The State of Online Recruiting 2025: Key Insights for Smarter Hiring

Lori Cole (00:04):

Alright, this is good. Let’s go ahead and get started. Thank you all for being here today. My name is Lori Cole. I’m a certified career coach and advisor here at iHire and I want to offer you a warm welcome to today’s webinar, the State of Online Recruiting 2025 Key Insights for Smarter Hiring. Before we get started, I’d like to point out some more features of our webinar platform that really put you in the driver’s seat. Those widgets that you see on the screen allow you to move and resize window windows and explore content related to today’s presentation. Make sure that you finally ask a question widget and you can ask a question at any time during the presentation. Only our producers will see those questions and we’ll get to as many as we can after the webinar. This one is packed full. Also, keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow for a recording of this so that you’ll be able to watch it on demand or forward it to other people on your team.

Lori Cole (01:07):

And lastly, just a quick reminder that you’ll earn one credit today for SHRM and HRCI recertification and we will prompt you at the end of the webinar to tell you how to, which widget to check and how to download that certificate. So with that I am going to introduce Laura and Brian. They are our presenters today. So Laura is the manager of education partnerships here at iHire and she joined us during the WorkInSports and iHire merger back in 2021. In addition to her work at iHire, Laura is also an adjunct professor at Upper Iowa University and she’s developed and she teaches a master’s level sports sales class. Welcome Laura. It’s so good to have you back.

Laura Nauta (02:06):

Thanks for having me.

Lori Cole (02:08):

Then we have Brian McAllister. He is lovingly known to us as B Mac, so you’re going to hear me talk or call out B Mac the whole presentation. But B Mac is a senior hiring success strategist here at iHire. He joined us from the hospitality industry. So he has extensive experience with customers and it gives him the ability to nurture relationships, collaborate with others, and help customers meet their goals. I see Brian, you already have some fans on because they’re clicking that emoji button. He helps customers meet their goals and enjoys working with our customers to help them overcome their unique challenges and develop solutions related to their and make sure that they’re getting the most of our industry focused tools. Welcome Brian. It’s good to have you back.

Brian McAllister (03:07):

Yep, good morning. I’m excited. This is my favorite webinar we do every year.

Lori Cole (03:11):

Yeah, very good. Very good. Good to have both of you here today. Alright, before we jump in here, let’s do a quick poll. Are you currently using AI in your recruitment process? Yes. No or unsure. And while we’re waiting for those poll results, I am going to ask Laura to tell us a little bit more about this report we’re talking about today.

Laura Nauta (03:40):

Yeah, absolutely. So it’s an exciting but challenging time for hiring professionals as you guys are dealing with the day-to-day. The exciting part is ai, right? The explosion of ai, all the advancements in HR tech, it’s creating new possibilities, giving you more time back in your day. It’s more efficient. But we’re also facing some challenges like talent shortages, economic uncertainty, and aging workforce. I mean, we can go all day, right? But what we’re here today to cover is as much as we can of all of it and bring you five key insights from our 2025 state of online recruiting report that will help you stay ahead no matter what the changes industry brings, as we all know, it happens often. So a little bit about the report. It is our seventh annual state of online recruiting report. We survey both sides. So we survey the employer side and the job seeker side.

Laura Nauta (04:34):

So both sides of the coin for you. But we are really going to dive in with the just over 1400 job seekers and just over 500 employers from across 57 industries in the us. So that’s what this report really encompasses. And while you can find the survey results in a full analysis of our findings on our site, if you can click that link, it’s also in your widgets, but we’re going to give you what we call the TLDR too long, didn’t read. We’d love it if you read the whole thing, obviously that’s why we launched it and put it out to you. But we really want to cover the high level with you and dive a little bit deeper so we have lots to cover. So let’s jump in.

Lori Cole (05:18):

Alright, let’s look at these poll results. So almost an even split with people using AI and not using AI in their recruiting process. Well the good news is if you are not using it yet, hopefully we are going to motivate you to do that. And if you are using it, we’re going to tell you how to do it more effectively and efficiently. So Brian, it’s remarkable how quickly AI has come on the scene. It was just hype at first and now it’s everyday practice and it’s reshaping how we’re writing our job ads and we’re communicating with candidates. So tell us more about why AI is booming in the hiring process.

Brian McAllister (06:08):

Yeah, I think it’s just generally that it’s booming everywhere in our everyday lives. And if we even look at our survey results we just took and compare it to the survey, the annual survey we did, we had what 39% said they’re using it. And here in our survey it was 25%. So I believe it’s just exponentially growing and impacting everything we do. It might not seem like a lot, but if you look back just a few years ago and see it at 4.9%, that’s over a 400% increase in just a couple years. And again, just rocketing off in popularity and rightfully so. I think we see today employers using these things for just basic ideas like composing messages and emails and texts back to candidates. It’s a great tool for that. Even just writing job ads, screening applicants, there’s so many ways AI can be used and I think the best part about it is, is it’s not afraid of anything. So you can ask it anything and it will try its best to do it. And back to your point of just encouraging people to do it, interviewing candidates, scheduling interviews, there are so many tools for AI that I think are going to make everyone’s lives better. And we’ll talk a little bit later about the different advantages to employers.

