GoodTime GoodTime

Tag: Candidate Experience

Culture Fit Is Dead. It’s Time to Hire for Culture Add.

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Keeping your company’s culture in mind is a must-do when recruiting for open positions, but should you really hire for culture fit? Or is hiring for culture add the new way to go?

When done right, hiring for culture fit means looking for candidates that align with the core company values and the way that things are done at an organization, making it even more likely that they would thrive in the workplace and successfully perform as new employees.

Sounds logical, right? Most recruitment teams would agree: 83% of recruiters reportedly consider culture fit to be the most important hiring factor after previous job experience. Meshing with company culture is equally significant to candidates, as more than half of job seekers say that company culture is more important than salary when it comes to being satisfied at work.

But as is the unfortunate fate for many recruiting buzzwords, culture fit has been misinterpreted and misused to the point where the concept now does more harm than good. It’s time to say good-bye to hiring for culture fit and hello to hiring for culture add.

Dangers of Hiring for Culture Fit

Culture Fit Is Difficult to Define

How well a candidate fits into a company’s culture is incredibly subjective and hard to measure. One recruiter may see a candidate as a perfect culture match, and another may have a completely different perspective.

Leaving culture fit open to interpretation makes it susceptible to misuse. What recruiters and hiring managers often end up measuring instead is how well they get along with a candidate. This is where hiring for culture fit becomes problematic.

Prioritizes Similarities When Hiring

The rumors are true: birds of a feather really do flock together. Science shows that we naturally take comfort in identifying with people who are similar to us. In a recruitment context, this means that if a candidate shares a specific characteristic or lived experience with a hiring manager, this commonality creates a bond. 

In turn, some hiring managers neglect to prioritize alignment between the company and the candidate — aka, what culture fit should really be about — and instead focus on alignment between themselves and the candidate. Hiring for culture fit turns into hiring for homogeneity, and I’m sure you can guess how this impacts DEI recruitment efforts.

Negates DEI Recruitment Principles

Selecting candidates based on how well you mesh with them goes against everything that equitable hiring stands for. What started as an attempt to hire for culture fit snowballs into a company that lacks diversity and struggles with DEI hiring practices.

Prioritizing sameness maintains the status quo and creates unconscious biases. Diverse candidates — whether this means diversity of thought or of demographic characteristics — find themselves at a disadvantage.

All in all, hiring for culture fit in this manner creates a workforce with employees that think and look the same. A truly successful company is a diverse company, where issues are tackled and innovations are created thanks to employees with a wide range of thought processes and lived experiences. 

Start Hiring for Culture Add

Stop looking for someone who simply fits your company culture and start searching for something more meaningful: culture add. 

Hiring for culture add means considering your company’s culture while looking for candidates who would enrich the culture with diverse experiences and ideas. In this way, your hiring team fosters a forward-thinking mindset by considering how adding certain perspectives and backgrounds would create a successful future for your organization. 

How to Hire for Culture Add

Assess What’s Missing from Your Organization

It’s impossible to identify candidates who would add to your company culture without first examining what your company lacks. Perhaps you don’t have enough employees who take risks and propose pie in the sky ideas, or who thrive when hyper-focused on the details of a project.

Once you’ve identified what you’re missing, your hiring team can venture forward in their search for candidates who would be successful additions.

Ask Candidates How Your Culture Can Improve

A good candidate keenly understands and appreciates your company culture. A great candidate goes against the grain and recognizes where your culture needs improvements.

If a candidate acknowledges gaps within your company culture, they’d likely be an employee who contributes to your culture with positive change and a different perspective on how to do things, instead of an employee who assimilates to how things have always been done and fits your current company image.

By hiring candidates who can recognize these gaps, your company benefits from a diversity of thought that pushes your organization forward and challenges the status quo.

Diversify Your Sourcing Channels

If you’re struggling with hiring for culture add, it might be because your talent pool is too homogeneous. Take this as a sign that you need to add diversity to your sourcing strategies.

Start by getting acquainted with online job posting platforms that cater to diverse populations, such as the Professional Diversity Network and Diversity Job Board. Posting your job openings on these websites encourages historically underrepresented groups to consider employment at your company.

You can also seek out and hold events with local chapters and associations where diverse candidates meet. This way, you’ll form meaningful candidate relationships with job seekers who could add immense value to your organization’s culture.

Want Better Candidate Engagement? Treat Talent Like Customers

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Hot take: if recruiting teams only focus on forming relationships with candidates within the hiring funnel, then they’re missing out on a lot of talent. That’s where continuous candidate engagement comes in. Let’s explain…

The traditional idea of the candidate experience is short and sweet. It starts when talent becomes a candidate, and ends when they’re rejected. But what about before and after?

Charles Mah, Chief Customer Officer at iCIMS, sat down with GoodTime’s CEO and Head of Company Strategy, Ahryun Moon, to share his strategy for continuously engaging candidates. This “customer-driven” hiring model converts candidates into engaged ambassadors of your brand, helping your hiring team make the most coveted hires.

Here’s the TLDR with five takeaways from the session.

1. The Talent Acquisition Model is Antiquated

The talent acquisition model is in dire need of a makeover. TA has always been about simply filling positions, and this used to be sufficient. But as the talent landscape continues to undergo major changes — with the rise of the distance economy, remote work, and a candidate-driven market, to name a few — we also need to change our candidate engagement.

Traditionally, the TA model is short and linear. Recruiting teams send mass amounts of emails and in-mails in a sourcing frenzy, interviewing candidates, and then relaying offers and rejections. The point when candidates enter the recruitment funnel and start interviewing is thought of as the prime time to focus on the candidate experience. However, the experience is largely neglected during all other touchpoints.

This process is no longer up to the standards of what candidates want out of their hiring experience. Candidates want to feel engaged at every stage of recruitment. This means before, during, and after the process. 

