Survey Shows Hiring is Broken; SmartRecruiters Releases New Hiring Platform for the Social Enterprise

SmartRecruiters marks second anniversary with more than 20,000 customers and 100,000 jobs created

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SmartRecruiters, the leading recruitment platform for the social enterprise, today marked its two-year anniversary with the announcement of its latest product release designed to make hiring easy for everyone. This new version, which marks a paradigm shift in the consumerization of recruiting technology, addresses the struggles that exist for job seekers and job creators in today’s hiring process. The experiences of both groups are captured in the findings of a new survey also announced today. According to the survey¹, finding the right candidate is so difficult that more than half (52%) of employers looking to fill a job simply give up. Other survey findings include:

“Talented employees are the life blood of our business”

• Finding the right candidate takes too long: 55% of respondents involved in hiring at their company reported that filling a vacant position typically takes longer than 60 days, and 43% reported that open positions aren’t filled within their required timeframe
• Employers settle for good enough: Almost half of respondents involved in hiring report settling for a candidate that was just “good enough” because finding the right candidate took too long
• Most people are unhappy with hiring: More than 60% of respondents, job-seekers and employers, said that their experience with the hiring process has been less than positive
• Inefficient hiring impacts more than HR: 70% of people surveyed indicated that their company includes at least three employees in each hiring decision
• Candidates give up before applying: Almost half (46%) of respondents have chosen not to apply for a job they are interested in due to an application process that was “too lengthy or complicated”
• Candidates expect a more mobile, more social experience: Nearly half (47%) of people surveyed said they would be more likely to apply for a job if they could apply with their online social profile (such as LinkedIn or Facebook) rather than with a resume and cover letter, and 57% would be interested in applying from their mobile device if that option existed

Available now, the new SmartRecruiters has an elegant user interface that facilitates organic adoption and involvement in the hiring process by everyone in an organization. The new release also includes two key features designed to improve the hiring process: HireLoop, an intuitive social feed that uses graph technology to enable collaborative hiring, and 1-Click-Apply, a simplified candidate experience that captures the best candidates.

• HireLoop – Empowering the Social Enterprise, HireLoop is a social feed that mimics the natural behavior of users in their personal networks to provide a highly engaging, collaborative process for hiring teams. Especially important to hiring across locations, it drives voluntary adoption of hiring practices throughout an organization and also provides a real-time pulse on all hiring activities. While 70% of survey respondents reported that three or more people in their organization are involved in every hiring decision, only 24% of respondents involved in hiring decisions agreed that they “know where things stand” with a candidate following an interview. HireLoop makes hiring activities transparent and quickly improves team communication so that organizations can make the right hire faster.
• 1-Click-Apply – Offering a new standard for applying to jobs online, 1-Click-Apply allows people to express interest in a job quickly and easily by submitting their Facebook or LinkedIn profile or a resume attachment to prefill their application in seconds with relevant contact details, work experience and education history. It also allows candidates to send a quick note to the hiring manager to start a conversation about the job. This feature directly improves the employer brand and also increases the likelihood of attracting top talent and candidates who are not actively looking for a new job.

The SmartRecruiters social recruiting platform is cloud-based and free for organizations of all sizes.

“Talented employees are the life blood of our business,” said Debbie Fields, Director of HR and Enterprise Development at Boulder Imaging, a company that makes technical video equipment. “Since we started using SmartRecruiters over twelve months ago, we have been able to double our staff and save 60% on our budget, having given up professional recruiters. In addition, we’ve gone from a heavily manual process of managing recruiting efforts to a more automated one, saving us untold hours of work.”

“On average, it costs a small business more than three thousand dollars to make a hire,” said Bersin & Associates CEO Josh Bersin. “And in addition to spending money on recruiter fees and advertising, managers have to read through resumes, conduct multiple interviews, and determine a candidate’s fit. Platforms like SmartRecruiters can cost-effectively streamline this entire complex process, saving small businesses time and money.”

Since launching the beta version of its software in February 2011, SmartRecruiters has attracted more than 20,000 customers. In less than two years, those 20,000 businesses have created 100,000 jobs through the platform. “Our goal as a company is to make it easy for employers to create jobs and ultimately eradicate unemployment,” said SmartRecruiters founder and CEO Jerome Ternynck. “A hundred thousand jobs are not enough to end unemployment,” explained Ternynck, “but that’s 100,000 jobs and therefore 100,000 people who are able to find their job faster and easier thanks to our efforts. This means a lot to us.”

Resources:

• Survey results graphic
• Video interviews with SmartRecruiters customers:
  • Rowan Stanek, CEO and Founder, GoodData
  • Eric Van Delden, Recruitment and Development Director, EF – Education First
  • Debbie Fields, Director of HR and Enterprise Development, Boulder Imaging
  • Kim Vandemoortele, Owner and Co-Founder, Streets Fitness
• Screen shots of 1-Click Apply and HireLoop
• Product demo video

About SmartRecruiters

SmartRecruiters is the social recruiting platform that makes hiring easy. Leveraging the latest cloud technologies along with intuitive design, the SmartRecruiters platform gives social enterprises everything they need to post jobs, manage candidates and make the right hire. The mission of SmartRecruiters is to eradicate unemployment by removing friction in the labor market. Its 20,000+ customers have created over 100,000 jobs. Founded in 2010, SmartRecruiters is backed by Mayfield and based in San Francisco, CA. www.smartrecruiters.com

¹ The survey was conducted in August 2012 by an independent survey provider. 1100 online adults were asked about their experiences with hiring.