Boost Your Response Rate-How to Get More Applicants ASAP

Anne St. HilaireHow to Get More Applicants ASAP

Boost Your Response Rate:

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What’s Inside

Intro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Nobody’s Perfect: Here’s Why You

Might Not Be Getting Applicants . . . . . 5

The Silent Killer: A Horrible Application Process . . . . . . . 8

The Secret for More Appplicants?

Think About Them, Not You . . . . . . . . 15


4 ©2015 Recruiter.com | Boost Your Response Rate: How to Get More Applicants ASAP

Finding and hiring qualified candidates is not the easiest task. Why else

would the recruitment industry exist if employers could easily grab the

attention of great new employees at the drop of a hat? Attracting job

seekers, especially passive candidates, takes time, effort and a slew of

strategies - and it’s come to light that job boards alone are not doing

the trick. So how can you attract more applicants to your

open positions?

Before we dive into new and

important strategies for growing

larger pools of applicants, we

have to assess what your

company might be doing that is

pushing applicants away. Millions of college

graduates, unemployed candidates or even individuals looking

for a career change are out there applying each and every day,

so there must be a reason that they are not filling out

applications for you.

It’s time to take a step back, evaluate your current job postings,

company reputation, branding and more and find out just how you

can get more applicants for your open positions.


Nobody’s Perfect: Here’s Why You Might Not Be Getting Applicantsbased on “ 5 Reasons Why You Aren’t Getting Enough Applicants” by Shala Marks

When it came to unfulfilled jobs, last year’s

re-occurring theme was the “skills gap.” We all know

the issue: There are more qualified jobs than

qualified workers. Employers were (and still are)

having trouble finding candidates who possess

the necessary talent to fill a role. Yet, interestingly

enough, a new study by the Center for College

Affordability and Productivity revealed that nearly

half (48 percent) of the nation’s employed recent

college graduates are working in jobs that they

are overqualified for. Hmmm.

So, somehow we have a skills gap and an

underemployment problem all at the same time.

This is interesting. Now, the “smart idea” would be

to say, Hey, why don’t we somehow combine the

underemployed workers with the thousands of

vacant positions and BOOM! Talk about a dent in

the unemployment rate. Yet, this “grand idea” is

obviously not a sure-proof plan, but why? What

are the reasons the millions of college graduates

(and tenured job seekers) aren’t applying to the job

listings your company has put up? Well, I’m glad

you asked because…

One, your reach isn’t far enough .

If there are millions of job seekers, yet you’re only

sending out openings to hundreds or thousands (if


that), your response may not be as large as you’d

like. Also, as a recruiter, you have to get your

openings to job seekers where job seekers are.

Posting on the mega job boards, using social

media, and recruiting via mobile means is a sure

way to increase your

attractiveness. Try sites that

offer a social network posting

feature that allow recruiters

to easily share their jobs on

sites like LinkedIn, Facebook

and Twitter – like Recruiter!

Two, your job descriptions lack description .

When it comes to sales,

people know that if you don’t have a good sales

pitch, then you aren’t going to get the clients that

you are looking for. The same can be said for a job

posting. If the ad isn’t as well put together and

attractive as the opportunity itself, then you are not

going to lure in the candidates that you need.

Boring, vague job descriptions that offer little-to-no

detail on what the job is are sure to bring down your

response numbers. Also, be cautious of “work-from-

home” and “telecommute” listings as people may

think the job is fake. Put the

listing under different

cities where your company

is located and then disclose

its remote feature to

candidates during the

interview process.

Three, your ad lists too many requirements .

Postings that want “5-10

years of this” and “15+ years of that” yet fail to

explain what the role actually entails are a no-no.

Again, bleak job descriptions hurt you and are even

worse when you’re demanding an applicant have x

amount of credentials but offer no reason why. The


same is true for salary. Jobs offering $8/hour and

must have 5-10 years of experience may push job

seekers to look elsewhere e.g. pay that is

commensurate with experience.

Four, you failed to mention benefits. Every job

seeker is interested in the perks that may come

with a position. If someone sees an add

demanding so many credentials and has a heavy

workload, yet offers no benefits, he or she is

prone to keep it moving. Make sure you list the

benefits that come along with a role to attract

more applicants.

Five, the look of your ad isn’t appealing .

This may sound trivial, but it counts. When it comes

to job listings you do not want to leave anything to

the imagination. A boring black and white ad with

no company logos and no links to your site should

be avoided. Job seekers should see your brand in

job listings (or at least be able to click on a link that

takes them to your branded career site). Be sure that

you have a consistently branded career site and that

your job advertisements reflect the look and feel

of the career site. Keeping the same theme and

branding throughout the application process can

increase conversions.


Job seekers hate the application process. I can

make that claim without citing a source, and no one

will contest it. We just accept it as fact at this point.

The folks at Jibe, an HR software company that

provides a set of cloud services for recruiting and

managing talent, recently conducted a survey to find

out just how much job seekers actually hate filling

out applications. According to the 2014 Jibe Talent

Acquisition Survey, applicants loathe the process

even more than many of us expected. According to

35 percent of survey respondents, the job search is

“easy.” Compare this to the 80 percent who said it

was “time-consuming,” or the 78 percent who called

it “stressful,” or the 71 percent who called it

“discouraging.”

Similarly, 30 percent of job seekers said they would

rather go on a blind date than fill out an online job

application, and 22 percent said they would

rather speak in front of 100 strangers. Heck, 12

percent even said they’d rather get a root canal.

Whenever anyone, anywhere would rather have a

root canal than fill out a job application, we have

a problem.

According to Ivan Casanova, Jibe’s senior vice

president of marketing, there are a few (good)

The Silent Killer: A Horrible Application Processbased on “Your Terrible Application Process is Costing You Big Time” by Matthew Kosinski


reasons why job seekers can’t stand the application

process. “First off — and especially for enterprise

customers — the application process is a function

of the applicant tracking system,” he says. “A lot of

that technology hasn’t evolved as quickly as

customers need it to.”

Job seekers are also

frustrated by another form of

outdated technology: poorly

designed company websites.

“People are on the Web all

day long, and if they’re on a

crappy website, they tend to

get off,” Casanova says.

Applicants run into a slew of problems trying to

apply online: they cannot upload the necessary

documents, or they cannot navigate the website on

a mobile device, or the experience itself is clunky

and repetitive, etc.

Many job seekers have enough self-respect to walk

away from companies who put them through

torturous online applications.

“[A person] looks at it like,

‘Do I really want to work

here? No!’ Casanova says.

“If they can’t even let me

upload my resumé in a way

that makes me comfortable, I

probably don’t even want

to work there.”

Losing out on Great Talent — Because the Application Process Is Awful

Jibe found that 44 percent of job seekers would

“put off applying or not apply at all” if they had a


frustrating experience with an outdated online job

application. A full 60 percent of job seekers report

quitting an online application before completing it,

or losing all of their work because a confusing

application process led them to believe they were

finished before they really were. Those who lose

their work do not try again: they move on to the

websites of companies that aren’t going to drive

them insane.

According to Casanova, employers of all types and

sizes face the consequences of poorly designed

applications. “There are always businesses where the

quality of the talent is the crucial vector. They need

to hire great people,” he says. “For those people, if

you have a bad candidate experience, you’re going

to lose the best people.”

Similarly, Casanova says companies that depend

more on hiring high volumes of applicants may find

themselves unable to fully staff their operations.

“If you’re talking more of a volume business, where

you’re hiring lots of hourly workers, you have to be

able to fill those jobs, and if you can’t, you literally

can’t run your restaurant, or your food chain, or your

supermarket, or your retail store,” he explains. “Even

with unemployment in the low sixes today, there are

still a lot of business that can’t hire enough people.

They’re going to lose out and not be able to run

their business.”

As serious as these challenges are, Casanova refers

to them as the “pedestrian perspectives” because,

as he points out, off-putting application processes

can hit businesses in ways they may not have even

imagined. “I think what’s really at risk, though, in

the bigger picture, is that there is some real brand

halo associated with this,” he says. “There was a

significant portion of people [34 percent] who

responded to the survey that said that, if a process


was terrible, they wouldn’t even buy anything from

that company.”

When job seekers have a painful time applying to a

company, they may start to think about the

company in a negative light.

They’ll stop giving the

company their business,

and they’re likely to

encourage friends and

family to do the same.

“The real danger for clients

is that somebody who is a

job seeker logs into your

website or finds you on a mobile device, and the

application process is terrible,” Casanova says.

“They’re going to think that you don’t know what

you’re doing or that you’re not as technically

sophisticated as an organization as you need to be,

and it’s going to make them think worse about you

as a business. It’s going to have a brand effect.”

Casanova says that companies should treat the

application process as an extension of their brand.

“If they think about it that way,

they tend to be more likely to

invest in it and make sure it’s a

great experience,” he says.

But there’s more to the

situation: despite the general

unrest amongst job seekers

and the negative impact that

bad application processes

have on organizations, many companies simply

are not stepping up to address the problem. The

reason for this? A general disconnect between

what applicants really experience and what HR

thinks applicants experience.


HR Departments: Keeping Their Heads in the Sand

According to Jibe’s survey, HR professionals are

wearing their rose-tinted glasses: they’re seeing a

sunnier, more optimistic picture of the application

process than the one job seekers are seeing.

“There’s a bit of the ‘head in the sand’ model for an

HR pro,” Casanova says. “Consistently across the

board, the survey showed that the HR pro was more

optimistic about their process. They thought it was

faster. They thought it was as good as it needed

to be.”

Casanova says that a significant portion of HR

professionals are still not thinking in terms of

candidate experience, and Jibe’s numbers support

his conclusion: 64 percent of surveyed HR

professionals believe is is important for the

application process to be user-friendly, but 54

percent of HR professionals admit that their current

application process is not user-friendly.

There is a disconnect between the picture in HR’s

head and the real world that job seekers are facing.

However, Casanova does not blame HR entirely.

He notes that many departments suffer from

outdated, unwieldy tools. “A lot of it has to do with

the life cycles of some of these big enterprise

systems,” he says. “As long as the ATS is the core

of how these large organizations are going to do

recruiting, they’re kind of bound to those systems,

and those things are not evolving as quickly as

customers need.”

HR departments are having an especially tough time

keeping up with advances in mobile technology.

While 80 percent of job seekers expect to be able

to use their smartphone during the job search, 27

percent of HR professionals at companies with 500

or more employees say they have not optimized the

application process for mobile devices. Similarly, 36

percent also say that, if they were candidates, they


would not describe the application process at their

company as “mobile optimized.”

“If you work in an organization — you work for a

corporation — and on day one, you’re given a laptop

computer, that becomes your lens to the Internet,”

Casanova says. “People just don’t realize that maybe,

for some people, mobile is the only option.”

We often think about job search in terms of

executives and other “office talent,” but, as

Casanova points out, there are other types of talent

out there — and HR needs to think about how they

can access job applications, especially when a

company is looking for hourly employees. “We

[Jibe] do a lot of work with hourly workers, and for

a lot of those people, mobile is their only Internet,”

Casanova says. “I think that maybe the HR pros are

not aware that access is still a big issue from a

desktop, and mobile is a cheaper and easier solution.”


Building a Better Application Process Requires Analytics

For companies interested in building user-friendly,

convenient, mobile-optimized application

processes, Casanova says the most important thing

to have is analytics. Jibe’s cloud services all offer

measurements of candidate experience — e.g.,

how long it takes candidates to complete

applications, how many candidates abandon

the process, etc. — which companies can use to

continually improve their performance on the

application front.

