Attracting top talent is on everyone’s mind. Recruiting is not what it once was when top candidates came knocking on your door looking for full time work. In today’s job market, competition is hard, and to get the right candidates to apply, companies need to use creative and effective recruitment strategies to get the attention of quality candidates.
These strategies can help both independent and in-house recruiters find highly-qualified candidates and improve their stream of potential hires.
Explore Niche Job Posting Sites
Job posting sites made advertising openings in the company much easier in the digital world. People can go online at any time of the day or night to search for businesses looking to hire. Unfortunately, candidates can get lost on the larger job boards. With so many employment postings to navigate through, it consumes the candidates time and energy.
Rather than just sharing your openings on platforms like Indeed or LinkedIn, look into posting your open roles on industry-specific job boards. These sites focus on a single industry, like retail, tech, healthcare or manufacturing, so you can find people who are interested in jobs in a given field. This saves time for you and the candidates because you won’t have to sort through tons of resumes from unqualified candidates, and candidates will only find jobs in their area of expertise.
Niche careers sites can be valuable not only for finding candidates, but also for building awareness for your business or agency.
Identify Passive Candidates Who Might Be Interested in a Role
The appeal of passive candidates is the very fact that they are currently not looking for work due to their strong work ethic or little conflict with managers and coworkers. Identifying passive candidates allows recruiters to put out bread crumbs and begin building relationships with these candidates.
According to a report by LinkedIn, 70 percent of the global workforce is made up of passive talent who aren’t actively job searching. Even if someone isn’t immediately looking for a new role, they might still be interested in switching jobs if the right role opens up.
One recruitment strategy to reach passive candidates would be to implement an employee referral program. Your existing employees are motivated to help the company, and have the greatest knowledge of who would be the right fit for a role. If you can offer bonus incentives or company perks for employee referrals, you could potentially reach a whole new group of talent.
Another way to find passive candidates is to simply ask around in your network. Often, your colleagues, friends, or acquaintances may know of someone who could be a perfect fit for an open role. Putting out a post on social media, or asking an old co-worker if they know anyone who may fit your criteria can allow you to reach better prospects who you otherwise would have missed out on.
Build Your Brand on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the best platforms for businesses. It is considered the world’s largest professional network with 774+ million members in over 200 countries and territories. LinkedIn provides a platform for business and professionals to interact, share information and grow communities. There is a good chance that you’ll find great candidates on LinkedIn.
If you’re hiring for a company, you will want to create an attractive company page on LinkedIn. It’s important to relay the company’s values and mission clearly, so future employees have an idea of the type of company they are joining. Make sure to post regularly, to develop a positive employer brand that gets people excited about the company and what you do.
Some content to showcase would be:
- Company growth and culture
- Events that the company and associates attended
- Employees stories, achievements, and advancements
- Video interviews and testimonies
Once you develop a following, post your job ads when openings become available. The greater the reputation you have here, the more candidates you can reach and the more likelihood a job seeker will apply.
Use an Applicant Tracking System
Remember, applicant tracking systems can be used for more than collecting applications and filing them in a database.
You never want to forget about candidates you reached out to, interviewed and made a connection with. Even if they did not fit the role you were looking to fill, they did show interest in the company and unless they were a poor interview, they could potentially be a perfect fit for another role.
It is also good practice to allow every visitor to your site the opportunity to leave an application, even if there is not a current opening with the company. Set up email notifications where the applicant can list preferences and when there is a match, they will be one of the first notified.
Optimize Your Company’s Careers Page
Keep in mind that marketing tactics that work for retail also work for company websites. Have your career page optimized to attract the right candidate when they search for a specific job or industry. Consider Google when doing title keyword research and don’t dismiss your competitor’s keywords when crafting your page.
Avoid having just job openings on this page. Promote employer branding here by highlighting:
- Company values and fundamentals
- Awards won such as top 100 employer in the region
- Diversity statistics
- Company benefits
- Quotes from current employees
- Company traditions
Adding employee testimony in the way of a podcast or video makes your page rise to the top of the search. Also adding a means that potential candidates can learn more about the company by way of a FAQs section, a guide to your hiring process or a Chat box makes for an attractive career page.
Create In-Depth Recruitment Content
Content is a long game when it comes to recruitment strategies. But for attracting the right candidate, adding this to your hiring process is worth the time and money spent. Top talent tends to be curious and continually learning, so if you can provide information for them they will start to trust your brand as an authority in your industry. They will be looking up information on career advancement skills, industry news or top trends. Getting ahead of the game and providing the information that top candidates would be interested in will have you in mind when they think about switching jobs.
There is no limit when creating content for potential employees. The subjects should be interesting and can range from:
- Blogs about current employees
- Article describing upcoming projects
- Videos of company culture
The key would be to try to stand out. There are likely other companies in the same industry as you and competing for the same quality candidates. Being a bit silly or taking a left when others go right is a chance that could pay off in great talent applying to your job openings instead of your competitors.
Conclusion
Successful recruitment involves attracting the best talent so companies have the brightest minds and innovative talent working on their side. Using a combination of recruitment strategies and hiring processes improves your chances of attracting that ideal candidate.
