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Tag: talent acquisition

How to create an ATS Friendly CV?

Posted on by Thmida Miah

How to create an ATS Friendly CV? Linking Humans

How to create an ATS Friendly CV?

The first step in being recruited into a ServiceNow role is getting your customised CV before a hiring manager or recruiter. Unfortunately, this process isn’t always as simple as it seems.

As ServiceNow companies look for ways to simplify and digitise the hiring process, many are turning to technology for help. A.T.S. systems, or Applicant Tracking Systems, can help recruitment agencies and teams sort through the applications for each role. Unfortunately, 70% of job applications fail to pass the A.T.S. test. 

While an A.T.S. system can save a company a lot of time searching for the right talent, there are endless ways the technology can trip ServiceNow candidates up. 

Here are some of the best strategies to make your CV/resume A.T.S. friendly.

1. Choose the Right CV format

Formatting is one of the most important factors in ensuring your CV is ATS-friendly. Your information needs to be well-organised and easy for the technology to scan through. 

Reverse chronological is the most commonly recommended formatting option for most C.V.s. This is the go-to for most ServiceNow recruiters, as it places the most important information (your ServiceNow work experience) at the top of the page. 

Reverse chronological formatting also ensures the most relevant and recent information appears on your CV before anything else. 

2. Find the Right File Type

The file type is the document you use to send your CV to a ServiceNow or recruitment company. When applying for a role, you might see requests for specific file types on the job description. Usually, the versatile option is the PDF, as it can be read by most A.T.S. software.

PDF files are excellent for maintaining the formatting and design of your CV/resume. However, some older applicant tracking models cannot read PDFs. In this case, your would-be employer might ask you to submit a .doc file. 

Make sure you read the instructions carefully to ensure you’re using the right file type.

3. Use a Simple Layout

Simplicity is often important for any CV, particularly in the ServiceNow environment, where business hiring managers and recruiters spend hours going through hundreds or even thousands of applications. 

A simple CV layout will be easy to read, with bulleted lists highlighting your achievements. 

Avoid using complex graphics or extra formatting to make your CV look more impressive. Fancy templates can be scrambled by the A.T.S. technology, which may make your CV harder to read and even get your application thrown out by the system.

There are special A.T.S. templates available online if you’re stuck. 

4. Use Keywords

Excellent CVs/resumes and cover letters for any ServiceNow role should be tailored to suit the position’s specific requirements. Ensure you look for important keywords listed in the job description that the A.T.S. software might be looking for in your application. 

For instance, skills related to a specific role are often one of the first things your A.T.S. will look for. If you need a certain certification or degree to be suitable for a certain role, include those words on your CV. 

It’s also worth using plenty of action words in your resume because this helps to highlight things you’ve accomplished. Try terms like “created” or “solved”. 

Don’t just throw keywords in at random, though; remember to ensure the terms you use make sense in the context of the application. Remember: A human will still read your CV after the A.T.S.

5. Don’t Apply for Too Many Roles At Once

A.T.S. tools are designed to find the best possible person for each role. With that in mind, it’s worth thinking carefully about whether you’re the right individual for the position you’re applying for. If you don’t have any of the skills the company is asking for in a job description, you’re not going to pass the A.T.S. test. 

Similarly, applying for multiple jobs with the same company could lead to the technology labelling your application as spam. 

Even if you get through to the human review stage with one or two applications, sending too many job applications to the same ServiceNow company can make you look like you’re desperate for any role rather than applying for the right position.

6. Don’t Game the System

As A.T.S. systems become increasingly popular worldwide, there has been an increase in people attempting to “game the system” or find ways to outsmart the technology. 

Although you might be able to find a handful of articles and guides telling you how to improve your chances of getting through any screening process, tricking the system won’t work long-term. 

Even if you did manage to convince the A.T.S. to send your application to the next level by copy-pasting keywords from the job description into your CV, this wouldn’t get you anywhere when a human reviewed your application.

7. Don’t Just Design for Robots

Finally, it’s easy to get caught up with the complexity of keeping track of everything you need to do to make your CV technology-friendly. In some cases, you might get so focused on designing for the A.T.S. that you forget about the importance of designing for people.

Ultimately, the A.T.S. is just the first stage of the filtering process for applicants in most hiring and recruitment strategies. This means while you need to make your CV easy enough for the robots to leverage and read, you also need to ensure it’s suitable for humans.

Read through everything when you’re done editing and make sure the content still flows naturally through the page. 

Here at Linking Humans, we have been helping companies deliver permanent and freelance technology experts to ServiceNow partners and End Users across the UK, Europe, and North America. We take pride in providing the best possible people to take your business forward. 

