Improve Your Employer Brand Using Employer Review Sites

An organization’s employer brand is often in the hands of its candidates and employees. And, when it comes to employer review sites, the fate of your employer brand is – quite literally – at their fingertips. In fact, according to data from Workplace Trends, 72% of job-seekers share their experience on online employer review sites like Glassdoor. What’s more, recent research from Deloitte found that 80% of candidates who experience an unsatisfactory recruitment process will openly tell people about their experience, and one-third of those candidates will do so proactively.

But, what does this mean for your organization? Unfortunately, negative reviews from both candidates and employees can have a huge influence on your bottom line. For example, per CareerArc, 62% of consumers have stopped buying from an organization that treats its employees poorly. Plus, an Indeed survey found that 95% of workers said that if they were considering a new job opportunity, insight into the company’s employer reputation would be somewhat (33%) or extremely (62%) important. As a result, a poor employer brand reputation could cost your organization millions as productivity decreases due to a reduced candidate pool and consumers stop supporting your business.

So, how can organizations take control of their employer brand and overall online reputation? Well, recent studies from HRO Today and PeopleScout show that organizations globally are planning to invest more heavily in social networking, consistent monitoring of employer review sites, and a greater use of employees as brand advocates.

However, while these steps are important to improve your employer brand, many organizations are unsure of where to start; they may also lack knowledge of best practices for these strategies.

Therefore, in this article, we’ll help you improve your employer brand by outlining how to establish ownership of your organization’s presence on employer review sites like Glassdoor and Indeed; offer best practices for responding to reviews; share tips on how to effectively leverage employee brand advocates; and highlight some popular employer review sites that organizations should be familiar with.

Establish Ownership & Claim Your Employer Review Site Profiles

The first step in establishing an employer brand plan for review sites is to establish who in your organization will own the initiative. Specifically, it may make sense to have your HR team manage the employer review site accounts because they are likely familiar with sites like Indeed and Glassdoor that offer job-posting functionality, in addition to candidate and employee reviews.

However, it can also be beneficial to form partnerships across departments to holistically manage your organization’s employer brand. For example, your communications team can assist HR in crafting responses to reviews that align with your brand standards for tone and voice, as well as provide up-to-date information on awards and accolades. In addition, HR can lean on the marketing team to maintain an active social media presence for your company, as well as work to optimize search results by managing SEO and creating content to combat potentially negative reviews and keywords.

After establishing who will take ownership of the management of employer review sites, claim your profiles. This can be done at no cost by verifying the profile as an employer and creating an employer account to edit and manage the profile.

Plus, with an employer account, you can add valuable information to your profile for candidates to view, such as:

  • Salary and compensation details
  • Explanation of benefits offerings
  • Company mission, vision and values
  • Overview of company culture
  • Logistical information (location, total number of employees, revenue, competitors, etc.)
  • Unique initiatives
  • Remote and flexible work policies
  • Diversity, equity and inclusion programs
  • Photos of employees, events and offices
  • Industry awards and accolades

It’s worth noting that, according to Glassdoor, 75% of active job-seekers are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand. You can do this by responding to reviews, updating your business profile, and sharing updates on the culture and work environment. Furthermore, building a robust profile on the employer review site will allow candidates to gain a better understanding of who your company is, what you stand for and what it would be like to work for you.

Respond to Reviews – Both Positive & Negative

Responding to reviews is perhaps the most important method in creating a strong brand presence on employer review sites. And, while both types of reviews can be easy to view and dismiss, leaving thoughtful replies is a guaranteed way to show candidates and employees that you care – regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative. In fact, 80% of job-seekers who read reviews on Glassdoor say their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review.

Some best practices to keep in mind when responding to reviews:

  • Address the reviewer by name (for non-anonymous reviews) to establish a personal connection
  • Thank the reviewer for their feedback
  • Acknowledge positive feedback
  • Address any concerns mentioned
  • Offer advice on any relevant next steps

Here are some examples of how to reply to common types of reviews:

Leverage Employee Brand Advocates

While organizations have little control over who will leave reviews – especially reviews with primarily negative feedback – they can proactively build up a strong body of positive reviews by leveraging employee brand advocates. These are employees who advocate for an organization and generate a positive image of the brand via online and offline channels. It’s important to note here that, when encouraging employees to leave reviews, you should emphasize the value of honest, candid reviews; employees should not feel pressured to paint a certain image of your organization.

Consider the following ideas to encourage employees to leave truthful, positive reviews that will help improve your employer brand:

New Hires

New hires are a great place to start when gathering positive reviews. That’s because the application, interviewing, and onboarding process is still fresh in their minds and they recently chose your organization as their new employer. So, ask new hires to leave a review on their hiring experience when they first start, and encourage them to update it after their first 90 days.

