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The Candidate Journey
This document discusses how organizations can nurture candidates throughout the hiring process using targeted communications. It defines nurture as communicating the right message to candidates at the right time. The goal of nurture is to guide candidates through the hiring process from awareness to application. Tactics discussed include capturing leads in a talent network, personalizing communications based on candidate preferences, and automating reminders to apply or complete applications. Nurturing applicants can help reduce declines and referrals. Providing transparency into company culture also builds trust with candidates.
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The Candidate Journey
- 1. The Candidate Journey &What Affects Their Decision to Apply
- 2. Webinar Tips • Youcan connect to audio using your computer’s microphone and speakers. • Or, you may select call in using the details under the “Quick Start” tab after joining the Webinar. • All lines will be muted to avoid background noise. • You can ask questions at any time by typing them into the Q&A Pane. • Use #GDChat and @smashfly to join in the conversation on Twitter throughout the webinar.
- 3. Featured Speakers Alicia Garibaldi SeniorContent Marketing Manager at Glassdoor alicia@glassdoor.com @albagaribaldi Elyse Schmidt Content Strategist at SmashFly eschmidt@smashfly.com @ElyseSchmidt
- 4. Agenda • What NurtureIs—and the Role It Plays in a Recruitment Marketing Strategy • How to Use Nurture Throughout Each Stage of the Candidate Journey, From Attraction to Application to Hire • How to Build a More Engaged Talent Network Through Nurture • Why Candidates Decline Job Offers • Key Examples of How Organizations Use Nurture Tactics Pre-apply and Post-apply
- 5. What Nurture Is—andthe Role It Plays in a Recruitment Marketing Strategy
- 6. Nurture’s Role inYour Recruitment Marketing Strategy Recruitment Marketing is every tactic that a talent acquisition team uses to find, attract, engage and nurture leads to convert them into more qualified applicants to fill jobs now and build a pipeline for the future: • Employee Referrals • Talent Networks • Job Marketing • Employer Branding • Recruiting Events • Recruiting Analytics • CRM • Sourcing • Content Marketing • Email Nurturing • Social Recruiting • Mobile recruiting • Career Site • SEO
- 7. So Why DoesRecruitment Marketing Matter Now? Candidates demand relevancy, transparency and personalization— and expect it in every interaction before they even see an application. Source: 1Glassdoor U.S. Site Survey, October 2014 4 in 5 Glassdoor users are actively looking for jobs or open to better opportunities1
- 8. So Why DoesRecruitment Marketing Matter Now? Not every candidate is ready to apply—in fact, most candidates identify as passive, and an average of Source: 1SmashFly, 2015 drop off during the application process1 74% Capturing basic information from these interested leads before they halt their application process will allow you to engage them in the future.
- 9. Why Have aTalent Network? Talent Networks Help You to: 1. Build a pipeline of interested leads separate from applicants. 2. Nurture leads with targeted communications. 3. Strengthen your candidate profiles.
- 10. Find, Attract, Engage,NURTURE, Convert 3 Important Steps Before Nurture: 1. Find and source candidates with critical skills. 2. Attract candidates through your employer brand. 3. Engage candidates to opt in to communication with your organization.
- 11. Let’s Define Nurture Whatis nurture? Communicating to the right candidate with the right message at the right time. Nurture is what, how and when you will communicate with your talent network to keep candidate leads warm and grow their interest in your organization so they may eventually apply or opt out if they determine they’re not a cultural fit. When does nurture start? Nurture starts when a candidate opts in to your talent network or is sourced by your team and gives you permission to communicate with them during the next several stages of the candidate journey: Consideration, Interest and Application.
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- 13. What Is theGoal of Nurture? 1. Target and personalize your messaging to interested leads based on information they give you and their actions with your content. 2. Drive leads through the candidate journey, from awareness to application. 3. Find the right candidates for the right opportunity without sourcing from scratch.
