Local Chambers Connect Job Seekers and Employers Quickly and Seamlessly
Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce & Jobvite’s “Rapid Response Program” At-A Glance
- In early March, the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce recognized urgent hiring needs in their communities across service, logistics, and e-commerce companies.
- Workforce development programs were helpful, but the disruption of Covid-19 made fast connections between employers and job seekers an urgent need.
- After incorporating Jobvite’s widget that enabled employers to sign-up and list their job postings, the process for a job seeker to select a role and apply sped up from 5 minutes to about 30 seconds.
For more than 100 years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has touted that businesses of all sizes, across industries, have relied on the organization to “…be their voice in Washington, across the country, and around the world.” And its core tenants of advocacy, community, leadership, and history are illustrated across its website clearly and proudly.
What’s refreshing about the Chamber’s core values is that the last few months of the COVID-19 crisis have put its cause and mission to the test — and they have proven to be a creative, determined, effective force for the good of the employers and job seekers they serve.
From creating rapid response programs to helping employers gain access to new tools to post their most urgent hiring needs, here are just a few ways chambers have risen to the occasion and furthered their mission “to help businesses create jobs and grow our economy”.
They’ve created online job boards in a matter of days, rather than months.
One of the most successful Rapid Response Programs from a local chamber has come out of Indiana, and its success has provided a type of roadmap for other communities looking to help employers and job seekers find one another.
In response to Indiana’s unemployment claims reaching 23.8%, they developed an online job board to highlight the most urgent hiring needs. The first iteration of the online job board was a simple job bank that website visitors could access using a link. Job seekers could see the most updated list of open roles and apply from the job board, and employers could sign up to feature their roles using a simple Formstack form.
And while the Indy Chamber received good feedback on the Rapid Response Program, they quickly realized that managing the program was turning into a large, manual effort, and they didn’t anticipate the number of employers who would want to add jobs to the job board.
They needed the second iteration of the program to be a little more user-friendly and a lot more automated. Their research said it could take months to make it happen. But after finding the right partner in Jobvite, they were excited to discover it would take about a week.
Want the latest numbers related to your state’s unemployment rates? Check out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s State-By-State Analysis.
They’ve made the job board mobile-optimized and text-friendly.
In addition to the speed at which the Indy Chamber of Commerce was able to go live with the second version of the Rapid Response Program, one of its strongest features has been its agility and responsiveness to the way the modern job seeker and recruiter meet through mobile.
They knew it wasn’t enough to have a job board that could be viewed on a mobile device. They needed the mobile site to be just as fast as its users with mobile-specific options and screens that offered an experience tailored to people on-the-go.
And after applying for an opportunity on the mobile site, it was important that candidates and recruiters have the option to communicate with the same speed and ease the mobile-site offered, so they included opt-ins for text communication that could be saved and curated in the same Jobvite system they used to develop the online and mobile job boards. So all the data and the entire journey from the moment an applicant searched for a new role, applied, and communicated could be tracked, measured, and referenced by recruiters and hiring managers.
Watch how companies of all sizes are seeing decreased time-to-fill and faster communication using text and chatbots.
They’ve used automation to match urgent roles with the best candidates.
Jobvite’s 2020 Job Seeker Nation Report proves that speed and frequent communication are the biggest factors that lead to a positive candidate experience. In order to make sure that an amazing candidate experience converts to an equally positive employee experience, the Chamber turned to automation to match the right job seekers with the right employers. Using automation and AI machine learning, employers could quickly screen for experience, background, preferences, even the level of engagement taken from uploaded resumes, social profiles, and text communication to find the best match for the role.
Not only did the partnership between the Indy Chamber of Commerce and Jobvite allow for large amounts of data to be collected quickly and securely, but it also provided them with the necessary reporting software to be able to view and share the individual candidate’s data and the data of their entire talent pool easily and clearly on a dashboard.
Here’s a look at some of the most recent numbers that speak to the initial success of the Indy Chamber of Commerce’s Rapid Response Program:
How can employers partner with their local Chamber to develop a similar program for their communities?
Many chambers have already started to build task forces and resources in response to COVID-19. Employers can contact their local chambers to understand what is already in place and get a program similar to what the Indy Chamber of Commerce has created.
Whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 500 company, this type of program will work for you as all employers are offered the same capabilities to feature their open roles and have access to all of the job seekers who use the system.
To learn more about the Rapid Response Program built by the Indy Chamber of Commerce and Jobvite, reach out to us today! We’re more than happy to partner with you as you work to find the best candidates for your most needed roles.