HR, PR & Marketing

Another good place to start is by requesting that members of your HR and marketing teams write reviews. Members of these departments already have a good understanding of the importance of employer review sites and are likely willing to leave honest reviews that highlight your organization’s strong points.

Promoted & Awarded Employees

If your organization recognizes employees for outstanding work with awards or honors, these workers can also be an excellent source of positive reviews. The same can be said for employees who have recently been promoted. A good practice is to establish a system that reaches out to these employees with a congratulatory message alongside a call to action to post online about their experience working at your company.

Employee Resource Groups

Employees who voluntarily join employee resource groups in addition to their daily responsibilities are already likely to be highly engaged within your organization. So, tap into these groups of employees and request that they leave reviews based on your organization’s culture and commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion – something Glassdoor provides ratings on and many candidates are interested in.

Regular Requests

Finally, managers should be empowered to regularly encourage their team members to leave reviews. This can become a regular practice during performance meetings, as well as after the completion of a big project or when hiring season is afoot. Likewise, if your organization offers flexible work arrangements or other unique perks, employees should be encouraged to share emotive experiences of how these benefits have affected their lives.

Employer Review Sites to Consider

Because there are a variety of employer review sites out there, it can be hard to keep track of them all. So, we compiled this list of the top 10 you should monitor to improve your employer brand for long-term success.

  • GlassdoorCurrent and former employees can anonymously review companies; submit and view salaries; as well as search and apply for jobs.
  • IndeedCandidates can upload a résumé and browse reviews and salaries, while employers can post jobs, search résumés and more.
  • Comparably: Includes information on employers, brands, salaries and company culture.
  • FairyGodBossWomen’s career community for career advice, job openings and company reviews.
  • KununuEmployer reviews, salary data and culture reviews from those who know best: employees and applicants.
  • Google ReviewsBusiness reviews appear next to your company’s listing in Maps and Search. These can help your business stand out on Google, which is the leading search engine.
  • InHerSight: Here, candidates can find company reviews and ratings; get matched to jobs; and connect with a community of women navigating the workplace.
  • VaultKnown for its influential rankings, ratings, and reviews on thousands of top employers and hundreds of internship programs.
  • CareerBlissCandidates can find jobs, research salaries and read reviews with a focus on company culture.
  • TheJobCrowdThis UK-based employer review site is focused on helping recent graduates in their early careers.

As recruitment processes and the world of work continue to take digital shifts, employer review sites will become increasingly important in making or breaking a candidate’s decision to join your organization. And, while you certainly can’t control every review, you can be proactive in taking charge of your employer review site presence by regularly responding to reviews, leveraging employee advocates, and monitoring what candidates and employees are saying about your organization online. In doing so, you’ll improve your employer brand by creating a strong employer brand and a positive presence where it counts – and where it makes a difference.

Doing More with Less: Creative Recruitment Strategies for Lean Talent Teams

Finding the right talent at the right time is never easy. It is made even more difficult when you have limited resources to work with. 

Whether that is a lack of time, budget or team members, how can talent acquisition leaders ensure their organization’s talent pipeline is filled with qualified candidates ready to fill critical open positions?

What’s more, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the talent market to being employer-driven, providing organizations with the advantage of having a larger pool of qualified candidates.

This shift creates new problems, however, such as having the resources on hand to efficiently recruit this new pool of candidates.

This change necessitates organizations retooling their talent acquisition strategies accordingly to stay competitive, regardless of resources. 

In this article, we cover creative recruitment strategies and innovative recruitment ideas to help you recruit smarter and maximize your impact despite limited talent acquisition resources.

ebook

IMPROVING DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN THE WORKPLACE

Become More Strategic with Sourcing to Build a Foundation for Your Creative Recruitment Strategies

Creative Recruitment Strategies

There are a variety of channels that can be used to source candidates: job boards, career fairs, networking events, social media and employee referral programs.

Most recruiting teams use a combination of these channels to source talent and build candidate pipelines.

However, when recruiting with limited resources, you need to ensure that you are devoting your recruitment ideas to the most effective channels as part of your talent acquisition strategy.

Sourcing Tips:

  • Review Past Success: what channels have led to hiring your superstar employees? Consider expanding your use of the most effective search channels.
  • Seek Talent from New Sources: ask current employees for creative contact ideas. They may be able to point you toward a professional association, conference, university, or discipline where you can connect with a new pool of candidates.
  • Get Digital: Invest in digital outreach through channels including webinars and virtual networking events. Especially as in-person meetings may be unavailable during the pandemic, these events offer the next best opportunity to strategically source qualified talent.

Before you start sourcing candidates for a position, it’s a good idea to create a candidate persona.

