Four Steps to Reverse Rising Cost of Hiring in U.S. Hourly-Wage Market

SEATTLE, Feb. 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Sifting the data behind 1 million hourly job applications processed in 2014, Jobaline.com, the leading mobile and bilingual hourly jobs matching marketplace, today announced its enterprise report detailing four key steps that will trigger a pivotal change in the way America hires blue-collar workers.

The hourly wage jobs market is the heartbeat of the American workforce, 76 million members strong. Over fifty percent of these jobs are created by the top 2 percent of corporations where hiring inefficiencies cost an astounding $5 billion. A two-way labor squeeze is forcing finance and operations officers at these Fortune 5000 companies to double-back and examine their total cost of recruitment. At the same time, brand experts and U.S. lawmakers are scrutinizing recruitment advertising practices.

1. Focus On the Total Cost of Recruitment Rather Than Cost-Per-Click Budgets

Nine of every ten large enterprise customers of Jobaline are completely rethinking total cost per hire alongside the EEO compliance of the tools they use. The total-cost analysis includes job advertising paid-per-click (or per-post), time pre-screening candidates, time in the interview loop, candidate drop-outs, and spending time processing out-of-town or non-qualified applicants.

The cost of hiring a new or replacement hourly worker is 30 to 50 percent of annual wages, studies show, and research from The Aberdeen Group estimates that average turnover can range from over 50 percent for line-level hotel and motel employees, to 100 percent at specialty stores, to more than 200 percent annually at fast-food chains. A constant hiring cycle like this wastes several billion dollars each year in job advertising and pre-screening practices in order to process half a billion job applications.

Beyond the inefficiencies inherent to job advertising, the average recruiter spends eight hours conducting simple pre-screening interviews for each open position, in many cases, contacting a slew of candidates that aren't the right match. Technology can do much better by automating mobile recruitment in an intuitive, consistent and compliant way that gives every applicant a fair chance, and substantially reduces the total cost for employers.

One of Jobaline's enterprise customers deployed the Jobaline matching solution and pulled in a million visitors to their jobs offerings and 100,000 EEO compliant applications. The best 20,000 were matched to jobs and delivered to the employer who ended up hiring one of every three candidates. Total savings: close to $1 million in job advertising and labor including the 17,000 hours of pre-screening time saved by the recruiters in the field.

2. Do More for Mobile Presence; Simply Shrinking the Job Application Interface for Mobile Delivers the Same 80 Percent Dropout Rate Generated by Applications on the Larger Screen

Jibe reports that 60 percent of respondents believe that even when mobile-friendly, job applications are more difficult to fill out than mortgage or health insurance applications. Given that over 70 percent of job seekers prefer to fill out applications on a mobile device, this is a significant miss. Yet Jobaline data shows that when employers simply push their existing job application process to mobile via app or responsive design, abandonment rates stay above 80 percent.

If you just apply a responsive design to the old "taxi" web pages, we get "taxi" mobile—it's the same old and dated process, with the same business results, just in the small screen. Advanced matching technologies will be the dominant factor in the Human Capital Management sector over the next decade. By reinventing the experience, you get Uber or Lyft. In 2014, 40 large hospitality, staffing, construction, retail and call center corporations improved the volume of qualified candidates by up to 800 percent by using advanced forms of job matching technology from Jobaline. Even in places of very low unemployment such as Fargo, ND where labor is scarce, Bank of the West experienced a 40 percent increase in recruitment efficiencies thanks to reinvented mobile pre-screening technology.

3. Squeeze Inside the 48-hour Window You Have to Hire the Best

Competition is brutal in the retail, hospitality and quick-serve restaurant sectors, and over a million new jobs will be added here over the next four years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. When recruiters call qualified applicants more than 48 hours after they applied, 80 percent turn unresponsive, according to Jobaline data, because job seekers apply up to 10 jobs at the same time. Without pre-screening  technology, a recruiter would need to reach out to 20 applicants per job, and often they are hiring for many jobs at once. The bottleneck causes delays of several days and the loss of qualified applicants.

Pillar Hotels & Resorts, one of the top five hospitality groups in the U.S., with over 220 properties in 36 states, saved 70 percent in recruitment after processing 31,000 EEO-compliant mobile job applications. Using Jobaline, they cut recruitment time to 10 days by focusing on local and  pre-qualified workers. Pillar Hotels & Resorts reached out fast and hired faster, and they offered a candidate experience in line with the high standards of the brands they represent.

4. Offer Great Candidate Experiences and Anticipate Coming Legislative Changes to Recruiting

Hiring companies lose credibility, and trust when the job application process is inefficient and offers job seekers an experience they perceive as disrespectful. They also lose face with prospective customers.

Applicants complain about complex applications, but also about unsolicited telemarketers calls from educational companies, credit bureaus and work-from-home companies, within a few hours of completing online job applications. Naturally, those candidates become immune to recruiters and the effect on the employer's image can be devastating. A framework for best practices and disclosure could come as early as this year.

Taken together, these four steps save over $200 per-hire just in advertising and time spent making phone calls or going through unqualified applicants or out-of-state applicants. Drawn over 30 million hourly workers hired every year, there's an opportunity to repurpose $5 billion dollars for accelerated expansion plans, increased wages, and better training to increase retention and better customer service.

About Jobaline

Jobaline.com is the leading mobile and bilingual hourly jobs matching marketplace. It makes it easy for workers to find, apply for, and get matched to jobs, from any mobile phone, tablet, or computer while reducing recruitment expenses, increasing quality of applicants and reducing time to hire, saving hundreds of hours in manual pre-screening. For more information, visit www.jobaline.com.

Lourdes Rios
206-264-8220
[email protected]

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SOURCE Jobaline

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