Jobinablog

10 Ways to Reduce Your Recruitment Costs

Is your recruitment budget already running on empty this year? Well if you need to looking at reducing your recruitment costs, here is a document I wrote recently that highlights 10 ways to start reducing your recruitment costs.

I guarantee that you won't be using them all!!

Recruiting Generation Y staff the Disney way

Following on from my previous post on using video as a recruiting tool, I wanted to share a post I read today by Bea Fields, whose blog is aptly titled "Attracting the New Workforce".  She looks at attracting the generation Y workforce, and how companies need to address their recruitment strategies accordingly. She has highlighted Disney's new recruitment campaign aimed specifically at generation y college leavers.

What I particularly like about this Disney program is this video, because it taps right into the mentality of different generation y groups. As you might expect from Disney, it is a well polished video, but it gets the exact message across.

59% of people on the internet view one video a week - are you using them on your site?

Video is now becoming a very key part of the online world, as shown by a recent survey by Universal McCann, where 59% of people watch at least one video online per week. Obviously there are the huge video sites like YouTube and similar concepts that have followed their trail. But it is the way that companies are more increasingly using video as a recruiting tool, that should be noticed. The video's may not even be a direct campaign of recruitment, more of an information tool, but they keep people on your website longer.

So is your company using video to attract / entice / inform people about your company? If not then you should be seriously considering the approach. Here is a great post about how a company went through the whole process of producing and publishing their recruitment video.

10 things you need to know about what Jobinablog can do for you

Interested in knowing and understanding more about Jobinablog? Here are the answers to the 10 questions I get asked most about what Jobinablog is:

1. Jobinablog.com -  so what is it then apart from a catchy name?  It is a career site that is built individually for each company, keeping their same design, that helps companies recruit staff directly through their own website in a very cost effective way and exciting way. It is also a very good way of developing (or improving) your employer brand.

2. How does it work? It uses the flexible functionality of a blog, to create a wide range of exciting options to display jobs, news, videos, photos, interviews and much more. And because it is a blog, it makes the most of Web 2.0 and allows readers (job seekers) to interact with the website. How can you interact? Using one of four ways 1) RSS feeds 2) Email updates 3) Newsletter subscription 4) Comments. If you want to understand it visually, watch a video presentation (approx 10 mins long).

3. But why a blog format? There are the development on the internet that is really changing the way people read websites. There are 110's of millions, which means that job seekers are very comfortable reading them and interacting with them. In fact the Y Generation and the Z Generation, your employees of the future, probably read them all the time. So to have a chance of recruiting these people, you need to be providing them with a site they want to read.

Low hanging fruit does not need to be so expensive!

Why is it that so many companies fail to harvest  'low hanging fruit?'

Let me explain a little further - when I refer to low hanging fruit, I am talking about candidates that have made it very easy for them selves to be found on job boards etc by placing their CV's online. And when they are in the harvest season, they also make themselves readily available by applying for good online advertised jobs, and at the same time they visit many career websites.

So why is it then that companies ignore these 'juicy fruits' (new candidates) and turn to the 'fruit pickers' (recruitment agencies) to deliver their products to them, with the added cost of a large 'delivery fee'?

This is a cause of much frustration to me, when speaking with companies who are complaining about their recruitment process. They just need to look at their direct recruitment strategy, and incorporate some straight forward processes such as placing their own online adverts or creating their own career site/job pages. They could also utilise one of the many online CV databases for a short period of time. These are some of the basics that a recruitment agency would use as their first candidate search for any role you have given them to look at. So why not get there first and save yourself paying for any low hanging fruit they simply pluck from the trees?

Jobinablog - a video presentation

A few people have had a little trouble grasping the concept of Jobinablog, so by means of a further explanation, I have produced a presentation that I am sure will make complete sense!!

Now you know how it works, I look forward to your phone call!!

FACT: Nearly 50% of job seekers go online to find a job - Do you recruit online yet?

If your company is not recruiting online, then quite frankly your are barking mad!! Taleo have just produced some research showing that nearly half of UK job seekers go online when applying for jobs. So if your company is not online you are missing out on getting access to nearly 50% of your potential new employees! (Want to get your jobs online?)

The survey, conducted by Taleo Research, showed that 43% of workers used online tools, such as applying online or sending a CV by email, to apply for their most recent job. Described by Taleo as “Internet Identifiers,” the survey found this group leading the way in how today’s workers prefer to apply for jobs. According to the study, job seekers can be broken down into three main groups, based on how they apply for jobs:

• Internet Identifiers (43%) – Internet savvy job-seekers who actively hunt for jobs by applying online, sending their CV via email to prospects or signing up to an online job board or business networking website
• Hands Off Hunters (38%) – traditional job seekers who rely on head hunters, recruitment agencies and personal contacts to find new jobs
• Traditional Targeters (19%) – more traditional job seekers, who prefer to actively apply for jobs through the post

So if you are one of the (shrinking) 19% of traditional targeters, you seriously need to be thinking of how you are going to change your methods. At the very least, sort out your own website and use it to start recruiting for you - if you don't your competitors will!!

Can't attract new candidates? Here are some reasons why

After having looked at problems that affect the recruitment process itself, I wanted to further look at the actual problems related to the sourcing of candidates for your company. These are not an endless list of problems (as that would fill a book up!), but they are some of the most common. Lou Adler has produced this list of 15 sourcing related problems, and what problems companies have in attracting staff to their company - how many do you find yourself saying yes to?  More than five does call for some action to be taken!

1.      The quality and quantity of candidates from job boards is declining.

2.      We tend to use the same sourcing methods every year.

3.      Our advertising is boring and out-dated.

4.      Our job ads are just cut-and-paste versions of our boring job descriptions.

5.      Ads are hard to find by top people who are casually looking.

6.      Ads are found, but top candidates don't apply.

7.      Our ads don't describe a compelling value proposition.

8.      Our ads are filled with disqualifiers and little about what's in it for the candidate.

9.      Our ads are written to exclude bad people, not attract good people.

10.  Our career website is difficult to navigate and search for jobs.

11.   We have not search-engine-optimized (SEO) our site or our ads.

12.   Our ads don't always come up first on the job boards we use.

13.   Good candidates say they're "not interested" early in the process.

14.   We don't get enough high-quality referrals.

15.  Our employees don't proactively seek out great people to refer.

7 ways to use videos to drive traffic to your career site

Every single month hundreds of thousands of people go to sites like YouTube and watch videos. People are very comfortable watching video online -so how do you and your company make use of this massive rise in video curiosity?  Firstly you need to go  beyond your website and into online communities where your 'targets' are spending time surfing, chatting and buying. Then you go about planting links to your video content in high traffic relevant areas communities online where potential 'targets' are likely to find it! Then there are certain tactics you can use to drive traffic  back to your website, here are seven:

Your own FREE Recruiting Channel on YouTube

You are looking to sell your company to prospective employees aren't you? Well YouTube have a great slant on their product that enables you to set up your own FREE recruiting channel. So when you have set up your new career site or Jobinablog site, you can simply insert the videos you have made about your company and what it is like to work there. What a nice and easy way to freely promote your company - which is still a relatively unique way. Not many companies show video of their company on their websites, so it will really make yours standout! Chris Russell of JobsinPods has put together this nice guide of how to set it up.