Candidate sourcing has changed a lot over the years. It’s rare that you’ll see a “help wanted” sign hanging in the window of a storefront, and you certainly won’t find one posted outside a major tech company or financial institution.

These days, most people find employment online and, more often than not, with the help of a recruiter or staffing agency.

Before and after the Pandemic

The sources where recruiters find candidates haven’t changed much since before the pandemic. However, the same cannot be said about the recruiting process or the mindset of today’s candidate pool.

Remote work is becoming the industry standard wherever it is applicable. Not only does it make businesses and employees feel more secure about surviving another wave of lockdowns, but it also alleviates the strain brought on by rising gas prices.

But prevailing gas prices and post-pandemic anxiety aren’t the only factors affecting the candidate’s ethos.

The great resignation has proven that employees won’t stay at a job they are unsatisfied with, nor will they apply for a job that doesn’t resonate with their aspirations.

Start sourcing smarter

As a recruiter, you have to keep up with the changing tides and understand what it takes to create a successful candidate sourcing strategy.

The first step is identifying your target group. Once you know who you’re looking for, it will make it that much easier to decide which channel you’ll use to find them.

Optimize your channels

Once you’ve defined your target audience, you can conduct keyword research to better understand the job titles being used in your target group. This will ensure that you are reaching the highest number of potential applicants.

Traditional channels

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, making it a prime spot for candidate sourcing, but it’s not the only one.

If you aren’t restricted to recruiting in a specific country, it would be worth your time to look into professional networks from other countries, like Maimai in China or Xing in Germany.

Employer review websites like Glassdoor can also be a suitable place to source candidates. It’s important that when setting up your profile on any of these sites that you make it attractive, which will make it easier to build up your network.

Social Networks

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit are all prime spots to market your job postings, but these channels do require a level of profile building and community engagement before seeing a return on your investment.

It isn’t as simple as putting up your digital ‘help wanted’ sign and targeting it towards the right demographic.

There is a lot of initial legwork when starting to use these channels, from creating noteworthy content to engaging in forums and communities.

But once you have, the candidates you’ll find will be worth every minute you invested in establishing your online presence, and soon you’ll have streamlined your process.

Internal Sourcing

Candidate pipeline

Your candidate pipeline is going to be one of your greatest assets. This is where you maintain relationships with potential candidates, “keeping them warm” for when a new role opens up.

Try to focus on a mix of those actively looking for new jobs and those passively considering a change. Passive candidates offer a larger pool of prospects to source through as they make up about 75% of the current workforce.

Employee referral

Employee referral programs are another sourcing method that is often underutilized due to a lack of employee engagement.

There is a stigma when it comes to employees referring someone to their employers. What if the referral underperforms or just isn’t the right fit? Could it reflect badly on them, or worse, put their own job at risk?

Every employee will have a different motivation for participating in a referral program. For some, it could be cash bonuses or additional time off. Others might want an altruistic bonus such as a donation to their favorite charity or simply recognition for helping the company grow.

The best way to find out is to ask them!

Create attractive job posts

What you put in your job posting is just as important as where you post it. The quality and quantity of interested applicants will be determined by the copy you use and the way you format your job description.

Gendered pronouns

Be careful when using pronouns in your job descriptions. Try using a second-person perspective with “you” pronouns. It’s more engaging to your reader, as it allows them to picture themselves in the role.

Superlatives

Besides being overused to the point they lose their meaning, superlatives can also alienate candidates, especially women and those who identify as neurodiverse.

It’s a given that you’re looking for skilled, experienced employees. Too many words like “expert,” “go-getter,” and “industry-leading” will make your copy feel bloated and out of touch.

Degree requirements

A 4-year degree is no longer an indicator of intelligence, ability to learn, or book smarts as some might have you believe.

Try ‘degree preferred’ as an education requirement and you’ll find candidates with slightly more unconventional training are perfect for what you need.

Sloppy description

Nothing will have a candidate skipping over your post faster than a messy job description. Utilize: bullet points, headlines, and make the important key points stand out!

Your readers need to be able to quickly skim through your post – getting the gist of your company culture, the responsibilities of the role, the requirements you’re searching for, and the benefits of joining the team.

