This October, the Future of Sourcing Awards will celebrate organizations and individuals that have shown innovation, leadership and transformation in categories that are critical to the sourcing industry. Interviews with the finalists provide helpful insight about their projects, the problem they sought to solve and the impact to their organizations.
Can you outline why your team embarked on this project and the problem that needed to be solved?
Our objective in introducing the WorkLLama AI-driven, talent acquisition and talent engagement suite to the market was to help our customers deliver a candidate experience that is more personalized for every individual in their talent ecosystem including full-time applicants, contractors, freelancers, independent consultants, and everything in between. Candidates are customers, and we believe that if companies approach talent acquisition with a sense of empathy for the candidate with the same level of focus as they do their customers, they will gain a huge competitive advantage in the war for talent.
How were things done originally and what was the inspiration to innovate the process?
When we consider talent attraction and engagement practices, traditionally there have been very fragmented approaches across the different categories of workers (full-time vs contractor vs freelancers vs others). Full-time talent attraction typically leverages several different systems which leads to a very time consuming and clunky process to apply for a job. After candidates apply, it’s often a black hole until they receive a rejection email some weeks later (if at all). Organizations have always relied on staffing agencies to find them contingent talent with a very hands-off approach and little concern for candidate engagement with the organization.
Because of the pandemic and shifts in the workforce, organizations learned the importance of empathy and candidates have learned they have an incredible number of choices when it comes to how and for who they will work. Today, candidates expect, and deserve, an incredible, personalized experience from the very first interaction with a company to application to hiring to re-engagement.
What KPIs did you use to measure success for this project? (For example: performance, customer satisfaction, revenue, sales or relevant financial gains?)
Our goals for this project were focused on hiring companies and the candidates as well (which we consider to both be our customers). A powerful solution was needed that helped companies connect with and remain engaged with high quality talent to serve their hiring needs, while also delivering a stellar experience to the candidates.
Three features made the goals a reality:
- Sofi, AI-driven bot: With Sofi, candidate profiles can be completed with a few simple clicks, demonstrating to candidates that we value their time. If a candidate needs additional assistance, Sofi transfers them to a live human to chat, answer questions, and eliminate obstacles in the process.
- Talent marketing: Companies can market to talent with the same kind of automated workflows their marketing teams use to connect with customers. The workflows provide check-ins to solicit feedback such as “How was your first day?” “How would you rate your experience?” and “Would you recommend our company (NPS)? Messages are text, email, push notifications.
- Crowdsourced referral engine: Referral sources are not limited to existing employees. Our referral engine is multi-tiered, allowing anyone in the company’s ecosystem to be referrers.
How do you plan to ensure that the new model remains relevant and adapts to the future needs of the market?
All technology must be continually enhanced by learning from customers and the talent that uses the technology. AI is a critical component of the WorkLLama platform, so it’s continually learning from user activity, including candidate actions within the platform. As the market shifts and companies and candidates require new functionality, we will review and assess what makes the most sense from an investment and innovation perspective.
What advice do you have for those who may want to implement this innovative approach in their own organizations?
The hiring strategies of the organizations have been completely transformed by leveraging the innovative technology platform. What took weeks or months to find and engage great talent is now days or even hours. What was challenging for candidates to engage with hiring companies is now quick and easy as seen in the number of successful engagements. To get started, you just need the desire to improve upon the processes that aren’t working for you or your prospective talent. Ensure you have a small group of stakeholders committed to making this change and, of course, call WorkLLama to get started. We do the heavy lifting, so the commitment on the part of our customers is minimal. As long as you’re passionate about creating a valuable experience for your workers, you can leave the rest to us.
What can you share that other companies can take as a “lesson learned” about talent management from your project?
Talent marketing and management focuses on the entire candidate lifecycle, providing a personalized candidate experience from attraction to re-engagement. We hope to create an experience we’d want to have if we were applying for a role. The goal is to follow the principles eCommerce companies use to attract customers, instead focusing on attracting the right candidates and engaging with them every step of the way.
The WorkLLama platform has been able to help one of our clients achieve the following:
- Increase candidates sourced via referrals by 300%
- Reduce time to hire by 66%
- Deliver candidates who are 9x more likely to be hired than candidates from other sourcing channels
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