Category: Candidate Experience

[On-Demand] How to Build an Agile Workforce for Scale and Demand

Posted on by akessler

[On-Demand] How to Build an Agile Workforce for Scale and Demand

Employers today are dealing with more than just a tight talent market, increased turnover and rising wages; the world of work has permanently changed —and so have candidate expectations. The demand for total talent has become more dynamic, and employers are leveraging seasonal and project-based hiring to reduce the time to mobilise internal and external workforces.

Watch this on-demand webinar in partnership with HR Exchange Network to get a real-life case study on agile hiring solutions that combine candidate experience, talent acquisition technology and dynamic insights-led sourcing, which are aligned to future workforce plans.

Talking Talent: RPO in a Shifting Economy

Posted on by nfuqua

It has been more than two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in that time, we’ve seen an economy and a job market that have changed in unprecedented ways. Talent leaders have dealt with lean teams, developed new, virtual processes for interviewing candidates and worked through the challenges of hiring through the Great Rehire and Great Resignation. Now, they’re staring down an entirely new economic reality.

In this episode of Talking Talent, Rick Betori shares his insights on the current economic landscape and how talent leaders can stay ahead. Rick also shares how RPO, recruitment process outsourcing, can create the biggest opportunities for talent leaders as they prepare for 2023.

The U.S. economy has officially regained all of the jobs lost at the start of the pandemic, putting an end to the Great Rehire. The pace of hiring has started to slow; however, current monthly job gains remain at historically high levels. The labor force participation rate has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, and there are currently 4.8 million more open jobs than there are unemployed Americans. On top of that, inflation remains high, and the Federal Reserve continues to raise rates to keep the economy healthy.

It’s a complicated landscape. How should talent leaders respond? Many have leaned on RPO recruitment companies to get through hiring spikes and implement new technology. But what is the value of an RPO partnership during more steady state hiring? How can talent leaders pull in more workers who have yet to return to the job market? What is the role of talent technology in today’s market, and how can you ensure a strong employer brand?

Joining this episode to discuss these issues is Rick Betori, PeopleScout’s President.* Rick has been with TrueBlue since 2011 and has more than 25 years of proven experience driving organizational change and growth.

*At the time of this recording, Rick’s title was PeopleScout Managing Director, the Americas.

Candidate Experience Pitfalls That Impact Diversity Recruitment [Infographic]

Posted on by akessler

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a top priority for global organizations, but only 5% say they’re succeeding with their DE&I initiatives. We decided to look into where talent acquisition programs fit in and how the recruitment process may be contributing to this disparity for companies.

In looking at the research, we uncovered some common pitfalls within the candidate experience in which organizations unintentionally sabotage their DE&I efforts.

CHECK OUT OUR INFOGRAPHIC TO EXPLORE SOME OF THE DATA WE UNCOVERED IN OUR DIVERSITY & THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE REPORT.

Diversity and candidate experience infographic

To learn even more about diversity recruitment, download, Diversity & the Candidate Experience: Identifying Recruitment Pitfalls to Improve DE&I Outcomes.

[On-Demand] Boosting Candidate Engagement with a Comprehensive Talent Strategy

Posted on by nfuqua

[On-Demand] Boosting Candidate Engagement with a Comprehensive Talent Strategy

The current hiring environment remains a challenge for employers—in the U.S., there are currently 4.3 million more open jobs than there are job seekers. Not only are employers struggling to find enough qualified candidates, keeping them engaged proves even more critical amid rising trends like candidate ghosting and recruitment process drop-out as well as the continued Great Resignation.

To cope, many organizations have added more gig workers, but the market for contingent workers suffers the same challenges. If talent leaders aren’t leveraging a unified strategy for recruiting both full-time employees and gig workers, gaps in their workforce will persist.

So, how can you engage these different types of candidates? Join PeopleScout Global Vice President of Implementation Mark Fita for the newest Talking Talent webinar, Boosting Candidate Engagement with a Comprehensive Talent Strategy, available now on-demand.

In this webinar, Mark will cover:

  • Today’s candidate recruitment process landscape

  • Best practices for optimizing your recruiting process

  • How to expand your employer brand to gig workers

  • The importance of using the right technology to engage candidates

  • And more!