2. Create Candidate Relationships — Not Just Candidate Experiences

Move over, candidate experience, and make way for the candidate relationship.

The candidate experience is all about how candidates gauge their interactions with potential employers during the hiring process. Having recruiting teams focus on creating a positive experience for candidates is undoubtedly important, but the candidate experience as it’s traditionally executed comes with pitfalls. That’s why we need to shift towards crafting rich, engaging candidate relationships.

When companies focus on the candidate experience, they don’t usually nurture the connection with the talent they’ve passed on. This is mistake number one: failing to connect with rejected candidates prevents you from tapping into them for new roles. 

Mistake number two occurs when hiring teams neglect to cultivate the candidate relationship before the interviewing stage. Candidates often have multiple job offers on the table, and the companies that go the extra mile to engage potential hires pre-interview are the ones that stand out.

3. Hiring Pools Still Lack Representation

Creating diverse talent pools is a major talking point in the recruiting world, yet data shows that there’s still a lot of work to be done in turning these conversations into actions. Even as recruiting teams expand their talent pools, they struggle to move the diversity needle.

“We’ve seen an average of 11% to 15% of diverse candidates get the opportunity to interview.

That’s still far below where it needs to be.”

– Charles Mah, Chief Customer Officer at iCI

The current methods of recruiting candidates aren’t conducive to championing diversity. If recruiters want to bring a wider range of representation to their talent pools and tap into more diverse candidates, they need to change the ways that they engage and evaluate quality candidates. 

4. Recruiting Teams Need CCE

It’s time to treat candidates like customers and focus on continuous candidate engagement (CCE). Just as brands engage and re-engage with their customers, CCE refers to the ongoing, value-driven connection between candidates and an organization. It’s established through continuously nurturing candidates.

CCE starts with reaching out to candidates about ideas that you’re mutually interested in, such as by sending relevant blogs or podcasts. You can then add these candidates to your CRM to nurture this engagement.

The next step is to connect candidates in your CRM to larger-scale events, whether this means hackathons or ERG events. When it comes to diversifying your talent pool, encouraging participation in ERG events can greatly accomplish this goal.

Participation in these events leads to networking. By connecting your talent pool to hiring managers and ERG members, you can facilitate genuine connections.

After using your CRM to collect data on these dynamic experiences, you now have a high-quality pool of engaged candidates to interview, already pre-vetted on key soft skills. Rejected candidates are not forgotten – the CCE model moves them back to the talent network and continuously nurtures those connections.

5. Why Ongoing Candidate Engagement Matters

CCE is the key to building meaningful candidate relationships for life. Through facilitating ongoing candidate engagement, these incredible experiences with talent not only build diverse and highly skilled workforces, but a community of loyal customers as well.

“Ongoing engagement creates a network of extremely engaged talent that will jump at the opportunity to work at your company.”

– Charles Mah, Chief Customer Officer at iCIMS

If you want to build a CCE engine that breathes life into your candidate relationships, look at your tech stack. iCIMS’ CRM allows you to cultivate robust relationships with candidates by creating moments that matter.

At GoodTime, our automated interview scheduling solution elevates your hiring team’s ability to connect with and win top talent at scale (and save your team major time and money along the way).

Use our free ROI calculator to see how much time and money you could save on hiring by using GoodTime.

Hiring Gen Z? Here’s What They Want in the Candidate Relationship

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Gen Z is the newest demographic entering the workforce, and they’re here to make waves. As the youngest, largest, and most diverse generation in United States history, Gen Z stands out from any generation that’s come before them. They’re already redefining the workplace with their unique preferences, and with Gen Z employees set to comprise 27% of the workforce by 2025, their influence will only continue to expand.

From a hiring perspective, teams need to consider how to cultivate a strong candidate relationship with the Gen Z job seeker. Talent leaders who want to win over this next generation of workers will need to get acquainted with their expectations— and fast. Forming an authentic connection with your Gen Z candidates throughout the hiring process is crucial to maintaining their interest amid a sea of other attractive job offers. 

Read on to learn how you can attract and engage Gen Z at every touchpoint in the interview process by living up to their expectations of the candidate relationship. 

Demonstrated Emphasis on Company Values

Despite being new to the workplace, Gen Z already knows what they value, and they don’t want to compromise. If an employer doesn’t demonstrate their principles, Gen Z will find a workplace that does. In fact, nearly 70% of young professionals in this cohort are likely to switch industries to locate opportunities that align with their values.

Work-life balance is among this group’s top principles; 42% of Gen Z candidates make a healthy work-life integration a top priority when job hunting. Gen Z seeks out employers that recognize the need to unplug and recharge once in a while to avoid burnout. It’s unlikely you’ll find this age group sacrificing their well-being for the sake of a paycheck.

Companies that don’t emphasize their values are setting themselves up for disappointment when it comes to attracting Gen Z talent. Taking time to clearly communicate what matters most to your organization in the interview stage goes a long way in cultivating a relationship with Gen Z candidates.

Commitment to DEI

DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) holds a special place in the hearts of Gen Z. 48% of United States Gen Z-ers are racial or ethnic minorities, and they want to see the diversity of their demographic reflected in the workplace.

Gen Z is leading the charge in shifting a heavier emphasis on DEI, and much of their interest comes from first-hand experiences with discriminatory workplaces. A recent study shows that 67% of Gen Z employees reported witnessing racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender-driven discrimination in the workplace, and 44% have been on the receiving end of this discrimination themselves.

In turn, this means that this generation is even warier regarding if an organization really cares about facilitating an inclusive and equitable work environment. Gen Z wants companies to champion DEI at all stages of an employee’s journey— even the pre-employment stage. 

Evaluate your pool of interviewers; do your interviewers come from a variety of backgrounds and characteristics? If not, you’re presenting an image of a workplace devoid of a diversity of perspectives. The interview is Gen Z’s first impression of your company, and failing to promote DEI starts the candidate relationship on the wrong foot.

