SEMA News—October 2015

INTERNET

By Joe Dysart

New Digital Tools to Capture The Best Talent

Best Job-Hunting Market in 15 Years

With the job market the best it’s been for job seekers in 15 years, digital-recruiting toolmakers are serving up even better solutions to ensure that companies can capture the best of the talent. The new tools come at an opportune time, given that the economy appears poised for continued healthy growth.

Indeed, according to the “Jobvite 2015 Job Seeker Nation” survey, only 35% of job seekers think that it’s tougher to find a job than it was last year. The rest believe that it’s about the same or easier. That comfort level is also reflected in figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which revealed that employers created nearly 3 million new jobs in 2014, making last year the best one to look for a job since 1999.

“The study confirms that the economic upswing is having concrete results for job seekers,” said Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite. “Now they have more options everywhere they look. Companies must cast a wider net to capture this talent.”

Not surprisingly, mobile devices are being viewed as ever-more-convenient tools for job hunting. Of those surveyed, 21% said that they look for mobile-friendly websites when looking for a job. And the figure is even higher with Millennials: 47% of those younger workers said that they use their mobile devices regularly when hunting for a job.

	The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that February 2015 saw the lowest unemployment rate since May 2008. (Infographic Source: Jobvite).

Mobile has also increased the window of opportunity of job seeking during the day. An astonishing 47% of mobile job seekers said that they look for their next gig while in bed, with 38% doing it during their commutes and 36% looking for work while they’re at a restaurant. Even the restroom is apparently a good place to look for employment: 18% of job seekers do it there on mobile devices.

All digital-recruiting tools considered, social media is especially hot, with 93% of companies surveyed saying that they’re currently using the medium or plan to use it to recruit, according to the 2014 Jobvite social recruiting survey. The reason is that social media is paying off: 14% of recruiters using the medium said that they’re able to fill job openings more quickly using social. And 13% said that the caliber of candidates they find on social media is superior to those they find via other channels.

All told, 73% of the recruiters that were surveyed said that they’ve hired at least one employee using social media.

“Researching candidates via social media and other online sources has transformed from an emerging trend to a staple of online recruitment,” said Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder. “In a competitive job market, recruiters are looking for all the information they can find that might help them make decisions.”

Added Jobvite’s Finnigan: “For the modern recruiter, the process starts long before the application and demands a growing pipeline of talent that can be nourished and tapped into at any time.”

Not surprisingly, Facebook is the number-one spot job seekers turn to when looking for a job on social media. A full 83% of job seekers cruised Facebook regularly when scouting for a new position, according to the survey.

Recruiters are also using Facebook and other social-media sites to better size up job candidates. In fact, 55% of recruiters said that they had reconsidered a candidate based on what they’d glean from that person’s presence on social media, according to the survey.

“It’s important for job seekers to remember that much of what they post to the Internet—and, in some cases, what others post about them—can be found by potential employers, and that can affect their chances of getting hired down the road,” said Haefner.

Of course, many employers may also want to do digital recruiting the old-fashioned way—i.e., directly from their company websites. For these companies, there is a plethora of website-based recruiting software solutions—more than 200, in fact.

Apparently, these solutions (also known as applicant tracking) are very popular. According to a 2013 Aberdeen Group study of companies that know how to do hiring best, 84% already have web recruiting software or plan to integrate such software into their websites. All can be found in a directory on Capterra’s website (www.capterra.com/applicant-tracking-software). Capterra specializes in advising businesses on software that best fits their needs.

One easy way to sort through the morass of offerings is to check out Capterra’s excellent, free, 20-page e-book, The Essential Guide to Buying an Applicant Tracking System. The guide quickly enables companies to zero in on a handful of highly recommended web recruiting solutions that are perfect for their needs, based on research conducted by Capterra.

Such web recruiting packages can save a company significant time by automating job board postings, resume submissions and pre-screening, said J.P. Medved, author of Capterra’s e-book and web-recruiting solutions specialist.

Web recruiting packages also help prevent lawsuits by ensuring that recruiting processes are compliant with hiring laws. It’s also likely that companies will hold on to employees longer with software that enables the company to better screen and qualify candidates, Medved said.

Most of the solutions enable companies to rank applicants side-by-side, track and schedule interviews, integrate a jobs board/career domain into their websites, do pre-employment testing and assessment and more, Medved said. Plus, some of the more advanced solutions offer the ability to do candidate background screening, manage referrals and integrate social-media recruiting on the same dashboard as the companies’ website recruiting. Many even allow businesses to conduct interviews on places such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

“Asking yourself the right questions and taking the time to examine your organization’s specific needs will ensure that you end up with an applicant-tracking system you love and that helps you get the best talent out there,” Medved said.