Best of HIRECONOMICS May 2018: Poetry on LinkedIn, Video Sourcing and Pimping Job Ads

I'm bringing you the best of the regular recruitment show HIRECONOMICS April 2018. This show brought by Recruitment Academy is published as both blog and vlog version as well. And you can benefit from original manuals, practical techniques, methods and data which you can immediately apply into your daily recruitment and talent sourcing routine.

Examples of Poetic Conversations with Candidates

by Jonas Waloschek, Talent Sourcer at GoodCall.

The topic of this article is creative approach on LinkedIn. Once again it will be especially about examples, in this case examples of conversations I have with my candidates. The idea that candidates consider every message and recruiter is very distant from reality. Actually it is so distant that even a negative response can be considered a success today. In my opinion LinkedIn is very similar to the world of online dating. It sounds strange, but a Java developer may have more incoming conversations then a Tinderella with a description such as ?looking for a one night stand“.

Although a LinkedIn recruiter and a Tinder recruiter have a distinct motivation, their task is similar, they try to be different. The candidate is overwhelmed, picky and allergic to each track of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Name addressing and personalising the message towards the candidate's experience may not be a guaranteed method to establish first contact. In my case, it was always important to make the message unique, the goal is that the candidates spend time reading or appreciate the work you put into it. This is one of the reasons why I decided to try out using poems. Even the simplest form as "roses are red, violets are blue" was successful. Over the time I tried to "improve" my poems, added the name of the candidates, the current company, or the required skill. The fact is that I am in touch with younger candidates. I am aware that this kind of approach may not suit everyone. So far, however, I have not experienced a negative response. You can see yourself what kind of conversations can be bourn:

Examples of Poetic Conversations with Candidates

by Kristina Shershun, Talent Sourcing Advisor at GoodCall.

Job posts are essential part of an employer brand and can highly influence candidates’ engagement.

There are lots of rules, dos and don’ts but the magical recipe to write a perfect job ad doesn’t exist.

However, thanks to language processing technologies recruiters have an opportunity to get data-backed recommendations for improving job ads and other written content.

Let’s have a look at three useful tools for analyzing and improving job posts.

Hemingway Editor

First tool, Hemingway Editor evaluates a readability of your text. The best readability score is between 6th to 8th grade. Higher readability means the text is too hard to read.

You simply insert your text to a textbox at hemigwayapp.com and see the result. You can also use a desktop version (which is paid but has more features). As you see app shows stats like reading time and readability issues: highlights sentences which are hard to read, suggests to get rid of passive voice and adverbs, and indicates the words or phrases which have simpler alternative. Very handy tool with simple and clear interface.

Textio

Let’s have a brief look at the more complex tool - Augmented writing platform Textio. It’s not free but has 14-days trial.

Textio predicts the hiring success of the job posting comparing it to similar job ads in a given location. App suggests a replacement of word/phrase to change the impact of the text. It also shows gender tone, corporate clichés and gives useful recommendations.

Job Page Grader

The last tool, Job page grader powered by Ph.Creative is using an URL to your job posting and provides complex insights to engagement, conversion, performance and SEO of your ad. This tool is focused much more on the technical side of the job ad as marketing content rather than purely text itself.

This tool is free and provides quite detailed score. Engagement metrics here include sentiment, usability, practicality and gender bias score. Criteria, however, are quite strict. For example, for high practicality score you should have a video or integration with Dropbox at your job ad page, but some job boards don’t allow that. So take the results with a grain of salt using the general recommendations and adapt it to your technical and industry specifics. This tool is quite interesting in terms of SEO metrics, analyzing the technical aspects like metadata, schema vocabulary, mobile optimization etc.

Bear in mind that those tools only work efficiently for content in English. For other languages it might work (depending on the tool) but not going to be very accurate.

You can try other similar tools like Atomic reach, Headline analyzer, cliché finder but also do your own analysis of job posts which were successful in the past and use the best out of it (style, visuals, phrases etc).

Mentioned tools can be extremely helpful, but as with anything else use common sense and think about the target audience when editing your job ad accordingly. And, of course, be creative.

Approach Your Candidates with a Direct Video

by Josef José Kadlec, Founder at Recruitment Academy & GoodCall.

I’ve written a ton about the method I call video sourcing, which basically means using video in recruitment. However, you’re not using it for inbound recruitment by making for example career videos, but to directly approach your candidates – outbound recruitment. I can say from my own experience that this translates into rapid growth in candidate response rate even in the case of software development positions that are most difficult to fill. At the conference Sourcing Summit recently held in Munich, Mark Lundgren and Bas Westland mentioned the method even in relation to positions within IT.

Since technology development is moving forward, there are more possibilities to apply this technique. In today’s Hireconomics I’d like to introduce one particular tool called Loom.

Loom is a Google Chrome plugin (or extensions if you like) enabling you to make a video in just few clicks.

To record a video just click on Loom icon. By that you get a variety of options to record a video.

Similarly, you can record a video by clicking on Loom icon next to the button Send in Gmail. When you’re done recording the video is automatically embedded, along with its preview, into the body of your email.

You can basically choose from different modes of recording but the most interesting one is a camera-desktop combination. You can, for example, open a LinkedIn profile of the candidate who you’re about to contact. The candidate then sees what you can see in the picture below.

One of the perks of this approach is that your candidates will definitely play your video if you also create a video preview, where they can see their own profiles. Who wouldn’t play a video when they see themselves in it, right?

Then you can explain and really sell a job offer to your candidate for example at your webpage or in a job description. You can capture in a video just what you’ve opened in your Google Chrome browser. The plugin isn’t allowed to record anything lying outside the app.

After saving the video you get several options what to do next. You can add it to the body of your email directly through the plugin Loom and then send it right away.

Note: Candidates might not be able to see the preview depending on whether they have image preview enabled or not.

Another option is to send your candidates a link to the video via LinkedIn invitation, which was impossible until recently, LinkedIn message or e-mail.

And as a cherry on top you get a notification right after the candidate is done watching the video. You can immediately pick up the phone and call your candidate for a follow-up interview assuming the person fits your group of targeted candidates.

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