Selecting the ideal candidates has always been a challenging task as it requires reaching out and attracting the best talent. It may sound simple, but it is definitely not an easy task. The HR manager or the recruiter has to conduct several processes to filter the candidates and identify the perfect one before onboarding him or her for the job. If your company is searching for a powerful mobile ready free online ATS to making hiring easy, be sure to start with Recruiteze. Get your free trial today.

Right from day one when a job vacancy gets announced, a seamless journey starts which comprises various approvals, formalities, interviews etc. This journey continues until the closing of the job opening and helps the recruiters understand the candidate pipeline, manage background checks, shortlist candidates, schedule interviews etc.  Without the right strategy, a lot of valuable time and effort is wasted which certainly creates a bad impression of the employer.

In this situation, the recruitment team wants to have a holistic integrated system that empowers them to perform the recruitment processes seamlessly. If your company is also facing problems like these, it’s time to switch over to smart Applicant Tracking Systems or ATS which are designed to optimize your recruitment process.

What Is an ATS?

An ATS, or an applicant tracking system, is software that helps simplify the candidate management processes by keeping all the essential needs of recruitment over a single platform. A free online ATS helps you organize, collect, track, monitor and store everything related to job and candidate data through all hiring stages.

Traditionally, companies usually hired subcontractors or outsourced the hiring process to another third party. This isn’t a smart business move though. You may lose some great potential candidates this way.

Here is where ATS software comes to your rescue. It will help you manage all the complexities revolving around talent acquisition.

Check out this article on the history of ATS

Now, the question is, ‘Does my company really needs an ATS’?

“I have a small company with less than 50 employees, do I really need it?”

Check out an article on the need for ATS in a small company.

Given below is a list of tips that will help you understand the reasons why you need an ATS:

1. All the job postings are uploaded manually

Time is valuable!

It’s a sheer waste of time to manually fill up all job requirements of your organization over the web and social media portals. The same time could be utilized for interviewing and selecting quality candidates rather than posting jobs over the job boards.

2. Unable to track applications from career page/website

Every organization has a career page on their website which displays the open jobs. This work is often done manually. As a result, many organizations fail miserably at updating the career page on time. Some of them even forget to delete job openings after they have been closed.

The situation goes worse when you are unable to track, monitor, or handle the candidate applications for these jobs. You lack the strategy to organize resumes that you have received from the career page.

3. Repetitive login to the respective portals to track the applications 

This really eats up a lot of time!

Logging into web portals and your career page to download the resumes is a tedious job. Moreover, it’s not just the portals you need to crawl but social media sites as well such as LinkedIn which undoubtedly serves as an excellent platform to reach out to the best candidates.

Because the response time is much quicker on these platforms than traditional portals, you definitely want an assistant who can help you track and download all the applications without logging in again and again.

4. Inconsistency in updating candidate information

A tired mind can let an error slip through and thereafter, you’re left wondering “How did that happen?”, “How could I make such a big mistake?”

You get lethargic when you have to scan multiple forms and upload them using lots of different software. Having a different software/tool for every activity can lead to errors.

Remember, human errors can do wonders and blunders too.

5. Too much manual intervention

Excel or spreadsheets are the most common software used by companies to maintain the temporary data regarding job openings. Even if it sounds like an easy thing, it’s certainly not.

You need to fill the entries manually and then apply filtration and scrutinize the process. A single typing error may cause you to lose a potential candidate. Using excel for your recruiting processes such as tracking, filtering, etc requires tedious manual effort. A lot of valuable time is wasted in terms of compilation and collection of data.

Check out this article on why it is time to move away from a recruitment spreadsheet.

6. No analytical metrics

Lack of analysis and strategy can lead to the inefficient execution of the recruitment process. The actual time spent by the recruiter during the complete recruitment procedure is less as a lot of time is consumed over other processes. All this time can be reduced by the use of ATS.

7. Different software for different metrics

Thanks to technology we have different software to cater to different needs and maintaining all these is a daunting task. It leads to more confusion and extra effort, ultimately resulting in a fatigued resource, resulting in errors.

The Importance of Using ATS Technology

ATS will help you streamline your hiring and recruitment efforts by automating certain aspects of the recruitment processes. This will help recruiters spend quality time with the candidates and select the best candidate to onboard.

The best in class and fully customized features offered by an ideal ATS include:

• Mobile-friendly, responsive career page
• Job board integrations and job library
• Advanced search options
• Communication management such as auto-reply, applicant response tracking, and capturing
• Integrated calendar
• Passive applicant database with detailed applicant profiles
• Streamlined workflows and defined user roles
• Unlimited job requisitions and email templates

I know they sound terrific and indeed they are.

Check out some more things which can be done using ATS

Choosing the Right ATS Tool: How It Helps

With each passing day, talent acquisition is becoming more competitive and technology reliant. ATS technology is the perfect answer to deal with the challenges faced by recruiting professionals. ATS makes your organization more efficient in attracting, screening and hiring the right candidate.

An optimized ATS will provide a new dimension to your business by seamlessly engaging and managing best candidates.  Let’s have a look at how ATS helps.

1. Time savings

ATS technology and software help to automate the mundane tasks of recruitment such as job postings, filtering the candidates (basic level filtering), and facilitating lightning-fast communications via email templates which seriously cuts down the time.

2. Better communication & relationship building

Applicant tracking software equips recruiting professionals with amazing relationship management tools that help improve  communications and also cast a dynamic impact over the applicants. ATS offers a desired professional approach for engaging the applicants in a timely and personalized manner. ATS also offers mass email options, one-to-one emails, calendar integration, notes, reminders, a communication log, and everything else that is required to streamline the recruitment process.

3. More actionable data

An ATS offers organizations a unique feature to mine applicant data which helps them make informed decisions regarding hiring positions. The software effortlessly helps recruiters sort and compare the applicants, merge duplicate contacts, and makes it easier to review passive applicant records as well.

4. A better applicant experience

A versatile ATS enables recruiters to reach job seekers over social platforms. It also provides potential candidates with a mobile-friendly career page. Job seekers want companies to make the process of applying easier. An ATS just does what is desired.