- 14. How to UseNurture Throughout Each Stage of the Candidate Journey
- 15. How Do IGet Leads Into My Talent Network? Optimal placement can capture both passive and active candidates. • Insert a talent network form in the front-end of the apply process to give candidates the option for opting in before completing the application • Promote across different channels and on multiple pages of your career site • Use call-to-actions elsewhere on your career site to capture a different audience
- 16. Key Example CH2M’s talent network hasmore than 300,000 warm leads worldwide
- 17. What Do IInclude on the Talent Network Form? Customized fields can help capture the right data for more informed decisions. • At first, ask for a few key fields: name, email and job category • Send preference emails after they opt in and track results • Glassdoor offers candidates the option to sign up for targeted job alerts when new positions are posted and employers the opportunity to sign up for alerts when new reviews are left by candidates
- 18. Key Example Eaton’s talent network formcaptures 1,000 contacts daily
- 19. What Do ISend to My Talent Network? Personalization will drive engagement. • Understand your target personas • Define “The What” • Understand “The Why” • Research “The How” • Create a candidate messaging plan for the candidate journey
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- 21. Types of ContentYou Can Send Your Talent Network • Targeted Job Alerts • Glassdoor Ratings • Content From Your Marketing Team • Employee Stories • Industry News Articles • Newsletters • Webinars • White Papers • Recruiter Emails • Blog Posts
- 22. What Can IAutomate? Automation can help drive conversions to apply. • Using automated email reminders or triggers when a candidate takes a certain action can greatly increase conversions • Recruitment Marketing Platforms can: • Send automated emails to remind candidates to finish completing applications • Send targeted job alerts based on candidates’ preferences
- 23. Key Example In 2014, 182hires out of almost 1,000 candidates that were reminded to complete an application
- 24. How to NurtureYour Applicants Into Hires―and Brand Advocates
- 25. Treat Every ApplicantLike a Potential Customer Job candidates research companies and job opportunities online, looking for an inside view and a competitive edge. Provide a transparent, efficient and organized interview process and remember to close the loop with every applicant. Don’t go dark!
- 26. Provide a TransparentView Into Your Culture Respond to Glassdoor reviews to build trust in your company in the eyes of job seekers and current employees alike. of Glassdoor users say their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review162% Source: 1Glassdoor U.S. Site Survey, October 2014
- 27. Stay Proactive toReduce the Number of Declines & Renegs Among the 30 U.S. employers with the largest percentage of employee referrals reported on Glassdoor, on average… Sources: 1Why Interview Sources Matter in Hiring: Exploring Glassdoor Interviews Data, August 2015; 2Beyond Employees: Employee Referral Programs Redefined, 2015 3 in 4 (75%) of employees would recommend their company to a friend1 Employee referrals account for 32% of new hires2
- 28. Check In WithRecent Hires Onboarding is a great opportunity to gather insight that can be used to nurture other applicants. What you learn can help optimize your hiring recruitment efforts, even minimize buyer’s remorse
- 29. Not all jobboards are created equal. Brandon Hall Group, for example, determined that when compared to traditional job boards… Sources: 1Brandon Hall Group Report, Understanding the Impact of Employer Brand, November 2014; 2Glassdoor Client Case Studies, 2015 Glassdoor as a source typically delivers 2x better applicant quality1 (as measured by applicant-to-hire ratios) at an average 30% lower cost-per-hire1
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Editor's Notes
- #4 Deirdre to introduce.
- #5 Deirdre to walk through this.
- #6 Elyse: Great, thanks so much for the intro Deirdre! Super pumped to be presenting this with Alicia from Glassdoor today, since this was our brainchild and inspired from an ebook we wrote together. Always so fun working with Glassdoor. Today we’re going to be talking about nurture and how it fits into recruitment marketing. A nurture strategy is integral in creating a more seamless and personalized candidate journey from first touchpoint all the way through hire. It’s what drives your leads to become applicants. Alicia: That’s right Elyse! We think about nurture campaigns a ton as marketers. What is the message that is going to resonate and how do we reach people at the right time with the right message to evoke a response and ideally a buyer or in a recruiters case – a hire. We’re here to talk about how to use nurture to your advantage to make your jobs easier in finding the right candidates.
- #7 ELYSE: But before we get into nurture, we all have to be on the same page about recruitment marketing. We hear a ton of different definitions of recruitment marketing – and I’m sure you see the same Alicia. One of the reasons we love to partner with Glassdoor is that they feel very similarly about what recruitment marketing is. At SmashFly, we define recruitment marketing as every tactic that a talent acquisition team uses to find, attract, engage and nurture leads to convert them into more qualified applicants to fill jobs now and build a pipeline for the future: Really, recruitment marketing’s importance is looking at how all of these tactics integrate together drive more qualified candidate leads to apply today – and build a pipeline of candidates you can source from and communicate to in the future. FYI: You are hearing me use the word lead, which is a marketing term. But here, I am talking about candidates that you want to influence to apply, similar to how marketing finds leads to turn into customers. At SmashFly, we look at candidates as talent acquisition’s leads. So you’ll be hearing me talk about leads a lot, especially in regard to nurture.
