Are you able to fill positions and maintain adequate staffing levels? Are you happy with the quality of candidates your recruitment efforts bring in?
Bottom line: how well are your recruitment strategies working?
The days of confidently posting job openings in the local newspaper or on a job board and snagging the best candidate are mostly gone. The post and cross-your-collective-fingers approach will not work in today’s candidate-driven market. A “post it and they will come” strategy basically amounts to no strategy at all when companies are competing to recruit and hire the best employees.
If you want to attract the best quality candidates, consider these approaches that take recruitment above and beyond the strategies of yesterday.
#1 – Hire a sure thing
The authors of The Human Capital Edge, Bruce N. Pfau, and Ira T. Kay, insist you should hire a person who has done the exact same job, in this very industry, in the same business climate, from a company with a very similar culture. Their conviction is based on a belief “past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.” Such candidates can hit the ground running, avoiding the cost and time loss involved in training a candidate with less pertinent experience, who may or may not be a successful hire.
#2 – Hire the smartest people
In their book, First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman recommend hiring for talent.
“People don’t change that much. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough.”
It’s too difficult to put or “train” missing talents into a person. Hire for strengths and expound on them, rather than trying to develop weak areas. Build on what’s already good and make it great.
#3 – Go after passive candidates
This is the reality of today’s job market: the top talent gets snapped up in less than 10 days. However, there’s no shortage whatsoever of passive candidates—those not actively looking for a new job but who would gladly change if a better opportunity came along.
While passive candidates won’t necessarily have a polished CV at the ready, nor are they perusing job boards, the skills and experiences they bring to the table are worth the little bit of extra digging or strategizing you must do to connect with them.
Not a new concept, right? Of course, recruiting from within has been around for a long time. But considering how candidate-driven this 2019 job market is, internal recruitment now should be viewed as a major recruiting strategy. Types of internal recruitment include promotions, department transfers, and temporary-to-permanent placements as well as employee referrals.
Current employees, who’ve already proven their dependability and loyalty to the company, can often step right into a new position with minimal training. Those same employees can often suggest just the right colleague—one with the appropriate training and experience who will fit well in the company’s culture.
# 5 – Be known as a great employer
Never underestimate the importance and benefit of being known as a great place to work. Key areas that contribute to “awesome employer” status are advancement opportunities, work-life balance flexibility, reward/recognition/appreciation practices, as well as community involvement. Employees bragging about their place of employment is, hands down, the best form of advertising your company will ever get.
When you pair your winning recruiting strategies with the marketing power of a partnership with ASJ Partners, your staffing firm will soar to the top. Our comprehensive marketing solutions for the staffing industry, when customized to your unique needs, will help you Win More, Sell More, Grow More and Be Found More. Give our team a call today.
