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Luck of the Recruiter or a Strategic Approach?

March 16, 2018
 
iCIMS Staff
4 min read
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March is finally here and as warmer weather is upon us, so is a new season of hiring. Although the luck of St. Patrick’s Day is in the air, employers must decide if that is enough to get them by or if they should take advantage of an excellent opportunity to evaluate and improve their strategy for recruiting great talent.

Go beyond luck this spring with these solidified and effective recruitment strategies:

Know Where to Find the Talent You Need

Start by determining which candidates best fit your organization’s mission and culture, and what will get them in the door. Today’s available jobs outweigh job seekers, according to the January 2018 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report announcing another month of 17-year low unemployment. This makes a well-thought-out sourcing strategy critical to compete for desired talent.

Placing your organization in front of targeted job seekers requires a simple approach for sharing out open requisitions to highly-trafficked job boards and social networks, while ensuring they rank highly on search engines such as Google. Not only does the right sourcing secure talent to quickly fill current positions, but it also allows organizations to build up high quality talent pools for future hiring peaks.

Understanding where best-fit talent engages most among varying sources will help set essential benchmarks. Although a “How did you hear about us?” field on the application itself may be helpful, it is important to realize that job seekers view the same job several times, and the most reliable source is the interaction that leads them to apply. Successful recruiting can be easily established on the foundation of a dedicated applicant tracking solution that automates sourcing activities while capturing the most accurate metrics to shape a strategy that best fits unique hiring needs.

Stay in Tune with Modern Candidates and Their Expectations

Once a job is posted, the last thing you want is for excited job seekers to turn into unsatisfied applicants due to a poor experience. Many employers recognize the need for a candidate-centric strategy, now that 78 percent of candidates view their experience as a direct indicator of how they are valued. Not only will your company’s reputation at stake, but so will your bottom line. Unsatisfied candidates are only half as likely to become your customer. That’s a big risk to take.

Benefit by recognizing candidate pain points and simplifying the experience from start to finish. For example, many job seekers feel frustration when they click on a job posting, and are redirected several times, requiring multiple registrations before ever getting to an application. This is why Google is pairing up with candidate-focused recruitment solutions  to deliver them relevant, open positions at the top of their search results, directing them right to the source for a straight forward experience.

Additionally, employers are adapting engagement styles around modern candidates who crave mobile experiences. Mobile friendly applications and career sites are no longer a nice perk, but rather an expectation of 66 percent of Americans. For this reason, many employers are increasing the capabilities of their recruitment solution by bringing in mobile engagement tools that offer convenient candidate communication methods through text message, online chat and artificial intelligence.

Centralize Hiring Activities Under One, Centralized Platform Dedicated to Recruitment

Talent acquisition (TA) has a lot of moving parts, with businesses using up to 24 technologies for recruitment alone. One of the largest challenges, however, comes from poor integrations between those technologies, and the use of disparate systems. Strong corporate recruitment strategies call for a view into the return on investment provided by each tool used for recruiting.

A recent report by Aptitude Research Partners shows that 56 percent of companies are investing in providers that can demonstrate deep domain expertise in talent acquisition, and it’s clear to see why when you look at the business impact it can offer. That same report states that organizations that select a best-of-breed talent solution experience a lower than industry average turnover rate, decreased time to hire and are four times more satisfied with their provider.

The impact of a best-of-breed talent platform comes from robust integration capabilities that bring together your third-party tools such as background checks, assessments or I-9/E-Verify while acting as an extension of core human capital management (HCM) technology. This model provides a full view into HR data as a whole, ensuring optimal visibility and control over strategic talent initiatives.

Understanding the value that talent acquisition software can provide on business initiatives ensures that organizations will never have to rely on luck when seeking out top performing individuals. To hear from some successful employers about mastering a strategy that works for them, make Three Talent Acquisition Tips from Top Employers your next read.

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