- #8 ELYSE: So why now? Why has recruitment marketing become such a major theme in talent acquisition? Recruitment marketing is definitely having a moment, but it’s here to stay. And I’ll tell you why. Because candidates today are different. The consumerization of the candidate experience has changed talent acquisition forever. Candidates research a new employer the same way they research products they want to buy, and they expect the process to have a personal, consumer feel. If your brand isn’t relevant, personal, engaging, honest, transparent – candidates will move along to one that is. Plus, nearly everyone can be considered a candidate. And I know Alicia can speak to this. ALICIA: That’s right Elyse. We do a lot of surveys at Glassdoor to learn about job seekers and what they are looking for and 96% say it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency. In fact, 4 out of 5 of its users are open to better opportunities. The majority of these people are most likely candidates browsing social media, researching their current salary or company they’ve just heard about or following company blogs or job alerts – but the real key is hooking them with your content to encourage them to click to apply. ELYSE: These passive candidates will fill your pipeline now and build a database you can own and source from in the future. It means not starting from scratch every.single.req. These candidate leads are extremely important to attract, engage and nurture.
- #9 ELYSE: I love that we uncovered this nugget of information. SmashFly found that 74% of candidates who start the application process drop off before they finish it. ¾! If your only call to action is APPLY, you will never be able to find or contact these 74% of candidates who were interested enough in your organization to click apply. So think about it this way, from the last two stats we’ve shared: if 4 out of 5 people are open to new opportunities, but 3/4 drop off during apply – this tells you that there needs to be another way candidates can express interest and engage with your employer brand. Point: Not everyone is ready to apply today. We need to be ready 6 months down the line, a year down the line, and we’re not going a great job of this in talent acquisition yet. But we will, with nurture! Capturing these candidates in your talent network before they drop off will allow you to nurture them with the right information until they are ready to apply.
- #10 ELYSE: People talk about talent networks differently, and you might have heard them called talent pools, talent communities, etc.. We define a talent network as: A database of interested leads who opt in to receive communications from you by providing their email address and other basic information to learn more about your jobs, projects, events and other career-related information without applying. Build a pipeline: A talent network enables you to capture those 74% of candidates who drop off during your application process for one reason or another. These are leads who are interested in your employer brand and who live in the CRM or Recruitment Marketing Platform, accessible to email and SMS communication. This is the network of people you build in order to nurture. NURTURE leads! A talent network is your organization’s database of sourceable leads – and they are warm! They have opted into your communication and won’t be shocked when they hear from you. As you send them more relevant and valuable information based on their interested and preferences, they will probably be happy to hear from you. Strengthen your candidate profiles: By tracking clicks and engagements in a Recruitment Marketing Platform, you will learn more about the habits and interests of your leads and prove that your nurture strategy is working to drive them to conversion. This data is so key in proving what’s working and building your candidate personas. ALICIA: Yes I’m so passionate about doing this as a content marketer. The more you know about your database, the better you can segment and target candidates with the right message. How much easier is it when an opportunity comes up and you already have a group of warm leads to tap into? I know for me when I launch an eBook, it’s 100% easier when I know what audience is going to download it and enjoy it the most. Think of the same method with your candidates.
- #11 ELYSE: I promise we are getting close to talking nurture, but all of this other stuff really is important in setting up who and how you will nurture! Nurture doesn’t just happen, you need candidate leads to communicate to. And quality candidates leads don’t just appear in your database. You have to earn them. And you’ll do that through your recruitment marketing strategy. 1. Find > This Is your sourcing from scratch based on critical skills you prioritize. The result is targeted pipelines of cold leads added to your Recruitment Marketing Platform to reach out to and engage. 2. Attract > it takes 12 touchpoints before a consumer makes a purchase decision. Yep, 12. Your job descriptions, career site content, Glassdoor profile, and social networks all can and should impact a candidate’s decision to opt in to communication with your organization (talent network, blog subscription, email list, etc.). These are touchpoints, and they are opportunities. 3. Engage > Allow leads to engage with your organization by joining your talent network through different paths—this could be directly within the apply flow before the application; a tab on your Facebook page; a call-to-action on the homepage of your career site; or a link on your LinkedIn profile. Once they engage and opt in to your talent network – it’s time to get your nurture on!
