Recruiting the right candidates has never been easy and today's competitive market makes recruiter's job even harder. Thousands of companies post job advertisements daily hoping to find qualified prospects who are willing to accept their offer.
How will you stand out from the crowd and attract those prospects? If you want to recruit and retain top talent, you need a well-defined plan. Here are some tips to help you build your most successful hiring strategy.
Be Updated on Your Industry's Trends
If you want to adapt to the exigencies of today's candidates, you must know what triggers their needs and expectations. Being up to date is one of the most important features of an efficient recruiter; you should be well familiarized with the latest employment tendencies on the market.
Read everything that might help you understand better what's happenings in your field: blogs, researches, articles. If they are written by recruiting specialists and authority figures, you'll get to find out useful tips you can apply in your company.
Also, make sure you're familiarized with the compensation ranges on the market, you should know for example how much is one of the highest salaries in healthcare, what's the average salary of a teacher, or how much an entry level should expect from companies in your domain.
- Events: attending job fairs will help you promote your company's job opportunities and get a glimpse of your competitor's activity, however, you should also search for talent in other places.
Attend conferences and events where you can meet professional from various domains. Networking is important in your job, so smile, socialize and spread the news about your company.
Use Multiple Channels to Recruit
If you want to spread your message and prospect as many people as you can, try to use multiple communication channels. Traditional job posting on career sites is the primary source of candidates for most businesses out there, however, there are several other means you could use to advertise your vacancies:
- Linkedin is a great place to start looking for candidates; here you can find professionals from various fields and level experience.
- Popular social media channels: don't shy from using your company's Facebook to promote vacancies. With so many people using their Facebook account daily, there are plenty chances you'll get lots of applications in a matter of days.
- Career section: if your website draws enough traffic, you can leverage the visitor's flow and draw them to a career section where they can submit their resume and find out more about what's it like to work in your company.
Be Honest and Original in Your Job Posting
If you want to trigger the candidate's interest, don't use the usual job advertisements they've already seen in dozens of previous posts; your job posting should be original and engaging. Try to come up with a funny introduction before you start mentioning the required skills and responsibilities.
If this idea seems too daring, or the executive doesn't approve it, you can try another trick: post a mini-interview together with your vacancy and try to make the questions less rigid and more personal. This will boost people's trust and desire to work for your company.
Before they actually get to meet you, candidates will feel relieved to see the human face of the recruiting process which is often a stressful experience. Don't forget that people like to get relevant information, so don't divagate in your job posting and give people exactly what matters most: job-related details.
Conciseness and honesty are the key ingredients to target the professional who really fit your job description. Another common trap for recruiters is hiding the downsides of a position; this can lead to workforce retention problems, so don't hesitate to highlight the difficulties your future candidates will have to deal with.
If your future colleague should have nerves of steel or above the average patience, try to formulate these requirements in your job advertisement.
Maintain a Good Relationship with all Your Candidates
You should provide each candidate with an honest and immediate feedback after each stage of the recruiting process; this will show your integrity and care. Continuous follow-up will also help you maintain a good relationship with your prospects, and this is essential because, like it or not, they will talk about their application and share opinions about your company.
A poor recruiter-candidate relationship can damage your company's reputation, so make sure you're in good terms with all the people you've interviewed. Your bound with these people also allows you to come back to them in case you need to fill more positions. In fact, many companies contact former candidates as soon as they have new vacancies.
This strategy allows you to spare the time you usually invest in prospecting. Besides, you already know these people and their abilities so you can send them directly toward the final stages of the recruiting process.
Implement a Referral Strategy
This strategy can help you recruit reliable workforce; most companies rely on referrals because they trust the staff they currently employ. Your colleagues know better than anyone what their job means, so when they recommend a person, they already know he or she can face the challenges and meet the expectations.
It's also useful for feature employees to work in a place where they already know someone; this will help them adapt easier and feel more comfortable during their first weeks at work which are often, though. They will also be more efficient in molding their job skills to the new position since they'll benefit from the support of someone they know.
If these reasons convinced you, try to craft a referral strategy that will help you bring in more talent and retain the current staff. Yes, retention, since most referral programs also involve incentives for the employees who recommend people who managed to pass through the recruiting stages and sign the offer.
These are some of the most frequent and effective techniques most recruiters use constantly. Does your hiring strategy include them? If not, you might want to implement these changes and see how your strategy becomes more successful.
About the Author
Amanda Wilks is the manager of www.schoolchoices.org and an expert writer who loves to pen down the premises of successful businesses. She believes finding the right balance between motivation, effort, and selflessness is the base of such a lifelong construction.