5. Manage processes in one place

As discussed above, having different software for different activities is time consuming and can cause frustration as well. An ATS handles all your requirements from job announcement to hiring over a single platform.

Also, by eliminating the need for logging into different systems, an ATS saves you valuable time and helps you make quality hires.

6. Increase efficiency

An ATS helps to combine your talent pool into one single searchable database providing you the best ever interface to access the applicants and pool members and get results in just one search. The advanced search feature ensures that you’re only getting the most relevant candidates.

7. Collect real-time data

Apart from producing internal reports, some customized ATS can deliver reliable source tracking data and deliver labor market statistics. This enables you to know the demographic locations the applications are coming from so that you can strategize accordingly.

Winding Up

An Application Tracking System (ATS) helps streamline your entire recruitment journey. It, therefore, ensures that the best candidates are recruited in the shortest time span. It facilitates minimal manual intervention and enables tracking, monitoring, filtering, and analysis of every process related to recruitment. Finally, an ATS makes the entire recruiting experience more cohesive and consistent for the recruiters, candidates, and the organization.

The Best Free Online ATS

With Recruiteze, you can manage your jobs, candidates, job portal, clients, hiring managers, schedules, notes and communication. Recruiteze combined with iReformat, can provide unparalleled efficiency by combining resume formatting with our free online ATS. With the resume formatting tool you can format a resume using pre-defined custom templates within 15 seconds. A formatted resume can be submitted to the hiring manger within 15 seconds using custom email templates. Now you can see how you can greatly benefit from an ATS combined with resume formatting. Try Recruiteze today for free!

Richard Branson’s name is synonymous with two things, being a billionaire and treating employees exceptionally well. Those two things, unfortunately, do not typically go together, particularly not to the extent he’s known for. He’s spoken a great deal over the years, so this list probably covers the tip of the iceberg, but hopefully it does represent many of his most important and novel ideas.

5 Hiring Lessons We Can Learn from Richard Branson

#1. Hire for personality more than hard skills

This is not a unique idea, as more and more companies realize the mistake of focusing too closely on hard skills, but Branson has a way of going further, more radical with it than most. Searching for the best small business ATS? Check out Recruiteze today. Start your ATS free trial today.

Someone asked Branson if he had ever been intimidated by someone else’s credentials and he replied,

“It’s a shame that people shut down ideas because they’re worried about being crushed by people who are supposedly better educated than them. This is all about fear of failure. In my opinion, entrepreneurial drive beats a fancy degree anytime.”

“I never judge people by their education and qualifications. The first thing we look for at Virgin when hiring new staff is personality, which always wins over book smarts or job-specific skills — the latter can be learned. We also give a lot of weight to experience. Time and time again I’ve seen people with a broad employment history and skill set who aren’t an obvious fit for a particular role bring a new perspective to a position and become incredibly successful.”

Did you notice part about the broad employment history and not being an obvious fit for a role?

In a previous post on choosing personality over skill, we included this quote where Branson elaborated on this idea of thinking outside the box when it comes to experience,

“Time and time again I’ve seen people with a background of broad-ranging employment and skills hired for a job where they don’t necessarily tick the specialist criteria boxes, but become incredibly successful by offering a new level of understanding to the role. With this in mind, we focus on hiring people with transferable skills–team players who can pitch in and help others in all sorts of situations. It’s important never to underestimate the power of versatility.”

Again he’s not the only one thinking about transferable skills, but his wording makes you ask questions about how broad-ranging this experience could be.

#2. Expect More

Branson believes in, actively invests in, and takes risks regarding the growth of employees.

In one of his Linkedin blog posts, he described it,

“Personality is the key. It is not something that always comes out in interview – people can be shy. But you have to trust your judgement. If you have got a slightly introverted person with a great personality, use your experience to pull it out of them. It is easier with an extrovert, but be wary of people becoming overexcited in the pressure of interviews.”

“You can learn most jobs extremely quickly once you are thrown in the deep end. Within three months you can usually know the ins and outs of a role. If you are satisfied with the personality, then look at experience and expertise. Find people with transferable skills – you need team players who can pitch in and try their hand at all sorts of different jobs. While specialists are sometimes necessary, versatility should not be underestimated.”

“Don’t be afraid of hiring mavericks. Somebody who thinks a little differently can help to see problems as opportunities and inspire creative energy within a group. Some of the best people we’ve ever hired didn’t seem to fit in at first, but proved to be indispensable over time.”

Kate Reilly summed up Branson’s interview on Talent Connect,

“He spoke about the time he learned an employee was stealing records from one of his music stores. After meeting with him Branson realized he rebelled in good ways too, so he didn’t fire him. The employee not only stopped stealing, but went on to do great things for the company.

In a similar vein, Branson always chooses to move an underperformer to a more suitable role within the company rather than terminate them outright.”

#3. Reject like You Hire

This is assuming you treat the people you hire well. The concept is that you realize that you’ve already developed a sort of relationship with someone during the hiring process, and they’ll go back out into the world with an opinion of you that could hurt or help your business. If you treat them well, then you could have a qualified and passionate in the future or at least a loyal customer. If you treat them poorly, you’ll have someone running around with an attitude, who won’t apply to your job in the future when they’ve improved or you have room for them, may not even want to be your customer, and may spread negative word of mouth about you. Which do you want? Which seems sound a sounder investment?

We’ve previously included a story about Branson and an impressive success story for his plan in one of our posts on rejecting candidates. He had to reject a candidate from the cabin crew at Virgin Atlantic and at the time used a technique involving an inspiring letter that welcomed candidates to apply again in the future and included a voucher for a free flight. The candidate ended up working for him in the future as his personal assistant.

#4. Treat People with Respect

Branson told Forbes contributor, Pavel Krapivin,

“What makes Virgin particularly wonderful is the wonderful group of people who believe in what they’re trying to do. Who are appreciated, who are praised, not criticized, and are given a chance to do a great job.”

Krapivin reports that Branson believes success starts at the top and sums up Branson’s ingredients list for a great leader, as:

• Praise employees instead of criticizing them.
• Genuinely love all people from the cleaning lady to the senior executives.
• Be a great listener who not only hears the recommendations from employees but acts upon them.

