“Gamification is the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.” -wiki

Forget all your recruiting challenges for a moment, and think about the future. How would recruitment ideally function?

First, you’d have a seamless process. Every candidate, active or passive, who saw your company had an open position would make their full work history, personality, aptitude, and other relevant skills/information available to you for selection purposes.

Second, the process for gathering that critical information – resume, assessment, interview – would be as easy as posting a photo online or swiping the unlock screen of an iPhone.

Third, you would have access to an unlimited, broad, and deep talent pool that touched nearly everyone qualified for the position you’re looking to fill.

Back to reality

Unfortunately, the talent search and selection process is far from this Utopian ideal. At the present, most candidates (not all) are still asked to do a huge amount of work just to get their “application” (whatever that means) available to your recruitment team.

Successful recruitment organizations – those who consistently receive far more qualified applications than they can possibly use – recognize the reality of the application process from the candidate perspective. They adopt the same tactics used by online advertisers. These best in class organizations realize that the company is paying a high advertising cost to get in front of candidates. In your case, that may be on-campus recruitment, fees for posting to job boards, or recruiter time to directly reach out to candidates.

Don’t believe me? Well, if you’re like most (non-SmartRecruiters) companies, you only get 100 applications for every thousand people who see your ad. If you were an online marketer, you would work tirelessly to improve that conversion ratio.

And what are the things preventing you from getting all 1000 people who saw your ad into your candidate pipeline? How many candidates start an application and never finish? Chances are you’re losing applicants because your process is just too damn annoying and time consuming to complete.

How games get you closer to the future of hiring

The power of games in recruitment becomes apparent in their ability to help you convert more of the people who see your job opportunity into active applicants in your pipeline. Treating candidates like customers is widely regarded by the top thinkers in recruitment as essential to ensuring that top-quality talent develops an interest in your company as an employment destination. Just like optimizing the conversion flow for a customer, you want to optimize the conversion flow for a candidate.

That’s the genius of games! If you can disguise your application and assessment process as a game, you’re much more likely to not only convert the top talent who saw your ad, but also engage candidates who would normally never consider your company. That’s the power of creating a viral loop.

At ConnectCubed, we find that candidates enjoy our games so much that they spend over 3x the required time. That’s right – they finish the assessment and come back for more! And remember, every minute they spend on your application is an opportunity to get your brand and your message front and center.

It’s amazing to see the process spread from person to person. Back in 2011, I joined our user experience team on a trip to conduct live user testing of a new game at a US college campus. In between focus groups, I wandered in to the library to see a group of students we hadn’t met with playing the new game.

Thinking I was being witty, I leaned over the shoulder of one of the students and said, “Hey, cool game you’re playing there.”

He turned his head and said, “Have you heard about this? It’s so cool, right?”

Two hours later and the game was already clear across the other side of campus. More students came pouring in throughout the day.

Additional benefits throughout the candidate pipeline

If you are using a tool like ConnectCubed, not only are your games adding to the attractiveness of your application process, but also delivering actionable insights into candidate fit for the role. This type of data not only helps you improve performance and reduce turnover, but also allows you, as a recruiter, to focus on only the most promising candidates in your pipeline.

If you use games in your application and assessment process, there will be a statistically significant boost in employer brand. It’s a fast and easy way to differentiate your company from the competition. If you’re fighting for talent, you want to put your company’s best face forward. Candidates who are given a game as part of their application process come into interviews with a noticeably higher opinion of the interviewing firm as an innovative and forward thinking place to work.

Isn’t that something we all want?

Doing the right thing

Recruiting is hard. It’s hard to manage overflows of applicants, and it’s hard to seek out top talent in tight labor markets. Sometimes, that means we cut corners. We let our technology take over the human element of building strong relationships with candidates who ultimately become our colleagues.

If the candidate is willing to share part of his or her day with our organizations, we owe it to him or her to make the process as easy and efficient and fun as possible. Through games, we can do that. We can get closer to the ideal of a seamless application process that provides a deep and broad talent pool, with meaningful data on each applicant.

It’s good business sense. And it’s the right thing to do.

 
Michael Tanenbaum is CEO of ConnectCubed. Using the power of big data, ConnectCubed utilizes epistemic gaming technology and psychometric testing to create next-generation pre-employment screening tests.

Meet Mike June 26 in SF at Smartup: Art & Science of Talent Assessment. More on information on the new SmartRecruiters Assessment Center.

