RecruitCon 2018 Speaker Offers More Best Practices for Using Technology in the Recruiting Process

In part one of this article series, HR Works sat down with RecruitCon 2018 speaker Lindsay Stanton to discuss trends and best practices when using technology in the recruiting process. Here is the remainder of that interview.
HR Works: There are a lot of these avenues of social media, so which ones tend to be most productive? I’m particularly wondering if Tweeting is effective or establishing a presence in LinkedIn groups—or what’s working?
Stanton:  Yeah. Great question.
It really depends on the job and the market. So depending on the location of the position and the job itself, it’s really going to make a difference as to which social site’s going to work best for you. I would say for strategic roles, those purple squirrels of the world, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Messaging, and InMails are really effective; reaching out to the groups like you mentioned can be super effective.
But in addition to that, for volume roles, Twitter can be really effective; certainly, Facebook can be effective. So tracking the success and where you’re seeing the conversion to application is really important with social so that you know where you should be spending your time against because I know social can be overwhelming too. You can spend a lot of time against it, not necessarily seeing results, if you don’t know where you should be focusing your efforts.
HR Works: I mentioned before active candidates and passive candidates; are there different approaches that you use for those two types?
Stanton: Yeah. Absolutely. I think a couple things. With the active candidates, I would say, those tend to align more with the volume roles that we’re helping our client organizations hire for; whether it’s Kelly Services or Prudential, they all have jobs they’re constantly to fill on their behalf.
And we will see the SEO and just a broad exposure really play into things with the volume hiring versus the strategic side, so with the more passive candidates, we see targeting and reaching people through niche groups being really effective. So again, the InMails or e-mail campaigns are super effective with video. We’ve seen impacts as much as 25% to 80% on open and click-through rates with e-mail.
HR Works: Wow. That’s pretty effective.
Stanton: Yeah.
HR Works: So, then, what about mobile? We keep hearing about mobile. What are the best practices there, and how important is it?
Stanton: I think one of the best things I would suggest with regard to mobile is to really track the process and walk through it from a candidate perspective and see what it looks like as far as “Is it easy to apply for your position through mobile?” Because the three pieces play altogether, so video, social, and mobile.
Most people who are coming into social are doing it through their mobile device, so the chances are they’re viewing your job video through their mobile device. How easy is it going to be for them to apply?
One of the things that we’ve helped our customers with is a light data capture, augmenting the mobile apply process, which can be really effective, and then do a redirect back to the ATS in case there is a challenge with the ATS in mobile.
HR Works: Great. What are some of the most common mistakes that you see companies and recruiters making?
Stanton: When it comes to video, specifically, I think I would say having videos that are too long. So a lot of times, we’re helping organizations keep it short and sweet, targeted messaging, repurposing some of the content that maybe their marketing communications built so that it’s really specifically targeting the types of audiences they want to reach.
The reality is that nobody’s going to watch a video that’s more than 2 or 3 minutes long, so that 20-minute marketing piece that your team put together isn’t going to get much viewership. So we’re really helping them to make sure that they reel it in and make it more targeted.
HR Works: Great. Well this has all been very helpful. To sum it up, any final recommendations for companies that want to improve their recruiting processes?
Stanton: The first step, I think, is to Google yourself. Google your organization, and see how your jobs are coming up. See how you’re ranking compared to your competitors. And then, think about jobseeker activity and how they’re going to be searching for a job.
And like we talked about consistently during this interview, social is definitely the number one way that you’re going to reach people, especially passive, which with 4% or less unemployment, that’s where you need to reach people.
So I think just walking through and seeing how you’re showing up is super helpful because it shows you the gaps in your process.
HR Works: Oh, great. Thanks so much. We really appreciate your joining us today.
Stanton: Thank you for having me.