How to Hire Right in 2023: Strategies for Successful Recruitment
As the intense competition for top talent continues to intensify, employers need to take measures to ensure they stand out in a crowded market and get hired right in 2023. This article explores the strategies and tools necessary to succeed in recruitment, including defining your corporate brand, utilizing social media in a targeted way, creating engaging interviews, implementing referral programs for college recruiting, and getting an applicant tracking system
Short Summary
- Create a corporate brand that reflects your mission, culture, and values.
- Treat candidates as customers during recruitment to create positive experiences.
- Utilize social media, job ads, employee referral programs, ATSs, niche job boards, recruiting videos, and recruiting software to find the right candidate.
Define Your Corporate Brand
Employer branding is a critical part of a good recruitment strategy, that helps to set a company apart from other hiring entities and illustrates to job seekers the advantages of working there. According to research, constructing a solid employer brand can reduce employee turnover by 28%. When defining a corporate brand, it is important to consider factors such as why potential employees would be interested in working for the company, the diversity of the workforce, and the feedback of existing employees regarding the organization as a place to work. A company’s branding should encompass its mission, culture, and values.
A company can communicate its corporate brand to potential employees through a branded careers site, campus recruiting events, and job fairs, postings on online job boards, and contacting career services at local colleges and universities. To ensure their branding and recruitment plan are consistent, a company should review their “about” page, social media profiles, and advertisements. Aligning branding and recruitment plan can be achieved by crafting an About Us page on the company’s website that clearly expresses the company’s vision and mission. Additionally, it is essential to ensure that the company’s branding and recruitment plan are in line with its mission, culture, and values
Treat Candidates as Customers
Treating candidates as customers is an important part of the recruitment process. It is essential to ensure that potential employees are respected and valued, and that their time is respected. It is also beneficial to the employer, as it can lead to improved recruitment outcomes and a strengthened employer brand.
To ensure the recruitment process is respectful of candidates’ time, employers can limit the duration of interviews and phone calls, provide concise information about the job and company, and promptly address any queries. Additionally, offering hospitality such as refreshments during the recruitment process can contribute to a positive candidate experience.
Employers can also make themselves available for follow-up questions, by providing candidates with contact information and actively encouraging them to contact them with any inquiries. Promptly addressing any queries that arise is also recommended
Use Social Media in a Targeted Way
Social media recruiting is a powerful tool for recruiting efforts, as it can help to increase the reach of a company’s job postings and build a brand’s reputation among potential job candidates everywhere. Leveraging social media for recruitment can involve utilizing employee advocacy to increase traffic to the company’s careers page, as well as leveraging employees’ personal and professional connections. Additionally, utilizing digital trends and social media can aid in the attraction of potential employees, as it can help to showcase workplace culture and provide job seekers with an insight into the experience of working for the company.
It is also essential to concentrate on disseminating content that reflects the company’s values and activities to attract compatible and appropriate talent. Companies can utilize social media to respond to candidate FAQs, advertise job vacancies, and demonstrate company values and activities. Investing in targeted ads on social media sites can help to reach potential candidates that match the desired personas, thereby increasing the quality of applicants in the recruitment pipeline.
Additionally, passive candidate recruitment techniques can be utilized to identify passive job seekers on social media platforms. Through searching for individuals with specific skills or job titles and utilizing talent aggregation tools, such as 360social, employers can effectively identify and engage passive candidates and job seekers
Have Job Ads That Reflect Your Company culture
A job post is of great importance as it serves as the initial impression a candidate will have of the company. Job postings should effectively communicate the company’s branding, including color, typography, and logo, to showcase professionalism. A job description serves to inform employers of the necessary qualifications and skills required for a role and provides prospective employees and applicants with a guide to evaluate their suitability. A job description that is written proficiently mirrors the brand and role accurately and assists in the identification of applicants who are not suitable for the position. Job descriptions written by experts meet the publishing criteria of various job boards.
