I was at a conference last week and heard a dozen variations of “our budget is being cut” or “we are scaling back.” There is no doubt that the funding available to TA during the post-pandemic is being reduced even if requirements are not declining proportionately. TA leaders are frustrated at the imbalance between resources and requirements. But is there a way to run a more efficient recruiting process?
Consider the following:
- 92.5% of all career site visitors leave the site without applying for a job.
- 86% of all sourced candidates never reply to a recruiter
- 74% of all applications are abandoned without being completed or submitted.
When you consider the money and effort spent to generate the candidate interest, it is amazing how low the results are.
And why are candidates abandoning the process? The reasons are varied, and differ by function and level, but common themes include:
- Candidates don’t feel connected to anyone – automation has dehumanized the process.
- They don’t understand the job – text job descriptions aren’t being read.
- They can’t differentiate between jobs – all the opportunities seem the same.
There is a relatively easy solution for this, but first consider a confusing practice.
For organizations with strong and positive corporate cultures, one of their strengths is the quality of their people. It is rare to have a discussion with a TA or Employer Brand leader where they don’t reference the value of the individuals who make up the organization. But think about where in the process candidates finally get to meet their boss and the people they will work with: the interview!
If people are your greatest asset, why do you introduce your people after 98.7% of candidates have left?
Hiring managers are busy and can’t reach out to everyone who applies, and traditionally, video has been expensive and time-consuming. If an employee left, switching out videos was not a simple process.
If people are your greatest asset, why do you introduce your people after 98.7% of candidates have left?
But there is an easy, scalable solution that is grossly underused. Every one of your hiring managers is walking around with a high-definition video camera in their pocket. And they have been for decades! Every candidate, at the beginning of every job search, can meet their boss and meet the team -and you can do it at scale and securely. All it takes is 20 seconds of a hiring manager’s time – and if they need the hire, they will make 20 seconds.
The candidate abandonment in the recruiting process makes it highly inefficient.
And the results are dramatic. Candidates who visit your career site, see a hiring manager video, and actually apply will go up by 60%. More importantly, they will spend twice as long on the page and learn more about the job so they make a better decision to opt-in or opt-out. Once they have “met” their boss, they start to wonder what it would be like to work for that person, so they read more. You get better-informed candidates who are more qualified and genuinely interested.
Candidates who visit your career site, see a hiring manager video, and actually apply will go up by 60%.
But it is not just career site conversions that increase. If you are sourcing candidates and reaching out to selected individuals, when you include a hiring manager video and give them the chance to “meet your boss,” four times as many people will respond to the recruiter. The increased efficiency, not to mention recruiter satisfaction, is immense. We all get discouraged when candidates don’t respond to us. Having a catalyst that engages people is magic.
It used to be expensive to produce video and it required a lot of planning and work, but that isn’t the case anymore. There are easy-to-use platforms for enterprises that provide all the security, scalability and flexibility that you need. (SparcStart is the best platform but there are others.)
If you were to design a recruiting process from scratch today, when 82.5% of internet traffic is video and the preferred way to consume information, you wouldn’t design a text-based system. You would start with the need to connect with candidates, make your jobs unique, and showcase your greatest strengths. Video does all that. We rely on a text-based system because it is there, and while grossly inefficient, it ultimately produces candidates. Making that system video-empowered makes all the difference.
Maury Hanigan is the CEO of SparcStart, the award-winning video creation and management platform that adds hiring manager video to job descriptions, and powers employer branding and recruitment marketing efforts. Request a demo at www.SparcStart.com