Taking advantage of web-recruiting tools for hiring

With unemployment at a stunningly low 4.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ensuring your propane business is working with the latest web-recruiting tools is crucial.

“Job creation has been steadily increasing ever since the recession, forcing recruiters to double up their efforts to fill positions with quality candidates,” says Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite, a web-recruiting tool. “As a result, recruiters must now go above and beyond to create a compelling employer brand and an exceptional candidate experience.”

Fortunately, there is no shortage of new web-recruiting tools you can use to attract job applicants to your website. Many propane retailers are also finding success using social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Indeed to attract applicants.

Before you sign on for your new dream tool, be sure it’s able to integrate seamlessly with your company website, email and other pertinent legacy systems, says Sheetal Kale, a digital and content evangelist at Alcor Solutions, a cloud services provider.

You’ll also want to verify the software is mobile friendly so that both sets of users – your company recruiters and the people stopping by your website to apply for a job – can easily access your recruiting materials on their smartphone, tablet or other mobile device. You should also be sure you have easy social media integration, Kale says. Essentially, a good web-recruiting tool will make it easy for you to share jobs on a wide variety of social media platforms. The platform you choose, however, is up to you.

Propane company preferences

“For our retail side, we like Facebook because it reaches a large, diverse audience, and the ability to boost ads is a nice feature,” says Tom May, employee development director at MFA Oil. “For our corporate side, we prefer LinkedIn because it has a great professional audience and tools to help showcase a candidate’s skills.”

Cindy Foor, director of human resources at Tri-Gas & Oil, also prefers Facebook.

“Facebook is proving to be a great tool for recruiting and sourcing candidates, and we’ve noticed an increase in people applying via our Facebook pages recently,” she says. “We especially like that Facebook allows us to target specific geographic areas because our business footprint encompasses regional markets with multiple districts of business operations.”

Some companies prefer Indeed to LinkedIn or Facebook.

“Our most recent successes are with Indeed. This has helped us reach an audience that may otherwise not be familiar with Crystal Flash or our locations,” says Pam Olsen, vice president of human resources at Crystal Flash. “Especially with the mobility of driver candidates, this site is easy for them to access and see our positions. Indeed also does a nice job of marketing their site and presents a professional image for us as the employer and to the candidates.”

Mike Hayden, propane manager at Co-Alliance, also likes Indeed.

“We’ve had a lot of success on Indeed.com, mainly because of its size and reach among job searchers,” he says.

Recruiting isn’t just about finding the best social media platform through which to post and advertise your job openings. You’ll also want to be sure your new recruiting tool easily manages those “most golden” of job candidates – referrals you receive from your current employees. The best web-recruiting systems ensure employees who refer excellent candidates are automatically given a bonus. They also make it intuitive for your employees to log onto your web-recruiting system to post a referral.

Currently, the market is flooded with more than 100 software tools to attract and manage job candidates. Here’s a list of the top 10, according to a 2017 report from FinanceOnline.com, a firm specializing in business software evaluation:

Bamboo HR (bamboohr.com)
Targeted for use by small- and medium-sized businesses, Bamboo HR offers a comprehensive system for attracting and managing job candidates online, according to FinanceOnline.com researchers. The software won FinanceOnline.com’s award for Best HR Management Software for 2016, and is known for enabling small and medium firms to attract job applicants inexpensively.

Zoho Recruit (zoho.com/recruit): This software is specifically designed for businesses with formal HR departments and features strong résumé management and interviewing tools, according to researchers. Zoho Recruit makes it a snap to attract candidates via job boards, social media and dedicated career pages. Plus, it includes a module to help onboard candidates once they’re hired. Zoho Recruit also integrates with a wide variety of in-house and third-party applicants, and is competitively priced, given its wide array of features, according to researchers.

iCIMS (icims.com): This is another comprehensive web-recruiting suite that offers separate modules for recruiting, connecting and onboarding job candidates. “Recently, we switched our applicant-tracking system to iCIMS,” May says. “We are still ironing out all the details and integration into our system, but we look forward to the instant-messaging capabilities this brings to notifying our applicants of interviews, offer letters, onboarding, etc.,” he adds. iCIMS is designed to comb through résumés submitted to your company online to find the best potential candidates based on indicators that you select. Plus, it automates your job postings to more than 300 job boards and other job-seeker hangouts on the web and enables you to quickly personalize communication with job candidates who enter your system, according to researchers.

Oracle Taleo (oracle.com/applications/taleo.html): Backed by one of the most widely respected names in computing, Taleo is specifically designed for companies with formalized HR departments that are looking for an extremely comprehensive web-recruiting toolset. Taleo is known for setting the precedent in recruitment marketing and automates virtually every facet of the online-recruitment process, according to researchers. The software is also designed to be extremely flexible: Users can easily pick and choose modules that work best for them.

Jobvite (jobvite.com): A long-established name in online recruiting, Jobvite is split into three modules – sourcing, hiring and onboarding. Its mobile hiring app is particularly strong, and the software also comes with a reporting and analytics suite, according to researchers. Jobvite can also be used to quickly build your own careers and jobs domain on your website and includes the ability to screen job applicants via video. Security is also another strong feature. Jobvite comes complete with built-in firewalls, TLS encryption, DDos data mitigation, identity management and alert notifications, according to researchers.

SmartRecruiters (smartrecruiters.com): This is probably one of the most easily customizable web-recruiting tools currently available, according to researchers. In practice, this means you should be able to easily adapt SmartRecruiters to the way you already manage your hiring.

Lever (lever.co): Like iCMS, Lever is designed to comb through résumés submitted to your company online to find the best potential candidates based on indicators that you select. There are also plenty of custom reports available, and the software can sync easily with your calendars and email system.

Recruiterbox (recruiterbox.com): This software eschews résumés and instead enables companies to design custom online questionnaires that enable them to attract the kind of employees they’re looking for, according to researchers. It broadcasts job openings to a wide array of job websites and enables everyone in a company’s HR department to easily communicate with one another about candidates using posts and attached documents.

Newton (newtonsoftware.com): Designed for firms with formalized HR departments, Newton offers users the ability to post career pages and job postings along with a seasoned kit of hiring and interviewing tools. It also helps with candidate background checks and governmental-regulation compliance related to hiring.

Greenhouse (greenhouse.io): Another program designed specifically for small- and medium-sized businesses, Greenhouse broadcasts job openings across the Internet and then enables you to manage prospective candidates with interviews, scorecards and detailed profile evaluations, according to researchers. The software is also well suited to managing a large hiring team that is looking to communicate easily and effortlessly.

Overall in the process, look for a system that is easy to use and maintain, Kale says. That may mean bypassing software imbued with every bell and whistle. In the long run, though, it’s more important that your web-recruiting system is used than awed.

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Joe Dysart is an internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan. He can be reached at 646-374-8507 or joe@joedysart.com.