In the first two parts of this series, we covered current statistics in hiring and recruiting as well as current trends in hiring and recruiting costs and efficiencies. In the final part of this series, we're presenting five great ideas that employers ought to consider for their talent acquisition initiatives. These ideas are specific recommendations that address the statistics and trends featured in the first two parts. Implementing one or all of these ideas effectively will enable employers to hire more creatively and efficiently, which is necessary in today's talent shortage in the marketplace.
Candidate Search is Job Marketing
When employers think of candidate search as job marketing, it makes them less reliant on one source of candidates for every open position. Although some candidates sources will be better than others, it wouldn't be prudent for a company to invest a majority of the recruiting budget on just one source.
"We believe that one of the best [departments] to talk to about how to launch candidate-generation campaigns is your marketing function," said Ray Rike, COO of Accolo. "Your marketing function would never go to one source to identify and qualify potential new customers."
Rike suggested that if employers are able to source from 100 or 150 sources efficiently, then they'll find that no one source will provide more than 20 percent of all hires (with exception to referral sources). Employers should consider how to apply the current techniques of customers acquisition and apply them to talent acquisition.
Survey Your Customers (Hiring Managers)
Take the time to find out what's working, or not working, from their perspective. Accolo conducted their own survey with 6,000 companies, asking hiring managers and recruiters about their level of satisfaction with their current recruit to hire process at their organization. On average, hiring managers were dissatisfied 35 percent of the time, while HR was dissatisfied only about eight percent of the time.
"One of the interesting things that we found is that going out and surveying your customer... after every job, and doing it just once a quarter and not doing it just after an unsuccessful [hire], will give you real insight into where you might want to invest your resources to increase hiring manager satisfaction," Rike said.
Connections are Social... Sourcing Is?
Use social media, but being social doesn't mean buying LinkedIn Recruiter or posting to LinkedIn. Being social means figuring out how to design employee referral campaigns "that leverage the social connectivity of the employee base."
"Think about concepts like having time-bound and theme-based employee referral programs that have executive sponsorship and leverage the social connections of the employees for specific hiring managers," Rike said.
Don't think of social media recruiting or of an employee referral campaign as posting every job to every social connection. It just doesn't work that way.
Data Drives Decisions
"We talk to talent acquisition professionals every day who will say things like, 'job boards will never find us great technical hires for our organization' or 'LinkedIn Recruiter is the best thing I've ever seen and Dice OpenWeb stinks,'" Rike said. "They are burdened with historical precedence and personal bias."
Rike suggests to measure your candidate sources and to measure them with more than the number of hires or the numbers your applicant tracking system gives you in terms of qualified candidates. He suggests that employers also look at the number of interviews, second interviews and offers each source receives.
Think Differently
Just because something has worked for you in the past doesn't mean it's going to be the best vehicle for your organization in the future. So, try new things and don't close yourself off to new concepts.
"We allocate 10 percent of our job marketing campaign budget at Accolo to trying new things," Rike said. "We have a hypothesis as to why it would work, but let's go ahead and try it and measure the results."
Rike says that when trying new things, make sure to test it and to measure it over an extended period. It's important to see if a recruiting method works for your organization, but also if it works as well as the current recruiting methods that your organization is using.
To learn more about the "State of the Hiring Union," you can view the full presentation by clicking the button below.