Lori Cole (07:35):

Alright,

Brian McAllister (07:36):

Sorry,

Lori Cole (07:37):

You go right ahead,

Brian McAllister (07:40):

I’m so sorry. But yeah, I think there’s ways employers can definitely be using all of these tools to create efficiencies in the jobs that they have today. And like Laurie said, if you’re not using it yet, I think it’s okay. Don’t feel alone. There are people that there are genuine concerns about are these real ads, are they real candidates? There’s concerns about data privacy. I can tell you as a seasoned employee, I was very resistant to AI at first and I eased myself into it. So I would advise everyone to start thinking if you’re not, how to start small again? Just let an AI review a message that you need to send. I review the job descriptions that you have. It can proofread, you’d be amazed. And I know from employers a lot that a candidate with a bad resume or misspelling is enough to really turn off, turn off that candidate’s probability.

Brian McAllister (08:43):

But you’d probably be amazed if you ran your job ad through a spell check what your job ad would show as well. So use it for even simple things like that. Proofreading, you can research in there. You can craft interview questions. You could literally take the job ad that you have and ask AI, what are the top five interview questions I should be asking candidates based on my job ad today? Tweak it again and then ask it again and it will adjust and tweak to those needs. So it’s very clever, it’s very easy. And I think once you start understanding and building that confidence with it, you’ll be ready to take on bigger challenges and more advanced uses like screening resumes. You can take a resume and you can take your job ad and say, how does this resume fit my job? Ad you can schedule interviews, there are tools coming online for that all the time. You can use it in other HR functions for onboarding. You can have specific onboarding plans for each individual role in your organization, which it just takes things to a whole new level. So again, I really think the idea here is to jump in, don’t be intimidated, have fun with it. And I think we’ll all be amazed at the results that we see.

Laura Nauta (10:02):

Absolutely. And a few more considerations too for making a part of your strategy for recruitment is ensure you follow your company’s AI policy. And we bring this up as well because if you don’t have one in place, now is the time it’s not going anywhere. It’s something that you should absolutely have in place. And if you don’t have one and you’d help with one, our HR services team can actually help you with that as well. You could find a link to their Calendly and the resources widgets. So if you’re needing some help with that, please reach out. But it’s not going away. So the sooner you get that set up, the better. And if you do have one set up, make sure you’re following it. And then I think one of the biggest things is AI should always be supplemented with a real human behind the scenes.

Laura Nauta (10:45):

Obviously doing a once over of everything, it can never replace human judgment. So it’s not perfect, it’s getting better and better, but it should never replace fully that human interaction, that human experience. So make sure to be mindful of that as you’re using it and make sure to always check things multiple times. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used it, even in my outbound strategy for sales where I’ve wanted to craft something, I put all the information in there, link to an article, and then the information they pull from the article isn’t even the right data. But fortunately we take a few looks at things before we send them out and I was like, that doesn’t actually match. It crafted a beautiful email, but it didn’t actually get the data. So make sure that you’re using it properly, have that human judgment and then continue to watch output and refine as needed, stay informed about changes in legal situations and remain compliant in all things.

Lori Cole (11:46):

And I’m just curious, are there people on the call whose companies have mandated you can’t ai, let’s just do a quick little emoji poll. If you’re not able to use ai, send us an emoji because I’m just wondering how companies are feeling about that at this point. I, alright, so I’m sure that everyone has experienced this at some point or in some form ghosting during that hiring process. Laura, can you tell us how we overcome this? That’s getting

Brian McAllister (12:27):

Some

Lori Cole (12:27):

Responses

Brian McAllister (12:28):

For sure.

Lori Cole (12:29):

Right. Oh my goodness. It’s amazing. Gosh, I’m really sorry for the people that can’t use it because it’s so cool. I know.

Laura Nauta (12:38):

I will tell you in the education side before we go into ghosting, which hits so close to home, me being in sales too, but from the education side, there’s so much going out because I teach and because I’m a professor about making sure that student work is not simply just AI prompting that they’re really making decisions and doing their own work. It’s almost a form of plagiarism. So we have a policy obviously at the university I teach at regarding AI and making sure to use it properly, but it is still in the beginning stages. So hopefully I do feel for the people that can’t use it in their workplace, there are so many great benefits to it, but I think it will evolve over time. So keep an eye out, continue to be well versed in what it means and how it works because it’ll be right around the corner before you know it.

