Posts

Use These 18 Job Boards to Keep Compliant

/ /by

Job boards remain an excellent way to engage talent, especially diverse candidates. This is especially important if you are a federal contractor and required to focus on good faith efforts for nine protected classes that include:  1) Age (over 40), 2) Disability, 3) Genetic Information, 4) National Origin, 5) Pregnancy, 6) Race/Color, 7) Religion, 8) Sex and 9) Veterans.

Under the required outreach efforts of the new VEVRAA and Section 503 regulations, federal contractors and subcontractors must undertake appropriate outreach and positive recruitment activities that are reasonably designed to effectively recruit qualified individuals with disabilities or protected veterans. This means:

  • Contractors must engage in outreach and recruitment efforts to attract individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.
  • Contractors must ask job candidates to self-identify if they are a protected class in order to demonstrate their outreach efforts using annual published hiring benchmarks.
  • Outreach to attract females and minorities is still necessary to meet good faith outreach efforts.
  • Contractors must conduct an annual self-assessment of outreach and recruitment efforts, a document such assessment and measure effectiveness.
  • Contractors are required to document all outreach and recruitment activities and retain these records for three (3) years.

Good Faith Recruiting Efforts 

As part of this outreach, employers must establish and focus on good faith recruiting efforts focused on engaging protected classes, building relationships and encouraging them to apply for their open job opportunities. One of the more popular means to target diverse candidates is with diversity job boards. Talent acquisition teams are able to publish job postings on diversity affinity sites and use the job board’s candidate database to drive candidates to apply for job openings. Since the changes to the OFCCP guidance in 2014, there is more focus on the metrics behind good faith efforts. Long gone are the days when you could simply fax your job openings letter quarterly to a number of diversity focused non-profits or even rely on print advertisements in diversity magazines. In the past, these were two of the more popular good faith tactics used by recruiters including myself pre-2014. The focus is now on the results of those outreach and good faith efforts with the end goal of getting diverse candidates to apply.

The Importance Candidate Source and Self-Identification

Because of these changes to the OFCCP guidance, companies must focus on being able to report the source of the candidate and their protected class status. Federal contractors must hire a percentage of employees each year that are veteran as well as employees with disabilities. The employee percentages for these two specific protected groups change annually. The DOL issues a “hiring benchmark” for each of these protected groups. Your source of hire as it relates to hiring benchmarks, as well as your candidate from protected communities, are something that the OFCCP will ask for when they are conducting an audit of your organization. This is why having hard metrics to support your good faith efforts as well as your source of hire is extremely important.

In terms of determining the candidate source as part of the application process, companies can rely on asking job seekers to self-select their own source or they can activate the “cookie” feature that is contained with the ATS. Cookies are a small piece of data sent from a website like your career site or job board and are stored on the user’s computer by the user’s web browser while the user is browsing and more importantly applying for a specific job opening. Using cookies are the best way to track candidate source of hire because candidates aren’t always truthful. They want to get a job and many candidates think that their protected class status can hurt not help their chances of getting hired at your company. They likely don’t understand the reason why you need this information and more importantly, that it is only used in your affirmative action reporting and not in the candidate hiring process.

Once a candidate beings to apply for a job posting, companies need to include the option for candidates to self-identify for a protected class as early as possible in the hiring and application process. Because of the increased focus on hiring benchmark, it’s an essential part of remaining in compliance, avoiding fines and passing the OFCCP audit process.

Included in this list below are diversity job boards employers can consider as part of their diversity outreach efforts under the OFCCP. Additionally, I have provided additional diversity communities that are not yet considered protected classes. If you are expanding your outreach to these other diverse communities, I’ve included job boards that reach these different types of candidates as well.

List of Diversity Job Boards HR & Recruiting Compliance

Over 40

  • Retired Brains. A job board for job seekers who are retired baby boomers.
  • Baby Boomer Jobs. A job board that is part of the Beyond.com family of job boards.

LGBTQ

  • Campus Pride. A job board for the college LGBTQ community run by a leading national nonprofit organization.
  • Out and Equal. Non-profit community and resource center that includes a job board.

Disability

  • Recruit Disability Jobs. A job board for job seekers who have disabilities powered by the Sierra Group.
  • Ability Links. A long time digital community that includes a job board for persons with disabilities.

Veterans

  • Vet Jobs. A job board for military veterans of all branches of service.
  • Recruit Military. A job board and community for military veterans.

Women

  • Women for Hire. Tory Johnson’s business and career community specifically for women. Individual or group posting packages.
  • Military.com. In addition to their veteran and military job board, they also have job postings and a community designed to engage the military spouse.

African American

  • Black Jobs. Independent job board and largest African American career community online.
  • IMB Diversity. Career community and online resource for African Americans that offers advertising and job board posting opportunities.

Hispanic

  • Hispanic Today. This career search engine is part of the National Labor Exchange but offers paid job postings with Equality Magazines. Click here to access their placement price list.
  • Hispanic Professional Latino Association. The organization is known for publishing a set of lists of America’s Best Places for Latinos To Work also has an active job board and job seeker community.

Multiple Communities

  • Professional Diversity Network. A network of affinity diversity groups including African American, Hispanic, Asian, disability, LGBT, veteran, and women communities.
  • Diversity Jobs. Offers a variety of focused minority job boards with options to post jobs manually or that are scraped from your career site.
  • Beyond.com. Offers a variety of diverse job posting options within their large number of job boards.

Other Diversity Communities You Should Consider That Aren’t Protected Classes

  • 70 Million Jobs. A job board specifically for candidates who have a criminal record.

What job boards are you finding produce success in terms of meeting your hiring benchmarks and good faith efforts when it comes to diversity? Please leave a comment as I’ll be updating this list frequently to help companies who are federal contractors.

This article was written by Jessica Miller-Merrell and originally published on Workology.

 

Three Key Recruiting Methods to Find More Candidates

/ /by

Considering how important it is to just about everything a business does, it’s a surprise that hiring isn’t given more strategic attention. With the advent of affordable hiring software, there’s no longer any excuse for this. Here are three key recruiting methods that will help you get a hiring process that works and a flow of better candidates.

  1. Is social recruiting for real?

Attracting job candidates with social recruiting

Social recruiting has sometimes been touted beyond its capacity to deliver, but it can help. You need to create buzz around the jobs on your careers page. LinkedIn has scores of groups you can join, mention jobs in, or initiate general discussions around a role, a company or industry.

Smart companies make sure they have created Facebook groups or a Facebook Jobs tab, or even run a Facebook ad campaign, with the sole purpose of attracting potential candidates. Your biggest fans are a good place to look when you’re hiring. Add as many touch points as possible between you and prospective candidates.

Social media has a role, but you cannot afford to ignore job boards. Depending on the nature of the role being hired, free job boards should be the first port of call.

  1. Job boards still essential

Some job boards, like Indeed, also offer free options that can be combined with paid ones. SimplyHired and Glassdoor offer free postings when you access them through an ATS like Workable. For the most effective places to post your jobs, check out our job board directory, which enables you to choose job boards based on industry, location, and cost (paid versus unpaid).

Don’t post your jobs on Friday evening, or by Monday, they’ll be last week’s news. Wait until Sunday evening or Monday morning and advertise your roles when the candidates are most active. Most job boards use freshness as a factor in ranking job search results.

Job board recruiting advice from Jeff Dickey-Chasins, Job Board Doctor

When the volume of candidates is the priority, LinkedIn, Indeed, and Craigslist are the top sites for posting paid job listings on account of their popularity, functionality and reach. These provide the maximum return on investment (ROI).

Are paid job boards always the way to go? No. There are many jobs where the free job boards can perform adequately. Indeed, for example is the biggest job board in the world. Indeed’s free version has a huge amount of candidate traffic and can provide great candidates. The decision on which job boards are best for you needs to happen on a role-by-role basis.

  1. Candidate sourcing 101

Advertising has its limits and referrals are great but sometimes they won’t provide you with enough leads to be confident that you’re making the right recruitment decisions. Which leaves you looking for those “passive candidates”, the ones who aren’t actively seeking a new job.

