5 Best Practices to Follow in 2022 for Acing Recruitment and Landing the Best Hires

With the recruiting landscape getting highly competitive day by day, talent acquisition teams have an ever-increasing expectation of landing the best hires.

This is because employers also spend a substantial amount on hiring – an average of $4,129 per job in the United States alone, according to recent estimates from the Society for Human Resource Management.

Given that the national unemployment rates are at an all-time low and good candidates don’t stay on the market for long, recruiters’ jobs become all the more difficult.

Here are five recruiting best practices that can save the day and help you bag the best candidates out there!

1. Leverage Automation to Cover More Applicants Quickly

Today, close to 75% of recruiters say technology will play a significant role in their recruiting process.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled automation is one progressive tech innovation that is taking the talent acquisition industry by storm at present. In fact, in one recent survey, early adopters of AI-powered recruiting software reported that it mitigated their cost per screen by close to 75% and reduced turnover by 35%.

Automating recruitment processes such as interview scheduling and manual screening of applicant resumes can allow HR managers and their teams to utilize their time better and focus on tasks that directly contribute to increasing their organization’s bottom line.

Additionally, recruiting automation increases the efficacy of the entire recruitment process. It improves the quality of your hiring efforts by enabling recruiters to hire based on characteristics predictive for job success.

Automation also enables recruiters to find more diverse candidates for open positions. Hubspot’s report found that close to 20% of organizations are now leveraging this state-of-the-art technology to support their diversity initiatives.

Due to all these reasons, forward-looking talent acquisition leaders should adopt automation to streamline their day-to-day workflows.

2. Step Up Your Advertising

You’ve undoubtedly heard this many times by now, but the way you phrase your job postings matters a lot!

Jobvite’s recent report states that today, the majority of candidate applications come from job boards (52.17%) and career sites (33.90%). Therefore, if your job ad isn’t optimized to attract job seekers on these platforms, your counterparts will easily reserve all the best prospective candidates out there for themselves.

Try and give candidates a gist of what you’re offering in simple, clear, and precise language. Try including visual content wherever possible since that greatly appeals to people and increases your chances of being discovered.

Since most applicants will begin searching for jobs on their phones, you should optimize your digital adverts to appeal to smartphone users. Doing this can help ensure you land the best hires.

3. Create a Robust Employee Referral Program

Employee referrals are among the best and most cost-effective ways to find exceptional talent for your organization.

One recent eBook states that close to 82% of employees rate employee referrals above all other sourcing options to yield the best return on investment (ROI). This is especially true because 45% of candidates sourced from existing employee referrals stay with the organization for longer than four years, while only 25% of candidates sourced through job boards remain with the organization for over two years.

That said, creating an employee referral program doesn’t have to be overly expensive or complicated. Just make sure it has the following elements, and you’ll be good to go:

• Incentives in the form of cash bonuses, extra days off, or other types of perks
• Easy to understand and use
• The ability to furnish constant feedbacks concerning updating existing employees about the status of their referrals
• Organization-wide recognition for the employee whose referral lands the job

4. Engage with Passive Candidates

Passive job seekers are simply candidates who aren’t actively looking for a job but will be willing to accept a better offer if a relevant opportunity comes their way. 

Around 70% of the global workforce comprises passive qualified candidates.

While such candidates might play hard to get initially, that doesn’t mean you should keep from targeting them from your campaign. Since unemployment rates in the US are at an all-time low, you should be optimizing your strategy to target suitable candidates.

One excellent way to capture candidate attention during a talent shortage is to maintain an applicant pool (a database of past applicants). Regularly sharing relevant content that keeps them engaged could be a great way to stay on their minds. 

Another effective way to engage with passive candidates is leveraging social media channels or sending updates through email lists.

5. Enhance the Candidate Experience During the Hiring Process

Recruiting is all about building meaningful relationships, and the stereotypical email templates that applicants receive are not the ideal way to kick off a new relationship. If you want your recruitment strategy to bear results, try to furnish a one-on-one feeling for candidates every time you interact with them.

Here are some ways you can work on improving the candidate experience. 

• Make sure that any updates you send out come from a team member and not a no-reply address.
• Spell out communication information for candidates who want to open a dialogue and ask questions.
• Personalize all communication with the candidates even if they aren’t shortlisted or choose not to join. This can compel them to refer their friends or reapply later.

All in all, recruiting is genuinely about keeping the candidate at the apex of your operations and deciding what will be essential for them. You can then make amends to your strategy accordingly and experiment with new techniques to attract the right talent pool.

Add technology to the mix, and things will only go upward from there!

To know more about what tools, techniques, and channels you can leverage to acquire the right resources, get in touch with us at Recruiter.com.

We’d be happy to guide you through any queries and help you build result-oriented, highly competitive, and employee-friendly workplaces in the long run.

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