The voice-enabled job landing page

Landing pages have long been the undisputed first point of contact for applicants. Most CRMs and ATSs provide their clients with an option to have a job landing page and to ask some basic text-based question on that page.

They can be very effective and are the fastest way to collect applications from a design standpoint: You get on the page, fill out the text fields at your pace and you’re done. If we are collecting 4–5 data points on a candidate profile via a one-time interaction, the form is the most effective way of handling the process.

At Talkpush, we want to make the recruitment process fun and simple, so we have designed our landing page to reflect that. Take a look below to view a standard Talkpush job landing page (which we have recently redesigned).

We’ve taken the benefits of landing pages, the speed and simplicity and combined it with our love for capturing rich media screening interviews, featuring voice and video. Both sides of the recruitment equation get what they want: Candidates get a chance to express themselves and recruiters collect data in a structured form. Try it out here.

As a reminder, the voice of the candidates does not only get captured in Talkpush, it is also transcribed, and can then be used to automatically shortlist/reject candidates based on their answers.

The bots

While the forms have been the norm for decades, bots are rapidly becoming mainstream, as was told in the 2018 State of Chatbots:

• 15% of consumers have communicated with businesses via chatbots in the last year, a number rapidly growing
• Consumers value chat because of faster service, a higher convenienceof staying in their preferred comms platform (e.g. FB Messenger, WhatsApp) and being able to record their interaction

Most use cases are in customer support and sales, though we have seen flurry of recruitment chatbots pop up in the last two years.

If you follow Talkpush, you will have certainly heard about the benefits of recruitment chatbots. Let me sum them up again here:

• Single platform and familiar interface — chatbots don’t require applicants to download or install any apps. You can maintain the entire conversation in a single platform that is already familiar to your applicants, plus you both get a solid record of the interaction and you get to follow-up with the lead on that same channel
• 24/7 availability — while your recruiters sleep or are enjoying their weekend, the chatbots tirelessly interview applicants
• Instant response — no matter when or from where, the chatbot replies instantly and thus can convert engaged applicant prospects on the spot and within minutes. Checkout these studies by Harvard Business Review and Inside Sales to see the dramatic impact of responding to leads immediately vs. later (here’s why recruitment should learn from sales)
• Full-suite solution — not only can recruitment chatbots do screening interviews, they can also organize all your incoming chat traffic, provide company FAQs and since recently, even be used for on site recruitment events and onboarding
• Cross-platform capabilities — with platforms like the facebook messenger, chatbot conversation might start on your career page, and then move to the applicant’s mobile phone and back to the desktop later on, all throughout maintaining the same conversation

All in all, chatbots provide a strong user experience, are interactive and offer a lot of opportunities for untapped automation potential, particularly in high volume recruitment situations.

Face-off

We recorded the time it took to complete three different application processes. Granted, we are comparing apples with oranges to a certain extent here as the application on the right side (the traditional ATS application) does collect a lot more information than the other two. Nonetheless, we think this really drives the point across that shorter is better. Some companies however are still stuck in the old ways/days and still require applicants to go through 5–10 pages of forms. These are usually the same companies that take weeks -or don’t bother at all- getting back to candidates with a personalized answer.

According to the face-off above, the loser is clearly the traditional ATS. And the winner is clearly the simple Form, which in less than 20 seconds does what takes almost 2 minutes to complete in a bot.

There are however plenty of other factors that could favor bots over forms:

• Searching/Sorting. Do you need to direct the incoming candidates to the right job? If so, you can use a bot to ask some open questions (e.g. “What sort of job are you interested in?”) to direct them straight to the right application. Many studies have shown that people are more likely to conduct a simple search through a chatbot interface than the traditional web search form. See this one for instance.
• Gradually “wheeling in”. Whereas a candidate may view a long form as a encumbrance and be dissuaded by the mere sight of it, in a chatbot conversation, the candidate will be asked one question at a time and be more likely to complete it.
• Stay native. By letting candidates stay on their platform of their choice (e.g. Facebook Messenger), you are delivering a better experience and increasing satisfaction. Read this study which measured the brand impact on survey respondents.
• More fun and interactive. Whereas most forms are static, bots are fun and interactive and there are constantly new ways to enhance the experience. See this blog post that turns a read into a real interactive conversation.
• Personalized. Both a chatbot and a web form UX can be adapted to the profile of the candidate with whom the interaction is happening. In the case of the bot though, there is much that can be done to personalize the tone of voice, and even engage in a little banter to build rapport. If you can connect your bot with a database of candidates, you can then inform them on the status of their application, answer questions they may have about the company, and veer in many other directions that would not be available on a static form.
• Chase ’em where they live! Whereas a web form is a one-time experience (click apply and you’re done), a chatbot can chase the candidate (provided they have opted in) for information. This can be to collect the missing data in an application (e.g. “you never sent me your resume”) or to keep the candidate updated, scheduled them for an interview, send them directions, etc. Check out the video below that shows how to use chatbots to continue the conversation with candidate far beyond the application stage.

In other words, if you calculate your conversion rates in terms of the # of applications, the (short) form will likely win, but if you calculate in terms of # of hires, the bot will have a strong edge.

It boils down to the metrics that matter to you and to the recruitment experience that you want to build. Landing pages can be a simple entrance point into the flow, capturing a small set of candidate data and then handing over the process to be continued via Email, or phone. For speed alone, it’s hard to beat the form. Bots on the other hand, offer the unique opportunity to handle a large share of this flow inside a single platform and giving your talent tool a better conversational experience, leading to improved conversation rates.