Two Reasons Why Your Recruiting Process is Broken
No one has to tell you that it’s difficult to find the workers you need. That’s stating the obvious. A low unemployment economy, however, isn’t the only challenge that you need to overcome in order to swing that situation around. Chances are good that if you’re still doing recruiting the way you’ve always done it, that your process is broken. The time to fix it is now and here’s why.
1. Reactive Instead of Proactive
The traditional recruiting process begins with a need. There’s a position that you want to fill. You post it in the usual places. You receive resumes and applications, and so on. With this reactive process you are missing your best pool of potential talent - those who aren’t actively looking for a job. Plus, you’re probably attracting the same pool of candidates again and again.
The result of a reactive process can be a long period of time when your position stays unfilled. This can impact your business in several ways not the least of which is a dip in morale while your other employees try to take in the slack. Customer satisfaction is also at risk when your people are stretched too thin. Who can measure the cost of lost opportunities when you can’t react as quickly as your competitors nor devote resources to innovation?
2. Human Behavior Has Changed
In our digital world, people look for jobs the way that they look for the products and services they want to buy. This means that you need more than your boilerplate job descriptions to attract attention. Job candidates want you to paint a picture of what the job is like so that they can envision themselves in it and they’re looking for validation that you are a good employer.
As people hop around to different digital destinations, your job description isn’t going to be your candidate’s first interaction with your company. Just as the consumer buying journey contains many touchpoints that lead to a decision, so does the candidate journey. Companies that strategically plan for these interactions are going to have the best opportunity to build relationships with the people who will become their best-fit hires in the future.
How to Fix Your Recruiting Process
If you want better results from recruiting, you need to flip your process from reactive to proactive and start to create the digital touchpoints that candidates are looking for. To do this, utilize digital marketing tactics to attract and nurture prospective candidates with content that presents your company as a preferred employer, and answers all their questions about what it’s like to work for you.
Recruitment Marketing Quick Start
I’m not one for putting tactics above strategy, but I do know that there’s one thing that you can do right away tto give prospective candidates what they’re looking for, and that is to publish employee stories. In fact, give this one tactic a try and it will likely build the groundwork for getting buy-in to allocate more resources to recruitment marketing in the future.
Get in touch to talk about how I can be your employer brand storyteller, or check out my course - Better Message. Better Talent Pool. - and learn how to interview employees and turn what they say into compelling recruiting messages.