- #12 ELYSE: So let’s define nurture. Honestly, this is the fun part of marketing – and it will be the fun part of talent acquisition. Simply, nurture is communicating to the right candidate with the right message at the right time. I’ll borrow from our Dir. of Recruitment Marketing Tracey Parsons here: “You don’t just propose to someone you see walking the down the street. You get to know them first.” Nurture is the courtship between your organization and your leads. It’s how you’re going to get to know these leads – and how they’ll get to know your employer brand – in order to make them want to apply to the right opportunity in your company. So when does that courtship start? You’re using sourcing, social media, job ads, career site and more in the awareness stage to find and attract target leads—but if they don’t apply, they haven’t opted in to any communication with you. This is why talent networks are so important. When they opt-in to your talent network, it means they’re saying “Yes, I want to learn more about you and hear more from you.” I know Alicia can speak to what Glassdoor does here. ALICIA: On Glassdoor, a lot of our employers use company updates, which are similar to status updates to message to their audience. Each page has active candidates that can choose to follow your company and we know that they are on Glassdoor researching what it’s like to work for you, so join that conversation. And I always encourage employers to sign up for a Free Employer Account and take advantage of all the free analytics we offer. Sometimes just a response to a popular review on Glassdoor can make all the difference and 69% agree their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review.
- #13 ELYSE: Just as marketers track the movement of their leads through a buyer’s journey, talent acquisition need to move their leads through different stages of the candidate journey. The top half of the funnel is focused on finding and attracting candidate leads, engaging them and nurturing them until the opportunity is right, then converting them into an applicant. This is recruitment marketing. The bottom half of the funnel focuses on applicants, and selecting the right qualified applicants to bring in for interviews in order to make the best hires for your organization. This is recruitment. Nurture should be used throughout this ENTIRE candidate journey, because there are touch points and interactions between candidate and org and applicant and org ALL THE WAY TO HIRE. Nurture doesn’t stop after a candidate applies! Think about when you make a purchase from Amazon or Target. Yes, you may continue to buy from these stores if you never hear from either brand again – but if they continue to send you great deals or targeted emails based on what you previously bought or new products based on what you browse on the site, it’s much more likely you’ll become a repeat customer faster and a stronger advocate of their brand.
- #14 ELYSE: OK – so what do you get out of nurture? It might sound like a lot of work, but really, the value of nurture is two-fold for both the organization AND the candidate, driving that better, stronger candidate experience. 1. When you target and personalize your messaging, you’ll start seeing how specific candidates in specific job families consume and engage with the content and jobs you send them. 2. You should see more leads converting into applicants. 3. It allows you to own your own database of warm leads! Which I find invaluable. A talent network enables you to jump into a specific job family in your talent network to source from and market new jobs to without relying on external databases. A telling stat from the marketing world on the value of lead nurturing: Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Forrester Research)
- #15 ELYSE: So now that we’ve defined nurture, we’re going to answer some key questions about nurture, plus looking at the organization who are actually practicing this stuff and seeing major results. Effective nurture is the union of valuable content marketing and smart email marketing, and its foundation is really understanding your target candidate personas and the candidate journey.
- #16 ELYSE: How do I get leads into my talent network?! Candidates engage with your employer brand and visit your career site through different mediums, so your talent network also should be promoted across different channels and on multiple pages of your career site. 1. Inserting a talent network form in the front-end of the apply process provides an option for candidates to opt in if they don’t complete the application. If you’re thinking – won’t this deter people from actually applying then? We hear this all the time, and it’s a valid initial thought. But from our data, we find this to be far and above the most successful placement of a talent network form CTA. 90% of talent network opt-ins occur here! Our data shows that filling this form out doesn’t have a major effect on them NOT continuing to fill out the application. 2. In addition, using calls-to-action elsewhere on your career site and content can capture a totally different audience: leads who haven’t yet looked at your jobs. Again, this is a smaller percentage aiming at completely passive candidates, but placement could be in the header or footer of your career site, on your general job search page, on your Facebook page as a tab, in social media promotions, as a call to action in your current employee’s signatures, as an email to previous applicants. The beauty of passive candidates is that they can be anywhere. ALICIA: Do your homework on your target candidate and do research on where they are researching your brand? For instance, are they coming to you on a mobile device? Do you have a way for them to mobile-ly apply and connect with you? Or are you active on sites like Glassdoor? Type in Google searches that you think your audience might be researching and see what comes up and then build a strategy that factors in that behavior. ELYSE: So let’s look at some real-world results and who is actually seeing success from nurture.
