In Sales, the “ABC’s,” stands for “always be closing,” meaning at every stage of the sales process – from first few seconds of a cold call through to negotiating contract terms – is an opportunity to “close” new business. Similarly, the success of your recruiting efforts can be attributed to a candidate’s experience throughout the entire recruit-to-hire process – from resume submission to interviewing to offer negotiations.

In the first part of this series, we covered two important tactics for pushing your top candidate down the recruiting process: job description and the screening process. Here we explore the next two steps in closing these top candidates: the interview and offer letter. 

A healthy company culture isn't just crucial to an organization's success, but it is also necessary in retaining and hiring the best employees. The employees that care about company culture, or who are good enough to get a job elsewhere, will leave your organization if they don't think the current work environment is a pleasant one. Potential candidates will also consider your organization's company culture when looking at where to apply and where to accept a job offer.

Recruitment's black hole is the gap between all those job seekers looking for an open position and all those companies with open positions that are looking for the right candidates to fill them. We call it a black hole because so many candidates and open positions fall into this gap, not knowing the other existed. "Skills gap" may be a buzzword, but it's a very real problem for many organizations. This week's hiring and recruiting news roundup addresses the issue of the black hole, offering insight into who's falling into it and how we can retrieve those candidates and positions before they're gone forever.

You might think that you need to be established in your field before you can negotiate for a better salary, but you'd be wrong. It's fairly common place for recent graduates to discuss the terms of their new contract, and you shouldn't let the opportunity pass you by! Below, you can find some of the methods you can use in your negotiations.

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.

Getting a hold of your metrics means a lot more than just refining the way in which you measure and collect information on the state of your company’s hiring function. In order to truly get the most out of your hard work, blood, sweat and spread sheets, your metrics have to do more than just collect dust. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of accurate measurement, but recording metrics for metrics sake just isn’t the point of the whole exercise. The point of this data is improvement, and the potential that good metrics have for growing your hiring function is immense. The only problem is that, much of the time, the same HR people who put in the time to collect and catalog the right metrics can’t quite tell the story that the data is pointing at. Even if the numbers are all laid out in front of you and your executives, the bottom line and organizational impact of recent HR decisions and your hiring function as a whole can still be lost in translation.

"The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue." - Antisthenes

A new hire survey is a questionnaire given to your new hire within his/her first 30 days. The point of the survey is to have them assess your onboarding process, everything from how they were referred to the position all the way to first-day orientation and the explanation of the company's benefits and procedures. Hopefully, your new hire surveys are effective in providing substantial feedback so that you can improve your onboarding and hiring processes. If they aren't, then here's how to write an effective new hire survey.