Job ads should accurately reflect the company’s culture by incorporating its values and desired professionalism in order to attract qualified applicants, who are a good fit for the corporate culture. There is an extensive library of job descriptions from various industries available online, providing a wide selection of templates for customization. Customizing job descriptions allows employers to highlight the specific qualities they are looking for in a potential employee, allowing them to find the right candidates to meet their recruitment strategy. Additionally, job descriptions that capture the company’s culture in a compelling way can help employers attract talented candidates
Start an Employee Referral Program
An employee referral program is a recruitment strategy that encourages current employees to refer suitable candidates for open positions at the company. It is an effective way to pre-screen potential candidates before they are interviewed and can expand the talent pool of prospective candidates you can access. This strategy can be incentivized with a referral bonus program, gamification and prizes to motivate employees to participate.
However, there are potential drawbacks to an employee referral program, such as a conflict with DEI objectives if employees only refer candidates of their own demographic or background. To address this, companies can set diversity goals for employee referrals and provide bonuses for referrals that result in diverse hires. Additionally, employees may refer friends or family members who are not suitable for the job and can be countered by establishing clear referral criteria and making sure that the employees are aware of them.
An employee referral program can also positively impact employee retention in the long term. Referred employees tend to stay with the organization for a longer period of time and perform better than those who are not. Furthermore, it can help the company save up to $3,000 in recruitment and job posting costs
Get an Applicant Tracking System
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a tool designed to assist recruiters in managing their recruitment activities and prioritizing more important matters. An ATS can optimize the recruitment process, thus reducing the time spent and allowing recruiters to address potential shortcomings in the hiring process at their source.
An ATS can be found as part of a comprehensive HR software suite, such as BambooHR, or as a standalone option, such as JazzHR. This allows organizations to customize their ATS capabilities to meet their specific needs.
An ATS-integrated careers site provides a streamlined job posting process and a highly customizable candidate experience. Using an ATS-integrated website can help ensure that the job postings are optimized for search engine visibility and provide a positive candidate experience.
In addition to an ATS, other tools available to be used in combination with it include Boomerang for Gmail, Calendly, Google+Hangouts, and campus placements. These tools can help recruiters find and attract qualified candidates, streamline the hiring process, and improve recruitment outcomes
Utilize Niche Job Boards
Niche job boards are job sites that specialize in a particular industry. These job sites provide recruiters with the opportunity to connect with job seekers who are seeking better career prospects, thus allowing them to access top industry talent [Fact 3]. The Institute of Company Secretary, All India Management Association, Indian Medical Association, Institute of Chartered Accountants, and Institution of Engineers all provide job boards [Fact 2].
Niche job boards can be beneficial in locating the appropriate talent for job offer and eliminating unsuitable applicants, given that they are concentrated on a particular sector or expertise set. This can help reduce the amount of time and effort needed to find the right candidates for a job opening [Fact 5]
Make Interviews Engaging
Creating an engaging interview experience is essential for a successful recruitment process, as it helps to attract and retain top talent. An interview should be seen as a two-way conversation, where both the interviewer and the candidate can gain valuable insights from each other. To ensure effective interviewing, it is important to create a relaxed atmosphere and be aware of potential unconscious bias. Utilizing consistent questions and instituting an impartial rating system are also beneficial.
An extensive interview process is recommended to evaluate the enthusiasm and efficiency levels of potential candidates. This helps in determining the best-suited and qualified candidate for the job. During an interview, it is important to provide employees with access to relevant information, invest in the conversation, and gain feedback from participants. Doing so will make the interview experience more engaging for the candidate, which can help to ensure a positive candidate experience and ultimately lead to better job performance.
Referral programs and compelling job descriptions can also help to improve the recruitment process and attract talented candidates. By following these tips, businesses can effectively make interviews engaging and ensure successful recruitment
Find Your Next Great Hire Through ZipRecruiter’s Online Employment Marketplace
ZipRecruiter is a renowned online employment marketplace, leveraging AI-driven smart matching technology. Employers can quickly post their job openings to more than 100 job boards, and reach out to 30 million job seekers. To utilize ZipRecruiter, employers must first create an account, then post a job. ZipRecruiter’s AI-driven matching technology will then identify the most suitable candidates for the job.