- #17 This is one of my favorite use cases for a talent network, and CH2M is doing really interesting and fresh tactics when it comes lead generation and nurture. When SmashFly helped CH2M launch its talent network on its career site and Facebook page, the organization gained 10,000 contacts in the first year. The next year, CH2M invited previous applicants to join and encouraged its recruiters to invite their prospective candidates to join, which brought the network up to 90,000 contacts. This year, the organization added an optional talent network form in the apply flow. The result: CH2M’s talent network has more than 300,000 warm leads worldwide. It’s awesome. When you see this type of database growth of INTERESTED candidates, it’s pretty surprising to learn that only 27% of the Fortune 500 use a talent network at all. And even fewer use it in the apply flow, where we see the MOST opt-ins: Only 9%. This is based on an original research report we published in the Fall of 2015. Tip of the day: Get started now for an advantage in building your pipeline! You will be ahead of the curve.
- #18 Next question: What do I include on my Talent Network form? It’s easy to get caught up in wanting to know everything about your candidate leads up front. You want a low barrier of entry. What is the minimum information you need to categorize these leads? First name, last name, email information and job family. No one wants to fill out 10 boxes – ain’t nobody got time for that! Over time, if candidates engage with you, you can ask for more information and their preferences, and they will be much more likely to give it to you. It’s building a relationship. You can send preference emails asking the types of content they want to receive and the types of job positions they are interested in. You can also ask for frequency preferences. Glassdoor actually does this really well. ALICIA: Keep it simple to cut through the noise and only include information that is the most valuable. Again, as a marketer we know that no one has time to fill out long forms anymore. No one has time in their busy days to job hunt. Partner with sites like Glassdoor that target the user for you with your jobs. I know a lot of our partners also leverage campaigns that target candidates that might be researching key competitors. The analytics on Glassdoor, again – some which are totally free, help you see who is researching you now, what age range, and even what jobs they are clicking on the most to help you tailor your strategy.
- #19 Let’s look at Eaton. Eaton’s talent network form captures 1,000 contacts daily, all of which are segmented into 23 core disciplines in the SmashFly platform to build better targeted pipelines of talent. Based on these core disciplines, the recruiting team can send more relevant messaging and job openings to find the best opportunity for the candidate and the best fit for the organization. Being able to segment your talent network leads is also great for sourcing – you already have core pipelines of talent that you can directly communicate to when there is a focus on specific jobs versus starting from scratch.
- #20 ELYSE: SO this is always the big one, and there really could be a whole webinar on this topic. What do I send my talent network once I have them? Content creation is a challenge for a lot of talent acquisition organizations. My charge here learn your candidates and think creatively! First, you have to understand who is in your talent network, the questions they want answered and the types of resources they would find value. Get in their heads! This is what is so invigorating about marketing – understanding target personas and figuring out what resonates. Data will help you! Where might they be looking for information about your employer brand? What types of company or employee stories would engage them to read more? How can your organization help them achieve their professional goals, per job family? Mapping target personas, the questions they might have in these stages and the best ways to relay that message (a content map or candidate messaging map) is key to your nurture plan. And back to getting creative. Everything is content if you can utilize it in the right way! Start with your jobs, or your Glassdoor reviews. See what your marketing team is putting out on your corporate site. Even better, pull in market trends or curated advice from external resources. Not every single piece of content has to be created from scratch by you – in fact, it’s better if it’s not, it provides a broader sense of expertise and value. ALICIA: Remember that your own employees are valuable resources to you as well. Employees rank among the most trusted influencers when communicating about their company’s engagement and integrity. (Edelman 2015 Trust Barometer, January 2015) In fact, your employees are your employer brand. Loop them in on what matters to them and keeps them at their current jobs and weave that message into your story. Remember that if you put one message out there and employees are contracting that message on sites like Glassdoor, your credibility goes out the window. Start from within and get employee buy-in on your company’s message to ensure success!
