Our take on a successful Inbound Recruiting Strategy
Sarah Goomar
October 27, 2021
•
5 min
Over 75% of job seekers start their search on Google and according to Dover's data, 40% of hires made by our customers come from inbound channels. Inbound recruiting is clearly an important channel for hiring managers and teams, but it differs from outbound and referrals because it involves having candidates "come to you" through the touchpoints you use to attract talent and differentiate yourself in the market, such as your company website and job boards.
Notably, qualified inbound candidates are more likely to result in hires than outbound candidates because these candidates are actively searching for a role, and have demonstrated an express interest in your company. Despite this, we've seen that as a channel, inbound is often neglected and severely underutilized.
We've seen why with our customers firsthand: an inbound strategy is not easy to develop and maintain — it's traditionally been very difficult to tell, (given the hundreds of job boards that exist), where it makes sense to advertise your job postings, how long you should post your ads for, and how much budget is appropriate. Perhaps the hardest part of all is finding time to manage a large number of inbound applicants to begin with.
Here's what an inbound strategy, lacking in automation, programmatic job board advertising, and an always-on phone screen process typically looks like:
Nascent employer brand: Your employer brand doesn't produce sufficient traffic to your website or careers page, so you don't get the applicants you're looking for.
Lack of job board familiarity: You turn to job boards to increase the number of applicants for your open roles, but don't know which ones would make your role successful, and don't have a good sense of how to create a strategy or budget for them.
Difficulty processing applications: After some time, you finally get applicants in the door, but it's hard to process the high volume of applications. It's noisy, finding a "diamond in the rough" requires a lot of patience and pain (our data suggests that only 10% of applicants are qualified for a first-round phone screen), and it's easy to fall behind.
Overwhelming phone screens: You might give up after a few unsuccessful phone screens leading to a scheduling backlog and delayed hiring process.
There's a new way to approach inbound — the following suggestions are a reflection of the new paradigm a high-quality inbound strategy requires:
Differentiate your employer brand
In a wildly competitive market for talent, it's important to stand out from the pack. We use a data-driven approach to benchmark your employer brand affinity to candidates, and help you with content creation and diversity audits so you can attract high-quality candidates.
Commit to job boards for a reasonable amount of time and set aside a sizeable budget
Diversifying your job boards — and managing the requirements and billing involved in that process — can certainly be time-consuming and difficult. We've seen that hiring teams who are patient with the process and utilize multiple channels are rewarded with good hires.
Process applications quickly
If your inbound strategy is working well, then you should expect a steady stream of applicants. It's important to review applications and resumes and start building a pipeline of first phone screens — neglecting this could mean a significant backlog of applicants, candidates feeling as though their applications aren't really being considered, and delayed phone screens, resulting in a poor candidate experience or drop off.
Cast a wide, permissive net for phone screens – and consider handing them off
Due to the sheer volume of applications a single job posting receives, there's a tendency for hiring managers to filter on a strict set of criteria and eliminate "time-wasting" conversations with candidates who don't seem like a perfect fit.
We've seen this is the wrong approach: employers who devote time to a consistent phone screen process with a set of candidates benefit due to a healthy pipeline and the ability to screen people out where necessary. This also eliminates potential bias — someone's job history is not always indicative of the skills needed to function well in a startup environment (being quick and eager to learn, great communicators, or collaborators).
Dover Inbound
Dover Inbound allows teams to simplify and automate inbound best practices so that they're achievable for lean and high-growth teams:
We automatically find and post on the job boards that are most relevant to your searches, and allow you to choose from an array of additional job board options. We also suggest how much you should spend on various job boards to meet your hiring plans. With our integrations, it's as easy as toggling a job board on or off, and processing payment directly in-app.
In the same way that our outbound recruiting software surfaces interested and qualified candidates to you in Slack, Dover filters inbound candidates so only those that meet your exact search parameters are surfaced to you in Slack. No more reviewing noisy applications and hours spent on tedious resume reviews.
Dover Interviewer allows you to screen candidates effectively because of our near-always availability: strike while the iron is hot and advance only those candidates who meet what it is you're looking for to subsequent stages.
Throughout the process, we work with you to improve and form your employer brand (through brand audits and training, content creation, and blog posts), so candidates see what it's like to work for your company.
If you'd like to chat with our team on how we can help you build and refine your team's inbound recruiting strategy, reach out here.