Laura Nauta (13:33):

And then our next insight is ghosting. I love the little ghost in the corner. So cute. Ghosting is continuing to haunt obviously employers and candidates. It’s on both sides of the market. Each year that we’ve conducted this survey, ghosting has been a challenge. So this isn’t going anywhere. It’s similar to ai, it is going to be around and this year 59% of candidates set applying for jobs and not hearing back was their top challenge, right? They’re applying for all these positions and they’re not hearing back and it can be frustrating from a candidate perspective. But then right on the other side, 51% of employers were frustrated by candidates ghosting them. So it’s really happening on both sides here. And we’ve even had it happen here with us that iHire where people, we schedule interviews and they simply don’t show up. It’s a little crazy to experience it, but even 47% of candidates expect ghosting to impact their job search or career growth in the next year.

Laura Nauta (14:39):

So it’s not going anywhere. It keeps happening and it’s really not ideal, especially for what you can control as an employer is when you don’t communicate frequently and clearly candidates will feel undervalued, they’ll feel discouraged and they can negatively impact your brand. You don’t want to burn any bridges. It can really lead to people dropping out of your pipeline for your hiring process. Declining jobs, which by the way was the fifth most common hiring challenges cited by employers in our survey. So again, it’s a huge part of the struggle on both sides, but as an employer it’s really, really important to make sure you’re clear and you’re communicating because you want to keep your brand and company as clean and easy to keep your pipeline going as possible because you never know. And I think we’re going to go into more pipelining later, but it is a huge part of your ongoing strategy.

Laura Nauta (15:35):

So if you’ve ghosted someone now that might be a good fit for a position later, they likely won’t come back around. So it can really, really have a negative impression. And I mean I felt this personally in my previous role I was a hiring manager for a women’s soccer team and it was so hard to have these candidates that were amazing on paper and I really wanted to interview and we got through the whole process. My HR team did the first round of phone screening and then I kind of put all my eggs in these candidates baskets of like, these are the ones I think I’m going to hire. And then they didn’t show right? And they reached out later and were like, oh, I ended up taking a different job. But if they came back around I probably wouldn’t consider them. So it goes both ways and in sales, I mean I feel it every day with ghosting and people not showing up and I never want to be that for someone else. So as an employer you’re feeling it, but candidates are feeling it as well. So it’s really important that this hopefully as years go on, this insight will have a better trajectory.

Lori Cole (16:43):

Well, we’re happy you didn’t ghost us today.

Brian McAllister (16:48):

And the other thing on that too, Laura, as you mentioned, how it hurts a brand and it’s a very subtle hurt, but it is a hurtful brand, especially in industry-based things. So if you’re ghosting a candidate and that candidate has friends or other people in their office or in their industry, they’re going to say, Hey, I applied to them and they never got back to me. So you need to be on top of that in responses as an employer for sure.

Laura Nauta (17:16):

It’s a much smaller world than we all realize people do talk.

Lori Cole (17:22):

So Laura, building on that, how can we close this gap and keep candidates engaged throughout this whole long hiring process? I know it takes a little while

Laura Nauta (17:34):

And that’s the thing that’s so hard about it on both. It’s quite a process and we’re not, we are aware of it and it’s something that I don’t know if candidates quite understand the full length of what goes on behind the scenes to hire until they’re in a hiring role. I didn’t quite understand what happened on the other side. I’d only been on the candidate side for a long time, but now that I realize it, I think the biggest thing is communication is closing that communication gap, even if it’s acknowledging every application with an automated response. And that’s something AI can even help you with if you have the ability to use it in your company. It’s something that if you commit to communicating with everyone in the same level, it it’s really going to help create a more positive candidate experience and it’s going to help you in the long run.

Laura Nauta (18:28):

So provide timely updates, candidates throughout the process to move them forward, schedule interviews or inform them that they’re no longer being considered. It doesn’t have to be a long drawn out experience, but if you can get things set up the correct way and you have your process set up the correct way, communication should be the most consistent thing in your process. When we do interviews here at iHire, we like to practice what we preach. We don’t want to tell you guys all these things and then we act differently. We are always very clear with candidates at the end of every single stage what they should expect from us. When should they hear from us? Who will they be hearing from? What should they do if they don’t hear from us? So you want to make sure that that communication gap is completely closed. So there’s no question.

Laura Nauta (19:15):

And then if you’re putting that out, you would hope in return that that candidate would give that to you, right? If you’re communicating consistently, then you would love it if your candidate did the same. So there’s something to be said about pipelining too, and I know I brought this up briefly in the last slide, but I wanted to bring it up again, is if you consistently communicate with pipeline candidates, it’s going to help you in the long run. So even if you had someone that applied and wasn’t their exact right fit for something that we were currently hiring for, I can’t tell you how many times I had to reopen the same position at my previous job. And I said to the first round of applicants, Hey look, we’re looking for a more experienced candidate, but I’ll absolutely keep you in mind if things change here.