Virgin is also one of a few business entities using an unlimited leave policy. Netflix started it, and Branson’s daughter Holly heard about it and said it sounded like something that really fit Virgin’s culture.

On the Virgin website, they describe it:

“Anyway, simply stated, the policy-that-isn’t permits all salaried staff to take off whenever they want for as long as they want. There is no need to ask for prior approval and neither the employees themselves nor their managers are asked or expected to keep track of their days away from the office. It is left to the employee alone to decide if and when he or she feels like taking a few hours, a day, a week or a month off, the assumption being that they are only going to do it when they feel a hundred per cent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business – or, for that matter, their careers!”

Branson tops this idea off with a bold quote,

“If you trust your people to make their own decisions, they will reward you.”

#5. Flexible Work

Branson believes in flexible work, including remote work, but he’s also been doing it long enough to know and is open enough to admit that there is no definitive rule book for flexible work. Everyone’s still figuring things out, and you have to do what works for your company and be adaptable. Few companies seem to have grasped that concept and have a working plan for dealing with it.

Branson advises,

Flexible work “is a powerful tool for good — but only if it’s used properly. It’s not just a case of dishing out a laptop and letting someone work from home, or chopping a day off their working week and expecting the same output. Truly flexible roles have flexibility built in rather than added on, and are designed to suit employers and employees alike. That’s the difference between just having a flexible working policy and having a flexible working strategy.”

You must have concrete plans in place for workers to have the tools, methods of reliable communication, and feedback they need to succeed on the same level as in-office workers and teams with more traditional hours.

Conclusion

Richard Branson is a visionary and a risk-taker. Yes, many business leaders are, but he always manages to be a bit more radical and out-of-the-box than most, particularly when it comes to investing in his employees. Most others may be remarkably visionary when it comes to products or drive, but Branson shines most in people investment and this is where most other companies falter. This makes him a unique and important study. Watch him take risks, learn from his successes and failures, and push yourself to take more risks. Trust people, believe in people.

Best Small Business ATS

Recruiteze is a free online ATS for small business recruiting, talent tracking, and hiring. There’s so many benefits to using our free applicant tracking system that I can’t list them all. The best option you have is to give a try! Click here to get started with your free trail. iReformat allows you to format up to 10 resumes per month, for free! If you’re ready to take the redundant administrative work out of your daily tasks, start using our free recruiting software today.

Before purchasing a small company applicant tracking system, you’ll want to learn all the things you need to consider to select the right one. Applicant tracking systems, also referred to as an ATS, vary a great deal in their features, their cost, their payment plans, customer support, and ease of use. Without proper research, you may end up with an ats that you can’t use effectively or one that has too many features you don’t need and costs you too much, which means you’ll probably have to get rid of it. We’ll go over what you can expect from an ats to help you choose the right one for your small business. Get creative with your hiring game by using Recruiteze. Start your free trial of our powerful online recruitment systems today.

What Makes a Good Small Company Applicant Tracking System?

Use Everywhere

One thing to consider when choosing an applicant tracking system is how many places it can be used.

There are many aspects of this to think about:

• You’ll need to know if it works properly with the internet browser you use, and any other you are likely to use.
• If anyone else will be using the ATS, will they be able to use it with their browser?
• Can all job applicants use it with their browser?
• Is it responsive, meaning it functions properly on both desktop and mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones?

This is not as difficult as it seems, an ATS will tell you if it is responsive, that’s how they will word it, and they’ll list all the browsers they support. The more browsers they list, the more likely they’ll be to cover anyone who needs to use your ats and its features.

You may be tempted to rule out this consideration too soon because you are thinking only of your usage and that you will only want to use your ats on your desktop computer, but you are probably going to want to use a career portal and other candidate-facing features. Most candidates use mobile devices in their job search. If everyone who comes to your career portal or reads your job descriptions can’t use them because they’re on a mobile device, or they can technically use the feature but it’s so miserable that they won’t mess with it, you’re going to miss out on a lot of potential hires.

Effective Resume Functions

Applicant tracking systems offer many life-changing resume functions. You’ll want to become familiar with them to know which ones to prioritize when selecting an ats for your small business’ unique needs.

Applicant tracking systems can:

• Bulk upload stored or collected resumes.
• Automatically upload new resumes.
• Parse resumes to sort them by skills, history, and more.
• Format resumes for easy reading.
• Associate candidates to the appropriate job or hiring manager.
• Search resumes by many criteria.
• Deduplicate to ensure each candidate only appears once in the system.
• Track a candidate’s progress through the interview process.

These features save you so much time in managing, reading, and interacting with candidate resumes. Tasks you used to have to painstakingly do yourself can be done automatically, resumes can be made to all look alike so you read them quicker and without confusion, specific candidates can be found easily, and the interview process can be organized and therefore quicker and more efficiently managed.

You can also have more control over diversity efforts and internal affairs with resume parsing. If your applicant tracking system removes words such as the names of certain schools or the applicants’ name, you can improve diversity efforts. If you want a partner’s input on a candidate without them being able to contact the candidate themselves, you can ensure this doesn’t happen by removing their contact information.

Do More Within the ATS

The more functions your applicant tracking system does within the system itself, the more streamlined your efforts will be and the more time you’ll save. If you have to perform a task to source, recruit, interview, and onboard, an ats could potentially help you do it and the more of these functions can be kept within this one system, the easier and more effective your life will be. Otherwise, you might have some tasks taken care of by the ats and others still done manually, or you might have to purchase multiple applicant tracking systems to do what another single system could do.

These are some of the ATS functions you should consider being included:

• Automatic candidate resume acknowledgment
• Automatic candidate rejection
• A notes function so information is viewable with the resume
• Candidate tagging
• A candidate contact history viewable with the resume
• Career portal
• Job descriptions
• Email template creation
• Sourcing candidates
• Tracking new hire onboarding steps

Be on the lookout for as many of those features as possible within your budget and other ats considerations.

Unlimited

Expect more of your ats. It is quite possible to find ones, such as Recruiteze, that offer features with no limitations. If you get ready to bulk upload resumes, you should be able to upload as many as you need. Any amount of resumes you need to handle should be supported. The same is true with any function of your ats; get one that does more, at least, or all, if possible.

