of content emphasising company strengths and key history milestones. Find those parts of your company story and culture that make you stand out from the crowd and shout about it! If your company has a great CSR or innovation story to tell, or a fantastic history of innovation, make candidates aware of it, on your main website and social media outposts. This can be done by incorporating more “About Us” style content in your Career pages, or promoting key links from jobseeker pages to other area of your site. Another approach could be to include prominent key company facts on all web pages, and by offering jobseekers “What you need to know about us” factsheet downloads that emphasise what sets your company apart from its rivals.

And what about ethics? Well, the obvious thing to do is incorporate ethics into your online Careers content, or if you already have some there, review it and beef it up if necessary. It’s important to emphasise that ethics and good governance content needs to be well-designed here – it needs to be accessible and easy to understand in other words. If your governance content is likely to make jobseekers start scratching the back of their head, it might be time for a content review!

One way to address this accessibility factor is by talking about the ethics and values that provide the foundations for your workplace culture, and then use leadership interviews to demonstrate ethical leadership. Better still, use a video interview of your CEO and ask them to talk about the ethical side of your company’s culture, and how all employees can make a difference.

Hiring the right candidate should be easy. After all, there are plenty of jobseekers out there, aren’t there? A recent study in the US revealed that 3 in 4 full-time employees were actively looking for new opportunities. Back in the UK, an ILM survey painted a similar picture, with 37% of employees planning to leave their current roles in 2015. And don’t forget all those hungry hotshot graduates entering the workforce every year!

So why are so many recruiters finding it hard to find people with the right skills and mind-set? Well, perhaps recruiters need to ask a different question: If there are lots of quality candidates out there, why aren’t they finding your company online?

The answer to this question could be sobering. Maybe those top quality jobseekers are visiting the Career pages on your website, but they’re not deciding to apply for the roles you need to fill, or, perhaps even worse, they’re somehow getting lost during the application process.

Here are 6 ways to improve your Careers content and improve your recruiting success.

1. Communicate with jobseekers

It could be something as simple as providing an email address for queries (and answering them!) or providing a chat facility where jobseekers can contact existing employees. Alternatively, social media platforms can be used to answer candidate queries. Whatever option is used, speaking to jobseekers will personalise the process, help the candidate decide if the job is right for them, and also help the recruiter decide if the candidate is right for the role.

2. Provide feedback (and be open to it too)

The jobseeker that isn’t ideal for today’s vacancy could be an exact fit for a new role six months later. An impersonal automatic email is unlikely to lead to another application six months from now. And invite jobseekers to provide feedback as well. They may be able to highlight parts of your recruiting process that aren’t working as well as they could.

3. Explain why you’re different

It could be your workplace culture or maybe your innovation track record. Whatever it is, talk about it in your Careers content. In today’s hiring environment, the best candidates need to be told why they should apply for a job with you and not someone else. If you don’t think this is important – take a look at your peers and see how they’re selling themselves to jobseekers.

4. Be clear about your processes (and what you’re looking for)

Wear jobseekers’ shoes. An impersonal or unclear recruiting process is a major turn-off for today’s jobseekers, and could also be an obstacle for successful applications from quality candidates. So explain how the whole application process works (including decision timescales) and provide advice e.g. common CV mistakes to avoid, what sort of candidate you’re looking for, and interview tips, etc.

5. Use Video

Good video content engages site visitors in a way that makes even the best online copywriters fear for their jobs. It’s particularly good at telling different stories quickly. Use it to tell employee stories, explain workplace culture, and illustrate the benefits and challenges of working for your company. A two minute video could be the trigger that makes a good candidate apply for a role.

6. Be sociable

US studies suggest jobseekers use 18 different sources when searching for a new role. How many of these sources are social media forums? Candidates are increasingly doing their company homework on Linkedin, Glassdoor and Facebook. If your company doesn’t have social media outposts, how are candidates going to find you? And it’s also not enough to have a nice static Linkedin page by the way. Social media outposts that don’t engage with visitors stick out like the digital equivalent of a sore thumb.

And that takes us back to my first tip – the key to recruiting success is communication.