Have you heard the saying that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result? So, we have to ask: are you running an insane recruitment strategy? It’s no secret that hiring is hard these days. Between the Great Resignation and today’s unprecedented talent shortage, there are plenty of obstacles to fill the open roles at your company. If you want to drive the applications, you need to meet your organization’s openings; you need to get creative with your recruiting strategies. Social media is your friend Social media is a tool that has certainly gotten a bad reputation in recent years. Instead of using it to compare how you’re doing to those with whom graduated high school, it can be extremely useful as a recruiting strategy. As with (mostly) anything on the Internet, the bigger the presence your brand has, the better – mainly because you’ll reach more potential applicants than if your profiles were limping along. To capitalize on this recruiting strategy, you’ll need to post timely happenings at your company, along with celebrating your employees; this will help establish your company culture online and give candidates a glimpse at what the environment is like before they even step through the door. Incorporating social media into your recruiting strategy can help in two ways. Firstly, you can monitor passive candidates who engage with your social media posts but don’t actually apply for a role and make the first move toward them. By determining how engaged these candidates are – and taking a quick look at their own profile to see if they’re open to offers – you can start the recruitment process by sending a simple message. Secondly, you can post your open roles on your profile for anyone who has been keeping an eye on their opportunity to get their foot in the door at your company. You can take this a step further by encouraging your employees to create their own posts to share with customized QR codes. Employee referrals If you’re not using your existing staff in your recruitment strategy yet, you’re missing out. Employees referred to their positions are, on average, hired faster, stay longer, and are more engaged than regular hires. In fact, recent data shows that 20% of new hires found their latest roles through a friend – aka they were referred. Now, adding an employee referral program to your recruiting strategy is easier than ever before. Some employee referral software allows you to create individual QR codes for each employee, making the tracking process a breeze even if your staff uses social media to recruit for you. You can even use the QR codes to gather referrals from your workers by using them in weekly presentations or posting signage around your workspace encouraging them to submit referrals. Read the 2022 Future of Hiring to see how the talent shortage has created a new set of hiring best practices that will be table stakes in the years to come. Revisit your job descriptions Updating and modernizing your job descriptions can help bolster your existing recruiting strategies. You need to go back and look at what you’ve written to see if there are any changes you can make to drive more applicants to these roles. One simple way to start this process is to actually read the job description aloud. You can read this to yourself, but you might gather more insightful feedback from someone who is actually working in that position; in fact, you can ask them questions to craft a better description, like “Does that sound like a position you would apply for if you were on the market for a new job?” You still need to keep Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind when wordsmithing your new job description to reach the widest audience possible, but you need to make sure that it’s still written for people to understand. So yes, while there are tricks you can do – like rearranging segments of job posting – focusing on connecting the content with the applicants (and not the bots) will make the payoff for this recruitment strategy worth it. continued on page 20 19
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