One of the biggest challenges for the HR team is to provide the best candidate experience. From awareness to hiring, the professional goes through several stages of the selection process – each one with a different qualification – that draw the Candidate’s Journey.

Thinking about these stages strategically defines your NPS and determines the success in the search for hiring the best employees.

Do you know how to create an excellent Candidate Journey? Want to learn more about this process? In this post, we’ve put together everything you need to know about the Candidate’s Journey, as well as essential tips for a successful selection process. Keep reading to learn more!

In this article, we’ll learn more about:

• What is a Candidate Journey?
• Why does the candidate journey matter?
• How can you map a Candidate Journey?
• 5 Steps of the Candidate Journey with Plooral

What is a Candidate Journey?

The Candidate Journey is a set of experiences that candidates go through during the selection process. 

Nowadays, thinking of ways to make this journey much more assertive and attractive to the best professionals is essential for developing your employee team. The best candidates choose the best companies, so make sure your company has been seen as a great place to work.

Why does the candidate journey matter?

The Candidate Journey mapping allows you to visualize all the steps in the selection process and the ways to improve it. It’s an opportunity for your HR team to rethink some aspects of your company’s recruitment, understand the strengths and weaknesses of your Candidate Journey, and think about how to improve the candidate’s experience – already looking to increase your NPS.

Some tools help you improve your candidate journey, like an ATS, that make the hiring experience much more enjoyable.

Discover other benefits of mapping your Candidate Journey:

• Improve hiring process
• Select the best candidates
• Reduce turnover

How can you map a Candidate Journey?

The Candidate’s Journey is drawn by all stages of the selection process – beginning, middle, and end. This journey starts when the candidate is interested in your company and goes until the hiring when the professional is no longer a candidate and becomes an employee.

This journey can vary from company to company, and it can also depend on the vacancy type. But overall, there are some common Candidate Journey topics. To better plan your mapping, find out what these steps are:

1. Awareness 

The beginning of everything. The candidate needs to discover your company! This can happen from a conversation with a friend to ads on job portals.

2. Consideration and Interest

After getting to know your company, the candidate needs to be interested in the position. This can happen in different ways, from an attractive vacancy page to an interest in a specific position or the benefits offered by your company.

3. Application

After finding enough elements that attract him to your company, the candidate becomes interested in the vacancy and submits the application.

4. Selection

At this stage, the candidate will go through a series of hiring processes – such as interviews, tests, questionnaires, etc. – which will be strategically placed to assess whether he fits the profile sought or not.

Improve your selection process:

• Understand your candidate’s profile
• Is your application mobile-friendly? Most applications have been made via smartphones in recent years, so make sure your applicants can easily go through this process on mobile.
• Have efficient communication with your candidates: feedback is always welcome

5. Hiring

We’ve reached the last stage! In this final phase of the Candidate’s Journey, the professional directly contacts HR to start the hiring process. 

Make sure you have good communication with him and remember that the candidate’s journey hasn’t ended yet – almost 30% of candidates leave the company after 3 months.

5 Steps of the Candidate Journey with Plooral

During the selection process within Plooral platform, from finding your job advertisement on a job portal to being hired by your company, your candidate will go through 5 steps. Understand better which ones below:

1 – Finding your vacancy ad

When you post a new position on Plooral, it’s automatically shared across multiple portals, such as Indeed, Glassdoor, Plooral’s App, LinkedIn, and more. It is in these spaces that, usually, candidates discover your ad.

2 – Visiting your career’s page

Within Plooral platform, you can set up a personalized career’s page for your company, but if you prefer, your candidates can also be directed to your official website. The career’s page is where the candidate has the first contact with your company, so try to keep it always updated.

3 – Applying for the position

Here you will find your famous “pre-qualification funnel”. When registering a new vacancy on Plooral, you will customize the steps in your funnel to form the path that your candidate will take. This funnel follows these steps:

• Presentation: Space where you can add videos, images, and employee comments so that your candidate can better understand your company – your values, culture, mission, and more.

• Frequently Asked Questions: Step where you can add a FAQ with frequently asked questions that can help candidates with some common questions.

• Resume register: The candidate will be able to fill in their personal and professional information.

• Questionnaire and/or test: In this stage, you can apply questionnaires (with open questions or not) to assess the candidate’s skills.

• Video recording: Here, the candidate will be able to record a presentation video. This step is optional, and you can add it if you find it necessary according to your job profile.

4 – Communication during the hiring process

Within the Kanban system, you can visualize your entire hiring process (which can also be customized). Then, you can also add automated messages to chat with your candidates and invite them for interviews, for example.

5- Receiving feedback

Also in Kanban you have the option to send automated or personalized feedback; you can also send emails to your candidates, dismiss or hire them, etc. All directly from the Plooral platform.

Now that you know everything about the Candidate’s Journey, it’s time to put these tips into practice! Remember that, especially in difficult positions, recruiters become competitors for the best talent. In other words, your Candidate Journey should be the best it can be.

O post What is a Candidate Journey? apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

A job interview should be a decisive moment to understand whether or not you would like to advance a candidate in your hiring process. When conducted correctly, it becomes a powerful screening tool. 

Effective interviews will tell you what you need to know about a candidate. It’s important for you to invest some time in preparing questions that make sense for the specific position, but also,  make the interviewee feel relaxed and welcomed. 

If you want to learn more about how to conduct an efficient job interview, we have some tips to share that can help you prepare! 

We’ll go over:

• The importance of a job interview 
• 6 Types of job interviews that you can conduct 
• How to make your job interview more efficient 

What is the importance of a job interview?

During your hiring process, applicants can undergo a series of screening steps in order for you to better understand if they’re qualified to work in the role they’ve applied to. The job interview should be conducted during this screening process, in the beginning, middle or end.  

