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3 ways to reach more people when hiring for mining and construction

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One of the biggest recruitment dilemmas many recruiters in the mining industry face is reaching the best people. Job boards like SEEK and Indeed are becoming a less effective way of recruiting for this industry. Why? Your ideal candidates are just not looking on the sites anymore… instead, the job offers are being delivered directly to them!

Similarly, for both construction and mining, the skills shortage is having a real impact, making it harder than ever to attract the best talent. So, if you’re recruiting for these industries, it’s crucial for you to understand the best way to attract and convert passive candidates. 

Passive candidates, or continuous candidates, are candidates who are not actively looking for a new role. This means that they are employed, enjoy their current work or lack the time to search for new opportunities. 

However, passive candidates may investigate the right opportunity if it arises, so it is important to create that opportunity and persuade the candidate to pursue it further.

Here are 3 passive recruitment techniques you can use to find the best people in mining and construction. 

Headhunting and digital headhunting

Headhunting and its digital counterpart is a targeted search for talent who are currently employed. These passive candidates may not be actively looking for a new position, but would be happy to move if the right opportunity arose.  

Headhunting is a particularly successful method of sourcing prospective employees with a niche skill – which may be just what you need in mining and construction!  

Clever advertising & standing out from the crowd

Typical recruitment advertisements can be completely missed or ignored by the passive candidates you’re looking to target. Create exciting and relatable recruitment advertisements that really speak to your demographic to attract attention and promote click-throughs that convert applications. 

Use a careers video or employee profile story as a way to promote your organisation’s ethos and culture. Establish an attractive careers page on your website with images of your real employees, as research reveals candidates are highly likely to investigate your employer brand and their careers page before applying. 

Utilise social media to promote brand awareness

Using social media as an advertising tool, you can advertise your vacancy to the right demographic and tailor it to reach those who like relevant pages and capture or recapture their attention. Advertisements are more likely to capture attention if it is related to your target’s personal interests.

For example, using Facebook advertising, you can search for potential candidates in a specific location, within a specific industry, based on interests and more to really target your recruitment advertisement. 

Our recruitment advertising team are experts in passive candidate attraction, headhunting, writing effective recruitment advertisements and social media advertisement targeting. For the best chance to fill your mining or construction vacancy, call us on 1300 366 573 or email us at info@employmentoffice.com.au.

Pay transparency: Can it help you attract and retain sales and retail employees?

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Salaries have always been a confidential aspect of the corporate world, but the latest research from LinkedIn suggests that this is changing.

In recent years, there has been a push to ensure glass ceilings are broken when it comes to gender and racial wage gaps. Many major corporations are facing this by becoming more transparent about the salaries of their highest earners, listing their roles and their gender identifications. LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report states that this trend has extended into more organisations; employees and candidates alike are now looking for better transparency when it comes to salaries.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean you need to publish exactly what your employees earn individually. It could be a matter of presenting titles or roles and giving a salary range. For example, ‘entry-level sales roles; base salary of $45-50,000 per annum with performance bonus’.

How salary transparency can benefit your organisation

In the Global Talent Trends report, Anil Dash (CEO of Glitch) is quoted: ‘Transparency isn’t the goal. The goal is paying everyone fairly, and transparency forces us to do that’. While this may  be a difficult subject to broach for current employees, there are some major benefits to being transparent within your organisation.

  1. Transparency builds trust, many may assume they are being underpaid for their efforts and become dissatisfied with their roles. You’ll not only retain employees by being clear about the salaries of their peers and senior employees, but you’ll earn their trust that you are paying them a fair salary.
  2. Employees that are on the lower end of the salary range will be encouraged to discuss ways in which they can improve and head towards the upper end of the salary range. These may be difficult discussions but encouraging employees to ‘prove their worth’ to achieve that pay rise will improve productivity.
  3. Being transparent addresses and avoids pay gaps within your business, especially where pay becomes more variable and negotiable. As Dash states, being transparent about salaries encourages the fair and equal pay. Your team can be sure that your company is a breaker of glass ceilings thanks to the open narrative regarding their pay.

While there are negatives to becoming more transparent about pay too, once you navigate the initial storm of pay discussions, disputes and upset; encouraging an open discourse in regard to pay will become more positive. It will both increase trust in your organisation and productivity in your employees.

Why pay transparency can help with candidate attraction for sales roles

According to a Glassdoor study, 67% of active job seekers look for salary in job adverts.  According to Julie Coucoules, Glassdoor’s Global Head of Talent Acquisition, ‘Job seekers crave transparency on pay, not only to make an initial judgment about whether to consider applying for a job, but also to assess if an employer holds long-term potential for them.’