A candidate persona helps you identify the right channel, message and strategy to source more qualified candidates.

Creating a candidate persona is a multi-step collaborative process, so you need to talk to your team, hiring managers and do some research to build a realistic profile of the ideal candidate.

Once you have created your candidate persona, you need to source candidates who best match the traits of your ideal candidate.

Your ideal candidates may be present on several platforms, so make sure you source from the right places.

For example, when recruiting developers, platforms like StackOverflow or GitHub may be a good candidate source, whereas if you are recruiting graphic designers, platforms like Dribble or Behance are innovative recruitment methods that may work best.

Creative Recruitment Ideas: Reengage Qualified Former Candidates

recruitment ideas

It is common to tell job candidates their resume is being put on file for the future if they are not selected for a role. However, how often do silver-medal candidates get notified when positions fitting their skill sets become open?

To maximize your recruitment methods and resources, seek out former finalists, and those who reached out to you about job openings in the past to see if they are still interested in working for your organization.

This allows you to get your brand and open positions in front of people who cleared multiple qualification hurdles before or were interested enough to send you their resume.

When crafting outreach messages to former candidates, make sure you acknowledge that you are aware that it may have been a while since you have spoken with them, and ask them if they are still interested in working for your organization.

Leveraging these creative recruitment strategies, you may pique their interest again, or maybe their positive experience with you will lead to them recommending a qualified colleague or friend who may be interested.

Regardless of whether they are actively looking at that time, your odds are still better with warmer candidates than with passive candidate outreach.

Pay Attention to Your Career Page

recruitment ideas

A career page can be a powerful tool for recruiting teams looking to extend their reach. However, it’s not enough to have a career page only listing your open positions.

Creative recruitment strategies begin with taking a close look at your career page.

You can post photos of group outings, get quotes from employees about their positive experiences and create videos of them describing the joy of coming to work – or how the benefits you provide have changed their lives for the better.

You can also build out your Glassdoor and LinkedIn pages, so they have personality and a voice that matches your company.

This is free and easy to do, so be sure not to overlook this simple strategy.

What’s more, optimizing your careers page for search is a great way to gain visibility with job seekers.

Ensure the copy featured on each of your careers pages is optimized to rank well by incorporating keywords relevant to your open positions and industry.

Your job description content should be specific to your organization and the individual role, with a minimum word count of 250 words.

The job description content should be relevant and informative to the job seeker, answering any specific question they may have.

Also, be careful to avoid duplicate content or imagery, you can assume the job seeker is looking at a number of job posts, so this is an area where you can really stand out.

Innovative Recruitment Methods: Leveraging Automation and Technology to Fill in the Gaps

Innovative Recruitment Methods

For organizations looking for innovative recruitment methods to optimize their recruiting resources, automation technology can provide time savings, increase recruitment productivity and help reduce unconscious bias in the recruiting process.

Talent acquisition technology can be used for high-level repetitive tasks such as candidate screening, interview scheduling and even sourcing passive candidates using artificial intelligence.

This gives recruiters more time to better engage candidates in a personal one-on-one relationship.

What’s more, technologies with texting automation tools like PeopleScout’s Affinixtm allow your organization to set up automated messages that are triggered at each phase of the hiring process to keep candidates up to date with their status as well as send text links for candidate self-scheduling to streamline interviews.

You can also leverage this technology to better scale your candidate outreach.

Your organization may already have a large database of candidates in your ATS. Sending automated text messages is an extremely effective way to reach out to those contacts at scale to rapidly generate interest in open positions.

However, before your text candidates, make sure they have opted-in to receiving communications from your organization to avoid compliance violations.

Creative Recruitment Strategies: The Gist

Recruiting with limited resources can be a challenging process, but by being strategic in your approach, your organization can source and hire top talent.

Taking a more strategic approach means deploying a variety of tactics and methods in order to build a robust talent pipeline.

The following articles in this section provide actionable insights into managing high candidate volume, creative sourcing strategies, tips for building a more diverse workforce and how total workforce solutions can help you navigate the great rehire with a mixed talent strategy.

[On-Demand] First Nations Resourcing Strategy

[On-Demand] First Nations Resourcing Strategy

Australian employers are investing in creating more diverse workforce.

In this on-demand webinar, Jane Royle, Head of Resourcing at Lendlease, will share practical tips to help you increase your presence within the First Nations community, become an employer of choice and create career pathways for the First Nations people.

[On-Demand] Why Hybrid Hiring is Critical for Talent Acquisition Leaders

[On-Demand] Why Hybrid Hiring is Critical for Talent Acquisition Leaders

What comes after your essential transition to virtual recruiting, when teams have shrunk and hiring needs are volatile? How do you ensure sufficient capacity and capability as organisations activate renewed growth strategies? The answer is hybrid recruiting.

