Top Ways to Make Your Company More Marketable to Elusive Candidates

Top Ways to Make Your Company More Marketable to Elusive CandidatesTop Ways to Make Your Company More Marketable to Elusive CandidatesTop Ways to Make Your Company More Marketable to Elusive Candidates BortzThese are challenging times for companies (including yours, perhaps) who are strugglingto compete for in-demand talentand for good reason.Late last year economists atGoldman Sachspredicted thatthe U.S. unemployment tarif was on pace to drop to 3.8% in 2018. That new low came to pass this May. Theirforecast also said that unemploymentcould tumble as low as 3.5% by the end of 2019. The last time unemployment was 3.5% was December 1969, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.As the labor market continues to tighten, it would be all too easy to settle for less, or worse, not hire the talent your company needs. So how can you break through? The best way to do that is with a hiring strategy that breaks through the noise and attracts the best job seekers to your business. Fortunatel y, with so many absatzwirtschaft tools at your disposal, its easier than ever to find, hire, and nurture your employees.To win the hearts and minds of the individuals you want to hire, businesses have to invest more in the marketing side of recruiting, says Kevin Grossman, president of international programs at Talent Board. You have to nurture your pipeline of recruits, just like marketers have to do when theyre selling a product.Jeff Smith, a partner at global marketing firm Prophet, agrees. The role of a marketer is to attract and retain customers. The role of a recruiter is to attract and retain talent, so the objectives are strikingly similar. But marketing shifts the focus to the job seeker What does the job seeker want? What makes potential hires tick?By adopting a marketers mindset, how you recruit talent can also improve your companys reputation and visibility in the job market. How do job seekers perceive your organization? is one of the most important questions for employ ers today, Smith says.Not sure how where to start? These expert tips will help you adopt a marketing mindset in 2018 and make your company more marketable to job seekers.Brand your business as a company with a conscienceTodays job seekers are looking to work at companies that give back to the community, says Julie Friedman Steele, board chair and CEO at World Future Society, a membership group for researchers who study changes across various industries.In fact, data from post-apply job survey of nearly 400,000 applicants ranked company values as one of the top six reasons that they applied to the job.You can use your companys website, marketing materials, and social media accounts to promote your organizations philanthropy projects. However, there has to be authenticity to it, says Steele. Job seekers today are adept at assessing what your companys values are and they can see through false marketing if youre not actually doing philanthropy.A bonus Company-wide philanthropy can also have a positive impact on your current employees. 2016 research from the University of Notre Dames Mendoza College of Business found corporate charity can boost employee engagement.Promote your companys training and development opportunitiesA growing number of workers want opportunities to gain new skills, says Parminder Jassal, head of the Learn + Work Futures Group at the Institute for the Future. In fact, 59% of Millennials say opportunities to learn and grow are extremely important to them when applying for a job, a recent Gallup poll found. Thus, to attract top talent your company has to offer options that combine work and learning, Jassal says.When connecting with prospective job candidateswhether through job fairs, social media, or conferencestalk about what employee training and career development opportunities your company offers employees such as certification programs or funding for attending industry events.Reach recruits on social mediaMany companies are using social me dia marketing to improve their customer tafelgeschirr and to engage consumers, says Grossman, adding that businesses can apply this strategy to improve their recruiting.Some progressive companies like T-Mobile are doing Facebook video streams showing what a day in the life of an employee at the company is like, Grossman says. Businesses are also beginning to use Twitter chats to answer questions from job seekers, Grossman adds.Instagram storiesa feature that lets you post photos and videos on your feed for 24 hourscan also help your company reach job seekers. For instance, you can use stories to share photos from a fun event, like the companys holiday or an employee appreciation day.job ads let you target candidates on social media, which, according to Nielsens 2016 Social Media Report, is where they are 3+ hours a day anyway.Integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into your marketingTo stay relevant to todays job seekers, your organization has to embrace the latest r ecruiting technology. As Smith puts it If your company doesnt adopt new technology, youre not going to attract the best talent.Some companies are now using chatbots on their job posting websites, Grossman says. These computer programstraditionally used to send customers instant messages when they land on business-to-consumer websitecan help job seekers with basic tasks, like submitting a job application and troubleshooting technical issues.Grossman predicts more businesses will begin to adopt artificial intelligence to recruit new talent. Robots arent taking over recruiting any time soon, but A.I. is helping empower recruiters with new tools, Grossman says.Show your commitment to work-life balanceWork-life balance is a top priority among job seekers today. Nearly one-third of job candidates cited work-life balance as a reason for applying to jobs, according to a recent survey of more than 400,000 job applicants.If you offer flexible working arrangements, then clearly outline them in your job descriptions and on your job board company profile pages. You can also take a creative approach by sharing videos with job seekers that show employees describing how they enjoy a balance between their working and personal lives.You can post these videos on not only your companys website but also through video profiles that integrate into your job postings to give job seekers a view of what its like to work at your company.Inspired to get your companys story in front of the top candidates? Employer Branding Solutions, which include video profiles, branded job ads and company profiles, can help you position your company to attract the talent you need to succeed in 2018.