ZipRecruiter has had great success stories from employers utilizing their online employment marketplace. For example, Company X was able to fill their position in just two weeks with an exceptionally qualified individual. Companies can also benefit from ZipRecruiter’s compelling job descriptions, recruiting strategies, recruitment process steps, and successful recruitment of talented candidates
Use Recruiting Videos
A recruiting video is a tool used to help potential employees understand a company’s mission, values, and culture. With the use of recruiting videos, companies can draw in top-tier talent, reduce staff turnover rates, and save time and resources during the hiring process.
To make an effective recruitment video, it should be kept concise and captivating, showing the organization’s distinct culture and values, displaying the work atmosphere and personnel, and including reviews from present personnel. Additionally, it is essential to ensure the video is of high quality and professional.
With the right recruiting video, a company can make a powerful statement as to why their organization is a great place to work
Reach Out to Past Applicants
Making contact with previous applicants can offer a source of potential candidates and facilitate the recruitment process effectively. By utilizing keywords and screening criteria, recruiters can review previous resumes to identify potential candidates for current job openings. Recruiters can also review resumes from previous applicants to find potential candidates who have already expressed interest in the company. Rehiring former employees may prove beneficial in terms of reducing the onboarding process and learning curve. Additionally, recruiters should contemplate giving past applicants a second look, as they may have acquired new skills since their initial application.
The hiring team should create a recruiting process that takes into account past applicants. This ensures they are not missing out on any talented candidates. Contacting past applicants can be beneficial for both the employer and the potential candidate. It saves time for the hiring manager, while allowing the potential candidate to get back into the job market quickly. The hiring team should reach out to past applicants and let them know when there is a suitable job opening. This can be done through email, social media, or even through an online employment marketplace like ZipRecruiter. Once a suitable candidate is found, the hiring team should make sure that the onboarding process for otherwise qualified candidate goes smoothly and that the new employees feel welcomed and supported.
By reaching out to past applicants, the hiring team can ensure that all potential candidates are considered for their job openings. By utilizing keywords, screening criteria, and past resumes, the hiring and recruiting team can quickly and efficiently identify the most talented candidates for their job opening. By reaching out to past applicants, the hiring team can save time and ensure that they are hiring the best people for their company. This is an essential part of a successful recruitment process
How Recruiting Software Can Help
Recruiting software is a tool designed to streamline the recruitment process, providing automation for many of the tasks associated with hiring, such as posting job ads, sorting applicants, and onboarding new hires. Employers who use recruitment software benefit from improved organization and tracking capabilities, enabling them to concentrate on engaging with quality candidates and reducing overall recruiting time.
Recruiting software can also facilitate onboarding by providing new hires with the necessary training and materials, as well as forms and videos to help them integrate into the system.
To identify top vendors for recruiting software, employers can access resources such as the HR Software Guide, ATS Software Guide, and Recruiting Software Guide
Tips to Improve Your Hiring Process
A robust recruitment process is paramount for any organization. It enables them to effectively identify, attract, engage, recruit and retain the appropriate candidates, thereby optimizing time and resources. This process should include strategic growth planning, skills assessment, brand incorporation, and personnel adaptability. Examining existing metrics and historical data can assist in identifying areas of concern, establishing effective recruitment strategies and objectives, and monitoring progress.
It is essential for employers to focus on streamlining their recruitment process and move quickly to distinguish suitable candidates from a large applicant pool. To do this, they can utilize tools such as video platforms and application tracking systems to facilitate the hiring process. Employers should also consider Proactive Recruiting, which is a recruitment process designed to anticipate potential gaps in staffing and refine recruitment strategies to ensure the highest they hire quality candidates and hire in a timely manner. An inadequately structured recruitment plan may not be successful in drawing in suitable applicants from the available talent pool. Therefore, it is important to utilize data and metrics in the hiring process to recognize areas of success and potential areas for growth.