What’s in your AI Toolbox?

If you’re looking for a faster, more efficient way to find quality candidates, Leoforce Quantum is your solution.

With Leoforce Quantum, you can find the best-fit candidates for your specific jobs in minutes. Our deduplicated, stack-ranked list of candidates is sourced from your ATS, job board accounts, and our own proprietary pool of 700 million+ active and passive candidates across the globe.

Don’t spend another minute jumping across systems and platforms; see how Leoforce Quantum can help you source top talent today.

The post Smart sourcing through candidate engagement appeared first on Leoforce.

You may have noticed a tendency for the media to designate certain events in our history as “Great” like the Great Resignation that began in 2021; the Great Recession spanning from 2007 to 2009, and the decade-long Great Depression that began in 1929.

A person’s first instinct may be to question why you would use such a positive word to describe such negative events but when viewed from a different perspective, you could find pros and cons for each of these “Great” incidents.

The Great Resignation empowered workers to find a better work-life balance. The Great Recession helped end the misallocation of investment capital.

Even the Great Depression brought us national retirement, unemployment insurance, disability benefits, minimum wages, maximum hours, mortgage protection, and the electrification of rural America.

So what can we expect from the next Great on the horizon?

The Great Consolidation of banks

The combining of bank institutions through mergers and acquisitions became widespread in the 80s as regulatory changes permitted banks to operate in multiple states.

This trend gained momentum throughout the early 2000s when technology-enabled banking institutions to provide services at lower costs.

Consolidations have become such a common practice that the average rate of branch closures was 99 per month in the 10 years prior to the pandemic; however, since March 2020 more than 4,000 branches have been closed, doubling the average rate to 201 closures per month.

Benefits for the industry

Mergers and acquisitions may bring glad tidings to bank workers by reducing the disparity in wages and making service conditions more uniform. Redundant roles and designations can be eliminated, which leads to career growth opportunities as well as financial savings for institutions.

Indeed, the governing boards of these institutions will find consolidations most advantageous as they result in reductions in operation costs, financial inclusion, and a broadening of the geographical reach of banking operations.

But these buyers should beware. Mergers can also leave larger banks more vulnerable to global economic crises, the absorption of bad loans, and poor governance in public sector banks, as well as staffer disappointment which can lead to employment issues.

Disappearing branches

While the benefits of consolidating are clear for banking institutions, the benefits and costs for the consumer are less so, especially as media headlines often associate consolidation with the closing of bank branches.

And with two-thirds of U.S. banking institutions vanishing in the last three years, an alarming rate by even industry standards, consumers may be right to be concerned.

Despite the increase in online or digital banking services, research shows that customers still value in-person interaction for a lot of their banking needs. There are still security concerns when performing certain transactions, such as opening accounts, resolving account issues, and transferring large sums in person rather than online.

Banking deserts

Intended to help correct the history of public and private redlining, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 requires banks to assist the communities in which they operate. The focus is access to loans and financial services for households and businesses in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods.

As a result of the Great Consolidation, one-third of the banks closed between 2017 and 2022 were located in low-income and/or majority-minority neighborhoods where access to branches is crucial in ending inequities in access to financial services.

As the top 25 banks continue to absorb more and more of the assets that once belonged to small banks, they fail to increase the number of brick-and-mortar branches effectively creating banking deserts.

Although there are more online banking services than ever, the presence of physical branches where customers can interact directly with loan officers who know them and their neighborhoods is something technology has yet to find a substitute for.

An increased responsibility

These economic shifts may have weakened the business structure on which the CRA was built, but they do not alter banks’ obligations. Larger, less-local banks are still responsible for serving the credit needs of every community they operate in.

Changes in how the public interacts with their bank do not create exemptions to the law. They could, however, create new opportunities for growth in both banking and technology.

As we’ve learned from the “greats” of the past, necessity drives innovation, and we can’t know the perception another decade or two might afford us.

New technologies such as smart contract systems, biometric and multi-factor authentication, secure online customer onboarding, and application programming interfaces (API) have already emerged, allowing banks the capacity to accelerate automation and deliver more widespread services.

