Finding and hiring top talent is no easy feat, and retaining those coveted, high-potential workers for the long haul is equally as difficult. And when it comes to the hiring process, without a united effort among your recruiters, both hiring and retention efforts are liable to suffer.
In the United States alone, over 2 million Americans quit their jobs every month according to columnist Alan Hall of Forbes magazine. No matter where you’re located, though, odds are if you’re recruiting for service roles or retail positions, hiring top talent can feel like a constant, uphill battle.
Though parts of the global economy are healing and slowly crawling toward prosperity, many employers are still experiencing recruiting difficulties. In fact, according to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder, 81 percent of employers claim it is at least somewhat difficult to fill job vacancies.
If you’re among the majority of employers experiencing some hiring pains, it’s time to explore some effective ways of improving your hiring process, starting with your recruiting efforts. When your recruiting team is contending with a large number of openings to fill, here are 7 tips to set your recruiting team up for success.
1. Make Sure Your Recruiting Team is the Right Size for the Hiring Process
Scaling up your business means scaling up your recruiting team. When a recruiting team diminishes, it impedes recruiters’ ability to effectively source candidates and slows recruiting speed. In order to efficiently source candidates quickly, it is imperative to keep a balance on your recruiting team. FurstPerson recommends 100 – 200 hires per recruiter.
2. Create an Incentive Plan
Consider tying aspects of recruiter compensation or bonuses to performance. If you opt to tie compensation to performance, try including metrics such as attrition and fill rate. Examples include credits for employees that stay for 90 days and deductions for those who quit or are fired within 90 days. If you choose to apply bonuses, establish a bonus amount, then apply a debit against the bonus for each new hire that does not stay for 90 days.
3. Give Your Recruiters the Details and Time Needed
Pushing incentives will only lead to rushed and potentially sloppy recruiting efforts if recruiters don’t have ample time (and a solid description with all the must-haves) to do their jobs correctly. As Mike Wolford points out in a recent recruiting piece, one of the most frustrating events for recruiters is finding a candidate – or group of candidates – only to have them be dismissed for lacking credentials the hiring manager forgot to mention.
4. Choose Your Recruiters as Carefully as You Want them to Choose Your Employees
Carefully determine each role on the recruiting team and hire specifically to that role. While some junior recruiters might be able to handle filling positions with an abundance of applicants, positions requiring candidates with a more refined set of skills – like developers – may require the expertise of a single, senior recruiter.
Recruiters with more industry knowledge will know exactly where the talent pools lie, and are oftentimes well worth the investment. Each recruiting team should have roles for individuals that are masters in sourcing specific candidates for specific positions. Ensuring the recruiting team is staffed for each role is critical for success.
5. Centralize Your Recruiting Efforts
Talent acquisition is a key priority for HR executives in companies of all sizes. However, for larger organizations, recruiting processes can become more complex. When it comes to getting a large number of positions filled in a timely manner, it makes sense to have a concerted and centralized recruiting effort. This is a little trickier (but not impossible) if your company is a large enterprise with multiple locations. If this is the case, talk with your team to determine which processes can be centralized to reduce costs and allow for local resources to be more flexible.
6. Focus on Internet-Based Recruiting and Employee Referrals
Many of the most effective recruiting strategies are those in which recruiters take a step back and look at their efforts through the eyes of a marketer. These days, a large majority of candidates conduct their job searches via the internet, and research shows internet-based recruiting has proven to drive both candidate volume and quality. However, getting candidates to apply to a position in your company as opposed to a competitor requires some creativity. Crafting compelling (but truthful) job descriptions boosts your company’s talent brand and creates a profile that allows the truth to be enticing.
Additionally, many companies have opted to start utilizing referral programs, however the effectiveness of such programs varies with how they are structured. FurstPerson recommends reworking your employee referral program into something that looks a little more like a sales process (leads/qualified/opportunity/close). Instead of using generic referral programs, break the program down into the following milestones:
- Point of referral
- Date of hire
- First day on the job
- 30 days
- 60 days
- 90 days
Use each referral to reinforce the overhauled program to the rest of the organization.
7. Determine which Sources Provide the Best Candidates
Strengthening recruitment efforts all starts with knowing where your best employees are coming from. Do your high performers come largely from LinkedIn job boards, or do they tend to come from career sites like Indeed.com? Hiring teams that maximize their quality of hire persistently focus on linking the recruiting sources to the new hire performance data. This way, they can optimize their recruitment efforts.
FurstPerson recommends analyzing each recruiting source based on the number of applicants generated, the retention rate of those applicants at 30, 60, 90, and 180 days and overall performance based on scorecard, rating, and review. This way, you can assign each source a ranking that can be used to identify which sources are sending you the most promising prospect versus those that aren’t.
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