To be successful at recruiting new talent, your recruiting team must do more than simply collect candidate profiles or resumes for the positions in question. Here, recruiting success is not necessarily a measure of the volume of candidates obtained. Rather, successful recruiting teams are able to utilize the most effective methods that help them quickly narrow their search to a selection of potential hires and then identify the candidates that are most likely to make a positive impact to your growing organization.
This is easier said than done – for instance, it requires looking beyond a candidate’s credentials and having both the mindset and the tools to do so. Here are 7 habits that you’ll find in every highly successful recruiting team.
Whether you’re a CEO, the head of HR or even an external recruiter, to be truly successful you must know everything about the organization. This goes beyond the general knowledge necessary for your particular position – you must also be familiar with the company’s business, its operations, culture and the culture of its work environment.
From this, a successful recruiter or recruiting team garners a deep understanding of not just the company, but of the brand and can express it concisely when recruiting. This is advantageous in three ways. First – being able to offer an attractive presentation of the brand attracts more candidates, giving your company and the recruiting team a larger pool of talent to work with. Second – with this knowledge you will now be able to easily identify candidates that would be suitable for the organization.
Third – when recruiting, you will be able to succinctly express what makes your company a unique and desirable place for candidates and what they can expect if they make the excellent decision of joining it.
Companies and recruiting teams often adopt a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to hiring and then wonder why their success rates vary widely from one hiring campaign to another. The answer is a simple one – no two positions are the same. Therefore, to properly represent each one and attract the most suitable candidates, the position advertisement process must be designed on a case-by-case basis.
Does the position require an emphasis on real world experience or is it one where more theoretical training would almost certainly result in greater success? If it’s a seasonal job, when is the best time to push advertising to catch the eyes of those looking as well as give ample time for the hiring process to be completed? At the same time, recruiting teams must avoid tunnel vision in order to achieve an acceptable level of diversity in the candidate pool.
Successful recruiting teams make a habit of tailoring their advertising to not only attract those on the job hunt but also be attractive to passive candidates. These are high value professionals and will consider moving from their current job to your organization if the timing and messaging are right.
A classic mistake made by companies and their recruiting teams is being blinded by an impressive resume and failing to dig deeper into the candidate details – his personality, values, work ethic, history etc. The perfect candidate is not just qualified for the job, he or she must also be compatible with the organization.
As the leader of your company’s recruiting team, it’s your job to always have this at the forefront of your mind. Through the aforementioned brand building, you will already be aware of what attributes a compatible candidate will possess. Now, it’s also up to you to discern whether the candidate has these attributes via a skillfully designed interview as well as through intuition.
With access to modern recruiting software and data-driven insights, an effective HR recruiting team will also be able to pick up on red flags that will dictate which areas should be focussed on and what additional questions need to be asked to build the most accurate candidate profile.
It’s been a well researched and confirmed fact that a large portion of successful hires come from employee and business network referrals. Effective recruiting leaders won’t wait around for an employee to approach them and recommend a candidate. Instead, as a recruiting team leader, you should proactively make employees aware that the organization is filling a position. Carefully implemented and easy-to-understand employee referral incentive programs that reward useful leads and referrals have been proven to get results.
Successful recruiting teams should constantly be developing and nurturing connections and relationships – and then use this wide reaching network spanning social networks and personal connections as a valuable sourcing asset.
With many moving parts such as sources, applicants, job posts, processes and tasks to track, streamlining a company’s recruitment process requires the right technology. A modern cloud-based platform for managing the hiring process, also referred to as SaaS recruiting software, can make a recruiting team’s job easier while at the same time making the process more effective.
A recruiting team must adapt quickly to a globally competitive and fast paced business environment to be successful in hiring in the 21st century. There is a critical need for your organization to transform into a dynamic team of individuals that are in tune with the changes around them.
A good recruiting team should stay focused on the goals that are in line with the organization’s long term objectives instead of focusing on hitting individual targets. And the best way to bring this kind of sharp focus to your recruiting team is by leveraging the right technology for recruitment management. Well designed and full-featured recruitment software has the capability to provide a recruiting team with powerful tools that optimize all aspects of the hiring process. A recruiting team leader that truly understands and fully utilizes this type of technology will have a clear advantage over the competition and quite likely enjoy a pattern of superior hires.
Data is king. This holds true for anyone who plans to objectively judge their own performance – as all successful recruiting team leaders do. The only way to find out what aspects of your approach are working and to what extent is to have an effective yet simple way to collect data for all your recruitment related activity. The best recruiting software is data-driven and makes it easy for you and your recruiting team to capture and analyze data at each step of the process.
A data-driven applicant tracking system and recruiting platform that collects data and provides reporting also makes it easy to see where your hiring process is succeeding and where it might be falling short. As you make tweaks to your process, you’ll be able to see which actions are making an impact on your process.
While it sounds simple enough, maintaining a long-term strategic perspective on recruiting may be one of the tougher practices for recruiting teams to consistently stick to. It’s human nature to focus on the reward that’s directly in front of you. As the leader of your recruiting team, you may find great candidates that are not a good fit for your current positions but good be excellent additions to your team in the future. The best thing you can do in such a situation is to include such top talent in your talent repository and make sure that you communicate with them on a regular basis to keep them coming back to your career site and checking the progress of your company.
On the other hand, ignoring good talent or not providing proper communication in the hiring process can leave a poor impression on individuals. This in turn can come back and harm your company’s reputation and employer brand. Thinking long-term makes sure that your hiring team and recruiting philosophy acknowledge the importance of initiating, nurturing and maintaining an ongoing relationship with your top candidates and your talent community. This, in turn, will help you find great talent fast when you are looking to fill an important position in the future.
Successful recruiting teams and leaders understand the benefits of the above described traits. Fostering these habits into your company culture and your hiring team will serve your organization in good stead and result in a workforce displaying low turnover rates and high ROI for your recruitment efforts.
Photo by Hamza NOUASRIA on Unsplash