“If you really haven’t gotten onto a modern platform

like Jibe, and you are still using legacy ATS

technology, you’re probably not geared for the

web,” Casanova says. “You don’t have the numbers

to think about how you’re going to drive performance,

and all that adds up to probably thinking that you’re

doing better than you actually are.”

Casanova says that he — and the rest of the Jibe

team — would like to see a world where job seekers

have the experiences they expect to have when they

log onto company websites. “When [a job seeker]

logs on, it looks like a modern website. It feels like

a modern website. The navigation of the application

process is really, really positive for him,”

Casanova says.


For the most part, attracting talent remains a highly

most challenging issue for companies and recruiters.

Time and time again, organizations post job

advertisements and hope for a flood of qualified

candidates; what they receive instead, however, is

a certifiable trickle.

Of course, the scarcity of job applicants is partly the

result of demand for talent outstripping the supply

in many areas, but it may also stem from the fact

your competition is producing more attractive job

advertisements. Even a job ad format that worked a

year ago may now be outdated, usurped by a newer

and more effective format and stopped; such is the

rate of progression in this area. This is why it is vital

that you regularly review your job advertisements to

ensure they incorporate the latest techniques

for drawing top talent in to your organization.

To help you do that, here are four methods proven

to boost your job advertisement response rate:

1 . Focus on Candidate Needs, Not Employer Demands

When under pressure from a boss or client to deliver,

it can be tempting to turn job advertisements into

long lists of demands that focus on what the

company — rather than the candidate — wants.

The Secret for More Applicants? Think About Them, Not Youbased on “4 Methods Proven to Increase Your Number of Job Applicants” by Kazim Ladimeji


However, research shows this is a flawed strategy.

For the best results, job ads should focus on the needs of

the applicants. A study from the University of Calgary

found that ads that emphasized “needs-supplies” —

that is, ads that emphasized what the company can

offer candidates — received three times as many

highly rated applicants as ads with “demands-

abilities,” which emphasized the demands of the

employer.

The lesson here is that top talent gravitates toward

employee-centered advertisements.

2 . Use a Standard, Recognizable Job Title

While it makes sense to get creative with job

descriptions in order to showcase your employer

brand, it makes less sense to let this creativity spill

over into job titles. What may sound interesting and

quirky to the members of your team may sound


strange and unidentifiable to candidates in the

marketplace. According to LinkedIn, 64 percent of

job seekers would not apply for a job if they didn’t

understand the job title, so if you use seemingly

creative job titles, you risk alienating huge portions

of the talent market.

3 . Include Company Logos or Slogans in Job Postings

Research from CareerBuilder shows that ads that

include company logos or slogans in job descriptions

can draw on 13-21 percent more applicants than ads

that do not. So, make sure you use logos, awards,

and mission statements in your job advertisements

to reflect your employer brand.

4 . Offer Salary Information Upfront

This is a controversial tactic, as many employers

believe revealing salary information so early on

puts them at a disadvantage in compensation

negotiations, while others believe that making salary

data available on job advertisements will make it

easier for competitors to poach staff or lure talent

from the pool by offering higher salaries.

However, the research from CareerBuilder cited

above suggests that ads that include salary

information perform better than ads that do not.

To me, this fact make a lot of sense: why would

an applicant want to spend 2-3 hours of their time

applying to a job if they can’t be sure the job pays

enough to cover their bills?

If you want your ads to attract more candidates, then

you should include salary information in your ads.

If you are worried about the dangers of putting this

sensitive information on display, then you could offer

a salary range, rather than a solid number.

There are many other techniques that can increase

response rates, but these four evidence-backed

techniques should make immediate impacts, if you

implement them properly.

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Boost Your Response Rate-How to Get More Applicants ASAP