Give Your Recruiting Strategy a Spring Cleaning

April 25, 2017 JiUS Staff Advice for Employers and Recruiters, Recruiting & HR 0

hiring spring cleaning

Now that we are well into the spring hiring season, we can learn from the successes and failures of last year by developing a new, fresh strategy for the rest of 2017. This strategy includes deciding what you want to accomplish internally, against possible external market factors like technology changes, behavioral swings, supply and demand shifts, and so on.

You may wonder which of these issues will help or hinder you most from achieving your goals. Here are some ways to freshen up your hiring efforts;

REWRITE

Go back through all copy on your career site including job descriptions and give it all a fresh look. You will probably notice some items that are out of date and need to be tweaked. For job descriptions consider hiring a freelance copywriter to give them a makeover which could help them deliver better ROI.

GET MILLENIAL FRIENDLY

In 2015, millenials became the largest population in the workforce and this doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Put aside the cultural differences and understand that this first generation of digital natives was born connected to the Internet on handheld devices. In other words, this generation expects the technology they use in the workplace to be as user friendly as what they use in their personal lives. If they visit your ancient career site and find that it doesn’t work on their phone, or it asks them to spend more than 10 minutes applying to a job, you’ve lost them. 2017 should be the year you look closely at your digital apply experience and update it to the 21st century.

MARKETING EVENTS AND WEBINARS

Although the “recruiting is marketing” drum has been played for years now, only a small amount of recruiting leaders appear to be embracing it. This year, take the opportunity to venture outside your HR/recruitment world. Learn from the pros by attending some marketing conferences and webinars. The world of internet marketing is rapidly changing and there is no excuse for learning from those doing it right. Also check out what your competitors are doing for recruiting by snooping on their career sites.

IMPROVE COLLABORATION

Start improving how you interact with hiring managers. Get them involved more. Pay special attention to transitioning from being an order taker to becoming a strategic adviser. Strategic advisers instruct hiring managers on the market conditions, where to find the best talent, how much they should make, how long it will take to find someone great, etc.

Because strategic advisers also hold their hiring managers accountable, work on quickly identifying bottlenecks in order to measure a hiring manager’s engagement and responsiveness. Of course, it makes all the difference in the world to have the right data. This brings us to the next point.

ANALYTICS

The fact that companies that rely on data driven decisions significantly outperform those that don’t is well known. Begin 2017 with a clear idea of which data is most important to impacting performance and then measure, measure, measure. At a high level, here are some ideas:

  1. Sourcing Analytics:improve the top of your candidate funnel by understanding in real time which sourcing and marketing channels are working.
  2. Pipeline Analytics:build a predictable and repeatable talent acquisition machine by understanding your process conversion rates and time in stage/step.
  3. Forecasting Analytics:as is most obvious in sales recruiting, your value is derived from whether jobs are getting filled on time, so that the company hits its employee capacity goals. Recognize your hiring plan and how you are performing against that plan in terms of % of fills on time.

Employers that take the time to be more proactive with their candidate outreach will be in a better position as the job market continues to tighten. Happy hiring everyone.