Transparency on the Compensation Package

Gen Z candidates want their future employers to have a strong social conscience, but they want to be paid well, too; 70% say that salary is their top motivator when considering a job offer.

Salary transparency is becoming a widely discussed topic, and Gen Z is oftentimes at the forefront of these conversations. A healthy workplace culture now includes better salary transparency, and 70% of Gen Z would consider switching jobs for more of this transparency.

As a generation defined by money-conscious mindsets and honest discussions on compensation, Gen Z is not likely to tolerate companies that withhold details regarding salaries and benefits. Companies seeking to form trusted candidate relationships with Gen Z must be transparent with their compensation packages, and this means facilitating candid discussions in interviews.

Open Communication on Growth Opportunities 

To cultivate a genuine candidate relationship between Gen Z and your hiring team, it is essential to include discussions on growth opportunities within the interview process. The data doesn’t lie: in a survey, 64% of Gen Z workers identified growth opportunities as one of their top career priorities. 

Gen Z candidates want to know that they can have an exciting future at your company, but this doesn’t mean that they want to hear all about how they can someday fulfill their dreams of becoming a top executive. In the same survey, only 3% of Gen Z cited having a “fancy job title” as a priority. 

Instead, Gen Z wants their hiring process to include open dialogue surrounding how they’d be able to pick up new skills and grow their learnings in their potential future job. Overall, these candidates are looking for additional responsibilities at companies that are dedicated to maintaining their values and prioritizing the well-being of their employees.

Tech-Driven Candidate Experience

Gen Z learned how to scroll before they could speak. They were born with technology in their hands, and they expect the hiring process to keep up with their fast-paced, tech-driven lifestyles. In fact, a staggering 54% of Gen Z job seekers won’t even submit their applications if your hiring process seems outdated or unnecessarily time-consuming.

Arming your tech stack with intelligent recruitment software allows you to keep pace with Gen Z’s expectations. Prioritizing a tech-driven candidate relationship will save you both time and energy, all while ensuring that outdated hiring procedures don’t hold you back from securing top talent.

The Bottom Line: Prioritize the Candidate Relationship

Every generation has preferences in what they want in the candidate relationship, and Gen Z is no exception. This new demographic is redefining not only what an ideal work environment looks like, but also what a desirable hiring process looks like. Staying up-to-date on their expectations is crucial to winning them over.

Cultivating candidate relationships doesn’t have to be complicated. Download our eBook to learn more about the key pillars to a strong candidate relationship.

3 Ways To Reduce Employee Turnover With Candidate Relationships

Posted on by Rachel Heller

In the world of recruitment, finding top talent is only half the battle—it’s all about candidate relationships. For hiring teams with goals to not only reel stellar candidates in, but to also ensure that candidates stay engaged in an opportunity that lives up to expectations, talent retention requires just as much attention as talent acquisition.

As a recruiter, if this component of hiring is overlooked (as it all-too-often is), an alarmingly high employee turnover rate can directly negate your efforts to grow your teams. And within the age of the Great Resignation as more and more companies lose their top performers to other opportunities, now is the time to amplify your employee retention efforts.

If the importance of driving retention needed further proof, the cost of replacing an employee reportedly amounts to between 90% to 200% of their annual salary, meaning that keeping retention top-of-mind from the start of the interview process can save both time and money down the road.

We’ve talked about the importance of prioritizing candidate relationships in order to turn candidates into new hires, yet this key component of hiring is equally important when ensuring those new hires decide to stick around for a while. 

While 31% of employees reportedly left their new job within the first six months of working, this statistic doesn’t have to be the reality for your organization. In fact, it is incredibly preventable, and the solution lies in cultivating strong, genuine connections with potential new hires from the get-go. Read on to learn how to use candidate relationships as your secret weapon in boosting retention and reducing turnover.

Be Transparent With Advancement Opportunities

Employees don’t just want to have a job at your organization – they want a career, and part of having a career means having a defined path for promotions and advancement. If these opportunities aren’t present, employees aren’t afraid to look to other places, seen in the more than one-quarter of employees that are reportedly hunting for a new career for better advancement opportunities. 

Clearly and transparently communicating the projected career path in the interviewing stage not only bolsters candidate relationships with a trustworthy foundation of communication but also ensures that both your hiring team and the candidate are on the same page with what can be expected in growth opportunities. 

With 51% of hires left feeling misled over opportunities for career progression, being upfront about how your candidates can advance within the role mitigates the chance that they’ll be disappointed with these opportunities down the line and will decide to move on to a different organization. 

Convey Your Organization’s Culture

Clear communication is undoubtedly a core component in forming a strong relationship with candidates that translates to success and retention once they’re hired, yet this goes beyond articulating growth opportunities: this also means communicating the company culture. 

Company culture has always been somewhat difficult to fully convey to candidates, and the distance economy along with the new norm of remote hiring has made this concept even more abstract and difficult to properly illuminate. But with 38% of workers wanting to leave their jobs due to the culture, it’s evident that taking time to communicate a clear image of the workplace’s culture in the interview process is a must-do.

In the end, a candidate relationship embedded with open discussions on culture ensures that whoever is hired for the role fully understands and aligns with the environment and values of the organization, reducing the likeliness of turnover due to a bad cultural fit down the line.

Demonstrate Flexibility When Hiring

If the rise of remote working has taught us anything, it’s that flexibility is good for business. With 42% of employees reporting that they would leave their jobs for a more flexible work environment, companies that don’t offer flexibility risk losing out on acquiring and retaining top talent.

Facilitating candid conversations with candidates on their options for flexible work and flexible schedules is a great way to both strengthen the candidate relationship and make sure that the new hire won’t quit soon after they start the job due to dissatisfaction with the room for flexibility provided within the position.

