Stop Scrambling: Build a Hiring Advantage With Talent Pipelining

Lori Cole (00:03):

Let’s go ahead and get started. Thank you again for everyone being here. I’m Lori Cole. I’m a certified career coach and advisor here at iHire, and I’m really excited to welcome you to today’s webinar, Stop Scrambling, Build a Hiring Advantage With Your Talent Pipeline. Before I get started, just a couple more features of the webinar platform that really put you in the driver’s seat. You can control your experience today. The widgets you see on your screen allow you to move and resize all of your windows and explore the content related to today’s presentation. Make sure you find that ask a question widget. You can ask a question at any time during the presentation. Only our amazing producer, Alexia will see those questions and we’ll answer as many as we can after the webinar. Also, keep an eye on your inbox Tomorrow you will get a recording of this webinar, webinar, I believe you can also find the slides to this webinar in one of the widgets on your screen. And lastly, just a reminder, you’re going to earn one credit today for SHRM and HRCI recertification. So with that, let’s meet our presenters. We have Molly Floyd. Molly is our customer success director and she oversees, iHire ’s customer success and client relationship teams. Molly focuses on the unique challenges of iHire ’s clients and develops solutions to make sure that their experience with all 57 of our industry focused recruiting sites are personalized and seamless and rewarding. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Molly,

Molly Floyd (01:52):

I need to unmute myself. Thank you Lori. I’m excited to be here.

Lori Cole (01:55):

And then we have Robert Oakley and we’re going to call him Bobbo from here on out because that’s what he goes by with an iHire and it just feels wrong to call him Robert. So we’re going to introduce him as Bobbo and he is an iHire hiring solutions advisor. He brings a lot of sharp insight and a collective spirit to every client interaction. Bobbo is known for asking the right questions and truly listening. He builds strong relationships with his clients and he’s rooted in those relationships are rooted in trust and understanding and I saw some emojis, so I think that we already have some Bobbo fans on the call, so that’s wonderful. Thank you so much for being here today, Bobbo.

Robert Oakley (02:44):

It is my pleasure, honestly. Thank you.

Lori Cole (02:48):

Alright, let’s start things out with a poll. What best describes your talent pipelining approach? Hold on. My emoji widget flipping up on my screen so I can’t see what best describes your talent pipelining approach today. Does your organization have a robust talent pipeline? So we build and nurture talent pools, we collect resumes but don’t really reach out unless we’re hiring or we start building a talent pipeline when we need to hire. Or the one thing that we’re hoping that you don’t say is what’s a talent pipeline? But as we go along here, we’re going to, we’re going to do a quick agenda while we’re waiting for those poll results. So today we’re going to go over why every organization needs a talent pipeline, how to build that talent pipeline, where to proactively find the right talent and how to continually engage and maintain your pipeline so that you can hire faster. So let’s take a look at those poll results. Alright, almost evenly split. Well, no matter where you are today in these poll results, there were no wrong answers and we’re going to cover all of these things so that you know exactly how to build this talent pipeline at the end. Bobbo, let’s start with you. Can you tell us the basics? What exactly is a talent pipeline?

Robert Oakley (04:32):

Yeah, absolutely. And for those of you that might answer it, I don’t know what town pipeline is, you probably are doing it or have tried to do it or think you should be doing this thing, which is essentially creating a pool of candidates so you can tap into when the hiring need arises. It’s more of a proactive approach. These we’re going to learn today, if you’re not familiar, it’s going to come from those past applicants, those silver medalists, the person that was totally qualified for the job, but you went with this person instead of that one and that was a year ago. Well where is that person now? Hopefully they’re living in your pipeline so you can still reach out to them easily. We’re going to talk a bit today about how you build those, how you manage them, and where you can source this talent. And the keyword at the bottom in the italics is being proactive in your hiring approach instead of being reactive.

Lori Cole (05:26):

Yeah, I like the bullet point here about the passive job seekers because I think sometimes those folks are discarded too quickly. You might look at a resume database and say, gosh, they haven’t been active for six months, probably not interested in a job right now and I shouldn’t reach out. But that’s really not the case. Those candidates are in there for a reason and I’m sure that they would always love to hear from you. Alright, Molly, you walk us through why this is something every organization should be doing.

Molly Floyd (06:02):

Yes, absolutely. So posting jobs strategically is important when you have an opening, but it’s really just one piece of the puzzle. Job postings reach active job seekers, but we have to think about what about those highly qualified passive candidates that may be interested. They’re just not actively searching. So that’s where many of our employers miss out. Building a talent pipeline, much like sourcing is a proactive way to develop those relationships with top tier candidates before you may need them. So hiring needs can shift quickly, overnight, unexpectedly. This might be due to turnover or growth, unforeseen changes, and having that pipeline gives you agility in situations like that. So when you have vetted engaged candidates on hand, you can quickly reach out and invite them to apply when you need to and often before competitors even post a role so you can be ahead of the game with a pipeline.

Lori Cole (07:12):

Yeah, being proactive makes a huge difference, especially when you need to hire fast. I know we’ve been in that situation before and it’s so nice to have at least a pool of candidates to start with. It gives you this sense of comfort to know that they’re there.

Molly Floyd (07:29):

Security for sure.

Lori Cole (07:30):

Yeah. Okay, Bobbo, once we’ve committed to doing this talent pipelining, how do we actually start building out the pipeline?

Robert Oakley (07:41):

Sure. And we’re talking about the pipeline. We are talking about that proactive approach. So we really need to identify what type of skills and essential skills that we want to be attracting for the future, the roles that you frequently hire for. And so often we’re thinking about the ones that have higher turnover, but also the ones that if that person was to leave tomorrow, how much trouble would I be in those roles? You need to be pipelining talent not to threaten that person, but should they leave, you can’t have the business take a step back. So you want to be able to tap into a pretty good pool of talent right away. And that’s part of the pipelining and certainly hard to fill roles. There’s fewer people out there. We want to try to collect some good resumes and good applicants and nurture those people along the way.

(08:34):

The other huge part here, and I cannot stress this enough, is having a strong employer brand. And most people when they hear that think why our customers should buy from us and not the person over there, but we’re talking about your brand that is attracting good applicants. That is why should I apply for you or work for you or show up for your interview instead of the guy over there? And especially in these positions where it’s hard to find, there’s high demand, low supply and these people have a lot of choice. And I would guess, and you can show me an emojis if you want, but COVID is a thing. This generation is a thing. It’s we continue to evolve and it’s hard to attract good people that show up and stay around and our pipeline is critical to that and our brand is critical to that. I do want to share something really quick on what I mean by well, how do we promote our brand to potential applicants? So just bear with me one moment.

(09:33):

I have two examples I’m going to show you here once the screen catches up. This is iHire’s join our team page. This is critical and here’s a stat that I want you to all remember from our research. 80% of candidates that see a job online, it doesn’t matter if it’s indeed iHire Craigslist, a career site on university. The good ones are going back to your website and they’re going to try to research you and they want to know why you’re a good place to work before they even think about applying for you. So you need a careers or an employment or a join our team link on your page and you need to tell them why. So with I hire, this is what we do. We have a nice blurb that is not talking about why our product is great, but why we’re a great place to work.

(10:19):

We’re going to have a video that’s talking about why we’re a great place to work for some insight there. We’re going to let you see our job openings and we’re going to let you pipeline and give us your resume. If you don’t see one that you like but you want to work for us, we let you take our choice Employer pledge. We will list every benefit that we have. We’re going to talk about our core values. We’re going to show some photos that show us working and us having fun. We’re going to have a couple of awards and some testimonials. We’ll show our locations and again, we will try to pipeline more talent by bringing you in there and we’ll link out to our social media. This right here for our ideal candidate that is researching if they should apply or show up for an interview at iHire clearly shows why we’re a great place to work and it’s true.

(11:06):

So let’s take a very small business. They were having a really, really hard time attracting massage therapists. They’re in high demand, hard to find. They did not have a career site presence whatsoever. They were not having success with their online postings. We had them add the word careers here and through your backend in your iHire account, there’s a very intuitive tool that let them build this page. They now have something very similar to what we have the massage therapist posting here key. The candidate can apply for it, they can also pipeline, and then they get to really show what it’s like to work there. So good job by them and it increased the quality and the quantity of the applicants. They started to receive real quick brief look before we go away. This is the interface that that company GLO de Spa used to build out their page. And it’s super simple and super intuitive.

Lori Cole (12:06):

I was just building out a page for a demo the other day and I was so impressed that when I uploaded the logo it drew all the colors from my logo so that my career site can match my regular employment or my regular website and look like it just fits right in. And it was built with it. So I know you had a lot to do with that building process and the product development of that Bobbo. So kudos to you for that. And I’ll also say that as I’m a career coach too and as I am coaching candidates, I always tell them that they need to go and research that employer. And you would much rather those candidates research you on your own website where you control the narrative than to go out to Glassdoor or Fishbowl or someplace where maybe there’s some negative reviews that a disgruntled person had posted in the past. You want to give them every tool that they need to know about you and control that narrative. Alright Molly, where’s a good place to find the talent to fill our pipeline?

Molly Floyd (13:25):

Well, we’re going to talk about resume databases because these are a powerful way to build your pipeline with iHire within our database. There are many different ways to filter and you can hone in by specific industries, skillsets, experience levels, locations, education and more. So you can take this a step farther. Within our platform we have saved search alerts where once you create that search you can save it and then we will send you automated alerts when new candidates who fit that criteria, you will get their information. So for small businesses especially, iHire 360 includes an IA powered resume sourcing feature, and this is an always on type of assistant that continually finds and delivers matches behind the scenes. We do have an iHire 360 widget in your dashboard where you can see how this works.

Lori Cole (14:33):

Yes, I love the AI powered because it’s very hands off now. You don’t have to do anything. It’s AI powered. Everything is coming to you and getting pushed to you and that’s really great, especially if you’re trying to source on very small teams.

Molly Floyd (14:50):

Yeah, I mean we’re always looking for ways to help our employers save time because there’s so many tasks and things to get done and while hiring is really important, this helps you take care of that. I

Lori Cole (15:08):

Bobbo, what about the folks who’ve already applied in the past? How can we keep those people in the pipeline?

Robert Oakley (15:17):

Yeah, this is pretty critical and we have the stories where I have a job opening, I posted the job, I had a perfect person apply. They came for the interview, I hired them and off we went. But that doesn’t happen that often. More often it’s when you say, Hey, where did you find that person? They seem to be amazing. There is a story behind it and this is part of that pipelining is creating that opportunity for those interactions that you have to with potential candidates, making them valuable in the future because we all know sometimes the timing’s not right. Something happened that they couldn’t start the job but they were a great candidate or their skillset was phenomenal, but not for this job, for the other job that we don’t have open right now. So how do you tag these people, keep them around, keep them warm and keep in touch and manage them in a way that you can reach back out to them when the time is right.

(16:11):

That is part of what pipelining is with your iHire account. You certainly gain that ability through 360 to note to bucket people in certain spots to reach out to them in bulk. But we want to preserve, that’s the key I want you to take away here is when you have a good interaction with a potential candidate and they don’t end up being the one for the job, you need to pipeline them and keep them for the future. And so definitely past candidates that have applied that didn’t fit the job, they could have been a silver medalist, something might’ve come up in their life, check on their timing nine months later, we need to save these resumes, we need to save them and bucket them for a position they might be more suited for. When that pops up, we need to make notes on these candidates so that when we get back to them, we remember who they were and what was all about and we need to leverage that relationship and the rapport and we can do that with a little bit of nurturing here and there just saying like, Hey, just to let you know I still have your resume on file and I’ll reach out whenever we have a good fit.

(17:14):

It’s as simple as that.

Lori Cole (17:17):

It’s really a smart way to use those past applications, take advantage of the past efforts and really make sure that that wasn’t wasted effort because you’ve already made that connection with that candidate in some places it’s something good for you to build on. Molly, I know you have some thoughts about looking internally and getting applicants through employee referrals too.

Molly Floyd (17:48):

Yes, definitely. So your existing team is a great source for future hiring needs in a few different ways. One, as you mentioned, referrals. Referrals from your current employees are an excellent source of talent and they know who they’re referring, they know your company, so they have kind of a headstart on who may be a good fit. So always accept those referrals and consider them current team members can also be ideal for another position within your company. And if they’re open to making a change, they should definitely be considered as part of your talent pipeline. Those who have strong transferable skills and who maybe have even expressed interest in another role or department, it’s always good to have those conversations and your one-on-ones. Just have an awareness of what your team members are seeking in growth and opportunity and then you can just have that information in the back of your mind as other opportunities arise. Again, employees who used to work for you and left on good terms of course could also be part of your pipeline. These are known as Boomerang employees and even if you’re not actively hiring, just keep all of this in mind except the referrals. Tuck ‘em away in a folder and just be aware of who’s interested in working for your company.

Lori Cole (19:22):

Yeah, I especially promote the Boomerang employees because I’m one of them, but we have had several Boomerang employees that iHire and it’s not because there was anything wrong with the job, it didn’t fit life at that point, but then life changes and things happen and it’s like, oh, well this is a really great fit for me now. So yeah, don’t disregard those people. We also have in the, it’s probably not in the resource widget, but in our resource center, a past webinar about career lattice ing. And that is a really interesting webinar about how to talk to your people, your current employees and find out what they want to do, where they want to go, what departments they’re interested in, and think about it as a lattice and how they can maybe move sideways and up or it’s not always a career ladder where they’re moving up. Sometimes you’re moving sideways and exploring different departments, but those internal referrals are gold in your current employees or golden. Yes. And finally, Bobbo, let’s not forget the power of our own networks, right?

Robert Oakley (20:45):

Yeah, absolutely. And for those of you that are business owners, you’re wearing every single hat you have, you’re always representing your business, you’re probably always keeping an eye out for talent. But as we get a little bit bigger and we start to have more specialized roles, a recruiter is certainly thinking potential talent, but how can you empower also the other people in your company when they have these opportunities, when they’re out there in the business to recognize, Hey, this person could actually be great with us and how do I get their resume? And I even just think of a trade show where we spend money to market and put our salespeople out there. Why not have something on your table booth interested in working for us? Submit your resume here, just have your people across the organization always looking for more good people. And then we talked about past coworkers.

(21:41):

Part of that too is when you have somebody really good, leave your company and we all, I think deep down want to see people be successful and grow. And it doesn’t always mean they stay with us, treat them really well when they leave because that’s creates that boomerang. If it’s not too disruptive to the company culture to have them come back to that Christmas party, bring them back to that Christmas party because those people will come back and we’ve seen it and those really good people, they need to grow somewhere else for a bit. And once they’ve done that, they come back and bring that growth to your business. And that’s really it. Just create more opportunity for people to understand that they can submit a resume and get into your pipeline because a lot of people just don’t get it unless they see a job posting. And this does all hinge upon your company culture and your value proposition as it is towards potential candidates, not your value problem, why customers should buy from you, but why somebody should work for you. That should be at the forefront on your career site and in all your interactions.

Lori Cole (22:51):

Alright, let’s do a quick pulse check, pulse check here. How do you currently keep passive candidates engaged through regular email updates, through recruiter check-ins, through employer brand or social content or maybe you just don’t have a strategy in place. Again, no wrong answers here. We’re just curious to know where our audience is. Oh, let’s go ahead. I’m going to give you a little bit longer on that. Sorry about that. And while we’re doing that, let’s jump to the slide maybe. Here we go. Let’s jump to this slide here. How can we really be thoughtful and intentional about keeping our pipeline engaged? What are some of the tips on here?

Molly Floyd (23:50):

Yeah, this is a really important piece, not just to build the pipeline but to engage with the pipeline regularly. So just collecting those resumes, that’s not enough. You need to nurture these interactions and build relationships. That’s what’s going to make it successful in the long run. So stay in touch for those top prospects, consider coffee chats or just quick check-in emails. Even offering some freelance or project based work can help keep them interested. So not all of this engagement needs to be one-on-one interactions as in a phone call chat or an email. But sending company newsletters, any hiring updates, social media posts or webinars can just help keep your brand and company name top of mind for them so that when you’re ready to hire again those candidates feel connected to you and to your mission and culture. And we know that that is really important for candidates to believe in your company’s mission and culture.

(25:02):

And so you want to share that throughout the process and show them consistently that your organization is a great place to work and that just continues to build trust and keeps the pipeline warm. And Lori, the example that I want to share is how in my experience with the hiring process that iHire several years ago at this point, the way that you engaged with me over the course of several weeks and even over a month, it just helped me feel like, okay, she’s working on it, I’m getting updates and I stayed engaged with you and here we are today doing webinars together.

Lori Cole (25:46):

Yeah, you’re a perfect example of a referral. It wasn’t an employee referral but it was an outside referral and when they mentioned your name, they said hire her now. And that was great advice. It was really good. We didn’t want to lose you. I think that that’s what some companies don’t put enough effort into that If they’ve got somebody really good companies think, oh well they’re super interested in our job too, so they’re going to hang out and wait for us if the hiring process takes six weeks or two months. But if they’re really good, they’ve got other companies after them too. So you really need to keep them engaged and make sure that they understand where you are in the process and ask them for updates. You have got to ask them for updates if anything changes on their side too. Let’s jump back to our poll results here. Alright, A lot of people do the recruiter. That’s great social. It’s pretty evenly split here. That’s good. Regular email updates. That’s good. Alright, let’s get to a slide about our, iHire 360 Bobbo. Can you tell us a little bit more about this? I know that we’ve talked about it early, we’ve talked about it sprinkled throughout the presentation, but give us the rundown on this.

Robert Oakley (27:24):

Sure. And there’s some bullet points in front of you that you can read, but I want to tell a little bit more like this. I think it was over 50% that said you don’t have a strategy and the other 50% could probably improve and some of you probably are nailing it and could be teaching this webinar right now. But the idea here is that if you don’t have a career site, you don’t have a way for anybody to visit your website and pipeline the resume, apply for the job that you actually have open and if you do have a career site, but that career site is simply saying send an email to HR at and then when that email gets there, it’s good in the moment, but if they’re not relevant to the opening right now it’s buried and gone, you have a management issue.

(28:11):

And what iHire 360 really does is just it solves that career site problem. If you don’t have one, it gives you one if you have one, but it’s sending a resume to a form that lives in a database somewhere that’s maybe an email notification and is really hard to get back to that person in the future, it solves that as well because it sends everybody into your iHire account. You now have an applicant tracking system and you can now go back six months, nine months, one year, two years, you can organize, manage, communicate. So I hired 360 really just for that small business that does not have a modernized approach to accepting and collecting resume to branding themselves as a great place to work to having a place for those resumes to come in and for them to organize them and communicate with them.

(29:01):

It solves that. Meanwhile, it’s also giving you maximum job boost for that immediate need resume database access. So this was a product that I was really, really fortunate to get to be on the group that helped build it. So was Molly. And from my perspective, every once in a while you get a perfect solution for your customer and this is what I get to bring to them and it’s been monumental in terms of how we’re able to modernize small business in their pipelining approach. I think Lori will speak to it later. Myself and my colleagues love to talk about this and we love to show how it can work specifically and customized for you. So for any of you that don’t have a career site or don’t have a good pipeline management system, talk to us and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you.

Lori Cole (29:51):

Yes, there’s a Calendly link in your webinar platform on your screen somewhere. You can just click that Calendly link and schedule a time with an account executive and they can go over this with you. I know that this has had rave reviews so far. It’s kind of a newer product for us, but the people that are engaging with it are just loving what it does and we’ve had a lot of actions, so we would really encourage everybody to check this out. All right, let’s do a quick recap. Bobbo of all of our takeaways and all the things we learned today.

Robert Oakley (30:36):

Well absolutely. I think we’ve learned here that if you’re not pipelining, it’s something you need to be doing. We all want to move from that transactional reactive approach to filling a position to be like a position pops up. Well first thing I’m going to do is go tap into my pipeline and see what I got. So it enables you to be proactive and contact candidate qualified candidates and hire faster. Everybody should have one. If this sounds daunting again, talk to us. 360 will take care of it for you. Build your pipeline with past applicants, with talent that you find in your resume database and other resume databases. And that’s something to consider as well. You can source talent if you have access to resume databases proactively and start bucketing them from current employees a hundred percent. We’ve talked about that. Employee referrals and anyone in your network and those really good employees that move on to bigger and better because they will come back, engage with them regularly, meaning you don’t have to do too much, but you should be saying, hi, I just want to let you know that you still exist over here and when the right opportunity comes, I’m going to see if it’s a good time for you.

(31:52):

That feels good. No candidate doesn’t like to not hear that. And it goes directly against what their typical experience is out there, which is I apply, I never hear back. So if they get a little email once in a while saying, Hey, you’re still on our radar, that feels pretty good. If you’re a candidate and maintain a strong employer brand and reputation, I cannot stress that enough in this day and age. You have got to tell people why you’re a great place to work and most of you are. And if you’re not telling people that, then you’re getting less applicants and the applications you’re getting are not nearly as qualified because you’re losing it to the person across the street that is.

Lori Cole (32:31):

Now I know Bobbo that we have the, iHire 360 for maybe small businesses that don’t their own applicant tracking system or applicant management program. So we’ve got 360 for that. But then for the larger businesses that might be on the call, how do we interface with some of their applicant tracking systems? We have like 50 or I’m not sure of the number of that, but could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Robert Oakley (33:03):

Yeah, that’s even more. And if you have an A TS and they’re typically quite expensive, ours is not by the way, we want to be able to integrate with you as best we can. So we want anything you’re doing in your a TS job posting wise to be refresh and reflected daily over on your iHire side. We want you to be able to choose the jobs that you want to promote and we want to be able to send those applicants directly back into your a TS because that is where you are managing your applicant pool. So yeah, we have a solution for mid-market and larger small business that really helps them leverage what they’re already using. Sometimes people have a great a TS but not a good career page. We can actually provide you a career page or at least get your job postings onto your career page. A lot of people will have a nice writeup, but then it’s just an apply form for a general apply form. We can help make that where all your jobs could actually be applied for individually. So talk to us, everybody is different and we will tailor a solution that works well for you.

Lori Cole (34:10):

Alright, very good. We are at the q and a section of the program now, so this is kind of the open forum for all of our presenters. So if someone feels like that question is very well suited for them, please answer it. But everybody should feel free to jump in here and especially on the attendee chat, I always love the q and a section on the attendee chat because people are making suggestions for what they do. So the first one is how do you know if your recruitment spend is actually working? We really don’t have a good way to track success.

Molly Floyd (34:56):

That’s a good one and I’ll take this one. Our team works closely with employers to help monitor and track success, especially related to ROI and the spend. So it can be tricky without the right metrics. iHire 360 and many of our other products as well, support metrics that are important to monitor, like impressions, clicks, supplies, that can all help determine how much it costs for hire. Our hiring success team works with you to review goals and performance, adjust the strategy in real time to pivot and to impact performance so that we can see the best in those metrics. So yeah, those are the key things to be looking at while you’re determining if your spend is working or not in the right place.

Lori Cole (35:57):

And are we still doing the regular business reviews with people so that they know it’s a setup call and they know where they are and how their money is getting spent and what that ROI is?

Molly Floyd (36:12):

Yes, we do offer business reviews depending on our customer’s preferences and needs. The timing of them differ, but we have a lot of data that our team provides and if we don’t have it available in the platform, we work with our insights team to figure out a way to get the right thing to our customers in order to track what we need to.

Lori Cole (36:42):

Alright, very good. How often should we follow up with candidates in our database without being annoying because we don’t want to come across as spammy.

Robert Oakley (36:57):

I mean I can take this, it’s put yourself in their shoes and that’s the biggest thing. If you applied for a job and you were really interested in it and you wanted to work for that company and you didn’t get it or maybe you just gave the resume, they don’t have a job that’s open, what would you want? And I think that’ll help answer that question and I would say every three months and I would be curious to hear what Molly and Lori would say and even our audience, but that to me is every three months just a bit of a message saying you’re still in our pipeline and we see you and there’s some other tactics that people will use as well to continue to promote and show their company culture. I dunno, I just had a thought. I don’t know what all the HR people think out there, but how cool would it be if you actually had some event that your company was doing and you invited your top pipeline candidates that you don’t have a job for in this moment to come and join you for an hour or do something like that?

(38:03):

A lot wouldn’t come, but that would go a lot way in really portraying your culture and keeping their interest is wow, that place would be awesome if I worked there.

Lori Cole (38:12):

That’s a great idea. If your company had a happy hour or something you mentioned earlier, inviting people like Boomerang employees or people that have left the company back to the company picnics so that they can talk to people and maintain those relationships. I think that that is so important. We have done that at iHire where we’ve had past employees get invited back to the annual picnics or the Christmas parties and it’s good to see them. It’s good to see that they’re enjoying their new role, but it always just leaves that door open to say, Hey, if things ever change with you, you’re always welcome to come back. Under what circumstances should you take someone out of your talent pipeline?

Molly Floyd (39:09):

This is a good question too because we’ve talked so much about the importance of building it and so it might feel wrong to think that at some point you might need to take someone out of it, but there are times you want to keep it clean and fresh and relevant so as candidates don’t respond after multiple attempts or there’s been some form of communication that they’ve changed industries, either an updated resume or a direct message to you that may call for the need to remove them and hopefully there’s such a relationship established that if they, well as I’m talking out loud, maybe this isn’t that use case, but if someone expresses disinterest then there’s really no need. If they’re not interested in the company, it’s not a culture fit, then get ‘em out of there. But if you have established a relationship with a candidate and it comes to the point at some time in the journey that they decide that they’re no longer interested because they’ve accepted a position maybe somewhere else, then you can remove them too. So just keeping it cleaned up, it’s less for you to go through at the time when you need to.

Lori Cole (40:39):

Alright. What are some creative ways to incentivize employee referrals? I’ll speak to that because I know that we had an initiative that iHire a few years back where we were really pushing for candidate, I’m sorry, employee referrals. Because when you think about it, if you have good employees, they probably hang out in a universe of good people as well. And if they’re happy at work and they are excited about what they’re doing, they’re excited about your company mission and about the company, those employee referrals are golden. We did do an incentive. I think that we still do an incentive and I don’t know if it’s $500 or a thousand dollars, but if you refer someone to the company and they’re hired then and I think they have to stick around 90 days or six months, you’ll want to put some sort of a timeline on there but that it’s just a really good way to get people to start thinking about their network of folks and who might be interested. Bobbo or Molly, do you have anything to add to that?

Molly Floyd (42:02):

The thing that I’ll add, and I think it came up in the comment section, how to put it out there that you’re looking for referrals With our company as a position opens, we send it out to all associates and say, if you know someone that would be a good fit, let the hiring manager know. So that’s a really simple way just to build that into the process and then you can immediately start collecting those referrals and if they’re not a great fit for that open position, then you can pipeline them for perhaps a future role.

Lori Cole (42:41):

Alright. What about adding video or photos to our career pages? If we’re a government contractor and many of our job locations are secure facilities that would not allow you to allow filming inside, are there any suggestions that you would have instead? I think that off the top of my head, I would say if you have employee picnics or things that you do with the employee’s family or Christmas parties and if your people are allowed to be photographed or videoed, that might be a good time to ask for some testimonials or just get some fun pictures or you don’t have to do a video. It’s nice if you do a video, but if you don’t have to and they don’t have to be extremely well-produced, you can just give somebody a cell phone and say, Hey, record a video about why you like working here. Any other suggestions on what people could do?

Molly Floyd (43:47):

That’s what came to my mind too, Lori. Were testimonials. We will have employers just share quotes with a first name and maybe last initial and with a picture or just that could be enough if you are not able to do the photographs or videos.

Lori Cole (44:07):

I do like that style. I think it’s pretty popular right now, just kind of the handheld short, informal type of capture of content.

Lori Cole (44:18):

Yeah, nothing fancy. It doesn’t have to be highly produced.

Robert Oakley (44:23):

Yeah, I would think just there are things you could probably show that aren’t confidential, but certainly being really prominent with your core values and just being able to portray those things without maybe showing faces or showing behind the scenes areas. You’d have to get a little bit creative, but it could be done.

Lori Cole (44:49):

Alright. Is it better to call, text or email a candidate that may be of interest to you?

Molly Floyd (44:58):

All of the above.

Lori Cole (45:00):

That’s what I would say too.

Molly Floyd (45:01):

Yeah, you need to change it up. Pick one to start with. Maybe an email if there’s no response, a phone call or text and follow up in different ways. Different people have different preferences. All three of those ways of communication are options within our platform to directly interact with candidates who have opted into texting if they’re interested in that. But you definitely want to try all avenues and kind of go back and forth between them to do your outreach.

Lori Cole (45:41):

I think it’s a generational thing and there’s the different generations like to be contacted in different ways. So I think all of those things should be in your toolbox and you just decide what is going to work. And if texting works for one certain candidate, keep texting them or if calling works for somebody else, keep calling them. So try to mold your outreach based on what you think their preferences are or what their proven preferences are.

Robert Oakley (46:18):

And then in terms of pipelining, if someone gives you their resume and they look like they’re decent but they’re not for a position that you have right now, try to have a quick interaction with them that will be human to human interaction and let them know it’s received and you’re going to keep it. And if you can do that, you can also quickly say, Hey, I’m going to reach out to you here and there, what’s your preference? And you can note that and try to follow it.

Lori Cole (46:50):

Alright. I’m very curious about your database and where you find talent. This person hires for dental practices, which is very niche and we do have, iHire dental as one of our 57 sites. My struggle is finding a place to source talent that has a large database of dental candidates. So Bobbo, isn’t it the case that if you reach out to an account executive, they can give you an idea about the number of people within your geographic location that might be a good fit for the job?

Robert Oakley (47:29):

Yeah, absolutely. We’re very transparent and we’ve been around for 26 years. We have 57 niche communities. If think you found us through, iHire dental, how did you and why did you find us? That’s the same way candidates find us. The big job boards are everywhere. Everybody’s been exposed to them, they’ve all probably tried them. A lot of people, a lot of candidates haven’t had great experiences there. They’re looking for a more industry focused, curated community. Those are the candidates that we have in our database. It’s going to be very contingent upon the job title location across the country. But that’s something we can review with you, take a look together, see what we have, and then strategize.

Lori Cole (48:18):

Alright. Now here’s a very technical question that we might have to ask someone else about and get back to this person, but our company uses ADP’s recruiting platform. How would this integrate with a DP or would it replace their recruiting function?

Robert Oakley (48:39):

Yeah, another good question. So when we start talking with a potential customer, one of the first things we do is identify the a TS. And we have a team here that will go do full integration capability research and with a DP, that’s something that we would want to look at. And whoever you are out there, feel free to connect with us afterwards or schedule a time and we’ll get you good answers on that. The idea is not often to replace the a TS, it’s to feed things into your a TS if you’re happy with your A TS. So we would want to try to make that as seamless as possible and every a TS has unique settings and capabilities, so we need to look at that and see what we can and can’t do with each one.

Lori Cole (49:28):

Alright. Is it worth trying to engage with someone who seems like they’re happily employed?

Molly Floyd (49:36):

Yes. Yes,

Lori Cole (49:38):

I think so too. I think so too. Everybody wants to feel like they’re wanted and you don’t know when that happy employment, when that changes and when something happens that that person will think, well, this company has been trying to recruit me for a little while, maybe I should reach out to them and just explore what they have right now.

Molly Floyd (50:04):

Yeah. One of the tips that we share with employers is just selling yourself. I mean that’s really what you’re doing in your job description. It’s more than just the day-to-day activities. You’re really wanting to talk about why you’re a good place to work. And so when you engage with that candidate who is passively looking, they have their resume available, it’s worth engaging them and sharing about your company and they may learn something about you during that interaction that really does interest them and you may have found your next best fit just with that interaction. So it’s definitely worth reaching out.

Lori Cole (50:48):

That’s perfect. I’m going to do one more question and I’m sorry we didn’t get to all of your questions. Everybody has been so engaged in asking us such great questions. I’m glad that we allowed this extra time so that we could answer them. Last question, do we have a pipeline? We don’t have a pipeline strategy in place. What would be the easiest way to get one going if we have just limited time and resources?

Robert Oakley (51:18):

Well, that’s why I hired 360 was developed, to be honest with you. The easiest way is have a discussion with one of us and let’s take a look at your business and see, but it’s get a career page up. Start advertising your brand, give you access to the resume database so you can set aside an hour, do some searches, find some people that you’d like, add them to your pipeline. It’s a really good starting point if you don’t have anything and it’s foundational. So you’ll build up on that over time and it’s best to just have a conversation because it’s going to be unique to every business.

Lori Cole (51:57):

And that AI sourcing is really going to help build your pipeline quickly with little or no effort on your part.

Robert Oakley (52:08):

And just to speak to that super quick, the AI sources sourcing is essentially you have a job posting and you would post that to advertise. You also would’ve access to resume database. So you would go start searching and looking for the people in the middle right away. As soon as that job is posted, our AI will go ahead and do that search for you, bring you up to 10 immediate matches. You’ll go through and go, yep, yep, nope, nope. Yep, yep, yep. And then you’ve got six people right away to start with. And that is the beginning of instantly targeting prime candidates for a particular posting. And if those six don’t work out, they also become a part of your pipeline right away

Lori Cole (52:50):

And they take into consideration your feedback. So if you gave a thumbs up to six of them, they’re going to start looking for more. The AI will start looking for more candidates like those six.

Robert Oakley (53:04):

Yeah, it’s a learning model so that we’re going to try to understand what you like and don’t like as you go through it and get better with the matching.

Lori Cole (53:15):

Alright, well thank you both so much. Don’t forget attendees, there is a certification widget on your screen, so this would be the time to click it and download that certificate of completion for your HRCI and SHRM activity IDs. So thank you all so much for being here today and submitting the questions. We just love it when we have such an engaged audience. Another huge shout out to Molly and Bobbo, thank you both for being here today. Exceptional job, especially with these questions.

Robert Oakley (53:53):

It is truly my pleasure. I love helping people get better what they do, especially for the small business that are wearing so many hats. So thanks for the time.

Lori Cole (54:04):

I can tell that just comes out naturally in you. Bobbo. For those who are attending who are from the small business community, make sure you check out that iHire 360 widget on your screen or go ahead and click that Calendly link so that you can talk to an account representative. If any other questions come to mind, you can reach out to our customer success department there. Let me see it’s not on the screen, so you can reach out to them at [email protected]. We’ll get you connected to the right people. We’re also going to be answering a bunch of these questions in an article that will come out in the next few days along with our survey results. So keep an eye out for that. Remember your certification widget, make sure that you click that now and you’re going to get a recording of this tomorrow. So keep an eye out for that. Thank you all again for being here today and I hope you all have a great rest of your day.

Molly Floyd (55:10):

Thanks Lori. Bye all.

Robert Oakley (55:12):

Thanks everybody.