Anticipate the User Experience in Corporate Recruiting & Hiring

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

When we think about the variety of players involved in the recruitment process, there are multiple stakeholders. Picture the “typical user” when I mention recruitment technology and you may imagine the job seeker.

There is no doubt that the job seeker’s user experience must be optimized to successfully attract and manage the candidate’s recruitment process, from the technology to the overall strategy. However, when it comes to the user experience of the actual recruiter, the interface is equally important.

After all, you, the recruiter, are ultimately the key person sitting in the driver’s seat. Your recruitment strategy is the road map and the technology you have deployed is like the dashboard that provides you all of the key components to move your hiring process forward.

Our tendency to consider the job seeker’s interface as the only user experience that matters can result in a technology platform that is difficult for recruitment team to use. Because the recruiter’s performance and experience directly impacts the job seeker’s, a great user experience for both sides of the hiring process is important.

TalentCircles has a great user experience for both. Visually, the interface is clean with a well organized layout. There are several great features that allow effective flow of communication and professional interaction between the recruiter and the job seeker such as the ability for recruiters to provide a welcome video.

Also, once candidates import their social profiles to the system, recruiters can have all of the necessary information on each candidate that is located in one place and is up to date.

The live online interview feature is robust. It provides the capability to interview one or more candidates at a time, access documents and take notes all from one screen. You can share the candidate videos and have the opportunity to get feedback from your colleagues. There is a brilliant scoring system and report function recruiters can benefit from as they make their selection.

Additional user interface features include calendars and social sharing buttons that allow recruiters to grow their talent network. For example, using calendars to organize webinars is one great way to increase an interest in your talent community. Also, the social sharing buttons that can be added throughout the process provide all users the ability to amplify new job opportunities or other announcements to their own social network.

Overall, the appearance is professional and clean and the use of buttons and tabs make the user interface intuitive. TalentCircles is one of the best technology platforms that provide recruiters with an optimal interface. This is true for the enterprise system used for the desktop as well as the mobile app, TalentCatch.

What I think is specifically amazing is the user-friendly capabilities to easily apply your company’s own brand elements to the app platform. Uploading the particular fields can be done in a snap and the outcome is great for both the recruiter and the job seeker as candidates enter their contact information in person from an iPad.

If you haven’t tried TalentCatch, the mobile app, I strongly recommend it! Here is a link to get you started using the free app for your next job fair or candidate meeting.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s is the Chief Blogger & Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell. 

Semantic Job Matching: A phenomenal plus for recruiters AND candidates

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

As an increasing number of companies create their private talent networks to remain close to their active and passive candidates and offer them the best possible brand experience, semantic job matching is a phenomenal plus for both candidates and employers.

For employers, a talent network is a live reservoir of candidates. They can drastically shorten their time-to-hire by leveraging the easy graphical interface that allows them to instantly:

• Identify and sort matching members with a percentage match for any job opening posted on the talent network;

• Find the jobs that fit a candidate's profile;
• Define matching settings along several criteria (Experience, Location, Education, Job Titles, Skills, Groupings, Languages, Certifications, Management and Executive Levels).

For candidates, semantic job matching is equally valued. Because candidates are live entities in your talent network (and not just names in a database), they can look up opportunities that best correspond to their profile. Just as recruiters, they can fine-tune their search along multiple criteria. As a result also, they can better evaluate for themselves why they might not be selected for positions they initially thought would be a good fit for them.

Talent Acquisition in the social media era is all about ensuring the best candidate experience possible. By empowering your candidates to analyze job opportunities, you give them the personalized and transparent experience that they expect. Of course, job matching drastically improves the recruiter experience. When you have the right match in your live Rolodex, you do not need to broadcast all your job openings and hope for the best for weeks only to find out that none of the respondents have the aptitudes and attitude you want!

Job Matching is a powerful complement to the multiple other features of TalentCircles that power continuous engagement between your company and your passive candidates, including automated email notifications, pre-recorded interviews and skill assessment questionnaires, live video interviews, chat conversations, blogs, or webinars.

C#5 of Social Recruiting: Conversation — Live video screening and discussions

This post is part of a series describing the nine "Cs" that drive a successful social recruiting strategy and started with You do social sourcing. Now start your social recruiting strategy!

We have already discussed "C#1" Continuity, C#2 Consistency or the art of following-through your branding, C#3 Culture — your core values and credibility, and C#4 Courtesy and Candidate Centricity.