The Importance of Me Time in Your Job Search

The Importance of Me Time in Your Job SearchThe Importance of Me Time in Your Job Search1Me time is a hot topic in this 24/7 digital era where you can literally work around the clock. When your work is your job search, youre faced with the same possibilities of spending endless hours, perhaps without breaks, trying to scare up that next opportunity. And if your job search equates to hunting down new clients as an entrepreneur or freelancer, youre in the same boat, since you may feel even more pressured to do your existing client work plus continue to market for new prospects.All of this time and energy funneled into seeking a new job or fresh income streams can quickly result in erschpfung if you dont pause once in a while to practice self-care.Here are some specific strategies on how you can periodically unplug from your search efforts and take some me time, while still tischsetting and reaching ambitious milestones and goals for your career or businessPace yourself.Burnout can occu r from overdoing it in any type of activity, including your job/client search. Psychology Today describes burnout as a state of chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism and detachment, and feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. Put even more simply, when you find yourself feeling run down from spending too much time on your job search and uninterested in doing anything related to it, you may be experiencing burnout.The best way to avoid the malaise of burnout is to nip it in the bud before it can flourish. This means pacing yourself through your job search, rather than constantly pressuring yourself to go full steam ahead. This is where an understanding of the importance of me time comes in. While your search for new opportunities is ostensibly for you, the fact that it involves what can only be described as work means that you need to take breaks from it to do something that feels fun to you.Prepare for it.Dont rely on whim to take s ome time for yourself in the midst of your job search responsibilities. Instead, schedule set times to do something different, calendaring me-time breaks just as you would any other important appointment. It also helps to identify in advance distinct activities that you plan to do during this time slot. By deciding that youll take a scheduled break from your job hunt to exercise, read, or meet a friend for coffee, for example, you can prepare what you need and anticipate your enjoyable respite.Another helpful element of this preparation is deciding the number of me-time breaks youll take each day, each week, and each month, and calendaring those out on a longer-range basis. For example, if youre self-employed and find yourself spending too much time doing marketing activities related to identifying potential new clients, you may benefit from scheduling set hours each week to devote to scouring for opportunities, paired with equal periods on the back end of those blocks where you rec over with some well-deserved me time.Look for signs.You may be nervous about devoting chunks of time to recovery from your professional initiatives at this stage in your job search. Perhaps you feel that you need to devote a certain amount of effort to your hunt before youll feel comfortable working in regular and reliable steps toward self-care. If thats the case, you should at least familiarize yourself with the signs of burnout so that you can recognize when its definitely the moment to give yourself some me time.Psychology Today lists the following signs related to burnout, whether from exhaustion, detachment, or lack of accomplishment. If you notice these symptoms arising, then take a step back and schedule in some me time before its too lateFeeling exhausted most daysDifficulty concentratingAnxietyPessimismHopelessnessIrritabilityThe bottom line is, dont let yourself get to the breaking point when it comes to finding work or seeking new clients. By allowing yourself to take ca re of your needs beyond the job search, youll be a stronger and more resilient candidate.

This is what women in tech wish they knew early on in their careers

This is what women in tech wish they knew early on in their careersThis is what women in tech wish they knew early on in their careersThe most encompassing way of phrasing the lesson is that I wish I paid much mora attention to gender issues earlier in my career, and taken the disparity more seriously. Admittedly, until it affected me personally I dismissed a lot of the discussion surrounding the issue as frivolous whining. I subscribed to the idea of meritocracy and believed that the issues other women were facing were a result of their lack of focus and that the opposition they faced wouldnt happen to me because I welches smart, talented, and hard-working (so my mom tells me).In retrospect I realize that it was naive of me to feel that way as an entry-level employee. I was at the bottom of the food chain and posed no threat to anyone. The enthusiasm, encouragement, and lack of repercussion I received for speaking my mind at that stage in my career only reinforced my view that I wa s just genuinely smart/talented, etc It wasnt until the past year and a half that I begun to experience the backlash of speaking up and I dont think its a coincidence that around the same time many of my female entwurf peers who are near my age and previously experienced the same sort of early career success began to have similar experiences at their workdistributionspolitiks.When I would interview for jobs I always focused so much on evaluating the role from a design perspective. I would grill the company on the structure of their team, the design process they employed, the types of challenges they faced, and what kind of product vision they had in mind. I tried to get a sense of how much designers were valued at the company. I honestly never thought to ask the same question of women what was the ratio of women in the company? What kind of roles did they employ? What were their responsibilities? Were there any women in the leadership? My current job is the first company Ive worked at where I thought to evaluate such things (more on that later).Sub-lesson 1Being a trailblazer isnt the only way to advance the current state of women in tech.The reason I didnt question these things is because I assumed that being the only woman on the product team (meaning PM/Designer/Development) was normal. That I would not find another awesome place to work with more than two women on the team. That if I wanted to work this industry, I had to be a trailblazer. So not true.When I joined the last company I worked at I was the only technical female and one of two women in the whole company. I wont lie, I romanticized the notion of being the first. I thought hiring me was an indication of open-mindedness on the part of the company (in reality it was because they viewed me as the non-threatening ingenue). I thought I would pave the way, be the point of change. I knew so many talented women engineers, designers, and product managers that I could potentially bring in to the fold. It was very telling that when I got one of them to interview, the experienced and talented female designer was honigwein with criticism from my boss while he pushed me to give a boy who had no design knowlumineszenzdiodege nor evidence of intrinsic skill, who hadnt even graduated college, an offer on the design team.When I decided to leave and look for my next role, something occurred to me. The idea of being a trailblazer is a very direct way of addressing gender equality. I am grateful to anyone who is or has been in this position someone has to be the first and I know very well it is not easy. However, it is not the only way. By supporting companies that already demonstrate and value equality, you are also helping advance women. If, as research claims, diverse teams perform better, than I hope to help advance companies that already have their heart in the right place. Copy-catting is an undeniable tactic in the tech industry. Apples definitive success with design has increased the v alue of design and led to a slew of startups clamoring to hire designers. Imagine if the next Apple or Facebooks definitive trait was having equal gender (or race) distribution on their teams.The ugly side of the first woman on the team coin is that not every woman wants to be a trailblazer. Theres an undeniably seductive quality about the princess spot (a term my friend Ash elaborates on in this comment). Dont automatically mistrust other women or other men, for that matter. Also, dont let the subtle differences in your perspective on feminism stop you from being friends with other women.Theres a lot of lists out there for women-in-tech who deserve recognition. I follow those, but in addition, I have a mental list of men that I want to make it a point to work within the future. These are all men whom Ive seen publicly speak (or tweet) about gender equality. I think its important to recognize men too because they currently do make up the majority of this industry. My list is actual ly pretty long and I know that if I were to work with any of them I would be treated respectfully, and if I found myself in a questionable situation whether at work or a conference, these men would use their privileged position to speak up. So basically Sub-lesson 2 Know and embrace your allies (but not literally, because HR).As I mentioned earlier, when I started looking for my current job I had new criteria on which to evaluate companies. In a sense, I wanted to work somewhere in which Sub-Lesson 2 was irrelevant because there was no us or them. I wanted a culture, not just individual people, that respected women. So what do you look for? Sub-lesson 3 Dont rely on the ratio. Nowadays theres a lot of focus on the percentage of female employees or engineers at a company. I think this potentially paints a misleading image. I tend to look at the companys leadership. How many women are executives, VPs, etc. I know its an easy decision to hire entry-level women because Ive been one, bu t at the point of my career Im at, I aspire to have more responsibility. Seeing women in the leadership at a company gives me physical evidence that upward mobility is possible, as well the potential for mentorship and advice.The healthiest thing to see is women at all levels in a company. This can be hard to identify at startups that have a flat hierarchy, which is why speaking directly to a woman is so important in the interview process. Sometimes when I say this it gets misinterpreted as since Im a woman, if I interview at your company, you should throw a woman in the interview process to reassure me.No, I think that if you have technical women at your company, I would hope that at least one is involved in evaluating both male and female candidates. So in being interviewed by another woman I am reassured that women play a role in hiring decisions and building teams, and I am able to get a personal account of her responsibilities and trajectory within the company.I wish I looked f or these signs when interviewing earlier in my career and generally focused more on longevity and the potential to grow with a company. It might not be the worst thing to take an entry-level job in a glass-ceiling situation if your intention is to gain a certain amount of experience and move on. Though Id still want young me to be fully aware of what shes getting into.This article was originally published on Quora.