First Advantage Recruiting Solutions News Archive
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The View from 10,000 Feet
What can First Advantage Employer Services Accomplish for your Organization?
Employer Services Segment Overview
Globally, for thousands of clients including hundreds of FORTUNE® 1000 companies, First Advantage Employer Services provides a comprehensive suite of employer solutions specifically designed to reduce the time and cost associated with recruiting, applicant tracking, screening and ongoing retention processes.
As an established, knowledgeable industry leader, First Advantage focuses on providing integrated, single-source solutions, featuring quality products and business practices, customizable technology, helpful compliance and managed services, and highly responsive client support to employers worldwide.
In response to the needs of the industry, our Employer Services offering combines best-in-breed systems and solutions to cover key aspects of talent acquisition. As employers tackle the challenges of finding, hiring and retaining the right employees faster, more productively and less expensively than in the past, they turn to First Advantage for integrated solutions.
Employers no longer have to contract with separate service providers, manage multiple sources of data, and reconcile the elements in the recruitment-hiring-retention process. First Advantages integrated solution speeds companies abilities and reduces their overall employment costs.
To learn more about First Advantage Employer Services and find specific solutions for your organizations needs, click here.
Effective Recruiting - The Real Deal
Editorial by Chris Cella
What's working and what's not
The efficiency-first mindset of most internal recruiting organizations has distorted the definition of a high quality job-seeker experience. The delicate balancing act between treating prospective candidates like human beings and controlling costs has forced the industry at large to set the bar disturbingly low, and as a result, many companies are actually failing to accomplish the goal effectively.
Here's how it usually works. A company has a constant need for hires based upon their growth projections, and so they go after them. Recruitment marketing and advertising campaigns follow, and the company gathers a large database of prospective candidates with various levels of interest and qualifications. After some technology-enabled ranking and sorting, the time-pressed recruiters focus on the best and most interested candidates in order to push them through the process efficiently. In great companies, these candidates are treated well enough to turn them into hires. Mission accomplished, right?
Well sort of, but not completely. Sure, candidates have turned into hires. Your short term needs have been met. But what about that database of candidates that were interested and perhaps qualified, but not hired? What about everyone that was interested enough to seek more information about your company but not ready to pull the trigger? By not caring for how these individuals perceive your company moving forward, companies are ignoring a very important aspect of the candidate experience, and not taking the long-term view of the ROI of their recruitment marketing investments.
Lets break it down by what recruiters are really trying to accomplish - 1) Providing a great candidate experience while 2) maintaining a good volume and 3) keeping costs down. Each aspect of this goal is diametrically opposed to the others, ultimately composing the complex puzzle that frustrates every single staffing manager alive.
The sad truth is that given these goals, a 'perfect' process will not exist until every top candidate beats down your door without you having to spend a dime (ref. Google). What you should set your sights on is a process that is more effective than what you are doing today. Since turning the ship in the right direction is easier than putting it in dry dock for a complete overhaul, start by addressing how you treat your candidate database.
You will find that by borrowing from marketing's playbook, you can easily build a strong talent pipeline, realize a significant improvement in your candidate experience, and therefore spend less with each of your successive recruitment advertising campaigns.
Communicate with everyone who has shown even the slightest interest in working for your organization on a regular basis.
Spend time cultivating the relationships on a macro level while making it feel personalized to the candidate. This requires some knowledge of effective communications, but the end result is a more valuable talent pipeline and less reliance on project-based recruitment marketing investments. What follows are simple and proven methods for keeping prospects engaged through simple email communications.
- Give prospects a reason to tell their friends.
- Ask them to keep you informed about their progress and/or status changes.
- Give them a reason to tell you more about themselves. Then use that information to 'sell' them on appropriate positions.
- Tell them about how the company is doing financially and highlight successes.
- Tell them about initiatives that could mean more opportunity for them.
According to the results generated from several clients my organization has worked with to implement this type of program, the extra effort more than pays for itself. Because most people change jobs fairly often but not entire careers, they remain valuable in your pipeline as long as you keep them interested. In addition, the viral aspect of this kind of program introduces prospective candidates to your company for no additional investment.
Keeping candidates happy is important, but keeping prospective candidates happy can be just as vital to your organizations recruiting success. Energize your full prospect and candidate database by treating them like their interest in your company is important to you. With an effective communication strategy, your company can realize huge benefits without having to break the bank or make a large investment.
Want to reach the writer?
Send Chris Cella an email
Want to know how First Advantage Recruiting Solutions helps companies develop effective candidate database marketing programs?
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Recruiter's Corner
Back to Basics: The fundamentals of effective recruiting
By Eric Smartt, PHR, CIR
Senior Manager, Recruiting Solutions
Talent acquisition should be treated as a vital aspect of your organization's daily activities, on par with other functional roles such as Sales, IT, Product Development, Finance, etc. Considering the fact that the shortage of skilled workers in this nation will continue to grow, the war for talent cannot be ignored. Therefore, the only option is to make talent acquisition a top priority. Because great recruiting requires the close coordination of many areas of your organization, success or failure depends upon strong project coordination and leadership.
Human Resource Managers and Hiring Managers need to take on Project Lead roles when it comes to their recruiting needs. Begin each recruiting project by establishing guidelines - create a roadmap. This will enable project leadership to manage resources and timelines against set expectations. Here are some tips to help increase the effectiveness of your recruiting team, whether in-house, outsourced, or integrated.
- Discovery Meeting/Call: Schedule a meeting to discuss your recruiting needs in full detail. Make sure your recruiting team understands the full scope of what you need to accomplish. This call is where most bad recruiting processes fall off track. Even when projects are considered normalized or "everyday", the careful management of these meetings is crucial to the success of the project.
