Its 7:15 on a Saturday morning. The sun rises, casting light on the freshly fallen snow. What am I doing awake? Why am I not taking advantage of the weekend and catching up on sleep that Ive lost during the week? Oh, thats right: I have a Personal Development Module at 9am sharp, at the UofL College of Business. Its basically a 7.5-hour-long class that takes up my entire Saturday, and believe it or not I dont always look forward to it.
However, on this particular morning, I found myself excited to be making the trip down to UofL during my weekend. The guest speakers at this particular PDM included top-level executives from Papa Johns and Wal-Mart. Im a big fan of both companies. And being leaders in their industry, I was very interested to see how they planned to innovate in the coming years. I grabbed my cup of Quills coffee (lots of good coffee in Louisville, but its my favorite), found a seat, and waited for the presentation to begin.
This particular PDM was centered on Ethics, both in the workplace and in the environment. Papa Johns is concentrating on improving internal processes, while Wal-Mart is striving to be more responsible in the environment. I was particularly intrigued by Papa Johns presentation, as Human Resources has been an area of interest for me; I even took HR electives during my undergraduate studies. Papa Johns has always famously been about Better Ingredients and Better Pizza, but in the future they want to be know for Better People as well. They are renewing their focus on investing in their workforce to ensure that each Papa Johns employee is equipped for success. They also stressed the importance of accountability and hard worktwo attributes that any recruiter would find valuable. So how exactly do companies find these people, and whats the most effective way to get them to stay with their company?
For businesses, both Recruiting and Talent Acquisition are saddled with challenges that are fairly new to the world of HR. Why? Because the job seekers themselves have changed, significantly. Theyre using new methods to look for jobs, and are moving away from traditional methods such as searching online job boards or the Sunday paper. Internal applicants want to apply for other jobs within their organizations, but are hesitant to search for those new jobs while using their work computers; email open-rates continue to fall, limiting effectiveness of those campaigns; many applicants can be understandably hesitant to give out their mobile numbers to recruiters; and many still become frustrated by having to filter through a bombardment of job postings listed on company websites, only to apply for jobs that may already be filled. On the business side, Recruiters struggle to keep track of applicants after they have applied for jobs that they did not get, and companies usually pay exorbitant amounts for referrals and third-party tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter.
These types of HR challenges are common across most medium- to large-sized organizations. At the end of the day, the goal of any HR professional can be reduced to three main objectives: Hire, Train, and Retain the right people. Emphasis on the right people. But with the workforce being so fragmented, and more users than ever seeking out jobs on their mobile devices, how will recruiters stay ahead of the curve and get the right people into the right position at their company?
At Interapt, one of our main goals is to create strategic partnerships with businesses, discover pain points in their business processes, and then create unique solutions for them that make business sense. As you might expect, HR and Recruiting/Talent Acquisition is one of the business areas that we are focusing on. We have worked with multiple Fortune 1000 companies to discuss the pain points mentioned above, and are confident that the mobile solution we have created addresses all of them.
Interapts Talent Community App creates a pool of talent for recruiters to draw from again and again. It combines social media sharing, live chat between recruiters and applicants, targeted push notifications for job openings, and a mobile-optimized job application process. This allows companies to quickly identify candidates, reduce time to hire, and reduce costs associated with referrals and job boards.
We proudly revealed this solution at the Louisville Society of Human Resource Managements Chapter Meeting on March 11. Were excited to be a part of the growing Louisville business community, seeking to innovate and partner with local businesses and provide mobile solutions that help their teams reach their goals. If you would like more information about the Interapt Talent Community App, feel free to reach out to Aaron Rosenberg, our Director of Business Development, at arosenberg@interapthq.com.