Hybrid recruiting blends the expertise of both core in-house and flexible outsourced recruiters, powered through a deliberate mix of human contact and digital technology. In this series of events we will research, debate and inform on:

  • How you can get the best from hybrid recruiting.
  • How you can determine the right hybrid approach for your organisation.
  • How to embed flexibility, agility, and scalability within your approach.
  • How you can create the change required within your organisation.

We are delighted to invite you to join us as we investigate this hiring adaptation.

This series is now on demand. Please fill out the form to gain instant access. 

 

Meet the panelists:

Adam Britten from Amey

Adam has been working in the Resourcing and Talent space for 18 years and currently operates as Head of Resourcing and Talent for Amey PLC, a leading infrastructure services and engineering company. In his role Adam is responsible for the end to end Talent strategy for Amey ensuring they attract a skilled and diverse applicants whilst ensuring diversity. Adam specialises in Change Management and Transformation in Talent Acquisition having worked as an internal TA leader and also as an RPO  implementation director.

Panellist 1Ewa Zajac from Zendesk
With experience in all aspects of TA ranging from top of funnel employer branding & sourcing, through interview process efficiency, all the way to offer negotiation and new hire onboarding, Ewa has an excellent candidate experience at the heart of her strategy. In her role at Zendesk she focuses on building effective workflows and developing diversity partnerships that help Zendesk hire outstanding talent.

nullLesa Molinari from Colt Technology
Lesa has 14 years of global talent acquisition experience working in healthcare, telecoms and IT. In her current role she leads a high performing, inclusive and collaborative team which enables business leaders to; innovate, drive meaningful value against current and future business needs and, create opportunities to build the business in terms of scale and transformation.
Lesa understands how to drive significant cost savings in a complex matrix environment (down to 5% agency) while balancing best in class solutions. Her pragmatic approach is always focused on delivering business performance. Lesa is an RL100 member, Mentor and Panellist.

Panellist 3 Lisa Kelly from Heathrow Airport
An HR leader and a specialist in talent and resourcing with experience of working in consultancy and internal HR functions. Lisa is passionate about delivering successful business outcomes by enabling organisations through talent acquisition, talent development, performance management, diversity & inclusion, succession, and workforce planning.
Panellist 4 Jon Hull from Nationwide Building Society
An HR and Talent management leader with 20 years experience, Jon is the Head of Resourcing Delivery at Nationwide Building Society. Helping drive the transformation of the customer facing recruiting and the tech & transformation agenda, Jon is passionate about creating a multi channel offer using the latest technology. A real team player, Jon knows that technology alongside human interaction will nurture and attract the best talent, whilst driving innovation, customer delivery and value into the community.

ROI on Employer Brand

ROI on Employer Brand

In today’s highly competitive talent landscape, an employer brand that resonates with each of your global talent audiences is more important than ever. PeopleScout’s full array of creative and digital services for employer branding helps you uncover why you’re an employer of choice.

Download this fact sheet to learn why you should invest in your employer brand.

Learn more about PeopleScout’s Talent Advisory solutions.

Dig into More Talent Insights

The Skills Crisis Countdown: The Clock is Ticking on Tackling Skills Gaps
Research Report

The Skills Crisis Countdown: The Clock is Ticking on Tackling Skills Gaps

Our latest research shows a detailed picture of the current state of skills in the global workforce and how HR leaders are preparing for the impending skills crisis

[On-Demand] The Human Advantage: Redefining Employer Value Proposition for the New World of Work
Webinar On-Demand

[On-Demand] The Human Advantage: Redefining Employer Value Proposition for the New World of Work

Join this discuss on how shifting from a generic EVP to a tailored PVP focused on each individual can boost engagement and attraction.

Inside the Candidate Experience
Research Report

Inside the Candidate Experience

Download our free Inside the Candidate Experience report for the latest research exploring the disparity between candidate expectation and reality.

Sourcing Candidates in 2021

Sourcing candidates—even in the best of times—can be quite a daunting task. Sourcers and recruiters can spend weeks and sometimes months searching for the perfect candidate for a job opening and sometimes the person you want unfortunately may not exist. As the job market quickly recovers and candidates are now considering a move, organizations need to look to new and innovative ways to source, recruit and hire talent.

While you cannot wish the perfect candidates into existence or fast-forward past the pandemic, there are a number of candidate sourcing strategies you can deploy to help ensure that you have a quality talent pool at your fingertips as soon as you are ready to hire. In this article, we outline tips and strategies for sourcing candidates in 2021 that will help you improve your talent sourcing.

