Hire Hacker

In today's episode, Ryan Kohler will be taking you along to one of his live sessions at a SHRM event in Orlando, FL. If you'd like to follow along with his presentation, click the link below to download the slide deck! https://www.applicantpro.com/resources-tools/Talent-Shortage-Crisis-of-Confidence.pdf?m=1And of course, if you have any questions, comments, or feedback... shoot me an email at ryankohler@applicantpro.com! 

How do we avoid generating bias when our employees are bringing in applicants? This podcast will tell you just how to avoid bias and how we can share our success. The employees take the current job openings and throw them into the world. Find out how they do this and what benefit comes from the way we have it set up. Tune in to learn!

Employee referrals have so much power. A lot of employers offer compensation or make it some kind of competition in order to improve the number of employee referrals sent their way. This podcast goes into detail on how employees aren't recruiters but they are great resources for people looking for jobs and how they go about being a great spokesperson for the company. Tune in to find out what they are doing and how you can start implementing employee referrals as well. 

Employee referrals work! We did our very own case study... and honestly, I think you would be really intrigued to find out the results. This podcast goes into great depth as to how we started, what we changed, and how the flywheel had a huge part to play in all of this. Tune in for the breakdown and results of this process!

Herd mentality has so much to do with sourcing the right applicants. Segment the market, commoditize, differentiate, maintain that profitability, and socialize. Making your offer different is going to make all the difference when it comes to drawing the right applicants in! This podcast will walk you through the steps of our to differentiate it from the others. Tune in and apply these ideas to your own model!

The most powerful and sustainable talent attraction engine for your organization is the employee referral flywheel. An effective employee referral program is something that will continually deliver high-quality hires and something that your team can constantly improve, optimize, and make changes to ensure it's producing the best possible results. A healthy sustainable employee referral program is a predictor of the overall health of your culture. This podcast explains the importance of the employee referral flywheel and how it can immensely decrease bias and increase your company's success!

Direct interest applicants are a great source for qualified, fit, eager candidates. You have to actively drive the flywheels in order to maximize the results from direct interest.  People with direct interest are looking for you specifically because they know, like, and trust you. They like your products and services, or your brand, culture, and values. Tune in to learn the three-step process to maximize those results from direct internet sources. I'll give you a hint... Manage your buy-in, understand the flywheel, and finally... run around it multiple times! Listen to the podcast to hear Ryan Kohler dive into the real details of it all.

 Let's get this breakdown started! This podcast will run you through each of the direct interest sources and help you make a roadmap for setting up a source. You will be able to get the initial momentum going to reach the point of inertia for that source. We have to expand our sourcing beyond just job boards. When we do that, we focus on what I call high power sources. Once we focus and optimize these sources, we can build flywheels that spin faster and feed themselves in the future. If we work together, we can find a constructive way to feed valuable people into each other's flywheels. You'll find the greatest flywheel success when the recruiting and marketing teams work together.

There are many powerful ways to use social media for recruiting.  Use Facebook to attract your fans and followers! While Facebook groups generally don't cost any money to post to... they do require your time, attention, and creative effort if you want to maximize your results. This is yet another reason to use a flywheel. Add that fuel and remove and reduce the friction! Tune in to learn the 5 steps to building that successful social media flywheel!

Sometimes it feels like getting the right applicants is just out of our control or that the only way to increase our applicant flow is to throw money at it. If you feel that way, Ryan Kohler has a solution for you! It's all about a power source, which is a way to generate applicants and focus on engaging people who have the highest potential to be hired. Tune in to learn about the different flywheels and sources that will help you obtain the highest quality applicants out there!

Sometimes it's time to switch it up, like... adding a different type of sourcing power into your recruiting mix. As we have learned, when it comes to sourcing applicants, it's just marketing. We start with the low-hanging fruit and then move up the tree! Once we have moved up, we have to find a way to the very top, that last rung. Listen in and hear how Ryan Kohler breaks it all down. From the sourcing issues to new sourcing ideas,  and then ending with a solution for any company! 

What do you call a hidden gem? You know... a place with great food, awesome service, friendly staff, and it feels like you belong there. But then... it just disappears. It goes out of business. You don't get to enjoy that comfortable and homey atmosphere anymore. Ryan Kohler explains why hidden gems go out of business, what causes it, how to craft your job ad to express to job seekers why they should want to work for you... and just all-around how to solve the problem!

The massive talent shortage just is not improving. I think sometimes we forget that even though it may feel like we don't have the right person or the right amount of applicants... they're still out there somewhere, just looking. Ryan Kohler lays out 5 core focuses for job board recruiting success. He goes in-depth and discusses the importance of putting out the right ad, with the right information, to the right people.