But, showing is nearly always better than telling, so if you want your recruiting team to really stand out from the crowd, it’d be wise to demonstrate your organization’s commitment to flexibility using the tools in your tech stack. You can make flexibility paramount in the interview process with optimized virtual interviewing experiences, complete with self-scheduling capabilities that allow candidates to interview at a time that is most convenient for them.

The Bottom Line 

When faced with an increasingly picky candidate pool combined with job-hopping employees that drive up turnover rates, acquiring and retaining talent can oftentimes feel like an uphill battle. In times like this, cultivating the candidate relationship grows ever more important. This means enacting hiring practices that present potential hires with a genuine, true-to-life preview of the job.  

Check out our eBook on the candidate relationship to learn how to give candidates personable experiences at every step in your hiring process.

Interview Strategy Basics: Build the Candidate Relationship

Posted on by Rachel Heller

A seamless candidate experience has become even more elusive in today’s distance economy, where things move faster than ever. It’s a new world of work, and people use technology to collaborate from anywhere — a change that’s had an enormous impact on the priorities of job seekers.

Now, candidates expect employers to give them the work experience and flexibility they need in order to flourish — and rightfully so.

With so many people experiencing emotional, physical, and financial burdens from the fallout of the pandemic, they’re reevaluating what’s most important to them and starting to put their own needs first. They want to be part of a workplace that is aligned with their values, and where genuine professional connections and holistic support are the norms.

Remote work and virtual hiring have been a monumental shift for talent teams, and organizations that are winning the race for critical talent are now focusing on building candidate relationships throughout every single part of the hiring funnel. 

That’s why today’s talent teams need to provide candidates with a flexible, personal experience as well as authentic insight into the company, the role, and the team they’re considering. To help you make the changes that matter, consider how you can focus on the candidate relationship before, during, and after the interview.

How To Create Genuine Candidate Connections Before the Interview

Train Your Talent Teams

Cultivating genuine connections starts long before a candidate’s interview is even scheduled. It starts by training the people who make the first impression on the candidate — the interviewers.

This is critical, and here’s why — an interviewer’s performance is a direct reflection of your company. So, to create genuine connections, train your interviewers on these key practices:

  • Always treat candidates with respect and kindness.
  • Be attentive when they’re talking so you can better understand their needs.
  • Despite hectic schedules, use the interview to truly connect with candidates. Smile and nod to show you’re listening.
  • Allow candidates to engage in real conversations about the things that matter to them.
  • Help them feel heard and understood by asking them to elaborate or by reiterating what they’ve said.
  • To minimize bias, ask open-ended and behavioral-based questions.
  • Be transparent, and be prepared to answer questions about topics like culture and pay.

Promote Flexibility and Fairness

Flexibility is at the top of most candidates’ lists. Prove that your company values flexibility by making it a key part of the interview process.

Start by respecting candidates’ time and letting them self-schedule their interview appointments. Automated interview scheduling platforms empower candidates to select their own interview slot and even reschedule, if necessary.

Besides flexible scheduling, here are some other ways to provide a fair, flexible interview process:

  • Look for bottlenecks in getting candidates through the process and address candidate dropout. Optimize for efficiency and speed. Can you reduce the number of interviews to speed up the process?
  • Candidates may need accommodations —provide options and support for candidates with your interviewing technology.
  • Understand when life happens, and candidates need to reschedule.
  • Diversify your interview panels. The more trained interviewers on your hiring panel, the more diverse candidates you’ll be able to connect with as they’re able to envision a place for themselves in your organization.

How To Create Genuine Candidate Connections During the Interview

Promote and Enable Authenticity

Will candidates join your company if they feel like they don’t really know what you stand for and what it’s like to work with you? Probably not.

For candidates, transparency in the interview is a reassuring sign. And if you want to win the best talent, honesty, and openness should be the top goals for each interview. To do this:

  • Be up-front about potential challenges or deal-breakers. No one likes having their time wasted.
  • Foster honest, mutual conversations from the beginning.
  • Be open about job requirements and expectations.
  • Talk about compensation and benefits early.
  • Absolutely no ghosting!

Be Willing To Be Interviewed

Candidates are putting their priorities first, and it’s showing up in interviews — that’s right, they’re interviewing you just as much as you’re interviewing them.

Candidates want meaningful work. So, it should come as no surprise that they’re initiating discussions on wellness benefits, flexibility accommodations, growth opportunities, and DE&I initiatives (a topic that 33% of recruiters say they now get more questions about than in previous years).

And in a competitive job market like this one, you have to bring your A-game. That means welcoming candidates’ questions, and being prepared to answer them thoroughly. Ensure you leave plenty of time in the interview to answer their questions — in more than just a rushed moment at the very end.

How To Create Genuine Candidate Connections After the Interview

Give and Receive Candidate Feedback

The best talent teams build genuine relationships with empathy. And this goes two ways — by understanding the candidate’s perspective, and by giving the candidate helpful feedback.

Hiring teams need to actively assess how their interviews are being perceived by all candidates — whether or not there’s an offer on the table. To do this, create open doors for candidate feedback. Then, use that feedback to examine blind spots and uncover growth opportunities for developing future candidate relationships.

Along with candidate feedback, leverage data to understand and refine your process. Continually making small, incremental changes will have a huge impact over time.

For candidates that did not receive an offer, don’t just quit the relationship after the interview. Continue nurturing genuine connections by providing helpful feedback. Here are some tips:

  • Be honest but considerate, giving praise when appropriate.
  • Provide helpful tips for future interviews.
  • Keep in touch with candidates for future opportunities.

Companies That Put Candidate Relationships First Will Be Hard To Beat

In today’s virtual world, the best hiring teams understand candidate needs while delivering best-in-class experiences.

