Is your recruitment strategy outdated?
Are you still at the mercy of job portals to find the perfect hire?
Hiring is an expensive, arduous procedure. No matter the time and money spent identifying, attracting, and hiring valuable employees, the process often breaks down, and hiring the wrong person can greatly cost you!
And times are a-changing. The long-serving old-timers are retiring, Millennials are freelancing, and Gen Z is entering the workforce. And amidst all this – digitization is revolutionizing the recruitment process to overcome the bottlenecks in traditional recruitment methods.
When it’s time to hire, the temptation to publish the job post on every job board and cross fingers hoping that a great candidate shows up is a common symptom of reactive recruitment. You may sometimes get lucky, but mostly not. You can be overwhelmed by responses that do not match your requirements, wasting valuable time and money as you filter through the pile. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t utilise job boards, but there are far more efficient hiring alternatives than your ‘post & pray’ technique.
Glassdoor reports that 76% of decision-makers believe candidates have grown wary of traditional job boards. These portals pretty much work by using resumé information to match people. Unfortunately, information available through job portals is not enough to do an intelligent match. Traditional job boards certainly still have their place, but they shouldn’t be the core of your recruitment and selection strategy.
According to LinkedIn, only 30% of professionals are actively looking for a job. If you are only seeking candidates via a job advertisement, you’re missing out on 70% of the market comprising passive candidates.
A job advert should be part of your strategy to recruit, but reaching out to the network of passive candidates can mean hitting the goldmine.
So, who is making up the global workforce scene?
The Millennials. By 2025, the millennials will make up 75% of the workforce. These millennials are tech-savvy, innovative, self-aware, and confident. And they are not lurking on job portals for their next career-defining job.
From employer reviews to your branding, they have access to vast amounts of information that they’re using to their advantage. Traditional job boards are losing their appeal to top talent, especially those with a tech background.
We could go on, but it’s clear old-school tactics lack creativity, and the recruiting industry is ripe for change. Before we get into the how of things, let’s get this out of the way:
What is a recruitment strategy?
A hiring strategy is a formal company plan that lays out a course of action for identifying, recruiting, hiring, and retaining top talent. And loopholes in your system can cause you to hire poorly.
So, how can you optimise your hiring techniques?
Inclusive job adverts
Just as you expect candidates to customize their cover letters and resumés, companies should tailor the job postings to fit the role and the candidate persona.
The choice of words greatly matters; if you are not careful, you may hurt the sentiments of various groups of the candidate population, including women, older individuals, ethnic minorities. Adding gender-neutral language to the job description can embolden people who typically wouldn’t consider applying to your company.
Efficient interview process
Too many rounds of interviews can effectively drive away qualified candidates. If you keep top talent waiting, failing to update them could easily be the differentiating factor between you and your competition. And speed doesn’t mean you have to compromise on quality. Value the time of your applicants just as you value yours.
Leverage the information you gathered about candidates from pre-employment personality screening and prepare effective interview questions. This way, you will avoid asking template interview questions and get an authentic glimpse of the candidate and whether they’re suitable for your enterprise. This leads to faster and more confident final hiring decisions.
Positive interview experience
Interviewing is a skill and assuming someone is capable of interviewing is flawed. Not training your interviewers to conduct effective interviews can be damaging. Remember that your interviewers represent your company just like a spokesperson. The character they portray and how they treat the candidates during an interview will reflect company culture and has a lasting effect on your employer brand and reputation.
Chances are you’ve experienced an eligible candidate drop off after getting to the very end of the recruitment process because of mismatched salary expectations. Including a salary range in the job posting can help prevent this. Being forthright and honest about the position early on will help candidates self-select themselves out, making your hiring process more efficient.
Accurate, concise, inclusive, honest — these are all qualities that will improve your talent pool and shorten the recruitment process.
Social networks
In the pre-social media era, passive candidates were almost impossible to reach. Thanks to social networks, you can reach out to any candidate to engage and build relationships. And if you have solid company branding in place, elite professionals will contact you. Once you’ve established connections, even if they aren’t interested now, your company will likely be the first one that comes to mind when they decide to change jobs.
Good old LinkedIn is the favourite to make meaningful professional connections, but you can no longer turn a blind eye to Twitter & Instagram.
At Anzy Global, we have sought out quality candidates over time through social networks, job fairs, campus visits and developed an extensive peer-to-peer network. We have fostered some great connections in our widespread network of candidates to swiftly find suitable talent for tech companies.
Rehiring past employees
Known as boomerang employees, these people have previously worked with your company but left on good terms. Rehiring past employees is a terrific recruitment strategy as you know their capabilities and can skip the vetting process too. Boomerang employees eliminate the risk of a bad hire, and reduce time and hire costs.
Optimise your careers page
Having a well-crafted careers page on the company website is non-negotiable. It’s an essential element of your talent acquisition strategy and acts as your own personal job board without the subscription fee.
Prospective candidates expect to find a careers page on your website. It’s a great resource to promote open roles, provide information on the company’s mission, culture, benefits and share insight into what it’s like working at your firm.
Ensure your website and the careers page are well-aligned with your employer branding. Candidates are quick to pick up on any disconnect in your messaging.
Read more about Employer Branding on our blog.
Employee referral program
Some of the best applicants are lingering within your current employees’ networks. To incentivize your team to tap into their networks, create an employee referral program that offers perks and payouts when you hire a candidate via a referral. Employee referral invites relevant profiles, reduces hiring time & cost, and increases conversion & retention rate.
Now, these are some assured ways you can acquire star candidates, but how about eliminating all these steps entirely?
We saved the best for last.
Recruitment agency
You can outsource your hiring process to a recruitment agency for they are the experts in this field. Freeing up your time to focus on what you do best, run your company.
The future job market could be different from what it is now; it is their job to keep up with changing industry trends, innovations, and techniques in the recruitment arena.
In addition to having market intelligence, they understand your complete needs, company goals, and culture to attract, identify and screen talents that contribute to your business success.
Leave the tedious exercise of hiring to the experts. Task your HR managers to find you the best agency today.
Final thoughts
When hiring is inefficient, qualified candidates end up slipping through the cracks, leaving you struggling to fill your vacancies. Any steps you can take to improve your hiring process and the overall candidate experience can boost retention and preserve your bottom line.
Today is a candidate-driven market, and there are clear signs that we must ditch some of our old ways of traditional recruiting and retaining the right people. Adopting innovative, new-age ideas and improving the process is the key to overcoming these challenges.
Anzy Global leads tech recruiting solutions, employment screening, and human capital management. Over the years, we have formulated a unique recruitment process that involves a peer-to-peer network and a vertical-based approach to hiring. We work to understand our clients’ specific needs beyond just technical skills, allowing us to find the right fit expeditiously and support future business results.
Take advantage of our 30-minute, no-obligation consultation to understand how you can restructure your hiring process.