Functional members of the meeting should be expected to know and be prepared to share all hard skill as well as soft skill requirements for the positions. Your recruiting team should also understand the target salary and bonus for the position and whether or not relocation has been budgeted for the role. There are many other variables, but these are the basics. - Qualified Time to First Submittal: Determine with your recruiting team how soon they will be able to present qualified candidates. It is very important to have these timelines in place in order to measure the effectiveness of the team and ensure process improvement in the future.
- Feedback Response Time: Consequently, you should be able to determine how soon you will be able to provide feedback to your recruiting team once they have presented a candidate. In this respect, each member of the team must hold the other accountable. This is an important step to keeping the project on task and moving forward.
- Interview Process: Outline the interview process and make sure the recruiting team communicates on a continuous basis with all stakeholders involved. Ensure that everyone has clear visibility over how many steps are involved in the interview process, and make sure schedules are adhered to in order to drive wasted time out of the system.
- Time to Fill: Set a realistic Time to Fill and communicate it to all project stakeholders. Consider any known factors that will impinge upon the schedule such as; vacations, holidays, off-site meetings, etc. Allotments must be made early in project plan development so deadlines are set realistically.
- Reporting: Determine what kind of reporting you will require for the project. Make sure your recruiting team understands the information and/or metrics you will require for reporting (i.e. AAP, OFCCP, etc ). Assign responsibilities for reporting, and include leadership oversight where necessary.
- Communication Call: Lastly, schedule a weekly 15 minute conference call with your recruiting team. In this call provide feedback regarding candidates in process, any changes to the requisition, process improvements, etc. This call is very important to ensure the recruiting project stays on course to the ultimate goal of filling the requisition.
Finding and efficiently hiring top talent is a crucial aspect of your organization's success, and a thorough and carefully thought-out project structure can make all the difference. All of the above steps are common to successful project implementation across business disciplines, but nowhere is adherence to them more vital than in recruiting. Because stakeholders (hiring managers), who are not necessary focused on recruiting as a core function of their job, are involved from the onset of recruiting project, proper planning and clear communication are prerequisites for success.
If you would like to learn more about how First Advantage Recruiting Solutions helps clients effectively manage recruiting projects, or if you have any questions for the author, please fill out the contact form below or call 888-547-4472.
Efficient Recruitment Marketing and Emerging Media, Part 1
Stay ahead of the curve with emerging recruitment media trends
Editorial by Lindsay Kaufman, Media Buyer
What is the main goal of your organization's recruitment marketing efforts? With hundreds of millions of dollars being spent every year by employers across the world, this question should be top of mind. Regardless of how much your company spends on recruitment marketing, the ultimate goal should be simple. You need to effectively manage your budget to communicate your open positions to the right candidate, right now. This is the first in a series of articles in which we will examine the effective uses of the most innovative media options available to recruiting organizations today.
Are your campaigns accomplishing effective REACH? Immediate candidate flow is best achieved through an efficient, targeted campaign that speaks directly to your prospect. Emerging media technologies allow you to reach people with specific interests and experience in targeted geographical areas. By using these tools, employers are going beyond advertising their recruitment brand. They are achieving today's hiring goals with measurable results.
Efficiency in recruitment marketing can be achieved online by crafting a strategic campaign targeted to an online user's behavior and background. This strategy allows you to speak to a selection of pre-qualified prospects instead of the masses. Reaching top active and passive candidates is accomplished through targeting, and the more targeted your campaign, the less waste in your budget. Technology allows online advertising to function as a report-driven medium. Traceable results enable you to make better recruitment marketing decisions for the future.
Approximately 52.2 million households in the US are on broadband, according to a study by eMarketer. High penetration of high-speed internet access allows employers to reach out beyond traditional advertising and communicate through the tools that their potential candidates are using on a daily basis. Podcasting and online video advertising allow employers to stream their message to engaged online audiences in an extended format.
According to a study by technology research firm In-Stat, the potential market for online video content worldwide will grow from 13 million households in 2005 to 131 million households in 2010. Employers should take advantage of this growing audience. Give them a tour of your office, introduce your employees or highlight major projects all through streaming video. Offering relevant, informational content to potential candidates both communicates your urgent employment message, and often offers a higher response rate than other advertising methods.
Thinking towards the near future, it is important for employers to understand other mediums that will command potential prospects attention. Today, more people in the US own cell phones than computers. This presents yet another effective method to communicate to the right candidate, right now.
Communicating via text messaging or mobile advertising is an immediate way to get in touch with a targeted list of potential candidates. With advances in mobile technology, our prospects' primary medium for communication and entertainment may become their mobile device. Your employment message should be there as well.
Leverage this medium to keep prospects informed about upcoming events, new opportunities or job openings in their area. Mobile marketing allows your organization to have a very personal, one-to-one relationship with your potential prospect. By utilizing emerging media technologies, and communicating your employment message efficiently, you are decreasing the possibility for "advertising waste."
In the end, it's about getting your organization's message in front of your ideal prospect. For years there have been a number of accepted, traditional methods of reaching potential candidates. Today, technology is allowing us to become more efficient with our recruitment marketing budgets. By embracing and utilizing these tools, your marketing efforts become more efficient, as does your overall recruitment process.
Stay tuned as I delve deeper into emerging recruitment media in future articles. I'll show you what to look for, what to avoid, and how we are helping our clients navigate the future of recruitment marketing. Next month... Podcasts!
To learn more about our recruitment marketing services and find specific solutions for your organization's needs, click here.
