Categories
Fractional Recruiting

How Fractional Executives Benefits Start Ups

If your business is all set to participate in the uneven recovery of economy efficiently, you are fortunate enough.

But being this fortunate is not a guarantee that you will be able to afford full-time executives to oversee your expanding human capital. Human resource is a vital part of a startup but it definitely has a cost.

A start up need strategic initiatives to determine your course of action but it is definitely difficult to afford its cost.

Till date talent management is considered as one of the greatest challenge for founders. Despite putting all their efforts they nearly fail to recognize the right employees in their first year of business.

It incurs an extra cost and pressure to the newly born business and may lead them to the path of failure. The next option is to set up a recruiting department that may help you find the right talent, at the right place and in a right cost.

But, setting up a whole-new department is itself quite costly. What can be the solution?

Hiring a fractional executive can be the ultimate solution for startups or growth phase businesses. Fractional recruiters are leaders who become an essential part of their business from the part-time additions.

Their decades of experience and high-level proficiency can be seen in their “been there, done that” attitude. They are senior level people having a great experience with the real world. They have a grappling experience of facing the situation one cannot even stand.

These high-level freelancers work for only a percentage time of a full-time but can bring the same credibility and skill set as of a full-time employee.

We have summed up the benefits of hiring a fractional executive in 3 major points.

Scalability with company growth

Startups often face a major challenge in identifying the appropriate timing of introducing the right talent to your system.

If you are following the legacy employment model, you will on-board the talent prior you start earning revenues and this way a full-time hire will affect your profitability implications negatively.

And this is the benefits with fractional executives. Companies can ramp them up at the same time when organization is growing.

On the behalf of organizations, these executives are much better than full-time hires because they are at a higher experience level and need almost zero training before taking up your work. It helps the organization to plan the ramp more effectively.

Managing margins

Startups need the right talent most, but they lack the resources to hire the costly full-time executives. A fractional executive, the top talent becomes the part of the organization without any expensive cost tag.

In simple words, startups get 100% expertise and brain power without spending 100% of the true costs. It saves margins and bottom line.

Fractional marketing is an access to hiring the big brain talent on a fractional basis. Companies get to brain tap the most trusted minds that would be otherwise beyond their budget.

Focus

It is very important for startups to focus on their clients, customers and missions initially. Although talent management is also a crucial part of establishing the business, finding the right talent comes at a cost of focus on product or service or delivery.

The process of finding, bringing and hiring the new talent is more critical because they need much more turnover than running businesses. Fractional executives are skilled freelancers that grow with the company.

They basically free up the founders time to concentrate on finding more employees. This way founders get enough time focusing on their individual responsibilities and follow the company’s goals and timelines.

In short, you get the same skill set at hourly-bill rate instead of a monthly price tag. You don’t need to sit them idle for hours and perform when required. Instead, you can simply contact them when there is a requirement.

They may work out of your sight or office, but they will always be in the system through external emails and deal with the things even when they will be physically absent.

The experienced and reliable power houses will send emails from their home, make late night calls and would be available even out of the clock.

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Categories
Fractional Recruiting

Why early startups should use Fractional recruiting?

Let’s admit it- amidst the struggling and successful launch of a company it becomes really difficult to have a spectacular vision of recruiting and human resource development.

Hiring is not easy and it becomes even difficult when you are at an early stage of developing a business.

All the startups face two most common issues when it comes to hiring.

  1. Hiring is slow. Whatever they do, they never happen to do it speedily.
  2. The quality of hires keeps bothering them even after a year of starting up. They suddenly realize that they have woken up in a pool of mediocre.

Both these concerns are quite real. Obviously, founders need to wear so many caps that they are never left with adequate sources to seek out, recruit, or train the talent effectively.

Human resources is often an overlooked department that plays a really important role in succeeding your business. Hiring the right talent is an utmost necessity if you want to pave a smooth path towards your success.