If you would like to speak to us, then use the “Request Call back’’ at the top of this page or find more ways to contact us here.

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Is your ServiceNow Team Diverse Enough?

Posted on by Thmida Miah

Is your ServiceNow Team Diverse Enough? Linking Humans

Is your ServiceNow Team Diverse Enough?

Diversity and experiencing inclusion have never been more important to ServiceNow employees.

Now more than ever, the top talent in your industry wants to work with companies capable of offering diverse, flexible, and empathetic working environments. The concept of D.E.I. (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is a major factor in determining which candidates are likely to apply for your new roles and whether your existing staff will stick around.

Research consistently demonstrates diverse companies are more innovative and creative because they allow for the melding of different perspectives. According to one McKinsey study, diverse teams are 35% more likely to achieve above-average financial returns for your organisation/company.

Unfortunately, although most ServiceNow employers are beginning to recognise the need for diversity, ensuring you have a process to embrace D.E.I. can be complex. It’s easy to fall into patterns with your hiring strategies that diminish diversity opportunities. 

So, what can you do?

1. Develop an Understanding of Diversity

First, build an understanding of what ServiceNow diversity means. For most companies, diversity starts with ensuring their team members include people from different genders, races, and religions. However, it’s important not to overlook other concepts like language and personality, sexual orientation, age, and disability.

Business leaders can often struggle with diversity when they’re unsure what it means. It’s difficult to be all-inclusive when you’re unsure what kind of hidden biases might influence your hiring and promotional decisions. 

If you are uncertain about your diversity process, there are online and offline training programs available to help business leaders and hiring managers question their thought processes and improve their understanding of diversity.

Expanding your education can also help you see how detrimental a lack of diversity can be. It doesn’t only damage business creativity but can also reduce employee engagement and lead to issues with internal conflict. 

2. Rethink Cultural Fit

The concept of “cultural fit” is referenced by many ServiceNow hiring managers when looking for new candidates to fill essential roles. Companies want candidates who will blend well with the existing employees in a team.

However, hiring for cultural fit can be a subjective process if you’re not careful. It’s easy to let your perspective of this concept lead you to hire only people from a certain personality group. While it’s important to ensure everyone in your team feels like a welcome part of the talent mix, it is crucial to allow different insights and perspectives from various backgrounds.

Rather than relying entirely on the somewhat intangible concept of cultural fit, try flipping the script and asking what each potential candidate might be able to add to your culture. Focus on hiring people with shared values and ethics rather than similar personalities.

3. Constantly Check for Bias

Bias can be a serious problem in many parts of the ServiceNow hiring landscape because it is often unconscious. Sometimes, we specifically find ourselves searching for a certain kind of person to fill a role because we’re trying to match a person who held the position previously.

Other times, we might be influenced by biases that we’re not aware of initially. For instance, you might decide to hire someone because you’ve been affected by what they’re wearing or how much you like their personality.

Though hiring bias is difficult to avoid completely, it’s something you can overcome with mindfulness and some helpful strategies. For instance, using competency-based interviews with standardised interview questions can be beneficial. 

4. Improve Your Recruiting Strategy

Recruitment is often part of building a diverse ServiceNow team that business leaders need the most help with. Ultimately, it’s hard to maintain a completely objective approach to finding candidates and working through potential options. 

Some of the ways you can adjust your recruitment plans for diversity include:

  • Updating job descriptions: Rethink the language you use when writing job descriptions, and avoid words with a specific gender appeal. 
  • Casting a wider net: Listing your jobs in more places and looking for candidates in a wider range of environments can help you attract a more diverse range of talented people. You could even consider looking for people in colleges and universities. 
  • Use technology: Technology like diversity recruiting software and A.I. tools to help sort through and shortlist clients can help businesses overcome several unconscious biases. 

The easiest way to improve your recruitment strategy is to work with a dedicated ServiceNow recruitment professional who understands your specific needs and can help to give you a more objective strategy for finding new talent. 

Many specialist recruiters like ourselves are trained in D.E.I. and proactively build diverse talent pools of ServiceNow candidates; if you want to find out more about how we can help you implement a D.E.I. hiring process, get in contact with us here.

5. Remember inclusion

Once you have implemented the process of recruiting diverse members of staff for your team, the next step is ensuring everyone feels equally included in your ServiceNow team. Being more diverse is an admirable ambition for any business, but it doesn’t work if some staff members feel more valued or “seen” than others. 

Work on building a more inclusive environment by regularly collecting feedback from all staff members. Your team can offer insights into whether you’re still showing any unconscious biases. 

It’s also helpful to look at your paths for career advancement in the business. What kind of steps do employees need to take to improve their chances of a promotion, and are certain team members more likely to be considered than others?