To create the most efficient, candidate-centric process, use hiring automation to maximize personal touch. With GoodTime, hiring teams can automate time-consuming, low-value tasks so they can focus on candidate relationships, instead.

To learn how GoodTime can help your company turn your talent strategy into a winning experience book a demo today.

How to Cultivate Great Candidate Relationships in the Distance Economy

Posted on by Rachel Heller

It’s no secret that the global shutdown in March 2020 forever changed the way we work.

For most, the first phase of this so-called distance economy meant physically distancing ourselves from people we’d previously worked with side-by-side. But as the pandemic continued, many workers made a permanent shift, and jobs that were location-agnostic from the start became widely accepted.

Since then, we’ve gone from working in close quarters with co-workers to collaborating online from different corners of the world. Yet while productivity has soared, erasing the misconception that remote work is inefficient, both social connections and company culture have suffered.

People are responding to the perceived void of human relationships by prioritizing the very thing they’ve been missing — genuine connection.

How can talent leaders foster genuine connections when everything feels so…distant? It starts by understanding how to build the candidate relationship, and how it ultimately drives the entire candidate experience.

Improve Communication

Despite its many benefits, remote work also created a disconnect that left people craving more human interaction — even if that interaction happens virtually. That’s why when job seeking, candidates are eager to see how they might fit into a new remote environment in a meaningful way. 

During the hiring process, modern candidates look for collaborative exchanges — where they play a role in the conversation as much as recruiters and interviewers do. How can you enable this?

Begin Important Conversations Early

39% of candidates say they want candid conversations on job compensation from the start. Begin critical, decision-making discussions — things like compensation, work schedule, and specific expectations — early in the hiring funnel, not the end. Then, weave the same transparency into your company culture.

Don’t Underestimate Responsiveness

In a 2020 study, 63% of candidates report that most recruiters do not effectively communicate. In remote hiring, it’s more important than ever to keep the lines of communication open. Especially when the talent market is moving at the speed it is now. Candidates want clear and frequent interaction — so check in regularly, give them the information they need, and take the time to make them feel valued. 

Leverage Digital Tools

The only way to keep up with candidate expectations and remain competitive in this job market is by leveraging hiring automation. With an automated hiring solution, candidates can schedule interviews on their time, eliminating the back-and-forth communication that slows down the hiring process. And with the best candidate experience technology in place, recruiters can focus on building genuine relationships with candidates, one of the most rewarding parts of their work. 

Advocate Well-being

Yes, remote productivity is high; but it comes with a price. 

Working from home took a major toll on health, with 40% of people saying it negatively affected work-life balance. People everywhere are experiencing burnout. As candidates begin to put their well-being first, they’re looking for employers who will encourage mental, physical, and emotional health. Beyond great communication, candidates want to see employers demonstrate their commitment to employee well-being.

Now is the time to show candidates that you have concrete policies to support them as their home and work lives collide. Make wellness a pivotal part of your hiring process and show candidates that you’re dedicated to helping them thrive, both in work and in life.

Offer Flexibility

For many, the distance economy provided the unique ability to balance work and personal life — if done right. Now that candidates know what’s possible, they expect future employers to continue to be agile. Whether it’s full company shutdowns to recharge, no meeting days, flex time, walking meetings, or coaching and mental health resources — candidates and employees are looking for support from their employers.

With 70% of people saying they want flexible work opportunities, offering a remote or hybrid interview process is the first step to proving that you care. Then, model that flexibility in your workplace.

Invest in Growth

During the height of the pandemic, offering security was the main goal. Now that we’ve moved past many of those fears, candidates are prioritizing their future. They want to find meaning in their work — and regular growth and development are part of that equation.

Create a learning culture, where growth opportunities are always present. And show candidates that you support their needs by outlining opportunities your company provides.

Share Company Culture

The isolation of the pandemic drove many to rethink what they value in company culture — and trendy perks are no longer it. Now, they want to be part of a place that gives them a fulfilling experience.

Demonstrate Transparency

With the isolation of remote work, 37% of people say they have a harder time trusting leaders. As people are meeting less in person and more online, lack of visibility is a big concern.

Candidates want to know that you’ll hear their needs — yes, even from afar — and that you are committed to creating transparent relationships between leaders and employees. Show them what you’ll do to create those relationships from the beginning, and how you ensure remote employees are visible for opportunities.

Give Them Space to Share Their Authentic Selves

People want to be a part of a company that reflects the things that matter to them. For talent leaders, giving candidates the space to share who they are and what’s important to them is critical. Then, create discussions around your company culture and your unique mission and values. 

Expand DEI Efforts

Three in four people say DEI continues to be a top priority — a topic that undoubtedly should be part of your candidate messaging. Many candidates will not consider a company that does not have a clear commitment to DEI. 

A commitment to DEI starts on your website, then continues through the interview stage and beyond. Ensure diversity in interview panels so your candidates feel like they belong from the start by using interviewer selection tools.

The Candidate Relationship Is the Way Forward

As the future of work is forever changed, and the distance economy becomes routine, one thing holds true — hiring leaders that prioritize the candidate relationship will have better hiring outcomes. It’s that simple, and there’s no way around it.

The best way to stand out from the talent competition? Create a standout candidate relationship by being transparent, and maintaining an authentic, empathetic hiring process.

Candidate Relationship: 4 Pillars for Creating Lasting Connections

Posted on by Rachel Heller

The candidate relationship is in style; but where did this concept come from?

For one, what candidates expect from their hiring experience is changing rapidly. This change is brought on by the “distance economy,” where an increasing number of people are working remotely, more and more jobs are location-agnostic, and fewer workforces have any kind of physical proximity to each other. 

Along with recent disruptions and ongoing uncertainties of the future, stress levels are high—and job burnout is even higher. And as a result, candidates all over the world seem to have decided that they want a chance to sit in the driver’s seat for a change.

