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How to Keep Your Recruiting Funnel Full

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How to Keep Your Recruiting Funnel Full

The best way to improve recruiting? Plug the leaks in your recruiting funnel.

As you have surely realized, most staffing companies “leak” talent at every stage of the recruiting process – from the moment a candidate becomes aware of your firm through assignment or onboarding. In many ways, recruiting is a numbers game. The fewer qualified candidates you lose along the way, the more efficient your recruiting function becomes.

So, ask yourself these questions: What percentage of visitors to your website are job seekers? Of those, what percent complete a job application and get placed by your firm? In a tight talent market, you can’t afford to lose great people — and you have to be proactive about placing every qualified candidate as quickly as you can. Yet, the vast majority of recruiting agencies lose over half of the placeable candidates who visit their websites.

Here’s where most recruiters lose talent:

Job Application

In reviewing the Google Analytics of more than 500 staffing and recruiting companies, we regularly see abandonment rates on online applications as high as 90%. At a recent TA Tech conference presentation, one of the speakers noted that if your job application takes more than 5 minutes to complete, you will lose 75% of the people who try to apply.

So how can you improve your job application completion rate?

  1. Simplify. Shorten the initial application to name, email address and resume.
  2. 1-click apply. Integrate your job application with tools like Apply with Indeed, Apply with Monster, a social signups through Facebook and LinkedIn.
  3. Convert to a 2-step apply process. Step 1, contact info only. Step 2, apply data. This way if people quit before completing step 2, you have enough information to follow up.
  4. Add Chat. Adding live chat (we partner with FlashRecruit) or a Chatbot (we partner with Olivia from Paradox.ai) captures response from candidates who are not quite ready to apply.

Home Page

Your home page is the most commonly visited page on your website. But is your home optimized to convert passive and active job seekers? Before you start making any changes, go into Google Analytics and look at the bounce rate on your home page. This will become your benchmark as you test ways to get more people to take action before leaving your website.

So how can you make your home page more effective?

  1. Add Search Jobs to the main navigation.
  2. Put a quick search widget right at the top of the first screen on your home page (just like a job board does).
  3. Add a feed of new or featured jobs to your home page.
  4. Add a fly-in to encourage job seekers to search jobs, complete a quick apply, or opt-in for job alerts.
  5. Offer a quick apply option.

Job Seekers Page

Active job seekers want to know more about the kinds of jobs you offer and what it will be like to work for your company. The goal of your job seekers page should be to make people want to work with your firm.

So how can you get people to want to work for you?

  1. Promote your jobs. Include a list of recent or featured jobs near the top of the page.
  2. Promote your clients. Show people where they could be working as an associate of your firm.
  3. Search widget. Make it easy to search available openings right near the top of the page.
  4. More CTAs. Include calls to action throughout the Job Seekers page.
  5. More ways to respond. Applying to a job is just one way for a job seeker to take action. You can also encourage them to opt-in for job alerts, signup for career newsletters, engage with chat, our click to call to speak with one of your recruiters right away.

Blog Page

After your home page, your blog (and individual blog posts) are likely to be the most visited pages on your website (of course, you are regularly blogging, right???). But when someone comes to read a blog post, is your blog page specifically designed to drive response?

So how can you convert more blog readers to active job candidates?

  1. Inline CTAs. Add text and graphic calls to action throughout your blog post copy.
  2. CTA footers. Include a blog banner graphics at the end of your blogs to drive job seekers to search jobs, apply now or opt-in for job alerts.
  3. Sidebar. Most blogs have a column on the right of the page that you use to embed buttons, graphics and widgets to encourage blog readers to take action right away.

Focus on Repeat Visitors

Did you know that a job seeker who comes back to your website a second time is more than twice as likely to apply to a job? You spend thousands (or more likely tens of thousands) on job boards to get candidates to visit your website, but how much do you invest to bring these people back a second time?

So how can you get job seekers to come back to your website?

  1. Job alerts. Encourage candidates to opt-in for alerts by email or text.
  2. Newsletter. Also encourage candidates to opt-in for an email publication (and it has to be really good if you want signups!).
  3. Remarketing. Use Google and Facebook remarketing to track visitors to your site, then show them ads on other websites to drive them back to your website to search and apply to jobs.

Improve Communication Throughout the Hiring Process

Have you heard of the recruiting “black hole?” That’s what candidates describe as the outcome of applying to a job – you send in your resume, and then it goes into a black hole and you never hear from anyone. If you want to improve your placement rates, get rid of the black hole.

So how can you improve talent engagement?

  1. Autoresponder. At a minimum, set up an automated email to acknowledge candidates who apply and tell them about next steps.
  2. Respond faster. Train your recruiters to reach out to EVERY job applicant within 24 hours to let them know what to expect.
  3. Automate interview reminders. Use marketing automation tools to create an automated communication plan to remind candidates about job interviews. Using email and text, ask people to confirm their appointments and then have your recruiters call people who fail to respond.
  4. Provide honest feedback. At the end of the interview, let the person know what to expect next. If the candidate is not qualified, tell them why you’re not able to place them and what they need to do to improve their skills.
  5. Have offers ready to go. Encourage clients to have firm job offers prewritten and ready to send. The time frame may vary depending on the kinds of people you place, but the faster you offer someone a job, the fewer you will lose to competitors’ offers.

The Biggest Leak in the Recruiting Funnel? A Lousy Experience!

Being a job seeker is tough work. You have to invest tons of time. Face loads of rejection. And keep pushing yourself forward day after day to find the job you want. It can feel like no one is on your side.

And that’s where recruiting companies have tremendous opportunities: to be a true career advisor; to simplify the job search process; and to make the process of being a job seeker more enjoyable and rewarding.

If you want to eliminate the leaks in your recruiting funnel, re-engineer your candidate experience to make the process of job hunting easier, faster and more enjoyable. Process map your candidate experience and then find ways to make each interaction more efficient and engaging. Define SLAs for how quickly your recruiters respond to candidates. Train them to provide more honest, thorough feedback. Use automation to enhance (but not eliminate) personal communication. Provide incentives to your team to consistently deliver world-class customer service.

When you craft a great experience, you’ll get more response to your recruitment advertising, more referrals, more reactivations, and of course you’ll close more placements.

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