Recruitment Marketing Public

Live chat events

Live chats are group Q&A sessions that turn your best people into brand ambassadors to help you share your story with your most engaged candidates, and create great Employee Connections content at scale. Live chats will drastically increase the quantity and quality of your content by mirroring real life conversations. Live chats are used to drive content around specific topics and target specific candidates (e.g. applications, diverse candidates) in public or private settings. Successful live chats will generate over 60 discussions that can be leveraged by future candidates who didn’t attend the event. This article provides an overview of the live chat feature. Please consult the Customer Success team if you are unsure how many live chat events per year are included in your contract.

Create a live chat event

1. Choose an effective theme

The first step in creating a live chat event is to select an effective theme. Start your first live chat with popular themes that will attract a wide audience, such as:

• Meet the team
• What makes our organisation unique
• Opportunities in [insert region]
• Summer internship program.

2. Confirm participating insiders, date and time

Once you have selected your theme, confirm the insiders that will participate. Remember, you can have an unlimited number of live chat insiders set up on your platform. When choosing a date and time for the live chat event, allow at least 3-4 weeks to promote the event and attract a lot of subscribers before the event date. Think about your target candidate audience when choosing a day and time - early evenings (around 6 PM) is a reasonable time for most people, and you will see more engagement for live chats hosted on a Monday to Thursday, compared to Friday evenings.

3. Create the live chat event in the Employee Connections platform

1. Log in to the Employee Connections admin portal
2. In the left-hand menu, click on Live chats then Create a new live chat
3. Input an eye-catching event title
4. Select the event date and time details and duration (take note of the time zone - if you wish to change the time zone, you can follow the steps from Employee Connections Platform configuration - Publish platform and change timezone.
5. Choose whether the event is private. Private events are designed for a specific candidate audience, such as internal employees or applicants, and are accessible to those with a unique event link Private live chat events are not promoted publicly on your platform.
6. Select the participating insiders - remember you can have an unlimited number of live chat insiders. To select an insider, their profile needs to be created first. To view steps on how to create an insider profile refer to Managing Profiles in Employee Connections. Make sure you are inviting a diverse group of insiders who can provide multiple perspectives and insightful responses to candidate questions.
7. Enter a detailed event description. When describing the event, make sure you answer the following questions:
   1. What is the purpose of the live chat event?
   2. When is it? What time zone? (If you're expecting candidates from multiple time zones to attend)
   3. Who will be attending from your company?
   4. What can candidates expect to learn?
   5. What value will candidates out of it?
8. If you want to track the candidates who attended the live chat event and who clicked to view your open vacancies immediately after the chat, enter an apply link with a tracking code. If you're unsure about the correct tracking code to use, please ask the Customer Success team.
9. Click save

Make sure to send a calendar invite to all participating insiders, so they remember the event date & time.

4. Add video content to upcoming your live chat event

An optional addition to your live chat event is to include an intro and outro video to engage candidates.

• Access the left-hand menu - "All Events" option of the Live Chats section
• Next to your upcoming live chat, click the "Manage Videos" option
• Follow the on-screen prompts, reviewing the tips for an engaging video
• Record or upload your intro video, then click save
• Review your live chat videos before saving them for the upcoming live chat event.

Promote an upcoming live chat event

The key to a successful live chat event and maximising your candidate reach and subscription numbers is to use multiple channels to frequently promote your upcoming live chat in the 3-4 weeks between creating the event and the live chat date. There are multiple ways to successfully promote your event, including:

• Inviting candidates from your Employee Connections talent pool
• Leverage your Clinch platform talent pools & email feature to invite candidates
• Install promotional plugins across your Clinch careers site
• Use your job board advertisements to include information about the event
• Promote the live chat at recruiting/careers events with flyers and QR codes
• Advertise the live chat event across all social media platforms.

Make sure your promotions are eye-catching by using banners and images, and most importantly, ensure they include the link to sign up for your live chat event!

Finding your live chat subscription link

You can find the subscription link to your live chat by navigating to the live chats area of the Employee Connections platform and clicking on the "All events" tab. In the "Upcoming live chats" section, you can click on the "Preview and edit" button to view the live chat details. In the top right of the screen, you will see a box labelled "Live chat link". Use this link to promote your upcoming live chat event.

Promotional plugins

The Employee Connections platform provides engaging live chat promotional plugins for use across your Clinch careers site in order to promote your upcoming event.

1. In the left-hand menu, click on Live chats, then Promotional plugin. The preview of the plugin is on the right side of the screen.
2. Copy the installation code from the left side of the screen, and paste the code into a code block in Clinch to display the promotional plugin on a web page.
3. If you want to combine your live chat promotion with other types of plugins, click on Promotional plugins at the bottom of the left-hand menu and follow the instructions listed in Employee Connections Social Media and Promotions - Promotional plugins.