Things that used to sway candidate decisions (remember nap pods?) are much less relevant in an increasingly virtual world. Now, candidates are looking for much more than a work experience that feels single-sided and staged; they want a genuine, mutual connection with their next employer, with plenty of opportunities to have conversations about what matters to them.

That’s why the candidate relationship is the new priority for talent teams and a critical piece of the hiring process that drives the entire candidate experience.

To build a strong candidate relationship, start by understanding these four key pillars:

Pillar 1: Genuine Connection

16% of remote workers cite loneliness and communication difficulties as their biggest struggle in this distance economy. The paradox is this: The further candidates get physically from their workplace, the closer they want to feel.

As a result, many candidates are craving more emotional connectedness from their professional relationships than ever before.

Yes — they still want remote and hybrid opportunities, but more than that, they want a company that creates digital experiences with genuine connections. Many conversations have moved online; in turn, people are missing the human engagement they used to get from in-person meetings and shared lunches.

With 72% of candidates rejecting job offers because they don’t feel connected to the company culture, now is the time for talent leaders to level up their candidate communication game.

Pillar 2: Transparency 

First impressions matter. And as remote hiring becomes the new norm, they’re more important than ever. Without face-to-face interactions, hiring leaders are forced to find new ways to reflect their company culture and outline job expectations.

One way to accomplish this is with abundant transparency. 39% of people say they want clear communication about pay in the initial job post so that they don’t waste their time applying for jobs that don’t match their financial goals. When companies are upfront and honest — from the beginning — candidates are more likely to trust that there won’t be unwelcome surprises down the road.

Beyond transparency in job expectations, candidates also want to see employers take a clear stance on fair practices that support diversity, equity, and inclusion. The desire for an equitable work culture continues to trend upward, with more and more candidates looking for open, action-backed conversations about the steps employers are taking to drive progress.

Pillar 3: Adaptability

Now interviewing at 4x as many companies as they were before the pandemic, candidates intend to be much more selective than they were able to be in years past. So even with companies promising sought-after benefits like flexibility and professional development, drop-off rates will continue to soar for hiring processes that are hard to navigate.

For candidates, the hiring experience is an indicator of what the employee experience will be like. When it’s clean and simple, and when candidates feel seen and valued, they can feel confident that’s how they’ll feel like an employee, too. A prime example is flexibility — a need that has grown by 12% in the last year. When flexibility is prioritized during the hiring process, candidates rest assured that it will be part of their future employment, too.

When hiring leaders leverage automation for both speed and simplicity, it’s a one-two punch: candidates are happier, and recruiting teams end up with the ability to adapt to every candidate’s need and focus even more on creating a genuine candidate relationship.

Pillar 4: Candidate Well-Being

Ever since the pandemic began, employee well-being has topped the list as one of the most important benefits candidates want out of future jobs. This should come as no surprise — the stress of the pandemic drove many to resign from their jobs and start putting their personal well-being first.

But quite often, there’s a disconnect between employee mental health challenges and the empathy employers show for these challenges; those who take action to understand and improve health and well-being are the ones that will attract the best candidates.

Companies that invest in benefits, such as more leave, hybrid work opportunities, flexible schedules, training and development, and mental and physical health programs will see enhanced productivity, loyalty, and engagement.

Make the Candidate Relationship Your Focus

In today’s candidate-driven market, candidates are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them. 

To start building winning candidate relationships, it’s time to think beyond great scheduling. Hiring leaders need a full hiring solution that will give candidates flexible, professional experiences and unique insights into the company and the role they are considering.

GoodTime Hire’s automated interview scheduling helps you coordinate faster, hire more efficiently, and free up bandwidth for connecting with talent. (Plus, you’ll save major time and money along the way).

Discover how GoodTime Hire’s interview scheduling software can help you transform your candidate relationships.

5 Key Takeaways: Meeting the Expectations of Candidate Experience

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Since March 2020, talent acquisition leaders contended with near-constant changes in both how they approach candidates, as well as sourcing top talent. The question is how to approach the remote work environment efficiently and conduct not only effective interviews with candidates, but also run interview processes that build the candidate experience and create excitement over the new role.

Teddy Chestnut, Chief Revenue Officer from BrightHire, spoke with Scott Parker, Director of Product Marketing for GoodTime, and shared smart recommendations for interviewers faced with the ever-changing recruitment landscape. Here are the key takeaways from their LinkedIn Live, with actionable steps on improving how you train your interviewers and how your team approaches the recruitment process.

“Being remote is no longer an excuse for not having your hiring plan together.”

— Teddy Chestnut, Chief Revenue Officer at BrightHire

1. “The New Normal.” It’s Pretty Much Just Normal Now

The pandemic afforded hiring teams the opportunity (or challenge, depending on your take) to manage the interview process using Zoom and other virtual tools to connect with and communicate effectively with candidates. Teams and candidates alike are now accustomed to having remote communication for interviews, and reverting back to less efficient processes isn’t likely.

Teams have pivoted their plans to remote, hybrid, and flex models to capture top talent.  Having buy-in on a plan that speaks to the future of work is critical. “Being remote is no longer an excuse for not having your hiring plan together,” says Chestnut. 

2. Building Adaptable Teams Is a Non-negotiable

Companies that do not provide flexibility for their candidates are at a distinct disadvantage because now candidates prefer to have the option to work from anywhere.  Because of the new hiring processes teams have been forced to implement, employees are increasingly requiring more interviewer training, and teams need to update their tech stacks to optimize core hiring metrics.

Building a resilient team that not only thrives in a remote work environment, but also demonstrates to prospective candidates the positive culture created in a distributed workforce, makes all the difference when sourcing new talent in this ever-competitive market. 