It is up to you to decide on the best moment to interview your candidates. As a general rule of thumb, you don’t want to spend too much time interviewing unqualified candidates because that would slow down your time to hire. So it’s important to add a couple of screening steps to eliminate applicants who are not fit for the position, before you begin interviewing. 

However, do not leave job interviews out of your hiring process entirely because they do serve an important purpose.

Job interviews allow you to understand the following candidate attributes better: 

• Their past experiences, skills and professional interests 

• Their personality traits, posture, communication skills 

• Whether or not they’ll be a good fit for the role, team and organization overall 

Benefits of conducting a positive job interview 

To guarantee a smooth interview process, it’s important that your candidate walks away feeling like they were listened to. Depending on where you are in the hiring process, they should also be provided with the important information they need to make an informed decision about the role. The job interview should always be a positive experience for both parties.

 Even if interviews don’t result in hiring, which they won’t for many candidates, a thoughtfully designed process that is personalized for the position, can bring several benefits to both you and applicants. 

Some of these benefits are: 

• Interaction with your candidate
• More precise information about the professional’s profile
• Humanization of the R&S process
• Strengthening of your Employer Branding
• Increased NPS
• Reduced Turnover Rate

The 5 different types of job interview models

There are several types of ways that you can conduct your job interviews. You should choose a job interview type based on the type of role you’re hiring for, where you are in the hiring process  and what information you’d like to get from the interview. You may also mix these models into one interview as well.  Below, we have selected six types of job interview modes that you can use in your hiring processes: 

Technical Interviews 

The main goal of a Technical interview is to better understand if the candidate has the specific  hard skills required for the role.  In this type of interview you and your team can assess technical knowledge, problem solving skills and critical thinking abilities as needed for the position. In this model, the interview can play out like an exam, where candidates are expected to solve problems along with answering questions. Or the candidate might have done a technical assessment before the interview and you might use the interview to discuss their answers. This type of interview is best for the roles that demand certain hard skills as a prerequisite. 

Behavioral Interview

Behavioral interviews are essential to understand the candidate’s personality, posture and communication skills, regardless of the type of job they’re applying to. In a behavioral interview you may present day-to-day work situations and analyze how the candidate responds to them. It’s also a good opportunity to learn more about the candidate’s past experiences and ask them about their professional goals. 

Problem-solving Interview

The problem-solving  interview consists in working through a business scenario (real or fictitious) that may be related to the position. The idea is to allow the candidate to present a solution on how to solve an issue, make quick and accurate calculations and explore creative options on how to best reach an  outcome. 

Group Interview

The group interview model consists in assessing more than one candidate at a time.  This type of interview can reduce time, but most importantly, it can be used as a strategy to see your candidate’s teamwork in action. This format can provide unique insights on how your applicants behave with other work colleagues. 

Activity based Interview

Similar to the problem solving model, the idea behind the activity based interview is to propose a series of activities based on real situations. In this type of interview, you can use tools such as games and challenges, which may require some planning. The idea is to simulate a realistic scenario and determine how the  candidate will approach and navigate.   

How to make your job interviews more effective

To help you efficiently screen candidates in your recruitment process and hire the most qualified professional,  there are key questions that you can ask to help you better assess your candidates.  

To make your interview process more effective investigate the following topics below: 

• Experience
• Achievements
• Requirements

Experience

With the right questions, you can gain better insights about a candidate and what value they can bring to your team and role. By giving the candidate an opportunity to talk about their career path and experiences, you can evaluate how that helped shape them into a qualified professional for the position in question. 

When asking about experience, explore  particular achievements and failures in recent past roles.  Take notes of the answers you’d like to explore in the next questions.

Be sure to understand:

• Whether the candidate enjoys the kind of work they have done (or are expected to do).
• What motivates them in their day-to-day 
• The career path they’d like to pursue 
• If they have relevant experiences and applicable skills 

Data-Driven Achievements 

It’s also important to know what past performance results your candidate can share with you during an interview. Whatever measurable indicators or data your candidate can talk about, the better!  Your goal is to learn about previous achievements, to hire someone who is able to bring specific results.  

Cut straight to the chase and ask questions such as the following: 

• What accomplishments are you proud of and what results did you achieve? 
• How can you help our team improve XYZ?

Requirements

It’s also essential that you understand during an interview if your candidate meets all the requirements listed for the job. Go down your list of required qualifications for the role and ask unique questions or tell your candidate to give practical examples of how they’ve put these skills into practice. This will be critical in helping you assess if your applicant is qualified for the role. 

Use job interviews as a powerful screening tool and retrieve essential information about your candidate that will help you identify if they’re qualified for the role or not. Don’t forget to also assess culture-fit and align important expectations to make sure both parties are on the same page regarding benefits, roles and responsibilities, and eventually compensation. 

Want to start today? Join Plooral. 

O post How to conduct a successful job interview apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

Whether you’re  a CEO, a manager, or an employee, adopting a lifelong learning mindset is key to personal and  professional success. Going hand in hand with lifelong learning is organizational learning.

 The concept of organizational learning comes from the idea that employees can gain new knowledge and skills through work.  

In this article you’ll learn:

• What is organizational learning
• Why is organizational learning important
• How to promote organizational learning
• 4 tips on how to apply organizational learning in your organization

Understand the concept of organizational learning

Organizational learning can be defined as any and all forms of obtaining knowledge, training, and development within the organizational environment. 

The organizational learning theory focuses on the creation of knowledge and the use of that knowledge within an organization.  As a result, innovative solutions are created in an effective and practical way.

This learning happens specially when employees interact with one another to solve problems, so it’s  important to foster a learning culture within an organization that prizes knowledge sharing.  It can help develop both hard and soft skills – such as communication skills, team problem-solving skills, emotional intelligence, leadership traits, and much more.