It is important to be clear when it comes to pay too. We advise being clear as to the whole package. Instead of only advertising the on target earnings for that role, be clear on what the base pay is, plus their superannuation plus the possible OTE.

For example, ‘$90,000 OTE’ is going get you more ad views but will be less productive than ‘base pay of $45,000 per annum, plus $5,000 superannuation and a variable monthly performance bonus with possible OTE of $90,000’. Not only will the full package be clearer for candidates and weed out irrelevant talent; the trust that candidate has in your organisation will increase as they understand the full pay package before applying to your position.

Pay Transparency contributing to Employee Satisfaction and retention

Pay transparency is becoming more common across many organisations, in 2018, PayScale reported it’s ‘Heroes’ of pay transparency. Aldi came in at the top on the list of organisations identified as having a ‘highly transparent pay process by their own employees’. What’s more, in order to make the list ‘organizations had to have at least forty percent of their surveyed employees reporting high pay transparency’. Aldi came in with 85% of their employees being satisfied.

If an employee is satisfied with their role and pay, the theory is that they’ll remain in their role and continue to work hard for the organisation. Also, encouraging an open discourse in salary can increase trust in the organisation. If you haven’t got anything to hide, why keep it so secretive?

The level of pay transparency you give is completely up to you and what suits your organisation, but there is proof that being transparent can increase employee trust and retention and attract more appropriate talent to your job advertisement.

Need expert candidate attraction advice?

Speak to a member of our recruitment advertising team for expert advice on attracting the right people to your role. You can get in touch on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.

3 SEO tips to boost candidate applications to your job advertisement

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Do you think about SEO strategies to boost candidate applications? You should be, here’s why.

With so many organisations competing for the best talent, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an easy way to gain a competitive edge. The ultimate goal for many organisation’s marketing strategy is to rank on the Google’s Page One for their keywords. Imagine how many more applications you’d receive if your job advertisement hits the top of a job board or careers page ranked on Google’s first page as candidates search for a role.

Imagine…

You’re hiring for a Marketing Manager for your business based in North Brisbane. A candidate is searching for this exact role and location on Seek. Your job advertisement appears on Seek’s first page and immediately grabs their attention. They click the link through to your advertisement and search for your website to read more about the company. They submit an application and they’re an ideal fit for your organisation.

What a great result.

The truth is, they may not have had the patience and continue searching to find you if you hadn’t hit the top page in their search query.

In today’s candidate-driven market, the easier it is for candidates to find you, the better edge you’ll gain over your talent competitors.

How does SEO help you to successfully reach the best talent?

Job seekers will be able to see your vacancies by simply searching for a role or a keyword on Google or job boards. If you want to master SEO for this purpose, you’ll need to utilise Google and job boards yourself. The Goliaths of the recruitment world will probably be paying for their ads to be seen first, but if you rank organically, this can look more authentic to your audience.

Job board algorithms are very similar to Google and you should approach the job advertisement copy for SEO in the same way you would for Google optimisation. Google ranks pages that it considers to be valuable based on particular key points. See a few tips below to help you optimise your job advertisement and to improve organic ranking on both Google and job boards.

3 SEO tips to get the most out of your job advertisement

1.     Keywords, keywords, keywords

Similar to writing a blog post or website copy, when writing your job advertisement for SEO, think about the keywords you’re using. The main keywords to consider in this case are the job title, location and popular work benefits (such as ‘flexible working’).

Keep these keywords as accurate and relevant as possible. So, for the example above, your keywords would be: ‘Marketing Manager’ and ‘North Brisbane’.

Try researching similar roles too to check out the top results – that way, you can determine what terms your competitors are using to make their advertisements rank. In assessing high-ranking, similar advertisements, pay close attention to the webpage title, meta-description, URL slug and the first few lines of text.

Bonus Tip: Once you’ve identified what keywords you’ll need to include in your copy, use a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner to help with optimisation.

2.     Be accurate and clear

Being accurate and clear is particularly important. Keywords will help you rank, but search engines and job board algorithms are clever and read your content to ensure it is relevant to the keywords you’re using. Don’t over-kill it on the keyword front; a selection of keywords is adequate.

Incorporate those keywords and write an accurate job description with your ideal candidate in mind. The algorithms will like your copy if it is clear, explanatory and precise. If it’s too vague, all your keyword research will go down the drain as the search engines won’t understand your copy.

3.     Increase traffic, reduce bounce rate

SEO algorithms are clever; they rank based on usefulness and relevance. Traffic heading to your page with a low bounce rate is a big tick, as it shows your page to be useful, and should therefore cause it to rank better.

How do you achieve this?

