recruiting Archives

Think Hiring Woes Are due Entirely to a Lack of Candidates? New Report Suggests Real Issue is Sluggish Response to Applicants

by Mike Seidle | Apr 6, 2022 | Blog, recruiting

INDIANAPOLIS (April 6, 2022) – – Regardless of who you talk to, employers are having a terrible time finding qualified people to fill open positions, citing more jobs than candidates. However, a new report published by PivotCX and JobSync suggests the issue is not simply a lack of candidates, it’s the slow response time to jobseekers who often wait weeks for a response to online applications. A simple change in strategy, responding to candidates via text within minutes of applying, can lead to a monumental shift in hiring success.

The recruiting benchmark report, 2022 Best-in-Class Candidate Engagement, tracked 500,000 job candidates in seven key industries obtained through job board applications to understand the impact of SMS text responses on candidate engagement. The biggest finding: by immediately connecting with applicants via text increased engagement—human-to-human conversations—by as much as 70 percent. The majority of jobseekers reached a live recruiter within 10 minutes of applying.

“That is a gamechanger for employers and candidates,” says Mike Seidle, PivotCX co-founder and CTO. “This near real-time engagement gives employers the opportunity to have the first pick of the best candidates. The majority of people accept the first offer so the sooner an employer can connect with interested candidates the better. For candidates, they get the immediate gratification of a human response instead of sitting in the dark for weeks wondering where their application is in the hiring process.”

The study analyzed the impact of SMS text across key industries, including education, health care, manufacturing, warehousing, personal care, trucking, and technology. The increase in engagement was about 60 percent across the board, with the highest engagement rate coming in education, with 70.1 percent of candidates responding to the text.

Another key takeaway is how quickly candidates responded to the initial text from the company recruiting. This ranged from a few seconds to several minutes based on industry. For example, healthcare, technology, and trucking candidates had an average response time to a text of around four minutes. Personal care candidates—hair stylists, cosmetologists and barbers—typically responded within 10.5 minutes.

Jobseekers’ rapid response to text messages is a clear message the days of waiting games are over, says Leah Daniels, chief commercial officer at JobSync. “Ninety-three percent of U.S. workers have smart phones and about 70 percent are using them to apply for jobs. Once they’ve put their hand in the air by applying on a job board, they’re ready to be acknowledged and engage with recruiters. In response, recruiters need to respond in real time and start moving people through the hiring process. Those who can deliver the immediate gratification within minutes of receiving an application, will have a huge advantage over other employers,” Daniels says.

PivotCX and JobSync conducted the study in part because of the profound difficulties recruiters face in accessing and connecting with applicants. For a variety of reasons, people don’t respond to phone calls or emails, frustrating recruiters.

Says Seidle, “Recruiters have to engage with as many candidates as they can as quickly as they can. To do that, they have to use the preferred method of communication, texting. Ninety percent of people open a text message within three minutes. Compare that to email where only 20 percent are opened. A simple change in strategy will accelerate the hiring cycle time from an average of 42 days to less than seven and increase the productivity of recruiters exponentially.”

Click here for a complete summary of the 2022 Best-in-Class Candidate Engagement recruiting benchmark report.

About PivotCX

PivotCX’ candidate engagement platform accelerates candidate flow and human-to-human conversations that empower recruiters to make better hires faster through live SMS texting. At the same time, PivotCX replaces the long, opaque hiring process for jobseekers with immediate, personalized gratification upon applying for a job, enabling them to land a desired job quickly and with confidence and transparency in the process. PivotCX’ platform integrates with many ATS, CRM, and HRIS systems as well as job boards, social media, and career websites, and enables automated and person-to-person conversations via text, email and voice. Data collection and thoughtfully designed, information-laden dashboards complete the SaaS solution that’s quickly becoming the go-to tool for recruiters. Learn more about PivotCX here.

About JobSync

JobSync empowers talent acquisition professionals to get more quality candidates from their existing solutions be emulating the ATS application process directly on job sites, creating a seamless direct apply experience for applicants, doubling the candidate volume. JobSync automates the data connections in the talent acquisition providing integrated direct apply solutions, job distribution, and seamless integrations between job boards ecosystem, ATS, and other systems used by recruiters. JobSync’s solution reduces friction for candidates, recruiters, employers, and vendors. Learn more about JobSync and how the company improves the efficiency of talent acquisition teams here.

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Media Contact: Melanie Lux, 803-331-4794 or press@pivotcx.io

Find out: PivotCX helps your company respond with a live person in seconds to candidate inquiries.

Want to learn more about how PivotCX can improve your applicant flow? Request a demo.

Workforce: Rethinking Talent Models

by Dominic Antonio | Mar 22, 2022 | Blog, Hiring, recruiting

Originally published by

Deloitte Insights

Not only have workforce demographics changed over the last 30 years—collectively making the workforce older and more diverse—but the very social contract between employers and employees has altered dramatically as well. Organizations now have a broad continuum of options for finding workers, from hiring traditional full-time employees to availing themselves of managed services and outsourcing, independent contractors, gig workers, and crowdsourcing. These newer workforce types are available to solve problems, get work done, and help leaders build more flexible and nimble organizations (figure 2). Alternative workers are growing in number; currently, 35 percent of the US workforce is in supplemental, temporary, project, or contract-based work. This percentage is growing as well—for example, the freelance workforce is growing faster than the total workforce, up 8.1 percent compared to 2.6 percent of all employees.

As labor-sourcing options increase, it opens up the possibility for more efficiency and creativity in composing an organization’s workforce. But with more options often comes more complexity. Employers should not only consider how roles are crafted when pairing humans with machines, but also the arrangement of their human workforce and what type(s) of employment are best suited to obtain the creativity, passion, and skill sets needed for the work at hand. Orchestrating this complex use of different workforce segments might require new models. It could fundamentally change our view of the employee life cycle from the traditional “attract, develop, and retain” model to one where the key questions are how organizations should access, curate, and engage workforces of all types (see the sidebar, “Beyond the employee life cycle”).

Organizations have an opportunity to optimize the organizational benefits of each type of talent relationship while also providing meaningful and engaging options for a wide variety of worker needs and motivations. However, making the most of the opportunity could require a complete rethinking of talent models in a way that allows organizations to carefully match people’s motivations and skills with the organization’s work needs.

Access. How do you tap into capabilities and skills across your enterprise and the broader ecosystem? This includes sourcing from internal and external talent marketplaces and leveraging and mobilizing on- and off-balance sheet talent.

Curate. How do you provide employees—ecosystem talent—and teams with the broadest and most meaningful range of development? This includes work experiences that are integrated into the flow of their work, careers, and personal lives.

Engage. How do you interact with and support your workforces, business teams, and partners to build compelling relationships? This includes multidirectional careers in, across, and outside of the enterprise; and for business leaders and teams, providing insights to improve productivity and impact while taking advantage of new ways of teaming and working.

Imagine being able to engage your applicants within five minutes of application, then engaged in human-to-human interaction starting in seconds. PivotCX can make this process happen. See our 90-second video explaining how PivotCX can help you get to the right talent fast so you can Pick First.

Webinar Recording: Candidate Engagement Benchmarks Report

by Dominic Antonio | Mar 18, 2022 | Blog, Podcast, recruiting

Download the Full Candidate Engagement Report here.

In 2021 67.24% of job applicants used mobile devices to apply for jobs. That asks two questions: first, is your application mobile-friendly? and secondly, are you engaging with them quickly enough?

JobSync and PivotCX have banded together to reveal our new joint Benchmark Report on best-in-class candidate engagement rates. We’re covering top industries like healthcare, education, manufacturing, trucking, and more.

If you feel like you’re getting ghosted too many times or losing good talent to competitors then this is the webinar for you.

What we will uncover:

Engagement rates and stats for top industries [including specified job titles]
What top companies are doing to get double and triple and candidate volume
How leveraging SMS within your existing automations can fill your funnel faster

Imagine receiving an application from a qualified candidate, contacting said candidate via SMS, and having a response within 9 seconds. You read that correctly – 9 seconds. And then imagine that at scale.

Download the full report here

Hosts

Mike Seidle is a serial entrepreneur and software developer with deep experience in HR Tech. Mike heads up product operations and product development for PivotCX. He brings over 30 years of experience in marketing, software development, product and user experience design, and a proven track record of leading technology-driven teams.

Leah Daniels has held a number of roles in the recruiting technology industry, including SVP of Strategy and the GM of SaaS Products at Appcast, Director of Product Strategy at Monster and Director of Global Alliances and Business Development at Bullhorn. Earlier in her career, Leah spent 10 years at ZoomInfo leading sales operations, product management, national account, business development, and data services. She currently resides in MA with her son, dogs, and husband.

The 5 Problems that Keep CEOs Up at Night

by Dominic Antonio | Mar 3, 2022 | Blog, Podcast, recruiting

Originally published by Industry Week

Ten years ago, we surveyed manufacturing CEOs to determine what kept them up at night. Coming on the heels of the Great Recession, concerns about another economic downturn were naturally top of mind. Worries about supply chain challenges—in the aftermath of the first significant global supply chain disruption and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March 2011—were second.

We informally surveyed CEOs again this October to gauge their current pain points. Following is a snapshot of top-ranked concerns facing U.S. manufacturing leaders toward the end of 2021.

Talent recruitment and retention. No surprise here—unless you were expecting No. 1 to be supply chain disruptions. What was once a concern is now a crisis. Not only were there almost 900,000 job openings in manufacturing in the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, or about 9% of all private openings, but more than 300,000 manufacturing employees quit their jobs each month this summer. The Great Resignation is altering the global work landscape. On top of the struggle to attract younger workers—those with STEM skills and a general interest in mechanical and technical careers—manufacturers now have to deal with changing generational perceptions of work overall. Millennials and Gen Z are predicted to make up 30% of total employment by 2030.
Global supply chain disruptions. Hiccups in the production and distribution of materials, components and products have become the norm with the rise of global value chains. But today’s crisis, of course, is no hiccup: Jammed ports and supply bottlenecks have been the rule rather than the exception for a year. IHS Markit says that suppliers’ delivery times in the United States and the EU have hit record lengths due to surging demand. Consumer spending on durable goods is up more than 20% in the past year, and widespread supply constraints, including component and labor shortages, exacerbate the issue. In fact, shipping prices from China are up 400% since last year, and wait times for ocean freight up 45%. While some analysts believe that as COVID recedes, capacity constraints and labor shortages will also diminish, IHS Markit says the crunch could last for another 12 months—if not longer.
Commodity and raw material prices. At the heart of much of today’s supply challenge is the shortage of commodities and raw materials, which have driven producer prices up dramatically. It’s hard for manufacturers to plan for growth in the face of unrelenting price spikes. The Federal Reserve’s Global Price Index for All Commodities stands at 167, the highest level in seven years. Moreover, Bloomberg’s index on raw-material spot prices is at a 10-year high. Oil prices are at their highest level since 2014, while according to the Fed, iron and steel prices are at their highest levels ever on the producer price index. Like so many other challenges, this one is not expected to resolve itself any time soon.
Cyber threats. There is one dramatic difference between our CEO survey of 2011 and 2021: rapidly rising concern over cyber-attacks, especially regarding ransomware and malware, that can lead to equipment sabotage and system shutdowns. The Internet of Things has proven to be a dual-edged sword: Networking with the outside world means exposing yourself to the outside world. According to Statista Research and Analysis, there are 10 billion interconnected devices in the world today, which will climb to more than 25 billion by 2030. At least 4 billion are in use across all industries as well as government. This means unless manufacturers turn the clock back to 1990—restricting their employees’ access to email and cell phones and canceling plans to create smart factories and supply chains—their systems are at risk.
General economic and global volatility. Economies across the globe are slowing considerably as the impact of the continuing pandemic (which wave is it now?) continues to plague businesses and consumers worldwide. On top of supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, there’s the specter of inflation. The federal government’s Consumer Price Index for All Urban consumers (CPI-U) is up 5.4% year over year, and according to the United Nations, global food prices are up 33% in the last 12 months. Adjusted for inflation and annualized, food prices around the world are at their highest level since 1960.

And yet … according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, after declining 5% in 2020, corporate profits were up 5% in the first quarter and more than 10% in the second quarter of 2021. Not too shabby considering the growing list of business concerns.

Stephen Gold is president and CEO, Manufacturers Alliance

Webinar: Reactivating Passive Candidates

by Dominic Antonio | Feb 26, 2022 | Blog, Hiring, Podcast

Overview

Many employers are experiencing a labor shortage. The previously inexhaustible pools of active candidates have been drying up. Now is the time for many of them to tap into their reserves to reactivate passive candidates.

Mike and Ric will talk about tapping into employers’ hidden market of previous applicants and reactivating passive candidates. Life happens and the timing might not have been right when they first applied, but right now could be the right time! Refresh your talent pipeline and spark new interest in your previous applicants to fill your current openings.

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