Having a talent pipeline consisting of top candidates who can be recruited to open positions is important for recruiters to do their job. The candidates in the talent pipeline can also provide candidate referrals to the recruiters. See the functionalities available in Recruiting Marketing (previously known as Jobs2Web) and how to use them to build a talent pipeline. Recruiting Marketing is a cloud solution offered by SuccessFactors.
Key Concept
A talent pipeline is made up of potential candidates who are actively looking for new jobs. An active talent pipeline helps recruiters to engage their candidates. Recruiters can post blogs, videos, and other content using social media that highlights the company culture. The main purpose of the talent pipeline is to build brand awareness with the candidates, keep the candidates informed about the job opportunities, and keep the candidates engaged, as well to reach out to these candidates for referrals.
Recruiting Marketing is a solution from SuccessFactors that offers social recruiting, the ability to use social media for submitting job applications, search engine optimization, and talent community marketing. Customers of any recruiting solution (SAP E-Recruiting, other ERP recruiting solutions, or applicant tracking systems) can implement Recruiting Marketing as an add-on to their current recruiting application.
A big challenge in the recruiting process is enabling recruiters to develop relationships with the candidates. Many companies’ career Web sites do not offer an easy candidate user interface. This pain point results in many candidates dropping off during the recruitment process, and a primary reason why companies still receive a high volume of paper resumes (even after they have gone live with an e-recruiting application).
One of the main issues with SAP E-Recruiting is that the job postings that are published do not appear in search engine results, which can have negative ramifications. With mobile devices gaining popularity, many candidates (especially new graduates and young professionals) prefer to browse and apply for jobs using their mobile devices.
In the Web 2.0 world, candidates (active and passive) have multiple options for posting their profiles and availability status. Conversely, it is difficult for recruiters to publish their job postings in every available Web site. SAP E-Recruiting, for example, does not offer a delivered integration with popular Web 2.0 applications, such as Facebook.
Note
A passive candidate is somebody who is probably currently employed and is not actively looking for a job. Such candidates frequently browse job boards, social media, and job aggregators looking for the next, right job that will provide the opportunity for growth, or for a career opportunity that does not exist in their current employment. Recruiters are always on the lookout for passive candidates, more so if such candidates have very specific skillsets that are hard to come by.
In this article, I discuss some of the functionalities that are available in Recruiting Marketing that can mitigate these pain points, while at the same time offering a great candidate experience and helping recruiters build a talent pipeline.
Social Recruiting
Companies can implement SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing as the candidate user interface to their current recruiting solution.
Candidates can use SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing to search for jobs, register in the SuccessFactors Recruiting talent community (Figure 1), and create job alerts. When a candidate creates job alerts, SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing sends alerts to the candidate about recently published jobs that match the candidate’s stated career objectives and goals.
Figure 1
A talent community registration confirmation from SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing
Recruiting Marketing offers the Social Matcher tool (Figure 2). Candidates can use their LinkedIn or Facebook accounts to log in. Once the candidate is logged in, Social Matcher displays jobs that match the candidate’s profile, as well showing job openings that are outside of the candidate’s network.
Figure 2
Social Matcher
Social Matcher enables recruiters to reach out to candidates (active and passive) and recruit them via social media.
Note
Social recruiting is the process of sourcing or recruiting candidates through the use of social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Since students, graduates, and young professionals increasingly use social media as a job search platform, as well as for looking for job referrals and references within their network, recruiters can use social media as a recruiting channel.
How to Attract Candidates from Multiple Sources and Build a Talent Community
With the multiple options available to job seekers, such a social networking sites (like LinkedIn and Facebook) and aggregators (such as Indeed and SimplyHired), recruiters need to be more proactive about developing strategies to attract candidates from multiple sources (Figure 3) and creating relationships with these candidates.
Figure 3
Build your talent community by attracting candidates from different channels
SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing enables you to create branded pages in LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Note
SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing provides a dashboard from which recruiters can access reports. Some of the reports that are available in the dashboard include:
- Applicants overview
- Visitors map
- Facebook referrals
- Jobs overview
- Keyword rankings
Where your business requires, you can create customized branded pages based on your business division or geographical location (Figure 4), for example. Using SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing, you can post job publications on social media sites (as well as on job boards and job aggregators). More importantly, job publications are displayed in search engine results.
Figure 4
Customized landing page for SuccessFactors Careers
Note
To comply with U.S. Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs regulations, SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing automatically provides job publications to state job service offices, veterans group organizations, and other compliance service channels. Note that only US-related job publications are automatically distributed to compliance service channels.
All these efforts build company branding and provide greater visibility for your job publications, and directly result in greater numbers of candidates opting in to your talent community (Figure 5). This talent community is private to your company (I am clarifying this, since SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing is a hosted solution), and allows you to create email campaigns to target specific candidate groups in your talent community.
Figure 5
Opting in to the talent community
Candidates can use their social network log-in credentials to opt into the talent community, as well to apply for jobs using their social profile information.
Tip!
Using the Recruiting Dashboard, recruiters can export registered talent community candidates into a standard CSV file.
Mobile Career Sites
Using your mobile device to perform a job search produces the same results that you would see when browsing using a laptop or a PC. With a mobile device, only the job title and location are displayed (this is primarily to provide a faster response on mobile networks).
From the search results, you can select any job that interests you. Once you select a job, a detailed description is displayed on your mobile device. If you wish to apply for the displayed job, the application asks you to enter your email address (on the same page), which initiates the application process. Then the system sends you an email (Figure 6) with instructions for completing the application process and a link.
Figure 6
Apply for a job using your mobile device
When you click the link, the candidate experience is similar to applying for jobs from a laptop or a PC. You can apply using a social networks profile, or you can apply directly.
Venki Krishnamoorthy
Venki Krishnamoorthy is an author, speaker, and SAP ERP HCM talent management solutions subject-matter expert. He is currently an independent SAP ERP HCM functional consultant. Venki has over 10 years of experience as a functional lead, project manager, and program manager in the HCM space. Besides implementing SAP HCM solutions, he has implemented and acted as a trusted advisor on SAP ERP HCM talent management implementations, including E-Recruiting, HCM Performance Management, Succession Planning, SAP Talent Visualization by Nakisa, Learning Solutions, and Employee Self-Service and Manager Self-Services. He is the coauthor of three books: E-Recruiting with SAP ERP HCM, SAP ERP HCM Infotypes: Your Quick Reference to HR Infotypes,
and SAP Transaction Codes: Your Quick Reference to T-Codes in SAP ERP.
You may contact the author at krish.venki1@gmail.com.
If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.
