July 17, 2024

Training is a vital part of any business’s long-term growth plan. In fact, a study from the American Society for Training and Development found that organizations that invest the most in employee training have 218 percent higher income per employee.And to make matters even better, employees actually want to be trained. In a 2017 Randstad US survey, 82 percent of employees said lifelong learning is important, 67 percent said they need more training and development opportunities from their employers.But if you want to be sure that your training and development programs are actually delivering these kinds of results, you need to start by tracking employee progress. Otherwise, you won’t have any window into how things are going — and how they could be better.How to Track Employee Training ProgressEvery business leader wants to know whether the time, effort, and money being invested in a project is paying off — and that includes employee training. Training programs can generate tons of value for both your business and employees when done right.You should never put employee training on autopilot! It’s important to be proactive with your efforts so you can make improvements on the fly to make training more engaging and more worth your while.There are typically two ways to track your employee training: using a learning management system or doing it the old-fashioned way with a spreadsheet. Here is a brief overview of each:1. Using a Learning Management SystemA learning management system (LMS) is a tool employers can use to manage employee training programs. As an added bonus, most LMSs come with built-in tracking and reporting capabilities.Here are the pros and cons of using an LMS to deliver and track employee development:Pros:• Cost-effective due to remotely accessible nature — no need to pay for trainers or travel.• Consistent training of employees across all locations.• Contributes to continuous employee development because learning materials can be accessed regularly.• Best used for compliance training, as LMSs can provide proof of course completion.• Tracking is built into the LMS.Cons:• When not used properly, LMSs can become more like administrative software to simply store videos, manuals, and training content, rather than dynamic training solutions. Studies show that employees can forget 70 percent of what they’ve within just a couple of days after taking a course on an LMS, suggesting many LMSs are not used to their full potential.• An LMS is best used as a tool to deliver courses with a clearly defined goal, like compliance, security courses, or training about specific products and services.• LMSs are not necessarily suitable for all work environments. For example, hourly workers in frontline industries cannot access job training through a desktop-focused LMS. Mobile-first solutions may work better for these types of employees.• A company admin controls every aspect of training through an LMS, including content and pacing. Without autonomy over how they learn, employees may find LMS content dull and repetitive. Adaptability and end-user customization are particularly important for younger Gen. Z employees, who have come to expect a certain level of personalization from technology.• Research proves that struggle and failure are critical components of the learning process, but many LMSs are centered around a more passive delivery system of watching videos and checking boxes, which may not be conducive to optimal learning.• Reporting capabilities can vary from LMS to LMS. Some systems have robust tracking options, but others only track employee progress through simple scores that lack granular insight.• An LMS may be expensive to scale as your company grows.2. Using a Manual SystemThe second most common way for employers to track their employee training programs is through spreadsheets, like Excel. Manual tracking is an ideal solution if you only need a small amount of data, lack the budget for a more focused reporting software solution, or have no other options availablePros:• Very easy to implement.• Little to no overhead costs.• No need for additional hardware or software.Cons:• Can be incredibly time- and labor-intensive, depending on the size of your organization.• Manual systems can be easily applied to all forms of employee training, especially more complex and dynamic training.—As the employee training technology space continues to grow, we’re seeing new solutions for managing and tracking employee development every day. My advice? Research the available tools and figure out which ones meet your needs in terms of budget, headcount, functionality, and more.The success of your employee training program depends on getting your tracking system right.Sam Caucci is founder and CEO of 1Huddle.Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.

