Engaged from the Get-Go

By Michael O'Brien 一次成功的网上工作申请的顺利进行，将给予一个新踏入职场的员工以非常有益的影响，会使他们对该企业单位有一个积极地认识，相反，如果初涉职场的第一份网上申请工作经历就很糟糕，也就使得他们对于该企业有一种消极的看法。所以，如果你想知道企业的网上职位招聘进程是否有漏洞，问一问那些应聘者你就知道了。

Laura Middaugh knows that if you want to find out if your organization's online-application process has any flaws, you just need to ask an applicant. Such feedback, says Middaugh, HR vice president of operations and recruiting at PODS Enterprises Inc., recently helped the company streamline a portion of its hiring process and select a more appropriate assessment for call-center candidates. Looking at the process holistically, we came back with some surprises, she says. While Middaugh and her team at the Clearwater, Fla.-based provider of moving and storage services initially thought they knew the correct competencies necessary for call-center positions, it was only after talking to candidates that she realized there was a mismatch. That feedback led her team to re-examine the assessments they were using for the positions and shave off a portion of the application that was deemed unnecessary. Mining applicants' experiences in this fashion can not only be a quick way to improve the recruiting process for many organizations, but it can also go a long way in giving applicants a positive view of the organization. As hiring experts have long said, it takes only a few short moments for an interviewer to form an opinion about a candidate during a typical job interview. But what's less considered -- although just as true -- is that candidates are also forming quick, yet strong, opinions about the organization, based on how they feel they're being treated throughout the application process. Companies stand to greatly benefit in the long run by improving candidates' online experiences, says Gerry Crispin, co-founder of CareerXroads, a staffing-strategy consultancy based in Kendall Park, N.J. These experiences are a vital link in the employment process, he says. In the last two decades, through the use of HR scorecards, we are seeing that employee engagement heavily correlates with the future performance of a corporation, Crispin says. And a logical extension of that is, if a new hire comes in [to an organization] highly engaged, then you're going to move [that person] into the organization as an engaged employee much easier and faster. Crispin is a co-founder of the first-ever Candidate Experience Awards, which are scheduled to be presented at the upcoming HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 4. The awards are intended to recognize organizations that have set a high bar for their own job-application processes. Only

25 percent of companies on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list actually let applicants know when a job closes, he says. And none of them make any promises on how they will treat candidates or what they can expect. Elaine Orler, president and co-founder of Talent Function Group in San Diego and a co-founder of the Candidate Experience Awards, says the most forward-thinking organizations are taking pains to ensure that all candidates have a positive experience -- regardless of whether they're ultimately hired -- because negative ones can linger long afterpositions have been filled. A negative experience breeds contempt and a fostering of perpetual lack of interest in the organization, she says. And those negative sentiments can be easily spread: Orler, who will be co-presenting at the upcoming awards ceremony with Crispin, says websites such as Glassdoor.com, Amplicate.com and Indeed.com offer job seekers forums for quickly sharing their candidate experiences -- positive and negative -- with others. And then there's Twitter, of course. Although the rise of online recruiting has brought more attention to the Black Hole -- the abyss into which job seekers throw their resumes and applications and often get nothing in the way of replies -- technology can also be a great help, says Orler, providing more options than ever for HR to forge good relationships between companies and job applicants. We just have not leveraged well, she says. Some companies are making the most of the latest technology by using informative, in-depth videos about open positions, or by sending candidates modeling tools that show prospective executives how their total rewards would stack up over time against competing offers. Such tools, says Crispin, can go a long way to getting the best candidates to become the best employees. You either make it easy for me [the candidate] or not, he says, and the harder you make it, the more I'm going to be reluctant to give you my all and be as engaged as you want me to be. Know Thy Process When it comes to the candidate experience, Crispin says, there are simple things that any HR organization can do to improve it. First among them, he says, is to try walking a mile in the candidate's shoes. Every recruiter should be regularly applying online to [his or her] company, he says. And the first questions should be: 'Does [the process] work the way you intended? Is it doing what you thought it should do?' At PODS, trodding the candidate's path is the norm, says Middaugh. Recruiters go through the recruiting process approximately five times a year, proceeding through each step to ensure every link works and all the messaging is correct and up-to-date. Middaugh adds that sending recruiters through the application process has helped tighten up the overall experience. A recent run-through by a recruiter led to a tweak to the process' entry message in order to help applicants plan their time better, she says. There is a certain time commitment for this, and it really is better for someone to go through the process in one sitting, she says. But otherwise, we really haven't had a lot of glitches, and we're lucky that we have some tools to ensure it's working as well as it is. Another way PODS has improved its candidate experience is by offering a realistic job preview for call-center candidates in the form of a three-and-a-half-minute-long online video that gives them a peek inside the environment in which they would be working. The video -- which applicants see right after clicking on the Apply button -- was prepared in partnership with third-party vendor SHLPreVisor and was rolled out this past December. Middaugh says candidates learn about the company and its culture, then get a deeper look inside company walls through the video. It talks about the training and expectations you'll receive, she says. You the things you'll be accountable for, as well as what you can expect from the company. The video has captured a very realistic depiction [of the job]. Middaugh says the feedback from candidates about the video has been very positive to date and the company has just rolled out a new video for drivers, its largest current hiring need. What we've heard from [current employees who saw the video as applicants] is that it really was a good depiction of what they're living today. It gave them a better-educated idea of what they were getting into. The Hardest Part The candidate experience is, at the very start, a sales-and-marketing effort, says Scot Marcotte, managing director of talent and HR solutions in Buck Consultants' Chicago office. Part of that marketing effort should include providing candidates with more information than just the basics about base salary and vacation days, he says. It should include total reward offer letters that sum up the true value of the potential compensation awaiting successful candidates -- including the value of the company's equity package, for example, so candidates can better compare it against other offers. McKesson, the San Francisco-based healthcare-distribution and technology-solu