- #21 Let’s look at who does this well. CDW uses dozens of customized workflows in SmashFly for each candidate persona to personalize their communication to their talent network. The company uses a combination of employee stories, Thank You messages and recruiter outreach through email as different automated touchpoints. It’s pivotal to use both mass database emails AND personal recruiter outreach. It mixes up the cadence of communication and adds a personal touch. CDW also utilizes its Glassdoor rating (which is very high) both pre- and post-application to better convert leads, as well as maintain talent. That Glassdoor name and rating is huge in the eyes of candidates, plus you can pull public reviews from previous candidates or current employees – that’s content right there! ALICIA: CDW has also taken all five steps to becoming an OpenCompany on Glassdoor. This signifies to candidates that they are an open transparent place to work. One of the steps is responding to reviews, so I always tell employers to look at OpenCompanies on Glassdoor and see how they respond to reviews and engage with the audience on Glassdoor to develop a strategy.
- #22 So we got ahead of ourselves a little bit in the all the examples just provided, but here’s a good snapshot of what to think about when you think “content” for nurture. It doesn’t have to be long-form articles or well-developed videos! Transparency, brevity and value is all extremely important. ALICIA: A good piece of content can be leveraged 5-7 ways. Use good content that is working in emails, job descriptions, videos, blog posts, etc. Get the most bang out of your content once you’ve done all your homework both internally and externally to figure out what’s resonating.
- #23 ELYSE: What can I automate? Automation is so, so important in keeping consistent touchpoints with your leads and applicants and NOT GOING DARK. As a marketer, it would be impossible to nurture leads and set up different customized tracks without our marketing automation technology. We live and die by those technologies, the Hubspots and Pardots of the world. I’m sure Alicia will agree with me here. Marketing automation technology has seen the fastest growth of any CRM-related segment in the last 5 years, and we’ll see a huge focus on this in talent acquisition upcoming. One of the key benefits of a Recruitment Marketing Platform is to help automate nurture. In speaking with one of our newest customers, they said something that really stuck with me: “We believe that technology will HELP build relationships and personalize relationship, not take away from it.” And we at SmashFly believe that wholeheartedly. Using automated email reminders or triggers when a candidate takes a certain action can greatly increase conversions without recruiters having to lift a finger. The big takeaway I want to reiterate here is the automation does not have to equal robot. It doesn’t have to mean boring. Yes, the email trigger is automated, but PERSONALIZE the message. Sound like a human. Insert your brand voice. Technology is the facilitator, it doesn’t become the recruiter. Alicia – what do you think about the automation debate in talent acquisition?
- #24 So the key example, The Cheesecake Factory. I know I have been saying I love all of these use cases for nurture, but as a marketer, this is the type of result that would have me dancing at my desk. The Cheesecake Factory uses SmashFly to automatically trigger an email reminder to candidates who don’t finish their application within two days. The result: In 2014, The Cheesecake Factory made 182 hires out of almost 1,000 candidates that were reminded to complete an application. That’s hires, not applicants! This speaks for 1: the quality of those in the talent network. Almost 20% of the people that started an application, were captured by a talent network form, were qualified enough for the Cheesecake to hire. And 2: The recruiters here didn’t have to lift a finger. Automation took over and they were 182 teammates stronger for it. So those were awesome, right? There are organization currently practicing nurture strategies and seeing huge results in influencing leads to become applicants. To wrap up, when you think about nurturing leads into applicants, you must have a talent network! I am telling you, get on that. Second, be creative in content and think outside the box. Track data, like clicks and opens and converisons, and understand preferences and what is working. And lastly, invest in technology to help you measure and automate, like a Recruitment Marketing Platform. So now passing the baton over to Alicia to talk about how nurture can be used POST-APPLY to ensure your applicants in fact become hires and brand advocates.
- #25 Just because candidates apply doesn’t mean they’ll automatically continue with the interview process or accept your offer. If they are top talent, they’ve likely applied and been contacted by numerous organizations. So here is where you step up your nurture game!
- #26 ALICIA: Monitor interview reviews on Glassdoor. You can respond to those reviews as well and the interview process is the first impression of your brand. Always close the loop with candidates and monitor the conversation, so that you are aware of how your brand is being received. ELYSE: This is so key. A top employer brand needs work to stay that way – and everyone that comes across your brand could be a candidate, a customer, an advocate or a detractor!
