Candidate Engagement is a Decaying Asset

Candidate Engagement is a Decaying Asset

At PivotCX we understand the intrinsic value of engagement in the realm of recruiting. It’s not just a buzzword; it’s a lifeline that connects you with your future employees, your organization’s internal customers, and the driving force behind your success. Engagement is more than just a fleeting interaction; it’s the bedrock upon which lasting relationships are built.

Imagine engagement as a precious asset, one that depreciates over time if not nurtured. But fear not, for we are here to help you not only preserve but enhance that value. We believe in engaging faster, engaging longer, and, most importantly, engaging better.

Why is engagement crucial, you ask? Well, your future employees are the heartbeat of your organization, the potential workforce that will shape your future. At PivotCX, we treat them with the utmost respect, considering them not merely as candidates but as valued customers. Our technology is meticulously designed to cater to their needs, ensuring a seamless journey through your recruitment process.

Our platform doesn’t just create lists; it crafts relationships. We guide your prospects through your funnel, nurturing and managing these connections, transforming them into the future talent that will drive your organization forward. But remember, like any valuable asset, these relationships demand consistent maintenance and development.

Maintaining these relationships isn’t just about data hygiene; it’s about investing energy and effort into moving the needle of engagement. We understand that relationships without active engagement are like objects at rest. Just as in physics, it takes significant energy to set these relationships in motion. That investment of energy into relationships is what we excel at, propelling your recruiting and hiring journey forward.

Let’s face the truth: if engagement isn’t initiated, you’re back to square one. Think of it as rebuilding a cherished relationship from scratch. Consider the consequences: customer churn, sluggish sales, and your top talent walking away just when you need them the most. It’s a scenario no organization wants to face.

Your candidates today are the employees of tomorrow. The databases of engagement we help you create are the future human capital of your organization. Just like a historic building, if not properly maintained, they lose their charm and value. At Pivotcx, we ensure that your investment in these relationships is not only preserved but amplified.

So, let’s engage, not just for today, but for a future where your organization thrives, where your best talent is retained, and where every engagement translates into an opportunity for growth. Together, we will shape a future where your recruiting endeavors are not just efficient but deeply human and profoundly impactful. Welcome to the future of recruiting with PivotCX where humanengagement transforms into enduring success!

The 3 Most Important Reasons To Celebrate Candidate Experience Day 2023

The 3 Most Important Reasons To Celebrate Candidate Experience Day 2023

It seems nearly everyday we’re hearing about the latest National – “fill in the blank” Day. For example, for those that were not aware, just the other day it was National Cheese Lovers Day.  There are practically national days of recognition every day of the year.  (For the historians in the crowd – In the USA, we can track the tradition of creating national days of recognition all the way back to July 4, 1777 – to the first organized celebration of Independence Day.)  While not all days of recognition have equal significance or are tied to such an historic event, the fact remains that these days of recognition give us a chance to pause and reflect.  And – in many cases, these days create the opportunity for us to both elevate the purpose for the day as well as to make further commitments to support the ideals and objectives that the day represents.

 Back in 2020, The Talent Board initiated the first Candidate Experience Day.  It was a brilliant idea to tie the kick-off of the 2020 CandE Benchmark Research program to this special day.  Each year since, The Talent Board has been “hosting” the Candidate Experience Day as a cornerstone event that both announces the findings from the previous year’s research as well as serving as the opening of the present year’s research program.  While the exact day for this has slightly varied over the years, the intent of the day has remained consistent – i.e. for Recruiting Teams to come together to honor the candidates that take the time to opt-in to participate in their recruitment cycles and to recommit to doing everything they can to create a positive experience for those candidates.  

 More often than not, discussions about the “Candidate Experience” center around the negative – i.e. all the reasons for rising Candidate Resentment.  Candidate Experience Day 2023, however, is an opportunity to celebrate – Celebrate the candidates, and celebrate all the techniques being deployed that are having a positive impact, 

 

3 Reasons Why You Should Plan to Celebrate Candidate Experience Day

 While there are a myriad number of reasons why celebrating Candidate Experience Day should be high priority, those reasons really all boil down to 3 core topics.

