15 non-generic recruiting tips you can use today!

Spend More Money Advertising - Just kidding!?

I was asked to speak at the Distrupt HR conference in Fargo, ND. Since we only have 5 min to speak I promised the audience I would supply them with this article for some links and takeaways around recruiting. I get to help companies everyday become smarter with how they utilize marketing. Since the workforce scenario has been at a very unique position, much of my efforts have shifted to helping companies with their recruiting processes. Below is some observations I have made over the past two years that I wanted to pass along to all you! Some apply to small businesses just exploring how to recruit, some apply to established businesses just trying to pivot a bit. But overall I wanted some good actionable takeaways for all of you. I hope you find it valuable.?

Us vs Them

• Prospects like seeing what makes you different. We call this competitive advantages.?Remember people usually invest in Benefits and Advantages over Features.?This is one way to provide context around why they should choose you.?It would blow you away at how much this doesn’t happen.

HR Tech Landscape

• Great way to familiarize yourself with all the tech out there in HR
• You can find these maps all over the place, this is one example of a site that has a good layout.

VideoAsk or Loom or Vidyard

• Interactive video that keeps things bite size and easy to retain and navigate.?Also provides backend analytics.?
• Loom and Vidyard are tools that can help you create custom videos, gather feedback on the interactive video, get analytics and more.?
• Here is an example of how we used Video Ask to help Great Plains Transport.?https://greatplainstransport.com/

Product Hunt search HR or Recruiting

• Great site to catch early state software and SAAS companies.?Gives you a good idea of where the industry is going through software.?Also, get in on beta and early membership discounts. Link: ???https://www.producthunt.com/search?q=applicant%20tracking

Make Sure Your Job Posts are Embedded on Your Website

• Most companies send prospects to this clunky and crappy third-party landing page hosted by their HR software.?You NEED to control that user experience at all costs.?So either find an HR Software that lets you embed the job postings on your site or help customize that job post page.?Otherwise, the experience will not be great and conversion will suffer.?
• Creating one more step for prospects in today's tight workforce can actually be a differentiator believe it or not!

Use tools like Hotjar or any of these to ensure people are actually using your page correctly

• We think we all know what our prospects want because we went to school for HR right??Well, that’s just silly when you think about it.?Why not use a tool to actually see how people use the site.?Then adjust the experience on that.?Makes sense!
• There are tons of other user experience apps out there. Always check sites like Appsumo to see if there are deals!

Don’t get handcuffed into your applicant tracking software and turn into a “Can’t” change it or find a way to make sure they don’t control your prospect's experience too much.

• Changing software sucks.?I get it.?But this is a crisis right now.?I would consider a change or at the very least try to send people to your website.?

Mike! Most of our leads come from the channels that our APS sends our listings too, like Indeed.?So how can I control that???

• Some of that you obviously can’t control and that’s ok.?I think the biggest message I want to get across here is the other side which is your passive job seekers, or people who have seen the roll and go to your website to vet if you are a great place for them.?If you can embed videos, graphics and other ways to create a better experience on those listings sites, start there. But don’t forget about how important your website is.?And try to send everyone to your careers page once optimized at all costs.?

If you are on a budget go to sites like Appsumo and look out for great deals

• This site has lifetime deals for softwares and can save a ton of money.?Also search Lifetime Deals on Google.
• Try this link -?https://appsumo.com/search?query=hr

If you don’t have an applicant tracking system, start with the regional company Hireclick.com - from Sioux Falls and a great place to start.

• Only $99 per month.?I have used Bamboo Hr, Jazz HR and others and I feel this is the best light weight tool to get started.?Then graduate later if you feel the need.?
• I actually did a review on this and you can watch it below.?

Make sure you make it really easy for people to ask questions and get immediate answers.?Sometimes the difference between someone working for you or not is if they can get a simple question answered right away.

• Prospects have options.?Meaning if a website doesn’t give them what they need right away they may just go to the next company site and get wowed.?Then guess what, they forgot about you!?Invest is FAQ’s, Video FAQ’s with VideoAsk, Chat Widget, Booking Widget, Text Us, ect.?
• Check out this tool called Bird Seed -?https://birdseed.io/

Don’t make the application process long and tedious. People have tons of options so something like that can cause them to just move on.?

• The number one complaint I see is people actually want to see if it’s a good company to work for and they are not sure.?So when they have to spend 45 min filling out a 15-step form it turns them off immediately.?Hey, 6 years ago this didn’t matter because people needed the jobs.?Now they will just bounce.?

Setting up text is actually super easy!

• For $20 per month, we have a text number that we publish and goes to as many people as we want in our company.?It’s a local number and there is an app to set up workflows and automation.?There are also tools out there that have this as part of a whole communications suite.?
• This is an easy site to get going and I have tried it:?https://www.salesmessage.com/
• Otherwise Twilio is really great!
• Here is one more platform that has great text features for recruiters:?https://higherme.com/

People are skeptical right now so avoid text and content that seems generic.??

• Great Benefits, Awesome Culture, Cool Workspace - this stuff goes in one ear and out the other.?If you do state this provides some context or commentary.?Dive in a bit, make it a graphic, do something because this is just filler at this point.?It’s like when restaurants put a billboard that says best service and fresh ingredients.?You are like “Ya ok that’s what everyone says”.?

Use your own team to give context or commentary around bullet points.??

• People don’t believe the bullet points or understand the value of them because they see the same points so often.?For example, if you said “Friday Afternoons Off” in the summer, next to it can be a quote with a headshot from Jenny Smith, Accounts Payable, 3 years with the company “Seriously this is an awesome perk because it’s not the fake way where they make you make up your time a 6am everyday to do it, we actually just plain get that time off”

Thank You and I hope you gained some value from this post!

Learn more about what my company Spotlight Media does to help companies with their recruiting efforts!