You can even look into building your diversity and inclusion committee, which can help collect insights from other staff members and solve issues. 

Here at Linking Humans, we have been helping companies deliver permanent and freelance technology experts to ServiceNow partners and End Users across the UK, Europe, and North America. We take pride in providing the best possible people to take your business forward. 

If you would like to speak to us, then use the “Request Call back’’ at the top of this page or find more ways to contact us here.

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The Complete Guide to ServiceNow Onboarding

Posted on by Thmida Miah

The Complete Guide to ServiceNow Onboarding Linking Humans

The Complete Guide to ServiceNow Onboarding


A successful onboarding strategy could be the key to providing your new team member with all the support, guidance, and insights they need to thrive in your company. 

The ServiceNow landscape has changed drastically in the last couple of years. Job opportunities are becoming more flexible with the rise of remote or hybrid work and the four-day work week.

Even the way companies find and assess new candidates for roles has evolved, with an increasing number of virtual and video interviews. 

On top of all these changes, hiring managers and employers are also facing new challenges in employee retention, with the “Great Resignation” now causing significant talent turnover. 

In a skills-short ServiceNow environment, it’s important to ensure you’re taking every precaution to not only find the right new employee but also prepare them for long-term success. 

Here are the onboarding strategies you can use to empower your ServiceNow hires.

1. Start with Preboarding

Employee “preboarding” is essentially an introductory step before the more intensive onboarding process begins. Today, as the competition for ServiceNow talent continues to grow, talented candidates are increasingly looking to work with employers who make them feel valued. 

Just as your new team member will be working hard to prove you made the right choice by bringing them on board, you want to demonstrate they’ve made a good choice by deciding to work for you. An introduction email as soon as your candidate accepts your job offer can set you off on the right track. You can even use this email to give your new employee some useful information. 

Start by welcoming your candidate onto the team, and let them know the names of some of the people they will be working with. Next, include valuable information your employee might need, such as videos showcasing information about your brand identity. 

2. Adjust the Onboarding Process for Different Roles

Certain parts of the ServiceNow onboarding process will be the same for all employees. You’ll need to introduce every new team member to the company culture in your business and the kind of values you expect them to adhere to. However, this doesn’t mean an onboarding process should be entirely one-size-fits-all. 

Adjust the steps you take in the onboarding process based on your new employee’s needs. For instance, ask yourself what kind of software and tools the team member will be using from day one, and provide them with video guidance on setting up new accounts. 

Think about the specific members of staff your new employee is going to be working with, and arrange for a video or group meeting where you can all get to know each other in an informal and friendly setting. 

Creating a streamlined and personalised process for each employee will ensure your new candidates aren’t overwhelmed by information that may not be pertinent to them when starting their new role. 

3. Focus on Inclusion

The needs of today’s ServiceNow employees are beginning to change. While all team members want access to great development opportunities, a good salary, and fair benefits, they’re also looking for an immersive company culture and a sense of inclusion within their teams. 

Today, 64% of employees say diversity and inclusion is a crucial consideration in their decision to take a job offer. As soon as a new candidate agrees to join your team, start focusing on how you include them. 

Ask new hires about their preferred pronouns and names, and introduce them immediately to the people they will be working with. Allow your employees to sit in on video meetings even before their role officially starts if you’re not going to be sharing sensitive information, and add them to your group messaging boards.

Make sure every team member feels like a crucial part of the team, regardless of whether they’re working in the office, remotely, or on a hybrid schedule.

4. Build a Plan for Development

Great onboarding isn’t just about welcoming a new ServiceNow employee into your team and ensuring they have all the information they need about your business. You should also be looking for ways to build a foundation for a long professional relationship between your company and your hires.

Around 93% of employees say they would happily stay with a company for longer if they felt their managers were investing in their careers with training and development. During the onboarding process, you can begin helping your employee see a future with your brand by working on a professional development plan together.

Set up a one-on-one meeting where you discuss what the future might look like for your new team member and what kind of goals they’d like to achieve. Discuss how you can help your employee reach new heights in their career and what your training opportunities look like.

5. Collect Feedback Regularly

Finally, the only way to ensure your onboarding process is having the right impact on your ServiceNow employees is to ask them about it. Collecting feedback is an excellent way to determine whether you’re giving your new team members all the support and guidance they need. 

Ask your new hires what they feel you did well in the onboarding process and what they would like to change if given a chance. Pay attention to productivity levels after your employees start their new role, and look at how they might change when you add further steps to the onboarding process. 

The feedback you get should guide your future onboarding strategies, helping you build a more comprehensive experience for every new hire. 