 1 – Mindset Matters!

Would anyone argue that we should NOT think about the candidate experience?  Do you know that purposely plans and designs a poor candidate experience into their process?  Of course, the answer to these questions is, “No.”  And yet, despite all the long standing evidence and the clear convergence that an improved candidate experience is important, creating a meaningful, consistent, and lasting candidate experience continues to be aspirational.

 As with anything worth achieving, the journey always begins with deciding that the pursuit is worth dedicating yourself to.  Mindset is critical. There will definitely be times during the journey when you will question whether the commitment is worth the continuous effort.  Candidate Experience Day 2023 is an opportunity to surround yourself with others who are traveling a similar trail as you.  It will be a day of positive storytelling from others who have found success.  What better way is there to stay motivated and committed that to surround yourself with others who have a similar mindset.  Their stories and specific suggestions will serve as great inspiration to stay motivated to keep to the plan. 

 

2 – Recruiting Outcomes Matter!

Improving Candidate Experience is not a fluffy, nice to think about business issue.  Not being able to achieve hiring goals and overspend on recruitment marketing are just two examples of what happens when your employer brand has a poor candidate experience reputation.  

 As noted above, though, no one means to purposely create a poor candidate experience.  The primary root cause of this is that too often recruiting teams are overwhelmed and overburdened.  They are expected to be experts on a large number of skills – i.e. Employer Branding, Recruitment Marketing, Copywriting, Sourcing, Labor Market Intelligence, Sales and Negotiation just to name a few.  They are expected to navigate and use a large number of systems and tools – many of which are not integrated.  And, of course, the biggest challenge of all – is that recruiters are expected to carry an inordinate number of requisitions.  As Josh Bersin famously said, “Recruiting is much harder than it looks” – which is why the vast majority of recruiting teams under-perform.

 I’m not saying that participating in the Candidate Experience events will cure all your issues.  What I am saying though, is that collaborating with other employers who have the same mindset as you and learning from them as to what has been successful should be a strong element to your strategy.  This is a great way to learn the skill sets and toolsets that others are leveraging to get to the ROI from investing in improving the Candidate Experience

 

3 – Your Job Satisfaction Matters!

In all my years of working in the talent acquisition industry, I’ve never met a single recruiter who stayed in the business who wasn’t passionate about the work they were doing.  The satisfaction that a person can get from being knowing they are the engine that enabled individuals to get jobs that fulfill their career aspirations is indescribable.  Couple that with knowing that your efforts play a role in the productivity and profitability of the business, and you have a killer combination of reasons to want to improve the Candidate Experience.

 As noted above – no one purposely works to design a poor candidate experience into the process.  At a minimum, it is frustrating to every day feel like it is all you can do to keep up with the candidates that are moving forward.  At worst, it is demoralizing and contributes to job burnout.  The largest population in any recruiting cycle are the candidates that do not get hired.  All too often, this is the group of candidates that do not hear back – which is one of the key reasons for the growing levels of candidate resentment.  

Participating in Candidate Experience Day – and for that matter, Candidate Experience improvement activities and events throughout the year, is truly a way that you can take control of your own work experience.  Not only will your efforts make life better for the candidates and improve the business results of your organization, but you will also be improving your job satisfaction.  Job satisfaction is the feeling of fulfillment you receive from the work that you perform.  Zeroing in on the meaningful aspects of your work is critical to job satisfaction. Identifying areas of the process that you can improve upon to produce better and more valuable outcomes for your candidates and hiring managers will not only add to your job satisfaction – but will also ultimately improve your work-life balance and reduce your work-related stress levels.

 

Wednesday, January 25th, 2023 is Candidate Experience Day.  While it is a specific day being set aside to share stories, posts, quotes, pictures, memes, videos, etc. It is important to remember though that, Every Day Should Be Candidate Experience Day!  And, while the title of the day only refers to the Candidate, the reality is that making improvements in the experience will actually create amazing outcomes for both the business your recruit for and for yourself.  Improving the Candidate Experience is a journey – not a destination. Embarking on this journey means that you are adopting this as a mindset and that you are continually striving to learn new skills and tools to further this pursuit.  Surround yourself with others who have also adopted this mindset plays an important role in that continuous learning.  Just remember – your candidates will appreciate it, your business will gain value from it, and your job satisfaction will increase.  

 Wishing you a productive Candidate Experience Day and a full year of related activities to come!

Speed Wins in Recruiting, Every Time – Kyle Roed on Pivot2First Ep. 7

Speed Wins in Recruiting, Every Time – Kyle Roed on Pivot2First Ep. 7

 

Speed Wins in Recruiting, and when it comes down to it, not all HR professionals recruit at the ideal speed. Mike Seidle and Kyle Roed discuss recruiting strategies CEOs can bring back to their team to get ahead in the competition for talent. 

What are the most common out-of-date practices you see out there?

There are a lot of people who still manage people with 40-year-old processes. Examples range from attendance policies to recruiting. However, the world is speeding up, and the expectations of our employees, applicants, candidates, and hiring processes need to get faster. Speed wins in recruiting, every time. Even if an employer comes out with a great job, but there’s a prolonged part of the process, or there are people who halt progress, it makes it hard to hire great people.

Policies and culture can also be stuck in the past. Instead of flyers in the breakroom or 50-page handbooks, people want to access information on-demand from their devices. Moreover, today’s employees want a company with a social media presence they can be proud of, inclusive, and willing to change, listen, and confront issues society-at-large faces these days.

Another issue companies face is a low application completion rate and even HR resistance to change for fear of not being compliant. Applying for a job should be as easy as buying something online. Most of the time, today’s applicants are willing to invest more time in a lengthy application only if they have built some rapport with a business. 1-click applications help counteract this issue. All HR needs to start the recruiting process is an applicant’s resume, and applicants can fill out an extended application after the first phone screen or an onsite interview. 

What should CEOs be asking about their Recruiting practices?

In business, we talk a lot about sales and customer experience funnels. It’s the same in recruiting; it’s a funnel and an experience. The product is your company, and you’re trying to get someone to buy into it. It’s the same KPIs as sales, skewed slightly for HR. 

  • Candidate Experience: Can a candidate apply easily and go through the hiring process smoothly? Having a fast candidate experience is a competitive edge. You’ll win the war for talent if you can do this regularly.
  • Quality of Hire:  Can we keep hires? What’s the new hire turnover rate? Companies should have sound structures to select candidates. Yet, businesses need to be agile enough to adapt to changes and talent acquisition strategies that enable them to make good decisions in hiring. 
  • Candidate Flow: How many candidates are we funneling? How many candidates does it take to hire one person?  Recruiting is a unique skill in HR; not all HR professionals are adept at recruiting, and your best recruiter might not be an HR professional within your organization. 
  • Market development: Who are we reaching out to? Are there other groups/demographics we’re not reaching out to? Organizations with more diversity, equity, and inclusion have a diversity of thought, and they have intensional, inclusive cultures that allow those ideas to bubble up. This is the right thing to do, but it’s good for business too.

Learn more about Kyle

Kyle Roed is the Vice President of Global HR at CPM Companies, Cofounder of DisruptHR, and host of the “Rebel Human Resources” podcast. He fell into HR and fell in love with everything about people practices. In his almost 20 years in HR, he’s discovered that things in HR are ripe for innovation and has sought to challenge the way the HR community thinks about the world of work. 

Transformational Book: In a professional context, Good to Great; has been a true north since college. 

Favorite Movie: Shawshank Redemption; it’s a great story of triumph.

Rebel HR Podcast: Everything innovation in the people space www.rebelhumanresources.com 

Kyle’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-roed

Learn more about Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

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