It helps you while expansion and implementing your policies effectively. It is important and it definitely needs a big investment as well and that’s why start up businesses turn towards fractional recruitment.

What is Fractional recruiting?

Fractional Recruiting is a procedure of outsourcing human resource requirement to a third party instead of setting up an internal department for the same process. It helps you to cut off overhead and expenses.

This cost-effective HR solution helps you achieve an expertise in this particular field of business depending on your current needs.

It also provides you with the flexibility of having professional human resource expertise on-demand only for the definite set of period.

A startup needs a whole team to process their functions. It needs a HR Administrator, HR Generalist, HR Manager, HR coordinator and HR director.

The whole process can be carried out by an entire team or a single person depending upon your requirement. However, everything comes at a cost and efforts and it is not that generous in case of Human resource management.

Fractional recruitment eases the process of hiring and functionality in case of start-ups. It can benefit the recently started business in following ways.

  • Budget-friendly nature: No matter in which sector you are starting, hiring new full-time employees is always heavy on your pocket. Hiring a new employee and training him up-to-the-mark needs a minimum investment of 6-9 months. The investment refers to money and time both. Fractional marketing includes experienced that does not incur the same cost as of the full-time employee.
  • Their vast experience: Fractional recruiters are high-level freelancers that have a great experience of assessing human resources. They have a definite set of interviewing questions and tools, and they always have a good coordination with past employees.
  • Reduces your stress: Human resource management is not as easy task and it includes dealing with uncomfortable situations at times. It builds a lot of stress, especially in small or mid-sized businessman who try to handle their HR department on their own. Fractional HR alleviates the emotional trouble from your business.
  • Infrastructure: You get assistance in compiling necessary templates that are often overlooked. These templates play an important role in growing a business. The templates include employment applications, offer letters, termination letters, employee surveys, performance reviews and much more.
  • Culture: Fractional recruiters help you develop an organizational culture at a minimum cost. They help you understand how engaged your employees are and the temperature around diversity and inclusion. They assess your culture and give you recommendations for improvement.
  • Flexibility: Even HR needs change and updations over time. Fractional recruiters expertise in different areas and their diverse expertise includes various skill sets. Hiring such a person will allow you to focus on more relevant parts of your business leaving this column stress free. These recruiters are flexible enough to work with any kind of leadership and set of employees.

With the multi-level recruiting needs of a startup, nothing can be more suitable than Fractional recruiting.

It keeps you stress-free, allows you to spend your time in more important relevant departments and is lighter on your pocket. You practically get more time in running your business efficiently.

Categories
Recruiter Tools

How to Use Email to Attract Clients

Missing sales can be a painful thing especially if the reason was a poorly written email and poor communication mode.

The three must-have elements in a great email to attract clients are friendly tone, respect, and relevance. It’s how we land great clients like our success story with Moka.

This article will share vital tips and information on how to use email to attract clients and get positive response from clients.

Emails are a great tool for communication used by individuals and businesses alike.

Many business owners often find it hard to translate prospective clients into customers.

If you experience so much difficulty in this area of your business, then you may need to focus on your use of emails as well as other modes of communication.

At the end of this article, you will have learnt new ways to use email to attract clients.

The points enumerated below, are intended to teach you how to use email to attract clients and to make them patronize you.

Use of Salutations

As said earlier, one of the essential elements a good email written to attract clients should have is a tone of respect.

The use of greetings such as “Hello,” “Hi,” or any other variation like “Good morning/evening/day” should be used as a form of respect and friendliness. The name of the email’s recipient should be used as well and not the generic “Ma and Sir.”

Use of subject lines and appropriate email content.

A great email should avoid the use of subject lines that are not relevant to the content of the message. Emails should be relevant and transparent and the use of exaggeration should be avoided in the content too.

A subject line that sounds too good will ultimately end up in the trash.

Showcase your phone number(s)

No one writes an email without expecting to hear from the recipient. If you want your client to call you back, you must make sure to have your phone number or contact options easily accessible.

It should be placed in a position where it would be easily seen and the word “please call me” or “please contact me” should be included.

Be clear about your intentions

The use of open-ended questions should be avoided words like, “what do you think?”

Also, do not form a habit of making your customers feel like you are making them do extra work. Words like, “As soon as I get your response, I will ….,” etc.

Take control of action steps

When trying to know how to use email to attract clients, it is important to note that it is an aberration to ask clients to get back to you.

Asking clients what date is best for them will make you lose control.

When taking control of action steps in the email, never make it too obvious that you are taking control.

Instead, it will be wise to use words such as “I’ll give you a call on Wednesday to discuss.”

Minimal use of punctuation

Another thing to note as you learn how to use email to attract clients is to make it appear professional.

This can be achieved by making it simple. Economical use of exclamation marks is advised.

Never make a mistake of using multiple question marks. Excessive use of ellipsis points will make your email look like an email written to solicit for help.

Flags

Email should only be flagged as high priority if the client requested you to do that. Therefore, it is advisable you don’t use it at all.

The basic ingredient you need in your quest to know how to use email to attract client is the time to write a friendly, respectful, and relevant email which, will enable you get the best response from your client and prospect.

It’s how you build a successful and thriving business.

(Photo from pexels.com)

Categories
Sourcing Candidates

When to hire a recruiting agency?

Putting workers in a chair is not an easy task. You can count upon recruiting agencies to save your company’s time and efforts.

They can help you to shortlist candidates for your job openings.

Why you should hire a recruiting agency?

One can yield many benefits by hiring a recruiting agency specially when:

  • You have short term hiring needs: Recruiting companies are quiet quicker when it comes to hiring employees. They have a widespread network of candidates. Staffing firms usually have good relationship with these candidates. They hire these candidates on role and assign them to clients who are looking for short-term employees.
  • You want to enhance your pipeline with qualified employees: Recruiting agencies fills your pipeline with good leads. It allows managers to make decisions easily.
  • You want an employee for a specialized role: Internal recruiters usually have less experience when it comes to hiring for a specialized or executive role. This kind of recruitment needs special skills and learning. Recruiting agencies have this kind of knowledge along with special sourcing methods. Their niche job boards also play an important role. To get your account prioritized you could pay them an upfront fee.

Basically, when you are hiring at initial phase, recruiting agencies take over the process and work on it efficiently. The initial steps of hiring include resume screening; phone screening and first interviews are taken care of by the hiring company.

Recruiting agencies are more like a substitute to internal recruiters of the company. Usually, small companies do not have any recruiting departments, and they outsource their hiring process through recruitment companies.

This way they save a part of money and spend that money on channelizing other departments. On the other hand, there are companies which do not hold regular recruitments. Such companies hire recruitment agencies and downsize their size of team to reduce employment cost.

Although, this approach seems extremely practical and reliable yet it has lots of drawbacks.

What happens when recruitment agencies replace the internal recruiters of the company?

Recruiting agencies can be a great support for any company, but they cannot hold the fort all alone. They will face a few limitations. Take a look:

  • They are not acquainted with the internal culture of the company.
  • It’s not necessary for the managers of recruiting agency to be available at the right moment.
  • Parameters for open roles keep changing and recruiting agencies are usually slow to adapt to it.
  • They do not have exact idea of what exact skills clients are looking for.

It is due to all these reasons, recruiting agencies alone fail to perform effectively on the part of the company.

Maintain the balance

To combine the positive and negative effects of the agencies, it is most important to strike off a balance between an agency and a recruiting firm. Combining an agency with efficient internal talent hunting team can do wonders. Both of them complement each other perfectly.

In house teams have several benefits:

A good knowledge of company culture: In house recruiting team has a good knowledge of internal culture and first-hand experience of the work place. It helps them to sell better candidates. They recommend hires that fit best to the company. Also, they know which hire can fill the skill gap most effectively.

Relationship with hiring managers: In-house recruiters maintain a healthy relationship with hiring managers and keep explaining them about the criteria and stages of hiring.

They learn from their mistakes: A bad hire or a good hire, they keep learning from their experiences and thus acquire expertise. They exactly know what their company needs.

Internal recruiters do care about candidate experience, and they carry a responsibility of building a reputation of their company

It is quite simple to understand. A start up of five people definitely does not need any internal recruiter immediately but as it grows, enter new market, launches new products and face a different kind of competition, it would become a necessity for them to invest in human resources.

Initially, recruiting agencies can shoulder your hiring burden but soon the company would have to augment with the internal recruiters. The companies who invest in a better talent acquisition team/platform in times is always better equipped to face future challenges.

(Photo from pexels.com)

Categories
Hiring Best Practices

How to speed up the hiring process timeline?

Hiring is a tedious task. Even, it can irritate everyone involved in the process. Moreover, it is a time-consuming process.

It is hard to find talent. It can be costly and time consuming. It comes and goes in the blink of eye.

A company needs a pace to acquire adequately comparing candidates and secure these top performers.

The top performers might move to other companies and positions if your hiring process takes too long.

In a survey, the recruiters asked a question about the most common reason behind candidates rejecting client job offers?

One-fourth of the candidates step back because companies take too long to make an appropriate offer.

To keep clients interested it is necessary to shorten the timeline of hiring process.

Tips to shorten the timeline of hiring process

Recruiters can speed up the hiring process by following these ways:

Be more selective about candidates

It is important to be more selective about the candidates you interview and send to your clients. Being choosy, saves you from initial vetting and interviewing stages. Instead of interviewing 25 not so good candidates, it is better to interview 10 exceptional candidates.

Spend more time and effort in sourcing for exceptional talent.

Make sure that you send only most qualified candidates to your clients. This way, your client would have to interview a limited candidates and it will speed up the process of hiring. It will fasten up the process for candidates as well.

The easiest way is to narrow candidates in starting as it saves you and your clients from hours of work. You can cut out the hiring work by weeks this way.

Cut out the unnecessary steps

Usually, there are a few steps in each task that take longer time. Identify these steps in the process of hiring and clean them up. Eliminate the unnecessary steps involved.

Utilize technology

Technology can help you to speed up the process of hiring. For example, video interview is the invention of technology. All this information can be placed in a well-developed careers page on your company website.

Candidate does not need to fly down from another city for the interview.

It allows you to complete interviews faster. If selected for next round, you can conclude a face to face interview with the same candidate.

Think about using on demand recruiting. It’s easier (and less costly) to subscribe to a recruiting monthly subscription to find candidates. Let others do the heavy lifting (candidate sourcing).

Automation processes are also of great help. For example, an automated email can be generated if a candidate efficiently completes some specific steps of the interview. The triggered email will explain about the next steps of the recruitment. It will save your communication time.

Eliminate software programs

Consolidate your already existing recruitment software. Go for software that possesses more features and you do not need to log in and out constantly. It saves you time from tracking down and transferring information from one source to another.

For example, you can choose software that includes a tracking system for application, job posting function and email marketing service. With such software you do not need to switch between different programs to track recruitment and complete your work.

Check references sooner

Checking references sooner will help you to speed up the recruiting process. Often, recruiters do not check references till the end of hiring process when an offer is near. There is no point in waiting for so long.

When you ask candidates for the references when the hiring process is almost done, they spend a good time to collect the information, round it up and send to you. On the contrary, if asked in time they will gather the information soon and pass it to you. Checking references sooner will help you to make a quick decision.

It doesn’t mean that you need to ask for references when the process is in pipeline. It will slow down the process even more. Choose a place in between where having the reference can help you. For example, you can ask for a reference when you ready to send a candidate to the client.

