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Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3…

When Glowi wanted to accelerate its recruitment of housekeeping staff, their partner Indeed knew where to look and how to act. Or how smart data analysis, A/B testing and behavioural monitoring help to find precious needles in a haystack.

The war for talent? Employer Glowi knows all about it: a tight labour market for household helpers, (window) cleaners and temporary workers; fierce competition for the few candidates out there; and a pandemic complicating matters even more. But with the help of Indeed, Glowi has progressively been able to unveil where potential candidates are hiding, what they are looking for in a job and how to connect with them.

Renate Nelis, Communication & Marketing Director at Glowi, has a lot on her plate these days. Exciting days though, as the company has just launched its very own line of eco-friendly cleaning products and materials and is reorganising its growing services portfolio under an umbrella brand.

Employer branding is very important to Glowi and one of the founding pillars of the company, says Renate. “The owners started a service voucher company because they wanted to raise esteem for the job which had a bad reputation. We wanted to show it could be done differently – better. We were the first to give household helpers a company car. We offer them a comprehensive salary package, pay attention to wellbeing and offer a warm environment. And with success. But even still, today the demand for household helpers way outweighs the supply. It’s difficult to find candidates out there, even as a human-centred employer. So you need to keep innovating.”

Show me the money

So something had to be done. “We turned to Indeed to help us find a facts-based approach to improve our campaigns. We‘d been doing a lot of data collection on our own platforms of course, but the scale isn’t comparable. And it’s a cost and time-effective effort.”

Enter Vincent Dams, National Account Manager at Indeed: “Each month, we record over 3 million visits on our platform. This produces a vast amount of data. Where do all these candidates live? Who are they? What are they looking for? It allows us to continuously optimise the platform. Because we want candidates to get the best possible job, fast.”

But data needs to be analysed in order to develop hypotheses. And then these assumptions, in turn, need to be tested. “Indeed is first and foremost a tech company, so we go to work with that data. This is why we continuously measure action and tinker with our platform. We give clients like Glowi sound advice, based on what search strings people use when they are looking for a job, what makes them click or anything else that can help build better funnels and campaigns,” says Vincent.

Trends evolve, companies will have to follow. We are not used to communicating openly about salaries in job offerings. But we can see and measure how candidates prefer to click on job descriptions that do.”

Vincent Dams

Renate explains how Indeed helped Glowi to adopt the candidate’s perspective on his or her job search. Data convinced them to try new things and see where it got them. “I appreciate how Indeed proactively engages with the challenges we present to them. It enables us to launch campaigns and adapt them quickly, based on test results.” Vincent provides an example: “The Belgian tradition avoids communicating about salaries in job offerings early on in a recruitment process. But in every poll candidates say it is an important driver to engage with a vacancy. We saw at Indeed that communicating the salary increases the click-through rate by some 50%. So we pass on that knowledge, without of course obliging the client to follow through on the advice.”

As Vincent proceeds, he points to the importance of continuous adjustments: “Tests are so important. Together with Glowi we look at different regions, at the keywords people use in that area – dialects can play a role for instance, just like cultural differences – and several other aspects. And then we use that data to test how we can make the campaigns more relevant to the target group. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But knowing what doesn’t work is also of value. And we communicate very openly with Glowi.”

A friend in need is a friend indeed

Renate underscores the importance of mutual trust: “OK, Indeed is a tech company and has a data-driven methodology. But they are also warm and thoughtful and this matches well with our human-centred DNA. We also have monthly meetings, so Indeed always stays in touch with our organisation and with the context in which we have to make decisions. And when the pandemic led to a sudden sector standstill in the spring of 2020, they were very flexible. Indeed immediately understood that we wouldn’t be activating our campaign budget like we normally would. So it feels like a true partnership, more than a formal client-supplier relationship. But that doesn’t surprise me. After all we share the same mission: help people get jobs without having too many hurdles in the way.”

It reminds Vincent of a recent joint initiative: “We cleared an extra budget for Glowi to create a campaign aimed at Ukrainian refugees. Sometimes a job is the best way to help you make a brand new start in a foreign environment. It gives you access to a lot of things. So we decided to support each company that took an initiative to help, worldwide”.

Adds Renate: “We already had people with us who spoke the language, who could help create messages but who could also help to give more information on how to settle in Belgium. And with the help of Indeed, we could move fast. Indeed’s proactive mindset combined with our short decision lines enable these actions. It helps to share the unburden-the-customer mindset.”

The future: shop a job

The Ukraine-Russia war or covid: both are examples of unpredictable and sudden shocks that may permanently impact labour markets. So we asked Vincent and Renate how they see the futures of tech and HR intertwining a couple of years down the road.

Vincent: “I see HR communication taking over more and more characteristics of e-commerce. The data-driven aspect to begin with, the efforts to segment and tailor offerings, but also the speed at which you complete the funnel. When you book a holiday, you don’t want to wait two weeks for a confirmation… you want it now. And we choose it based on reviews, preferably even a 3D tour of the room. The same will go for job markets. Candidates will expect much faster experiences, they will want to check other sources than the employer. They won’t want to fill in 90 questions anymore. The war for talent will help employers reshape those journeys. We can help point out which way to go, by spotting the evolution of candidate needs and expectations.”

Renate: “We are very focused on our own identity, on what we can offer candidates. And such a value-driven story must remain authentic, and it is up to Glowi to shape the story. But Indeed offers the mirror, the insights into what the market thinks and wants. Technology provides the interaction between the two. And it also enables us to accelerate when we see opportunities and play fastball. Refining the funnel, speeding up processes while finetuning the relevance of our employer branding messages to different audiences is the way to go. Tech offers speed, the opportunity to take a personal approach and it is of course cost-effective.”