The country is opening back up and we are finding that applicant flow is not what we thought it was going to be and job boards just don't look like they used to. Needless to say, it's worth figuring it out. How do you stand against your competitors? Understand what your competitors have to offer and use that to add to your job board strategy. The goal? figure out how far off you are from your competitors and get to work!

It's not that qualified job seekers don't exist... it's that they're currently employed with your competitor. First, it's important to make sure that you have the right requirements listed. Second, it needs to be enticing. Focus on where the job seekers are right now and ask the questions. What is it about where they are that makes it more compelling than what you can offer them? What can you offer them that will be a solution to the frustrations they are currently experiencing? Use these tips to attract that talent to your open positions.

Everyone is still struggling with sourcing applicants. We have found that the most effective way to better your sourcing efforts is to focus on your job ad. So... let's learn how to write an engaging job ad! The most important factor in all of this is to refrain from letting the job ad turn into a job description. If you follow the 6 elements that I have laid out for you in this podcast, you'll see an increase in applicant flow from 50-300%. Now, let's create that job ad! 

Great marketing starts with content and great content comes from knowing your target. You might think your best hires fit all the job requirements listed... but I think you'll be surprised! Validate the requirements for the job and get to know your target job seeker. These steps will help ease you into the 5 steps that are laid out for you to write the best job ad that will inevitably help you find the highest quality candidates that your company deserves!

Like it or not, sourcing applicants is just like content marketing. Ryan Kohler explains what the 4 most costly and detrimental mistakes are when it comes to sourcing qualified applicants. Tune in to find out how you can avoid making these mistakes, why it is important to move past this, and why it leads to low applicant flow. Then... find out what Ryan did to help his friend's restaurant generate 20x more applicants than what he was getting before!

We know we need to act. Our recruiting problems are all similar in some ways. So... I have found the solution for you. I call it "the recruiting roadmap." Our goal here is to create an efficient strategy that drives success. Tune in to learn how to make the most of the 5 steps of the recruiting roadmap. Let's learn how to make the biggest impact, with the least amount of effort, and the highest amount of certainty that it will work inside your organization.

We are all struggling to attract qualified applicants for our jobs. The economy will always have its ups and downs. The entire hiring ecosystem of job boards, competitors, software, and job seekers' desires… it's all constantly changing. That's why we need to be proactive and build a recruiting flywheel.  Tune in to learn the 5 pieces of the recruiting flywheel... these steps will set you up to keep that momentum going so you can continue attracting the most qualified applicants.

We need a predictable, controllable, and scalable engine for driving qualified applicants to your jobs. Sourcing is power. Sourcing is marketing. Tune in to find out what the 5 main sources of applicants are, what the 4 steps you can take to drive your applicant sourcing channels are, and how to create your sourcing power report. We can successfully create that plan of attack and continue to move forward. 

It's time to shift the paradigm of unemployment. To survive, or better yet thrive, in a hyper-competitive job market, you have to focus on what you DO have control over and stop focusing on what you don't. What you do have control over is your ability to attract the people who are either currently working, or at least eager and willing to. You have the power to attract qualified applicants through creative thinking. Constantly change and adjust your methods. Observe how different sourcing methods and company changes impact your qualified applicant flow. Utilize the weapons that fit your strengths.

A best practice is the agreed-upon way of doing things within an industry. Best practices are great in heavily regulated areas, like payroll and benefits, where the main goal is reducing risk and errors. Bigger companies can get away with using older best practices. They have the budget, resources, manpower, and brand recognition to make up for it. Smaller companies don't have the same resources, budget, team size, and brand recognition. If they hold to those best practices for too long... they fall behind. In today's episode, we will discuss ways that small companies can begin to innovate and evolve the hiring process. 

A lot employers seem to be struggling with the same idea... unemployment is low, the government is overpaying... which makes applicant flow is low. We aren't finding that as the case. My goal here is to set the stage for how you're thinking through what the problem is, what the options are for solving it, and how to communicate that with your management team to ensure you're all on the same page.  In today's episode, I'll walk you through what you can do to make yourself stand out in a market full of job seekers.

As businesses are opening back up, most employers are allocating more budget to recruiting and sourcing applicants, which makes the entire job board ecosystem more competitive. Employers are seeing fewer applicants from their hiring efforts than they expected, so they just throw more money at the problem without actually changing at all. Job boards are changing. Your competitors are changing. And the desires of the job seekers are changing. In today's episode, we'll start walking you through a step-by-step plan on how to improve your sourcing.