A quick communication between parties

As a liaison between your client and a candidate, it’s your duty to communicate quickly. The speed of hiring process rests on your back. Follow up with your clients and candidates throughout the process. If requires, you can also pressurize them a bit by encouraging them to share all the required information and their decisions faster.

(Photo from Pexels.com)

Categories
Hiring Best Practices

How to attract candidates by improving your careers page?

A career page of the company is its pitch. It is a showcase where you can represent the candidates why your company is attractive.

When it comes to HR management, one of the hiring best practices is to develop a compelling career page. It makes it easy for the candidates to apply for open roles.

We have enlisted a few careers page examples that will encourage potential candidates to apply to your jobs:

Display your jobs prominently

Careers page is meant for job listings. Job openings should be listed in such a way that a candidate can find them in minimum number of clicks. Get your careers page designed in such a way that display jobs and job filters are located on the front page of the website.

This page is an example of display page of business intelligence Software Company. The grouping of jobs is done in a clear and accessible way.

Aim for a hassle-free application

No one likes the lengthy application process. Candidates quit this lengthy process. When the candidate clicks on the “Apply” button, he definitely does not like to answer the questions with the information he has already mentioned in his resume.

Test drive your already existing careers page design and ask these questions to you:

  • Are all the mentioned fields necessary?
  • Is it necessary to ask for this information at this stage?
  • Is this information available on the resume or social media page of the candidate?
  • Is this questionnaire relevant and makes sense? (egs multiple choice vs open end questions)
  • Are we asking about any pertinent information (college grades)?

Prefer a quick and streamlined design over a complex one. Ask hires to upload their resume and cover letters and answer only a few relevant and qualifying questions. Choose a single page application form over anything and an Application Tracking System (ATS) can help you in this.

Showcase your culture

Candidates want to have a clear picture of the company in which they are going to apply for an open role. Careers page is an ideal place to showcase to spotlight the culture, mission and visions of the company.

It offers candidates an insight to what they are looking for, and to understand if they are the right fit. You can easily communicate your message through videos, slogans and graphics.

Talk about your benefits

Information about benefits is always welcomed and appreciated by candidates. It is most important job attribute an employer can offer.

A few companies display the “benefits they offer” content on the front page of their careers page.

Offer inside information to job seekers

A hire definitely wants to know if your company is worth applying or not. That is why they visit sites like LinkedIn company profile or Glassdoor to gather behind the scenes information of the company before applying. Personalizing your careers page with your team member’s views really works.

Keep your careers page current

Have you ever realized that managing your company’s career page can attract job seekers in your company?

Managing in general means responding to the reviews and sharing details about your culture.

Updated accounts help candidates to visualize how your company works and grows.

A mobile version of your careers page

Nearly 60 percent of people prefer to apply for a job that offers a page for their mobiles. They try to save the page on their mobile and use it later on their laptops. A mobile career’s page has become must in today’s time. It reduces the bouncing rate of hires.

These few tips will help you to improve the mobile version of your page:

  • Keep your copy short and punchy: No one likes to scroll through the long paragraphs of copy on the mobile.
  • Avoid graphics or videos that take long time: The pages that are not easily accessible are frustrating.
  • Make sure your page adapts to every screen size: Candidates may access your page from different devices like laptop, mobile or tab.
  • Simplify the process of application: Going through different pages can be annoying. Different pages take more time to open up in mobile. Avoid popup windows.

Measure and test your career’s page effectiveness

The conversion rate defines the success of your career’s page. IT is important to track your conversion rates as it informs you about how people interact with your page.

Your careers page is a showcase and branding tool of your company. It helps you explore new opportunities.

(Photo from pexels.com)

Categories
Recruiter Tools

When to hire a recruiting agency?

Putting workers in a chair is not an easy task. You can count upon recruiting agencies to save your company’s time and efforts, or Vested’s monthly subscription for $999.

They can help you to shortlist candidates for your job openings.

Why you should hire a recruiting agency?