Global Diversity Awareness Month: Resources to Improve Your DE&I Outcomes

Posted on by akessler

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) is a priority for 75% of global organizations and corporate DE&I programs offer a huge opportunity to win over talent in today’s tight labor market.

In recognition of Global Diversity Awareness Month, we’ve examined the state of diversity recruiting in our recent report, Diversity & the Candidate Experience: Identifying Recruitment Pitfalls to Improve DE&I Outcomes. This deep dive into the candidate journey uncovers common areas where employers are unintentionally sabotaging their DE&I efforts. Plus, we offer actionable takeaways for addressing these issues and improving diversity recruitment outcomes.

In addition to the report, we thought we’d share some of our top articles and podcasts to help you create a diverse, equitable and inclusive candidate and employee experience where everyone feels welcome and respected.

DE&I and Talent Acquisition

Talent acquisition plays a crucial role in bringing to life diversity and inclusion within an organization through sourcing, engaging and hiring talent from underrepresented groups.

Here are our top insights for talent acquisition leaders for improving diversity recruitment outcomes.

  1. DE&I Insights for Talent Acquisition Leaders:
    A PeopleScout survey of job candidates revealed important differences between how diverse groups find, research and apply for jobs.
  2. DE&I Initiatives: Assessing Program Maturity & the Role of Talent Acquisition:
    Anthony Brew, Vice President of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at our parent company TrueBlue, shares how to determine the maturity of your DE&I program and ideas for talent acquisition leaders to increase their influence.
  3. Podcast: Building an Inclusive & Equitable Employer Brand & Recruitment Process:
    In this episode of our Talking Talent podcast, we hear from Paula Simmons, our Director of Employer Brand & Communications Strategy, about building an employer brand and a recruitment process that is equitable and inclusive for candidates from underrepresented backgrounds.
  4. Podcast: Reducing Unconscious Bias for an Inclusive Recruitment Process:
    In another podcast, Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory, teaches us about unconscious bias and shares tactics to reduce it from various stages of your recruitment process.
  5. Data & Diversity: Using Analytics to Achieve Your DE&I Goals:
    As the saying goes, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. In this article from Liz Karkula, Associate Product Manager of Affinix™, and Jason Kaplan, IT Manager of Business Intelligence, how to leverage technology and analytics to measure and improve DE&I in your recruitment programs.

Research Report

Identifying Recruitment Pitfalls to Improve DE&I Outcomes

Download Now

DE&I and Employee Experience

The employee experience is just as important to the success of your DE&I program. For employees from underrepresented groups, meaningful engagement and organizational commitment to DE&I can improve retention, productivity and employee referrals that can boost your diversity recruitment efforts.

Below, we’ve outlined our most read resources for creating a more inclusive workplace.

  1. The Importance of Inclusion in Your Diversity Program:
    Make your diversity recruitment efforts count by following these ideas to cultivate a culture of inclusion.
  2. Diversity Training: Getting It Right, Right Away:
    Diversity training is one way organizations are fostering inclusion within company culture. This article explores different kinds of diversity training and how to leverage them to improve your DE&I efforts.
  3. Diversity and Inclusion: Building Employee Resource Groups and Driving Change:
    Employee Resource Groups, or ERGs, have multifaceted benefits that impact an organization’s strategic diversity and inclusion efforts in recruitment, retention, mentoring, leadership development, customer relations and more. Check out this article for practical tips on supporting ERGs in your organizations.
  4. How to Support BIPOC Colleagues Through Meaningful Conversations:
    Race can be a sensitive topic in the workplace. This article is a guide for how to make your workplace a safe environment where everyone feels respected, heard and understood while participating in this important dialogue.
  5. Podcast: Women in Leadership:
    In this episode of our Talking Talent podcast, PeopleScout’s diverse group of female leaders from all around the world share what it means to be a woman in leadership. Women at all levels of the company—from executive leaders to team leaders and managers—talk about how they got to where they are and how to create work environments where women can succeed.
  6. Proud At Work: LGBTQ+ Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace:
    This article provides a historical look at LGBTQ+ activism and its victories in the fight for workplace equity. Plus, you’ll learn strategies to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workplace.