It's been said that employees don't quit jobs, they quit managers. You can find proof of this pretty easily by looking up the negative reviews on Indeed or Glassdoor about your company and your competitors. Chances are, those reviews are going to be far more honest than any exit interview will be and they'll be focused on the company culture, management values, or the environment... rather than the job itself. In today's video, I'm going to walk you through how you can use this knowledge to your advantage and recruit amazing talent away from your competitors! Check it out.As promised, here is the 'Guide to Writing a Killer Job Ad' for download.

A while ago, we were working towards hiring an executive assistant for our chief revenue officer -- Our team of expert job ad writers wrote an awesome job ad, got it posted across our top-performing sourcing channels, and within three weeks we received 117 applicants. However, once we started the sorting and ranking process, we weren't finding the type of applicants we were hoping to find at the top of our list. We were so focused on how many years of work experience each applicant had as an executive assistant... That we couldn't see deeper into the skills and experience performing specific tasks that we were looking for. You might be making the same kind of mistake with your screening process! Follow these 5 simple steps to ensure you're sorting, screening, and ranking applicants to reach the best candidates faster!  As promised, here is the Job Interview Question Guide for download.

If what you're doing isn't working, then your data is just proof that it isn't working, right? Your goal as a hiring professional is to stand out from your competitors. Doing so requires out-of-the-box thinking and innovation. Most new, cool ideas won't be found in the data because they are things you've never tried before -- But, in retrospect, they make sense logically.  In today's episode, I'll walk you through 5 steps to better tap into your intuitive problem solving, and ultimately a better hiring process.As promised, here is the Job Ad Review Checklist for download!

Are you tired of wasting time and money on job seekers only to have them ghost your hiring process? In a study conducted by Indeed in 2019, they found 83% of companies recruiting for open positions reported being ghosted by candidates. In this podcast episode, Ryan goes over 6 tips to help reduce ghosting and get better quality applicants.As promised, here is the Job Interview Question Guide for download.

In this episode, we are going to talk about the vital steps you need to be taking as a company to make sure you are ready for when the economy starts to open back up more fully, and hiring will pick up again. We'll address how the world of hiring is different now because of changes of desires in job seekers,  how there is a possibility you could be missing out on a bunch of qualified applicants that aren't making it to the bottom of your funnel, and what you can do about it. And most importantly, we will talk about why it's important to be thinking proactively about hiring now, instead of waiting until the moment you are ready to make a hire. As promised, here is the link to the Job Ad Review Checklist for download.

In this episode, we're going to explore the first step of the sourcing funnel we talked about in our last episode. The first step of the funnel is the number of times your job appears in the search results. If you want to improve the number of times your job appears in search results, one of your options is paying money and posting to more job boards. While that's a totally viable option, we can optimize the funnel so that we can increase the likelihood of someone progressing down the entire process without spending more. We give you specific tactics you can use to do this.As promised, here's the link to the SEObook Keyword Tool.

In today's episode, we dive into a fascinating set of data from Indeed about metrics they track. We see how many applicants we're missing out on. Spoiler: it's a lot. Indeed provided us with data points like:how many times jobs showed in search resultshow many times jobs were viewedhow many applications were startedhow many applications were finishedWe combine this data with information collected in our system to create what we call a Sourcing Funnel. Because of this data, we now understand how big of an opportunity there is and what steps we need to take to stop missing out on applicant flow.As mentioned, here is the Indeed Applicant Funnel Study.

In today's episode, we talk about the final hiring success lens: evolution. We need to change our hiring process as the world constantly changes. We ask ourselves: "How we can change the process to become better 1% by today?" We want to hear from you! How are you going to improve by 1% today? What hurdles are you having trouble overcoming? Join us on the Hire Hacker Facebook Community.

In today's episode, we build on the hiring success lenses with the fourth lens: momentum. We ask ourselves: what can we do to keep moving this applicant forward in the hiring process? Why is the "Time to Fill" metric important? Join the Hire Hacker Facebook Community!

For the last few years, we've been hearing over and over again how there's a shortage of talent. Most people believe a shortage happens when the employment rate is low. But even in the COVID-19 crisis, with all the people who've been laid off, the stimulus from the government makes it so that you, the employers, are probably experiencing a huge shortage of qualified applicant flow. That doesn't mean there isn't anything you can do about it. There has never been a shortage of talent that you should have been worried about. In reality, it was a lack of winning at the war of competition against your competitors. Employers were all approaching hiring the same exact way because they thought it was a “best practice.” Doing this made all the jobs sound the same and made it so there wasn't a reason for a job seeker to choose to apply. One of the biggest areas where this is true has to do with something called the dip. The dip is the experience a new hire has in the first 3, 6, 9, or even 12 months of coming to work for you that makes them less excited and makes it financially negative for them to quit their current job and come work for you. As long as the dip is present in your process, it will continue to be difficult to both attract and convince your competitor's talent to leave where they're at - the safety, the security - to come work for you even if you offer them more pay. Today we're going to talk about 3 or 4  of the best techniques that have the lowest overall cost that you can use to actually drive and attract talent away from your competitors by reducing the dip.