  • Ensure your advertisement is as accessible to those who are viewing it on their smartphones and tablets as it is for desktop. Giving candidates the ability to read your advertisement on a mobile device will reduce your bounce rates and prove it’s worth.
  • Optimise your advertisement for sharing. By ensuring your link is optimised for people in your organisation (and potential candidates) to share on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, you’ll be able to drive more traffic to the page.
  • Consider placing links within your advertisement. For example; a link to your organisations ‘About Us’ page on your website and social media pages. If candidates are able to interact with your webpage, Google and the job boards see it as useful.

Need some help optimising your job advertisement for search engines?

Find out more information about Employment Office’s Recruitment Advertising services. Our team are experts in writing the copy for and strategically implementing your job advertisement. For more information on how our experts can help you reach the best talent available, call us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.

Use gender-neutral language in your job advertisement to attract more women in construction, engineering and STEM

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When it comes to STEM professions, it is clear that in Australia, women are largely underrepresented. According to a study by Australia’s Chief Scientist released in 2016, only 14% of Australian engineers are women and only 16% of Australia’s STEM qualified people are female. So, when there’s a national shortage of women in STEM, how can you attract more females to your workforce?

While there are lots of possible answers to this, one of the solutions is to use gender-neutral language. This seems straightforward but can come with numerous, confronting issues to tackle; including battling with our unconscious bias. Using gender-neutral language in your job advert can help you attract more women to your STEM vacancy without deterring the men who would also be equally as qualified for the role.

What is gender-neutral language?

Gender-neutral language (also referred to as gender-inclusive language), is dialect that avoids bias towards a particular social gender. A basic example of this is the move from using the term ‘two-man job’ which immediately infers a male bias, to the term ‘two-person job’ which does not associate a specific gender.

While the example above uses an obviously gendered term, this article will mainly refer to words and phrases that are gender-coded.

What is gender-coded language?

Gender-coded language is when a word has undertones that are biased towards a specific gender. You could be unconsciously using these terms within your job advert, as they are not overtly obvious in their gender association.

A research paper, Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2011, Vol 101(1), p109-28), written by Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen, and Aaron C. Kay; discussed how using gender-biased language (whether unconsciously or not) can consequently affect who will apply to your job vacancy. Their paper identified the words used and how they could attract or detract candidates.

Identifying words that are gender-coded can be difficult; especially since the most natural or appropriate word choices may be coded, such as; lead, connect, independent and cooperative.

Totaljobs, the UK’s largest hiring platform, did some research into the most commonly used gender-coded words in UK job descriptions and here’s what they found;

Most commonly used male-gendered words in job descriptions:

  • Lead (70,539 mentions)
  • Analyse (35,339)
  • Competitive (23,079)
  • Active (20,041)
  • Confident (13,841)

Most commonly used female-gendered words in job descriptions:

  • Support (83,095)
  • Responsible (64,909)
  • Understanding (29,638)
  • Dependable (16,979)
  • Committed (13,129)

Through a total of 77,000 job ads, there averaged a gender-bias of 6 words per ad.

Source: https://blog.totaljobs.com/gender-bias

Does this mean to say women are not leaders or analytical (etc)?

It categorically does not!! Women can absolutely be leaders, analytical, confident (etc); this research indicates that women are more hesitant when applying for roles that include these words in the description. When a job ad has a bias towards masculine coded language, women may feel (even on an unconscious level) that they are not eligible for the role and so do not apply.

Why is it imperative that this changes?

Totaljob’s research indicates ‘a distinct male-bias in adverts for senior positions, while supporting roles were worded with feminine coded words.’ By becoming more aware of this unconscious biased, we can encourage more women to apply for these more senior roles and encourage more women into male-dominated careers (without deterring the men who are also capable and qualified); moving towards a better gender balance and equality in the work place as a whole.

Not only this, but research on issue this in the USA indicates that the job ads that were gender neutral received 42% more responses than those that were biased. Wouldn’t it be amazing, if nearly double the talent were applying to every job ad you posted?

How do you tackle unconscious gender-bias in job ads?

The way we solve this as HR professionals is by ensuring we use gender-neutral terms as much as possible; where not possible, we ensure there is an equal balance of these words to avoid our ad being heavily directed towards one gender.

As Gaucher, Friesen and Kay state ‘The results were clear: Women were more interested in male-dominated careers when the advertisements were unbiased, making reference to both men and women as candidates, than when the advertisements made reference only to men’; so, to attract more women to the male-dominated STEM roles, we must ensure our ads are as unbiased as possible. It’s as simple as that.

Need some further help and clarification?

Our recruitment advertising team are experts in candidate attraction and copywriting job advertisements. Discuss your recruitment advertising needs today by calling us on 1300 366 573 or email us at info@employmentoffice.com.au.

