How Candidate Experience Affects Your Recruitment Marketing

How Candidate Experience Affects Your Recruitment Marketing Recruitment marketing is about attracting passive job seekers and making them want to search for openings at your company. What role does candidate experience (CX) play in that? Well, since CX refers to each and every touchpoint a potential applicant encounters on their way from audience member to employee, and those touchpoints are created by your recruitment marketing efforts, we’d say quite a bit, wouldn’t you? OK, so maybe it’s not quite as straightforward as all that. There is give and take, with a feedback loop developing where RM and CX interact and play off each other. Let’s look at a simplified example of a candidate’s journey from the audience to the employee, so we can get a better handle on those touchpoints and see this interaction at work: Your social media posts initially attract the person to your EB and EVP. They begin following your presence on several outlets and subscribe to your blog. Since they’re a passive job hunter, this may be the extent of the interaction for a while, but then one day they get the itch to check you out on review sites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn to see what people are saying. Now they’re hooked by your glowing reviews and the employee testimonial videos you post and decide it’s time to check out your openings on the company careers page. This stage may also last a while, during which time they’re still following your social media accounts, liking posts and commenting on blog articles. Then one day the right position pops up and they get an application in. Now they’re firmly in the applicant funnel. Each of these steps (and many more we left out for brevity) is a touchpoint where you and your RM team have the ability to affect the candidate’s experience, and in turn, their experience provides you with information about things you’re doing well, and areas where you can improve. There’s a lot of information mixed into each touchpoint, some of which you can discover simply by asking applicants what they thought of their experience. The rest is discoverable with some advanced planning and use of appropriate metrics. Some of the key areas to take into account when digging into how your candidate’s experiences can help you fine-tune your recruitment marketing efforts are wait times, the fact that people trust other people more than companies, and the fact that RM is a long game. Each of these concepts provides more room for development and ways to tweak your campaigns to better impact CX. Nobody likes waiting Yet in the recruiting world, waits are inevitable. Whether it’s the candidate waiting to hear back about an interview, or the recruiter waiting to hear back from a hiring manager about any number of things, there will be waiting. What can you be doing to ensure that your candidate doesn’t get fed up with all this waiting? Stay in constant contact. Use RM automation software to automatically send email updates and reach out on the candidate’s preferred channel to keep them up-to-date on their status. The emails don’t have to be directly related to this one candidate, they can be general company updates, interesting news stories that relate to your industry, anything that lets the person know that you remember them and want to stay in touch. In today’s candidate-focused job market, people report being willing to wait no longer than 2 weeks before they move on. If you don’t deliver something to let them know they matter and where things stand with their application, your quality candidates will walk. Right down the road to your competitor in all likelihood. So stay in touch. People trust people And people talk. On social media, on review sites, and on job boards. If someone has a negative experience with your application process, the first thing they’re going to do is let everyone they can think of know about it. That means they’ll be posting on Facebook and Twitter and leaving scathing reviews on Glassdoor. This should affect your RM in two main ways. First, tweak your process to eliminate the pain points that caused this person’s experience. If it was the length or complexity of the online application form, shorten it. If they got lost in the ATS black hole and just never heard back from anyone, find the process gap that they fell through and plug it. And second, respond to their comments, tweets, and reviews. Remember to stay in brand voice, but also remember that empathy rules the day when it comes to calming upset and working to ensure this person doesn’t harbor lasting bad feelings toward your company. Furthermore, social proof goes a long way in the battle for people’s trust. Remember, humans trust other humans. Post testimonials from current employees, bonus points for videos so viewers have a face to put to the words. And as for those reviews that may not be so stellar, respond with kindness, stay in voice, and remember the power of empathy. Recruitment marketing is a long game You already know you’re in it for the long haul, as RM can produce amazing results and help drive your company’s recruiting efforts well into the future. But those results don’t appear as if by magic overnight. Candidates who are sourced by RM or referrals are more likely to be happy with their jobs and are more likely to stick around longer. In fact, 47% stay longer than 3 years. Knowing this should help you adjust your content, better targeting those quality candidates you want to attract and who will stick around, and doing that will also impact the CX of your candidates as they become applicants. It’s the content you design for this long game that provides the first, and often second and third, of those all-important touchpoints that color people’s opinions of your recruiting department and by extension your company from the very beginning of their journey with you. And that’s the real bottom line here, the candidate experience affects your RM efforts by informing the decisions you make going forward. You can’t always undo past missteps or repair damage done when someone has a bad experience. What you can do is use your RM and your social media presence to reach out to those folks with empathy, then make changes and adjustments to your processes to avoid the same missteps with future candidates. About the author: Monica Cocian, is a digital marketing specialist at SmartDreamers, a platform that helps companies reach more, better candidates in record time by automating recruitment marketing activities to accelerate online talent acquisition. SmartDreamers was founded in 2014 and currently operates in Europe, the US and the APAC region.

