
Recruiting and hiring the right people for your organization is no doubt one of the key challenges you face, especially in the current environment of low unemployment and fewer highly skilled candidates. According to George Dickson, who focuses on strengthening organizational cultures, a successful recruiting strategy involves your entire team and several areas of your business to be effective. Dickson offers a variety of tips to help you consistently attract top talent (15 Simple Recruiting Tips You’ll Be Happy You Learned), including:
Promote employee referrals
The first step to building a recruiting machine is to turn every employee into a recruiter by soliciting referrals from them. As Laszlo Bock outlines in his recent book, Work Rules!, sometimes the simplest strategies are the best:
- Hire amazing people
- Keep them consistently challenged and happy
- Encourage them to bring their most talented friends and associates
- Provide an excellent candidate experience
- Repeat
Click here to access A Guide for Setting Up an Employee Referral Program.
Use modern tools
There are many tools you can use to improve the effectiveness of your sourcing and hiring processes:
- GapJumpers allows organizations to host blind auditions, which offer an opportunity to judge candidate performance, rather than resume bullet points, GPAs, pre-existing relationships or any other number of unconscious biases. There are many scenarios where an excellent candidate might be passed over because of a factor that wouldn’t determine their success in the actual open position. Blind auditions can also help prevent candidates who would be less suited to a position (but better looking on paper).
- Textio helps organizations draft better and more effective job descriptions. There are a number of unnecessary descriptors and types of language that could be considered unappealing or off putting to a great candidate.
- ZipRecruiter is a platform that allows you to draft a single posting and distribute it across 100+ job boards. You can also manage social recruiting and screening all within a single platform.
- Wayup is a very useful tool for any organization working to build an internship program or looking for recent college grads to add to the team.
Practice collaborative hiring
Each new hire is going to impact the work of others on your team, so it’s important to make sure you’re hearing your key team members’ thoughts on the matter and taking them into consideration. Your current employees are in a unique position to provide insights about the position and the candidates hoping to fill it.
Write better job descriptions
If you’re not accurately describing your open position, you’re at a disadvantage from the beginning. It’s crucial to be honest about the job to make sure that you’re attracting the types of candidates who will be successful in it. (See Tri-Valley Career Center’s Writing a Job Description Tip Sheet.)
Communicate a strong Employee Value Proposition
Employee Engagement Director Andrew Collett defines an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) as what an organization would most like to be associated with as an employer and the “give and get” of the employment deal (the value that employees are expected to contribute as well as the value that they can expect in return). Key elements of a strong EVP include competitive salary and benefits, a positive work environment and company culture, employee autonomy and rewards and recognition for goals achieved. Attracting the strongest candidates is similar to attracting customers and clients; you need an offer that stands out.
Get clear (and realistic) about timelines
Recruiting a great new hire can often take longer than anticipated. Extended timelines can be challenging for your recruitment and hiring team, but they can be even more challenging for candidates. Do your best to let candidates know two very important things early on:
- When you plan to make a hiring decision?
- How much of the candidate’s time you will likely require throughout the hiring process?
By communicating your expectations about time and timing from the start, candidates can plan and organize their job search accordingly and will appreciate your consideration of their time and efforts. This includes keeping them informed on changes to the timeline as well.
Finding the best possible people who can fit within your culture and contribute to your organization is a challenge and an opportunity. Incorporating some of these ideas will hopefully help your organization overcome the challenge and create opportunities to find great candidates.