Did you know that the average job posting receives 250 resumes? That’s a lot of information to sift through!
Plus, when you consider that the average cost of hiring a new worker is around $4,000, it is not hard to see why it is important to get it right the first time around.
With that being said, we are going to take a look at some of the different strategies you can use to strengthen your recruitment skills, ensuring you attract the best talent to your business.
1. Make a careers page on your website
There is only one place to begin, and this is by making a careers page. Your career page is the core of your employer brand.
This is where you market yourself to people who may be interested in working for your business.
There are a number of different reasons why you should make a careers page.
Firstly, this is an excellent branding opportunity for your business. The job market is incredibly competitive today, which is why it is important to do everything in your power to set yourself apart from other businesses.
A careers page can also work wonders in terms of SEO.
After all, you are going to be competing against plenty of other recruitment agencies that are looking for fresh candidates.
By using relevant keywords and posting content about careers on your recruitment website, you can help to boost your visibility on the major search engine pages.
If this was not enough, a careers page can contain critical information about the jobs that you have available and what it is like to work for your company.
This will help to make sure that only suitable candidates apply for the jobs that you have available, ensuring you do not waste your time looking through applications that are not suitable.
2. Develop a clear employer brand
Another tip to help you improve your hiring process is to develop a clear brand for both yourself and your clients.
So, what is your employer brand?
This is what will set you apart from other businesses that are hiring. It shows candidates why they should work for you.
Your client’s brand needs to reflect the values, culture, and mission of your business.
Why would someone want to work for your client’s company?
This is the all-important question to ask.
Would your client’s current employees recommend the workplace as a great place to work?
Do they currently support a diverse work environment?
Spend some time assessing the adverts, social media presence, and the pages on your website to make sure that everything aligns with your and your client’s employer brand.
3. Make decisions based on data
More and more business owners are recognizing that hiring employees is a data-driven exercise.
You are not going to be able to manage what you do not measure, and there is certainly a lot that needs to be measured in recruitment.
Collecting, reporting, and evaluating data stretches across all recruitment strategies.
Some of the most critical metrics you need to track includes candidate response rate, time-to-hire, cost-of-hire, qualified candidate rate, and application completion rate.
If you assess recruitment data, this will help you in terms of identifying which recruitment strategies perform effectively, and which ones need to be updated.
4. Consider creating an employee referral program
One strategy that we highly recommend when it comes to improving your recruitment efforts is creating an employee referral program. While employee referral programs are not new, it can be difficult to get them right.
Asking your current workers to refer excellent people from their network is an easy way of connecting with exceptional talent.
Plus, it is not going to cost you a penny!
There are a number of different reasons why this recruitment strategy works well. It is cost-effective and can lower your time-to-hire.
Plus, you can enjoy better quality hires, and referred candidates also have lower turnover rates.
The key when it comes to implementing an employee referral program is to get the balance right between quality and incentivization.
You want to make sure that your workers are encouraged to refer people to your network, yet you want to ensure these connections are going to be of a high quality.
5. Use performance tools to understand your current efforts
Aside from the tips that we have mentioned so far, use performance tools so that you can review your current processes.
Performance review tools are vital across all elements of your business, recruitment included.
After all, how are you going to improve your efforts if you do not know how you are performing at the moment?
6. Boost your visibility in terms of passive candidates
Did you know that the best talent is gone from the job market within just 10 days? This means that you need to move quickly if you want to end up with the top talent on your team.
It is not all bad news, as there is no lack of passive candidates.
According to research that has been conducted, around 70% of the talent around the world sits in the passive market, meaning they are simply waiting to be made aware of better opportunities.
As passive candidates are not actively searching for new roles, you will not be able to engage with them on job posting websites and such like.
Instead, adopting a long-term talent acquisition philosophy is needed.
Talent acquisition focuses on the long-term awareness, visibility, and appeal of your business.
If you build up all of these elements, you will be able to secure passive talent before they start to look for a new role.
This is because they will think of you when they are eventually on the market.
7. Host industry events
In addition to the strategies that we have mentioned so far, we also recommend that you start to plan some industry events that can help you to raise yur profile in the staffing industry.
These events should not be focused on recruitment.
Instead, they should position your agency as an innovative and exciting place to partner with while also bringing value to your network.
From a recruitment point of view, this is an excellent way of synergizing with several other recruitment strategies.
Events provide you with an amazing opportunity to build your talent pool while also planting the seed with passive candidates and helping you to boost your employer brand.
8. Look for ways to innovate your recruitment process
The majority of job listings result in hundreds of applications.
There are a lot of candidates to sift through, and this takes a lot of time!
However, rather than trying to navigate through all of this, why not look for ways to innovate the recruitment process instead?
For instance, the conventional approach starts with a job advertisement, a resume, a telephone interview, an in-person interview, a final interview, and then a job offer.
So, look for ways to change this.
For example, you could start with a job ad, then move on to a skills test and video intro, interview, and a job offer.
This change would be beneficial for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it cuts down the number of steps that are involved, which can help to make the process a lot more efficient, reducing the time-to-hire.
Aside from this, by getting applicants to do a skills test first, you ensure that they have the required knowledge and experience before you move on to the resume and interview portion of the recruitment procedure.
In final words
All in all, there are a number of different approaches that you can use in order to strengthen your recruiting skills.
If you follow the tips and advice that we have provided, you will give your clients the best chance of hiring the right talent that will drive your company forward.