Hiring
Blink and You'll Miss Them: Seasonal Hiring
Seasonal recruiting is a misnomer; recruiting for hourly frontline roles happens year-round, and it’s only getting faster and more furious. Read on.
New year, new you, right? While a high percentage of resolutions fail by the end of January, we have some easy tips to help nail your recruiting goals for the coming year.
As we begin the new year, we’re also reaching another milestone: In March, it will have been three years since most of us had our lives (both work and personal) turned upside down because of a global health crisis. While we have (sort of) reached what we think is the new normal, the talent marketplace and global economy are still in chaos. With nearly two job openings for every unemployed American, companies are struggling to find workers and retain the ones they have. A tight job market tends to keep upward pressure on wages and feed into inflation.
But we’re telling you what you already know. All of these factors together mean that those of us in HR and talent acquisition have to work harder, smarter, and more efficiently than before – and do it all better than our competitors. Going into 2023, there are a few key areas to focus on so that you’re able to handle the demand for talent while also balancing the possibility of hiring freezes or reorganization at the same time.
We promise that these are likely easier than your personal resolutions (we also love to use our Peloton for hanging clothes to dry, thank you 2020) and you can put the power of your team behind them.
3 Resolutions HR & Recruiting Teams Can Actually Keep
ONE: Resolve to develop (or define) your company’s employee value proposition (EVP). Your employee value proposition (EVP) is the set of benefits you offer employees in return for the skills, experience, and qualities they bring to the position. You already have one of these (if not, let’s talk), but it’s important to revisit your EVP from time to time because what you think it is and what your workforce thinks it is might be different today than it was two years ago.
Related Article: The Disconnect Between EVP and Employer Brand (and How to Solve It)
The new year is a perfect time for reflection. Listen to your employees by sending out surveys to hear what they think the company should work on in the future. They can be short pulse surveys with one or two questions (consider that your employees are also returning from a week of holidays or extended time off and no one loves a 30-minute survey in their inbox when they just want to hit the ground running). Don’t be boring, keep it simple and short to avoid frustration or the Meryl Streep from Devil Wears Prada will come out in your employees.
According to research from Gartner, “Organizations that effectively deliver on their EVP can decrease annual employee turnover by just under 70% and increase new hire commitment by nearly 30%.” So trust us when we say, this resolution is worth your while.
TWO: Resolve to improve your candidate experience. The biggest challenge we face today in recruiting is elevating our employer brand to attract the right candidates and being able to offer an exceptional candidate experience. This means speeding time to hire, letting candidates know where they stand in the hiring process and what next steps to expect, and eliminating any scheduling confusion.
Related Article: 4 Candidate Experience Fails and How to Fix Them
If you’re not sure how your candidates feel about your application and interviewing process, you might find some tips on review sites OR (and hear us out) you could ask your candidates. The same kind of surveys you send internally can be used to gather more information from your candidates once they have been through the application and interview, whether they were hired or not. Note that those who were not hired are more likely to be candid about what they think of your application process and company overall.
THREE: Resolve to optimize your career site. When was the last time you applied for a job at your company? Walk through the steps for searching for and applying to jobs you’ve listed on your own career site. Is anything unclear? Confusing? Taking up too much time? Think like a candidate. Do you know that your resume has been submitted? Is there a confirmation page or email that follows submission? If not, you’re doing the whole career site thing wrong. Consider the opportunities to engage candidates and make sure that you’re making full use of them.
Related Article: 5 Spicy Career Site Tips to Get More Candidates
How do you know whether or not your career site is optimized for candidates? Well, it’s not rocket science. Analytics are easy to find (Google Analytics is hooked up for most sites) and you’ll want to check your bounce rate (candidates land on your page with a job posting and leave immediately), source of traffic (are your campaigns hitting the mark?) and traffic by source (which campaigns are working). You can also measure how many candidates begin your application, but don’t finish (abandoning the process). That last one? It’s important to monitor anytime you make changes to your application process, your job postings, or your job description – even something as simple as the text on your call-to-action (“apply now” is an action, “learn more” is less effective, for example).
Don’t be a part of the 80% who abandon their new year resolution by February. These are three easy resolutions that require minimal effort and little to no cost. You’ll thank us in the end and so will your hiring managers.
Talentcare’s recruitment marketing solution helps you target qualified job candidates across the internet, optimizes campaign performance on budget and candidate volume goals, and leverages AI to learn and double-down on what works so you can achieve your hiring goals for the new year. We’re here to help (and we’re fun at parties). Drop us a line or slide into our DMs.