No matter how you’re celebrating Global Diversity Awareness Month at your organization, we hope these resources give you practical steps you can take to improve your diversity recruitment outcomes and create a more equitable and inclusive culture at your organization.

Want to learn more about diversity and talent acquisition? Download our report, Diversity & the Candidate Experience: Identifying Recruitment Pitfalls to Improve DE&I Outcomes, for the latest research on how to improve the candidate experience for underrepresented groups.

Diversity & the Candidate Experience: Identifying Recruitment Pitfalls to Improve DE&I Outcomes

Posted on by akessler

Diversity & the Candidate Experience

Identifying Recruitment Pitfalls to Improve DE&I Outcomes

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) is a priority for 75% of global organizations. But only 5% say they’re succeeding with their DE&I initiatives.

That’s bad news in today’s tight labor market since 76% of candidates said that a diverse workforce was an important factor when considering a new job.

Download this free report, Diversity & the Candidate Experience: Identifying Recruitment Pitfalls to Improve DE&I Outcomes, for research about diversity and recruitment. We’ll explore:

  • The role of diversity and the candidate experience
  • The gap between the perception of companies and candidates
  • An analysis of the stages of the candidate journey where bias is undermining talent acquisition’s efforts to attract diverse candidates

The UK Talent Shortage: How to Engage & Support the “Missing Million”

Posted on by akessler

By Joe Mongon, Head of Recruitment Delivery, EMEA

When Dame Sharon White, former Chief Executive of Ofcom and current Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, was recently interviewed on BBC radio, she said: “One area that I think has not had enough attention is what has happened in the jobs market over the last 18 months.” Not enough attention? The UK talent shortage, and the tightness of the labour market, has been at the heart of many mainstream news stories in the UK over the past year: petrol shortages, queues at air and sea ports, and general “skimpflation” in the customer experience.

In this case, White touched upon an interesting factor in the dynamic between an oversupply of job vacancies and an under-supply of job seekers—the “missing million” in the UK workforce who have left employment all together since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Who Are the Missing Million?

White identified that there are “1 million fewer people in work,” adding that, “Some think about it as the ‘great resignation’. I think about it as the ‘life reappraisal’, because this is predominantly people in their 50s.”

This latter point is broadly correct: four-fifths of the recent rise in economic activity is among older people, and while the concerning increase in long-term ill health negates the idea that this is most often the result a positive “reappraisal” of life priorities, growth in early retirement started in summer 2021 and remains persistent.

White rightly called for government action to address the challenge of encouraging early retirees back to work, and it’s possible that “flexible retirement” will in the future be discussed as often as “flexible working.” In the meantime, there is much that employers can do directly to support and re-engage early retirees including approaches to recruitment, job design, workplace support, and – yes – flexibility.

How to Attract and Retain Older Workers

A clear and informative job profile that brings the role to life and amplifies these factors can be the first step to finding the right candidate, including engaging overlooked or under-engaged audiences like the missing million. Job seeker priorities are often straightforward and are typically unaffected by age. Salary and flexibility—especially work from home considerations—lead the way when it comes to potential job switches.

To succeed, employers must recognise that temporary solutions to business problems, such as hybrid working, have turned into ongoing employee preferences and expectations. If you can’t advertise jobs as flexible and leverage that advantage due to the type of role, investment in pay or upskilling offers may be the answer.

At PeopleScout, we are certainly giving the UK talent shortage our full attention. We’re offering our clients bespoke strategies and tactics to overcome these challenges. By helping organisations understand their audiences—including the missing million—we’re able to support targeted candidate attraction efforts that create real results.

Interviewer Skills Training: How to Conduct Interviewing Skills Training for Hiring Managers

Posted on by edyson

Interviewing skills training is crucial, as many hiring managers feel that the success of a well-conducted job interview hinges on the interviewers ability to build a connection with the interviewee. What’s more, for many candidates, the interview is a critical factor when deciding whether to accept a job offer, with 50% of candidates declining job offers after feeling disrespected during the interview process.  

When interviews do not go well, they not only lead to candidates declining offers, but they can also lead to poor hiring decisions, possible compliance issues, and hiring manager burnout. Interviewing candidates is arguably the most important part of the hiring process, so interview training for hiring managers is essential. Hiring managers touch many parts of the recruitment process—often opening new roles, writing job descriptions, posting on job boards, interviewing, and in some cases, making that final call on which candidates get hired. 

With all that’s riding on the hiring manager, they must know how to interview effectively. Interviewing tips for managers can come in handy because the interview process can be stress-inducing regardless of which side of the table you happen to be on. In this article, we provide insights into training hiring managers to be effective, impartial and empathic interviewers. 

 

Securing Hiring Manager Buy-In for Interview Skills Training

recruiter training

Both new and experienced hiring managers can benefit from interview skills training. A veteran hiring manager typically has years of hands-on experience engaging, interviewing, and hiring candidates for a variety of roles. However, even the most seasoned hiring manager may need to brush up on their skills through learning emerging interviewing skills and techniques, like combating bias and improving diversity, how to use structured interviews, and avoiding cliché or out-of-date questions that conflict with the modern hiring experience.

For newer hiring managers, interview training can serve as an on-the-job education and can help accelerate their career through learning the latest and most effective interviewing techniques.

Before introducing a new interviewing skills training program, schedule a meeting with hiring managers to discuss the status of your current interviewing process as well as their thoughts and concerns when it comes to engaging with candidates. You can ask them if they use interview techniques such as structured interviews, panel interviews, and blind interviews to gauge areas of interest and potential training topics.

It may be a good idea to create a list of questions for hiring managers to think about leading up to their training. Questions for your hiring managers may include:

  • Can I talk about the company’s strategy, mission and structure confidently?
  • Can I answer questions about perks and benefits accurately?
  • Do I know what the job description involves before going into an interview?
  • Have I coordinated with my team on the candidate and job details?
  • Have I read candidates’ resumes?
  • Do I know what interview questions I’ll ask?
  • Are my interview questions reviewed by HR for legality?

 

Interviewing Skills Training: Help Hiring Managers to Combat Bias

job interview skills training

Meeting a candidate for the first time may prompt a series of unconscious judgments that cause a hiring manager to make unfounded assumptions based on attributes that are not job-related, such as race, gender, religion, or socioeconomic status. These unconscious biases can result in unequal treatment of candidates. Yale University released a study revealing that hiring managers judge candidates’ socioeconomic status based purely on the first few seconds of their speech. Furthermore, the candidates perceived to be from a higher social class received more lucrative salaries and signing bonuses.

Everything that makes a hiring manager a better interviewer in turn makes them less biased. The best way to combat biases during interviews is to be aware of them. This can’t be achieved overnight—it takes time and effort. A good start would be to help the interviewer standardize their interviews.

Unstructured interviews lacking defined questions where a candidate’s experience and expertise are meant to translate naturally through conversation can be unreliable and produce bias. Structured interviews, where each candidate is asked the same set of defined questions, thereby standardizing the interview process, help minimize bias.

This outcome (allowing hiring managers to focus on skills and experience that directly impact the role)  comes from having an interview based on job analysis and a structured, evidence-based assessment framework. Standardizing the interview process reduces bias by creating a level playing field for all candidates and ensuring that everyone is asked the same questions in the same way.

Combating bias is not easy, however, by addressing bias you will empower your team to tackle bigger challenges and to make a real commitment to building an inclusive culture.

 

What is a Structured Interview? Teaching Hiring Managers to Understand Structured Interviews

Structured Interview

Conducting structured interviews is an exceptional strategy for screening job candidates and finding the best possible person for a role. So, what is a structured interview? Structured interviews ask a set of questions in a structured format intended to help hiring managers to collect valuable data from each interviewee that can then be compared to the response of other candidates. Your should also include a clearly defined rating process for hiring managers and interviewers to follow when evaluating and scoring candidate answers to questions- asked during an interview.

Structured interviews are more objective and legally defensible than unstructured interviews. Interviewers who use this interview format should learn how to prepare behavioral questions, understand rating scales, and score candidates consistently.

In this section, we provide examples of structured interview questions as well as how to conduct and rate interviews.

 

Role-Related Structured Interview Questions

Role-related questions ask candidates directly about the duties and responsibilities of the role. Including role-specific questions in a structured interview can assist a hiring manager in determining whether or not a candidate possesses the skills and experience necessary to succeed in the role.

Examples of role-related structured interview questions include:

  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of the CRM software you used in your last role?
  • What in your career or educational experience do you believe connects you with this role ?
  • What do you like and dislike about working in nursing?

 

Behavioral Questions and Structured Interviews

Behavior-related questions in structural interviews ask candidates to provide examples of their professional experiences. Including behavior-related questions in structured interviews can help hiring managers to find out which experiences the candidate may have excelled in and struggled with in the past. Ask a mix of questions to gain information about each candidate’s professional successes and challenges and the way they interacted with their clients, coworkers, and superiors.

Examples of behavior-related structured interview questions include in interview skills training:

  • ‘Describe a time when you have had to deal with a difficult colleague?
  • ‘How do you ensure that you know what kind of experience your customers are having in your stores?
  • Can you tell me what you look for in a manager or which management style fits you best?

 

Situational Questions for Structured Interviews

Situation-related questions in a structural interviewing skills training ask candidates to think on their feet and imagine how they would handle varying scenarios working for your organization. Situation-related questions can determine a candidate’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills. There are a variety of questions that assess how candidates would interact with your clients and employees, how they work with a team, and how they would react to common workplace challenges.

Examples of situation-related structured interview questions include:

  • How would you handle an unhappy customer?
  • How would you pitch our new product line to customers?
  • How would you prioritize multiple deadlines from different stakeholders?

 

What is a Mock Interview? Teaching Interview Skills Training Best Practices Through Role Playing

mock interviews

Mock interviews are simulated or role-playing interview exercises designed to give hiring managers the opportunity to sharpen their interviewing skills through formulating responses in real-time. Mock interviews can help inexperienced hiring managers familiarize themselves with an interview setting and give veterans a chance to practice the latest techniques. For example, hiring managers can practice brief notetaking techniques to avoid being distracted by their notes during actual interviews.

Here are the goals of mock interview training for hiring managers:

  • Identifying the common steps of the interviewing process and how to respond
  • Learning how to thoroughly review a candidate’s resume and prepare for a productive conversation
  • Developing technical, cultural, and behavioral questions to successfully evaluate a candidate’s fit in the role and organization
  • Determining what they need to do before, during, and after an interview
  • Evaluate information gathered during the interview more successfully
  • Understanding how to interview within the law using acceptable and appropriate questions
  • Reading body language

Much of communication is nonverbal. In an interview setting, hiring managers unable to understand body language may misinterpret what is being communicated during an interview. Mock interviews can help interviewers become more aware of candidates’ nonverbal cues, thus improving their overall interviewing skill set. For example, if a candidate’s body language suggests they are anxious, interviewers may make a more conscious effort to relax the candidate. You can train interviewers to control their body language as well. Even if hiring managers think a candidate is unqualified, they should not let their body language negatively affect the candidate’s experience.

Job Interviewing Skills Training: Compliance Training is Key

One of the best ways to avoid potential legal compliance issues is to ensure that all interview questions are related solely to the role the candidate is interviewing for and are in compliance with the employers hiring laws and practices. To determine if a question is truly role-related, have your hiring managers ask themselves the following questions:

  • What type of information is the candidate likely to provide in response to the question or the comment?
  • Is that information related to the job?
  • Is the question that I am about to ask, or the comment that I am about to make, necessary to make a legitimate assessment of the candidate’s qualifications?
  • Could it appear to the candidate that I was trying to encourage them to reveal information related to the candidate’s inclusion in a legally protected class (based on age, race, disability, national origin, marital status, etc.)?
  • Do I need to know the information that I am about to (or likely to) gather?

What’s more, many countries have laws protecting job candidates from discrimination during the hiring process, so it’s important for hiring managers to understand how discrimination can occur in recruiting, interviewing, and hiring and how to remain complaint with local laws. You can provide guidelines for handling your interview-related responsibilities fairly and legally. Guidelines may include:

  • Guidance on identifying candidate categories protected from employment discrimination
  • Follow a standardized interview process to help ensure a fair and consistent hiring process
  • A list of questions to avoid during interviews that can lead to discrimination claims
  • How to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate interview behavior from candidates

 

Skills Training for Interviewers Begins and Ends with Relationship Building

As a talent acquisition leader, investing in interviewing skills training can mean the difference for your organization’s ability to hire quality staff in today’s candidate-driven market. With a well-run interviewer training program, you can increase the chances of securing the talent your organization needs for a competitive edge.

It is no longer only about candidate experience, it is about building candidate relationships. Candidates expect their job search and hiring experience to be positive, and the interview is a key component of fulfilling their expectations.

High-Volume Hiring in the Contact Center: 3 Challenges and How to Tackle Them

Posted on by akessler

In our world of e-commerce and online banking, consumers want slick digital experiences. But they still want the human touch when they run into a problem. Despite the growth of digital channels, excellent customer service is still a must-have in a business landscape where companies compete on customer experience. High-volume hiring in the contact center has never been more important or more challenging.

Customer queries are more complex and high-value, and contact center agents are now expected to not only answer calls, but interact with customers through chats, emails and social media. Contact centers need highly-skilled talent who are comfortable working in a myriad of technology platforms. Customer service representatives (CSRs) must also exhibit strong soft skills like listening and empathy—especially as consumers are experiencing more financial hardships and mental health struggles post-pandemic.

Indeed, 84% of contact center leaders—whether part of a BPO or an internal contact center—believe the pandemic permanently elevated the importance of the contact center for their business. But, it’s hard to deliver against your service levels when you’re struggling to hire or when you’re losing staff amidst the Great Resignation. Since 2019, the number of vacancies has increased, while the number of applicants per opening has dropped by 50%.

Chart showing reduction in applicants for high-volume hiring for the contact center
(Source: Indeed)

So, how can a contact center director and talent acquisition leader team up to tackle today’s tough landscape? Here are three top recruitment challenges in the contact center and tips for overcoming them.

1. Use Your Employer Brand to Attract the Right Kind of Talent

ContactBabel’s Contact Center Decision Maker’s Guide states that contact center attrition reached 23% in 2022, with 1 in 6 operations experiencing annual attrition of over 30%. This results in contact centers making over 212,000 hires annually. With turnover like this, how to make high-volume hiring more effective is always on the minds of contact center directors.

As consumer behavior has changed, a different set of skills is needed in customer service. Contact center agents need to exercise problem solving and analytical skills while also displaying empathy to customers who may be upset or emotional. Agents who lack these skills are more likely to struggle to resolve customer issues and to suffer from increased stress levels.

By honing your employer value proposition and attraction messaging, you can stand out amongst your competition but also zero in the characteristics you need for your contact center. By shifting your mindset from focusing on getting the most applications, or even those with customer service experience, to getting applications with the right profile, you can reduce attrition by increase the likelihood of your new hires being successful.

Case Study: Finding Candidates with Problem Solving Skills

We helped Direct Line, a British insurance provider, improve their recruitment outcomes in the contact center through employer branding and recruitment marketing. We found their ideal candidate profile was someone with strong analytical skills and who could proactively problem solve—rather than those with past experience in customer service.

We then expanded our search efforts, looking for candidates who would have honed these skills in non-customer service roles who would be interested in making a career change. Not only did this open the doors for Direct Line to access a new pool of talent, but it also helped to increase the quality of their hires and reduce attrition.

2. Rethink Your Assessment Center to Reduce Drop-Off Rate

With growing complexity in customer service, organizations need contact center agents with strong listening skills and written communication skills (for chat, email and social media enquiries) as well as the ability to self-manage and multitask. Leveraging candidate assessment tools to find candidates with the right combination of skills and behaviors is imperative to the success of your contact center.

Chart of most valued characteristics for high-volume hiring for the contact center
(Source: ContactBabel)

Case Study: Moving the Assessment Stage Forward

One of our longest standing clients, tasked us with high-volume recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) for their financial services customer contact centers. The bank needed to recruit more staff to meet their service levels and create a great experience for their customers. We designed the customer contact recruitment process from scratch, including a recruitment marketing campaign.

As part of this new process, we advised the client to introduce an online test immediately after the candidate applied using an automated email. This caught them while the application was still front of mind and also ensured that only best-fit candidates progressed. This meant that hiring managers were committing their time to top talent and helped to reduce the overall time to hire. As a result of identifying high quality candidates sooner, we were able to reduce the attrition rate to just 11%, well below the industry average.

More Assessment Center Tips to Reduce Drop Off

Here are some more assessment center tips:

  • Try introducing assessment tasks earlier in the process or combining assessment stages. This helps increase hiring speed and keep candidates engaged.
  • Rather than traditional multiple-choice tests, try a role play scenario or an interactive experience that gives the candidates a real-life feel of what their day-to-day job will look like. The benefits are two-fold—you get a better idea of how candidates will perform in the role, and they get a better idea of what to expect before they accept the offer.
  • Ensure candidates are prepared for the assessment center by offering webinars, instruction videos and even practices tests. This helps to eliminate nervousness and boost confidence amongst candidates—reducing candidate drop-off before the assessment center phase.

Learn more about our whole-person model for assessments and we leverage it for evaluating customer service reps for the contact and other high-volume hiring situations.

3. Boost Your Communications to Eliminate Ghosting

Newly hired customer service reps are increasingly ‘ghosting’ their call center jobs—not showing up for day one with no reason given and often no communication from the candidate at all. According to an Indeed survey on ghosting in the workplace, 22% of candidates say they have accepted a job offer but didn’t show up for the first day of work.

Following the tips above on finding the ideal candidate profile and assessing for the right skills to start with, will help reduce ghosting on day one. In addition, you can also work to speed up the recruitment process and improve communications to keep candidates engaged after offer acceptance.

Speeding Up the Recruitment Process

With so many contact centers vying for customer service talent, employer response time is crucial as you want to beat the by being the first to move the candidate through the recruitment process. About a quarter of candidates state the reason for their ghosting was because the hiring process was too long or too slow. So, take a look at your recruitment process. Are there any steps you could eliminate or combine? Are there ways you could reduce the time between steps?

If it’s feasible for your organization, you might consider moving to same-day offers, even if they’re contingent upon reference verification, background checks or drug testing. Also, moving the start date up will reduce the likelihood of a competing offer turning your candidate’s head. Waiting for your next training class could be risky, so think about running smaller training classes more frequently to accelerate hiring.

Staying Connected with Regular Communication

Communication is also a key part of combatting ghosting during the crucial period offer and onboarding. Staying in touch with candidates is imperative to keep them interested. If you ghost your brand-new hire by forgetting to check in, they’re more likely to ghost you in turn. The same Indeed study found that 77% of jobseekers saying they’ve been ghosted by an employer.

Assessing the touchpoints between your organization and the offer holder is an important way for employers to ensure they keep the lines of communication open and increase engagement with candidates. Are you using your CRM to the fullest? Investing in creating content that showcases your employer value proposition (EVP) and sending it out regularly to your candidates via engaging emails will ensure they are reminded regularly of the value you offer—whether through benefits, flexibility, growth opportunities, diversity and inclusion initiatives and more.

Personal touchpoints are another way to stay connected. Check-in emails from the recruiter or even messages of congratulations from the hiring manager will help candidates feel valued and special. You might consider asking existing employees to act as an ambassador and share some onboarding materials with more information about your organization, your culture and values or your employee resource groups (ERGs) so they start feeling like a part of the team.

These small gestures can help your candidate feel connected to the organization before they start—and could end up being what keeps them from changing their mind when they receive a competing offer.

RPO for the Contact Center

Facing a recruitment landscape in which you need high-volume hiring to support your contact center operations? Learn strategies to speed up your hiring process and deliver on customer service quality by downloading our 9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges.

