The face of recruiting has changed drastically over the past decade. Practices like circling jobs in the newspaper’s classifieds section and snail mailing printed resumes and cover letters to companies as job applications are fast turning into relics of a recent past. Recruitment has predominantly shifted to the online space for the better of both the applicants and the recruiters owing to the convenient and cost-effective nature of the internet. Here are some of the modern hiring techniques that recruiters use to find top quality talent in the digital space:
1. Using innovative methods of showcasing vacancies
With so many job boards and sites flooded with text boxes, it’s hard for your job ad to stand out. A video or podcast on the other hand, can do the trick. You can use interactive YouTube videos or a recorded podcast describing the position and your organization. This will do three things: It will cut through the clutter of competing job ads, appeal to both active and passive job-seekers since the latter won’t be reading online classifieds and finally, it will convey your corporate culture right from the start.
You can post these videos on your careers site, on Linkedin, on your social media accounts as well as on other job forums. Evalufy is one such great platform to post your video job ads. You could also link your video to job sites that only accept text entries by uploading them on vimeo and Youtube to retrieve shareable links.
2. Engaging passive candidates
Typically, the most talented lot is usually gainfully employed elsewhere and the real challenge is reaching out to them and getting them to apply to your company. You are unlikely to accomplish this through conventional job fairs but you can do one the following to land good passive job-seekers:
Attend events that are not job fairs: Use group events on forums like Meetup to interact with qualified people who would fit well in your vacant job role. Going to conventions where people of similar interests and professions meet for discussions can also be a great way to gather skilled people for your company.
Host a virtual career fair: A lesser known benefit of virtual career fairs is their ability to attract passive job-seekers. Since employed individuals don’t prefer to be seen by others while they’re on the hunt for jobs, a virtual event offers them the perfect opportunity to remain anonymous during their search. The increased convenience of the virtual space is another reason why those not in dire need of a job will also end up attending.
3. Hosting a company-wide ‘Open House’
If you host an open day for your company, you have an added opportunity of separating the wheat from the chaff. By adding this additional layer between job application and interviews, you can ensure that only the most serious candidates are forwarded through your hiring process.
The Open House is also a great way of showcasing your office, the culture and the people working for you. Although employer branding videos can accomplish this as well, an open house can provide an unparalleled sense of realism and authenticity that can bring you the cream of the crop very quickly. It can also help you see how your applicants interact in groups.
4. Social Media Recruiting
Social Media has become extremely important for sourcing top talent in the recent years. According to iCIMS, job ads saw a boost of 30-50% in candidate applications after being posted on social media. By leveraging job ad campaigns on networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can target your audience down to location, demographics and interests. This significantly improves the relevance of the talent you receive. The campaigns also provide stats on ROI as well which helps you manage them better.
Additionally, social media maintains transparency on both sides. Recruiters can glance at the candidates’ profiles which is sometimes more useful in making the hire/reject decision than a socially desirable persona that they put forward in resumes and interviews.
5. Advertising to Niches
Promoting jobs on all-inclusive job boards is a common practice but you are less likely to find relevant talent there. Alternatively, online communities and forums can be far more useful in targeting job ads to a specific demographic with particular skill sets. For example, if you are looking for a graphic designer, try searching for terms like ‘graphic design forum’ or ‘community of graphic designers’ and you’ll find multiple places for publicizing your jobs in that niche.
A solid way to deal with integrated recruitment marketing is to start using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that uses multiple paid and local job boards and communities to source top talent. Another relatively inexpensive method is to buy keywords that you think potential candidates might be searching for online.
6. Sifting through past candidates
Just because a candidate was not fit for a previous opening does not mean that he/she won’t be suitable for a new one. Going over your existing talent pool can be a great way of sourcing people for new vacancies. Since these candidates have usually passed through the initial stages of your recruitment cycle, re-evaluating them and progressing them through the hiring funnel is much easier and time efficient.
You may have skipped over a good candidate in the past for some reason. If that reason ceases to exist today, it doesn’t hurt to reconsider them. You could resort to your CV stack but if you have an ATS, you are halfway there since all the talent profiles are still intact and ready for access in the cloud.
7. Incentivizing Employee Referrals
People from your employees’ networks can be excellent sources for hiring. Since your employees are already aware of the company, its management, culture and work life, they can be the perfect ambassadors for job vacancies and can bring in some of the best-fitting candidates.
You might want to use technology to further streamline the referral process. Platforms like GaggleAmp allow HR to gain access to their employee’s social networks and promote jobs on their feeds and even source candidates from their network.
You can catalyze this process by adding monetary or non-monetary incentives (like extra vacation days, early offs or premium parking spot) to each employee whose referral ends up getting hired. This will also bring a sense of competition among your employees in trying to fill a vacancy whenever it’s announced. One way of maintaining the referred talent pool’s quality is by incentivizing employees only after their referral has completed a set amount of time in the company.
8. Using Video Interviews
Some companies still fly candidates to their offices and often times pay for their accommodation for assessments and interviews that span over days. This might resonate corporate culture for some companies but the cost and time can easily be saved by replacing physical interviews with digital ones and the overall experience with other employer branding techniques.
Using video interviews through Skype, Google Hangouts or video interview software built in their ATS are just some techniques that leading enterprises are gravitating towards. Video interviews are easy to schedule (especially if you have a sophisticated ATS Software), convenient and effective which is why they are growing vastly popular.
9. Going Virtual with Networking Events
The in-person interactions at physical career and networking events are certainly an invaluable experience but the truth is, nobody has the time to attend them.
You can either visit, exhibit in or host online networking events to gather and interact with people who will be a good fit for your company. These events can be as engaging as their physical counterparts where you can indulge in group or private chats, exchange electronic business cards, host live Q&A webinars and share experiences to learn more about your applicant pool.
Looking at the trends of the past decade, we can see that technology has transformed recruiting for start-ups and enterprises alike and it shows no signs of stopping. The purpose of recruiting, however, has stayed the same: cutting through the clutter (which now comprises of tweets, posts and jargon instead of stacks of paper) and finding candidates who are the best fit for the company.
If you need assistance in finding out more about a recruitment solution, you can reach our professionals here for a free guided demo and product tour.