Employers must make sure they have an effective recruitment process. To do this, they should use the SMART framework, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. This includes assessing and detailing the job qualifications, experience, and skills needed to fill any open positions. Employers should also take into consideration factors such as qualifications and cultural fit when making hiring decisions and be aware of common errors made during the recruitment process. Hosting industry-related meetups for employee engagement can also be beneficial. This presents a valuable chance to create personal connections with possible candidates that cannot be found on job posting websites. Employers should also have a well-defined hiring process and might also consider using psychometric testing to identify the best candidate for a job
Summary
Attracting and retaining quality employees is no easy task, especially in the present tense job market. The advent of technology has allowed recruitment strategies to be used in a more efficient manner; these strategies range from developing a corporate brand to utilizing recruiting software. By incorporating each of the mentioned approaches into their recruitment process, employers can maximize the effectiveness of their hiring process and secure top talent for their company.
Establishing a corporate brand that is reflective of your company culture mission and goals helps potential hires identify if they will fit into the culture of your organization. Additionally, creating a candidate experience that feels like customer service and using social media to target desired personas are great techniques to promote your business and draw in high-caliber candidates. Moreover, an employee referral program, application tracking system, and niche job boards provide innovative methods for businesses to find competitive applicants that match their criteria.
Finally, structured interviews, video tours, past applicant reviews, and SMART objectives should all be included to complete the interviewing and hiring process. Recruiting software can also provide helpful tools to facilitate onboarding tasks, optimize recruitment time, and locate resources for identifying vendors.
Ultimately, employers must use creativity and resourcefulness to develop and utilize successful recruitment strategies that will result in finding the most suitable employees to propel their business forward in the upcoming year of 2023
Frequently Asked Questions
What is HireRight?
HireRight is a trusted provider of comprehensive employment background screenings, helping businesses protect their reputation and make informed hiring decisions. With fast, reliable and secure process management solutions, HireRight delivers the insight employers need to stay compliant with regulations and build a strong workforce.
Does HireRight call your current employer?
It is not required for HireRight to call your current employer directly for verification. Instead, the company will typically verify work history by requesting documents such as pay stubs and W2 forms.
Additionally, employers may opt to go through an independent third-party source if desired.
Why do companies still use HireRight?
Companies still rely on HireRight to ensure they make informed hiring decisions. By providing employers with an easy-to-navigate user interface and the ability to integrate with an existing ATS system, HireRight helps to streamline the recruitment process while allowing employers to access needed information and protect their data.
As such, it is a necessary and invaluable tool for employers.
How does HireRight process work?
HireRight’s process starts with employers inputting their criteria, which can range from a simple criminal record check to an in-depth and comprehensive review of a candidate. Depending on the level of background check selected, HireRight reviews the candidate’s data before presenting a report to their employer.
This process helps employers make informed decisions and protect themselves against fraudulent applications.
What are the 7 steps in the selection process?
The 7 steps of the full recruitment and selection process will include defining the role, creating a job description and candidate requirements, sourcing and recruiting candidates, reviewing resumes and applications and conducting interviews, verifying qualifications and references, extending an offer, and onboarding new hires.
With this comprehensive approach, organizations can find the right fit for their needs and ensure a successful transition into the team
Eighty-six percent of human resource professionals say that it’s hard to hire technical talent. Accordingly, it helps to know what options you have when selecting tools to help with that process. There is various HR and test management software that solve various parts of the hiring process. To keep this blog actionable, we’ll focus on technology hiring and talk about technical assessment tools. What are technical assessment tools and how do they help in the hiring process?
Technical assessment tools are often called coding assessment tools and they’re meant to help you evaluate the technical skills of the candidates in your hiring pipeline. They provide all kinds of benefits:
- Saves the hiring team’s time. It saves recruiters significant time when sifting through and assessing applicants.
- Reduces time to hire. Taking too long to hire affects your product teams’ capabilities, candidate experience, and overall employer brand. Technical assessment helps not just better hiring decisions, but faster decisions as the data are clear and it’s easy to compare a maximum of candidates.
- Gives quantifiable assessments. Tests are great ways to measure proficiency before hiring someone.