How to Quit Your Job with Grace

How to Quit Your Job with Grace A big welcome to Melody Kiella!  This is Melodys first guest post on MsCareerGirl.com! Recently I made a job change that required me to reevaluate my career goals, step out of my comfort zone, and resign from my first professional position. I had been working as an in-house attorney for a small Atlanta-based company for a little over a year when I started to feel antsy, and in mid-September my eyes began to wander. My wandering eyes had nothing to do with the people I was working with or my working environment.  It simply had to do with the fact that I wasn’t being challenged enough and I wasn’t growing at the rate that I wanted to be growing at. During my down time I started looking into potential job openings. Since I work in the legal field I wasn’t too positive that anything would happen, but in mid-November I got an email from a young lady indicating that her law firm wanted to interview me. I went on the interview with no expectations and no plans. Part of me didn’t want to get my hopes up, and the other part of me knew that I had nothing to lose. I had a job and an incoming paycheck so there was no added pressure on me to nail the interview and please everyone I talked with. For the first time in my career I was able to actually enjoy the interview process and not stress out about what I said or didn’t say. When the lunch interview was done I knew that everything had gone well. I had no doubt that I would be called back for another interview, and I was. The second interview was a little more intense because I met with about seven attorneys at the firm for a three hour period, but three days later I got the call that I was being offered the job. The second I got off the phone with the law firm I called my husband and we both cheered together. It was a great opportunity for me professionally and for us financially. It wasn’t until the following morning that it hit me that I would have to tell my boss, whom I greatly admired and enjoyed working for, that I was leaving to go work somewhere else. I knew that he was going to be completely caught off guard and shocked, and I wasn’t looking forward to answering his why questions. Why are you leaving? Why didn’t you tell me you were unhappy? The week leading up to “the talk” I asked a lot of people for their advice. Many of them told me that quitting was not a big deal; quitting was simply part of business. One of my friends told me that employers know when they hire young professionals that the chances are high that they will leave when a new opportunity arises. While I knew that all of this was true, it didnt make going into my bosss office any easier. I ultimately decided that breaking the bad news was best to do on a Friday. My husband convinced me that Friday would be the best day because it would allow my boss time to collect his thoughts over the weekend. The week leading up to the Friday of “the talk” I wasn’t really that nervous, but when Friday morning arrived I could feel the nerves expanding in my stomach the closer I got to the office. When I arrived at the office I typed out an official resignation letter emphasizing how much I enjoyed working at the company and even typed out exactly what I wanted to say when I walked down to his office. I found that going over what I was going to say a few times in my head made my nervousness dwindle ever so slightly. When my boss came in around 9 I walked down to his office with my shoulders pushed back and my head held high. I quietly knocked on the door and asked if he had a minute to speak. I sat down and tried to gather myself, but the moment I saw his happy, smiling face sitting across from me all of my preparedness went out the window. I took a deep breath and got right down to the facts. I was resigning. I was putting in my two weeks. I had a great opportunity that I couldnt turn down. I was not leaving because I didnt enjoy working for the company. Please don’t take this personally. I am not going to go into details about what happened exactly (because that is between my boss and I), but it was not easy to tell someone that you enjoyed working for that you were resigning. In fact, I got teary eyed when I broke the news to him. Something about the shocked look that slowly crept onto his face and the close, personal bond that we had established throughout my tenure with the company made it impossible for me to keep my emotions inside. Looking back I wish I had refrained from letting those few tears come to the surface, but what could I do? I am human after all. After the meeting was over I felt as if a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. While I was sad about leaving my position and the people with whom I had grown close with, I was excited to have my first resignation under my belt (and hopefully my last) and have a new opportunity to learn and grow from. As I know from personal experience, putting in your two week notice can be extremely nerve racking and difficult. While you are bound to be nervous before you walk into your boss’s office, remember that at the end of the day business is business no matter how much you like working for a particular employer. Your boss knows that resigning and moving on is a part of life. I am sure they have resigned from positions before and understand that sometimes an opportunity is too good to turn down. The most important part about giving your two weeks notice is to be respectful and to allow your boss enough time to find someone to replace you. I am a firm believer that when it comes to your career and your life you need to take all of the opportunities that come your way. You never want to look back and wish you had done something different. So, if you are blessed with a new career opportunity but are scared of letting your boss or current company down, just make the decision that is best for you and never look back. Have you ever had to leave a job you enjoyed?  How did you deliver the news?  What was your bosss reaction?   What tips do you have for others who want to resign with grace?