Sourcing Candidates Begins with Your Employer Brand

Your employer brand could be the difference between a candidate responding to your strategic sourcing and outreach or ignoring it. Candidates may not respond to your outreach messaging if they think poorly of your employer brand, so make sure you communicate your employer value proposition.

To improve your sourcing techniques and overall recruiting success, here are some tips on both repairing and building a better employer brand:

Respond to Reviews

Regularly check review sites like Glassdoor and respond to the feedback to let people know you appreciate their input and will take action where it’s necessary. This will generate goodwill, and help your employees feel engaged and heard.

Tell your Story

Engaging your employees in storytelling, encouraging them to personalize their LinkedIn profiles, starting a company blog, being active in the press and speaking at conferences are just a few of the ways employers can spread awareness about their brand.

Partner with your Marketing Team

The strategies and methods needed to help spread your employer brand to job seekers are similar to the ones marketing is using to promote your organization’s brand. Partner closely with your marketing team on both employer-branded content creation and distribution channels. 

Start Sourcing Candidates for Jobs Before You Are Ready

candidate sourcing

Sourcing candidates for jobs takes time, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. To get ahead of the candidate sourcing curve, start sourcing talent even if you do not have open positions. Typically, sourcing goes like this: “I have X job to fill, I’m going to source people for X job.” But smarter sourcers get even more proactive with their sourcing efforts and get ahead on roles they will need to hire for in the future.

First, take a look at your business growth plans. Then, build a corresponding workforce hiring strategy that gives you insight into when hires need to be made across the year to sustain your organization’s goals.

Once you have a picture of which teams need to grow, you can work with department leaders and HR to identify the level and skillsets required. Aggregate those skills and what you know about your company and team culture so you can begin to strategic sourcing for specific profiles candidates in a focused and on-ongoing way.   

Social Sourcing Tools and Platforms

sourcing tools

If you want to find and connect with the best talent, you should create a comprehensive social media sourcing strategy.

Social media channels provide strategic sourcing professionals an opportunity to share targeted job content and details about their organization, mission statements and hiring process to keep candidates warm, and better source talent.

Social talent sourcing tools and technology like PeopleScout’s Affinix technology solution help sourcing specialists and recruiters narrow their search and identify qualified candidates quicker. Here are some social media tools and platforms that will streamline your sourcing:

  • LinkedIn with 760 million users has been the social network of choice for sourcers and recruiters alike and for good reason, as professionals share their career history, advertise accomplishments and interact with industry experts. A LinkedIn Recruiter license lets you search profiles and send personal messages (InMails) to potential candidates, making LinkedIn an essential sourcing tool.
  • With 2.8 billion users, everyone is on Facebook, making every user a potential candidate. What’s more, users frequently research potential employers, look for job opportunities and apply for jobs through Facebook. Consider using paid job ads and Facebook groups to help you source candidates
  • Twitter has 330 million users and offers various tools, like search, lists and chat that help recruiters source candidates. Get the most out of your sourcing efforts by being active on Twitter. Engage in Twitter discussions, advertise conferences you sponsor and follow industry-related hashtags to find the talent you are looking for.

While the most popular platforms for social sourcing are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, if you want to expand your sourcing efforts to non-traditional social channels, consider the following social platforms:

  • Slack is a platform that allows group communications between professionals with similar interests. You can use Slack to source candidates by joining channels relevant to the job candidates you are looking to source in a more casual setting.
  • Meetup is a website that facilitates meetings and groups for people with common interests.
  • Reddit is an online community forum where members (Redditors) discuss a range of topics and interests. Reddit is not a traditional sourcing channel, but Reddit’s communities (called subreddits) are great places to post job ads and engage with potential candidates, especially in the professional communities you are searching for talent in.

Creative Ways For Sourcing Candidates: Leverage Your Employees’ Networks

sourcing strategies

According to LinkedIn, organizations can expand their talent pool by 10 times by recruiting through their employees’ networks. Run sourcing sessions and employee referral programs with your team to see if anyone in your employee’s networks would be interested in one of your open roles. Your employees can help you reach more untapped talent pools, and improve response rates with warmer candidates. 

Facebook, for instance, will display to your team, different job candidate search results based on their social graph, so you can uncover passive job candidates you would not have otherwise discovered. Job sourcing sites such as Sourcing.io allow your employees to connect their social media accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and GitHub so you can view candidates who are connected to your team members. When you find a qualified job candidate, you should encourage your team to send warm introductions to increase your candidate engagement and response rate.

Perfect Your Outreach Messages When Sourcing Candidates

sourcing techniques

You and your talent acquisition team have worked hard to source the qualified candidates, but that does not matter if you fail to create a real connection. A few rules of thumb: Lead with a subject line that will stand out and make the candidate want to open and read your message; always personalize your recruiting message with the relevant information you found about them; paint a brief picture of the role and your organization; and explain how you think they could contribute to your team.