- Removes bias. When recruiting, you want to be as objective as possible. There are subconscious human biases, and even AI-based shortlisting algorithms are still found to be biased in several instances. Skill-based tests can help remove that bias and give employers concrete hiring parameters.
So what should HR professionals and recruiters look for when choosing a technical assessment solution? Here are a few tips that will help streamline the tool selection process.
1. Determine what jobs you’re hiring for
2. Consider what skills and technical requirements you need
The next step to decide on a technical assessment tool should be to define the intended outcome of technical tests. Once you know the roles you want to fill, understand the skills that translate to on-the-job excellence for those roles.
Consider a long-term perspective and answer a few imperative questions. Some of these can include:
- What skills would you want to evaluate – just technology fundamentals or a holistic assessment? Both of them work depending on your organization’s hiring culture and requirements.
- Would technology-specific skills be needed before hiring? For example, having a solid knowledge of Kubernetes, AWS, cyber security, a particular framework, etc., might not be required if you are looking to procure the tool for hiring fresh graduates.
- Do you also want to enhance the interview experience? Technical assessment platforms like Skillspace.ai offer solutions to deliver an end-to-end premium candidate experience. Generally, technical interview platforms are intended to provide interviewing essentials such as note-keeping, IDE, compiler, a question bank, video calling, and whiteboarding, all in a lucid interface. While they’re also available in the market as standalone products, if you buy them with a technical assessment platform, it will make management easier for your team and reduce costs.
More features might require you to eliminate specific tools from consideration or spend more money. In either case, you’ll be moving in the right direction if you want to adopt technical assessment platforms at your organization.
3. Know the required scale
Thanks to online assessment platforms, the organizations can now send the assessment link to the candidates across various locations simultaneously, thereby reducing the time of the recruitment process.
However, what is the scale that you need? For example, you can conduct a country-wide examination for all the university grads or evaluate just 3-4 developers every week.
The candidate will only need a computer and an internet connection to take the assessment. However, the technical assessment platform should be able to support the scale that you’re looking to test. For example, Skillspace.ai allows you to evaluate thousands of candidates at the same time.
4. Check the integrations offered and required
The last thing you want is to launch a testing software that fails because it has a bad user experience. At times, when you are operating at a large scale, your team might want to use a technical assessment software that necessarily offers integrations with collaboration software or other HR tools. At times, companies might not need any integration when most features are available within the technical assessment platforms. Before procuring a platform the integrations critical for you and see if they’re available or can be customized for you. If they’re not available, it might be a good idea to re-evaluate your need, budget, and choice of technical assessment platform.
5. Library of Questions
Nishant Das (current TA Head at Coinswitch Kuber and a former leader at Amex, Fractal Analytics, and Zeta) mentioned on Skillspace.ai’s podcast that the quality and newness of the question are of highest importance when purchasing a technical assessment platform. Often picking a tool with outdated questions with online published answers backfires as candidates start sharing their findings on social media. This kills the purpose of your online assessment and hampers your employer brand.
Most platforms offer thousands of questions in the bank. It’s more important to check the frequency at which those questions are reviewed and if the platform can prepare new high-quality questions for you if required.
6. Quality of Support
At times, recruiters or candidates may not possess technical knowledge related to the technical assessment platform. And there are some instances like university hiring where you might be testing a massive number of candidates at once. Priority support via phone call or live chat is needed in such scenarios. Before buying the platform, check if you have a similar requirement and if the tool provides it at a reasonable price.
Other Resources you might like
- Key to assessing 86% of tech candidates using automated assessment platforms | Conversation with Talent Head (India) of Dun & Bradstreet on Skillspace.ai – Read here.
- How can startups hire first set of data scientists | Conversation with VP/CTO of Juniper Networks on Skillspace.ai – Read here.
- Picking the right hiring tech-stack | Conversation with Talent Head of Meesho on Skillspace.ai – Read here.
- How to become an employer of choice | Conversation with Talent Head of Coinswitch on Skillpace.ai – Read here.