It’s a great way to scale professional development and  promote a collaborative workforce envirionment.

How to promote organizational learning within your company 

It’s impossible to promote it without developing a company culture that prizes knowledge sharing and encourages employees of all levels to learn continuously through projects and mentorship.   

Here are some ideas on how to promote it! 

Encourage knowledge sharing

Develop a culture that values  interaction amongst employees, so that acquired knowledge can be shared in a positive and effective way. The exchange of experiences not only fosters learning, but also favors the creation of a collaborative environment.

Promote constructive feedback

Encourage the act of constructive feedback around projects and deliverables,  allowing teams to reflect and create an opportunty to understand and learn from each other. 

Foster Lifelong Learning 

A Lifelong Learner is an individual who never stops learning. In recent years, lifelong education has become a strategy widely discussed by CEOs around the world.  Encouraging employees at all levels to continue their education is  key to increase employee satisfaction and to create new opportunities for workforce and business growth. 

Invest in learning that happens anywhere

 COVID-19 pandemic propelled companies around the world into an inevitable future: the ever-increasing digitization of learning. As new generations of employees (Millennials and Generation Z) demand a learning path that fits their fast-paced routines, the advance of technology has emerged as an opportunity to enable learning anytime and anywhere – whether through videos, courses, digital materials, podcasts, and more.

Why is organizational learning so important?

Including organizational learning in your business  has many benefits. Some of these include increased employee satisfaction, higher customer satisfaction, lower turnover rates, increased productivity, professional development at all levels, and greater organization growth. 

Businesses that encourage and invest in learning become more competitive in the marketplace and are better able to react quickly to changes in their industry.

Measure Organizational Learning! 

If you want to measure the results of implementing organizational learning in your company, invest in benchmarking research.  Observing and comparing employee performance can be an important tool for implementing changes that will improve your operation. 

I

Want more? 

Discover Plooral LX’s platform and start today.

Follow Plooral on social networks to access more content.

O post How to use organizational learning to transform your company apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

Providing a positive candidate experience today is fundamental for a successful hiring process, regardless of company size, stage or industry.  In this article, we’ve put together everything you need to know on how to improve your candidate experience, plus unbeatable strategies for attracting the best candidates.

In this article you will see:

• What is the candidate experience?
• What is the importance of a candidate’s experience? 
• 13 steps on how to improve your candidate’s experience 

Candidate Experience: Explained

Candidate Experience is defined as the experience applicants have throughout your selection process – from the moment they find your company online to the moment they’re either hired or disqualified.

The candidate experience you provide to applicants,  is just as important as the experience your business provides to their clients. Not only does it strengthen your employer brand, but also helps you attract more qualified candidates. We’ll learn more about this later in the blog.   

According to Exame magazine, around 70% of candidates consider the company’s brand and reputation as an important factor when applying to a position. In addition, 18% of candidates refuse an offer letter after having a bad experience during the recruitment process.

Candidate’s experience: Why it’s important 

If you believe that the candidate ‘s experience ends after your recruitment process, you’re mistaken! 

After a bad experience, applicants will not only talk about it with friends or on social networks, but will most likely never apply to your company again. The end results are pretty grim for your business: you potentially lose the chance to hire great talent and seriously damage your brand ‘s image at the same time. 

It’s also common practice for applicants to research a company or learn more about their recruitment process online and other social networks, before applying to a position.  In fact, research shows that around 76% of applicants do exactly that. So if your employer brand isn’t being promoted in a positive light online, this can seriously hurt your candidate attraction strategies. 

  If you want to find out what candidates are saying about your hiring process, search for your company’s hashtag on social media or find your company on Glassdoors. 

Here are some interestings stats on candidates: 

• 87% of applicants have a preference for job descriptions that contain a lot of information about the position, its activities and the company in general.
• 43% of candidates complain about the lack of feedback during the recruiting process.
• 12% of candidates complain about lengthy online questions.
• 35% of newly hired employees quit due to unaligned expectations about the job  

How to improve your candidate experience in 10 steps 

The candidate’s experience goes beyond the selection process – it defines the image that your company will have as well as the relationship with your external audience. It’s the first step to promote efficiency and good relationships with your employees in the future. 

Learn more on how to improve your candidate’s experience in these 10 steps: 

During the recruitment process:

The recruitment process is the first stage of your candidate’s experience. In this phase, the candidate will discover your company online, learn more about what your business does, and better understand the position’s activities and responsibilities. It’ll be the first interaction they have with your company!  

This is the moment to engage candidates and make them see your company as an attractive place to work! See our tips below to create a positive recruiting process experience: 

1.Invest in your careers page 

A careers page is the ultimate place to showcase your employer brand and will give your visitors the first impression on your company.  

A well designed careers page will often be responsible for inspiring applicants’ interest in applying to available jobs.  

Businesses  that invest in an attractive careers page have a 94% increase in their visitor to applicant conversion rate. 

Here are some careers page inspirations: 

• Spotify 
• Carrot 
• Crowdstrike 
• Accessibe

Make sure to have in your careers page at least 4 important elements: 

• Information on what your company does (but do not focus on this) 
• Information about the workplace environment, teams, and overall company culture (add tremendous focus here!) 
• All open jobs with a search bar preferably for positive user experience 
• Benefits included and offered 

2.Optimize your job postings 

You won’t be remembered if you’re not seen! By partnering with your marketing team and allocating a marketing budget for your job positings, invest in advertising channels that drive your ad’s reach.

SEO strategies, sharing jobs on social media, ads on job portals and more. This will give you a broader audience reach and with ads, you can also focus on targeting specific candidate profiles. 

 Plooral has two Recruitment Marketing services – Job Ads Marketing (Paid Media, PPC) and Linkedin’s Premium Job Marketing. If you’re  interested, let us know! 