Narrowing down and building a targeted audience is a way to create a strong and more personalized outreach message. According to Glassdoor, 78% of sales professionals said they would accept less money to work at a company selling something compelling, 66% of healthcare professionals are likely to accept less money to work at a company with a great culture.

Improve your response rates by personalizing and focusing on the issues that matter to candidates of all categories. Your goal is to give your pool of job candidates just enough content and engagement to pique their interest and respond to your outreach messaging, you want to be careful about overloading them with communications. Ask your recent hires for feedback on your outreach messages, and use that feedback to test different messaging to improve your response rates.

If your talent team invests the resources to sourcing a robust talent pipeline, you will find more candidates in your talent pool qualified for open roles in the future. Re-engaging prospects is a missed candidate sourcing opportunity for many organizations, you should remind your recruiting team to source from silver medal job candidates first because they are qualified and vetted.

Remember Strategic Sourcing Begins with Reexamining Your Program

Despite setbacks caused by the pandemic, the best candidates will always be in high demand, making it more important than ever to reevaluate your talent sourcing strategy in 2021. Attracting top talent is essential to your organization’s ability to recover and keep pace during the great rehire. These strategic sourcing methods can help you fill your pipeline with qualified talent so you can choose the best hire for your team.

PeopleReady: Increasing Reach, Candidate Engagement, Conversion and Automation

PeopleReady: Increasing Reach, Candidate Engagement, Conversion and Automation

Talent Acquisition Technology

PeopleReady: Increasing Reach, Candidate Engagement, Conversion and Automation

PeopleReady, one of the top industrial staffing agencies in North America, required a digital recruitment solution powered by PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology, AffinixTM, to attract and engage candidates.

Direct sourcing solutions with increased reach via SEO 
Direct sourcing solutions with increased reach via SEO 
100 % automated application, selection and onboarding process
Mobile-first, easy application complying with all North American state and province laws
Mobile-first, easy application complying with all North American state and province laws

Situation 

PeopleReady, a TrueBlue company (NYSE: TBI), specializes in quick and reliable on-demand labor and highly skilled workers. PeopleReady supports a wide range of industries, including construction, manufacturing and logistics, retail and hospitality. Leveraging its game changing JobStack staffing app and presence in more than 600 markets throughout North America, PeopleReady served approximately 83,000 businesses and put approximately 226,000 people to work in 2022.

PeopleReady has invested heavily in innovative, mobile-first work scheduling and dispatching technologies but lacked a digital online sourcing solution to attract and engage candidates. 

PeopleReady selected PeopleScout’s Affinix recruitment technology platform to replace its existing solution. Affinix enhances the online candidate experience and increases conversion rates by solving the following challenges:  

  • Simplify the previously complicated job posting process by distributing job openings to multiple sourcing channels immediately by creating just one post in Affinix  
  • Implement direct sourcing to channels such as Indeed, Google for Jobs and niche platforms 
  • Improve email integration with assessment vendors that previously had high drop off rates 

Solution 

  • An engaging, mobile-optimized apply experience that guides candidates through application, online selection, employment form completion, WOTC, W4 and I9 processes via a safe, remote process 
  • Direct integration with four external vendors to ensure the entire application process can be completed within the browser, with no interruptions from external emails or links 
  • Highly localized job recommendations 

Results

TARGET LAUNCH ACHIEVED

Solution launched within 15 weeks, on time and under budget

RECEIVED MAJORITY OF MOBILE APPLICATIONS

80% of candidates apply via a mobile device

INCREASED CONVERSION RATES

15% increase in conversion rates within the first two weeks of go-live

“The PeopleScout team allowed us to design a candidate flow that met the needs of our business. The team was quick to pivot and solution as areas of opportunity were identified for improving the candidate experience. Launching a solution with operational reporting allowed us to immediately monitor candidate flow to allow for quick adjustments of sourcing strategy. Very positive partnership with the entire implementation and technology teams.” 

Tina Radosti, VP Talent Acquisition, PeopleReady 

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: PeopleReady
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Affinix
  • ANNUAL HIRES: 1 million candidates for staffing and short-term labor positions
  • ABOUT PEOPLEREADY: PeopleReady, a TrueBlue company (NYSE: TBI), specializes in quick and reliable on-demand labor and highly skilled workers. PeopleReady supports a wide range of industries, including construction, manufacturing and logistics, retail and hospitality. Leveraging its game changing JobStack staffing app and presence in more than 600 markets throughout North America, PeopleReady served approximately 83,000 businesses and put approximately 226,000 people to work in 2022.