But the expansion of financial institutions and their obligations, combined with rapid advancement in technology, creates another hurdle for banking in the form of talent acquisition.

The tech savvy-banker

In the past, banking jobs have always been considered highly coveted roles for candidates looking to get into finance, but with the emergence of crypto and other decentralized peer-to-peer payment systems banks are left struggling to acquire talented, skilled, and competent employees.

Automatic teller machines (ATM), Internet banking services, electronic money transfers, and telephone banking have changed the skills necessary to be a bank employee forever.

Tech firms are redefining our society in business practices on a daily basis, which means in order to get the most out of their employees, banks will need to train and re-train them on a regular basis.

Most notably in sectors such as information technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, mathematics, and software engineering.

And there is no shortage of tech startups and firms that are ready to scoop up the diminishing pool of skilled workers currently available.

New tech to find tech

The growing demand for tech-savvy workers means that banks aren’t simply competing with other banks. Recruiters across every industry are desperately searching for candidates with increasingly similar skills.

At Leoforce, we understand the need to identify a clear strategy for faster human resource acquisition and development.

That is one of the many reasons we developed Leoforce Quantum, to help financial institutions modernize their recruiting infrastructure to find the specific skills required to succeed in both analog and digital banking.

Leoforce saves the time it takes to search and rank candidates by providing recruiters with a prequalified and ranked list of diverse individuals that not only meet your skill needs but also blend well with your company culture.

Look to the future

We may not have a crystal ball that can divine how this great change will affect the landscape of banking, but we can continue to glean insights from the greats of the past.

There will almost certainly be layoffs as well as role changes and staff reshuffling, which will lead to opportunities for recruiters and workers alike.

We can also expect to see more pressure put on banking institutions and their reliance on technology to meet the needs of their ever-growing customer base.

As banking continues to evolve, industry players will need to keep an eye on the state, federal, and global regulators, preparing for new laws and regulations in emerging focus areas like climate, financial inclusion, and digital assets.

Subscribe below and stay up-to-date with the latest in recruitment news, industry insights, and staffing tips.

The post The ‘Great Consolidation’ and future of banking appeared first on Leoforce.

And those healthcare workers who weren’t drafted in the great fight against Covid were left jobless as non-emergency offices closed and hospitals postponed non-emergency care to free up resources.

It seems, however, that the industry is beginning to bounce back. As of February 2022, 64,000 jobs were added to the healthcare sector.

While the data shows an increase in job placements for home health service hires as well as physician and other healthcare practitioners’ offices there is still a large void that desperately needs to be filled.

The nursing shortage crisis

Since the onset of the pandemic, and honestly the beginning of all healthcare, nurses have played an integral role in how we provide medical care, but these roles haven’t recovered as well.

A large reason for this is that more than 85% of the healthcare workforce consists of women who experienced the largest share of the Covid-19-related job losses especially those with children 5 years of age or younger.

Not only are registered nurses in high demand – nursing aids, long-term caregivers, and medical assistants – fields also predominantly composed of women, are also finding it difficult not only to fill roles but keep people in them.

Recruiting contention

The nursing labor market remains significantly unsettled post-pandemic with hospitals and nursing homes experiencing huge losses in staff. With the advertised pay rate of travel nurses surging more than 67% in the last two years combined with the ongoing strain of nurses in traditional roles, it’s no wonder many are choosing to transition to traveling nurse agencies that offer competitive pay and sign-on bonuses.

A letter from the American Hospital Association to White House officials state shows just how desperate the situation is. AHA along with the nursing home lobby are having to pay these increased rates in order to fill their vacant staff roles with contract nurses which they believe is exacerbating the nursing shortage.

However, many nurses have spoken out saying that if hospitals and nursing homes invested more in their staff nurses, they would be more likely to stay.

Frenemies of the state [A state of agitation]

Cost-cutting in hospitals long pre-dates the pandemic and isn’t the only thing threatening nurses’ take-home pay. Many nurses grow concerned that heightened scrutiny from the government will result in lower wages as some states have already begun to cap nurse pay in certain circumstances, or are considering legislative action to do so.