Before the pandemic, 17 percent of US employees  worked remotely full-time. Now, it’s closer to 44 percent.More businesses than ever before are operating without physical headquarters or offices, giving their employees lots of flexibility around their work schedules and workplaces. And it is safe to say that these remote work policies are here to stay, with 73 percent of workers saying they’d like to continue telecommuting in some capacity after the pandemic.There was a time when remote work wasn’t even a possibility, mainly due to the lack of technology and tools necessary for distributed teams to stay connected and collaborate efficiently. These days, that’s no longer a problem: Plenty of apps now exist to improve the remote work experience and increase employee productivity.Adapting to the remote work world has not been easy for everyone, but I believe many companies could overcome the challenges of telecommuting by investing in the right tech tools. There’s no perfect equation for a flawless remote work tech stack, but here are some platforms and programs that can surely make your remote team more efficient and organized:Tools for Staying ConnectedOne of the biggest concerns about remote work is effective communication between employees. After all, communication is foundational to an optimal collaborative environment. Therefore, reliable instant messaging and video conferencing platforms are necessities.One of the most popular instant messaging apps in the market, Slack offers a simple way for teams to stay in touch. It integrates with other business applications, like customer relationship management (CRM) tools, for added ease of use. Meanwhile, GoToMeeting offers a reliable video conferencing program, with some important features like a “smart meeting assistant” that allows users to record meetings in the form of both audio/video and written transcriptsLoom is another useful tool that blends video conferencing with instant messaging. Loom allows users to record and share short video messages, which can be a much more efficient communication channel than emailing and instant messaging.Tools to Manage ProjectsEffective project management is vital to keeping work on track in a remote environment, but it can also be challenging to manage a project when everyone isn’t in the same room together. As a result, leaders need tools to help them track the stages of a project, follow up on tasks, and delegate to team members.Basecamp is a project management platform where users can create different spaces and timelines for different departments and projects. In addition, admins can create checklist templates to ensure the same steps are followed consistently between projects, and members of each project team can manage their past, current, and future tasks in one place.Asana is another popular project management tool. What I like about Asana is that it offers three main views to choose from: list, timeline, and boards. Teams can select the views that best fit their projects, and no matter which they choose, admins can define workflows and add insights and instructions for team members. Asana also includes some handy reporting tools that help leaders keep track of the team’s progress and workload with real-time charts and status updates.Trello is a good choice for those who prefer a visual representation of projects and tasks. A Trello board consists of lists and cards that contain detailed information about tasks, including who is responsible for the task, when it’s due, related attachments, and relevant productivity metrics.Technology + Talent = Remote Work SuccessRemote work brings new freedom and flexibility to companies and employees, which is why so many have embraced it. However, employers will need to put some new standards in place to ensure employees continue performing at their best while telecommuting.Luckily, the technology is now available for employees to enjoy the benefits of a remote role while staying connected with colleagues and staying on top of their tasks. As a result, companies can continue offering remote work options while minimizing the challenges of overseeing a distributed team.As companies continue building remote teams of talent from around the world, they’ll need to rely on the right tools and platforms to encourage productivity and teamwork in the virtual work environment. It is important to note that the tools highlighted above — and any other tools your company may adopt for remote work — are most effective when employees adopt them with accountability, trust, and discipline. Given the inherent autonomy of remote work, employees must do their part in leveraging the right tools to reach higher levels of productivity and get the most out of working remotely.Lesley Pyle, MSc, is founder and CEO of HireMyMom.com.Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.

Working an internship is good for more than just earning college credit — it’s also an opportunity to make valuable connections in your preferred professional field and gain real-life work experience.However, many college students have a tough choice to make this season: accept an unpaid internship to get a foot in the door of their target career, or find a summer job to help pay for school.If financial constraints mean an unpaid internship is off the table for you, don’t worry. There are plenty of ways to boost your resume and advance in your career, even if you can’t take an internship.1. Leverage Your Work ExperienceRoughly a quarter of Americans have participated in an unpaid internship, according to a recent survey from Student Loan Hero. What’s more, almost half of them (47 percent) took on debt as a result.If you’d rather have a paying gig than go into debt for an internship, look for ways to reframe your experience working a traditional summer job to your advantage.“If people have been working any kind of job, even if it’s a restaurant job, you’re developing a skill set,” says Daisy Swan, career and executive coach. “A resume really needs to be built around those skills.”Look back on your summer jobs and think about how the skills you honed in those roles might translate to the kinds of jobs you’re seeking now. Swan recommends avoiding vague, general descriptors that fall flat on the page when adding those skills to your resume. In particular, steer clear of  more tentative language like “worked,” “helped,” “supported,” or “assisted.” Instead, opt for more active descriptions, like:• Provided excellent customer service• Resolved complex problems for customers• Managed busy phone lines and emails2. Play Up Skills You Learned Outside of WorkYour work experience is a vital component of your resume, but the education section can also give employers a good idea of your capabilities. Reflect on relevant school projects or clubs you were involved with. Might those experiences be sources of transferable skills, too? For example, if you took a course where you learned to build a website, you could highlight that fact when applying to jobs that involve web design and programming.Don’t limit yourself to formal schooling, either. Swan says you can draw on coding bootcamps, one-off online classes, and personal professional development courses you may have taken.Volunteer opportunities can be another great way to pick up valuable skills that add extra punch to your resume. While volunteer work may be unpaid, it usually has a flexible enough arrangement that you can volunteer while still holding down a paying job. Just like an internship, volunteering can also result in full-time work down the line, and it may make you eligible for student loan assistance after graduation, depending on your degree and the volunteer work you do.3. Consider an ApprenticeshipInternships aren’t the only way to gain relevant work experience in your future profession. Many employers across a variety of industries use apprenticeship programs to train and recruit new hires — and, unlike internships, apprenticeships offer competitive wages in addition to on-the-job training, course work, and mentorship. The US Department of Labor maintains a database of nationwide openings.Your target employer may lack a formal program, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be open to the idea of taking you on as a paid apprentice or post-graduate intern.“Get very proactive and targeted about who you want to work for,” says Swan. “If you find a company and you want to offer yourself as an apprentice, you can reach out to them.”4. Include a Profile Section in Your ResumeThe average recruiter only spends about 7.4 seconds reviewing each new resume they come across, according to Ladders. That underscores just how important it is to make sure your resume stands out immediately.Swan recommends tailoring your resume to each individual job opening that’s a potential fit for you in the employment market. “Use the job description as a kind of map for your resume,” she says. “You really write it for the position.”Swan also suggests adding a brief profile section to the top of your resume, which can be a particularly effective strategy for candidates who lack formal work or internship experience. This profile gives you space to highlight characteristics that make you special — like the fact that you’re a go-getter who self-financed part or all of your education.—If you have to take summer jobs in lieu of unpaid internships, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re at a disadvantage. In fact, you may be able to spin your work experience as a positive thing. Some employers will see your choice to take a paying job as a testament to your work ethic and character.Marianne Hayes is a longtime freelance writer and content marketing specialist.Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.