One can yield many benefits by hiring a recruiting agency specially when:

  • You have short term hiring needs: Recruiting companies are quiet quicker when it comes to hiring employees. They have a widespread network of candidates. Staffing firms usually have good relationship with these candidates. They hire these candidates on role and assign them to clients who are looking for short-term employees.
  • You want to enhance your pipeline with qualified employees: Recruiting agencies fills your pipeline with good leads. It allows managers to make decisions easily.
  • You want an employee for a specialized role: Internal recruiters usually have less experience when it comes to hiring for a specialized or executive role. This kind of recruitment needs special skills and learning. Recruiting agencies have this kind of knowledge along with special sourcing methods. Their niche job boards also play an important role. To get your account prioritized you could pay them an upfront fee.

 Basically, when you are hiring at initial phase, recruiting agencies take over the process and work on it efficiently.

The initial steps of hiring include resume screening; phone screening and first interviews are taken care of by the hiring company.

Recruiting agencies are more like a substitute to internal recruiters of the company. Usually, small companies do not have any recruiting departments, and they outsource their hiring process through recruitment companies.

This way they save a part of money and spend that money on channelizing other departments. On the other hand, there are companies which do not hold regular recruitments. Such companies hire recruitment agencies and downsize their size of team to reduce employment cost.

Although, this approach seems extremely practical and reliable yet it has lots of drawbacks.

What happens when recruitment agencies replace the internal recruiters of the company?

Recruiting agencies can be a great support for any company, but they cannot hold the fort all alone. They will face a few limitations.

Take a look:

  • They are not acquainted with the internal culture of the company.
  • It’s not necessary for the managers of recruiting agency to be available at the right moment.
  • Parameters for open roles keep changing and recruiting agencies are usually slow to adapt to it.
  • They do not have exact idea of what exact skills clients are looking for.

It is due to all these reasons, recruiting agencies alone fail to perform effectively on the part of the company.

Maintain the balance

To combine the positive and negative effects of the agencies, it is most important to strike off a balance between an agency and a recruiting firm. Combining an agency with efficient internal talent hunting team can do wonders. Both of them complement each other perfectly.

In house teams have several benefits:

A good knowledge of company culture: In house recruiting team has a good knowledge of internal culture and first-hand experience of the work place. It helps them to sell better candidates. They recommend hires that fit best to the company. Also, they know which hire can fill the skill gap most effectively.

Relationship with hiring managers: In-house recruiters maintain a healthy relationship with hiring managers and keep explaining them about the criteria and stages of hiring.

They learn from their mistakes: A bad hire or a good hire, they keep learning from their experiences and thus acquire expertise. They exactly know what their company needs.

Internal recruiters do care about candidate experience, and they carry a responsibility of building a reputation of their company

It is quite simple to understand. A start up of five people definitely does not need any internal recruiter immediately but as it grows, enter new market, launches new products and face a different kind of competition, it would become a necessity for them to invest in human resources.

Initially, recruiting agencies can shoulder your hiring burden but soon the company would have to augment with the internal recruiters.

The companies who invest in a better talent acquisition team/platform in times is always better equipped to face future challenges.

Photo by mentatdgt from Pexels

Categories
Hiring Best Practices

What to keep in mind while hiring for startups

A startup is literally a bunch of people, starving hard for success.

In the beginning, the team comprises people who signal for their ambition and set their limits.

No one is perfect and an outer help becomes necessity.

Go for the people you can’t get. Grab people who have exquisite talent. Once you got a few of them, they will naturally attract many others like them.

Punch above your weight

This is a bit tricky. Punching above your weight is definitely not a luxury but it seems the most obvious choice.

A successful startup continuously shifts up its weight category. These people will help you to rise up and never get stuck.

Hire deliberately

Always remember, hiring is not filling for a job but it is for building a company. Make sure to hire first 20 employees deliberately keeping the future in mind. It is important to make hiring criteria before you start the process.

Do not hire someone just because he is general and available. These opportunists are bad hires, and they can sink your boat.

A pointless hire costs around $25-$50 and that’s a huge amount for a startup to waste. The first few hires play an important role in toning the future of the startup. Beyond the wastage of money, a wrong hire puts your future at the stake on the other hand, a deliberate decision makes this intrinsic thing a lot easier.

Pro tip: Never hire a person who badmouths about his previous employer or co-workers.

Hire for potential

Any successful startup will outgrow the current skills and roles, and will morph unpredictably well if the things work out as intended. The demands of the employees will also grow with the growing company.

Constant evolution is one of the most exhausting aspects of the startup. Owners call it “keeping up with their own company.” Though it is easy to hand on the current skills of the employees, it is quite hard to rate their potential. Taking account of their past can be a great professional help.

Most of the times, smart, hard-working and decisive people do great in their schools and colleges as well. Prefer high-achievers.

Pro tip: Including pre-interview assignments can help to choose people who are ready to go extra mile.

The Culture fit

It is hard to pin down but it is important to realize the fit between a personality and organization. Hires should be assessed on the basis of their behavior, mentality and their values for the organization.

Pro tip: Follow your senses while taking interviews. A small mistake in the interview will double up many times in the coming months if overlooked. Avoid people who have a bad attitude.

Go for people who have an opinion and who can talk about their likes and dislikes with utmost honesty. People who believe in mission, vision and values of an organization tend to care. This kind of people will be true while talking about their belief in your start up.

Hire for attitude, train for skills

It’s necessary to like a candidate before you hire him. It may sound highly subjective and unfair in the context of employee especially in a professional set up but it is important when you want someone to blend in your team. Your employees are your emotional reserve in the tough times.

Yes, the learning ability of a man matters but his attitude is certainly something that defines his character. Instead, checking him for specific skills, do check their prospect.

Pro tip: Behavioral interviews can help you out at such times. Bank a good number of questions.

Look for things you can’t train

Financial management or Google analytics are easy to teach but it is almost impossible to instill manners, etiquette, numeracy or ethics.

When you have a close group, as in startups, it is easy to transfer that skill and experience to your employees.

Skill can be taught and knowledge can be put to use but it is quite difficult to teach about work ethics or solid enthusiasm.

Only 11% of people fail because of a lack in their technical skill. Most of the people fail because they lack motivation and are unwilling to learn.

Pro tip: asking for references help.

(Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels)

Categories
Sourcing Candidates

How to source passive candidates?

Sourcing a passive candidate is not an easy task, which is why our clients rely on our on demand recruiting model to find the right talent.

What’s more difficult is to screen them and engage in a conversation.

How to find passive candidates?

Meet them online

  • Use Twitter and Facebook: The number of users of Twitter and Facebook counts in billions. You can use advanced hash tag search on these platforms to look for passive candidates. You can find a content manager with a hash tag #contentmanager or #SEO. Follow them on twitter and reach through it. Prefer those who have an insight about topics and answer questions. Also, you can follow the companies that are doing better and connect with their employees. Facebook can also help to find matching profiles. Target people who are into a job for some time and open new opportunities for them.
  • Try more targeted social media: Involving more upon social media stumble your chances of getting success. Websites like Snapchat, reddit and instagram are not popular for passive hire hunting unlike LinkedIn or Xing. But that also means a low competition on these websites. Though, users on this website do not like aggressive recruiting but you can initiate the process carefully.
  • Check out portfolio/ work sample sites: Online sourcing allows you to see candidate’s work on portfolio websites. Github is a good choice if you are looking for a developer and Behance, Dribble and carbonmade are ideal sites if you are looking for designers. You can host a coding challenge on this website and check out the talent.
  • Try sourcing tool: Sourcing talent from online communities allows you to see the environment and prospect of candidates in which they are living and working. It allows a personalized communication and brings more information.
  • Meeting passive candidates in person: Meeting someone face to face is equally significant even in the era of social media. It builds trust and rapport. You can attend conferences and events that allow you to meet many passive candidates. There are many websites that provide you a list of people who are attending the event. Having an idea about who is attending the event lets you prepare for it and conversations flow easily. You can yourself arrange such kind of events. Meeting people in person increases the chances of finding an efficient candidate.
  • Meet passive candidates through connections: It is often said that best employees can be found through reference only. These people rarely quit and work responsibly. You can ask your current employees for referrals. Send specific emails regarding the role you are asking for. Your network is the first place you should look for.
  • Meet through past hiring processes: You can use your database and call for previously rejected candidates. Such people can be the best employees in the future. Your ATS provides you with the data of a good number of employees instantly. There are many candidates who get rejected at the last stage of the hiring process.
  • Meet through tools and services: Manual searches are not enough if you want the best results. Do check websites that offer a good database with millions of resumes at your fingertips.