Laura Nauta (20:02):

And they did, right? I was able to hire a passive pipeline candidate that applied for something recently, but the only reason that it happened was because I communicated, right? I told them, Hey, I saw you, I see you. It’s not a fit right now, but I want to keep you in our network. So communication is huge. It is something that I think we all could improve on, even myself on both sides. So making sure to close that communication gap, it’s hugely important when you’re talking about getting your recruiting strategy underway

Lori Cole (20:44):

And something if people out using iHire, we have a lot of these tools baked right into our system. The messaging tools and the ability to reach candidates with text messages and email messages and automated messages. There are just so many tools that we have just baked in that use AI that would be legal for you to use even if you can’t use AI in your day-to-day. If you’re using the iHire job board, we have everything protected. So you technically would be able to use that and use those tools in there. And I love the idea of keeping people in the pipeline. Laura, I know you were a pipeline candidate for quite a while and we’re both boomerangs, so I think you’re going to talk about that a little bit later, right? Yes. Alright, so let’s shift gears a little bit to job boards. How are the job board platforms changing in 2025?

Brian McAllister (21:51):

Yeah, we’re evolving almost daily. It seems like. I’m sure the folks on this call have heard some of the news about CareerBuilder and Monster kind of shutting down and going out of business or filing for bankruptcy, but job boards aren’t dead. I mean, we’re still here. Our survey showed that they’re still the key way that employers are connecting with candidates, but employers are being savvy and looking for those boards that are reinventing themselves and evolving to make sure that it is a worthwhile process and a worthwhile investment for ‘em. So you can see here, even 68% of employers are still conducting almost all of their hiring through job boards. And 79% of candidates are using job boards for their search and their career opportunities. So they’re still here, but as we’ve been talking about, things are evolving, things are changing, and employers want more out of the job boards that they’re using.

Brian McAllister (22:57):

So there’s a pretty cool list here on the right hand side. A couple that I really think are important. Lori, you touched on the text messaging capability, the ability to really immediately respond to a candidate via text. I think that does show urgency on both sides. I still want to throw out a prop for the old school method of making the phone call. So we all don’t forget about that as well. I’m a big believer in phone call first and then turn on all this other technology, but they’re all important texting candidates, interviewing and scheduling interviews, ATS integrations with technology are becoming much more easier than they’ve ever been before. So really encouraging to maximize your spend on job boards by don’t just pick one or two jobs. Figure out if you can put all 10 of your jobs up there with the vendors that you use. Background checks, career sites. It’s a really long list of things here, but I think assessment skills, things like that are all important and they’ll continue to evolve the job board industry.

Lori Cole (24:07):

And I think it’s also important to know your audience because there are some people that will absolutely refuse to pick up the phone and they’ll even tell you in their messages, I’m not going to answer your call, just text me, but I’m in your camp B Mac. I really appreciate a phone call too. Well, it’s clear that we’re not going anywhere. Job boards are not going anywhere. There’s still a lot of people using them, but we are certainly evolving to help adapt to the new ways that people are using AI in the whole hiring process. So tell us about a few ways, B Mac that we can get even more return on our investment from the job boards we’re already using.

Brian McAllister (24:57):

Yeah, I think that really once we got through the COVID crisis a few years ago, the whole idea of posting a job and hoping that somebody applied to it changed dramatically, not only from the technology side, but just even the expectation of candidates who now came out of a workforce that they might’ve been let go on or laid off in and had some time to reflect on that terrible time in our history and thought my job is much more important to me than just going to work every day and doing the job. So as I think just making sure we’re acknowledging that, and we can do that in lots of different ways. We can use company profiles to highlight why a candidate wants to work for us. We can include some of that language in the job ad. We can use these messaging tools like we said, to convey more than just, Hey, we saw you, we think you’re a good fit.

Brian McAllister (25:59):

Call us. These are all these touch points I believe are opportunities to shout a little bit about your brand and tell some stories about who you are. AI tools can again, do some really neat things with that. And AI tool can look at your specific job ad, look at your specific applicant, and you can send a customized message that says, Hey Lori, we noticed your skills and this and that really match our need for this, this and that, and therefore we think you’re a good fit. It brings a little personal side to it instead of just, Hey, I found your resume on this job board, I think you’d be a good fit. Let’s chat. So thinking along those ways to really get good candidate summaries, good messaging, and make sure that candidate’s really good for you. The one thing about iHire obviously too and other job boards is really focusing on the industries, making sure that the candidates you have are the qualified candidates you want.

Brian McAllister (26:58):

In my job every day I help customers with very specific roles and I help customers with very broad roles. A project manager job for example, people will ask me like, well, what industry should I put that in? There’s project managers and probably all 57 industries that IHOP does. So that really should prompt you to think about, well, what in your job ad is really going to zero into the project manager that you want? What background do they need to have? What skills do they need to bring to the table other than just project management skills? What are they going to do every day? And that helps you just get this idea in your head of I’m looking for quality, I’m not looking for quantity. I don’t want to go through a thousand resumes and have to sort through those. If you put a strong ad out there, then that will reciprocate With a strong candidate.

Brian McAllister (27:49):

I always tell customers, if you want a strong candidate, you’ve got to put a strong ad out in place. So those are just a few things like that back to quality and quantity as well. It is not uncommon for customers to come to us in our industry focus groups and tell us that they’ve been looking for X amount of months or even a year or more for a custom customer or that right candidate, and we somehow work with them and can fill that candidate fairly quickly. And again, I think that goes back to quality over quantity and really focusing your message and your job ad.