You’ve invested time, effort, and money into designing your recruitment strategy — but you’re still not getting the results you’d hoped for.What’s going wrong with your recruiting strategy? Why isn’t it attracting the top talent your business needs?To help you troubleshoot, here are a few of the most common reasons why recruitment strategies fail — and how to fix the problem:1. Using Outdated Recruiting PracticesThe world is always changing, and recruitment has to keep up. If you’re still relying on the same tactics you used even a few years ago, you’re unlikely to see results. In particular, watch out for these obsolete recruiting tactics:Prioritizing In-Person InterviewsEven before the pandemic, in-person interviews were on their way out — and with the arrival of COVID-19, virtual hiring became the default. If you’re looking to bring back the in-person interview, you might be sabotaging yourself. Ditch physical meetings and use these tips to make your virtual interviews even more effective:• Host virtual open houses:Use webinar software to recreate large-scale recruiting events in the digital realm. Virtual open houses offer a convenient way for hiring managers, recruiters, and interested candidates to get to know one another.• Give your team the right tools: Ensure that everyone involved in the recruiting process is equipped with the right technology and log-in credentials to facilitate virtual interviews. Double-check everything from hardware to software and make sure each member of the talent acquisition team knows how to leverage these resources.• Prepare your candidates: Virtual interviews are more common than ever, but they’re still new to many. Put your candidates at ease by giving them as much information as they need to navigate the virtual hiring process comfortably.Valuing External Hires Over Internal CandidatesWhen new roles open up, most companies default to searching for an external hire. But hiring internally has serious benefits, including:• A shorter hiring cycle• Lower recruiting expenses• Increased employee engagement• Higher retention ratesHiring from within offers you a more direct line to the talent you need. After all, you already know what skill sets your employees have. It’s much easier to home in on candidates who are qualified for the role when you’re recruiting from your existing team.2. Failing to Define Your Target AudienceRecruiting is a form of marketing — and the foundational principle of marketing is understanding your target audience.From a recruitment perspective, your target audience is defined as individuals with the particular skills, qualifications, values, and work experience necessary for a particular position. Defining your target audience before you embark on a recruiting effort is important because it allows you to:• Craft messages that are more likely to resonate with your audience• Look for talent in the places where your target audience is likely to be• Create a recruitment process that addresses the specific needs and concerns of your target talentTo define your target audience, simply build a candidate persona for each position you want to fill. This is a hypothetical representation of your ideal job candidate. To create a candidate persona, you must first clearly define the role itself. Next, interview team members to get an idea of the traits, motivations, and skills the candidate will need to succeed in that role. If you’re filling a role you’ve filled in the past, you can reuse data about previously successful employees in that role. The intersection of the job description and the candidate’s required characteristics is your candidate persona.Knowing your target audience makes it easier to build a recruitment strategy that attracts the right people — which, in turn, leads to a more productive team overall.3. Not Focusing on the Candidate ExperienceIn the bid to fill a vacancy as quickly as possible, many recruiters overlook the candidate experience, focusing instead on moving candidates through the pipeline with maximum efficiency.But candidates are people, too. If they have a negative experience during your hiring process, they won’t want to work for your company. Watch out for these red flags of a negative candidate experience:• High candidate drop-off rates• High numbers of unqualified applicants• Candidates expressing confusion with your processA negative candidate experience can have massive repercussions for all your subsequent recruiting efforts. If candidates have a bad time with your hiring process, they’ll tell others about it. They’ll share their stories on social media, and other candidates will see those stories when they research your organization. You’ll gain a reputation for being a difficult employer to work with, and top talent will stay away.On the flip side, a positive candidate experience reflects well on your brand, making your organization a talent magnet.So, how do you ensure your candidates have a positive experience instead? Some simple but powerful tips include:• Use convenient application forms. Only ask for necessary information, and don’t make candidates retype their resumes.• Use an application platform that allows candidates to save their progress so that they don’t lose their applications in the event of a technical problem.• Host remote interview sessions instead of making candidates travel to your office.4. Ineffective Candidate OutreachCandidate outreach is an essential part of a recruiter’s job. That’s how you make contact with high-quality candidates in the first place.Unfortunately, most organizations don’t have optimized candidate outreach strategies. One of the most common mistakes is sticking to a single communication channel (e.g., email, LinkedIn) to reach out to candidates.Effective outreach requires an omnichannel approach. That helps you reach candidates on the platforms they frequent and the channels they prefer, making it more likely that talent will see your messages and respond.As for the content of your messages, follow a few key tips:• Personalize your outreach. Use names and reference the candidate’s professional background when possible.