Recent changes in the talent marketplace have prompted HR leaders everywhere to pull out their recruitment strategies and start over from scratch.  These strategic changes are circled around the implementation of time-saving technologies and the reorganization of a recruiter’s daily duties and success metrics. With technologies now able to automate scheduling, resume screening, and much of the candidate follow up during the hiring process, traditional metrics such as the number of candidates interviewed, or interview-to-hire conversion rates, are becoming less telling. 

5 Easy Wins when Revamping Your Recruitment Strategy

More Money, More Money:  

When developing a recruiting strategy and discussing the strategic partnership of recruitment to overall business success, statistics in relation to the cost saving via reduced time to hire, and cost of hire are utilized. These are the numbers that allow HR business partners to fight for every budget dollar allocated to the recruitment function. While implementing new technology will require an upfront investment, the resulting speed of service, in addition to the simple task of staying market relevant, should result in a better quality of said hire. All of which boils down to money saved. 

Raising Retention: 

Employee engagement starts with a positive hiring process, and is followed by a stellar onboarding experience. If you can effectively “debug” your recruitment process, eliminating those pesky communication gaps and time-consuming interview practices, it’s a win-win for everyone around. By doing so you have set a tone of respect between your organization and the new hire which will carry over into their attitude when they start. Additionally, with increased communication on the frontside, candidates will have a clearer picture of the organization and job expectations, something which 67 percent of employers believe would improve retention rates.  With the right engagement technologies in place, partnered with stronger human interaction throughout the onboarding experience, we should see a rise in retention due to a hiring strategy that produces more qualified and culture-fit candidates. 

Employer Brand Reach: 

Revamping your recruitment strategy post a major technological update will have a couple key outcomes. The first outcome being incredible quantities of time saved due to the automation of various tasks.  The second being more time being able to be dedicated to the development of creative sourcing tactics. This luxury of time will result in a more cohesive and creative employer branding strategy and message. Furthermore, with extra time comes the ability to interact with a larger portion of the market place, fully saturating the market with your brand to build familiarity becomes possible. 

Stronger Team Synergies: 

The screening technologies on the market are becoming far more sophisticated due to the surge of artificial intelligence. Now, there are tools for purchase that will first analyze the cultural profile of an organization, and then apply that formula to the search logic used, in order to identify candidates with the strongest likely cohesion to current team cultures. As result, the concept of “culture fit” will be addressed earlier in the recruitment process yielding closer fit candidates and stronger teams.  

Diversity Hires: 

An additional byproduct of screening technology is the ability to eliminate any unconscious biases that a human sourcing team may have. The artificial intelligence performing the basic search does not have the cultural or historic experiences to pull upon which can result in biases and less diversity.  This reduces bias, and from a legal point of view, helps to protect the recruitment team from any accusations of EEOC violations. Furthermore, with the ability to screen thousands of resumes and profiles, the candidate pool accessed for a single hire broadens significantly. 

The moral of the story here is to simply stay current and evolve your recruiting strategy as the technological capabilities and candidate expectations do. Falling behind (or for some not catching up) to the changes in the market can soon be recruitment and retention suicide as well as make it harder to compete for top talent. Protecting your organization from a potential talent shortage will not only make your job easier, but also help ensure continued success and prosperity for all of those who rely on that business strength for their personal livelihood.