3.Job Description

 One of the main complaints candidates give today is the lack of clarity and consistency across job descriptions. Your job description should accurately reflect the position’s expected activities and responsibilities to paint a realistic picture to candidates.  

Add these essential elements to your job description: 

• Small excerpt about the position 
• Daily job activities 
• Necessary candidate requirements and additional wants 
• Benefits offered 
• Additional information about the position such as salary, location etc. 
• Why it’s great to work for your company 

During the selection process:

Your selection process must be strategic and carefully constructed so that you can provide the best experience for your candidates and internal team.

During the selection process it’s extremely important to invest in communication strategies with your applicants and to provide timely feedback.  

Here are some tips on how to optimize your selection process for better candidate experience: 

4.Invest in technology: 

Without the right tools your hiring process can take months to complete and can directly impact your selection strategies. Investing in an Applicant Tracking System for your recruitment processes, will not only make life your life easier but will most definitely  improve your candidate’s experience by making your hiring process more efficient and personalized. 

Plooral has an end to end applicant tracking platform that allows you to be more productive and your hiring process more humanized!  Our features allows businesses to completely customize their selection processes according to company needs and demands. 

5.Create a candidate profile 

Understanding what type of professional you need  is the first step in creating a positive candidate journey. Collaborate with hiring managers to design your candidate profile and focus on ways to explore these traits and requirements throughout your application process. The more assurance you can provide to candidates around what you’re looking for, the better for their experience. 

6.Offer a customized selection process

Develop a selection process that will reflect and help find the professional you want. Include personalized questions, assessment tests, and depending on the specific position you can even request pre-interview videos as a means to qualify your applicants. Most candidates enjoy providing extra information about themselecsand showcase their knowledge beyond the resume.   

7.Create a humanized communication strategy  

Maintaining clear and direct communication with applicants throughout your application process is the most important contributor for a positive candidate experience. If you can only choose one strategy to adopt out of all the ones presented in this blog, this would be the one to pick! 

 Preferably, invest in a tool that allows you to automate your communication strategy, giving you the opportunity to contact the candidate in every phase of your hiring process. 

8.Get your entire team involved

Involve hiring managers in your application process to meet candidates who are in the final stages. Invite them to participate in candidate interviews and ask them to give their feedback on applicants. This way, candidates can meet other teammembers and get a feel for who they might be working with. They may also feel more comfortable asking questions to potential co-workers that they might not have the courage to ask you. 

9.Invest in giving feedback

One of the biggest complaints that candidates have is the  lack of useful feedback they receive after an application process. Many companies fail to notify applicants that they’ve been disqualified or inform the reason behind their disqualification.

Applying for a job demands a good amount of time from candidates, recognizing this effort and giving participants constructive criticism will allow them to strengthen areas that need improvement and perhaps be more prepared for future opportunities.

10. Be open to receiving feedback

Encouraging new hires to give you feedback about your hiring process can help your company  develop a more positive experience for future candidates. Information you collect can help you understand what’s working well and what’s not, providing clear data for you to refine your strategies. 

Having one-on-one sessions and  using surveys during employee onboarding are some of the strategies that can benefit your organization.

Make the best out of your strategies! 

We hope these insights will help you create recruitment strategies that promote a better candidate experience for your applicants.   

Remember, you don’t have to implement everything at once! Positive change can start slowly. Embrace the strategies that make the most sense for your organization at the moment and start from there. 

Our team will be here to help you along the way! Join Plooral. 

O post Candidate Experience: What you need to know apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

Finding qualified professionals who are prepared to fulfill all of the necessary requirements employers seek today in the job market has become a difficult task for recruiters. 

Our traditional forms of education can no longer qualify professionals with the  new evolving skills and abilities needed to remain competitive in today’s market. The employees who seek to further develop their skills and continue learning after formal education, are the ones with better chances of securing a job and remaining employed.  In other words, becoming a professional who never stops learning is part of the solution for closing the talent skills gap.

 The Annual Global CEO Survey conducted by PWC,  which discusses the main agendas of leaders around the world,  states that today’s talent skills gap is a global topic of major concern.  In recent years, due to the increase of this competency gap, continuous learning has become even more fundamental, so that both hiring and workforce strategies become successful.  

Learn more about Lifelong Learning and how to foster it amongst your employees: 

• What is Lifelong Learning?
• The 4 Pillars of Lifelong Learning
• Why is Lifelong Learning important?
• Benefits of Lifelong Learning
• How to implement a Lifelong Learning strategy

What is Lifelong Learning?

Lifelong Learning is the ongoing pursuit of knowledge and learning throughout life, regardless of what career you have chosen to pursue or if you’ve received a traditional education.  

A Lifelong Learner is a person who chooses to build new skills or strengthen existing ones throughout their professional career and personal life.    

When Lifelong Learning is applied and promoted in the corporate environment, teams become more qualified and aligned with the organization’s overall direction and growth. Learning can happen through training, social interactions, lectures, workshops, podcasts, and educational courses. With the right tools in hands, learning opportunities become endless.

The 4 Pillars of Lifelong Learning 

According to The Lifelong Learning Council Queensland foundation, Lifelong Learning is based on 4 main pillars:

1. Take pleasure in learning: 

For knowledge to be properly absorbed and retained,  take pleasure in learning. Curiosity, applicability to real life scenarios, skills targeting, and critically analyzing what’s been learned all contribute to Lifelong Learning success. 

2. Apply what’s been learned: 

Turn learning into skilling: through training, work, projects and other forms of opportunities, put learned skills into action.   

3. Learn socially: 

Share acquired knowledge with others and receive feedback to foster learning habits in a scalable way. 