Keep it Short

Like a resume, a cover letter should not be more than one page.  But I would also advise that you keep it to three-quarters of a page, consisting of three paragraphs.  The first paragraph is used to introduce yourself to the recruiter.  The second paragraph is used to talk about your background and why you want to work for the company.  The last paragraph should be used to wrap your letter up and ask for that interview.

Remember, the purpose of a cover letter is not to express how great your writing skills are. The purpose of the cover letter is to highlight your achievements and explain why you are the best candidate for the job and therefore should get an interview.

Grab the Recruiter’s Attention

If your cover letter doesn’t grab the recruiter’s attention immediately, then your cover letter is a waste of time—both yours and the recruiter’s.  Recruiters are very busy and do not have time to look through everything.  For that reason, you need a strong hook to instantly capture the recruiter’s attention.  Come out strong and get right to the point.  You may think you are quite the wordsmith by being overly verbose—but being too wordy can actually have a negative impact on you getting that job.  To get the recruiter’s attention, make sure your first few sentences count and get right to the meat.

A great way to get a recruiter’s instant attention is to use numbers in the first two paragraphs.  This is a good idea for two reasons.  First, numbers will automatically jump out because the vast majority of cover letters consist of only words.  Second, numbers will give the recruiter a baseline in which to judge your past performance.  For instance, if you led your division in revenue generated—you can tell the recruiter exactly how much you made your previous employer by putting a dollar amount on it.  If the number is especially impressive, you can also try to bold or italicize it.

Personalize the Cover Letter

Cover letters, like resumes, should not be one-size-fits-all.  Instead, you need to personalize and cater each and every single cover letter you send out. With a cover letter, you should express why you specifically want to work for the company.  The goal of recruiters is not to just hire the smartest and most qualified candidates. The goal of the recruiter is to also hire great people who sincerely want to work for the company and will stay for the long haul.  Remember attrition costs the company money.

To explain why you want to work for them, it is important to go into specifics—the more specific the reason is, the more impressed the recruiter will be.  For instance, if you are a computer engineer and want to work for a company that has a unique SaaS (software as a service) platform in the pipeline, it may be advantageous to talk about that product and why you are the perfect candidate to work on it.

Another great way to personalize a cover letter is to do a little digging on the recruiter.  You can do this by viewing the recruiter’s LinkedIn profile, following the hiring manager on Twitter, or even their profile on the company page.  Use that personal knowledge to cater the cover letter to their taste.

Sell Yourself

In addition to personalizing your cover letter, you should also get in the mindset of a salesman when writing your cover letter.  After all, a cover letter is just a fancy way of saying “sales letter.”  But like any good salesperson, you should sell benefits, not features.  So don’t just talk about your fancy accolades.  Talk about what you can do for them and how the company can benefit from hiring you.

Grammar and Spelling Matter

Spelling and grammar is the easiest thing to get right on a cover letter.  To do so, just keep it as simple as possible (remember KISS).  If you are especially wordy, you may feel inclined to use colons and semicolons.  But keep in mind that the use of these two punctuation marks can backfire as the recruiter may disagree on the usage of these two controversial punctuation marks.  So in short, just keep your sentences short and sweet and you will have already won half the battle.

Call to Action

Every great cover letter will have a call to action.  A call to action can be as simple as nudging the recruiter to call you.  The call to action should be in the last paragraph and should specifically ask for the interview.  The last paragraph should also mention the various ways the recruiter can get in touch with you.  Also, be sure to mention a specific time that you will follow up with the recruiter to ensure that everything is going along as planned.  Some applicants don’t follow up as they perceive following up as a tactic for the desperate.  But it really isn’t.  The follow up shows the recruiter that you are serious about the job application and want the job.  But of course, there is a fine line between following up and stalking.  Following up once or twice is polite and beneficial.  Calling them every other day is just asking for a rejection.

Felix Tarcomnicu is the founder of ResumeOK.com. There he writes articles for job seekers and also resume templates. He has recently written the ultimate guide for job interview questions. 

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates and make the right hires.

People who come on board with us have to own their work, and have the initiative to bring new ideas and projects to life. We work in a collaborative environment where you can get feedback and push ideas forward. This trait is expected and encouraged across the company, from interns to founders. We also have amazing work spaces that are filled with everything our team needs to feel inspired and productive. Our spaces are filled with billiard and fussball tables, window gardens, the best coffee, and we host tech meetups to keep us on top of our game, and highly connected to the community. Propertybase is a place people look forward to spending a majority of their day, and we like to make it easy to love your work.