This used to be known as headhunting although these days there’s also strategic sourcing of job candidates (think of it as headhunting before the kill). The key to this is to know as much about your prey as possible. The necessary steps should already be familiar from your hiring plan and job descriptions.

Picture your ideal candidate and ask these three questions to begin building a profile:

  • What experience would they have?
  • What kind of job are they doing now?
  • Which companies have good people doing this job?

Once you have a profile the sourcing begins. The good news is that there are more sourcing tools than ever, and everyone will already have a digital footprint. Github is strong on programmers, TalentBin is a good all-rounder, and then there’s LinkedIn, the biggest professional network. Browse profiles and make a long-list of prospects.

Now begins the courtship. You need to put your research to work in framing an approach. Start with prospects whom you can reach out to using your existing network. Utilize the hard-won experience of recruiters when it comes to cold-calling (usually via email) prospects outside your network.

Recruiting advice from Rob Long Workable VP for Growth

Make sure to warm up your cold call. With a bit of research and a concise, personalized message, you’ll improve your chances of getting a response from the passive candidates you approach.

The recruitment funnel

Done properly, your recruitment process should resemble a funnel. What you’ve seen here belongs at the top of the funnel — the wide net you cast to get the highest number of quality applicants. For the rest of it, look to our Recruiting Strategies Guide For Small Businesses. You’ll find mini-case studies, interviewing techniques, tips for leveraging recruitment software, and advice from recruitment experts such as Tim Sackett, Mervyn Dinnen, and TalentCulture’s own Meghan M. Biro.

About the Author:

Christine Del Castillo is the Community Manager at Workable where she primarily works on community building, digital content creation, and social audience development. She frequently writes about HR tech, hiring, and recruiting for Workable

 

photo credit: No 3 – green paint via photopin (license)

 

Workable is a client of TalentCulture and sponsored this post.

How To Get The Most Out of Your Job Ad

/ /by

So, you’re hoping to create some buzz around the job ad you’ve just published on your careers page? Today’s recruiting environment is competitive and complex. Recruiting the best candidates starts with making the right first impression—and using a combination of tactics will help you get the most out of your job ad. For the best results, it’s important to include social and mobile recruiting tools, as well as free and paid ads—and to know the best day to post.

Building Hype Around Job Openings

So where do you start?

The first thing you need to do is get your listing noticed by the communities where the passive candidates hang out. LinkedIn might be just the platform you are looking for. The business- driven social platform has scores of ways to get your job ad noticed, including groups you can join, mention jobs in, or initiate general discussions around the role, your company, or the industry.

The next thing is to promote the opening within your organization. Does everyone on staff know you have just listed a new job? Share it across your company. If you don’t have a referral system in place, we’d strongly advise you to set one up. For example, eFounders used simple tools they were already familiar with and made it work. Include a social sharing feature to your job ad and give your staff incentives to start sharing from their own social accounts.

Just listed

Another tactic is to create your own online communities. Smart companies make sure they have created Facebook groups or a Facebook Jobs tab, or even run a Facebook ad campaign, with the sole purpose of attracting potential candidates. Promote your employer brand through these pages and when you post a job ad, you’ll have a talent pool of existing fans. Add as many touch points as possible between you and prospective candidates.

Make sure to add mobile listings to your arsenal. According to research from comScore.com, smartphones and tablets account for 60 percent of total digital media time in 2014. Kelton Research survey results indicated 86 percent of active candidates surveyed use their smartphone to begin a job search, and 70 percent of active candidates want to apply via a mobile device.

seven out of ten

The Top Job Boards

Posting your job ad on your careers page and social media is not enough. You need to include job boards. While the leading premium job boards in terms of ROI (return on investment) are LinkedIn, Craigslist, Indeed, and Monster, there are many other job boards you can consider using.

Some job boards, like Indeed, also offer a free option as well as a paid. SimplyHired and Glassdoor offer free postings when you access them through an ATS like Workable. For the most effective places to post your jobs, check out our job board directory, which enables you to choose job boards based on industry, location, and cost (paid versus unpaid).

Posting your job on your careers page and social media is not enough. You need to include job boards. While the leading premium job boards in terms of ROI (return on investment) are LinkedIn, Craigslist, Indeed and Monster, there are many other job boards you can consider using.

Some job boards, like Indeed, also offer a free option as well as a paid. SimplyHired and Glassdoor offer free postings when you access them through an ATS like Workable. For the most effective places to post your jobs, check out our job board directory, which enables you to choose job boards based on industry, location, and cost (paid versus unpaid).

The Best Day to Post a Job

Don’t post your jobs on Friday evening, because by Monday they’ll be last week’s news! Instead, wait until Sunday evening or Monday or Tuesday morning and advertise your roles when the candidates are most active.

Most job sites use freshness as a factor in ranking job search results. Plus, the new jobs of the day usually land in email updates and job board front pages, so getting there when the action is happening can often get you double the candidates you’d receive on a slow day.

The Premium Job Boards

When volume of candidates is the priority LinkedIn, Indeed, and Craigslist are the top sites for posting job listings due to their popularity, functionality, and reach. LinkedIn boasts the biggest potential candidate pool and may be the most powerful sourcing tool in your arsenal. Indeed is a job search engine and a global job board leader with over 180 million unique visitors per month. Finally, although Craigslist is a classifieds site and not a traditional job board, it beats everyone on inbound traffic.

job directory

If the big guys are too broad, and you need to do some laser-targeting, you’re in luck. Try our global, searchable job board directory to drill down by industry, location, and cost. Just the thing if you’re looking for “only healthcare job boards,” or “only job boards in Brazil.”

Happy hiring!
Photo Credit: Kevin H. via Compfight cc

 

Workable is a client of TalentCulture and sponsored this post.

Forbes Picks TalentCulture As A Top Career Site: 3 Reasons Why It Matters

/ /by

“The people to get even with are those who’ve helped you.”
–J.E. Southard

Today it’s time for us to “get even” by expressing deep gratitude! Why? Because Forbes.com has selected TalentCulture as one of “100 Top Websites For Your Career.” Of course we’re thrilled — and not just for all the obvious reasons. So, in the spirit of lists everywhere, here are our 3 Reasons Why This Forbes List Matters:

1) It Matters For Our Mission

By including us, Forbes is acknowledging the rise of crowdsourcing and virtual communities of practice in today’s social business world. And, if you consider the breadth and caliber of the company we’re keeping, it truly is an honor to be featured.

2) It Matters To Others In The World Of Work

On this list, everyone is a winner because there are no rankings. Instead, as Forbes staff writer Jacquelyn Smith notes:

“Our goal was to assemble a comprehensive guide to smart and engaging…online destinations for interns, job seekers, business owners, established professionals, retirees, and anyone else looking to launch, improve, advance, or change his or her career.”

forbes-logoForbes has developed a highly eclectic mix of sites. It’s not just about wildly popular social platforms like Twitter; professional networking sites like LinkedIn; job boards like CareerBuilder; and reference sites like the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Forbes actually adds meat to those big bones with niche services like CareerBliss and PayScale, as well as informational sites like Lindsey Pollak and Jobacle.

However, for us, the most exciting sites on the list are the many valued friends, partners and participants in our TalentCulture community. For example:

Blogging4Jobs by Jessica Miller-Merrell
Brazen Life by Brazen Careerest
Come Recommended by Heather Huhman
Keppie Careers by Miriam Salpeter
The Office Blend by Dr. Marla Gottschalk
Tweak It Together by Cali Yost
WorkLifeNation by Judy Martin
YouTern by Mark Babbitt

3) We Hope It Matters To You

Most importantly, this recognition is a positive reflection on each of you — the tens-of-thousands of monthly visitors who rely upon TalentCulture as a resource for helpful “world of work” ideas, insights, connections and conversations with professional peers.

This milestone is also an opportunity for us to express our gratitude for the hundreds of community participants who, for nearly 4 years have generously developed blog content, appeared as guests on our #TChat Radio shows, participated in our popular #TChat Twitter events, and shared knowledge and peer support continuously on our social media channels.

TalentCulture exists only because of the time, effort and skill that each of you contribute. That’s the beauty of community. This isn’t merely a “website.” This is a reflection of a continuous collaborative process that our founder, Meghan M. Biro, calls a “metaphor for the social workplace.”

Truly, in this case, we could not have done this with out you. So thanks to you all! And congratulations on what you’ve helped us create. Stay tuned to this site — and let’s see where our living learning laboratory will take us next!

Image Credit: redagainPatti at flickr

 

Recruiting Trends & Effect on Job Seekers

/14 Comments/ /by

Today’s post is by Ty Abernethy — founder and CEO of ZuzuHire, a multimedia candidate screening tool incorporating video, voice, essay and multiple-choice questions. He has a background in executive recruiting, and currently manages the finance/accounting recruiting division of Chase Professionals.

The hiring process is changing–not only for companies and recruiters, but also for candidates. With companies facing challenges like budget cuts and understaffed recruiting departments, they are looking at new tools to simplify the hiring process. Things are changing quickly, and it’s hard to keep up. But it’s also difficult to tell which tools and innovations will stick once the dust has settled. Here’s a breakdown of some of the exciting new technologies that will (most likely) stick and how candidates should adapt to keep up.

Ding, Dong the Job Boards Are Dead (well sort of…)

Once upon a time, all hiring strategies went like this: 1) post an ad to a major job board, 2) review resumes, 3) interview, 4) and hire. But things are changin’. Now, with the advent of social media, companies and recruiters have so many more recruiting gadgets in their tool kit. And with aggregate job sites like Indeed and SimplyHired, there is no longer a need for employers to post with the major job boards. Companies can use the smaller, lesser known (and cheaper) boards and get great results. And LinkedIn has now become the largest “resume” database in the world. Soon companies and recruiters will use LinkedIn profiles interchangeably with resumes. And before too long, companies will start allowing applicants to apply to their job postings via the “Connect with LinkedIn” plug-in instead of having to upload a resume. For candidates, this means they must have a professional, updated, and detailed profile.

Video Is Not Just For Pop Stars!

Video is fast becoming a major component to the hiring process, both as a marketing tool and as a candidate screening and interviewing tool. Companies are realizing that the more they differentiate their jobs from their competitors’, the easier it is for them to attract exceptional candidates. And video is a great way for a job seeker to get to know a company better. YouTube and Facebook videos help to give a company a face and a personality and make candidates more excited about the organization. Additionally, video offers a great time saving solution for companies during the interviewing process. Companies can interview candidates in a fraction of the time by incorporating video, and save on travel costs as well. Very soon it will be commonplace for companies to screen and interview candidates via video before bringing candidates in-house to interview. Job seekers need to purchase a webcam so they can keep up!

Mobile! (It’s not just a town in Alabama!)

Mobile recruiting will be huge in the future. Currently, companies looking for a competitive edge have started to incorporate mobile apps and text messaging into their recruiting campaigns. New technology allows recruiters to send out a job via an app and candidates can “check in” if they are available. Recruiters see not only that the candidate is available, but where he/she is geographically located. Then recruiters can reach out to candidates that are in the closest proximity to the job. Crazy, right! Additionally, recruiters now have the capabilities to mass text message candidates with job specs. Instead of having to wait for a candidate to check his/her email, recruiters send the message directly to the one device candidates never put down—their cell phones! Powerful stuff, especially for recruiters sourcing for time-sensitive temp jobs. Job seekers should update to smart phones to keep up.

How Job Seekers Should Adapt

Job seekers that adapt the fastest will see the best results. Being prepared for these changes really helps a job seeker stand out from the crowd. First off, it’s imperative for candidates to leverage their social media communities. Great sites like StartWire make it extremely easy to keep your networks updated on your job search and to ask for assistance and support along the way. It is imperative to find and apply to jobs within the first 24 hours that they are posted. Candidates should set up Indeed and Bing job alerts for target job titles in their geographic location. Signing up for social media job search tools like BraveNewTalent can also be quite effective for finding companies that are hiring. Job seekers should purchase a webcam and become comfortable communicating and interviewing online. If job seekers can keep up, they will stand out among the crowd.

The times are a changin’, and if you adapt you will thrive. What are you doing to update you recruiting or job search strategy?

IMAGE VIA  Bramus!