4. Take charge: 

Become proactive in the learning journey by creating personalized learning paths and a strong learning routine.  

Why is Lifelong Learning important?

With the fast changes occurring in the workplace, accelerated by the pandemic and other factors, such as the on-going creation of new types of job roles to keep up with technology, knowledge and skills acquired by traditional education cannot keep up.  

The result of all this impacts organizations and individuals directly: professionals have become unequipped skillswise to conquer the modern day job market. Because of this, there is a very large gap in the journey of education to employment. While millions of candidates with potential to work find themselves without job opportunities, on the other side, recruiters cannot find enough skilled professionals to hire.

After Covid-19, problems generated by this skills gap have become even more evident. Research conducted by the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 205 million jobs will be lost by 2022. At the same time, for growing businesses, the trend causes a major concern: by 2030, the demand of skilled workers outruns supply. 

This is where the importance of Lifelong Learning comes in. While our education system doesn’t go through a massive transformation to adapt to the current scenario, professionals must continuously keep learning so stay updated with market trends. 

The  skills gap doesn’t only affect candidates and hiring teams. For employees, continuous learning is essential for career advancement. For organizations, investing in training and developing their workforce, through reskilling and upskilling, is important in order to avoid talent shortages. 

According to the research “Lifelong Learning: Why do we need it?”, conducted by the University of Tehran, professionals who have greater opportunities to update and adapt their skills, are more likely to reach higher positions and win better career opportunities. 

Reskilling

Even though some professionals still believe that learning ends after earning a degree, technological changes are here to prove that this mentality is outdated. The world has changed, and the way in which people learn must follow suit.

In order to have a successful career, individuals must be aware of the constant changes that arise in a demanding job market and always look for new ways to update themselves. Reskilling means to  acquire new skills, and for this to happen, people must be prepared to embark on the continuous learning journey to increase their readiness  and competitiveness in the job market. 

Benefits of Lifelong Learning

The main focus in the Lifelong Learning concept is to keep individuals up to date in their education and interests so that they can achieve their goals and face either personal or professional challenges. 

   9 benefits of Lifelong Learning for companies and employees:

•  Qualifies workforce 
•  Keeps corporate training efficient 
•  Promotes business growth 
•  Fosters team collaboration and engagement 
•  Increases employee satisfaction 
•  Increases career and professional value

How to implement Lifelong Learning habits in your organization 

There’s no perfect formula when it comes to instilling Lifelong Learning habits throughout your organization, as each individual takes on a different approach to learning. However, there are some common steps and strategies that can guide companies who wish to develop their workforce in the right direction.  

1. Find a learning strategy that makes sense for your organization 

Learning is not the same experience for everyone. Find out which learning strategy makes the most sense for your company and employees depending on its size, industry, skills needed, how scalable, flexible or compliant learning needs to be, amongst other factors.    

2. Create learning goals 

Learning becomes more efficient when learners can see a “finish line”. So it’s important to set goals and objectives around learning journey’s to give employees a clear direction of the skills they should be learning and why they should be learning them. 

3. Be transparent 

In order for employees to create learning journeys that are aligned with their career goals, it’s important for their employers to be as transparent as possible about the company’s direction. By communicating which skills the organization needs and what future roles will be opened  employees can make more informed decisions about their learning journeys.   

Foster lifelong learning with a platform that gives your workforce the power to grow. Join Plooral. 

O post Why Lifelong Learning is essential for your workforce development strategy apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

Even though many organizations worry about employee retention, not all teams understand how to monitor and prevent turnover. Why should you understand and care about Employee Turnover? What real impact does it have on your company? Let’s find out! 

What is turnover, and why does it happen?

The term turnover is a synonym for the number of people that leave your company. It’s a significant indicator to keep track of to understand the quality of your recruitment process, employee engagement and workforce environment. You can measure your turnover rate by dividing the number of  terminations over a given period of time by the average number of employees.   

Your turnover rate can vary depending on your organization’s  current moment, goals and even its industry.  Regardless, it’s important for your company ro determine what a healthy turnover rate is for its present moment and keep an eye on it to prevent it from increasing. A high turnover rate means that your company’s ability to retain talent is impaired. Your workforce is most likely  unhappy with their work environment which results in them leaving the company and taking the intellectual capital that was built while they were an employee. 

Many different situations can lead to employee turnover. Some are uncontrollable, such as fatalities and diseases, while others are directly related to the quality of life at work and their job satisfaction.

 Here are some of the leading causes of employee turnover:

Receiving a lack feedback and unclear directions from managers  

Through daily tasks, employees seek to add value and purpose to their work and achieve professional recognition. When the job doesn’t meet these expectations,  goals aren’t aligned and there’s absence of feedback, work can become frustrating for professionals who are invested in bringing more meaning into their careers. 

Absence of a career plan

Even when goals are set and feedback is given, it’s important that employees have a clear sense of direction in their careers and long-term development within your organization. If not, they’ll most likely find a company  that can provide them with more opportunities in the future. 

Lack of identification with the company culture

When employees do not connect with the purpose of their activities, they become more likely to seek new places both for personal values and for compensation or other similar factors.

Compensation 

It’s extremely important to keep an eye on your organization’s salary and benefits and compare it with other players in your industry to understand if what you offer is competitive and attractive to your employees. Considerable salary differences across teams or roles (within your company, or when  compared to other organizations in the same industry) can definitely be unmotivating for your workforce.   

Weak leadership

Immediate supervisors and managers have a crucial role in reversing (or causing) turnover. It’s important to train managers and key leaders on how to establish positive relationships with their direct reports and teams. As mentioned previously, lack of feedback or an abuse of micro management can be direct attitudes that influence employee turnover. 

Unhealthy work environment

Organizations that aren’t able to provide a healthy and employee-centric environment that fosters trust, work life balance, creativity and transparency for their employees are destined to have a high turnover rate. 