• Keep the message short and sweet. Get straight to the point about why you’re reaching out, and make sure to share the benefits of taking the conversation further.• End with a call to action that tells your candidate exactly what to do next if they’re interested.5. Failure to Follow Up ProperlyNot every candidate to whom you reach out will respond after the first message. That’s why you need an effective follow-up process. Here’s a simple three-step formula you can use:• Send the initial outreach message expressing your interest in interviewing the candidate for the position you’re filling.• After a few days, send a follow-up message letting the candidate know that you’re still interested in them.• Wait a few more days and let the prospect know that you’re open for them to reach out when they’re ready.Following up is a great way to show prospects that you value them and you’re serious about your offer. The latter is essential these days, when online recruitment scams are rampant.—The average cost of a bad hire is $15,000, which means your company can’t afford to recruit the wrong people. If your recruitment strategy is failing to deliver, it’s time to audit your process. Start by looking out for these common recruitment failures.Neal Taparia is founder of Solitaired.Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.

Most companies today have something to say about their company culture and how it makes them unique with regard to what they do and how they treat their employees. And that’s a good thing: Today’s employees are not motivated solely by money, and behaving as if they are will rarely lead to good long-term recruiting results.When candidates are considering prospective employers, they have a broad range of questions they’d like to answer. Typically, that includes:• What opportunities will I have once hired?  What might my long-term career growth look like with this company?• Is this organization a collaborative and open one?• Who will be my hiring manager, and what can I expect from their management style?• What unique things does this company do internally to help drive external results?• Are there opportunities to work remotely?• Do I have any say in my work schedule?Your hiring process should be designed to answer those questions for candidates — and, in doing so, it should convey the type of culture your company embodies.Pay Attention to the DetailsYou can share a lot of information about your company culture before the first interview even starts, getting candidates excited about your company and job right from the start. Simple things matter: Even something as seemingly minor as using convenient interview-scheduling technology can send a positive message to candidates. They might start thinking, “Okay, this company is trying to make the recruiting process a good experience for me. I wonder what other interesting things they do there?”Furthermore, you can and should set candidates’ expectations for your entire recruitment process at the outset. Use the initial call, email, or other point of contact to lay out all the details candidates need to know about how your hiring process will proceed. Don’t feel like you have to fit it all in one message — share a document or a link to more information so that candidates can peruse it at their leisure. Sharing this level of detail tells the candidate that your company is organized, prepared, and excited to start the hiring process with them. You can even take it a step further by having recruiters and hiring managers send additional messages about how excited they are to speak to the candidate.Put Purpose FirstAs you work to convey your company culture during the recruiting process, be sure to tie that culture to a sense of overarching purpose as well. This can be an extremely powerful recruiting tool.At Kognitiv, the company I co-founded, we do this from the very first interview, which is actually with me, the CEO. The purpose of the call is basically for me and the candidate to get to know each other. I always tell the candidate, “We want you to want to be here.” This is very important to us, because if a candidate is joining our company — or any company! — simply because they are looking for a change, chances are it won’t work out. If a candidate’s motivations in the recruiting process are 100 percent about them, with little concern for how they will align with the company’s purpose, then there won’t be a good culture fit.That’s why the first interview is with me, the CEO. This way, we can make sure there’s a purpose alignment before an offer is made.Granted, it’s possible for me to hold our first interviews because we have just a little over 100 people in our organization, so I can still do that initial call without being overloaded. If your organization is larger, the CEO may not be able to hop on first-round interviews, but another key decision-maker can still join in on the recruiting process.During our interviews, we also tend to highlight a couple of our company values in the context of what we expect from candidates and what they can expect from Kognitiv itself. While doing this, we are highlighting our company culture and hopefully showing the candidate just how much it matters to us.At the end of the day, the recruitment process is not just finding out whether a candidate knows enough to do a job. It’s about making deeper connections with candidates to see if they share the company’s culture, mission, and values, too.After all, we all end up working together under one company roof. It’s up to the company to show the candidates what’s under that roof before they accept the job.Luke Switkowski is cofounder of Kognitiv, Inc., the company behind Rooster.Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.