Providing Flexibility and Speed to Meet Seasonal Talent Demands

Providing Flexibility and Speed to Meet Seasonal Talent Demands

seasonal recruitment solutions

Providing Flexibility and Speed to Meet Seasonal Talent Demands

PeopleScout helped a major healthcare company and pharmacy chain meet accelerated demand in their call centers by managing their seasonal, high-volume hiring program.

2,000 + call center roles
30 + The PeopleScout Flex Team scaled up to 30+ recruiters
PeopleScout played a key role in getting our client’s seasonal hiring program back on track
PeopleScout played a key role in getting our client’s seasonal hiring program back on track

Situation

A major American retail corporation faced difficulties with the ability of their long-term RPO provider to meet hiring targets for their seasonal, high-volume hiring program. As the client’s RPO provider began missing critical hiring targets without demonstrating any corrective actions, the client turned to PeopleScout to step in and assume ownership of hiring for the vital call center roles. With their busy season fast approaching, and a need for specialized call-center talent to meet surging demand, the client transitioned the project to hire more than 2,000 call center representatives on an accelerated timeline of two months to PeopleScout.

Solution

  • To facilitate the hiring of 2,000+ call center roles across numerous multi-location regions in the United States in a compressed time-frame, PeopleScout utilized its Flex Team to add 30+ recruiters dedicated to meeting the client’s seasonal hiring needs in approximately one week, with plans to add additional resources as needed.
  • PeopleScout’s scaled-up team includes veteran recruiters with direct experience working with our client. The familiarity and deep understanding of our client’s historic hiring needs ensures our team hits the ground running without any disruption to our client’s business.
  • To help navigate the recruiting challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, PeopleScout’s team sources, screens and hires call center talent that are able to work from home to support the client.
  • PeopleScout’s rapid deployment played a key role in our ability to get our client’s seasonal hiring program back on track. We are continuing to demonstrate our commitment to the client by our ability to source specialized call center talent and hire on time and on target.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Healthcare company and pharmacy chain
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ANNUAL HIRES: 2,000+
  • LOCATIONS: Multiple locations across the United States

Diversity Sourcing: How to Recruit a Diverse Workforce

Diversity, inclusion and equity are top of mind for many talent leaders and professionals. While much progress has been made, there is still much work to be done. Women and people of color are underrepresented in leadership positions, certain job categories, and entire industries. The wage gap is narrowing, but is not expected to close for quite some time. And for many, persistent injustices and systematic issues impact their lives far beyond the workplace.

Every employer has a responsibility to do their part to right these wrongs, and there is certainly no shortage of actions that could be taken right now to make an impact. We can start by building a more diverse talent pipeline that will feed into our workforce and provide more opportunities for people from underrepresented groups.

Many companies in several different industries still struggle to source diverse talent. One problem that persists is the lack of diverse professionals in the talent pipeline. Many fields suffer from their own version of the pipeline problem that has plagued the tech industry. A workforce that is diverse is more creative and innovative, research suggests.

Companies without a diverse pipeline will continue to hire the same groups of people, which will inhibit growth, progression and their competitive advantage. Being able to diagnose some of the causes of this problem can help organizations overcome this issue to create a more diverse workplace. What’s more, having a diverse set of employees can also attract a wider or untapped customer base, making your organization more profitable. In this article, we will cover strategies and best practices for sourcing diverse candidates.

Start with a Diversity Sourcing Audit

Diversity Sourcing

With any process or procedural changes, you need a sound business case for changing your approach. That is why it is always worth looking at your organization as a whole (job functions, processes, departments, markets) to find concrete ways in which bringing on board a more diverse workforce is likely to make a positive impact.

A diversity sourcing audit can help you in the following ways:

  • It informs which areas to prioritize. You have a general goal of diversifying your workforce across the board. Yet at the same time, you’ve identified that more diversity could be especially welcome in your customer service and marketing departments. Over in your technical department meanwhile, you are struggling to find suitably skilled people to fill key roles. These departments might be prime areas to focus your efforts.
  • It avoids you adopting a “quotas for quotas sake” approach. If you focus on how and why greater diversity in your workforce might benefit your business, it becomes possible to go about it in a way that benefits everyone.
  • It makes it easier to achieve buy-in. Establishing a strong organization-specific case for greater workplace diversity makes it more likely that key players within the organization (the board, departmental heads, all those involved in the selection and interviewing process) will take it seriously.

Diversity Sourcing and Institutions

how to recruit diverse candidates

Often, when organization’s begin a diversity sourcing program the easiest thing for many organizations is to source talent from local colleges and universities. While this strategy could save time, money and resources, it may result in a homogenous group of candidates in the talent pool. Expanding the search to more diverse colleges and universities can expand and widen the pool and increase the likelihood of finding candidates with a skill set that matches the open positions that must be filled.