Types of Turnover

Many situations can lead to employee turnover, however turnover can be categorized in different ways:    

Voluntary: When the employee chooses to leave the company. In this case, your organization is at risk of losing a high-performance and talented professional due to problems such as those mentioned above. 

Involuntary: When the company terminates the employee. Despite the financial costs involved in the dismissal process, this type of turnover can be healthy if used strategically to replace underperforming employees. 

Functional: When the employee who resigns is a low performing employee. 

Dysfunctional: The opposite of functional,  in this scenario the company loses a talented employee that brings in good results. 

Inevitable: When employee turnover occurs due to external casualties that are not in the company’s control. 

Avoidable: Turnover was due to internal organizational problems that relate to  management.

Consequences of having high turnover rates in your company

High turnover rates can bring many consequences that directly impact your organization’s overall health. In general, every time companies lose talent,  it also automatically loses its ‘know-how’ or in other words, intellectual capital (the learned knowledge about processes and strategies that an employee builds during its time with your organization). This loss can create a short-term, or in some cases long-term, imbalance in your organization’s processes, teams and communication.  

Their are also financial costs related to turnover: 

Recruitment and Hiring costs

Opening a new role, screening candidates, scheduling interviews, advertising the new position and  involving other hiring managers, in addition to using the recruitment team’s time, can all add up financially. 

Onboarding and Training costs

New employee training programs, orientations, miscellaneous training costs, time of those involved, are also costs to be aware of. 

Resignation and Dismissal costs

When an employee resigns or is dismissed, organizations also have to invest their time on exit interviews and covering related costs depending on the situation and specific employee contract. 

How to calculate turnover 

 As mentioned previously, turnover rates will depend a lot on your company’s current moment and industry. However, in general, an acceptable turnover rate is defined as 3% .

Strategies to reduce turnover 

It’s important to emphasize that turnover will always exist in your company and is not something that should be eliminated completely, as there are healthy types of turnover (ex: when an underperforming employee resigns). Every company will have its own turnover rate, but your team must know how to differentiate a healthy rate from an alarming one. 

To reduce your turnover rate in the case that it’s negatively affecting your company, you can invest in management strategies such as: improving organizational climate and reinforcing company culture, maintaining a positive and employee-centric workplace environment, training leadership teams to collaborate with their direct reports in a healthy manner, create well-planned internal policies and opportunities for growth and learning, as well as creating a professional development plan. 

Make room for recognition, creativity, autonomy, diversity, trust and transparency in your company. 

When recruiting talent, align expectations from the beginning and keep true to your word when speaking about company culture, environment, teams and role. 

How your hiring process influences turnover 

Your recruitment and hiring process goes hand in hand with turnover rates, because as you’re hiring new employees, you’re aligning important expectations that will make them decide whether or not to be a part of your organization. 

If these expectations aren’t aligned correctly or  important company information isn’t well communicated during this process, it can easily cause frustration for new hires and increase turnover. 

Your recruiting process should ensure that new hires meet your organization’s needs and specific position requirements while simultaneously providing assurance to new talent that your company will provide the benefits, environment, career development and compensation that you’ve offered.

That’s why it’s important to count on recruitment and hiring tools that allow your HR team to strategically align these expectations with candidates throughout your hiring process. Plooral helps organizations save time in hiring qualified talent and reduce turnover rates through it’s engaging application process and innovative features. 

Turnover rate is an extremely important HR metric to track. Develop your own internal standards by regularly collecting turnover data over various periods of time and across all departments. Track turnover as it relates to individual managers at different levels. By having this type of information in hands, you’ll be well-prepared to make improvements and create an exciting employment opportunity that job seekers want and employees don’t want to leave.

O post Employee Turnover: What it means and how it impacts you apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

Employees within this environment are to be seen as key players in the company’s growth and success and are given the possibility of developing their skills and talent by working in a collaborative culture.   

In this article, we’ll see: 

• The meaning behind Employee Centric 
• Benefits of an employee-centric culture
• How to create more engagement with employee-centric strategies 

​​What does it mean to have an Employee Centric environment?

In a few words, adopting an Employee Centric environment is about improving your employees’ experience, respecting and caring for them, and investing in actions that encourage a sense of purpose. Ideas, creativity,  free-flowing communication and innovation are encouraged throughout the organization.

The main idea behind the Employee Centric environment is to build a welcoming space, to be open to new ideas, feedback and where the employee can express their thoughts in an atmosphere of cooperation amongst their entire team and across the organization. 

More than just offering a space of dialogue and respect, the workplace and the benefits offered to employees must also be considered. Building a comfortable workspace that promotes your employee’s well-being or offering benefits that help them maintain a healthy work life balance, are also Employee Centric strategies.  

Benefits of having an Employee-Centric culture

The main benefit of having an Employee Centric culture within your organization  is making your employees feel that they are a part of the company’s overall mission and believe in its purpose. 90% of employees that work for an organization that promotes an  Employee Centric environment, are proud of their employers and ultimately help foster the company’s growth.

When employees can be a part of flexible work  environments, they also manage to have a better balance between their personal and professional life, which can positively impact their professional productivity.

Attracting Talented Candidates

Having an Employee Centric culture can bring many benefits to employers as well.  Companies that promote Employee Centric strategies can increase their employee retention across the board. In addition, these strategies, as a result, attract a higher number of talented candidates as they seek to work for a company that values ​​the care of its employees.

Driving brand awareness

Employees who work for a company that invests in Employee Centric processes, are more likely to share their work experiences and achievements on social networks, which ultimately helps attract more talent to your company as your employer brand strengthens.  

Companies that support their employees also build more trust amongst their clients, influencing the public’s view.

