…ideas from Jeffery Giesener – SourceMob.com – CEO
As a recruiter candidate, have you ever tried to apply through your company’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS)? How was your experience? My sense is that, if you are like your candidates, you were frustrated.
Now consider what actual candidates are thinking and doing within your application process. How many of them are defecting?
Here are some of the many obvious obstacles I have found in evaluating tons of application processes. I will act like a candidate.
Hurdle #1: I need to log in with my personal email before I even get to see jobs. WHY?
Hurdle #2: I need to sign your terms and conditions document before I see jobs. WHY?
Hurdle #3: If you didn’t ask originally, then you will only let me see jobs if I first give you my email address to log in. WHY?
Hurdle #4: I can only find jobs chronologically by job posting date and not categorized or by location or do a search on your jobs that I like or by keyword. This just gives me tons of job pages to sift through if you a large company. WHY?
Hurdle #5: After investing a half hour filling out your job application, I get a time out message and all the prior filled out data is lost. Grrr… WHY?
Hurdle #6: If I try to look up jobs and apply with my smartphone or tablet, the web form fields are too small. . Much More Frustration. WHY?
Hurdle #7 and certainly not the final one: Not communicating to me, the candidate, that you have received my application. WHY?
What is the result at any or all of these hurdles?
MASSIVE CANDIDATE DEFECTION! (up to 40-90%)
So the obvious question is…when was the last time you acted as a candidate and went through your application process? Why not test the process for the hurdles above? How many hurdles did you discover? Are there other hurdles you have put in front of your candidates which are preventing them from getting their application to you?
If you experienced any of the hurdles, you are looking at candidate defection rates of 40-90% according to ERE.net.
Now just imagine how much it costs to bring your candidates to your apply pages through the various job advertising methods you are using.? Step back and consider why would you want to lose 60-90% of these candidates with a bad apply process.? If your CFO or COO knew this data, what would they be saying? Trust me, they soon may be asking you for your cost per apply or cost per hire data as a tight economy is driving these new questions from the C-Suite.
Now to get to the defection answers and to solving the hurdles above is to have a solid platform of 3rd party analytics to understand what is happening within your apply and ATS process. Relying on your ATS vendor to tell you your analytics or report defection is like letting your Financial Investment Advisor manage your money without you ever checking your bank balance. If you don’t, your bank account may be empty. You wouldn’t do that, would you?
What should your candidate experience look like?
- Your apply process should enable your candidates a similar experience to view and search your jobs whether they are on a desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet platform. Candidates should be able to see your jobs by category, location, number of jobs, chronically, by search or by keyword. In fact, you should be able to customize your own candidate search experience in the way your candidate will search. Then and then see how it affects your defection analytics and improve them.
SourceMob will do this for you? CHECK!
- Your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) should be able to deliver your jobs to wherever your candidates are hanging out and meeting up. This would include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Mobile. An additional difference when you use SourceMob’s Social, Web and Mobile solutions, is that we create exclusive landing pages for your Career Channel on all of these social and mobile platforms. This way your communication is 1:1 with your candidates. Obviously of course, we also hang place a job icon off your Facebook social marketing pages as well. SourceMob’s ATS does all of the above for you without having you lift a finger. It works on auto-pilot.
SourceMob will do this for you? CHECK!
- Can your candidates share your jobs easily to the other social channels? Is this data proprietary to your business? Or are you using ShareThis, AddThis or SocialTwist, which do not protect your candidates’ data and in fact, distribute their data across the Internet to hundreds of thousands of sites.
- Social Sharing through your employees social pages makes social sharing of your jobs FUN and productive.
SourceMob will do this for you? CHECK!
- Can your candidates apply to your jobs directly from their smartphones and tablets? Now using SourceMob’s Mobile DirectApply™ your jobs are optimized for your candidates’ mobile platforms. They can progress through the apply process more easily and their mobile applications are automatically delivered to your ATS.
SourceMob will do this for you? CHECK!
SourceMob is a highly effective and affordable solution for companies who wish to increase applicant flow, especially passive candidates, using social, web and mobile networks. Your payback is almost immediate; you will reduce cost per hire, increase recruiting process efficiencies, gain mobile applies and reduce outside recruiting fees while increasing your overall recruiting ROI.
Arrange SourceMob product demonstrations by emailing me at jeff@sourcemob.com or calling me at 612-349-2740.
Best
Jeffery
Jeffery Giesener
CEO/Founder
SourceMob.com
612-349-2740
Twitter: @sourcemob
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferyjeffgiesener