The Talent Acquisition Funnel Dilemma
As a veteran in the talent marketplace, I have a long history of listening to both candidates and employers discuss the challenges that they face in achieving their goals. Ostensibly, candidates want to ensure their applications are properly considered and not automatically sorted into File 13 in pursuit of landing their dream job, and employers need a way to find the right candidates for their organizations quickly and effectively. The two come at odds when automated systems or long application processes come into play and quality candidates get lost in the cross-fire. This is particularly troublesome for candidates early in their career or those undergoing a career pivot. Automated systems like to look at where you’ve been and project it to where you’re going, not factoring in that humans are tremendously adaptable creatures and are capable of being effective in new career roles. In fact, more than half of the workforce at some point in their career will undergo a big pivot to a completely new kind of career role, and unfortunately this doesn’t play nicely with automated systems that stack-rank candidates based on their parsed resume and past experience.
Furthermore, it’s critical for employers to properly balance their applicant funnel while considering the candidate experience. Most TAs understand that the “easy apply” processes from their top of the funnel channels results in the most number of applicants, precisely because it’s easy for candidates to use. The downside of this is that it also nets a lot of applicants with low intent, making the phone screening phase of the employer’s process more challenging. For employers that struggle with this challenge and receive an overwhelming number of applications, they may instead opt to send candidates directly to their ATS instead. The ATS-first based flows net less applicants, since ATS’ are notorious for long, gnarly and burdensome flows that essentially require a desktop computer and is an exercise in frustration for a candidate - especially when they are asked to do this over-and-over again only to never hear back from employers on their applications (known in the industry as the “applicant black hole”). Many quality candidates will simply opt out of the process and look for another way to try and catch the eye of an employer.
Unfortunately, many employers with well-known brands that get a lot of applications end up using these burdensome ATS processes to be a filter for applicant volume by design. They ask many required and free-form questions across multiple pages, hoping to find the best candidates while weeding out the ones with low intent that don’t want to go through the hassle of completing the lengthy and long-winded application process. Again, however, this inevitably leads to an employer shooting themselves in the foot by often missing out on great candidates for their roles because those candidates simply don’t want to go through a high-touch process that more often than not gives them no signal in response.
The Video Response
Over the past few years, various video-based platforms have started to emerge for the talent marketplace. Unfortunately, from my perspective, most of these platforms have taken the wrong approach and have essentially tried to recreate the arduous ATS process, but in video form. Employers are given leeway to set up many questions and ask that candidates create many video responses, not considering the candidate experience on the other side. For a candidate, it can almost feel like an employer trying to interview you without ever having to talk to you! I’ve seen situations where a candidate new to the video experience starts with a sense of excitement to try this new approach and catch the eye of an employer through something other than their resume, only to see a palpable look of frustration on their face by the time they are asked to submit their 4th video in response to yet another question.
This balance of the employer and candidate experience is a critical part of our thinking every day at JobPixel. We strive to create an intuitive and simple experience for candidates while providing employers with the important data that will help them find the right candidates for their organization. By adding an accessible video introduction experience to your TA funnel, it allows you to identify seekers with high intent while also allowing them, and you, to get a much better sense of who each other are. It’s an opportunity for candidates to connect with you about where they want to go and not just where they have been. It is not a replacement for talking to a candidate, but rather it allows TAs to get a better sense of who a candidate is and focus their time and energy on engaging with these high-intent candidates instead of trying to reach everyone collected at the top of the funnel through phone screening calls - all while also converting better than frustrating and heavy ATS based flows. As TAs know, candidates today are less likely to actually answer their phone (nearly 90%!) from an unknown number than ever before - an unfortunate side effect of all the spam calls we all get every day. This is what makes JobPixel so compelling for employers and candidates alike. With every feature we build, we carefully consider the needs and requests of the employer, while also ensuring that everything we build will be intuitive and easy to use by candidates on any kind of device - mobile, tablet, or laptop/desktop - and never an overbearing process.