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January 31, 2017 · 4:00 am

Underutilized Recruitment Marketing Tactics

data-point-tuesday_500

A recent SmashFly publication, the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Report Card for the 2016 Fortune 500, came across my desk a couple of weeks ago. And if you’re involved at all in recruiting talent, you’ll find it interesting.

It’s easy to assume that the Fortune 500 are among the most effective recruitment marketers out there. But if you made that assumption, you’d be wrong! This report card is pretty interesting. SmashFly, the recruitment marketing automation software company, has pulled together some fascinating information and graded some of the most well-known employers in the U.S. on their recruitment marketing. It’s pretty fascinating stuff.

In addition to grading each of the employers – by the way, only 4% of the 500 received an A! – this analysis also provides an abundance of good and best practice examples from some of the most admired companies around. The three categories that caught my attention were Best Practices, Emerging Practices, and Untapped Practices.

The Untapped (used by less than 20% of the Fortune 500) Practices are fascinating:

SmashFly points out that 20% of the Fortune 500 send regular communication to leads – but only 1% send content other than job alerts. The opportunity to build lasting relationships by sending other types of content – like company news, employee stories, and other valuable subjects – exists for all employers. An obvious quick win would be to automatically send email reminders to candidates who haven’t completed their applications. This simple automated outreach can enable a 15% increase in job applications!

The opportunities for greater recruitment success seem obvious, and include some of these:

Fortune 500 employers are doing well with SEO, but 51% (!) don’t optimize their job landing pages
48% of the Fortune 500 never send an email to leads in their database after the initial confirmation email
Referral calls-to-action on job descriptions are under-utilized, missing big opportunities to drive referrals from both employees and candidates
Only 14% of Fortune 500 employers have a blog or other resources about their application processes

Examples of effective recruitment branding from employers that are highlighted in the report include companies like Exxon Mobil, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Pepsico, HP, Marriott International, and Comcast.

This report contains recommendations that you can begin to implement today to increase your recruitment marketing success. You may not have the budget of a Fortune 500 recruitment department, but you can certainly begin to adopt best and untapped practices to become more effective and to have a wider choice of talent.

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Filed under China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Fortune 500, Hiring, Recruiting, Recruitment Marketing, Smashfly, Talent pipeline

Tagged as China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Fortune 500, Hiring, Recruiting, Recruitment Marketing, Smashfly, Talent pipeline

May 19, 2015 · 4:00 am

Where Do Candidates Come From?

There is a robust conversation in the talent arena about “candidate experience” led largely by Gerry Crispin and Elaine Orler, founders of the Talent Board and the Candidate Experience Awards (#CandE). There are lots of opinions about whether ensuring that candidates for hire have a high quality experience is meaningful. Some think the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. But I think most believe treating candidates like consumers is smart business. Two new vendor publications discuss aspects of candidate experience:

Creating a 21^st Century Application Process from RolePoint, and
Beyond Employees: Employee Referral Programs Redefined from Smashfly

Both reports were published within the last month and contain analysis of current data. The Rolepoint whitepaper was written by global recruiting legend Bill Boorman. It highlights Intuit’s approach to embracing a social approach to the apply process, with a particular focus on making the application process streamlined and device agnostic “with equal attention paid to user experience and interface on both desktop and mobile.” Bill is a legend for a reason and his approach to this topic in the whitepaper is compelling. The Smashfly presentation provides insight into the employee/candidate referral landscape with some interesting data:

77% of organizations currently have a formal referral program
32% of new hires come from referrals on average, and rate highest in quality among sources of hire
57% of organizations limit their referral program to employees only
43% extend their program beyond employees to include alumni, contractors, customers, vendors and/or partners
Analysis shows those that reach beyond employees get 28% more hires from referrals and 8% better quality candidates

This survey data is interesting, and I key in on the 4^th bullet. Extending referrals into other stakeholder groups makes a great deal of sense – and correlates to higher quality candidates. Take a look below: If you’re in the 23% of employers without a candidate referral program, this might be a wake up and smell the coffee moment. If you’re in the 57% of organizations limiting referrals to employees only, this might be a pedal to the metal moment. Either way, whether you’re recruiting programmers, developers, customer service agents, nurses, marketers, HR professionals or executives, approaching your trusted partners – including employees – for referrals makes good, logical sense. And treating potential candidates like consumers, that is, making it as easy for them to press the “apply” button as it is to press the “buy” button seems like a tenant from Econ 101. Check out these reports from Rolepoint and Smashfly.