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

For very good reasons, video interviews and video interactions now have a place on the corporate agenda. You can make the most of video interviews because TalentCircles is not just a digital interviewing tool, but a complete platform to fully manage relationships with candidates.

Our white paper TalentCircles: The Ultimate Screening and Interviewing Solution describes the extensive and state-of-the-art capabilities of TalentCircles for video screening and interviewing. Our purpose here is to tie the natural power of video interviewing and conversation with the specific purpose of social recruiting, i.e.:

• To fill jobs expeditiously.
• To build up a relevant pipeline to serve your company's workforce plan.  

The TalentCircles' live interviewing environment is similar to what candidates have become accustomed to on social networks — an environment that is fully Web-based, requires no download, is accessible via a click, and provides information effortlessly. During the conversation, participants can view and discuss documents together, or review a featured job in real time, as well as chat and send files in any language. Recruiters can view the profile of each participant and take notes.

TalentCircles supports as many interactions with the same candidate(s) of whatever length. These interactions can be recorded, be part of profile of the candidate (s) and can be shared equally effortlessly with hiring managers.

A powerful way to get to know several candidates at once is to organize live group meetings. A joint research study by the Harvard Business School & Harvard Kennedy School has established the benefits of group evaluation/discussions:  "New research suggests that organizations wishing to avoid gender stereotyping in the hiring or promotion process--and employ the most productive person instead—should evaluate job candidates as a group, rather than one at a time."

You may be able to identify a great person, somebody who may have a "jagged resume" that you would never found via the traditional acquisition process, but is what George Anders calls the "rare find," the candidate that will not only get the job done, but also advance your company.

A proactive social recruiting methodology enables you to identify not only people with the right skills, but those who also show some sort of personal leadership and adaptability — and then you can recommend that they apply. In fact, in many cases, the ideal approach is to interact with candidates before they apply.

5 Essential Characteristics of Your Video Interview Provider

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Video Interviewing Best Practices 

Video interviewing is one of the most popular recruitment technology tools in our industry today, but not every provider or service is created equally.  We’ll break down five characteristics that are most important to current video interview users and what makes them so valuable to lowering cost of hire and time management. 

• EEOC Compliance. The EEOC is very clear when it comes to technology and discrimination. Regardless of the type of technology you’re using it’s important that you follow all EEOC guidelines as if the interview was face to face. To protect yourself and employer implement best practices to overcome any discrimination lawsuit that might arise especially when interviewing a different way. Best practices include having a written set of criteria, asking a standard set of questions, and making sure there is more than just one person watching video interviews.

• Ability to Provide Multiple Interview Types. Having a pre-recorded set of questions is only one type of video interviewing that happens. You want to make sure your provider has multiple formats in which you’re able to interview potential candidates. Based on the job level and experienced required it’s important to be able to talk with someone live using video interviewing software. Before signing up with a vendor of video interviewing technology you want to make sure they offer an array of services that fits your company’s needs.

• The Share Factor. Sharing is caring. If you’re watching an interviewee in a pre-recorded session and you find someone who stands out, what next? Having the ability to share the video with your manager or another recruiter is essential to make sure the right talent is placed in the right spot. If you feel like someone interviewed well and they fit another position within the company being able to forward the interview with the click of the mouse would be a prime feature in video interviewing.

• The Employee Profile. There are a lot of vendors out there who provide video interviewing technology, but do not provide a network and talent community to gather deeper insights about a candidate. Developing a community that allows the interviewee to create a profile based on interests and qualifications gives the candidate a deeper sense of belonging and will stick around for more opportunities. Jobs are applied for on a whim and many times job seekers go from job board to employer website to a 3^rd party client to fill out the application then they’re stuck in the dark hole of the applicant process.

• Interview and Candidate Notes.  While the ability to share is important, having the ability to leave notes for follow up questions or points of interest you’ve identified in the interview is important not just for sharing with other recruiters or hiring managers but also for yourself.  When you a large number of candidates, it is easy to experience interview halo where the most recent candidates appear to you to be the most qualified.  Adding notes help to evaluate job seekers fairly and organize your thoughts for future interviews. 

While video interviewing is not going away anytime soon, it’s still in its infancy stages. EEOC Compliance standards will likely remain the same as discrimination across any platform is standard. Within the last two years different video interviewing companies have sprouted up while trying to differentiate themselves from each other. Take a look at the features they provide and think about what is important for yourself and your company. Choose wisely.

Learn more about video can be used in driving employer branding awareness and recruitment campaigns by clicking here.  

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media.  She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs.