Long gone are the days of posting a job on Monster and receiving a stack of qualified candidates from one talent source delivered to your email inbox. In the past, Monster dominated the online job market. Now you have to use a variety of resources to reach a pool of qualified applicants. Candidates are looking for jobs via basic boards such as ZipRecruiter.com, but they are also seeking out industry specific boards, websites, alumni groups and enticing employer career pages.
Just as candidates have a variety of ways to find job opportunities, there are an abundance of tools available to employers when it comes to sourcing talent. It’s exciting to think of all the potential candidates you may elicit through LinkedIn Recruiter, Indeed, Glassdoor, Career Builder, Simply Hired, Talent Desk, Dice or the next new job posting site.
While it’s exciting, it’s also expensive when you start using multiple sources which predominantly yield resumes from only active job seekers. When you do this, you miss the passive candidates who are not actively searching for new opportunities. Online tools are only part of the process when it comes to sourcing the right talent for your open positions—there’s a lot more required when it comes to strategic candidate sourcing at a process efficient price.
With all these options, what is the best strategy to create the best source of candidates for the role and for your company?
Post the right position
Let’s back up and consider the first, most important step: why are you hiring? Before posting on a job board, you need to have an in-depth discussion with the hiring manager about the scope of responsibility, the problems that this candidate will be hired to solve, required skills versus desired skills, and what critical tasks the individual must be able to perform.
Insider’s Tip: With today’s candidates accessing job boards via smartphones and tablets, make sure your job postings aren’t too long. If they are, you risk losing candidate interest before they’ve read past the first sentence.[/bsg_quote] The answers to these questions are what you include in your carefully crafted job posting to ensure you are targeting the right audience—and that the right candidates will respond to your messaging. Without this step, you risk missing the talent you desire. As a general rule, Resourceful HR does not engage in recruitment efforts without nailing this information down. Helping clients clearly articulate what they need and why they need it helps facilitate the rest of the recruiting process and will result in generating candidates who are more closely aligned with the position.
Assess candidates accurately
While it may be tempting to think online sourcing is the time-saving solution you’ve been waiting for, it’s not. You still need to sort through resumes, screen potential candidates quickly but thoroughly, and determine which applicants the hiring manager or team should spend their valuable time interviewing. Each of these steps helps identify which candidates:
- Have the skills and experience you need
- Might be a culture fit
- Will likely fit within your budget
- Should be more thoroughly assessed
Insider’s Tip: Many job boards offer job agents that submit resumes for positions without the candidate ever reviewing the description. While this may seem great in theory, it often results in high resume volume with low overall quality. Consider the time you have available and develop a plan for reviewing and sorting through these resumes.
Deliver a positive experience
Once you’ve made your decision about who meets the necessary criteria, it’s time to talk with them. The process of screening candidates over the phone, scheduling and conducting in-person interviews, and then following-up with everyone involved takes considerable time.
“Every single candidate touch point—the online application experience, each interaction with the scheduler, the preparedness of the interviewers, the turnaround time in communicating with candidates, the way an offer is delivered—reflects on the employer, Leela Srinivasan, chief marketing officer for Lever, an applicant tracking system based in San Francisco, told the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
If something goes wrong—an interviewer doesn’t represent the company well, or the candidate receives mixed messages about the position for which they’re applying—that negative experience can have a long-lasting impact.
Insider’s Tip: Candidates are assessing you and forming an opinion of your organization throughout the entire recruitment process. Be deliberate with each process step and craft the employer brand message you want to convey in advance.“If you’re missing the mark, the world soon knows about it due to sites like Glassdoor, and highly skilled people juggling competing offers will certainly factor their experience as a candidate into their final decision, so it impacts offer acceptance rates,” she added.
Value the strategic process
At Resourceful HR, online search tools are part of the toolbox we use to identify candidates for our clients. But they are only part of the equation. With each search, we put to use our decades of recruiting experience, our ability to assess candidate skills, and the thousands of interviews we’ve conducted to identify top talent for our clients’ open positions.
The bottom line:
There’s no quick fix to finding the right candidate. Finding the best candidates requires an investment in a deliberate recruitment process combined with strategic insight and experience. If you’re buried in resumes or determining a strategy to recruit for your next position or positions, please reach out. We’re here to help!
