As a recruiter you no longer be passive in your recruiting.
Today’s companies find themselves in one of the most challenging times to build sustainable and strong organizations. Between cost containment, automation and new software, it’s never been harder to find qualified niche talent. As you know employees ultimately make the company, and true talent in today’s marketplace is scarce and fickle. Finding and keeping employees has also become a company priority, which has demanded a shift in how recruiters approach their jobs.
It used to be that changing jobs was a momentous decision that only occurred every 5-10 years, like buying a home or a new car. These days, it’s common practice for professionals at all skills and levels to shop for jobs on a continuous basis. There is an ongoing battle for talent and it has become a much more competitive environment for jobs across all industries. With the growth of mobile job searching can now be done within your company footprint. Video interviewing can be done in your parking lot.
Much like marketers have to market constantly, recruiters must now recruit constantly. For years, sales and marketing professionals have successfully marketed their customers of finding, engaging, and closing prospects and gaining new business. I’ve found that the most successful recruiters use many of the same tactics as they source, vet, and ultimately hire candidates. However new recruiting ideas must also now enter the recruiting department to net today’s candidate. I believe recruiters must adopt and use new recruiting innovation to ensure your company attains top talent and stays in front of its completion for talent.
Market the Opportunity
The more you market an opening, the more — and higher-quality — candidate options you’ll ultimately have. Be proactive about filling the position: think beyond the online job board, think about using social and mobile recruiting (there are now 3.5 Billion social profiles for your to find candidates), activate your current employees’ and company’s social networks. Make a compelling hiring video or a unique career branded site. The wider you cast your net, the more likely you’ll find the ideal candidate faster. With more options, you naturally build a spectrum of candidates and can pick and choose based on their qualifications and cultural fit with the company. Building your Talent Community is the first step toward connecting your company with competitive niche talent.
Keep Track of Your Candidates
Use a centralized database (Talent Community) to build, manage, and mine engaged talent. With an organized system to manage prospect information, you’ll know exactly how to engage candidates through social, mobile email, and targeted digital campaigns. Make your Talent Community mobile enabled so candidates can engage with your recruiters on their smartphones and tablets. A database with everything in one place and one that is searchable on many data fields while being accessible by those who need it is the most efficient way of filtering through prospects. It gives you the perspective and efficiency to sift through large numbers of candidates until you’ve reached a manageable Talent Community of candidates by employment segment.
Additionally, a centralized Talent Community where you own the data will prove to be a long-term asset towards future hiring campaigns. You’ll often find candidates who apply for a position not because of the role, but because of the company brand. Even if they’re ultimately not the right fit for the job, you can still have that candidate’s information for when you are hiring for that position.
Stay Top of Mind
Staying relevant is a priority for marketers, and equally as important in filling your open positions. Marketers use powerful digital campaigns to stay top of mind in e-commerce, and now recruiters must do the same. With a well-organized Talent Community of prospect information, recruiters can execute highly specialized campaigns that target skill sets, job titles, geographical locations, or even interests, friend groups and more. Where can you find more candidates for your Talent Community? Add in candidates from your Applicant Tracking System, LinkedIn Connections and other social media connections that you and your recruiters have. Knowing how to use your Talent Community like a marketer and strategically reaching out to candidates with targeted, consistent, creative and relevant information is the best way to turn a prospect into a candidate and eventually, a hire.
Analyze, Learn, Improve, and Repeat
Successful salespeople and marketers analyze where their sales come from and how they can improve their process. Recruiters must implement the same process. Use your best employees and past hires to educate yourself on what is and is not working to strengthen your entire recruiting process. Where do most of your applications come from? How much are you spending per candidate? What is your analytics telling you? How long is your average time-to-hire? How can you make the timeframe shorter? There is always room for improvement, lessons to be learned, and inefficiencies to be weeded out. With today’s third-party analytics, recruiters can measure their performance and efficiency, and improve their quality of hire.
Attracting top talent in today’s market is more difficult than ever before, and demands a change in the way recruiters do their job. However, with a Talent Community marketing approach and the tools to find, engage, and close prospects you will be one step ahead of your competition.
Let’s schedule a virtual appointment at your convenience. Simply reach me by email at jeff@sourcemob.com or by phone at 952-807-8364.
ABOUT SOURCEMOB: SourceMob links Internet, social, talent community and mobile recruiting solutions to help talent acquisition professionals recruit the very best candidates for tough-to-fill positions. SourceMob software distributes job content and conversations providing a job posting springboard to over 3.5 million candidate profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and all of the major search engines. Our solutions also enable Mobile Quick Apply and candidate application management services to create efficiencies and lower recruiting costs.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Best,
Jeffery
Jeffery Giesener
CEO/Founder
SourceMob.com
952=807-8364
Twitter: @sourcemob
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferyjeffgiesener
by Dan Finnigan edited by Jeffery Giesener