9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges

Get the Ebook

Talent Attraction in the Building and Construction Industry in Australia

Posted on by akessler

PeopleScout has over 10 years of experience working in partnership with our clients in the building and construction sector. Our Australian footprint covers metropolitan, regional and remote locations supporting multi-national clients with varied requirements including:

  • National infrastructure and transport projects
  • Property development
  • Telecommunications
  • Remote site construction
  • Building and construction materials distribution
  • Renewable energy development

PeopleScout is an end-to-end recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) provider delivering strategic talent acquisition solutions across the building and construction sector. Our deep understanding and insight led approach to the delivery of project-based workforces will allow us to transform your approach to talent acquisition. We can partner with your existing team or deliver standalone projects to provide surge capacity and allow you to gain the competitive edge in the acquisition of talent.

The Talent Attraction Recipe for Success

The building and construction industry has weathered an incredible amount of change and challenges over the past decade and PeopleScout has been a trusted and strategic talent partner with a number of tier 1 and tier 2 industry leaders throughout this period, taking on lessons and continually refining our process. Over this time there are a few standout learnings we can share which have made a major impact on securing talent in this sector.

Industry Insights – Project Driven Forecasting for Balancing Skilled Labour

We have developed a deep understand of project-based recruitment across the building and construction industry, which includes the development of candidate source and attraction strategies aligned to project cycle and location. PeopleScout recruitment teams is involved from the bid stage of our client’s major infrastructure projects which allows us to start forecasting when the demand for certain skill sets is due to pick up and when there will be available workers ready to start planning for their next engagement.  

Workforce Partnership Planning – Forecast Planning

We partner closely with our clients to workforce plan against their project pipeline and the phases of the projects currently in play. One of the most impactful workforce planning tools is the forward mapping of your internal and external pipeline talent pools to your client’s future workforce requirements. PeopleScout’s CRM technology, Springboard allows our team to proactively manage our talent pools and keep them informed of opportunities on the horizon. Springboard helps our team to keep talent engaged with our clients and facilitates a seamless application, screening and onboarding process to ensure we maintain momentum with our talent and have them ready to start as soon as a project receives the green light.  

Employer Value Proposition – Including Community Engagement

Construction projects do not happen in isolation from the community they operate within and leveraging your EVP to build your brand within the local community is an integral sourcing strategy for this sector. Even more so when the projects you are sourcing for are based in regional and remote locations. PeopleScout works with our innovative Talent Advisory team to design sourcing campaigns that will resonate with the local communities our clients are working within. Our recruitment teams work directly with community groups, educational institutions, and industry partners to promote local pathways to work and support the diverse needs of our communities.

Talent Sourcing Insights

PeopleScout is an insights-led business, we use the data gathered via our business intelligence platform Springboard to analyse every aspect of the recruitment process both retrospectively and in real-time to ensure our campaigns are as effective as possible. Our insights tool interfaces with all the leading ATS platforms used by our clients and is fully integrated with our proprietary Talent Solution technology – Springboard. which allows your teams:

  • Access the real-time ROI on advertising and social media campaigns allowing your team to immediately pivot from avenues that are not yielding results and ramp up investing into the strategies delivering the greatest impact.
  • Access data analytics has been instrumental in achieving our client’s diversity goals; we enable your team will monitor the progress of applicants throughout the recruitment process and our data analytics will identify any key dropout points in the process. The PeopleScout team will assess what is causing applicants from certain demographics, to not proceed with the application and redesign the application process to stop this in its tracks.
  • Access to a dedicated talent insights team who conducts candidate market deep dives, to understand what the candidates career motivators are and where the best talent is for your organisation. We use these Market Benchmark Insights to develop candidate personas which we validate and use to design our go-to-market strategy.

As an example, PeopleScout partnered with a client, who is a leader in technology, industry, infrastructure and transport for over 11 years. Our solution features an onsite strategic sourcing business partner whose role is to source the hard-to-fill positions and provide overflow recruitment capability for the in-house team.

The Result?

PeopleScout is one of the leading outsource talent partners in the building and construction sector. We have over 10-year knowledge on how to support clients in the mobilise workforces for major infrastructure projects across ANZ. If your current talent solution is not meeting the demands of your project pipeline, PeopleScout as the technology, skills and experience to transform your talent acquisition team. The outcome of which will be a strategic function aligned to project and workforce needs. that decreases time to mobilise and provides you the competitive advantage you need in a tight talent market.