Attracting high quality candidates is the top challenge for 76% of hiring managers. Make this the year to have a solid recruitment plan for high performance candidates with our 6-month breakdown. We recommend working on one area every month so that by the time June and July comes around you’ll have a new and improved process. Here’s where to get started:
Month 1: Fix Employer Branding
Everything from social media to your career site needs to reflect the brand you wish to portray as an employer. Candidates should be able to see your company values, understand your culture and the type of work you do from basic research of your company. Ideally, most of this information should be accessed in one place - your career site!
78% of people will look into a company’s reputation as an employer before applying for a job. This means tracking and responding to reviews is a must. Show that you care about the candidate and employee experience by replying to any negative reviews. In your response, provide a solution to resolve their issue or show your company is working towards resolving it for future candidates and employees.
Here are other actions you can take to ensure your employer brand is well-represented:
- Customize your career page. Don’t just simply list open jobs and slap on a description. Provide context by showcasing your current employees and company culture so jobseekers can envision what joining your team is really like.
- Show the diversity of your team. Diversity should be represented in your job ads copy but also in the imagery used on your site. Show a wide-range of ages, gender and race.
- Get feedback. This is probably the most important tip. If you want to improve and make sure your employer branding is reflecting the right message, why not ask those who digest it first hand. To get a good idea on how others view your company, get feedback from current employees, past employees and candidates that are going through the hiring process through surveys.
Extra EB Knowledge: How to Manage to Employer Brand Promise
Month 2: Foster Collaboration
Teamwork is key. The same goes for recruiting team collaboration. At times, recruiters and hiring managers may not see eye to eye. They often have different opinions about who is the best candidate. If you’re looking for true talent success, working towards collaboration between these two parties is crucial.
Create a process that helps recruiting and management get on the same page. There should be no misunderstanding or miscommunication when it comes to the expectations required and what they need to accomplish as far as candidates are concerned. Why is this so important? If your hiring manager and recruiter aren’t on the same page, you aren’t the only one who suffers - your candidate suffers as well. Studies show that 41% of candidates who had a poor overall experience intended to take their loyalty elsewhere.
Try This: Shadow each other. In order to fully understand everything that each of these positions do, it may be a great idea to have them train and shadow each other - even if just for an hour or a day. This gives each team insight into the moving parts behind the role. From this, the manager gets to see good ways to improve their interviewing techniques, and the recruiter can learn team dynamics and culture to better understand who would be the best hires.
Need to write it down? Download our 5 Steps to Collaboration Printable
Month 3: Revisit Sourcing Techniques
You may not be aware of it, but chances are your sourcing techniques might be a bit outdated. In order to help catch up with the latest trends, you need to be embracing technology. A simple ATS will help you track and manage your talent all in one place while having access to easy applications, documents and even keep close contact with your job postings.
Bonus Content: The 8 Secrets of Strategic Sourcing
94% of recruiters and hiring professionals say their ATS or recruiting software has positively impacted their hiring process. If this and other technology and data sources aren’t in your arsenal, they should be!
Here are some other sourcing tips to take advantage of:
- Calendar chunking. Block off chunks of time on your calendar for sourcing, phone screens, candidate feedback, hiring manager meetings, and more to stay organized and on top of what needs to be done. Some recruiters specify a day during the week specifically to update candidates on their status.
- Pull candidate profiles. We’ve already discussed the power of an ATS, but creating role-specific profiles for your system helps you to track and collect data for future analysis of your most prolific candidate sources and possible bottlenecks in your recruitment process for specific roles.
- Employee referrals. Candidates who are referred by other employees are more likely to be hired and have a positive impact on your company. Get a referral program to reward employees who bring in fresh, new talent.
You already have your best sourcing tool. Here’s a complete guide to ATS.
Month 4: Kick off Diversity Recruiting
During 2017, diversity was huge in the world of recruiting and hiring. This new year is no different. With so much emphasis on candidate experience, it is more important now than ever before. Diversity doesn’t stop at recruiting though - it is a matter of creating a truly inclusive environment within your workforce. This will reflect through your other processes and help eliminate candidate and interview bias.
Almost 80% of millennials consider how they fit into the company culture before taking a job. Ensuring that you cater to people of all genders, ages, races and more will help find those who will be the perfect fit while broadening your talent pool. t also means the quality of talent goes up and creates
In order to make your recruiting more diverse, take a look at these tips:
- Make it known. The best place to highlight how diverse and inclusive you are? Where applicants are going to be within your site - the career page. Even a simple sentence and a few photos are enough to showcase any work you put in to ensure that everyone feels welcomed. Doing so can broaden your talent pool tremendously while helping you find great candidates you may have overlooked in the past.
Extra tip: For good measure, add any diversity incentives or benefits
to the end of your job descriptions as well. Make sure to make your point clear and drive
home what you are try to convey - your diverse culture!
- Don’t let culture fit decide. Within an interview culture fit isn’t always easy to tell or recognize. Many recruiters and hiring managers may have a “gut feeling” during the interview but that doesn’t mean your gut is right. Many individuals act slightly different when in an interview then how they would on a daily basis within the office. Relying so much on whether or not someone seems to “fit” is setting your team up for unconscious bias and you could very easily miss out on a great candidate.
- Change up your questions. We’ve all had those questions about how many golf balls can fit into a suitcase and always wonder the same thing - what does this have to do with the position for which I’m interviewing? These questions only serve to confuse candidates. Instead, focus more on their experience and see how they would act under job-specific pressures or how they would perform tasks unique to the role. When you find an interview process that works, establish standardized questions by department to ensure every candidate is treated equally, regardless of who conducts the interview.
- Request diversity. You may be outsourcing some of your recruiting efforts. If that’s the case, don’t forget to request that they give you a variety of candidates. Even if you have a list of requirements, fill them in on your diversity goals and any requirements you may be trying to hit.
Want more expert diversity recruiting advice? We’ve compiled 70+ Diversity Recruiting Stats!
Month 5: Audit Candidate Experience
Candidate experience is taking the HR world by storm. Recruiting isn’t black and white anymore, it’s about continuously improving your efforts to get better candidate communication and feedback. Still, many companies struggle. When tasked with high-volume recruiting, skill-specific sourcing and hard-to-fill requirements, it makes sense that candidate experience can end up on the back burner. Implementing a candidate-friendly applicant tracking system, an enjoyable interview scheduling system and video interviewing capabilities can make all the difference when communicating with today’s candidates.
Want to better your #talentsuccess for the new year? Here’s our month-to-month breakdown!
60% of candidates say they’d prefer “better communication throughout and after the applicant process,” so be sure to make a serious effort to reply back to both applicants and candidates in a timely manner.
Check out these other ways to give your candidate experience a boost:
- Shorten your applications. No one wants to spend 30 minutes filling out an application, especially if they are a serious job seeker and sending out multiple in one day. Instead, shorten your application to the important stuff (name, desired position, contact information) and then let them simply upload a resume or profile. A good ATS will parse the information so you’re not flying blind come interview time.
- Brief your hiring team. Never have your team go into an interview without all the information about the candidate. Send a briefing email or create an interview guide in your ATS to get the hiring team on the same page about who the candidate is and what they are bringing to the table. Encourage hiring managers and others on your hiring team to send feedback immediately after the interview to speed up time to hire with standardized interview scorecards.
- Provide a short tour. Even before the candidate turns into an employee, it is a great opportunity to provide a small tour of the facilities. This lets them feel more comfortable and get a glimpse at where they may be working. If you have a remote workforce, a video interview is a great way to help your candidates get some “facetime” with their future team.
Month 6: Tackle Onboarding Employees
You did it! You found that amazing candidate, and you’re ready to hire. Now, you just have to close the deal and make their welcome one to be remembered. Don’t just send a simple email, give them a warm and caring message with a few extras to show how excited you are to have them join your team. Here are some great ideas of what you can do to help your new hire feel right at home:
- Get the paperwork out of the way before day one with a paperless onboarding system.
- Send something personal like company swag, a card from their team or new business cards.
- Get creative with fun GIFs and videos. You can even create a tour of their new space.
Onboarding needs a great process, which is why we’ve built some resources to help you create one. Try one of these to get started:
By looking closely at every aspect of your recruiting process you can more easily recognize what needs to be changed and where you can improve to hire better in the future. With our month-to-month breakdown of topics, we’re sure that you can take the time to consider every aspect and work to make it better.
Want to further your talent strategy? Use ClearCompany’s Talent Management Software to track and engage with your candidates like never before. Book your demo today!