Searching at historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic and Latino organizations, or professional groups like the National Association of Asian American Professionals, LGBT Meeting Professionals Association and Women For Hire are all great resources for sourcing a diverse candidate. Many professional groups have job boards where recruiters can post open roles.

Employee Referrals Are Key in Recruiting Diverse Candidates

Enlisting your employees through an employee referral program is a great way to source diverse talent. If you notice a lack of underrepresented groups in your talent pipeline, seek assistance from your diverse employees. For example, a woman in the STEM space is likely to know other women in STEM, and may also help your recruiters gain inroads into professional organizations representing women in STEM.

Employee referrals can also help lower your recruitment costs and may increase employee engagement. Because it’s so easy for an employee referral system to lead to preferential treatment and unconscious bias, particular attention and emphasis should be placed on identifying individuals from underrepresented groups.

Diversity Sourcing Strategy

Recruiters, Sourcing Tools and Hiring for Diversity

diverse candidates

Recruiters are human and may come with their own set of unconscious biases. Implementing technology into the recruitment process can help decrease the unconscious bias that may take place during diversity recruitment.

For instance, if you find that there’s a large drop in minority candidates moving between the onsite interview and skill assessment, unconscious bias training may be in order. Follow your data closely so you can make more informed decisions and continue making progress on your organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. What’s more, you should also build a team of recruiters who hail from a wide range of backgrounds.

There are also websites and job boards such as Jopwell that allow diversity recruiters to advertise open roles to a diverse pool of candidates.

Engagement Best Practices for Diversity Sourcing

Once you have a slate of diverse candidates, it is time to restructure your candidate engagement strategies to make them more diversity-friendly. With diverse candidates, you want to ensure that you can strike a chord that resonates with them by sending highly personalized and creative messages.

When looking for candidates, try to dig deep into their experience and their interests instead of just skimming through it. Looking for recognizable names of schools and companies won’t help you learn more about each individual candidate. You are looking for what they have done, not where they have done it.

You want to start looking through the different projects that they might have owned or contributed to, or the various levels of responsibility that they have in their current role. Remember, tenure does not always equate to impact. Also, don’t forget other clues beyond their resume. Dig into the different areas of the business they might have impacted through their organization’s social media or blog presence.

Recruiting technology tools like PeopleScout’s Affinix, allow you to build automated workflows so that your candidates receive scheduled messages from members of your recruiting team, sharing more information about your opportunity.

What’s more, Diversity and inclusion programs provide companies with the opportunity to tap into the strengths of their workforce. According to a survey conducted by Glassdoor, 67% of job seekers said a diverse workforce is important when considering job offers and 57% of employees think their companies should be more diverse. This means that companies that implement a diversity and inclusion program are more likely to attract top talent.

Conclusion

Diversifying your pipeline is not an easy feat, but by taking actionable steps, you can fill your candidate pipeline is with diverse candidates. By setting measurable milestones on your sourcing initiatives, you will ensure that you are progressing forward, and if you’re not, you can easily recognize it and adjust your strategies. 

Sourcing a diverse slate of candidates is only one part of building a more diverse and inclusive workplace. You must be intentional in your efforts to evaluate candidates fairly, so you are not unintentionally weeding out great talent at each stage of the pipeline. It can be helpful to leverage sourcing tools to track conversion rates between these stages to understand where you should focus your attention.

Talking Talent: Talent Acquisition in 2021: How Talent Leaders are Planning for the Great Rehire

In our first episode of 2021, we’re looking ahead at the new year. It’s one talent leaders are facing with a mix of hope and continued uncertainty. We expect the vaccine distribution, economic recovery and more changes to the way we work. But as we’ve seen in 2020, there will be issues and challenges we can’t predict.

One phrase you’ve probably started to hear is “the great rehire.” We know it’s coming. We have some idea of what it will look like, and we know that talent leaders need to prepare.

Joining us to talk about what that great rehire will look like is PeopleScout President Brannon Lacey.

In this episode, Brannon talks about the biggest issues facing talent leaders and the role HR outsourcing, like RPO, MSP and total workforce solutions, will play in the upcoming recovery.

Right now, according to SIA, 83% of all deals are still RPO only and 7% are blended RPO and MSP. Brannon discusses how these numbers fit into the discussion of total workforce solutions.

He also digs into the future of talent programs–sharing insights about talent technology and the biggest tech priorities of PeopleScout clients.

Looking at recent jobs numbers, Brannon explains what the disproportionate job losses in 2020 among women and people of color mean for ongoing discussions of diversity and inclusion.

Listen now for Brannon’s biggest take aways for 2021.