How to Screen Passive candidates?

You can screen passive candidates in a similar way you screen active candidates.

  • Have a clear understanding of your objectives: Stick to your must-have qualifications list and keep a list of your required general qualities in your mind.
  • Check out passive candidate’s social media account: A look on their accounts will help you to understand those candidates in a better way.
  • Keep an open mind about their online presence: Hire for attitude and not for their skills as skills can be easily taught.

How to recruit passive candidates?

Passive candidates are those who are not looking for a job but a good opportunity might attract them.

  • Approach them carefully: When you approach these candidates through social media be careful about the message you draft, and they may not like it.
  • Send personalized sourcing emails: You can write them a personalized email with a great content. Talk about their wishes and interests and give them enough details to make them curious.
  • Communicate what passive candidates want to know: Approach passive candidates with the information that is useful to them. Only a clear picture of what you are going to offer can help them prepare their mind.
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Hiring Best Practices

3 Ways You Can Make Your Freelance Resume Stand Out

When you’re in the freelance market, it’s difficult to create a resume because you don’t work for just one company. In fact, a typical week may contain work for four (or more) companies. This can make building resume challenges. Freelancing also has an added layer of difficulty, because for many they are almost always having to be on the lookout for new jobs. However, there are a few ways for you to make your resume stand out with a potential employer.

Provide Only the Necessary Information

A good resume should only be a page long. If you have a significant amount of information to share, it can extend to a second page. Since you don’t have a lot of space to work with considering your contact information has to go to the top, you need to be selective as to what you include.

You don’t need to include a full paragraph to identify your objective, every job you have ever worked, every award you have ever won, and a long list of your hobbies. It’s simply not needed.

Instead, focus on the information that is necessary. You may want to customize your resume for every type of position you are applying for so that you can highlight the most pertinent information. Ladders explain, “include several success words that will quantify more about what you do and how well you do it. Success words are variations on just saying, “I did it”. Make your verbs active verbs and not passive.”

Use a Simple, Skimmable Design

Having a unique resume is important, but it’s also important to not deviate too much from the norm. College America explains, “a key element to creating a standout resume is to make sure the layout promotes easy readability.” If potential employers have to search everywhere for the information they are looking for, they’ll simply skip over your resume entirely.

Don’t go overboard with bright, bold colours. While you may be tempted to stand out from all of the other resumes, it will do so in a negative way. Stick to the standard resume templates to ensure that you are giving hiring managers what they need in a way that they can read it quickly. If you provide enough information that gets their interest, they’ll contact you to learn more.

Include Relevant Experience

Make a Living Writing explains, “with the upcoming recession for freelancers, many are looking to focus on jobs with big companies to avoid any kind of gap in work. When this is the case for you, be sure to include relevant experience for the job you are applying for.”

Don’t hesitate to include a list of clients you have worked for and their websites so that a potential employer can see your work.

In the end, building a freelance resume is similar to any other resume. Focus on the information that is relevant and keep the design simple.

If you’re looking for a new job, see how Vested can help!