Lori Cole (28:32):

I think the mindset has really changed over the last few years. It used to be, give me all the candidates you can give me. I mean, I want hundreds of candidates so that I have a choice. And now recruiters are just so busy they don’t want to sort through all of that. They want the targeted candidates and they don’t care if they only get three. If there are three qualified candidates, that’s great. Less work for them

Brian McAllister (29:02):

And one of the three is a higher, that’s even better, right?

Lori Cole (29:05):

Oh,

Brian McAllister (29:05):

Absolutely. Yes,

Lori Cole (29:07):

Absolutely. So Laura, let’s talk a little bit about creativity. What are some companies doing to help and find talent beyond just posting a traditional job?

Laura Nauta (29:23):

Yeah, absolutely. It’s huge. And I think B MAC alluded to it a bit too, is it’s not of the post and pray model anymore. You have to really diversify your sourcing strategies. You have to try some different things. You have to have a multichannel, you post the job, you bring in referrals, you have things on your own website or your career page, you put stuff out on social media. And even more than that, right? In the past year you can look at this chart, how are people getting their candidates? How are they getting these people in here? Because 55% of employers for see talent shortages being a humongous problem in the coming year. And I think in order to combat that, you have to diversify. You have to keep changing and evolving and adapting. We all do all the time. And there’s some really key findings, and we are going to talk about this a little bit later, but 31% of employers hired former staff, also known as Boomerang employees.

Laura Nauta (30:25):

And I’ll go into that in the next slide as well, because I’m one Lori’s one, it’s a great way to make sure that you’re getting the right candidate in the right role. 42% hired from within or promoted someone instead of hiring an external candidate, 28% upskilled or reskilled, a current employee. And then 37% hired from a talent pipeline, which I mentioned earlier that I’ve used that strategy in previous roles of, Hey, you were in final stages with me for this, but at the time we went with someone else, please keep an eye on what we’re doing here. And as we’re evolving, I was working for a startup, so I knew that things were coming in the future and I was able to go back to that talent and really get them involved in a different role. So there’s a lot of different things that you can be doing and you really should be doing all of them. There should be a lot of different strategies that you’re taking on to tackle this ongoing talent shortage.

Lori Cole (31:26):

One of the favorite, my favorites is reaching out to people who have retired from your company and just asking them, are you willing to come back to work for 20 hours a week or 15 hours a week or whatever it is to get us over the hump on this one project? I think that is a huge talent pool that is neglected. And I see so many retirees that will retire just cold Turkey. They didn’t do the step down method and they’re sorry, they’re a year into it and they’re like, I am bored out of my gourd. I need to have something that is mentally stimulating and I need to have a place to go to. And you could be that for them and they can help you solve a problem and then you’re helping them solve a problem. So big win-win for everybody. Now, what are some of the ways that we can uncover talent from within our own group?

Laura Nauta (32:35):

So we talk all the time, look internally for qualified talent. Okay, well what’s the best way to do it? We’ve brought up a few ideas of how to do it, and I think there’s a lot that you can do with moving someone laterally or promoting a high performer. If you’re looking for someone to lead a team and they’ve shown great leadership ability and are an expert in that role, move them up because it’s probably a little bit easier and nothing’s easy in hiring, but it’s probably a little bit easier to find a lower role, like an entry level role to fill to then move them up. But if you’re really helping grow your internal teams, those should be the first people that you look at for a bigger role, right? Because then bringing in entry level, you can do the same thing. You’re basically pipelining within your own company to make sure that you always have someone waiting in the wings for when it’s time.

Laura Nauta (33:34):

So that’s a huge one. And I think there’s another, there’s quite a few on here, but boomerang employees, it’s super time saving to boomerang back an employee who’s already familiar with your company, your processes, your culture, and all the other different things. I know for me, boomerang, back to IHI was such an easy decision and I think for me, I kept a relationship with multiple people at the company during my time. I even said when I was leaving that I would be back. And our CEO at this time, Steve was like, oh yeah, that’s what they all say. And I said, no, really, I do not think that my time here has done, I wanted to do something new. I wanted to expand and learn and grow with a startup company. But I said to him, I was like, you’ll hear from me this isn’t over.

Laura Nauta (34:20):

And I did just that. About a year and a half later I was like, Hey, I’m ready. What do you got going on? And there ended up being a gap that I was able to fill. So Lori’s done the same. So we have been able to boomerang back to iHire and continue on in different roles. So really, really important to consider Boomerang employees and then tap into your pipeline. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve done it, other people do it. It can include former applicants who are runners up to a hire or passive candidates that you’ve came across their resume or they were a referral. Lori mentioned reaching out to your retired staff and having them come back and work maybe even part-time to fill a gap that you might need. Also ask them, do you have anyone you’d recommend, right? If it’s someone that you trusted already to work for you and to come back and they can or they don’t want to, they probably have.