Monitor your upcoming live chat event

Once you've started promoting your upcoming chat event, keep an eye on the candidate subscription numbers by going to "Live chats" in the left-hand menu and clicking on "All events". In the "Upcoming live chats" tab, you can view the number of participating insiders and subscribed candidates. Like all events, not everyone who has subscribed will attend the live chat. Expect around 40% of the candidates to attend the event. As a general rule, ensure there is approximately 1 insider for every 10 subscribers. You can continue to invite as many live chat insiders as required in the lead up to the event. Remember to send a calendar invite to all participating insiders, so they remember the chat event date & time. Remember to continue to promote the live chat event frequently, across multiple channels, to attract as many candidates as possible.

Managing a live chat event

1. Joining the live chat event

Subscribed candidates and participating Insiders will receive a "Join the live chat" link via email 10 minutes before the event start time. When accessing the live chat, be sure to use a modern browser, like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. The administrator who created the event and has managed the promotion should join the live chat and introduce the event using the global announcement notification feature available at the top right of the chat interface (click on the drop-down menu, then "Send global notification"). Insiders can also introduce themselves, so candidates know who they are and their role at your company.

2. During the live chat event

Candidate questions will appear as discussion tabs on the left of the screen. All participating insiders, Admins and candidates can ask questions and contribute to any discussion. Insiders, Admins and candidates can use the tabs on the left of the live chat interface to filter discussions and view:

• All questions
• Pinned questions
  • Questions the admin wants to ensure everyone has read. They stay at the top of the list of all questions. Admins can pin by clicking on the ellipsis and then the pin.
• Following
  • Questions that a user has decided to follow by clicking on the ellipsis and then the heart.
• Unread
• Assigned to me (Insider and Admins Only)
• Unanswered
• Mentioned (Insider and Admins Only)
• Your questions
• Filter by topic
• Delete a question
  • Admins are able to delete any question.
• Delete a reply
  • Candidates are able to delete their own message; Admins are able to delete any message.
• Ban a user
  • Unfortunately circumstances may come up where it is needed to stop a user from sending further questions or replies. Admins can ban a user if necessary. 
• Search questions

3. Assign or mention an Insider

Admins are now able to assign Insider questions. This is possible by clicking on the ellipsis and then "Assign user" and picking the relevant Insider. The Insider chosen will then receive a notification and the question will appear in their "assigned to me" tab. Additionally, on the upper right side of the discussion, it will state that the question has been assigned and to whom. 

Within a discussion, when pressing @ it will bring up all the Insiders' names on the platform. This will then notify the person who was mentioned. All discussions where an Insider has been mentioned will show under the "Mentioned" tab.

4. Ending the live chat event

Ten minutes before the end of the live chat event, the Admin should use the global message feature to inform everyone that the chat is ending soon and to ask their final questions. If they have scheduled a video to end the live chat, the global message will show automatically.

At the scheduled end of the live chat, the session will end for all candidates and they will see a short survey. The survey results will determine your "Net Promoter Score".

At this point, the Insiders and Admins connected to the chat will still be able to view and answer questions. When the Admin is ready, they can then go to the admin dashboard and close the chat. This will end the chat for all users. 

After the live chat event

After the live chat, candidates will be asked a few questions about their perception of your company. The multiple choice questions and possible responses include:

• How did your perception of [company] change after this live chat?
  • Got worse, stayed the same or improved
• How likely are you to recommend this experience with [company] employees to a friend or colleague?
  • 1-10 rating scale

If the live chat is a public event, the discussion content will be reviewed for spelling and grammatical errors and then posted on your public-facing platform by the Clinch team. Live chat discussions can be shared and promoted on social media, just like any other discussions on your platform.

Viewing Candidate Feedback

To view candidate survey feedback following a live chat:

1. Navigate to the live chats area of the platform
2. Click All events
3. View the Previous live chats tab.
4. Click on the Candidate feedback button to view the results.

You will be able to view whether candidates have an improved perception of your company following the live chat event, how likely they are to recommend the live chat experience to others and any comments.

Troubleshooting

An insider cannot find the link to join the chat, can I send it to them?

Each insider has a unique link that will be emailed to them 10 minutes before the live chat event, and log them straight into the chat. You can also find this link from within the platform.

1. Navigate to the live chat area of the platform and click on All events
2. Find your live chat event in the Upcoming live chats or Ongoing live chats tab
3. Select Preview & edit
4. Next to the insider's name, there is an Insider's auto login link that you can send to the insider, and they will be able to join that chat.