2. What challenges were you facing in finding the talent you were looking for?

A big recruiting challenge is the corporate mindset. We’ve all worked in corporate organizations at one point or another, so we understand how the hierarchical system works. However, some candidates are brainwashed into believing they shouldn’t rock the boat, because they are taught not to. Finding candidates with an entrepreneurial outlook, as well as the skills and experience to drive Propertybase forward is challenging, but not impossible.

3. How did you come across SmartRecruiters and what was your first impression?

We had been looking for a solution for quite some time. Our company was at a crucial time when we needed to create a world class team… Fast! We were looking for a system that made publishing jobs to multiple platforms easy. In addition, we wanted to have a SaaS Solution that made responding to applicants efficient, without creating a complex HR infrastructure.

Bigger platforms couldn’t match our wish list, so we started researching startups, and that’s how we came across SmartRecruiters. We were extremely impressed with how they were going about changing the recruitment space, and completely related to the product vision. We’ve been sold ever since.

4. Max, you’ve given the team a lot of great feedback, what has impressed you with the growth of the product?

The SmartRecruiters team was really open to our feedback, and actually delivered solutions to problems the platform had in the early days. I could tell that the product management team were listening to customers, and continually improving the application. SmartRecruiters had a great customer service ethic, and have developed their product into a first-class application that simply gets better and better all the time.

5. How many hires have you made through SmartRecruiters? 

Almost every single hire, over 2-3 offices, so approx. 30 hires….  So we’re very happy! Without SmartRecruiters we couldn’t have sifted through to real talent, which is like finding a needle in a haystack. Candidates are sometimes shocked at how quickly we get back to them. SmartRecruiters speeds up our response times, and shows where the blockers are in the process. This makes everyone involved accountable to giving an answer, scheduling the interview, and getting the candidate on board. It really just keeps everyone organised in the very collaborative HR process we have here at Propertybase.

6. What would you tell the next business about the hiring platform?

The key things we would say about SmartRecruiters is that it’s easy-to-use, has super fast setup, open positions are published to all major platforms, within minutes, and it speeds up the sharing of applications with your team and getting feedback.

Overall, the SmartRecruiters platform really shortens the hiring process, which is extremely important. Talented people are hard to find, and they don’t want to wait forever.

Max-Michael Mayer is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Propertybase – The Real Estate Desktop™, the leading Real Estate solution built entirely on the Force.com “software as a service” platform.

Check out the Career Opportunities at Propertybase!

1) Integration is Key: To attract the best candidates the key for us was to seamlessly integrate our social recruiting strategy into our current content marketing strategy which focuses on beautiful images and highly shareable content.  It’s important to blend our recruiting posts in with our existing content for a positive and cohesive brand message for both potential candidates and our customers.

2) Customize Your Message: Our talented designer created a beautiful image that we knew would appeal to our recruiting target –  beauty lovers and industry professionals. Since at any given time we are recruiting for several different positions, we kept the message simple and direct while providing a link that referred interested candidates to more detailed information. Keeping the message simple, pretty and concise helps the post be more “shareable” and less like a fussy ad. We had several fans share our recruiting image with comments like, “Great opportunity for Esthetic graduates!” We couldn’t have asked for a better genuine endorsement!

3) Timing is Everything: As with all posts in the social media world, there is a fine line between providing regular and relevant content and bombarding followers with posts that can be seen as spam. Since “We’re Hiring” posts are relevant to just a small portion of our followers, they can teeter on the edge of being spam-like to the majority. So instead of posting on our organization’s fan page every time there is a new opening, we plan our recruiting posts once a month. This keeps our followers engaged and loving our content and leaves the daily posting of openings to relevant job sites managed by our Corporate Recruiter.

By implementing these strategies we’ve seen a surge in qualified applicants while maintaining our loyal social media fan base and staying true to our brand. Using social media for recruiting has helped attract candidates who are already passionate about what it is that we do which can make a world of difference when it comes to finding the right match.

Amy Foster is Digital Community Coordinator (Digital Commerce & Media) at gloProfessional, a cosmetics and skincare company dedicated to providing our customers with what we call beauty with a higher purpose.

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates and make the right hires.

These are the Top 8 Career Handles doing it right:

8. @AmtrackCareers wants you to learn more about their company than just open jobs. If you haven’t thought about riding with Amtrak before, you will now.

7. @MicrosoftCareers not only shares their #hotjobs but give a lesson in employer branding by showcasing current employees.

6. @NPRJobs knows they want candidates ready to be on the frontlines of the news. Their career handle tells applicants exactly what to expect.