Laura Nauta (35:15):

I mean, I was hired originally from a referral, right? Brian Clapp, who is one of on our senior leadership team here, reached out to a friend of mine and in my network and said, Hey, I have a sales job that I’m interested in hiring you for. And she said, I don’t need it. I’m happy where I am. And he said, do you have anyone else? And she said me. And then I ended up getting in, and now I’ve been a mentor of mine for my entire career. So asking the people you trust as well, referrals is a huge part that can be within your own company. We have a really great referral structure here that referrals are our top candidates. If it’s a referral from within the company, those are our highly qualified candidates. So trust your people too to help you out. And then you can always upskill and reskill current staff.

Laura Nauta (36:07):

So if there’s someone that’s really demonstrating great curiosity or adaptivity in your environment and you’re like, you know what? I think so and so if they got this certification or if we really went and invested some time into training them, I think they could be great in this other department or leading this team. Take the time, take the effort. It’s a lot. It saves you a lot of time and it probably saves you a lot of money getting someone internally ramped up for that next stage. So consider upskilling and reskilling your current staff. Continue to make sure that your training workers and new technologies and proficiencies, professional development, cross training. I mean, we’ve had multiple trainings on AI at iHire because we’re an AI first company. Well, in order for us to be an AI first company, we have to know what that means and how that works. So we’re constantly cross training and learning from one another, and that’s huge for your current employees. So upskilling huge, huge, huge benefit if you have people on staff already that you trust and that you think could be a great fit.

Lori Cole (37:19):

So B Mac employer branding is something that sometimes falls through the cracks because we just don’t have time to do it. But how can it make a difference in our job postings?

Brian McAllister (37:34):

Yeah, I think it can make a big difference. And I breathe this to a lot of my employers every day. And as you can see here, we’re all used to seeing salary be the top thing that matters to employees or candidates. But if we look here, look what jumps to the top. Just being transparent about hiring timelines, indicating when they want to schedule interviews. All this I think ties back to your brand and we touched a little bit earlier on just the ability to communicate clearly, but spotlighting your employee job in your ad can be done in a lot of different ways. It can be very direct and I encourage it, how long have you been in business? What type of company you have? How many employees do you have? Have you won any awards? You don’t have to list these out as paragraph after paragraph, but again, back to this AI idea of how can AI put a summary together that says we’re a small family business located in a rural town in southeastern Pennsylvania that’s been in business for 45 years.

Brian McAllister (38:41):

Our employees love the rural community and the skiing or just feeding that idea of who you are. To me, the branding is all about speaking to a candidate that makes them think that’s the kind of company I want to work for. And that can become across in the way you communicate with the candidates. The one big takeaway I am taking out of our survey this year is that very first bullet and encouraging employers to be more transparent about the hiring timeline. And I don’t think that has to say, here’s the steps and here’s when we’re going to hire. But I think candidates are saying they want to know if this is an immediate opening we are looking to fulfill, or we are currently accepting applications for a September 30th start date of this job. That kind of messaging, I think again reaffirms like, oh, well they’re not going to ghost me.

Brian McAllister (39:39):

They’re going to be in contact with me. I think other things too, having a profile that you can back up with what you say in your job. So if you say for example, we provide state-of-the-art equipment well in your profile, show that equipment, show what your office looks like, show what your rooms look like, your equipment that your team’s using, show ‘em on job site or show ‘em in the office, drill in the tooth or whatever that equipment is, share it and show it. So as you write your job ad, you can expand on those things with profiles. The really important part of all of this is a, it helps the candidate, as we see they’re almost 20% of them are saying that job ads are clear and vague. But the other part is we’ve too, and we run into this on both sides as well too, are these real candidates?

Brian McAllister (40:33):

Are these real jobs, AI and bots and things are really taking over that too. So if you can emphasize your brand and your ad, it really helps sell the position and engage the candidate and it gives it a legitimacy. Just a simple thing like putting a logo in your job ad gives your ad legitimacy in the eye of a candidate going further than that. Obviously it legitimizes it even further with all these things we’re talking about here. So salary range still continues to be at the top of the list though I thought some other things on here jumped out to me that the list of must have qualifications versus nice to haves being separate. That’s the first time I really kind of am taking that and just because of the number of people who replied to it that way, obviously be very open about remote hybrid in person.

Brian McAllister (41:30):

I think those obviously in person is important if you know, want that person in the office every day to set that expectation. If you’re going to say it’s a hybrid role, try to define exactly what that means. We expect you to be in the office three days a week, say that in your ad. Don’t leave that to be a question. Questions in job ads and vagueness like we’re seeing here. We’ll just make a candidate move to the next one. So all these are really good tips. And back to that idea of, I always say quality candidates demand a quality job ad.

Lori Cole (42:07):

Ooh, that’s a good saying. You should coin that. Alright,

Brian McAllister (42:16):

AI came up with it. No, no, that is not from AI.