In today’s business environment, where millions of open positions remain unfilled and labor shortages abound, hiring right is more critical than ever. Yet, many organizations are woefully shortsighted in their hiring decisions, ignoring the very business strategies that differentiate their companies in a competitive market. Hiring is so much more than just filling empty seats, and hiring strategically often spells the difference between a thriving business and a stagnant one.Organizations have similar goals — generating revenue, increasing profitability, gaining market share, etc. Yet the means by which they achieve those goals — product innovation, process efficiencies, cost-cutting, entering new geographical markets, marketing strategy, or pricing methodologies — vary tremendously. Even those that choose similar broader strategies will vary greatly in their application. For example, Apple innovates products as a technology leader, whereas Target innovates processes to enhance the customer experience.Business strategies heavily impact an organization’s ability to differentiate in the market. Logically, the hiring strategy should be in service to that overarching business strategy. When you look across the hiring landscape, however, you don’t often see organizations hiring through this lens. You see the same tired job descriptions and processes, focusing almost exclusively on job characteristics rather than the characteristics people in these roles must possess to execute the aforementioned strategies.Look at just about any job description, and the characteristics desired for successful candidates will be virtually identical across every open position with the same job title. However, these positions can vary tremendously when you look at the characteristics needed in the role.Imagine a retailer hiring store managers. The job title across 1,000 stores and the related job description will likely be identical. However, the job itself will vary tremendously based on whether that location is a startup, a turnaround, or a mature location. This is important because managing a location is not just a matter of stocking shelves; it’s a matter of fine-tuning and squeezing out every ounce of efficiency (in a mature location), or embracing innovation and new approaches (in a startup), or dramatically changing the culture and dealing with highly complex people issues (in a turnaround). Department managers must live and breathe these strategies, executing on them across their teams. Team members must also consistently act in a manner that is aligned with these strategies, lest the operation fails. At every level and virtually every role, successful execution of the business strategies that drive revenue and profitability are influenced — for better or worse — by the degree to which employees’ capabilities and motivations are aligned with them. Isn’t it time our hiring processes reflected this critical need?A Model for Hiring Based on Business StrategyHR leaders need a true partnership with organizational leaders because they are in one of the best positions to influence the future success of the business. Business strategies should lead to a discussion about the roles that need to exist — and the characteristics people in those roles must possess to execute those strategies.Looking to drive repeat business? Hire call center reps who put customer service above upselling at every turn. Your marketing strategy positions you as a valued business partner to your clients? Hire for consultative sales ability rather than transactional skills. Obvious examples like these are readily apparent once you start thinking about aligning positions and the characteristics required to execute business strategy.Business strategy should drive position identification and the characteristics needed for success in a role. This leads the way to choosing the right diagnostics — tests and interviews — to determine the degree to which candidates have the ability to execute on those strategies vis-à-vis their roles. Assessment results are then used to identify strengths on which to capitalize and gaps to bridge through development.Both tests and interviews have a place in this process. Higher-volume roles require quick, engaging online tests, as businesses need an objective and efficient means to quickly identify those candidates most likely to succeed in executing the strategies of the business specific to their role. Assessments can meaningfully improve time to hire, enhance quality of hire, and increase tenure, creating an upward spiral of talent within your organization. Leveraging assessments to identify strengths and development opportunities for new hires adds further value by reducing the learning curve and positioning new hires in the roles where their natural strengths afford them the greatest potential for success.Once you’ve identified those candidates most likely to succeed in the role, the interview is your chance to delve deeper into how candidates’ strengths and motivations align with the strategies of the business with regard to their potential role. Most hiring managers want a chance to meet the people who will work with them, and most candidates want the chance to meet their potential teams. Interviewing is an important and natural way to begin the relationship and assess fit for the role.The aforementioned shift from hiring based on job title to hiring based on one’s ability to execute on business strategy is an opportunity many companies miss. In retrospect, it may even appear obvious. But are you doing it? Maybe now is the time to start.Brad Schneider is vice president of strategic consulting at Criteria and president of the LA Chapter for the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.

