Is it difficult to recruit during the holiday season?

It's the festive season and there are 3 common observations regarding hiring activities:

Some are great hirers - They make great hiring plans and have no problems attracting job-seekers.
Some try to hire - They catch a few job-seekers here and there.
Some don't hire - They think it's impossible to hire.

I am going to share in this post our most recent example where our client took up a hiring campaign with us and received 121 QUALIFIED Singaporean applications in just 7 days.

We all know why we should plan ahead, and what's important to note is WHY more companies don't.

This boils down to 2 fundamental myths:

a) No applicants apply during December because everyone is on holiday or out shopping.
This is not true.
If that's the case, Singapore would either be empty, or our warehouses will be empty.

b) December applicants are mostly part timers and it is not worth the effort.
The worth of effort is measured by how much effort you put in and how productive that is.
Chances are, your efforts are being put to waste due to excessive and unnecessary manual tasks.

Fret not.

I will show you exactly how easy hiring can be.

A Case Study of a Customer

We met our client on Friday, customized the back-end support system with the advertisement artwork and had it go live on the following Wednesday.
In our latest campaign, we advertised with a focus on the Straits Times and The New Paper (a total of 7 times in a week).
Applicants would call or send a SMS to the number provided by us in the newspaper advertisements.
Our SMS-based Auto-Handling System will send a series of SMS to guide them along the application process, by first asking for their preferred language (English/Malay/Chinese).
From there, they would select their preferred jobs, answer some basic questions that HR would usually ask and select their preferred interview date.
Our system will then automatically forward qualified candidates via SMS and email.
In turn, the HR team could focus on contacting the qualified candidates.
All in all, over 300 applicants applied in that week, with the majority preferring to converse in English, and the rest split between Malay and Chinese.

Now imagine.
Without our SMS-based Auto-Handling System, what would they have done?

• They would have to speak to all the employment agencies calling in hope of a business opportunity.
• They would have to waste time speaking to non-Singaporean candidates when they do not have any hiring quota left.
• They would have to waste time handling queries and maintaining a fine brand image politely rejecting unsuitable candidates.
• They would have to be at the office phone all the time to answer every single call (and miss out on any candidate that happens to call in at the same time).
• They would have to redirect the applicant to the respective HR staff to answer in the respective languages (including queries from applicants that may not be relevant)
• They would have to ask all the basic questions, scribble or type the reply down, and note the candidate's other details such as phone number manually while making a few careless mistakes.
• They may ask all candidates to apply online, even when the job doesn't entail IT literacy...and even when the candidate may not even have an email.
• They may have to employ additional staff and set up additional phone lines to handle the approximately 50% of all calls that are received outside of office hours or during lunch.
• They will try and fail to send a thank you message to all candidates that have applied.

Instead, our client was on leave for a couple of days during this campaign and when she returned to work, there were 121 candidates lining up for her to select the ones with the best-fit.
That's a customized hiring campaign backed with HR tech in 10 days, resulting in 121 qualified candidates, at a cost per double-qualified lead of around $30 (I call it double qualified because these are candidates who are interested in the job offered and who fulfill the company's basic requirements).

For double-qualified leads, the hiring rate is approximately 30% - 50% (from our experience) and that's a potential cost per hire of around $50.

Are you looking to hire Singaporeans but not getting the results like our clients?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Phone: (+65) 6407 7282
Email: info@sms247.com.sg