Lori Cole (42:21):

B Mac. Tell us about some ways to up our game and make our job postings stand out above everyone else’s online.

Brian McAllister (42:31):

Yeah, I think we talked a little bit about it on that previous slide, but it’s really, to me it is all about making a candidate, read your ad and say, that’s where I want to work. And I think sometimes we get caught up in, like you said, everyone is busy, everyone is overwhelmed already. So I always encourage employees to remember that this is an ad, it is a job ad it is not just put your job description up there and hope somebody can roll through it and find it. So you want to engage a candidate of the possibility of working for you. So your job description might not be the most exciting job description. And in fact, I sometimes worry that job descriptions prevent a candidate from acting because they just look at it and go through it and go, I do that, I do that, I do that.

Brian McAllister (43:21):

Oh, I don’t do that. Who I do that, I don’t do that. And after a couple I don’t do that. They just don’t apply. And you might be missing a candidate just for something silly that they think they don’t qualify because you’ve just listed a long list of specific things. Again, I still believe salary is one of the most important things. It’s required in some states. I think that will eventually expand out, but if you’re not putting a salary there, I really want you to question why you’re not. It’s probably the most popular thing that a candidate looks at. If they don’t see it, they’re going to move on. We talked earlier how AI can help you with that. iHire’s tools and most providers can help you with that. The reality is the candidates already know what they know what they’re looking for and they also have tools to be able to say, this job should be paying X amount. So keeping that open, you can put ranges out there, you can put qualifiers in the ad itself that say based on experience, based on certifications, however you want to qualify that, but it is imperative to put a salary out there.

Brian McAllister (44:33):

Details about the company, we talked about that a little bit. Who are you? What do you stand for? What are the must haves? What are the nice to haves? I like the idea of the timeline. Benefits are still big opportunity to really attract candidates. And the one word I find I’ve used a lot in the last couple of years that kind of fell off for a while as we focused on benefits, the old word perks, what other perks are available with this job? They might not be traditional benefits. They might be We’re going to help you with any certifications you need or if you need continuing education credits, we’ll send you to the shows to get those things. We’ll support you with discounts on meals. I’ve seen some creative fun things in that too. And I think that’s important is to be creative and think what you do bring to an employer that they might not have in their current spot that just might be enough to trigger them to apply to the ad.

Brian McAllister (45:30):

I’ve seen ads for free beer, right? So if you working at the concession stand and you get free beer too, so be creative. And I want to say this too, we, a lot of this is about AI and I think some of us fear a world where every job ad is going to look the same and every candidate resume is going to look the same because AI is creating all of these things. I think this is the great opportunity to let AI feed AI the prompts you want, let AI spit out the response and then you take it and make it yours. With all these kinds of things we’re talking about your brand, what separates you, what differentiates you? Even just sharing your mission statements sometimes is enough. You want an employee to look at this and think, this isn’t something I have today and I didn’t even realize there were companies that do this, so I’m going to apply to this job. So I think it is a mix of everything. Back to this idea, let’s embrace ai, but let’s not make a hundred percent reliable on ai.

Lori Cole (46:38):

And back to what you said about including a salary range. Sometimes if you don’t do it, the job board will, and I know that when my son was looking for a job, we would see jobs that said, the salary range for this is between 75 and $146,000. And it’s like what? No, but you do have people that will look at that and say, well of course I’m going to go for the higher part of that range. I’m worth $146,000 a year. So if you don’t put it in the job board you’re using may guesstimate what that range should be. And then you’re going to have to explain that to candidates.

Brian McAllister (47:25):

Well, I think it works the other way too. If you’re an employer and you’ve got the person who said, yep, I’m here to work for this $146,000 a year job that you’ve put on our board, that prompts the employer to have a really great conversation about really, let’s talk about the skills you’re going to bring and the ability for you to do the job that we expect for $146,000. So I think it can be good. I know the top reason out there, I hear it all the time, is I can’t put a salary range out there because it might offend some of my current employees. And I get that a little bit, but I still think you have to think through that range then a little bit. And I think that even ties back to Laura’s point about having strong pipelining. If you can hire somebody internally or a boomerang, it might be easier to hire somebody at an entry level or just starting level position and not worry so much about the salary as you would if you bring on somebody with three or five years experience and how they compete with your team.

Lori Cole (48:26):

All right, Laura, let’s do a quick recap so that we can get to our questions and answers.

Laura Nauta (48:31):

Absolutely. So we’ve covered a ton and there’s more in the full report obviously, but let’s just cover the five insights we found. So AI in hiring is booming, don’t fear it, embrace it, start using it to maximize your recruiting. Number two, ghosting is still happening. So please do everything that you can as the employer to commit to clear and frequent communication. You can do this with the help of ai, but it is still happening. Number three, job boards are still here. They’re not going anywhere. They’re evolving. They are becoming more diverse in their features. So of the platforms that you use, look into all the features that are available. Number four is look into alternate sourcing, right? There’s other ways that you can find quality talent. So put some things out there to switch it up to really future proof your talent acquisition. And then number five, employer branding does matter. It is a great way to make sure that you’re engaging top talent and that your job postings convey that brand. So those are our five today, but let’s dive into q and a.