While everybody has an opinion about what's right and wrong (and the right answer is probably “It depends!”), the fact is that focusing this discussion around transparency regarding pay misses the greater mark of what HR can do to add more transparency in the process, or in the job ad, without disclosing pay.In order to make a compelling case to job seekers for why they should want to apply to your job, it's more than just about pay. You need to help them understand and be able to see themselves performing the job. This requires you to be able to describe the experience of what it's like to work for you. A lot of employers fail to do this in two main ways. They fail to do it early enough in the process, holding it back for the interview. While it does make a compelling case to close somebody to want the job, it doesn't help attract awesome people to the job. They fail to do it in a way that is transparent, authentic, and specific. We're not just talking about pay here, we're actually talking about everything else besides pay. This podcast walks through a very specific approach and examples of how to go about being more authentic, transparent, and specific in your job ad to help you attract more qualified candidates for your job.

In today's episode, we have a discussion with our special guest, Chandler Bolt, founder of the Self Publishing School. Chandler is the host of the Self Publishing School podcast & the author of 6 bestselling books including his most recent book titled “Published.”We discuss: Why you should be replaceable and comfortable working yourself out of a jobSlowing down to speed upThinking of hiring as marketing to create your company cultureHow hiring is vital to the success of an organizationYou can learn the hacker mindset from anyoneYou can learn how to break the status quo, even your own status quo

In today's episode, we'll continue our investigation of hiring success lenses with our favorite: empathy. We'll learn about how empathy truly is your superpower as a smaller business. You will learn about: How to increase empathy in your processWhy asking questions is a product of empathyHow to create a job ad with empathyHomework: Take a moment and ask how someone else sees the world, what they look for in a job, how they feel. 

Before we go too far... why don't we listen to a pretty normal employer complaint.  Employers don't think there are qualified candidates out there for their jobs... they think its unemployment, generation issues, the economy, etc. Their evidence of this problem is simply this... they posted a job and the people who applied weren't very good!Here is a link to the original news story that was posted by a local TV station here in Utah.https://kutv.com/news/local/100000-unemployed-in-utah-as-a-small-business-struggles-to-hire-2-workersThis episode walks through this ad/story and breaks down where the real issues lie.

In today's episode, we're going to continue looking through our hire hacker lenses: relationship. The hiring process is the start of a professional relationship between the company and the employee. Any relationship is like an emotional bank account that is funded by a series of deposits and withdraws. We'll learn what the deposits and withdraws are in the hiring process. 

In today's episode, we'll learn about the hiring success lens: balance. We can find a balance between the needs of the job seeker and your needs as an employer. We'll talk about how we can find a win-win solution for both parties. Homework: Practice looking through the balance lens! Look at a job ad on a job board, read the ad, and try to see how the content helps the employer and how it helps the job seeker.

In today's episode, we'll learn why copying everyone else's hiring process is such a huge problem. We'll also go over the world's current paradigm about hiring and how to flip it completely over to your advantage. These marketing tools will help you throughout this podcast:LensesFunnelsFrameworksTemplatesChecklists

In today's episode, we'll dive into the story of David and Goliath to see how you can disrupt the hiring world. We will show you how to change your patterns of thinking so that your weaknesses become strengths. You will learn about: How David was a growth hacker like youThe Cycle of DisruptionThe myth of "best practices"Your superpowers

In today's episode, we are going to share with you the origin of OUR concept of metrics.  We have taken the proven, documented, and tested methods used in growth hacker marketing, and will show you how to apply their funnel metrics—originally intended to generate customers—to the hiring world.  We will discuss:The talent funnel metrics.How to compute those metric results.How to compute conversion rate.How to drill down into the FOUR separate sub-funnels.How to use this data to run through the iterative process of improving the end result.  

In today's episode we will discuss the core paradigm and philosophy of hire hacking.    We will focus on how to flip the conventional hiring approach upside down, and make the hiring process more about the job seeker as the customer and the employer as the vendor providing a professional opportunity that is beneficial for both the “buyer and the seller.”  You will learn about:Why employers approach hiring the way they do.Why hiring is set up for the underdog to lose.How to think about hiring in a different way.The 5 main ways hire hackers approach hiring differently.

Welcome to our brand new podcast! Today we go over our origin story... of where I came from, what our goals are of the podcast, and the first step of this journey to make hiring a competitive advantage for your organization.