9 Best Practices in Recruiting Top Talent

As competitive as recruiting candidate is in this day and age, how can you ensure best results for your company or organization? Recruiting veteran, Jimmy Taylor of Novotus, shares recruiting best practices in a recent webinar hosted by the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association called "Attracting and Engaging the Talent Your Organizatino Needs." The following is a summary of Taylor's 9 best practices for recruiting top talent.

Process
Have a well-planned, thoughtful recruiting process that you actually follow. This is one of the best indicators of recruiting success. Recruiting is a process like any other business process, and should be customized for the size and needs of your organization. Follow-through is essential for this practice; you can have the best process in the business, but if you don’t follow it, it will not be the effective resource that it can be.
Invest
Invest in highly-skilled recruiters, and keep training them. Growing and developing recruiters will make them more effective in their position and provide dividends in the quality of the talent they recruit.
Sales Function
Treat recruiting like a sales function, because it is. The only difference is that the recruiter is not trying to sell a product; they are trying to sell the idea of a position or candidate. Recruiters need to see where a candidate’s needs and a client’s needs fit together to make the case for a particular candidate or a particular position, just as other sales people connect the market to the need.
Hiring Managers
Build a strong, consultative relationship with your hiring managers. Hiring managers are under pressure to fill the position as well and quickly as possible. They are therefore likely to give recruiters basic information and a short timeframe and expect miracles. Recruiters need to be able to work with the hiring managers to get them to slow the process down to identify what success looks like for that hire and work to make sure they get the best candidate for that position. The goal is to have them see you as a trusted advisor who knows what they’re doing, and rely on you for advice and expertise.
SLAs
Have Service Level Agreements in place. These agreements between hiring managers and recruiters outline who is responsible for what, and what timeframes are realistic. These agreements make communication easier, improve results and help to build strong hiring manager relationships.
Referrals
Maintain a strong employee referral program. Your best people are likely to know other high performers, and you want your existing employees to bring those high performers into a fold. Enhance and market your employee referral programs, and make them a process that feeds smoothly into your normal recruiting stream.
Candidate Pools
Develop and maintain strong candidate pools. Building relationships ahead of demand ensures that even in a crisis, your recruiters will be able to act quickly to fill pressing positions in the client company. Taking an interactive approach that builds a community based on sharing information with candidates and potential candidates, even if that information is not about specific job openings, keeps your candidate pool responsive.
Assessments
Use assessments tools to evaluate your recruiting effectiveness and function. While assessments will not tell you who to hire, they do assist in identifying the best candidates in the sourcing and screening process.
Data Driven
Analyze your best performers and most effective recruiting strategies, and use the resulting data to inform your recruitment practices. This allows you to concentrate your effort and processes on the practices and candidates proven to be most successful.

Implementing these nine recruiting practices will make a powerful difference in the effectiveness and success of your recruiting programs. Tailoring each practice to the needs of your firm or organization will ensure that your recruiting function becomes a smooth, efficient process that is an integral and appreciated core function of your business and HR.