Bill Boorman, Founder of #Truevents.
Social Recruiting Implementation guy and Key Note Speaker in his second guest post on the Tribepad blog.
Most activity and attention in social recruiting is built around talent attraction. The gap between digital marketers and recruiters is ever shrinking, with many corporate recruitment teams hiring specialist recruitment marketers. People like Quezia Soares at Accenture, and plenty more. Much of what gets written, spoken about and commented on concentrates on this area. So much so that it is easy to think that recruitment is now all about talent attraction, and there’s nothing else to it.
We are beginning to understand the need for engagement, and considering if the best approach is just in time sourcing, talent community or talent network. With all of this “thinking” going on, it’s easy to overlook the critical part of recruiting, and that is going from garnering interest, to getting people to actually apply, and every application is important.
It’s also not all social. Most potential candidates will come to you via Google. They start off searching for jobs and locations and hit your landing page. They arrive via P.C, desktop or laptop, but increasingly by mobile or tablet. What do they see when they arrive? Have you thought about “browser sniffers” to change what I see according to the device I’m using?
If I get attracted to your organisation by any of this activity, I’m going to click on a link, an apply or similar button, and that’s going to take me somewhere. The place I land is your welcome mat. That’s where I decide if I want to go through the application process. The more cluttered or complicated your landing page looks, the less likely I am to apply.
According to who I am determines what I want to see. If I work internally I want to see content about internal mobility, and I don’t want to need to qualify my status or my details. You already have them. I want to see how I can apply, and for my application to be prioritised ahead of external candidates. I shouldn’t need to send you my CV because you already know about me and have my details. I don’t expect to have to apply with the masses, and I don’t want any “dear sir” mail. I don’t expect to have to go through any qualifying questions; I already work for the business.
If I’m coming to you as an ex-employee I want something different again. I already know the business. You don’t need to sell yourself to me. I don’t want that content. I want to go to the job and be able to let you know I’m from the alumni. You already have my details, data and reference source. I only want to give you an update of what I’ve been doing since I left.
If I have applied to you before, but a different job catches my eye, I want to go straight to the job. I don’t want to have to give you all my details again. I want to see just the job, and be able to reactivate my application with one click. Why should I spend time giving you information I don’t have?
If I’m looking in from outside, I want to go straight to the job that caught my attention, to see a single page. I don’t want to leave the channel I’m in. If your link was in Facebook, I want to stay in Facebook. I don’t want to have to go elsewhere to apply. I also want to be able to use my Facebook profile to sign up or sign in. I want to have easy access to relevant employer brand content, and to follow you even if I’m not quite ready or interested in applying. I want easy navigation, and content in a variety of formats from video to texts. I want you to message me relevant openings and content according to my location, current level and skills, but I don’t want to have to provide lots of information about who I am. You can get that from my other on-line profiles. If I do apply, I want to know that you have received my application, and an idea of what is going to happen next. I want access to the recruiter who is dealing with me, and to be able to ask questions. If I ask a question or for help, I expect an answer quickly. Most importantly, I want to know what your process is, and know that my personal data is secure, and what’s going to happen with it. I also want to be able to see who I might know in the organisation. If it’s hard or time consuming for me to apply, and I’m in demand, I probably won’t. If I need to bookmark the job or e-mail it to myself, I will probably forget. If I upload my C.V, I don’t expect to have to give you the same information all over again as part of the application process.
Finally, if you want me to share your job with my friends, because I’m not interested but my connections might be, then you need to make it easy for me to do so, suggesting the connections I might want to share with (by semantic matching of jobs to connections), and giving me something worth sharing. Keep links short, and give me easy to find share buttons.
If you want to know how effective (or not) your landing page is, you need to be measuring visitors, bounce rate, (how long visitors stay on pages on your site before moving on), applications started and applications completed. If they not what you expect, might be that they are not having a happy landing. When was the last time you applied for one of your jobs and found out?
Bill