If you’ve already written your job advert and you aren’t sure whether you have unconsciously used gender-coded terms, Totaljobs have a Gender Bias Decoder, where you can paste your copy and identify the gendered words you may have missed.

We also have a small cheat sheet below to help you find a more appropriate word or phrase.

Gender-coded phrase Alternative phrase
Someone who can connect well with customers (Fem) Someone who can provide great customer service
Strong communication skills (Masc) Exceptional communication skills
Happy working in a competitive atmosphere (Masc) Motivated by high targets
A responsible and sympathetic individual (Fem) A reliable and attentive person
Our dominant ambition is… (Masc) We have a principal goal to…
Join our community of… (Fem) Join our team of…
Able to act autonomously and on impulse where necessary (Masc) Able to think on their feet where necessary
Ready to challenge the norm (Masc) Can think outside the box
We are looking for someone dependable (Fem) We are looking for a dedicated individual

 

Comprehensive candidate attraction strategies have gone from being a ‘nice to have’ to a necessity – here’s why.

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In a candidate driven market, finding and securing the best talent for your business is an ongoing challenge and frustration for many Australian organisations.

Gone are the days when placing one ad on a job board was enough to get results. Savvy businesses are now diving into a variety of attraction channels to secure their next superstars.

Why use multiple channels to attract candidates when you can simply place a single job ad? The answer lies in the makeup of today’s talent market. What used to be black and white (i.e. you were either looking for a job or not) has now become an ever-increasing grey area – something we refer to as a scale of continuous candidates.

These days, most candidates can be considered continuous; that is, they’re either actively applying for new jobs, or are at the very least open to the idea of a career change. To ensure you find your ideal next hire, you need to consider who you’re targeting and where they sit in the continuous candidate continuum (say that 5 times fast!). Further to this, it’s crucial to understand which attraction channels are going to get you the recruitment results you need.

Below is a high-level breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of using job boards vs. proactive attraction strategies – keep these in mind when designing your next recruitment strategy.

The advantages of using job boards:

  • Your vacancy is visible to an audience who are both engaged and open to discussion about new opportunities.
  • Candidates searching for work regularly online are generally either immediately available or ready to commence within a reasonably short timeframe.
  • You don’t have to work as hard to get in front of a high volume of job seekers – post a few well-placed job ads, some great copy and candidates will come!

The disadvantages of job board advertising:

  • You’re competing for the attention of candidates actively looking for a new role. It’s rare the buck will stop with your vacancy. As such, if they have applied for your position, chances are they’ve applied for multiple others as well (meaning you need to move quickly with your recruitment process if you have a chance of securing them).
  • Candidates actively searching for work have generally already left their previous job, or are looking to leave their current role with some sense of urgency. This can potentially create a situation in which candidates are accepting new positions that are not necessarily the best fit (for them OR your organisation), but rather a means to get them out of their current role. This is not good for either party and can lead to problems with performance and retention.

The advantages of proactive attraction methods: 

  • Making an effort to proactively seek potential candidates through means other than job board advertising ensures you have less competition from other organisations or recruitment agencies trying to secure them.
  • You’re likely going to find a higher calibre of candidates by getting in touch with people who are currently employed. They have no trouble landing and keeping a role, so it’s all about presenting them with an enticing new career opportunity to consider.
  • Singling out someone you’re reaching out to as THE PERSON you need for your role means they are more likely to feel a stronger sense of being truly needed and wanted by your organisation. This often leads to increased employee loyalty, a strong work ethic and stronger retention.
  • Motivations for joining your organisation from these types of candidates are more honest. You found them, not the other way around – they have no reason to lie on their resume and if they do move it is more likely to be for genuine career reasons rather than a need to leave a current situation.

The disadvantages of using proactive attraction methods:

  • As mentioned above, most of these people already hold positions (and are likely great at them since you’ve sought them out!), which means you will need to work harder to get them to make the move to your organisation.
  • It can be tricky to find who you’re after. You know who you want, but where do you look for them?
  • Searching for passive candidates is time consuming. For many Hiring Managers and HR professionals, recruitment is only a small component of their larger role. Finding the time to scroll through databases and online channels to find people can be quite overwhelming.

So – with all this in mind, what type of attraction channels should you focus on for your next job opening? The answer is BOTH.

Covering your bases and having an advertising strategy that is targeted to reach candidates from different talent pools within the continuous market will give you the best possible chance of success for your next vacancy.

The Recruitment Advertising team at Employment Office are experts in candidate attraction. Our specialists will partner with you to put together a comprehensive strategy to give your next vacancy the best chance of being seen by the right people, across multiple candidate pools.

Want to know more? Give us a call today on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au to see how we can help.