Why Being Early Is Arriving on Time 5 Reasons for Interview Punctuality

Why Being Early Is Arriving on Time 5 Reasons for Interview Punctuality One of the first interviews I  attended shortly after graduation was for a marketing position for the Disney  Store based in London. Being a typical Northerner, London was a bit like Narnia  to me it was a strange and mystical place which I wasnt sure really existed,  but the letter asking me to attend suggested that there really was such a place! At the time I wasnt that well-travelled and there were no smartphones, so  getting to London and finding my way around was quite a stressful  experience. It seems ridiculous now, but  the Tube completely befuddled me and I ended up going in the wrong direction on  several occasions.  Against all odds, I did actually get to the interview on  time, but the interviewer whisked me into a room the moment I arrived. Unfortunately I was so stressed all I was  able to do was hyperventilate and repeatedly say the words ?Mickey Mouse?. Unsurprisingly I didnt get the position, but  15 years on it has at least provided me with an anecdote to demonstrate the  importance of being prepared and punctual for an interview. I learnt the lesson the hard way but  I have written a few essential tips from my experiences so you don?t have to and, as you will see below, being early is very much the best policy: 1) Don?t wing it: By: Peter In today?s society it is so easy to rely on a smartphone to  get to places, but phone batteries can run out and signals/GPS aren?t always  reliable, especially in rural areas and in the middle of large city centres.  Even  if everything is OK with the technology, it has been known (dare I say it?) for  Google to be wrong (there goes this website?s rankings!). Plan your journey and print out directions. It  is also advisable to print out contact information in case you need to ring  ahead for assistance. 2) Be at one with  yourself: Arriving early to an interview allows you time to de-stress  from the journey and collect your thoughts. It will give you time to go over  the questions you have prepared, run through your presentation (if applicable),  and review the answers to questions that  are likely to be presented to you. It will also give you time to calm your  nerves, have a drink of water and go to the bathroom if necessary. This will hopefully  allow you to enter the interview as relaxed and comfortable as Lenny Henry in a  Premier Inn double bed. 3) A glimpse into the  future: First impressions are extremely important. How you behave at  an interview is a reflection of how you will potentially behave if you were to  be offered the position. Being late for the interview may suggest to the  interviewer that you would be regularly late if you were offered the job and employed  by the organisation. Being late isn?t the only action this may apply to. Nose picking,  putting your feet on the desk and drinking from a hip flask are also unlikely  to be considered as acceptable future traits. 4) The interview before  the interview: In many organisations the interview starts as soon as you  arrive in the building. How you interact with the receptionist or secretary may  well be taken into account when considering you for the position this gives  the organisation an idea of your personality outside of the formal interview  setting. If you arrive late or on time then you may be missing out on the  ?unofficial? part of the interview process. So arrive early and be nice to all  staff you encounter, but definitely no flirting! 5) Ring ahead: If you are running late for any reason ring ahead. It is easy to think ?I?ll explain everything when  I get there? when time is against you but, again with today?s technology, it is  assumed that most people will have a mobile phone and the capability of giving  the organisation an update on your progress. However, you may want to think carefully about  the reason you give for your lateness.  Being scared of escalators, a man stopped me in the street to talk to me  about breakdown cover or I saw a really cute dress in the window of Topshop are  unlikely to be considered acceptable reasons! These are just a few of the reasons why being early is being  on time for a job interview. If you take this advice on board I am positive you  will be setting yourself up for interview success and future employment as the  early bird catches the annual salary, company car and pension scheme, but I wouldn?t  suggest that you adopt this mantra in all aspects to your life as you are  likely to become really unpopular at house parties.

The 3 Steps to Building an Audience on Social Media

The 3 Steps to Building an Audience on Social Media Whether you represent  an employer or a recruitment  company, the same challenge exists with attracting talent: How exactly do you build and retain an audience online? You should  of course create compelling content, not just about  specific jobs but about your company culture and beyond. I recently had a chat about audience building with Jeff Rohrs, VP, Marketing Insights at Salesforce and author of Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans Followers. Have a listen to the audio podcast on  iTunes,  Stitcher    Soundcloud  (above).  Questions by me, answers by Jeff. The value of your online audience The value just of an audience is that you have an exclusive right to communicate with a group of folks whove given you permission to do so. Thats true whether youre a marketer or whether youre a performer or a preacher or a politician. What social media and the web and the era of mobile devices have given brands is the ability to speak to these consumers who are hand raisers. PR folks look at media equivalency value. What would have been the cost to get that kind of exposure to that size of an audience through a paid third party channel? And then theyll ascribe that to the value that theyve created through whatever social or direct channel. So maybe to sum it up, the audience value really is that ability to speak direct to the consumer so that you can reduce your dependency on paid media and ultimately increase the speed with which you can go to market with new ideas, new products or hopefully increase social amplification. 3 Ways to grow your social media audience: 1. Optimise your paid media First of all is to optimise your paid media. Most companies are already doing some form of advertising, and most are thinking its enough to brand or just try and sell in the moment. Were asking too little of our paid media in many instances. It can also capture the audience for us. And by that I mean to say, boy, if youve got a thirty-second commercial, dont just slap up a Facebook logo or a Twitter logo. Thats advertising for them. Actually integrate into the creative some sort of interaction that gets them to pick up the mobile phone or to go online and register for e-mail. And again, this takes collaboration with the brand side. And this is where the tension is right now in a lot of those organisations because brand wants to use beautiful campaigns, and the digital direct folks want to build audience. And we havent really had those two groups get together and understand theyre not mutually exclusive, they can work together. 2. Dont forget mobile Second is dont forget mobile. The vast majority of consumers today, now have mobile devices that basically allow for direct response if only you ask them to do something. And thats why its interesting to me to see so many ads and other things that never have a call to action. When, in fact, if the ad captures a persons attention and they have interest, give them a way to interact. And that becomes a way that you can get them to subscribe via SMS or scan something or take some step that will actually get them into one of those permission based audience channels. 3. Look at the hybridisation of social and email And I think the third one is to look at whats happening in the hybridisation of social advertising and e-mail and online. Really interesting things happening there as social media comes of age. For instance, youve got the custom audiences products from Facebook, which allows you to map your e-mail subscribers to your Facebook fans. And what that allows you to do is a number of things. I can now go in, and I can target advertising to the people who are my Facebook fans but arent email subscribers. And what kind of ad would I want to put to them? I probably want to incentivise becoming an e-mail subscriber. Because being a Facebook fan is great but we all know as Facebook has grown in popularity, the distribution of our organic posts has dropped. And so to get that Facebook fan to be an e-mail subscriber gives you control of the cadence, gives you another channel, so that you can diversify and you can have multiple points of contact with that consumer. Find out more about Jeff by reading his book Audience, follow him  on Twitter @JKRohrs  and  listen to him on the Social Pros Podcast. A longer version of this  post was originally published on Link Humans. Image credit: Shutterstock

63 Valuable Skills for your Digital Marketing CV

63 Valuable Skills for your Digital Marketing CV With the vast majority of modern businesses requiring an online presence, there is always a high demand for digital marketing staff across the globe. As a digital marketer, your CV / Resume needs to be packed with impressive skills and knowledge if you want to land interviews for the best digital jobs.From email marketing and social media management, to SEO and user experience optimisation; the spectrum of digital covers a huge range of skills.StandOut CVhave provided thishandy infographic, highlighting 63 of the most valuable skills to include in your CV, to secure a top digital job.Content marketing and SEO requires a wealth of skills including research, competitor analysis and a flair for creating excellent written content.evalPay-per-click marketers need a strong knowledge of all the major PPC platforms along with campaign strategy and management skills.Strong copywriting skills are important for email marketers and user-experience professionals should have a solid web developmen t experience along conversion optimisation know-how.Infographics Credit â€" standout-cv.com