Remember the ’90s horror hit,The Blair Witch Project, which shocked audiences with its groundbreaking found-footage style? More than 20 years after its release, audiences are going to be able to step inside the house where it all took place — except it will be happening just steps off the Las Vegas Strip.Immersive experiences are a hit in the entertainment world, whether it be the upcoming Blair Witch experience, a Rugrats escape room, or the nationwide Immersive Van Gogh  exhibition that has taken over social media worldwide.What does this have to do with recruitment?Well, recruitment and immersive experiences are both all about standing out from the crowd and making people feel some sort of connection to the environment — and to each other.That’s why companies are jumping into immersive experiences, too. Instead of sending out a PowerPoint on the latest workplace safety updates, for example, companies are creating immersive experiences that teach best safety practices while providing a team-building experience in the process. And it works: Games can be powerful ways of building connections between people. Immersive experiences in the corporate setting are an opportunity to build stronger bonds between teams members and a company culture that acts as a recruitment engine. Here’s how to use immersive experiences to drive your culture-driven recruitment and long-term retention strategiesImmersive Experiences Build Bonds NaturallyIn the global virtual workplace, many coworkers never get a chance to interact outside a Slack channel or Zoom meeting. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to build bonds between coworkers through these channels unless everyone happens to be very outgoing.Office bonds are usually formed at the literal watercooler or during the quiet times of company functions like day-long conferences and workplace training days. To help recreate those moments of social interaction for remote employees, companies are turning to immersive experiences that put coworkers together in virtual settings that naturally promote interaction that leads to bonds.At Emeraude Escape, we’ve helped a few companies build custom immersive games for this purpose. For example, we worked with an international chemical company to create a multiplayer immersive escape room that is, in reality, a training platform on workplace dangers. Players are grouped in teams (we found the best size is a maximum of six people per team) and go room to room solving puzzles while learning best practices for the real-world workplace. Each player’s video streams live during the immersive game, and players are forced to talk to each other “face to face” to solve the puzzles.This type of interaction plays on the IKEA effect, which states that people care more about things when they’re actively involved in building them. So, when employees are actively involved in team-building, they care more about their teams. It sounds obvious because it is.Immersive Games Build Company CultureBuilding company culture remotely isn’t easy, but it’s more important than ever to keep employees feeling connected when their team members are distributed around the world. Companies must build virtual environments that align with their values while showing workers that they are investing in them in ways that are actually enjoyable.Employees don’t want Zoom happy hours. They hate Zoom events. In fact, when Emeraude Escape surveyed more than 1,000 newly remote workers during the pandemic, 54 percent of workers said they had participated in a virtual happy hour with their coworkers as a team-building exercise — and only 25 percent of those workers said they would prefer that type of event in the future.No one wants to attend another Zoom conference. What do they want instead? That same survey found that 70 percent of employees would be excited to play competitive virtual games with their colleagues as a means of building company culture.Friendship Leads to Better RetentionThe connection between immersive experiences and employee retention is actually more direct than you might think. Games can be a strong foundation for bonds between people, as we mentioned earlier. When incorporated into the workplace on a somewhat consistent basis, games can build bonds between team members. And once employees form those bonds with their coworkers, they are less likely to leave for greener pastures — even if offered more money!In another survey we conducted, 66 percent of remote employees said their relationships with their colleagues were among the top factors in their decision to stay with or leave a company.Immersive experience technology is booming across all sectors, and it’s fantastic to see companies adopting it to improve their workplaces. The end results are better retention and happier employees who feel more connected to their companies.Virgile Loisance is the CEO of Emeraude Escape.Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.

They’re motivated, they’re eager to make a difference, and they bring a breath of fresh air to every team. I’m talking, of course, about college students and recent graduates. Young talent is a real asset for a company, which is why competition for these candidates is so high. To attract qualified young professionals, you need a solid university marketing plan.Understanding University MarktingBut what exactly is university marketing? To put it simply, “university marketing” refers to your means of addressing, engaging, and ultimately recruiting college students.Because of the escalating war for talent, companies need to become visible to young talent while they’re still in school. The sooner you can convince these candidates that you’re a great company to work for, the higher the likelihood they’ll choose you after they graduate.Like general recruitment marketing and employer branding efforts, university marketing pursues a set of talent-related goals:• To reach an audience of potential applicants and employees for your company — in this case, students and new grads.• To increase awareness about your company and its products and services among the target group of talent.• To strengthen your image as a good employer among relevant talent populations.The key to successful university marketing is adequate, early, and targeted planning. As you prepare to communicate with university students, think carefully about your goals. Ask yourself the following questions to get some clarity on how you should proceed:• Who is your target group, and where can they be found? Be sure to get specific here. For example, at what stage are the students in their studies? Are they new students, graduates, dropouts? Which courses and subjects do the students take?