Current talent markets for all industries are becoming hotter, and it’s quickly becoming a candidate’s market if we’re not already there. Last quarters numbers don't lie. The unemployment rate for the U.S. was at 4.1% this past October, a decline from last years 4.9%, and a huge shift from five years ago when they were sitting at 8.2%. Due to this power shift, recruiters are having to become more innovative and work at unprecedented speeds to capture top talent. The demand for talent isn’t slowing down anytime soon, yet for many working in the field, their budgets for additional staff support has stayed stagnant.
This has left maxed-out recruitment teams struggling to stay ahead of the market, asking the question of “how are we going to keep up?!”
The good news here is the answer is quite simple: recruiting optimization.
If you don’t have at least one process within your organization that feels cumbersome or counterproductive to the goal then you must have found the magic formula that just about every company in the world is searching for. I’m willing to bet that we have all faced unwieldy processes at some time or another within recruitment. Most of them were born out of the needs of a specific situation and have now been instilled as doctrine. Analyzing how recruitment is performed across the board, and the hoops we require both candidate and recruiter to jump through should be the first step. Trim the proverbial fat and streamline procedures. Sometimes the fat is a two-hour personality assessment no one actually looks at, and other times a third round phone interview prior bringing the candidate onsite. Regardless of what’s slowing you down, it’s time to get the lead out.
Recruitment technology has made leaps in bounds within the last year. With the development of artificial intelligence products hitting the market with force, it is now possible for a recruiter to shift much of their more monotonous tasks onto the metaphorical shoulders of technology. This means paring down hours of screening, scheduling, and mass market communications. By eliminating this type of work and using technology the bandwidth of a single recruiter can by multiplied immensely and allow them to focus more on the human element of their job. Ergo fewer candidates are needed, as individual candidate quality improves.
Take a moment to consider whether or not your employer brand is doing everything it could for your recruitment team. A standout employer brand with market familiarity can do a lot of the work for you when attempting to capture the attention of top talent. One quick place to look when diagnosing the health of your employer brand is your career site. Is it descriptive, user-friendly, and most importantly mobile? If you answered “no” to any of those questions you’re burdening your team unnecessarily. Another area to be examined is your career site’s content. Ask yourself if it communicates the brand well to all potential candidates, for all varieties of positions. If it doesn’t do this well it might be time to consider more targeted messaging to all demographics with the development of microsites.
Good things like training and technological adoption take time. Time, which unfortunately many of us don’t have. This is when it is best to send out a SOS and seek alternative solutions. A service like OnDemand Recruiting could be the solution to bridge the gap while your internal team is playing catch up. By partnering with a service like this your team will be given the opportunity to stop, evaluate processes, implement technology, and come out the other side of this struggle invigorated.
These steps how to improve your recruitment process are just small ways a recruiting department can start to optimize their time and resources. The problem, most companies are so bogged down with process after process that they don't have time to come up and breathe to fix pieces that could easily lead them down a more efficient route. That's where we come in. Whether we're training your recruiters and hiring managers best practices around interviewing or building your employee referral program – Proactive Talent offers a wide range of services that will help unearth you from the madness.
Let us show you what Proactive Talent can do for your organization. Contact us today.