3. Help Interviewers Avoid Distracti… Look at This TikTok!

Now that many of us work 100% remote and are far more accessible, calendars are filled to maximum capacity. Because of constant access to news and by social media, it’s harder to tell if a remote interviewer is distracted versus when they were in person, because they can’t just grab their phones in the middle of interviews. The challenge today is for interviewers to give their candidates full attention so that the interview process can be as effective as possible.

When the calendar is full with back-to-back meetings, and Slack, WhatsApp, and Gmail constantly send notifications, it’s much harder to concentrate in an interview fully. Candidates can quickly tell when their interviewer is not giving them their full attention, which can create a negative experience that they might write about on Glassdoor.

Those negative reviews could deter potential candidates from even considering applying for a position at your company. Teams need to help interviewers focus on the task at hand, and work hard to avoid distractions in order to create a positive candidate experience.

4. Great Candidates Have Lots of Options (And They Know It)

Since the start of the Great Resignation, it’s been clear that the hiring process has greatly changed. Almost all candidates have other offers, even when they’re sitting right in front of you in an interview.

Interviewers need to remember that candidates have other options, and probably have other people giving them offers for a job. This means that interviewers need to make sure that the company is communicating the value that it can add to the candidate. The candidate also needs to make sure that they present themselves in the best way possible. 

Things have drastically changed with the dynamic between the candidate and the interviewer. This creates a sense of urgency between the interviewer and the candidates and it makes the interviewer keenly aware that they have to make sure that the scheduling works well and they’re not skipping interviews. Otherwise, these candidates can easily take a different job offer because of a delay caused by the interviewer.

5. Training Interviewers Is the New Non-negotiable for 2022 

When you’re in a situation requiring an interview where you have to have over seven hours of interviewing a day, logistics become challenging. Interviewers have to take time to do candidate research, write the feedback, and have time for preparation even before the interview starts.

Interviewers must have the right training to know how to interpret what they learn about the candidates they’re interviewing. When the interviewers are trained with the skills needed to manage remote interviewing, the interview process will be so much more efficient than it would’ve been if they were not well trained — or worse, not trained at all. 

Time To Elevate the Candidate Experience With Interviewer Training

Train interviewers how to create an amazing interview experience— then teach them to trust the process.

The time is now to implement interviewer training. GoodTime helps you train interviews with ease, giving you one hiring experience solution that lets you track interviewers and their progress and train them at scale. GoodTime gives you the confidence that your selected interviewers evaluate candidates effectively.

Want to learn more about the positive difference GoodTime can make? Sign up for a demo now. 

How To Win Top Talent During the Great Resignation

Posted on by Rachel Heller

A wave of resignations has hit the job market as millions of employees leave their jobs. As per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August 2021. What’s more, the scenario is spreading across the globe.

The pandemic has given many employees the chance to work 100% remotely. That shift in the zeitgeist that has significantly altered expectations away from the traditional workplace.

To say that the changing landscapes in the time of The Great Resignation have made recruiting top talent challenging would be a drastic understatement. 

Here’s the good news. There are steps that hiring teams can take to beat the competition for top talent. 

Promote Your Mission Statement

The Great Resignation has been a time where employees consider the deeper implications of a job and the value they offer in the larger context. Today’s employees try to find fulfillment through work in more ways than ever before.

A mission statement tells the world what  your company stands for, which gives both employees and candidates a sense of culture and camaraderie to align toward. It expresses the objective of a company and helps employees to focus on a purpose. A well-crafted mission statement helps employees stay engaged with the company in a way that can boost morale. 

A mission statement will also help develop the vision and values of a company. This will help employees get a clear understanding of what they’re working for.

Create an Authentic Interview Experience

Impressing the right talent during the interview is one of the best ways to make your company stand out from the competition. Here are a few simple steps with which you can impress the right candidates during an interview.

  • Send an interview agenda to the candidate with additional information about the brand and social media highlights.
  • To make the work culture stand out, prepare a short video about the future teams the candidate will be working with. Make sure to highlight the fun aspects of the work culture.
  • Stay authentic during the interview and be truthful about the present business scenarios. Highlight statistics that make the company a great place to work and share future visions.
  • Always provide a timeframe by when you will convey the results to the candidate. Even if the candidate is unsuccessful, connect with them or send a quick email with thanks. Explaining the interview roadmap clearly is also a good idea.
  • Keep in mind, the candidate will be excited if you show enough enthusiasm and make them feel wanted in the company.

It’s Work-life Harmony, Not Work-life Balance

In the past 18 months, the concept of work-life has undergone a tectonic shift as employees continue to essentially live at their workplaces. Developing a culture that supports harmonious work-life integration can be a key factor in winning the race for talent. 

This makes it important for companies to develop a flexible work culture. Flexibility makes it easier for employees to find the right harmony between work and personal life. In turn, this allows employees to be in their best condition, both physically and mentally.

Adapting a hybrid work culture offers employees the best of both worlds. Employees feel more empowered and the chances of retaining a talent pool greatly increase.

Invest in Leaders and Managers

Choosing leaders and managers with the right vision can make a big difference in retaining your talent pool. In fact, managers play a big role in improving employee productivity and engagement.

Leaders need to listen to the opinions of Gen Z employees and get to know them at a personal level. Since every employee is different, it takes time to understand what matters to them. 

But this knowledge can be a powerful tool for empowering managers. It can help them plan personalized career advancement plans for their team members.

This requires managers to interact and engage with the team and support the individual growth plans of the team members. Since there is no one-size-fits-all solution for retaining talent, training the managers in the right manner for this activity is extremely important

Focus on Employee Wellness

Two of the most common factors that lead to employee resignations are stress and burnout. Quite simply, overworked employees are not happy employees. When the majority of people work remotely, ensuring employee wellness can be even more challenging.

It’s important to connect personally with employees and engage in conversation. The tried and tested tools of praise and recognition can work effectively in all scenarios. Some other effective tools include hosting virtual wellness sessions, workout plans, offering vacations, and granting sabbaticals.