Reducing turnover

Companies that listen to their employees and build an environment based on suggestions and feedback, achieve much higher levels of workforce retention.

Feeling seen and validated  creates more productivity. Employees pay attention to whether or not their feedback is being accepted, which encourages them to be more invested in their daily tasks.  

Companies that encourage employee ideas, suggestions and challenges will be able to  attract talent who are more likely to stay loyal to your business and put 100% into their work, because they feel invested with the company.

How to create employee-centric strategies

To create employee-centric strategies, companies must first understand their employees’ basic needs and desires. In other words, finding out what can impact your employee’s sense of wellbeing within your organization. This can be community, respect, appreciation, understanding, space for dialogue and discussion on issues related to the company’s growth, being able to give and receive feedback, among other things. 

Before becoming an employee-centric company, HR teams and other key leaders should come together and review what strategies can be implemented that are easily scalable and can last long term.  A great starting point is to survey employees across the board to receive feedback, learn where gaps exist  and be able to create a list of priorities. 

If your company offers hybrid work or you have full-time remote employees, this feedback is even more important. Promote communication and employee feedback by implementing recurring team meetings, brainstorming sessions, distributing short surveys or keeping online communication channels open at all times (ex: Slack). 

Your company can improve its environment by simply listening, taking action on feedback and letting your employees be people! Offering more autonomy to  employees is a simple yet profound strategy that can go a long way.  

Remember that by putting your employees first and building a more pleasant workplace, you directly increase your company’s productivity and growth. Employee satisfaction and health should matter to your company because at the end of the day, everyone wins. 

Want to start today? Talk to our team of specialists. 

Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

O post What is an Employee Centric environment? apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

Hiring the right people for your team is a big challenge. This process, many times managed manually, can become extremely complicated. Without the right tools in hand, opening and closing a position can take days – or even weeks – of hard work. That’s where an Applicant Tracking System comes in. This software optimizes your hiring process by helping you automate tasks and screen candidates efficiently. 

In this article, we’ll learn more about ATSs: 

• What is an Applicant Tracking System?
• How does an ATS work?
• Benefits of applicant tracking systems
• How to choose the best ATS?
• Why is Plooral the best ATS platform?

​​What is an Applicant Tracking System?

ATS is a software that offers all the features your company needs to manage its entire hiring process. 

Applicant Tracking Systems are similar to a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, but it is tailored for HR teams and their recruiting needs. With an ATS, your team can consolidate all company hiring processes and applicant information in one place.  

How does an ATS work?

You will use your ATS in all the stages of your hiring process, from the moment you need to open a position to the moment you’ve hired your candidate. 

Many ATSs today will automatically publish your open positions on job boards or other sourcing channels as a way to attract more candidates to your jobs.  

When candidates apply to a position with your company, your ATS will most likely give you the opportunity to set a few qualification questions for your applicants to answer as they attach their resume. 

Once they apply and send in their resume, they will appear in your recruitment funnel. Your ATS will come into play in this phase of your hiring process as well.  Many ATS’s offer features that allow you to filter and screen candidates,  conduct interviews, apply tests and collaborate with your hiring team, within your application funnel.    

Applicant Tracking System – Benefits 

Investing in the right Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can give your team major benefits, such as automating your hiring processes and helping you find qualified candidates in less time. Many growing businesses are still hesitant to invest in these types of technologies, specifically for their recruitment needs.       

However, regardless of the number of positions you open a month or the size of your team, Applicant Tracking Systems can still bring amazing results to your hiring strategy and process. 

1. Helps increase team productivity

ATS’s help reduce, if not eliminate, manual operations, which can replaced by automated features. This allows your team more time to dedicate their brain power to other important tasks!  

2. Improves internal and external communication 

Most Applicant Tracking Systems integrate with your inbox, allowing you to communicate directly with candidates through your account. With Plooral, you can also speak to team members and hiring managers directly through the platform, tagging them in tasks or to view candidate resumes. We provide an email template feature and automatic communication triggers to promote end to end seamless communication strategies. 

3. Streamlines processes and gathers key analytics 

One of the main benefits ATSs provide is the ability to organize all of your open positions, candidates and processes in one place. You’ll be able to track key indicators and metrics that give you valuable insights on what’s working and what isn’t! 

The best way to understand how an Applicant Tracking System can help your team is by talking to other businesses who use these tools. 

    4. Speeds up your hiring process

 Applicant Tracking Systems offers features that automate your workflow and day to day tasks. It also provides intelligent filters to find qualified candidates easily in your funnel, ultimately speeding up your hiring process. 

How to choose an ATS thats right for your company?

Now that you know the importance of having an ATS, you need to decide which one out of the thousands that exist, is right for YOUR company! 

It’s  important to choose a system that meets your needs, gives you a good ROI and fits your budget. 

Don’t forget about candidate experience when choosing an Applicant Tracking System. It’s important that you provide applicants with a humanized process and you’re able to give everyone a fair chance to be screened and evaluated. 

It’s important to ask yourself the following questions when looking for an ATS: 

• How personalized do you want your recruitment process to be? 
• What does the candidate journey look like? 
• Do you want to automatically eliminate candidates without screening them first? 
• How many job portals would you like your ATS to connect to? 
• Which tasks do you need to automate? 
• Do your managers need to be involved in your recruitment process? Do they need different permissions? 
• Would you like to apply tests or ask your candidates questions? 

What makes Plooral stand out from other ATSs? 

Plooral is a modern and intuitive applicant tracking system that not only streamlines your recruitment process from beginning to end, but also delivers a fantastic candidate experience to your applicants. Count on Plooral to automate your workflow, involve your entire team, help you attract and screen candidates efficiently and much more. Plooral is very simple to navigate and use on a daily basis, offering  powerful features that allow you to make the most of your recruitment process. 