- #27 ALICIA: The Why Work For Us section on Glassdoor allows you to break down your messaging in easy ways. We just launched our Best Places to Work Lists and one the of the common traits among those winners was that they had a killer company culture that was emphasized from the top down. Culture and engagement is the No. 1 challenge faced by companies around the world, according to a recent survey business and HR leaders. (Global Human Capital Trends 2015, Deloitte), so we just published a Culture Code Template with Hubspot to make your job easy in how to put this together, so be sure to check that out. Great companies like Patagonia, Netflix, Hubspot and Glassdoor are featured, so it’s a great read and could spark great ideas and discussion on how to hone in on your own company culture. And remember, employer branding is not a set it and forget strategy! You need to always be iterating and refining your strategy and consulting with your employees as your company evolves. ELYSE: Yep, now is the time to be transparent. The EVP is making a comeback. Set expectations up front. Own your good reviews, and your bad. Be vocal with applicants and continue to give them a deeper look into the culture.
- #28 ALICIA: We have a chief economist on staff at Glassdoor and he published a report based on the data on Glassdoor. In interview reviews, they have to state where they came from and if they took the job offer. The number one source of job matches from this data was employee referrals! And of those companies with the most employee referrals that lead to a job match, their average % of employees that would recommend them to a friend is 75%. Check this metric on Glassdoor and strive for that. And don’t get discouraged. On average, nearly half (49%) of Glassdoor users would recommend their employers to a friend (Glassdoor Data Labs, September 2015). ELYSE: Referrals are SO VITAL! But we believe the referrer is also so vital. If your applicant came from a referral, encourage the referral sponsor to stay engaged with the applicant throughout the hiring process. Referral sponsors can play an important role in keeping the applicant “warm” especially if the hiring process is longer than they’d like. That is their advocate throughout the process.
- #29 ALICIA: Onboarding is a great opportunity to gather insight that can be used to nurture other applicants. During onboarding, you can validate why applicants chose to work for you. What you learn can help optimize your hiring recruitment efforts, even minimize “buyer’s remorse” on the part of candidates who may regret their decision to accept job offers. Start by putting formal processes in place. For example, check in with new hires at 30-, 60- and 90-day intervals. These nurture touchpoints can be used to solicit their feedback on how satisfied they are with the company and how confident they are that they made the right decision to come on board. (In HR and hiring circles, e-tailer Zappos is legendary for paying new hires to quit after just a few weeks if they aren’t committed to the company or its culture.) As it turns out, candidate expectations, gleaned during interviews and other employer research, may differ from actual job reality and company culture. I know that companies like Square and Twitter as candidates to give feedback on Glassdoor after the interview. This feedback can really help you improve your processes over time. We also have Employee Engagement Toolkits with great ideas on how to motivate employees to contribute to reviews and stay engaged with the company culture.
- #30 ALICIA: Check-ins are also a good opportunity to query new hires about the channels or sources they used to find the job opportunity and research their eventual workplace. Not all job boards are created equal. Brandon Hall Group, for example, determined that when compared to traditional job boards… Glassdoor as a source typically delivers 2x better applicant quality1 (as measured by applicant-to-hire ratios) at an average 30% lower cost-per-hire1) Through partnering with Glassdoor, Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center saw 94% more profile traffic when compared to other companies in the state of Washington and a $826 cost-per-hire, which was 77% less than the national average cost-per-hire. ELYSE: Having a process for checking in on the candidate experience is extremely important to gauge feedback. Also, tracking your sources of influence, along with source of hire, can really provide you metrics of where candidates are converting along your touchpoints and where they are being influenced, or engaging the most. SmashFly’s platform provides this type of look at your recruitment marketing tactics side by side. ALICIA: So before we get into questions, we want to give a little info about each of our companies. (30 seconds, then kick it over to Elyse) ELYSE: SmashFly is marketing automation for recruiters. We are a leading Recruitment Marketing Platform that manages your outbound sourcing, inbound recruitment marketing (social, referrals, email marketing, mobile, job distribution career site) and employer branding in one platform that integrates with any ATS. Come read our blog at blog.smashfly.com or follow us Twitter (or me!). Feel free to shoot any perspectives or questions about recruitment marketing on over. Say hi.
- #31 FOR ALICIA: You mentioned, I can respond to reviews for free but where do I go to sign up for the account to do that? What do I do if our company just got acquired or is going through a re-brand – how do I ensure my employer brand is top of mind to stakeholders? FOR ELYSE: