If you are a SME or SMB and are looking into slashing your recruitment costs and most of all, you’d like to find exceptional quality hires, you might like to continue reading.
Recruitment software provider Zartis conducted a research that shows that the UK are falling behind compared to the US when it comes to using the web and social media for what is now known as social recruiting.
LinkedIn is still the most popular social network among recruiters and companies looking to hire new staff.
One quarter of US companies directly advertise job vacancies on the popular site (25%) while only 14% of UK companies place job ads on LinkedIn.
Twitter usage for recruiting purposes is lower compared to leading social media network, LinkedIn. Only 9% of UK companies use the microblogging site to promote vacancies, whereas 23% of US companies are actively tweeting about job openings.
According to Zartis, these findings could be associated to the fact that more US companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS) which often offer an automatic posting feature to Twitter. Most employee referral programs also result in an increase in the use of Twitter for recruitment purposes.
Despite its 750m users, Facebook is the least-used network. Only one UK company out of those surveyed lists jobs on Facebook. The US number is also low, with four companies posting job openings on Facebook.
An encouraging finding 61% of UK companies are advertising jobs on their own website. However, only 11% are using an applicant tracking system, or anything other than email, to receive and manage job applications.
Looking at the US, a slightly higher amount of companies (68%) advertise new roles on their websites. Notably, their use of applicant tracking systems is more than double than UK usage at 23%.
Social recruiting is a sector with massive potential for growth, and the survey results suggests it’s only the beginning.
How was the research conducted?
Zartis used the Sunday Times FastTrack 100 list for UK companies, and the Red Herring top companies list for US companies. Zartis selected every second company on the list to get to 100, then visited every site and analysed the companies’ use of web and social media for recruitment.
I’d like to see social recruiting software like Zartis to be used more and more as they empower SMEs worldwide with much needed tools to save on recruitment fees while helping with finding great quality candidates. Zartis has also put together other resources such as an interesting ebook about “Five great online recruitment strategies” and a free Social media policy download on their site.
Find out more:
Social recruiting software (Zartis.com)
Download the Social recruiting report for more information
WordPress jobs listing plugin to supercharge your recruitment (playfolio.com)
Image via CrunchBase
So, word is out, you have to jump on the “social recruiting” (definition by Wikipedia) badwagon to be keeping up pace with the current trends.
It’s not only a matter of keeping up with trends, but more of fulfilling your hiring needs with the best possible people around.
A common problem to lost of companies is that great people are probably already in employment and might also be passively looking for a job, balancing their options.
Well, you need to be on top of your game to snatch these great people up before anybody else will do so.
In light of this, I’m sure you currently use some sort of ATS (application tracking system). A lot of them I think would be quite similar in their offer and the choice would probably be down to personal preference. Leading ATS like Jobvite, include some social integration and employee referrals, which I assume, come connected to a hefty price tag, since there is no way to see their pricing on the website without registering or contacting sales.
That for me is already a major put off. I quite like The Resumator, they’ve recently revamped their website, which looks good, and also I like they’re quarky and funky approach and the fact that they show their plans and pricing. That said, the basic plan starts at 49$ with 3 jobs available. So it’s definitely not cheap, but you can try for free for 14 days.
So, you might be thinking now, what’s WordPress to do with this blog post? So far, nothing. But I’m coming to it.
One of the most innovative as well as seriously well designed app is Zartis. They’ve been in the market for a couple of years with their flagship product, HR Locker, a self service HR software solution to manage annual leave and employees details. Few months ago they’ve launched their latest – and coolest – addition to their SaaS portfolio, a social recruting software.
So, I obviously like their style and also I like their pricing plans. You can sign up for FREE and get 1 job with this plan or optionally, you can sign up for their PRO plan and get 20 jobs with it.
I think it sounds very reasonable compared to not knowing the price (and being forced to talk to sales) or the basic $50!!
Anyhow, another couple of points which will set the guys from Zartis apart from the rest of social recruiting software providers.
1. They offer a super easy to install widget for your website, fully customasible, which will sit on your site and show that “we’re hiring” and allow applicants to apply from it directly with either a CV or LinkedIn profile.
2.They seem to believe so much in what they’re doing that they’ve built a FREE jobs listing plugin for WordPress users. As far as I know, nobody else has anything similar on offer and knowing that are almost 60 million other WordPress sites, I’d say they can’t go wrong with this. A lot of business sites nowadays are made with WordPress and using this plugin will surely make the hiring process. According to Zartis you can “Easily add job listings and secure candidate management to your WordPress site.” It’s basically super simple and straight forward and lets you quickly and easily create your own jobs page and automate much of the recruitment process. One feature I particulary find useful and enjoyed is that it also allows you to automatically post your vacancies to Twitter and Facebook. If you want to see an example of the little widget you check out the Zartis website.
In case you’ve missed the link above, you can now download their free WordPress job manager plugin .
So these are my considerations. Are you a WordPress user? Are you using any tools, software, apps to streamline your recruitment process?
Have you joined the social recruitment revolution? I’d like to hear from you, whatever you’re doing!
May be of interest:
- Social recruiting, apps and cloud computing (hriscom.com)
- John Dennehy on the benefits of moving to the cloud (gamesindustryemployment.wordpress.com)
- Social recruiting survey 2011 results (hriscom.com)
Tech entrepreneur John Dennehy talks about innovation
Today, I’m going to write a more serious post than usual. “Serious” doesn’t mean not fun or not worth to read or watch the video. So, give it a go! Last Thursday, Microsoft Ireland and DCU organised a workshop in Dublin. The event aimed at developing awareness and skill set surrounding the Microsoft Azure platform. The lunch seminar included speakers from Microsoft and from industry experts and users of the platform.
John Dennehy, was among the speakers at the event. John’s has already had a few successful startups in the tech space, including web development company Zartis (the original one), and game developer Upstart Games. Assembly Point, his latest business venture, offers two products, for the HR/recruitment space. HR Locker, a low cost HR software system solution and an online recruitment solution called Zartis (yes, like his original web development business).Both products are sold as a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, and John sees the global market as being far more accessible than it was in a decade ago.
“The primary difference between now and then is that people are now willing to spend money on online services. Previously there was a lot of hype around Internet services, there was a lot of hype around companies who were bringing out new products in that space, but ultimately two things weren’t happening.
“Firstly, everybody wasn’t using it and consuming those services, especially from a business point of view, and secondly, now there’s an acceptance that you pay for those services online so there’s a whole industry that’s evolving at a massive rate. It’s a massively fast rate in Software as a Service, and it’s companies developing products locally and selling them globally.”
Assembly Point’s first product is HR Locker, a human resources application that allows small to medium enterprises to manage information like annual leave, timesheets, employee records and compliance-based documents, and even to publish a staff handbook and have staff sign it online.
“It keeps all the data in one safe, secure place and they pay a low cost annual fee for it”, explains John.
Zartis.com is John’s recruitment application.
“We want to help companies hire great people without going to recruitment agencies. The cost of our service works out a €600 per year, the cost of the average hire through a recruitment agency is €6,000. So you could hire one person through a recruitment agency, or use our service for ten years, and that’s a comparison I want people to think of.”
For both products, John has deliberately made the signup process as quick as possible; with the sheer wealth of information on the web, he is aware that people’s attention spans are limited.
“Sixty percent, typically of the people who land on the front page of your website will leave and they never actually go any further than that, and that’s across the sector. “Visitors are very transient, it’s a very ephemeral attention span people on the web have, so you have to catch their attention immediately and you have to try and have a compelling call to action and convert them into a customer as quick as you possibly can. Every single time barrier and obstacle that you put in their way, you will see a fall off.”
As a participant in Microsoft’s Bizspark programme for startups, both the Zartis and HR Locker applications are hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, and John believes that moving to the cloud has allowed him to focus on the important elements of his business.
“Essentially what cloud computing does, is it removes the platform layer as a distraction from us so we can focus on building our application, working our marketing message and managing our customers. “We no longer have to worry about scalability, we don’t have to put NTR architecture in place with multiple web servers and multiple databases and hardware accelerators, you know? Nobody should ever have to worry about that.
“There’s probably about five companies in the world who will take care of that in ten years time. It’s probably going to be the Microsoft’s, the Google’s, the Amazon’s, and the IBM’s, and that’s what they’re very good at, providing that platform. We want to build our application on their platform.”
Security is a frequently voiced concern when a move to the cloud is mooted, but as John points out, the platform provider has access to a far greater level of security resources than a small software developer does, and this again allows the SME to focus on their product and their customer.
“Security is a key issue for us, we have a very sensitive data so we went with the Windows Azure platform, largely because of the security around that. Microsoft has spend over $20 billion rolling out their data centre; they look after the firewalls and the software upgrades.
“They can provide attention to detail and security resources that no medium size company could put in place. So security is absolutely essential, it’s a very important thing, and in choosing which provider to go with you have to rely on a partnership with them to provide that world-class security.”
Although the cloud has made things easier in one sense, John is acutely aware that in a global marketplace, although there is abundant opportunity, there is also fierce competition.
“Your competitors are not local guys. People always look over their shoulder to see who’s their local competitor; that’s no longer relevant. “To compete effectively on the Internet, you have to be absolutely top of your game, because if you’re not giving the best service, somebody else will, so that’s a pretty profound change.”
What are your thoughts on cloud computing and web apps using it? Go on, leave your thought here!
Original post published on New Tech Post
and reposted on Job in the game industry blog
Image by carveconsulting via Flickr
At the beginning of June LinkedIn announced that they would launch “Apply with LinkedIn” button by the end of the month. Although a bit later than promised, LinkedIn has now officially launched their latest social recruiting tool.
I think the idea behind the button has potential, seen all the talk with regards to CV, resume and the likes being outdated.
Mashable writes that Technical Product Manager Jonathan Seitel said on the company’s blog:
“Our goal with Apply With LinkedIn is to help every professional put their best foot forward, anywhere across the web when they take that leap to apply for a new position.”
In my opinion there are few notable key things:
For companies:
The LinkedIn profile offers a standardized view of all candidates, making screening of candidates easier but highly impersonal.
The click of a button makes it too easy for “desperate job seeker” to apply for a huge amount of jobs for which they might not even be qualified. This could prove to be a problem for recruiters when screening candidates.
This is a good enough reason to integrate the use of the LinkedIn button with an applicant tracking system (ATS) or you will end up trebling the amount of work you’ ll have to go through when selecting candidates.
If you don’t have an ATS implemented yet, you better start thinking about it and try a social recruiting tool.
For job seekers:
You can manage all your applications made through the button with a “saved jobs” tab. This is useful in keeping track of your applications.
Also, once you applied for a job, you’re given the chance to contact your connections who work at the company, and ask for a referral or recommendation.
Related articles
- Social recruiting can help your job search (humanresourcechina.com)
- The state of social recruiting 2011 [infographic] (hrsoftwarechina.com)
- Led by LinkedIn, Social Recruiting Continues to Grow [Infographic] (readwriteweb.com)
- How to use LinkedIn: 5 tips (hriscom.com)
- Apply with LinkedIn (zartis.com)
I guess you’ve probably come across this data already, but I thought I’d share some graphs provided by Jobvite with you. I thinks colorful charts always help.
The SHRM published a similar report to the Jobvite’s one couple of weeks ago, with pretty similar results as well.
Social recruiting is quickly becoming a reality and is no longer just a buzz word. Companies have to face this truth and equip themselves with the right tools for the talent war. In today’s world, it’s harder than ever to find a job and and even harder than that, to find the perfect match between a job and a prospective candidate.
Social recruiting looks at filling this gap and enables employers to make a thorough and more effective search with enhanced results: the dream employee.
Jobvite’s survey results support this view with actual numbers.
The survey was conducted with US companies.
Unsurprisingly, the most used social network for recruiting purposes, is LinkedIn.
Followed by Facebook and Twitter.
Job seekers should note that 45% of companies use the candidates online profile for search.
So don’t let them find you unprepared.
Also, companies are going to invest more in social media for recruitment in the future. So, if you’re looking for a job, check out this post about do’s and don’ts on social media for job search.