Great Onboarding Starts with the Right Hire

Remember, a great onboarding process can be a powerful tool, capable of improving new hire retention by around 82%. However, excellent onboarding processes will always start with the right hiring decisions. Improve your chances of bringing the right people on board by working with a specialist ServiceNow recruitment team like Linking Humans. 

Here at Linking Humans, we have been helping companies deliver permanent and freelance technology experts to ServiceNow partners and End Users across the UK, Europe, and North America. We take pride in providing the best possible people to take your business forward. 

If you would like to speak to us, then use the “Request Call back’’ at the top of this page or find more ways to contact us here.

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Interviewing Techniques for ServiceNow Hiring Managers

Posted on by Dan Wells

Interviewing Techniques for ServiceNow Hiring Managers Linking Humans

Here are some of the top strategies to follow as a ServiceNow hiring manager if you’re concerned you might not be getting the most out of your candidates in interviews.

When most ServiceNow professionals think about the complexity of interviewing, they focus on the challenges facing the person being interviewed. However, the hiring manager hosting the interview has hurdles to overcome too. 

From avoiding unconscious bias to selling your candidates on the idea of working with your ServiceNow company, there are several important points to keep in mind. 

1. Know Your Interview Options

The first step in ensuring you can master your interviews as a hiring manager is knowing what methods you can use to connect with candidates. 

Today, the face-to-face interview isn’t your only option. Video interviews have increased by 67% recently due to the pandemic and the rise of remote work. As hybrid employment options continue to thrive and companies look for ways to streamline the interviewing process, video conversations will likely grow more common. 

There’s also the option for simple phone interviews too. 

Each type of interview has its own challenges to consider. For instance:

  • In-person interviews: You’ll need to think about where you’re going to host your interview, whether it’s a welcoming space, who will attend, and whether the candidate will present or not. 
  • Video interviews: Consider what kind of video meeting service you’ll be using, the background you’ll have in your video, and how you can present yourself as professionally as possible over a webcam.
  • Phone interviews: Ask yourself whether you may need to record phone interviews to go back over them later and how you can ensure you get a good idea of what the candidate is like based on voice alone.

2. Avoid Inappropriate Questions

Inappropriate questions are more common than you would think in ServiceNow interviews. While certain topics of conversation can feel like polite small talk at first, they often cause more problems than you’d think. For instance, asking people about what they did on the weekend can create an unconscious bias if you also have a shared hobby. 

Unconscious bias could favour one candidate over another because you like certain things about their lifestyle or personality, which have nothing to do with the role.

3. Interview Style and Format

There are many different kinds of interviewing techniques today’s business leaders and hiring managers can use, including competency-based or collaborative interviews, presentations and group interactions. 

Interviews are always best performed with two people from the hiring company, which can help avoid bias.

Consider using a first and second stage format before the final decision. In today’s environment, many first and second stage interviews can take place over Zoom or MSTeams.

4. Standardise Your Interview Questions

Standardising your interview questions makes it easier to assess your candidates when you have interviewed several people for a role. It also means you’re less likely to allow unconscious biases to get in the way of your hiring decisions because you’re evaluating everyone based on the same set of guidelines, criteria and questions.

Create specific competency-based interview questions for the specific ServiceNow role in question, which allows you to score each potential employee based on their specific values, behaviours and results. For instance, you can ask questions, share examples of times they’ve acted as a leader or shown exceptional teamwork, and then make notes about their responses. Assigning scores to answers will also help you see who you should be shortlisting.

Your interviews need to maintain a level of flexibility. It will be logical to ask follow-up questions to elicit more detail at times. 

“Tell me more about X or Y or why you decided to do B or C” are classic follow-up questions that work.

5. Make Notes and Follow Up

Finally, make sure you take notes as often as possible as you progress through the interview. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment of the conversation and then forget everything you needed to know about the candidate when you come back to review later. 

Always set aside some time at the end of each ServiceNow interview to gather your thoughts and catalogue what stood out to you most about the candidate (good and bad). This information should accompany your scores for various standardised questions.

Making notes can also help when you’re following up with your candidates by allowing you to provide a more contextual and relevant message. 

Showing you remember what you said (like any requirements for starting dates) shows the potential candidate you’re invested in working with them.

Remember, if you’re struggling with your ServiceNow interviewing process, it’s often helpful to seek some help from a specialist recruitment company like ourselves that can help with a lot more than just finding you new candidates – they can also give you advice on how to interview more effectively, with tips on questions you might need to ask.

Here at Linking Humans, we have been helping companies deliver permanent and freelance technology experts to ServiceNow partners and End Users across the UK, Europe and North America. We take pride in providing the best possible people to take your business forward.

If you would like to speak to us, then use the “Request call back” at the top of this page or find more ways to contact us here.

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