If you didn’t have time to attend ATAP’s 2022 Global TA day, don’t worry. Adway’s got you covered. We showed up for the insights and stayed for all things Automation and Social Recruitment Marketing.
Our Head of Brand & Community, Sara Dalsfelt was there again this year - giving attendees the inside scoop on why Social Recruiting is the latest and greatest link to CX success.
We put together a summary of the most actionable hacks to help you — our savvy talent acquisition professional — carve out a clear opening to win the competition for talent, with a CX that’s better than all the rest.
In this Global TA Day takeaway, you’ll get:
- The data that proves that Social Recruitment Marketing is the most effective TA Strategy for sustainable business growth
- The components needed to deliver a seamless CX via Social Recruitment Marketing
- The business case for adopting Automated Social Recruitment Marketing
Social Recruitment Drives Sustainable Business Growth
Let’s start with the why.
WHY should you dedicate time to optimising youronline candidate experience in the first place?
There are 2 fundamental reasons:
- To get more relevant candidates, you must make your candidate experience work for THEM.
- To WIN those candidates, your candidate experience needs to be BETTER than the competition.
We’re living in a Social Economy, and you simply can’t afford to avoid it:
- In 2021, over 4.26 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost six billion in 2027
- The average daily usage is 2 hours and 27 minutes
- More than half of the people on the planet use social media
- 424 million new users have come online within the last 12 months
- 73% of millennials found their last position through a social media site
And we’re already seeing in our Adway data that a good social candidate experience delivers:
- More applicants (+500% more relevant candidates for advertised roles)
- More diversity (+53% more female candidates)
- Reduced time to hire (-50% time to hire decrease within tech roles)
- Higher productivity (~5 hours of saved working time for every vacancy in Adway’s platform)
- Increased fill rate (+148%)
- A stronger employer brand
- Better candidate conversion rates
- Lower cost of hire
- Increased quality of hires
- More sustainable social talent pools
- Better channel performance ROI
In short, investing in the social candidate experience directly benefits your business’s bottom line.
Very few organisations are making it a priority, but 41% plan to invest in social media and social recruiting software in the near future - all in an effort to increase employer brand awareness, reach passive candidates and increase their overall number of applicants.
So now, you’re ready for the how.
What Components Do You Need to Deliver a Seamless Social Candidate Experience?
Think Like a UX Designer
Remember, every time your talent pipeline leaks from a poorly executed candidate experience, all your other talent acquisition investments return far less value than they could.
In order to plug the hole, you need to step right into the trenches and start thinking on a granular level. And who better to model than a UX designer?
A talented UX designer approaches their work by asking two questions:
- “What do my users need?”
- “What’s standing in the way of them completing the next step in their user journey?”
When translated to the social candidate experience, you can assess your current CX journey from that same UX lens:
- Are you giving your candidates the info they need to easily travel through the hiring funnel?
- Are you making it clear what the next step is?
- Is that next step easy to take?
Most importantly: Are you selling them more than just another job opening (*yawn*)?
Embrace E-Commerce Thinking
Grabbing your candidate’s interest and keeping them engaged throughout the application funnel is a whole lot like selling someone a lifestyle product, i.e. the perfect pair of sunglasses.
The competition is just as tight, the expectations are just as high, and the attention spans are just as low. And, just like with e-commerce, sitting back and waiting for your candidates on job boards or with organic social posts simply won’t cut it.
You’ve got to turn the candidate experience into an e-commerce-like experience that continuously meets them where they are and sells them a sunny lifestyle — not just another job. That’s the land that social media recruiting thrives in.
Sell a Lifestyle Through Storytelling
Even with social media right there at your fingertips, the best candidates aren’t actively refreshing their feeds in an attempt to access your job ads. Their attention must be earned and kept, from the first consideration click to the final application submission.
That’s where the art of storytelling comes in. It’s time to feature the tales of why it’s amazing to work at your organisation - from employee testimonials to videos of “a day in the life,” plus your captivating employer brand and organisational culture. Show, don’t just tell, with vivid photos and videos.
Set Up the Candidate Experience Like a Customer Experience
If you want to build a fantastic candidate experience online, you’ve got to treat the candidate journey like a customer journey — complete with enticing ads at every stage of the funnel:
- Day 1 of the Candidate Journey: The initial job ad
- Day 3 of the Candidate Journey: Employee benefit ads
- Day 7 of the Candidate Journey: Employee testimonials
- Day 10 of the Customer Journey: Rave reviews from Glassdoor
- 2 Weeks Later: The job opportunity is there for the taking, and the candidate can apply - with one click - in the ad itself
Pro tips:
- Use a different direct CTA for each ad to convert viewers into applicants at each step of the journey
- Make sure the entire candidate experience is optimised for mobile
Where are the Pitfalls in the Application Process?
It should be hard to say goodbye to high-quality talent, but these days it can be all too easy:
- 72% of hiring managers say they provide clear job descriptions… Yet only 36% of job candidates agree with that statement
- 9 out of 10 potential candidates drop out of the application process because it was “too lengthy or complicated”
- 59% of candidates admitted to having left job applications because of technical issues (bugs, slow websites or poor UX)
- Application processes with 30 screening questions reduce applications by 50%. More than 45 questions? Expect an abandonment rate of nearly 90%
All that’s to say that a clunky, overcomplicated candidate experience can equate to a skyrocketing number of candidates dropping out of the funnel. Remember those leaks in your talent pipeline? This is where the drops create a flood.
By building a better candidate experience with social media recruiting, you can avoid these pitfalls and save every last drop of high-quality talent in your sustainable social talent pool.
How Do You Measure CX Success?
At Adway, we’re nothing if not data-driven. And process KPIs are a great way to know how you’re candidate experience is doing (and whether it could be doing better):
Initial KPIs
- Views & impressions
- Engagement rates
- Brand recognition
- Consideration clicks
- Size of Social Talent Pools
Long Term KPIs
- Dropoff rate
- Apply clicks
- Applications
- Quality of applications
- Interviews scheduled
- Number of hires
- Time of hire
- Quality of hire
- Star candidate pools
- Diversity goals
Start Building a Better Digital Candidate Experience Today
2,000+ TA professionals have already downloaded our Quick Guide to Building a Better Digital Candidate Experience, and it’s ready and waiting to help you create the kind of candidate experience we’ve been breaking down and measure your results.
You’ll get all the hacks you need to apply UX principles to your talent pipeline - with actionable advice on bulletproofing every step and an ultra-efficient checklist for assessing your current candidate experience.
Ready to download? Here it is. We can’t wait to watch you thrive!
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