Massachusetts, for example, caps pay for registered nurses at hospitals at around $120 an hour while at nursing home facilities, the state caps RNs’ wages at approximately $80 per hour according to the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

But is this the solution to how we maintain our front line of healthcare defense? Especially in the wake of The Great Resignation?

What are nurses saying?

Many nurses say pay caps are not just unfair but unethical. The problem isn’t high pay; rather that there aren’t enough nurses willing to do an increasingly challenging job for low wages.

This sentiment which is shared by many of those leaving their jobs and finding they can negotiate for higher pay, more consistent hours, or better accommodations through agencies.

Another contributing factor according to a recent survey from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing is demographics. The average age of registered nurses in 2022 is 52 and with many of this generation retiring, more nurses will need to be trained to replace them. Though there is no lack of interest with the number of nursing graduates swelling in recent years, experts say nursing schools could produce significantly more graduates were it not for the cost of nursing schools and a shortage of nursing instructors

But the largest factor, by far, is how low the pay is compared to how difficult the work environment is.

Michelle Mahon, assistant director of nursing practice at National Nurses United says “There is no nursing shortage in the United States. There is a shortage of nurses who are willing to work in these conditions. This is something that’s been created by health care employers over a very long period of time.”

Fantastic nurses and where to find them [Shifting the bottom-line]

As with all issues, there isn’t going to be one simple solution but as you listen to those front-line workers it seems the first step is a paradigm shift in what we consider the bottom-line in healthcare.

While financial stability is important to every business if healthcare employers focus on providing reasonable accommodations, desirable schedules, and comparable wages to their front-line healthcare staff they will undoubtedly see an increase in employee retention.

That will of course result in:

• Less time and fewer resources devoted to training new staff every few weeks
• More staff on-hand to avoid employee burn-out
• An improvement in overall patient care (which is the whole point of healthcare after all, right?)

Healthcare organizations need to understand that there is a business impact from both the status quo – constant turnover and employee dissatisfaction – and paying more for talent that can be retained. Weigh those factors in a way that optimizes your business and patient-care objectives.

Headline: The hidden healthcare workers

While you look to fill these competitive positions it’s important not to miss out on those hidden workers within the healthcare industry.

As we’ve seen, women make up more than 85% of this workforce, many of whom are historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups. That alone makes them prone to AI recruiting bias and being eliminated from your pipeline for reasons such as gaps in their work history due to childcare responsibilities.

At Leoforce we understand the importance of reducing these biases and promoting protected classes in order to uncover hidden talent and promote a more productive and diverse workforce.

Our AI recruiting platform, Leoforce Quantum, combines data-driven hiring solutions and Artificial Intuition to reveal a world of healthcare talent previously undiscovered.

The post How the Healthcare industry is recovering and where it’s still hurting appeared first on Leoforce.

The tech industry has seen massive growth in the last two years, but we seem to have reached a point of stagnation as more than 17,000 workers in the U.S tech industry have been laid off already this year. Large tech companies such as Netflix, Cameo and the Facebook parent company Meta are altering their employment plans and report large hiring freezes along with reductions in their workforce, but what is causing this drastic change?

Two major factors seem to be at play here, a combination of over-hiring during the pandemic in a response to the massive growth of the time and the current geopolitical climate making investors and venture capitalist concerned about their ROI. Because of this, tech companies and their recruiters are going to have to become much more adaptive to keep up with the fluidity of the industries hiring needs.

Why are tech companies so “fired” up?

Many tech jobs shifted to remote work, and new roles were established to adapt our stay-at-home lifestyle. As we transition into this post pandemic period of slowly opening the world back up – tech companies are evaluating their workforce needs and finding themselves overstaffed and needing to make hefty cuts. The pandemic also caused a huge increase in the use of automation technologies, which has led to even more job losses in the tech sector.

The largest factor however has to be the rising interest rates and the unstable political climate that has investors in both private and public markets changing how they value tech companies. They are focused less on the high growth which we saw at the beginning of 2020 and are more concerned with strong cash flow.  This is forcing companies to concentrate on their profitability rather than their growth potential.