Plooral features include:

• Automatic job board integrations 
• Schedule and conduct online interviews 
• Collaborate with your entire team 
• Promote your company benefits and culture through vídeos 
• Track KPIs and Indicators
• Create and manage  talent pipelines
• KanBan board to organize processes 
• Apply screening and search filters 
• Apply assessment tests and video interviews 

And much more! 

Here’s what our clients had to say about Plooral in our newest survey: 

If you like what you see, speak to one of our team members!

Finding the right ATS for your organization  can be a difficult task! After you understand exactly what needs to be met in your hiring process, speak to other recruiters in your network and learn what ATSs have worked for them! Schedule demos and make sure to have at least three options to choose from when making your final decision!

O post What is an Applicant Tracking System? apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

However, despite the number of positions you open a month or the size of your team, Applicant Tracking systems can still bring amazing results to your hiring strategy and processes: 

1. Helps increase productivity

ATS’s help reduce, if not eliminate, manual operations, which can replaced by automated features. This allows your team more time to dedicate their brain power to other important tasks!  

2. Improves communication 

Most Applicant Tracking Systems integrate with your inbox, allowing you to communicate directly with candidates through your account. With Plooral Hire, you can also speak to team members and hiring managers directly through the platform, tagging them in tasks or to view candidate resumes. We provide an email template feature and automatic communication triggers to promote end to end seamless communication strategies. 

3. Helps organization and data tracking 

One of the main benefits ATSs provide is the ability to organize all of your open positions, candidates and processes in one place. You’ll be able to track key indicators and metrics that give you valuable insights on what’s working and what isn’t! 

The best way to understand how an Applicant Tracking System can help your team is by talking to other businesses who use these tools! The businesses who invested in our recruitment platform Plooral, received these positive results and more.  

If you like what you see, speak to one of our team members!

O post Why an ATS impact positively your hiring process? apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.

As school systems and teachers were forced to adhere to a remote learning model, this new experience gained traction and, depending on the specific scenario, brought positive results. Consequently, many key decision-makers in this space have considered implementing a remote learning hybrid model into their school systems. 

However, remote Learning is not the only change in our education system that resulted from the pandemic, and that is here to stay in the post-pandemic world. The mass implementation of technology in education, the autonomy to learn independently online, creating your learning paths, and personalizing your individual learning goals, is a reality that we should start getting used to in the next five years. 

How will our learning experiences be impacted in the post-pandemic world?  

Skill-building courses focused on career paths.  

With a focus on building skills that land students an opportunity in the job market, courses and classes are tailored to specific professional goals. Education becomes a true catalyst for employment in the digital age.  

Lifelong Learning as a new approach to “life.”

Traditional learning experiences have a beginning, middle, and end. A student could begin an MBA and finish it in under two years to apply that learned knowledge into securing a job. Lifelong Learning is a new concept and buzzword gaining popularity. By definition, a lifelong learner never ceases to learn and evolve their skills. This concept combines continuous Learning for personal and professional development. 

Artificial Intelligence 

In this new world of Learning, educational tools will be working hand in hand with Artificial Intelligence to bring increasingly personalized and individualized experiences to students. According to the World Economic Forum, our education will be based on four main pillars: virtual teaching, learning assessments, matching opportunities for internships and jobs, and peer/expert mentoring. 

More autonomy for students

Students will become the protagonists of their learning journey. With remote Learning, teacher’s become educational mediators and develop a new role based on content curation and support. Still, it’s up to students to decide what exactly they want to learn.  

How can you implement these changes into your employee development and recruitment processes?

All these new changes in education will also impact how companies recruit, reskill, qualify and develop their potential candidates and employees. Here are some quick tips on how to ride this new wave of learning transformation and implement these changes to your company for the benefit of your employees and candidates: 

Make a current diagnosis of your company’s L&D efforts: 

It’s essential to understand what your company does to train and develop its employees and if these processes are aligned with the new learning trends that are beginning to appear.  

Some questions to answer to diagnose your internal L&D efforts: Do you offer a career path development program to your employees?

• How do your employees build new skills in their careers? Independently or through your company? 

• Do you qualify candidates for potential job opportunities through external company courses?  

• Do you track, manage and analyze your company’s intellectual capital (aka employee skills)? 

• What experience do you offer your employees if they’d like to switch career paths within your company? 

• How personalized are your company L&D efforts to employees/teams? 

Define your goals

What do you aim to achieve with the changes that you have identified? Begin by creating short, medium, and long-term goals with possible results and metrics so that you can keep yourself accountable. 

Here are some long term goals to think about: 

• Do you want to improve internal employee mobility?

• Do you need to attract more qualified candidates to your positions? 

• Do you want to increase employee retention?

D- o you need to invest in skills-data management?  

Engage with your team

Communicate with key leaders and educate them about the importance of implementing L&D strategies in your company. Working side by side with managers to create clear goals is essential, also give them the resources to identify what is working and what is not. Managers should work directly with team members to develop a personalized learning and development plan based on each employee’s professional goals and aspirations. 

 Additionally,  speak to your recruiting or HR team to work hand in hand with them and understand their hiring needs. Can roles quickly be filled by internal mobility, or should external hires fill them? It’s essential to understand the types of skills needed for open positions in your company and if you can quickly identify these skills internally or recruit externally. 

In the post-pandemic world 

Remote Learning, access to technology, and the rise of innovation in educational tools are catalysts to the abrupt transformation we witness in learning experiences worldwide. The life-long learning concept and the autonomy students now have to develop their learning paths is a trend that is here to stay and disrupt education and the future of work. 

Want to learn more about this topic? Please speak to one of our specialists!

O post How will technology transform education in the post-COVID-19 world? apareceu primeiro em Plooral Blog.