Lori Cole (49:37):

Alright, so we’re going to get right to it. How do we ensure AI tools aren’t introducing bias into the recruiting process?

Laura Nauta (49:47):

Yeah, I can take this. We brought it up earlier, right? You can’t rely solely on ai. So no matter what you do, you need to always have human judgment and you also need to do your due diligence by choosing the correct tools, right? You need to make sure that they’re transparent. Everything has bias depending on where they’re pulling information because of different data sources. So you need to have very clear parameters around where you’re finding your data, your evaluation criteria, and then making sure that you’re constantly taking a look and auditing your outputs to make sure it’s fair and always pairing. Again, AI with human judgment. It should always have a stamp of approval of a human being before it is sent out.

Lori Cole (50:36):

Alright, good. Next, we’re in a small business or we’re a small business. How can we build and maintain a talent pipeline without a dedicated recruiter who wants to take that one?

Brian McAllister (50:55):

I think I can start us for sure. I mean it gets back to Laura’s idea again by just keeping track of all the candidates that you have. So you’re not always starting from scratch every time and creating the pipeline. And we talked about getting referrals from candidates, getting referrals from current employees and just staying connected on every level that you can. The hardest thing I know is to just start over Every time I have employers who come back every couple months to me and just say, Hey, we’re ready to put another ad up. That other person didn’t work out, or we have another position open. And in our system you can keep all those candidates lined up in your pipeline and have access to ‘em so you don’t have to start from scratch every time. So even just keeping abreast on LinkedIn and other social media tools when you’re not hiring, paying attention to who’s visiting your social media sites, reaching out to those people if they’re leaving comments. That’s a few that come off the top of my head.

Lori Cole (52:04):

Alright, I’m going to do one more here. This one is juicy. What about addressing negative results of not hiring a referral from one of my internal sources, my boyfriend, my nephew, all of those unqualified people that will have to say no to, but we’re afraid of hurting the feelings of the referring party. How do we handle that?

Laura Nauta (52:27):

Yeah, I saw that one pop up and I was excited.

Lori Cole (52:29):

Yeah, I know. I like that one. I would say as somebody who has put my neck out, referred someone and had it spectacularly backfire on me, I think that the person referring just needs to understand the weight of what they’re doing if they’re referring a nephew or a boyfriend because it’s going to reflect negatively on them and you can’t argue with this person is more qualified for the position that you’re hiring for than maybe a referral from one of your internal sources. So I think you just have to be transparent and let them know specifically, these are the reasons that we went with this other person. Maybe you don’t have to say anything negative about the person they referred, but just say some positive things about the person you’re actually hiring so that they can say, oh, okay, yes, I see because my boyfriend didn’t have those skills.

Laura Nauta (53:38):

Anything else to add? Transparency. Transparency is key. I think it’s the biggest thing. You also have to make sure that you are, we always put it out when we post jobs and things. We say referrals are always the best scenario if they’re qualified referrals. So I think it’s something that needs to remain like, oh, my nephew or my mom needs a job desperately, but I’m just going to have her apply because, and she has no experience in that field. So making sure that you’re communicating with your team too about what a referral actually is and what it means when you put in a referral and making sure that they understand that when you put a referral through, it’s you’re putting your stamp of approval for that person for that specific job. Just referring someone period for all jobs is not the same. So making sure if you do have a referral strategy in place at your company, it’s very clear what that means and that it has to be qualified and we’re not just going to take anybody and everybody and they’re not guaranteed the interview. I think that’s something too that just be very transparent of they’re not guaranteed an interview if it’s a referral that is not qualified. So quality, again is the biggest thing. And make sure when you’re giving a referral or someone’s giving a referral, if they just keep referring their boyfriend or their girlfriend or whatever and they’re never the right candidate, they need to realize that that might make you question their abilities and their fit and their add to your company culture. So all things to consider for sure, but transparency is key.

Lori Cole (55:11):

Alright, so this is the time that you will click that view certificate button in the certification widget so you can download that certificate of completion for your SHRM and HRCI activity IDs. Thank you all again for being here today for taking time out of your busy day. Laura and B Mac, wonderful as always. Love your insight and just love doing webinars with both of you. Like I said, click that view certificate button and you can go ahead and get that download started. If you have any other questions, you can always reach out to our customer [email protected] team. We’ll connect you with the right person, make sure that you look at that resources widget. You can download the full report so you can share that with other people in your company. And make sure you keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow. You’re going to get another recording of this and on demand so that you can watch it and pass it along to all your friends. And I think that’s it. We’re going to have another webinar invitation coming out in a couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for that. And everybody, have a great rest of your day. Thanks for being here.

Brian McAllister (56:26):

Thank you, Lori. Thank you everybody.