The short-term outlook for the tech jobs might not be great but the market is nowhere near collapsing. In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor reported the economy added 428,000 new jobs last week, beating the Dow Jones estimate of around 400,000. The days of rapid growth may be on-hold while companies worry more about short-term profitability and there may indeed be more layoffs as companies try to adjust to the new reality.

The industry will continue to grow as always but at a more measured pace and companies will need to be adjust their methodology to avoid these periods of stagnation going forward.

Controlled cash burn

Technology is a growth industry that ebbs and flows. At the beginning of the pandemic, we saw a huge increase in startups and early investors were champing at the bit to get in on the ground floor, especially in online retail and work-from-home tech. Cash burn, the rate at which a startup is spending its venture capital, is especially important for venture-backed startups as they are not traditionally profitable in their first few years. Any revenue these businesses generated is poured back into the business to scale as quickly as possible.

Now that we are in a downturn, many investors are asking to see returns on their investments and some are even asking for their money back. This is causing venture-based startups to lay off staff and go through other cost-saving measures. However, this hiring hold won’t last forever and soon the tech industry will be on the growth cycle again. This presents quite the conundrum. How do these companies maintain their sales and marketing quotas while keeping their general and administrative expenses in line during these down times?

To stay afloat, tech companies need to focus on controlled cash burn. This means reducing unnecessary expenses and only investing in projects that will generate a return.

The pros and cons of contingent labor

One major solution tech companies are turning to is hiring contingent labor to help them cope with the current slump. Contingent labor offers a number of advantages over full-time employees. They are generally cheaper to temporarily bring onboard and can be hired on a project-by-project basis. This allows companies to scale up and down as needed without taking too much of a risk on over staffing. Contingent workers also have a lot of flexibility.

They can work from anywhere in the world and often have a wide range of skills and experience collected from a wide range of niches. They can also be a great way to test the waters before decided to hire them on as long-term or full-time employees. Of course, there is also a risk that they will be poached by other companies once the market picks up again, so it is important to identify the “keepers” and presenting them with a competitive offer.

The downside to temp workers is that they are not always as reliable as full-time employees. They will take on multiple clients in order to compensate for a lack of full-time work which means you can’t guarantee their minds are always on your company’s needs. Because we consider them temporary workers the onboarding process can be rushed or even non-existent.

Companies that have previously never worked with contingent labor probably don’t have an expedited hiring process set in place yet but taking them through the complete onboarding process can costs precious time and money (which is what they are trying to save by hiring freelancers in the first place.) Additionally, you may have to manage multiple freelancers at once if you’re working on a large project which does increase the workload for recruiters and hiring managers.

So, what’s next?

While the technology market is in flux, it is up to individual companies to determine exactly where their needs fall in this sector and what they need to address in terms of hiring freezes, job cuts and what roles to fill with temporary workers. The Leoforce recruitment platform specializes in finding candidates, both contingent and longer term, for technology companies big and small to stay ahead of the game.

We access our huge database of qualified, tech candidates and use artificial intelligence and intuitive algorithms to match the candidates to the specific job, regardless of location and niche. Whether you’re looking for short-term projects or long-term employees to augment staff, Leoforce can help you start in overcoming your recruiting woes.

The post How employers cope with hiring freezes and layoffs in the tech industry appeared first on Leoforce.

During the Great Recession, when jobs were scarce and manufacturers said they needed to cut costs to survive, workers had very little leverage. But times have changed and the last year has been a tale of worker empowerment.

Employees have figured out they’re less constrained than they thought they were in terms of where they deploy their skill sets and won’t hesitate to leave a less fulfilling job for greener pastures.

And now an industry that has quietly looked for ways to reduce labor costs in the past is now facing the challenge of not only attracting new talent but retaining their current workforce.

The new workforce

Technology advancements have helped streamline procedures, increase productivity and create a safer, more efficient workplace but have made some jobs redundant and others more complex.

Roles that were once easier to fill with rank-and-file factory workers now increasingly require digital expertise in combination with operational and procedural knowledge.

Workers who are charged with the operation and maintenance of these machines require proper training, which adds to their list of skills making them much more valuable to employers.

Luckily, the majority demographic of manufacturing workers grew up during the technological boom of the past few decades and tend to be quite adaptive to new technology.

The same majority seems to be the bulk of those driving the Great Resignation which presents a problem for hiring managers and recruiters searching for talent in this sector.

Because these roles are highly transferable, workers can take their skills to practically any company within the manufacturing sector, regardless of niche.

That’s why it’s important for companies to determine the underlying causes of turnover within their organization and the methods they use to attract new talent.

Trickle Down Culture

Anyone who’s worked in a corporate structure has probably heard of trickle-down economics: the theory that benefits for corporations and the wealthy will trickle down to everyone else.

They will also have heard other (more risqué) expressions about what else tends to roll downhill in a company.

The general takeaway is: Whatever your company culture is at the top will have effects on every other aspect of the business. That’s why some organizations rethink how they structure their hill and what to send down.

Greif, a global leader in industrial packaging manufacturing, is taking a more holistic approach to hiring and talent retention by empowering managers to make more decisions. After all, it’s the manager relationship that can retain and motivate an employee, or cause them to resign.

Greif invests in their managers by offering training in topics like diversity, neurodiverse inclusion, and unconscious bias. They also established input and feedback structures and processes designed to make all voices heard and amplify good ideas no matter where in the organization they originate.

So far, the results have been phenomenal. Hiring has increased, employee retention is up, and they now rank in the top 10 global manufacturers for employee engagement thanks to this change in company culture.

Invest to attract the best

Another timeless adage in the world of business is “you have to spend money to make money”.

Though often taken out of context by CEOs who spend money on designer office furniture and high-status credit cards, a more apt expression may be to “invest your money in places that will actually help your business grow.”

It may not roll off the tongue like its predecessor but it reminds employers that manufacturing is a growth industry and it’s important to focus your spending where it counts.

There are three key areas of investment to attract this next generation of talent:

workforce, workplace, and work experience.

Workforce

The primary cause of the high turnover rate in manufacturing is understaffing.

The misguided thought process of “more hands make less work” has led employers to drastically cut their workforce, the idea being that too many employees on hand will result in idle workers with not enough work to go around.

The reality is employers are shooting themselves in the figurative foot by leaving their remaining workers with twice the work at the same pay rate.

In order to grow in this industry, employers must realize that more hands actually produce more work.

Redundant workers protect employers from disturbances in production such as staff illnesses, vacations, sudden resignations, and other unseen circumstances.

Additionally, a full staff and flexible work schedules give employers more opportunities to train and promote from within while allowing employees the support and respite they need to avoid burnout.

Workplace

Environment plays a huge part in employee morale and overall productivity. And a little investment in this area will have huge returns.

Up-to-date equipment and software optimize your business and let your employees know you care about their work experience.

Even seemingly small physical changes to a manufacturing workplace—an updated entrance, modernized break areas, or improvements in shower and locker room facilities—can go a long way toward enhancing the employee experience.

Beyond making the workplace more comfortable it is imperative for businesses to focus on employee safety.

In the last year, social media has been flooded with videos poking fun at the various safety violations reported by workers and though initially intended to be humorous, the response from the emerging workforce has been one of indignation.

Employees will no longer tolerate cost-cutting at the expense of their safety.

Work Experience

Proper staffing and updated facilities contribute immensely to an employee’s overall experience in the workplace but what truly makes the greatest difference is the sense of respect a worker receives from their employer.

Today’s workforce isn’t satisfied feeling like a cog in a machine and employers are making big and small policy changes to ensure their staff feels like respected members of their team.

It could be something as simple as eliminating unpaid lunch breaks.

If you pay for the fuel and upkeep of your car in order for it to function properly why wouldn’t you do the same, if not more, for a human being that helps your business function?

Larger changes like establishing affinity groups within your organization, adjustments for neurodiverse employees, support for childcare, and a well-designed onboarding experience can all help build your reputation as a preferred employer.

How Leoforce can help attract the new workforce in Manufacturing

It is time for manufacturers to embrace the new workforce and understand what it takes to attract them.

With the help of Leoforce, you can find the right recipe to become an employer of choice in each community where your company has operations.

This will not only ensure that you have access to the best talent but also that you are able to build a strong reputation within your industry.

The post Manufacturing: Attracting the new workforce appeared first on Leoforce.