• What is the current situation like on the average college campus? What is the social and cultural environment like?• Which schools would you like to work with?• In which regions and niches is your company active?• What time frame and budget do you have for your university marketing measures?Once you’ve answered these questions and identified your target schools, it’s time to reach out to those universities to begin the process of collaboration.University Marketing, Step by StepIn a nutshell, your university marketing strategy should follow three steps:1. Make your target group aware of your brand and promote a positive image of your organization as an employer. Possible tactics include guest lectures at universities and colleges, posters and other advertising materials on the school’s premises, and advertisements on the school’s website.2. Make direct contact with your target group and start a conversation. Booths at job fairs, information stands on campus, offering courses and seminars, sponsoring awards, and inviting students to visit the company are all great ways to do this.3. Maintain contacts with students through internships, student employment activities, and cooperation on school projects.Of course, you have a few different options when it comes to how you go about implementing these steps. Let’s take a look at some of the tools and tactics you might want to use for your university marketing efforts:Print MediaPrint media like student newspapers can be an easy way to reach students. However, there are relatively high costs associated with placing print advertisements. Placing outdoor advertisements, posts on notice boards, and passing out flyers and brochures may be more cost-effective, depending on your budget.Online MediaBetween smartphones, laptops, and tablets, college students spend a lot of time online. Thus, it’s a good idea to make your brand visible online to reach your target group.Social media is an important factor here, so be sure to establish a company profile and active presence on sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and anywhere else your target candidates might spend their time online. Use these channels to posts vacancies and career opportunities, and increase awareness of your brand through tailored advertisements.On your own website, be sure to create a company careers page where candidates can see open jobs and learn more about your organization. Also, publish and promote blog posts about your company’s activities to give candidates insight into everyday life at your organization.EventsCollege campuses are often teeming with events, which can be effective ways to get into contact with students. For example, you can get your brand in front of students by sponsoring sporting and cultural events, competitions, prizes, or scholarships. You can participate in university job fairs meet students directly. You might even consider giving guest lectures for more focused engagement with students.If you do participate in on-campus events, be sure to budget for merchandising items (i.e., “swag”). These can be roll-ups, flyers, giveaways, and also branded clothing for your colleagues on site.CollaborationYou can also work with students directly to start building relationships. Internships are the most common way for employers to work with prospective candidates, but they’re not the only option. For example, you can help students with their academic work, too, by serving as a resource for bachelor’s theses, master’s theses, and doctoral dissertations.—University marketing campaigns can take many forms, depending on what’s right for your organization. And the best part is that you don’t need a massive budget to market to students.In fact, creative campaigns don’t have to cost a lot. A sponsored coffee bike parked outside of a student center can generate a lot of positive attention, and the price tag can be as low as $500, depending on how many students you provide with coffee.Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.

Job seekers hate the application process. I can make that claim without citing a source, and no one will contest it. We just accept it as fact at this point.The folks at Jibe, an HR software company that provides a set of cloud services for recruiting and managing talent, recently conducted a survey to find out just how much job seekers actually hate filling out applications. According to the 2014 Jibe Talent Acquisition Survey, applicants loathe the process even more than many of us expected. According to 35 percent of survey respondents, the job search is “easy.” Compare this to the 80 percent who said it was “time-consuming,” or the 78 percent who called it “stressful,” or the 71 percent who called it “discouraging.”Similarly, 30 percent of job seekers said they would rather go on a blind date than fill out an online job application, and 22 percent said they would rather speak in front of 100 strangers. Heck, 12 percent even said they’d rather get a root canal.Whenever anyone, anywhere would rather have a root canal than fill out a job application, we have a problem.According to Ivan Casanova, Jibe’s senior vice president of marketing, there are a few (good) reasons why job seekers can’t stand the application process. “First off — and especially for enterprise customers — the application process is a function of the applicant tracking system,” he says. “A lot of that technology hasn’t evolved as quickly as customers need it to.”Job seekers are also frustrated by another form of outdated technology: poorly designed company websites. “People are on the Web all day long, and if they’re on a crappy website, they tend to get off,” Casanova says.Applicants run into a slew of problems trying to apply online: they cannot upload the necessary documents, or they cannot navigate the website on a mobile device, or the experience itself is clunky and repetitive, etc. Many job seekers have enough self-respect to walk away from companies who put them through torturous online applications. “[A person] looks at it like, ‘Do I really want to work here? No!’ Casanova says. “If they can’t even let me upload my resumé in a way that makes me comfortable, I probably don’t even want to work there.”Losing out on Great Talent — Because the Application Process Is AwfulJibe found that 44 percent of job seekers would “put off applying or not apply at all” if they had a frustrating experience with an outdated online job application. A full 60 percent of job seekers report quitting an online application before completing it, or losing all of their work because a confusing application process led them to believe they were finished before they really were. Those who lose their work do not try again: they move on to the websites of companies that aren’t going to drive them insane.According to Casanova, employers of all types and sizes face the consequences of poorly designed applications. “There are always businesses where the quality of the talent is the crucial vector. They need to hire great people,” he says. “For those people, if you have a bad candidate experience, you’re going to lose the best people.”Similarly, Casanova says companies that depend more on hiring high volumes of applicants may find themselves unable to fully staff their operations. “If you’re talking more of a volume business, where you’re hiring lots of hourly workers, you have to be able to fill those jobs, and if you can’t, you literally can’t run your restaurant, or your food chain, or your supermarket, or your retail store,” he explains. “Even with unemployment in the low sixes today, there are still a lot of business that can’t hire enough people. They’re going to lose out and not be able to run their business.”As serious as these challenges are, Casanova refers to them as the “pedestrian perspectives” because, as he points out, off-putting application processes can hit businesses in ways they may not have even imagined. “I think what’s really at risk, though, in the bigger picture, is that there is some real brand halo associated with this,” he says. “There was a significant portion of people [34 percent] who responded to the survey that said that, if a process was terrible, they wouldn’t even buy anything from that company.” When job seekers have a painful time applying to a company, they may start to think about the company in a negative light. They’ll stop giving the company their business, and they’re likely to encourage friends and family to do the same. “The real danger for clients is that somebody who is a job seeker logs into your website or finds you on a mobile device, and the application process is terrible,” Casanova says. “They’re going to think that you don’t know what you’re doing or that you’re not as technically sophisticated as an organization as you need to be, and it’s going to make them think worse about you as a business. It’s going to have a brand effect.”Casanova says that companies should treat the application process as an extension of their brand. “If they think about it that way, they tend to be more likely to invest in it and make sure it’s a great experience,” he says. But there’s more to the situation: despite the general unrest amongst job seekers and the negative impact that bad application processes have on organizations, many companies simply are not stepping up to address the problem. The reason for this? A general disconnect between what applicants really experience and what HR thinks applicants experience.HR Departments: Keeping Their Heads in the SandAccording to Jibe’s survey, HR professionals are wearing their rose-tinted glasses: they’re seeing a sunnier, more optimistic picture of the application process than the one job seekers are seeing. “There’s a bit of the ‘head in the sand’ model for an HR pro,” Casanova says. “Consistently across the board, the survey showed that the HR pro was more optimistic about their process. They thought it was faster. They thought it was as good as it needed to be.” Casanova says that a significant portion of HR professionals are still not thinking in terms of candidate experience, and Jibe’s numbers support his conclusion: 64 percent of surveyed HR professionals believe is is important for the application process to be user-friendly, but 54 percent of HR professionals admit that their current application process is not user-friendly.There is a disconnect between the picture in HR’s head and the real world that job seekers are facing.However, Casanova does not blame HR entirely. He notes that many departments suffer from outdated, unwieldy tools. “A lot of it has to do with the life cycles of some of these big enterprise systems,” he says. “As long as the ATS is the core of how these large organizations are going to do recruiting, they’re kind of bound to those systems, and those things are not evolving as quickly as customers need.”HR departments are having an especially tough time keeping up with advances in mobile technology. While 80 percent of job seekers expect to be able to use their smartphone during the job search, 27 percent of HR professionals at companies with 500 or more employees say they have not optimized the application process for mobile devices. Similarly, 36 percent also say that, if they were candidates, they would not describe the application process at their company as “mobile optimized.”“If you work in an organization — you work for a corporation — and on day one, you’re given a laptop computer, that becomes your lens to the Internet,” Casanova says. “People just don’t realize that maybe, for some people, mobile is the only option.” We often think about job search in terms of executives and other “office talent,” but, as Casanova points out, there are other types of talent out there — and HR needs to think about how they can access job applications, especially when a company is looking for hourly employees. “We [Jibe] do a lot of work with hourly workers, and for a lot of those people, mobile is their only Internet,” Casanova says. “I think that maybe the HR pros are not aware that access is still a big issue from a desktop, and mobile is a cheaper and easier solution.”Building a Better Application Process Requires AnalyticsFor companies interested in building user-friendly, convenient, mobile-optimized application processes, Casanova says the most important thing to have is analytics. Jibe’s cloud services all offer measurements of candidate experience — e.g., how long it takes candidates to complete applications, how many candidates abandon the process, etc. — which companies can use to continually improve their performance on the application front.“If you really haven’t gotten onto a modern platform like Jibe, and you are still using legacy ATS technology, you’re probably not geared for the web,” Casanova says. “You don’t have the numbers to think about how you’re going to drive performance, and all that adds up to probably thinking that you’re doing better than you actually are.”Casanova says that he — and the rest of the Jibe team — would like to see a world where job seekers have the experiences they expect to have when they log onto company websites. “When [a job seeker] logs on, it looks like a modern website. It feels like a modern website. The navigation of the application process is really, really positive for him,” Casanova says.Jibe’s handy infographic illustrating the company’s findings: