Pivot2First: Indeed Advertising with Dominic Antonio

Pivot2First: Indeed Advertising with Dominic Antonio

 

There is much low-hanging fruit in the world of recruitment advertising that every recruiter can adopt to improve their hiring practices. 

Is there a difference between a job description and a job ad?

Job descriptions are not job ads and job ads are not job descriptions. Descriptions are straightforward. They show the functions of the job, requirements and what the “perfect” candidate looks like. However, it doesn’t do anything to attract candidates. On the other hand, a job ad sells candidates. In a way, you have to have a marketing mentality in recruiting. In this hyper-competitive, candidate-market, job ads are more important than ever. If your ad fails to sell the candidate on the opportunity, get them to click it and apply, it doesn’t matter where you place the ad or how much money you spend, you’ll lose the vast majority of great candidates

Job ads have 2 audiences: The job seeker (we’re trying to get them to click on the job post and apply) and the job board search engine (we want the search engine to index the ad and show it to as many job applicants as possible).

 Indeed Spend 

How do I know how much I should spend on Indeed?

Start from the end; keep the goal in mind. Too many recruiters think they have a gut feeling about what a budget should be. Take a look at your recruiting funnel and analyze it, from hire to applies.

Hires needed → Qualified Candidates to Interview → Applies → Cost per Apply

How many hires do you want to make? Think about how many people you need to interview to make those hires. How many people should apply to get the number of qualified candidates you need to interview? Finally, Indeed doesn’t sell you applies, they sell you clicks. How many clicks do you need to get a certain number of people to apply?

How do you find out what you are spending on indeed today?

Get in touch with Indeed, whoever is your account manager, and see who is spending what across all your accounts. Go over the past 3-6 months: see how much you’ve spent and how many candidates you’ve received.

How do I get control of managers posting jobs without going through the company account?

The problem with posting jobs on your own, is the lack of accountability for budgets and candidates. We’ve seen clients where different locations use separate credit cards and accounts. It’s easy to lose track of how many candidates they’re receiving and the amount of money they’re spending.

Having a recruiting agency working with Indeed on behalf of clients allows the client to gain an inside scoop on what the going bid price is, what the competitive bids are, make accurate spending budget calculations instead of going by what is comfortable, which is usually either way too low or too high. This insight allows clients to be realistic about the real cost of advertising on a job board.

What do people not understand about Indeed?

CPA vs CPC. PCA or cost per apply, and CPC, cost per click. Indeed only lets you bid on clicks but the actual apply number shows how effective your job ads are. Ads are bid on a CPC basis, but the CPA is what you, as a recruiter, should worry about because it will tell you how effective your budget is.

Sponsored ads – show higher on the feed. More budget allows for higher bids. If you’re bidding above $200-$300 then you simply don’t have a job market.

 

Indeed Myths

 

Organic ads… where do they work?

Organic is free traffic, so always make sure you have organic going.

Don’t duplicate jobs or you will lose organic traffic; there can only be one source of truth on Indeed, but they will always take your money for sponsored ads.

Refreshing jobs… myth or not?

Don’t do that if you’re sponsoring positions. It takes time for jobs to find their CPC bid and budgets to work themselves out. If you refresh jobs, you’re losing data that the job has been working to build up. Leave sponsored jobs alone but refresh organic jobs about once a month. If you refresh too often, Indeed’s quality team will flag those jobs and they might not get as much traffic.

Job Salaries

“If I don’t put a salary on a job, the candidate won’t have expectations and it’ll be easier on recruiting.”

The truth is that Indeed has an incentive to put a salary because it increases the click-through rate. If you don’t provide a salary, they’ll provide an estimate since job posts with salaries get 22-28% more clicks.

There’ll always be employers that pay more and those that pay less than the competition, you can always use a pay range even though it might be skewed to one end or the other.

 

Reverse-Searching Jobs

Every instance you look at your own positions, Indeed believes you’re job seekers thinking about applying for the job. Since you’re constantly visiting the job post but not applying to it, Indeed may assume it’s a bad job and work to not show it as often in the future.

Pro-Tip: If you want to look at the jobs for a company, instead of using the normal search bar, go to Company Reviews at the top, look for your company, and go to your company page. There you can take a look at a full list of your job openings and see which ones are getting organic visibility.

You can also look for jobs in an incognito tab and type what the candidate traffic is like in a certain city or what job titles competitors are using.

Indeed (Native) Apply vs ATS Career Apply

Native apply will get a candidate into your funnel fastest. Job seekers don’t have to create separate accounts for each company they want to apply to, as they would if they applied from a company’s career website.

You, as the employer, have every incentive to use Indeed Native Apply because you’ll get more people. You can expect to get about 23% more candidates if you use native apply.

Another consideration is that 70-72% of applications are completed on mobile phones. Most ATS career sites are not known for being mobile-friendly and that can discourage a lot of people from completing an application. A better tactic is to use Native Apply to get them in the door, screen them and then invite them to complete the ATS application.

Job Post Content, What really matters in my job posts?

  • Keywords always help. If you’re with an agency, ask for a market report for your jobs and that will include a keyword report with the most search terms.
  • One trick is to add job titles from jobs that people could transition from easily into the job body.
  • Change up your job titles to use what other competitors are using. For example, we changed one job from “Electrical Instrument Assembler” to “Electrical Manufacturing Technician.”
  • Keep descriptions short and make sure the first paragraph is clear. A Job Description is NOT a job ad.
  • Salaries in the ad… do it or not? YES

Time to Hire

The company’s timing to make a hire is not the same as a candidate’s timing.

Whereas a candidate might be looking to get a job within a week or a month, according to a new Talroo report, the average time to fill an entry level position is around 44 days. Candidates, however, are not waiting 44 days to get hired.

The job market will continue to be hyper-competitive and 44 days to hire is not sustainable. While the average cost per hire is $670, that doesn’t seem to account for the opportunity cost of being short-staffed and missing orders, job advertising, or staff-hours spent interviewing. On the other hand, 90% of candidates take the first job they are offered. How do you win in recruiting? You learn to go fast, reduce friction and streamline the hiring funnel so you can pick first.

 

Learn More

Dominic Antonio

Dominic is PivotCX’s Recruiting Marketing Manager. He has been a core part of the team for 6 years.
He’s skilled in digital ad buys, technical recruiting, content marketing, email marketing, website management, CRM management, social media, ad copy writing.

Favorite Books:

  • Business book: Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  • Fiction book: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

Favorite Movie: Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Anything else you’d like to share with the audience?  Good recruiting is relational, not transactional; it’s a conversation.

 

Mike and PivotCX:

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

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

Values Alignment

Values Alignment

 

Today we are joined by Lindsay Harle-Kadatz, the host of “Businesses are people too! A Podcast.” In this episode, we’ll reflect on Values Alignment. We’ll discuss Neuro-change, the challenges people are facing during the pandemic, and why you need to see a business as an actual person.

What is Neurochange?

Why do things change in our brains? Mindsets, beliefs, subconscious, and more are all woven into the framework of neuroplasticity. It helps us understand how our brain changes. Neurochange is the science behind what you need to do and how to get your brain to work with itself. 

What are the challenges people are facing during Covid?

 People reflected on what values they believed in and if they still rang true for themselves. People know relatively quickly what matters and what doesn’t and can cut through the “crap” much more rapidly. Businesses realize they are not who they used to be.

Working from Home vs. Office?

People want to work from home more. It’s a hard change to navigate to come back to the office. Businesses are wondering how to create a connection between remote workers. One thing to remember about remote workers is people will get their jobs done when you trust them to do it.

See the Business as a person?

Lindsay believes in seeing the business as a person too. It comes from the definition of a corporation as an individual entity. In marketing and branding, mental wellness is also off if a company’s brand is off. Seeing it as a person helps with brand management because you realize there is a reputation and relationship it has with other companies and other people. What many people say about companies isn’t always grounded in reality. Outcoming generations can feel that their identity is tied to the business. In contrast, incoming generations believe that they are the ones who determine the business identity separately from their personal identity. 

What parts of the business to see as a person?

First and foremost, ask the people. Ask them how they feel and what they think. Sit down with each team member and ask them what they think: those conversations will tell you where to improve. Remember that you hire people to be better than you at a job. Trust your people.

How do we get trust back?

Fall on your sword. Own up. Hold yourself accountable. Leaders own up to their mistakes. Ask yourself if your ego getting in the way of you and your team achieving something? 

How to bring about change when people aren’t in alignment?

This is very situational-based. Always bring in an HR professional or a lawyer. First, ask yourself if you, the leader, are doing the same things you want your employees to do. Also, ask them how they understand the values they need to follow. 

Parting thoughts: 

Take some time to stop and reflect on whether our daily actions reflect and align with our values. If they do, “cheers!” But if we notice our activities are not aligned with our values, let’s get curious and dig in on how we get there and what our values actually are. 

Learn More

Lindsay Harle-Kadatz

Lindsay is passionate about supporting leaders to empower, promote, and champion their people and seeing each team member for the value they bring to their role, well beyond their skillset.

Values Vixen 💛 | Neuro Change Method™, Certified Master Practitioner 🧠 | “Businesses Are People too! A Podcast” Host 🎙

Lindsay’s favorite business books are Necessary Endings (Dr. Henry Cloud) and  Traction (Gino Wickman). 

Favorite movie: the first Jurassic Park

Lindsay’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsayharle/ 

 

Mike and PivotCX:

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

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

Hiring for Attitude

Hiring for Attitude

 

Mike and Athin Cassiotis delve into the importance of setting a growth mindset in business and life, business coaching and mentoring, developing your company and personal brands, and hiring for attitude in this job market.

Athin’s Process with service-based businesses

Ramping up service-based businesses is relatively quick, but you must ensure you provide an excellent service. Athin helps business entrepreneurs manage whether they need to adapt their model to be more sustainable (e.g., recurrent revenue vs. one-off jobs or changing their marketing and sales strategies). 

 

Differentiating your business and your personal brand

“People buy from People”  and how you position yourself and your brand affects prospective clients’ decision to do business with you. Someone will buy based on trust and connection if there are a few options with similar offerings. It’s very compelling to understand and utilize these methods when running your business. 

Touchpoints: 

We get distracted very easily. Gone are the days when you could cold-mail people or just ask them to buy from you. It takes more for people to trust a business and several touchpoints before they’ll buy from you.

The importance of Mindset

It’s what’s between your ears that will determine your success. People sometimes have beliefs that are holding them back. Understanding yet questioning those beliefs can unlock your ability to succeed. 

A great explanation of this is by Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” In it, Kiyosaki speaks of how many of our parents taught us that money is the root of all evil; however, the flip side argues that not having money creates a lack of freedom. Putting a proverbial mirror on yourself to uncover limiting beliefs and updating your actions takes effort and happens over time. It’s easier for someone from the outside (a mentor or coach) to help uncover and help change business direction. This shift in beliefs changed Athin’s life exponentially. 

A new type of hiring challenge

In the US, people are slowing growth. It’s just hard to hire right now. What are the biggest challenges in Australia?

  • Australia is a country of mostly immigrants, and many people come from overseas, especially for tech.
  • Skills shortage, tech or otherwise, makes it hard to find good people.
  • Great Resignation: employees are rethinking what is essential for them. Remote work vs. office vs. hybrid is an example. Clear work options will make it easier for employers to retain and attract new employees. 
  • Culture: Being clear on business purpose, mission, and values.

Hiring For Attitude

To fill openings, you might have to rethink what makes someone qualified. You can’t wait 60 days to make a hire. Employers must quickly decide if someone is a good fit for the role and the team culture. 

What do people need to change the most about hiring?

  • Do you have to have that person as an employee? Some roles might be well suited for people who are contractors if it’s challenging to find people? Being flexible in this regard can go a long way. 
  • What are you actually offering to people? There are a lot of opportunities out there. How do I make it more enticing for them? Work arrangements and benefits, why would I join my business versus another company.

The Biggest Takeaway in Recruiting

Hiring should be based on values, attitudes, and behaviors

  • It’s unlikely that you’ll get someone with all the skills you’re looking for, especially with the skills shortage we have right now. You can train someone on the skills they are missing, but the values, mindset, attitudes, and behaviors are usually deeply imprinted into somebody. While it’s possible, using coaching and other methods to change attitudes and mindsets can take a long time.
  • Know the things that should be required and, know the things that can be taught, be realistic about it. 

What are the most important questions to ask?

  • With language awareness, prospective employees are likely to touch on their values and attitudes, allowing employers to learn about their motivations.
  • Learning what people have gone through in their lives. Learning about their grit, discipline, and the challenges they’ve overcome. What did they do growing up? Playing an instrument, a sport, or doing martial arts shows that someone has discipline and commitment. 

Final thoughts

The big lesson in business and life: be yourself; it doesn’t work if you try to be someone else. Whatever you’re doing (business or otherwise, always have a growth mindset. If we’re not growing, we’re dying. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and learn new things. Think whether getting a coach and mentor to know how to do things better would be beneficial. Time is the only resource we have; learning from someone can cut down on time needed to succeed.

Learn More

Athin Cassiotis

Athin hails from Adelaide, South Australia but has lived in Sydney, Australia, for over ten years. He started his first business about 5yrs ago: Waste Management Consulting, and it’s been about 2 ½ yrs since he began consulting and mentoring service-based companies.

Podcast: Business Growth Show → Insider Secrets and great feedback on Business with entrepreneurs and celebrities. If you can ask great questions of the people around you, you can get great answers. 

Favorite business book: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (Fundamentals of business mindset, being curious and delving deeper to set yourself up for success).

Favorite movies: Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura and Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop series. (having a good laugh and being different, be you; it’s a key lesson)

 Athin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/athincassiotis/?originalSubdomain=au 

 

Mike and PivotCX:

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

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

The PEO Revolution

The PEO Revolution

 

It’s time for a PEO Revolution. Today I’m joined by Dawn Lively and Daniel Fuller of FullStack PEO. We use FullStack at PivotCX for HR benefits, payroll, and everything we do managing our people. If you look at a PEO, they allow a smaller company like us to compete with more prominent companies for talent. It’s an option that can be transformative if it fits your organization.

What is a PEO

PEOs (Professional Employer Organization) are outsourcing firms that provide services to smaller businesses. They enter a co-employment agreement with their clients and become the employer of record (EoR) for tax purposes. Typically, PEOs offerings may include human resource consulting, payroll processing, employer payroll tax filing, benefits administration, recruiting and hiring, regulatory compliance assistance, training, and development. 

Reasons to use a PEO for HR needs:

Although people think of outsourcing accounting as a business function, many don’t connect the dots about outsourcing HR. Using PEOs enables small companies to focus on building their product and growing their company without allocating additional resources to HR tasks.  It becomes pretty simple and can save a lot of time. Many entrepreneurs don’t think that they only have so many hours in a week to put into work.  How many of the things that a PEO does are going to give you, if you do them yourself and you do them very well, will provide a business any advantage over what a PEO can do? I’m not sure there are many. 

Entrepreneurs’ Resistance to the PEO Revolution

There’s a profile of people who think they have to know the ins and outs of their business. The hardest thing to get some business owners, especially some new entrepreneurs, to realize is that they should use PEOs to free up their time and energy instead of holding onto HR tasks until they’ve mastered every aspect before giving any away.

A mentality that has to be learned

“A quick story, we worked with another HR tech going in scale-up mode. Their team comprised HR professionals, and they knew how to do the job themselves because they had done it before but realized from the beginning ‘if we’re gonna grow and scale and positively answer to our investors, we need to give this up.’ The team started with us when they were just three cofounders; they hadn’t hired anyone yet but wanted to have the benefits piece in place for when they recruited and onboarded that first person.

When you have that personality where you want to know and control everything, you have to be challenged to let it go to be successful.”

What are the biggest challenges business owners face when it comes to HR and people?

The first challenge is finding people. Once they find them, the second challenge is differentiating themselves from competitors.

“What will stop that person you brought on six months ago, especially in today’s market, from getting an offer from a competitor for $15000 more. What will stop someone on your team from taking $15000 a year more? If someone hasn’t proactively thought about what besides compensation is gonna keep that person here, and they haven’t done anything about it. I think it’s going to be a big challenge for them.”

Solving this issue has a lot to do with culture fit and being part of the future strategy. Dealing people in on stock options when possible and appropriate. Having buy-in regarding the company’s values, mission, and vision and including them in the decision-making process. Listening to people and getting their feedback (some of the best ideas come from feedback)

It’s also vital to consider ideas and act on them; otherwise, it negatively impacts the culture. 

How many companies are having trouble finding people?

That person was hard to find before the pandemic, and it’s even harder to find now. We hear about that struggle with most of our clients. 

It’s very different when you are a small business vs. a big company. What are companies doing to attract talent?

In essence, there are two parts to this. The first is finding talent and being able to attract it. Secondly, companies have to work hard to retain talent. Companies that usually offer 2-5% raises to their employees in this tight labor market have to do 4-7 or 4-8% increases to be competitive. “But you have to do what you can afford as a small company. So half is trying to keep the talent you already have in addition to recruiting and growing.”

Learn More

Dawn Lively

Dawn has over a decade of experience in the PEO industry, providing administrative, operational, and strategic human resource guidance to small- and mid-sized companies. She has served in a Senior Director capacity, overseeing human resource, client service, benefits administration, and payroll administration functions within a PEO. She was also instrumental in both strategic planning and tactical execution to achieve the strategic goals.

Transformational Book: Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and related books

Favorite Movie:  first “Point Blank”

Dawn’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-lively-she-her-hers-9558b08/ 

Daniel Fuller

Prior to working at FullStack as VP Business Development, Daniel’s background includes coaching entrepreneurial leaders and mission-driven organizations. While completing his MA in Global Leadership, Daniel founded Sycamore Way, a startup focused on developing tangible skills for leaders and organizations to be talent development cultures. He hosts the “Savage to Sage”, a podcast exploring the evolution of entrepreneurs through the crucible of starting and growing companies.

Transformational Book:  “At your best” by Carey Nieuwhof

Favorite Movie: “Dead Poets Society”

Daniel’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielfullerindy/

Podcast: “Savage to Sage” explores the evolutionary journey of entrepreneurs and founders. https://www.savagetosage.com/ 

Mike and PivotCX:

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

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

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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