Custom

Even more important, well nothing can be more important than how many resumes the ats handles, but more important in general than unlimited, is the ability to customize. If your ats can’t be customized to your business’ needs, it is going to be less efficient and you’re going to miss out on powerful branding opportunities.

Look for more custom options in your ats, such as custom:

• Email templates
• Candidate workflow management
• Job codes
• Careers page
• Job applications

Analytics

It’s important to have reports and analytics so you can measure progress. You’ll want to know how many resumes you’ve received, where they came from, your application to interview ratio, and how long your hiring process takes so you can control things like hiring times, hiring costs, candidate experience, and diversity.

Your ats also needs reporting that can be broken down into different periods of time with varying metrics to get an actionable understanding of your hiring process.

Research the reporting options of an ats you’re interested in and try to pick one with a combination of more reporting features, a reporting structure that looks appealing to you, and one that doesn’t so sound complicated that you are likely to not use it. A small business probably won’t need as many reporting features as a larger company so there’s no point in bogging yourself down with too much to learn and navigate.

Training and Demos

An applicant tracking system is only as good as your ability to use it. Look for an ats like Recruiteze that provides demos and even screen share training, upon request, to ensure you are empowered to use the system to its fullest. A knowledge base is also helpful for giving users extensive information to answer questions on their time, whenever needed.

Ensure that the ats you are considering has at least one of these options.

Secure

Applicant tracking systems handle sensitive data, so they need to be secure. Read the information about any ats you are considering to determine that it protects your data from being stolen or lost.

Here is an example: Recruiteze’s own data security policy:

“All your data is stored on Azure Cloud, which has 3 levels of redundancy. The database is backed up to the latest 5-minute period. Check out this article on data security to see how your data is secured.”

You’ll want to research both how the ats promises to protect your data from hackers and how it backs up your data to prevent data loss. The more protection you can get for your budget and other considerations, the better.

Has the Features Your Company Needs

Pay for what you will use and not what you don’t. Small companies don’t need as many features as large companies, so don’t assume that you have to buy the most popular, expensive, or feature-packed ats. It’ll be harder to learn, harder to use, and more expensive without really suiting small business needs.

Make a list of features for all the applicant tracking systems you are considering and weigh out which features are most important to addressing your needs versus the cost of the ats.

Fits your Financial Needs

Applicant tracking systems can be subscription based or billed by the month. Consider your desire for either payment arrangement when selecting an ats.

Further, an ats vendor with multiple rates and plans helps you choose the plan that most fits your needs. Some have free options that may be perfectly fine for your needs as well as several other plans for varying features and numbers of users, should you need one of those. This way you pay only for what you need.

Also, avoid ats vendors who don’t provide a price upfront and ask you to reach out to them for a custom quote. You should see full transparency about prices and contracts, or lack thereof.

Versatility

Applicant tracking systems can be very versatile, so do yourself a favor and choose one that is. If you want to add users, remove users, change plans, or even move to a new ats vendor, it’s much more advantageous to be able to do so without cost or headache. Look for declarations on their site that you can change these things without penalty.

Customer Service

Check ats vendors for their customer service policies and their reputation for customer service so that when something goes wrong or when no matter how much you try to educate yourself, you still don’t understand something, you can reach out to someone for personalized help.

Be aware that even a single vendor can offer varying support types with each plan they offer. Consider the different customer service offerings when choosing a plan.

Conclusion

Ultimately, a good small company applicant tracking system is the one that serves you best. This is determined by a variety of factors including the ats’ features, the pricing, and the support the vendor offers. Research applicant tracking systems carefully, use free trials when offered one, and compare features and pricing to find the best ats for your needs. Best Online Recruitment Systems | Recruiteze

If your agency or HR team is currently evaluating free online recruitment systems, click here to start using Recruiteze for free! Our easy-to-use cloud-based recruitment software makes recruiting easy! Call us today to learn more.

Employees love food perks at work, but the benefits go much farther than simply making employees happy. These are also versatile perks, meaning there are so many ways to employ them that anyone can do it, from a startup with a few people working there to a major company and everything in between. One work perk you don’t want to miss out on is using our free online recruiting system! Recruiteze is powerful online hiring software that makes hiring easy. Get started today!

The Importance of Food Perks At Work and How To Use Them

Why Food Perks Are So Important

People need and love food.

Let’s start with the love part. People look forward to eating and we get a sense of gratification from it. Because we enjoy it, food plays a big part of our parties, gatherings, and relaxation time. When you combine food with work, you create a powerful positive association with your work environment.

Yahoo CEO, Marissa Meyer, probably accidentally proved this point very well when she entered a negative work environment and offered free food.

A Yahoo employee at that point in time recounted in a later blog post,

“To truly understand how soul-crushing it was to work at Yahoo in pre-Marissa times, you should have been in Sunnyvale (I was, on a business trip) on the day Marissa announced free food in the company’s cafeterias. People scrambled to stuff themselves as if the announcement would be taken back in a day or two.

The coffee shops were stripped of pastries. Yahoos packed multiple boxes at the salad bar and hoarded them in break room refrigerators. You’d think that the announcement Marissa made was a coming price increase for lunches, not free food. Good news at Yahoo was treated as suspect and likely to change at any minute.”

The free food also appeared in 229 Glassdoor reviews, one of the most prevalent pros mentioned for Yahoo!.

And it’s not just Yahoo!. SurveyMonkey said their employees rank food in the top five most meaningful perks, along with such biggies as medical benefits and flexibility.

We don’t just enjoy food, a lot; we need it. Healthy food is the fuel that makes people go, much like a car; too little fuel or bad fuel impairs the vehicle’s function.

A healthy eating routine feeds employees’ mind so they can focus, memorize, and think better at top efficiency. They are also less likely to get sick.

In a previous post of ours on productivity, we said,

“Way back in 1917, Thomas Loveday proved that being fed was imperative to productivity. Work before breakfast (‘an inheritance partly from the necessary habits of agriculture’) was both harmful to the worker’s health and also relatively unproductive work time. He maintained that ‘food should precede work’.”