Quite simply, it’s important to create top-notch employee experiences across the platform. Make sure to gather feedback and follow up with data-driven decisions to improve employee satisfaction levels. A comprehensive employee wellbeing strategy is a must for higher employee engagement and performance.

Next Up: Candidate Relationships and The Great Reshuffle

The Great Resignation shows no signs of slowing down. Some say it’s evolving into The Great Reshuffle. Companies cannot remain complacent, lest they lose their competitive edge. In this hyper-competitive market, it’s essential to attract and engage talented candidates as quickly as possible, and keep them engaged continuously, regardless of whether they become employees.  

COVID-19 brought the need for hiring teams to gain a deeper understanding on the candidate relationship and the two-way street that’s developed in this candidate-driven landscape. It’s absolutely critical for TA teams to understand how wellness, culture, values, and mission come across to their candidates, and then reflect on the methods that deliver the best candidate experience.

Because their talent competitors? They’re not waiting to win.

GoodTime’s Ahryun Moon on Candidate Experience and the Future of Work

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Editor’s note: The original interview with WorkTech is from July 2021. Watch it in full here.

GoodTime CEO Ahryun Moon met with WorkTech’s George LaRocque to discuss how GoodTime does more than just automate the administrative aspects of the hiring process for TA teams. Ahryun discusses her experience raising funds in a pandemic, the GoodTime roadmap, and the impact GoodTime delivers on diversity and inclusion in recruiting.

“Candidates get almost a consumer-like experience when they schedule an interview.”

— Ahryun Moon, CEO at GoodTime

At its core, the hiring process revolves around hiring managers, based on availability and the employer’s timeline. With the rising demand for talent, especially tech-enabled hires, the pitfalls of the traditional recruitment model cannot be ignored any longer. Companies that take too long to hire miss out on high-caliber candidates, leading to potential candidate frustration and the risk of reputation damage. Paired with shifting priorities and more employees placing happiness over a pay raise, there’s a need to reshuffle the dynamics for better hiring.

“GoodTime transforms the interview process. First of all, we’ve completely removed the hassle of emailing back and forth. Candidates get almost a consumer-like experience when they schedule an interview,” Ahryun shared. 

Placing talent at the forefront of recruitment, GoodTime Hire makes the process easier for both recruiters and candidates alike. Besides scheduling automation, the platform goes one step further by using an AI-powered algorithm to provide tailored experiences.

Unlike legacy scheduling tools, GoodTime’s ultimate goal is to transform the way that interviews are made and conducted – starting from pre-interview processes like training.

“Our technology tracks the interviewer database, so you can store your interviewer’s relevant attributes. Based on those attributes, you can schedule the right interviewer to the given candidate,” Ahryun continued. 

Along with that, the platform provides interviewer training to fully equip hiring professionals with proper training. The system also uses data and insights that you wouldn’t get from an agent.

How this plays into the paradigm shift in the employment market is that candidates now get a say in who they speak to and their comfort levels. It also puts an emphasis on how interviews are a two-way street. Both parties play a part in contributing to a successful meeting. To illustrate this, Ahryun brought up an instance where clients would question the lack of female hires due to rejection, while not actually honing in on the root of the issue: when these candidates meet with an all-male board and get turned off by the job environment.

Scaling Relationship Building

“The real magic happens when candidates meet with interviewers, they hit it off, have amazing conversations.” Ahryun stated, when talking about how organizations scale their operations by building larger candidate pools and overlooking the actual candidate experience. On the other hand, an unstructured process leads to breakdowns and recruitment woes while scaling operations.

Building an optimal environment for candidates could also ramp up diversity and inclusive hiring, an important aspect for companies to stay relevant today. Inclusive hiring is a concept that has been long overdue, and can bring about multiple benefits to any organization. A more diverse workforce brings about a wider range of perspectives and skill sets, leading to more ideas for problem-solving and better decision making. Yet, some corporations still face issues in hiring diverse candidates. 

“Filling the top of the funnel, that’s definitely number one priority and one of the most important aspects. But usually those candidates don’t necessarily get a fair chance through the process, or at the end they decline the offer because they wouldn’t see themselves working there,” Ahryun explained, indicating the need to cater to candidates and improving first impressions. 

Raising Investments in a Time of Economic Volatility

GoodTime ended their investment round in November of last year. In a time of uncertainty and the global pandemic in full force, this was a challenging round for the company, Moon states. At the same time, with national conversations surrounding diversity and corporations seeing turnovers and new hires, it was time for a step toward a more inclusive workforce. 

This year, however, valuation is through the roof. “It’s pretty crazy now,” Ahryun said.

The funds have been used to refine GoodTime’s solutions and fuel the expansion of the team to over 60 members. According to Moon, “The hiring scene is changing so rapidly. The ‘future of work’ is a remote and hybrid type of work. We want to make sure our products help the journey.” Thus, the investments were used to further innovate and bring fresh ideas to life with a bigger team.

As hybrid and remote working transition from the ‘new normal’, to just normal,  GoodTime also seeks to provide the appropriate training for hiring in these areas. As more companies move towards a data-driven hiring strategies, Moon and her team are refining GoodTime’s data and insight features.

Customers who come to GoodTime acknowledged the complexity of the reality of work, and want to embrace this through their solutions. Leading by example, GoodTime aims to continue adapting to the new environment, hiring high-quality talent across geographical borders. 

The Future Is Candidate-driven

“Personally what makes me really excited is our product. We’re really excited to bring additional innovations. We try to keep our ear to the ground and try to work closely with our customers,” Ahryun said.

“As we figure out the best practices in this new world, we want to bring new innovations to our customers – interview training, additional insights, as well as new innovations around remote and hybrid hiring. We’d love to be the new transformation of this new hiring and crafting of a new candidate journey.”

To watch Ahryun’s full interview with WorkTech, click here.