This article is a guest post by Augusta Henning, Resume-Library.
Are you struggling to hire right now? If so, you’re not alone. Indeed, many companies are finding it difficult to entice people out of their current roles and attract them into their businesses - especially as the US labor force has hit a record high. For organizations, this means there’s more pressure than ever to be proactive in your hiring efforts.
But what does proactivity look like? Of course it involves reaching out to candidates directly, but it also means giving yourself time to think about your strategy, your goals, how your company is coming across during the process and what the experience is like for candidates.
The more time you focus on perfecting your recruitment process, the better results you’ll achieve. So, with that in mind, here are our top tips on how to be more proactive in your hiring efforts.
With any task, it’s crucial to have an end goal in mind. Whether you want to source higher quality candidates, or reduce your time to hire, this proactive approach will help you stay one step ahead.
Other areas you might want to focus on include hiring manager satisfaction, how successful the new hire is in their role and the number of applications you receive.
Alternatively, your goals may center around one particular job at a time. Perhaps you have a short window in which to find someone and therefore need your sole focus to be on one job. Whatever it may be, be sure that everyone in the team is aware. That way, you can work in collaboration to meet these objectives.
Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can begin to think about the recruitment tools that will help you reach them. For example, if you want to start reaching out to candidates directly, you may want to invest in accessing a resume database, like Resume-Library. This is especially handy for targeting passive candidates.
To make it even easier to find the best candidates, you can use recruitment technology. Daxtra Search enables users to match candidates to jobs by searching simultaneously across multiple job boards and their ATS or CRM. Candidates are ranked by relevance to the job, based on the context of their skills and experience in their resume. Daxtra Capture automates the loading and deduplicating of candidate resumes into your ATS or CRM, dramatically reducing the time spent on manual admin tasks.
There are certainly a range of options out there, but whichever tools you choose to use, it’s important to talk to your suppliers about your goals and ensure they can help you to achieve them.
Another key area to focus on is your employer brand. Taking a proactive approach towards understanding how your company comes across and making necessary tweaks to your recruitment process can go a long way towards boosting your hiring efforts altogether.
Put yourself in the job seekers’ shoes. What would you think of the company if you visited your website? What image do you portray to potential recruits? Moreover, what do your social media profiles say about you as an employer?
These are all elements that candidates look at when considering applying for your jobs. Not to mention that your job advert can say a lot about your business. Get it right and you’ll have no trouble attracting the right individuals to your roles.
Alongside this, think about the candidate experience as a whole. People don’t have time to jump through a number of hoops in order to apply to your jobs. Being proactive and thinking about the hiring process from their perspective is crucial.
Key focus points should include how clear your job descriptions are, what the application process involves, how quick you are to feedback on applications/offer interviews and the time it takes between them attending the interview and you reaching your decision.
With employee review sites growing in prominence, candidates can review your hiring process on these pages, regardless of whether you offered them the job or not. So, if they have a particularly negative experience, they won’t be afraid to shout about it.
Even if someone doesn’t accept your offer right now, building positive relationships with job seekers can help you out in the future.
Indeed, there’s a lot of talk in the market right now about targeting passive candidates - people that aren’t actively looking for a new job but would be open to discussing opportunities. So, creating a target list and getting to know these individuals is a fantastic example of proactive hiring.
Connect with them on LinkedIn, keep them up to date with what’s happening at your company and encourage them to follow the business on social media. That way, you’ll be front of mind when they’re ready to think about a new job.
Overall, there are a number of ways in which you can be proactive in your hiring efforts. So try to take a step back and look at your existing processes. Could you allow a bit of time to reassess your goals, review your suppliers, boost your brand and build positive relationships with candidates?
In doing so, you’ll stand a much better chance of connecting with the right individuals for your company. Good luck!