At Social Talent we're all about working smarter so that you can live happier, and working smarter often means making the most of free recruitment tools and resources that can lighten your workload.
Over the years, we've introduced you to numerous free recruitment tools each with one purpose and one purpose only, to make your working life easier. This list is no exception!
So without further ado, here are 6 incredibly useful free recruitment tools and resources you need to start using right now:
1. Crystal
Useful for: Helping you improve candidate engagement.
According to the users of our Black Belt in Internet Recruitment programme, one of their biggest concerns day to day is how to successfully engage talent. And if you're anything like them, you're going to love our first tool recommendation: Crystal.
Formally known as Crystal Knows, this Chrome extension analyses public data to tell you exactly how to communicate with different individuals across a variety of platforms including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail.
Take it from us, it's exceptionally accurate!
Using personality detection technology, Crystal creates unique personality profiles for every person with an online presence, to show you how to communicate with them in the most effective way.
In other words, it helps boost a recruiter’s candidate response rate by helping you speak/write in the style preferred by your chosen candidate. No joke!
After installing the Crystal Chrome extension, when you view a LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter profile just click the Crystal section under their profile to visit that person's full personality profile on Crystal's website, where you’ll learn the best way to communicate in several instances with that person, based on their personality:
Take Michelle's profile for example. On her profile it tells me with 90% confidence that she is “very loyal, ambitious, and accommodating, but it might take longer to earn her trust than most other people.”
As a result, if we were contacting with her via email about a job opportunity we would need to “state our purpose for the email in the first sentence”, “use emotionally expressive language” to drive her to action, and employ the use of some emoticons.
Exceptionally practical, insightful and useful information when trying to contact someone for the very first time about a role, I think you’ll agree!
Or, if you're using Crystal in conjunction with Gmail, Crystal will give you real time suggestions on how to compose and phrase your email to that person right within the compose box itself:
You can try Crystal here
2. ContactOut
Useful for: Finding email addresses and contact details of hard to reach candidates.
Ok, so this is one of the most accurate email finding tools we've found in addition to Rapportive and Prophet.
In a nutshell, ContactOut is able to instantly find the personal email address and phone number (sometimes) of any candidate from their LinkedIn profile by automatically searching other social media sites and the broader web using an AI engine.
The best part? All emails provided are triple verified and 97% accurate. WIN!
ContactOut also lets you easily export LinkedIn profile information and contact details to either a CSV or a Google spreadsheet. Oh, and it's been endorsed by some industry heavy hitters including Dean Da Costa.
Try ContactOut here
3. Know Your Worth/LinkedIn Salary
Useful for: Salary information that will enable you to have a nuanced discussion with candidates about how the skills, experience, and education may influence their pay.
There has been A LOT of talk around the topic of salary and salary transparency these past few weeks.
It started when both ZipRecruiter and Indeed added the ability for job seekers to select a "Check Salary" option on job ads included on their site, and was compounded by Glassdoor releasing "Know Your Worth" - a tool that allows people gain insight into how much money they make in comparison to other people working the same or similar job.
The discussion ramped up a gear last week when LinkedIn announced they too were introducing a salary tool called "LinkedIn Salary" to help professionals "make better career decisions and optimise their earning potential now, and in the future.”
The discussion of salary transparency isn't going away.
As more and more sites start to give jobseekers the ability to find out what they should or could be paid, it will become increasingly important for recruiters to educate themselves about salary.
We recommend taking advantage of these new salary tools when putting together job specs or discussing your next intake with your hiring manager.
They'll prepare you for what compensation the candidate will expect and give you a proof point that your pay is competitive.
The information these tools give you will also provide you with a background for a nuanced discussion about how the candidate’s skills, experience, and education may influence their pay.
In the cases when candidates are unwilling to discuss their current salary, these tools can be used as a reference point.
Try "Know Your Worth" or "LinkedIn Salary"
4. The Gender Decoder
Useful for: Ensuring your job ads are free of gender bias.
Looking to improve gender diversity in your organisation? Who isn't these days!
But did you know that one of the best places to start is with your job ads. Are they appealing to women as well as to men? Is the language you're using too masculine or too feminine?
Find a digital copy of the last job ad you wrote. Highlight the text, right-click and copy it in its entirety.
Now, go to a website called gender-decoder.katmatfield.com. When you’re there, right click and paste your job ad into the text box provided.
The Gender Decoder will then tell you whether your job ad is feminine-coded (i.e. if your job is written with more of a leaning towards a female candidate), masculine-coded (i.e. if your job is written with more of a leaning towards a male candidate) or neutral (i.e. if your job has no leaning towards male or female candidates), based on the language you’ve used.
In this example, we copied and pasted a random job ad from Indeed for a Desktop Publisher in London, UK:
According to the Gender Decoder, this ad is feminine-coded i.e. has too many stereotypically feminine words used in its description:
Fortunately, according to the Gender Decoder, the research suggests that this will have only a slight effect on how appealing the job advertised is to men, and will encourage women applicants.
However, ads that have more stereotypically masculine words will risk putting women off applying. So test your job ads and see whether or not your particular gender bias has affected how you’ve written your job ads. You might be surprised at the results!
Test your job ads in the Gender Decoder here
5. Gorgias Templates
Useful for: Constructing hassle free emails.
Do you send the majority of your day composing and sending email to candidates and clients? If so, it's time you gave Gorgias Templates a look.
This Chrome extension (which we first saw demonstrated at SOSUEU in Amsterdam back in September) helps you to write emails faster by letting you to create your own keyboard shortcuts and templates across a wide range of email providers including; Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, LinkedIn, Facebook and more.
For example, if you’re always ending your emails with “Please find the document attached to this email.”? With the extension's keyboard completion feature, you can type alt+TAB and get the same result.
Or, if most of your emails start with “Hello firstname”?, just hit h+TAB and get you’ll get “Hello Jennifer” (if you’re writing to Jennifer, of course).
Similarly, if you find yourself writing repetitive pieces of text in your emails, you can make those pieces easy to access templates.
The premium (paid) version of the extension also lets you create and share email templates with your team, so when a template changes everyone is on the same page.
Oh, and if you can't be bothered to remember your various shortcuts, you can just search and insert templates right inside the compose box. Handy, right?!
Try Gorgias Templates here
6. SourceHub
Useful for: All of your sourcing needs
Ok, we couldn’t do a list of useful free recruitment tools without mentioning our very own SourceHub - an exclusive one-stop shop for sourcing!
If you struggle to get to grips with using Boolean to create more effective searches, you're going to LOVE SourceHub.
SourceHub negates the need to use Boolean, by implementing taxonomies to perform comprehensive searches for you, based on very little data.
For example, if you need to find great candidates on 15 different social sites (including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, About.me and GitHub), all you need to do is enter the title of the job you’re looking to fill, the skills the candidate needs to possess, and the location you’re looking for the candidate in.
No ANDs, ORs, or NOTs. Just tell SourceHub exactly what you’re looking for, in simple terms, and it’ll do the hard work for you – literally.
Complete the fields with the terms/locations you’re looking for candidates with/in:
Customise your search by adding or removing any of the pre-populated synonyms in the ‘job title’ and ‘skills’ fields:
Open your search on any of the following websites:
Try Sourcehub here
Pro tip
If you're looking for other tactics and tools to improve your team's recruiting results, take a look at the Beamery Academy. It's stuffed full of actionable ebooks and whitepapers that will help you take your team to the next level.