And this blog post from kununu includes many links to studies proving “the science of food and work productivity” such as how the time and type of breakfast affects employees’ productivity, how glucose impacts concentration, and more.

And they say, “Only 35 percent of American employees say they almost always take a lunch break. 60 percent either eat at their desks or don’t eat at all, The New York Times reports.”

It is crucial to a company when their employees eat plenty of healthy food. You can’t force them. That’d be creepy, but you can definitely not hinder them and you can provide them with food perks that will make eating healthier more likely.

Providing food perks serve other useful benefits. When employees eat onsite, they spend more time together, so they can network and nurture a sense of teamwork. They also aren’t leaving the building where there will be the risk of them being late returning and they are using less gasoline, reducing your company’s carbon footprint.

The Varied and Wonderful World of Food Perks

You may be daunted, wondering how much it will cost you to offer food perks. Thankfully, there are many, many food-related perks and they are all beneficial and appreciated, so you can select what works best for your budget and your company’s individual needs.

The first option is to make sure everyone has a meal break and that it is long enough for them to reasonably eat a healthy meal rather than something they brought with them that is nonperishable and can be eaten in a hurry. If that’s all you can do, that’s okay, because allowing someone freedom to eat a hearty, healthy meal is important for employees’ happiness and health.

Many companies offers discounts on food sold in their businesses. This is always good. Everyone might be allowed 10, 20, or 50% off their meals on work days or entirely free meals per work day. This might cover one meal or more depending on the employee’s hours.

Starbucks gives employees free coffee and tea during each shift as well as 30 minutes before and after. They also offer a pound of coffee and tea to employees each week to take home as well as a 30% discount on any beverages and food.

You might offer discounts or pay for employees to eat at certain places like a nearby restaurant with healthier eating options. This is a great way to provide food without literally providing it, keep the budget at a certain amount, and encourage healthy eating choices.

Try out offering free food onsite without overloading yourself by providing free healthy snacks. Stock up a break room or designated snack area with apples, bananas, healthy beverage options, nuts, sandwich fixings, yogurt, and more.

Neither of these really address the health aspect of food, but they do acknowledge that food speaks to people. If you want to make employees feel rewarded with food, you might reward them with lunches or dinners, serve food at meetings, or have events with food for employees and their families to attend.

You might offer up beverages and healthy foods on arrival each work day as a way to start their day off right. It might be a welcome area at the entrance, a few free minutes to eat before working, or a snack bag.

Serve breakfast. It is the most important meal of the day after all. If someone skips it, or chooses less than optimum options, it will negatively impact their day. Help employees make up for rushing to work and missing breakfast or make eating more and healthier easier by providing breakfast options.

Some companies go all out with their free food perks.

CNBC reported that SurveyMonkey offers employees two meals each day and snacks, and they have a chef who learns what employees most want, which keeps them happy and reduces waste. It is estimated to cost them “$10-$15 a day per employee.”

Their vice president of human resources, Rebecca Cantieri, told CNBC that this promotes healthfulness and fosters a sense of community.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yelp, and more offer options like multiple meals a day, cooked onsite, and eateries in the office.

Play around with what works for your employees and your budget. You can offer as many meals a day as you like, or keep it restricted to certain days. Saturdays may have free meals, you may offer 3 free meals a week, or you could reward employees for working overtime with completely free food. You could also order a specific type of food for the whole office a certain day of the week.

According to CNBC, ZeroCater delivers catering to start-ups as well as such companies as Adobe, Wells Fargo, Visa, and Salesforce and reports average company spending of between $3 and $8 per employee.

You can ensure you are providing the food employees want, and make costs most efficient, by conducting surveys and monitoring inventory. Make it even more fun by running weekly or monthly “contests” between different kinds of foods to see which one employees want next.

Cantieri says, ”It is a bit of an art and a bit of science, we take a pretty data driven approach. We ask employees which dishes they enjoy. We also watch inventory patterns so it gives us a sense of what employees take advantage of, what they enjoy and what is less of interest.” Apparently she also to CNBC, “SurveyMonkey’s chef actively solicits cooking ideas.”

Conclusion

Food is both something everyone enjoys and something everyone needs. Catering to both this enjoyment and need is good for your company because it promotes an engaged, productive, and healthy workforce. Thankfully, you can do utilize this food perks without having to break the bank because a little bit of investment goes a long way. You might provide longer meal breaks, offer a discount on food, pay for employees to eat out, or provide some or all of their meals during the workday. Do whatever works for you and your employees. And remember, you aren’t just spending money, you are making a powerful investment in your company. You could quite likely make back what you spend and more.

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The chances are that you remember our expert post on the three H’s of hiring. But before hiring, there lies a crucial task of screening the resumes. When we talk about Human Resources, the screening of applications along with resumes is still considered to be one of the most crucial parts of the selection criteria for recruiting candidates. Most of the companies still judge the applicants based on old-school methods. There are other elements you should consider. Let’s take a closer look. One crucial component to a successfully screen talent is by using a reliable recruiting management system like Recruiteze. Recruiteze is a powerful ATS and lots more. Try our online recruitment systems for free today.

What do you screen in a resume? Is it the university from which an applicant has graduated? His grade point average? His last job and employer? Or do you look for a half a page filled with the skills which even a primary school student would also know such as MS Office?

Do you really think that an A4 size sheet can actually convey factual information about the social traits of the person or his logic building skills? The answer is a straight NO!

Can you get a real idea of who the person is by just reading a list of his achievements and accomplishments on an 8.5” x 11” piece of paper? The answer is not “maybe”, but “impossible”.

You may look for a traditional resume for finding an ideal candidate for your organization but considering only the “resume” as the final screening element is certainly not a good idea.

The reason is simple. It’s a human tendency to exaggerate or glorify even a simple task. A resume can throw light over the career achievements and academic accomplishments but certainly can’t portray the basic traits such as “Will the candidate be a good fit culturally in the position?” or “Is he the type of person you have been looking for to fill this role?”

So, it’s time to say goodbye to all those traditional candidate screening approaches. Innovation in hiring is the need of the hour and it can be achieved by getting acquainted with the latest technologies. Hiring managers can actually save a lot of valuable money, energy, and time in their recruitment drive by syncing with the latest technologies. Go online and get a feel for a person’s online brand and presence. This will give you a much better idea regarding what you are expecting and what you are getting, before calling candidates for an interview.

This article helps you explore some non-traditional techniques which will help you to look beyond the resume to find some great employees. So, here is a quick round of tip-offs to help you find best hires without you having to rely solely on a piece of paper.

1.    Check out the web presence of candidates

You can actually get a peep in their online world through the internet. If a person is marketing himself well over LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media platforms, the chances are high that he will make efforts to market your company in the same way. By reading one of his blog posts, you will be in a position to understand his communication skills better rather than believing the things he has claimed on a piece of paper (resume).

Looking through the social media profiles of a candidate you will get a real glimpse at how a person is at portraying himself over the internet and what he feels regarding his work ethics.

Whenever you ask the candidates to drop their resumes over email, you must not, therefore, forget to ask them to share their social media profiles as well.

2.    Ask applicants to record a short video introduction

This is yet another very effective for evaluating an applicant’s communication skills.

Just ask the applicants to prepare a short video – let’s say 30 seconds to a one minute. The video should explain the reasons why the recruiter should consider them and why they an ideal fit for this job role. While looking at the video, you will be able to get a better idea of their conversational skills.

You should seek answers to questions like:

Is the candidate engaging when he talks?

Is he well spoken?

You will quickly get your answers. You will have a much better idea of whether or not this candidate is someone you’d like to work with. You will agree that these questions cannot be answered by reading a resume or a cover letter.

3.    Set up project-based interviews

Instead of asking the candidates their strengths or taking someone else’s word for it, give them a chance to prove their abilities. It’s always recommended to get the project manager or one of the project team members into a panel when the hiring is being conducted. Project-based interviews do help a lot in finding the right candidate.

Would you buy a new car before going for a test drive?

The answer to this question illustrates why you must allow the candidate to prove his excellence by making him work on an ongoing project rather than asking him a list of standard questions. Say for example: if you want to hire a tele-caller, why not ask him to attend a dummy call?

Even if you’re thinking that no one is perfect and every candidate requires a basic training/mentoring, the key aspects of a given job role such as communication skills, talking tone, and gestures can be easily judged from that dummy call, right?

There are certain traits which do not require any kind of training or mentoring, and your job is to find them out.

So, if you are looking for software developers, give them a problem to solve. This will help you to check their coding skills as well as logic building skills. Even if you are looking for something which is less task-based such as in the role of a project manager, you may consider testing the candidate’s analytical skills and questions or ideas he has in his mind related to that project.

Companies don’t want to see candidates in their “best behavior” but they would like to see how the candidates hang out with colleagues during lunch or maybe even over a beer.

Besides hunting a hardworking and determined employee, you must look for someone who can think independently and is capable of taking initiatives.

4.    Pay extra attention to the application

In this digital era, most job applications require applying through the online portals of the company. Most of the candidates do not read the complete post and just copy and paste the same thing over and again (cover letter), spamming the post or the mailbox of a recruiter.

To weed out all the “non-serious” candidates from the race, ask the applicants to add a hashtag or a code before their applications. As per Forbes, it is called The Logic Gate Approach. All those who actually read the job advertisement properly will be adding the required code before their applications. The other so-called  spammers” or nuisance creators will not be paying any attention to details and will, therefore, miss out on the code/hashtag part. This will filter the candidates and separate the ones who are actually interested in the job opening from the ones who are not.

5.    Use trial periods

Trial periods may not be possible with all the positions but are a good method of finding the candidates who will be a right fit for your company. You can go with trial periods in the form of internships, probation period, etc.

Depending on your requirements, you can fix the length of a trial period in your company. It could be weeks, months, or sometimes even a year. A trial period allows you to get a sense of your employee before you commit to a permanent offer.

6.    Personal interviews

During personal interviews, you may question the candidates to learn a number of things.

a.      Desire to grow

It is very important to know if a candidate is aware of his strengths and weaknesses. You want someone who is prepared to embrace his shortcomings and who has the desire to improve. If a candidate assumes that whatever he does can never go wrong, he will never be open to learning anything new. You never know when a plan will backfire and you will need a plan B to move forward.

b.     Ability to embrace new technology

Technology is changing every single day. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, virtual reality, or blockchains are trending today. A candidate should have a willingness to learn and resonate with the changing technological trend.

c.      Individual goals

It is certainly very important to know about the candidate’s goals. If your company fails in satisfying him, the chances of job hopping become extremely high. Make sure you understand his long-term goals and take that person onboard only if you can give him what he expects.

Some Final Words

The value which an employee can bring to the company can’t be conveyed in just a 2-page resume. The resume may get the candidate noticed but it may also eliminate some potential candidates who if recruited could become great employees serving the company for a longer tenure.

Resumes are papers which depict what the candidates say they can do. As hiring managers, you should be hiring doers and not tellers.

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As per An Exploratory Study on Job Hopping, researchers have shown that Generation Today (Let’s call it Generation Y) has become less loyal towards their employers and the reason is “EXPECTATIONS”.  Generation Y’s expectations have grown extremely high as they have become more achievement & team oriented, challenging, tech-savvy, and family-centric. If you need to replace talent because of job hoppers, our online applicant tracking system for small business hiring can really help you out. Click here to use Recruiteze. We make online recruiting and hiring easy.

This generation strives to strike a work/life balance, aims for a better lifestyle, and excellent opportunities for overseas travel and career development more than other generations. In short, they are more freedom focused. This is something which we have already discussed in 5 Hiring Lessons We Can Learn from Microsoft.

The Situation That Is Today

Fresh candidates start their career expecting a long and permanent journey with their new organization, but no matter how lavish the onboarding experience is, there still exists a gnawing sentiment, “If the company isn’t loyal to us then why we should be loyal to it?”

Every day a new company comes to life, but the really long corporate ladders have disappeared resulting in fewer growth opportunities. The ultimate way by which employees can advance is by job hopping.

The problem is that employers want to retain their good employees and lessen the attrition rate but all the good employees seek recognition and wish to get rewarded for their hard work and effort, so they job hop.

Being digitally equipped with so many job websites and referral campaigns, employees are determined to switch if they are not satisfied or feel their skills are not being utilized.  The salary factor is indeed an important factor, but other factors such as soft benefits, education, and recognition have pushed it down the chain.

Many hiring managers across the top organizations are using software algorithms to predict employee turnover. Strange but true, by the time their software identifies the employees who are on the verge of leaving the company, it is often too late. A savvy recruiter from another organization has already approached them with a great job offer.

Let’s drill down into some factors that influence job hopping. Have a look.

Beginning with the End Already in Mind

When an employee in this current generation Y joins an organization, he already has some propensity “I am not going to stay forever!”

Only a few aim to stay in the company for a long time, the rest all  inclined to job hop.  We’ll discuss over this later in the article.

How does education influence job hopping?

It’s been evident that job hopping is more prominent in cases where the workers are overqualified, underpaid, or underemployed. Qualification is a major factor influencing Generation Y these days. Let’s take a closer look at how education plays an important role in job hopping and who is affected by education the most.

1.    Highly educated workers tend to job hop more.

Job hopping is now a trend witnessed in almost all industries, but it’s more common in the professional services, media & entertainment, and non-profit industries.

The scenario changes drastically when a grad gets a job out of university and stays there until his/her retirement – or layoffs. According to Forbes, “Millennials can earn a higher salary, grow their career, change locations more frequently, and find a better cultural fit from job-hopping.”

According to a study by livecareer, employees with an average qualification like high school graduation tend to stay longest with an organization (around 4.4 years) and the ones with an associate degree tend to stay for 4.1 years. This figure is further lowered with respect to employees with a PG or a bachelor’s degree as they tend to stay a maximum of around 2.5-3.7 years with any organization.

2.    Education is overemphasized in nonprofessional occupations.

Be it a professional or a nonprofessional occupation, employers look forward to recruiting qualified candidates for the available job roles. Talking about nonprofessional occupations such as cashiers, servers, bartenders, etc where the core skills are learned and gained on the job, studies have shown that education is overemphasized in these occupations. As a result, job seekers tend to list their higher education degrees and certificates over their resumes more often than described in the job ads.

3.    Older workers tend to job hop less than younger workers, but only up to a point.

As per the findings of an  Exploratory Study on Job Hopping, the average number of years an employee stays in any organization is 3 years. The main reasons for job hopping as per Forbes are remuneration, career growth, soft benefits, the reputation of the company, work environment & culture, and job security.

The study also reveals that with growing age and career maturity, job hopping decreases but education and certification still remain the key indicators of job-hopping propensity.

Female employees criteria for job hopping was a bit different from that of male employees. Female employees prioritize working hours, personal matters, and work from home options quite a lot over the salary factor and tend to stay with the same company for a long time.

On the contrary, male employees tend to job hop more than females in their career. The initial fight for females, however, is found to be more as they tend to switch around a number of companies when they start their careers so as to find the one that suits them the most but stop thereafter. The more the employees are educated and skilled the more they hop.

4.    Blue collar vs. white collar.

We all know that professionals, especially the ones in the IT sector, job hop more than individuals in other industries. According to the study, a software professional serves his company for only 2.4 years on average. While, on the other hand, administrative assistants, teachers, and store managers tend to stay the longest.

All in all, the workers who require more employer specific knowledge tend to stay longer as it takes many years for them to become proficient.

5.    Use your school wisely.

A good education buys you more options, opportunities, and mobility if played right. The higher educational qualification signals that you are very competitive in the market. But for some occupations which are known to have high job hopping rates, it might make you look overqualified.

You must, therefore, be careful while presenting your educational background as it can send both positive and negative signals to your future employer.

Review your job ads carefully and use your credentials well. For the job roles where the job skills are transferred relatively easily, there might not be any need for degree/certificates unless otherwise stated in the job advertisement.

Essential Tips for Job Seekers

1. Downplay your educational achievements and credentials in cases where you are applying for jobs which require a specific skill set for that role. For the roles which can easily be transferred to other employers/employees (non-professional), you should never show off your professional credentials. This will help in creating the impression that you are not overqualified for the job role and you are more likely to stay with the organization for a longer period of time.
2. When applying for jobs that require highly skilled roles such as nurses, software developers, teachers, or accountants, you must make sure that you have certain professional certifications or licenses to fall back on. This is because the first round of elimination is generally based on that. In order to make your resumes effective, you may consider highlighting the certification/s as they act as a game changer.
3. Do not just copy/paste or forward your resumes blindly to employers or HR teams. Carefully review the job openings and draft a resume that suits their requirements. Write the latest and most relevant achievements first, thereafter, highlighting the certifications relevant from the job perspective.

What you must always remember is that having a degree may not necessarily qualify you for the job profile. So, it is favorable to think and design your resume keeping in mind the skills your next employer values the most.

Some Final Words

After analyzing all the traits of Generation Y and their reasons for job hopping, a close relationship can be observed. There is no doubt that the employees in Generation Y are better performers compared to the previous ones but they job hop more frequently.

As per Deloitte, the employees today value opportunity more than anything else and it is the duty of employers to understand and get the best out of them. Furthermore, the relationship between job hopping and education is closely linked to the level of expectations of the employees.

There is a big difference between the expectations of an employee with a degree and an employee with an advanced level qualification. As a result of this increased level of expectations of the degree holders, they tend to look out for better job opportunities with a good salary hike and other soft benefits. But, the highly qualified employees hesitate to job hop during the start of their careers as their competition is high when compared to degree holders. Thus, the organizations have high chances of retaining these employees for a longer time.

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The internet these days is flooded with a plethora of blogs and opinions written over “talent communities”. According to Google trends, searches on “online talent communities” have grown rapidly and it continues to be one of the hot topics over the last couple of years. Even though talent communities are trending, there are many people who still don’t know what these communities are and how they can be effectively used to channelize the recruitment process. But, let’s see first what a talent community is. When you need help with your recruiting and hiring, use Recruiteze! Recruiteze is the top free online recruiting software on the market. Start your free trial here.

According to Wikipedia, “A talent community is a mechanism that employers use to keep warm pipelines of talent for future recruitment.”

These talent communities have talent pipelines which consist of some good potential employees who are interested in joining a given company but aren’t ready to apply. So, the aim of these communities is to engage and remain connected with these employees on a frequent basis. This means that when the employees are ready to switch jobs, they are already in a relationship with that company.

Perspective from a Job Seeker’s Mind

Job seekers join a company’s talent community if they are interested in a company but are not ready to move to a new job.

Let’s take an example:

John has worked at ABC Corporation for five years and he is happy and fully satisfied. However, John learns about XYZ corporation from a recent PR related to the company’s innovative technology. This certainly excites John and he is interested enough to drop his name and email at the career page of the company’s website in its talent community section. He will now be getting regular updates from the company regarding interview tips, new job openings, information about the company, work culture, etc.

So, when John makes up his mind to switch jobs, he already has XYZ Corporation on his mind. His chances of applying there increase manifold because of the relationship he has built over the time by consuming the company’s content after joining its talent community.

The Aim of Talent Communities

The actual power of the talent community lies in the hands of the community members because they are the ones who dictate topics for discussion. The main aim of these talent communities is to build relationships and trust with potential employees, thereby, framing a positive aura of the company. Another aim is to keep the company as a top priority in the minds of employees. The real difference between other recruitment related concepts and talent communities is that the career opportunities are not at all on the forefront of the communication.

Building a Talent Community

Building a talent community is not as easy as it looks. It does require a lot of dedication, time, and prodigious effort. As a recruiter, you need to keep the participants engaged in order to foster a solid foundation between them and the community. You need to be patient as there is no scope for short-term or immediate hiring. Rather there is a need for a content marketing strategy that is completely focused on building a relationship with the participants as per their interests.

The main HR strategy should be to build an emotional connection with the participants, think of them as humans and not resources. You should try to engage participants just like you would do with your friends. You must also keep in mind that the talent community is a cycle and not merely a transaction.

Creating Great Experiences

The best way to foster great experiences that make the participants feel valued is by using content irrespective of the condition whether they join or not. These applicants are the potential brand ambassadors for your company and, who knows, one day they could get on board with you. You might also want to read our post on building a good candidate experience.

In fact, building a good candidate experience is one of the top four strategies mentioned by Forbes for sourcing top talent. It’s really important to nurture the community, as you do in relationships, so that you have an engaged talent community at your fingertips. The experiences you are creating both before and after hiring process matter.

Do you know the best candidates just won’t settle for any random company? You need to set a benchmark that you’re living a compelling and authentic employer story. So, before starting to improve your candidate experience, make sure that you have a great employer story.

Potential candidates expect to work in a company culture that reflects their own values. So, you need to work on capturing the employees’ love and interests and craft your content as per their desire.

Have a look at some tips which will help you to humanize the candidate experience through relevant content.

1. Careers Page

The best place to start with content sharing is your career page. Your career page is actually the face of your company. It is the finest opportunity to showcase your company in front of the prospective hires. This is the page where they actually get to know about job openings, work culture, your areas of work etc.

The content is the masterstroke here as with a perfectly tailored content you can actually give them an insight into the company’s culture and values. You can also add video testimonials by your employees or a corporate video that will actually bring these values to life. This is the best way to advocate that your employer story is genuine and authentic.

Giving a sneak peek into your office space is yet another good way to engage the community. This will help the applicants visualize themselves in that working space. Include some good pictures of your workspace showcasing some innovative aspects of your work culture.

For example, you can add a picture of a gym if you have one in your vicinity, a yoga room, a game room, or any competition you have conducted internally. Highlight what’s special about your office space through visually compelling images that let future employees know what’s important to you.

2. Applications and Interviews

Starting from the applications and on to the interviews and beyond, you have the responsibility to provide a great and engaging candidate experience. Just imagine yourself as a job seeker. If you don’t get a response when you submit your resume on a company’s career page, what are the first thoughts that come to your mind?

“Is my resume dumped?”

“Did someone actually read it?”

“Should I follow up?”

Now, if you don’t hear from that company even after a week, you are doomed to think that this is not the right company.

As an employer/HR manager, it’s your responsibility to provide the candidates with great candidate experiences. Make sure that each and every individual who applies to your open roles receives a thank you note from your side. You can use the help of an Applicant Tracking System which is able to send auto-reply messages.  You can easily customize them to make them look personal and compatible with your brand.

Let the candidates know that their application did not fall into a black hole and has been received by someone. Even if you are rejecting the application from your side, make sure to craft the content in such a way that they don’t feel discouraged. In either case, do let them know whether you will be inviting them to meet or not.

You may also share some video testimonials which you have prepared beforehand (on your career page). This will help them to prepare for interviews as well as feel connected with your team.

The thing which you should keep in mind is that providing a great candidate experience does not end with the interviews. Rather, you should be even more thoughtful in your communication while rejecting people. This is the time for you to draft content in a creative way to not only give tangible feedback to candidates for their future interviews, but also encourage them to stay in touch with your company.

Beyond the Hiring Process

Now that you have created an authentic employer brand and have provided a good candidate experience, what’s next? When you develop and nurture your talent community it further adds a new pillar of strength to your employer brand.

Share all the company insights, the fun times, company awards & recognitions, employee programs, PR, blogs, tips, etc with your talent community to give participants a sneak peek into your culture and values.

Now that you have created the content, it’s time to start sharing. You can start a community page or forum on your social platforms, webinars, blogs etc. It also means that, as an employer, you can spend less time managing inbound applications and more time activating a highly-skilled and passive talent pool that understand your values and is eager to join you.

Winding Up

Your content marketing strategy should be 80% educational with the remaining 20% focusing on company news. This means that your prime focus should not be on job openings or making announcements but on sharing compelling content such as the latest technologies, trends, etc. Your community should also encourage participants to share their views. Adding educational content helps in building positive relationships and trust, thereby, allowing the community to thrive even more.

What content strategies are you following to engage your talent community?

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