“Who isn’t scared of competition? … probably Everyone!”
Recruitment is a very, very competitive space. Everyone wants to hire best candidates. And everyone wants to reach them before their competition. Companies or recruitment agencies work on different strategies to hire best talent. But they often fall short for various reasons.
In an attempt to understand pain points of recruiters, I remember having several various lengthy conversations with them. We would often discuss about different recruitment and selection strategies like how to attract right talent? How to hire best candidates sooner and faster? How to automate mundane tasks so that recruiter could get more time to talk to more candidates? etc.
Talent acquisition leaders would tell me it is all about reaching to the best candidates first!
Recruitment Agency Vs Hiring Company
Recruitment practices varies between recruitment agency and hiring company. Staffing company or recruitment agency focuses on sourcing best candidates where as hiring companies also focuses on interview process. Hiring companies also have to deal with salary negotiations, on boarding process, etc.
For a recruitment agency or staffing company it is about how many positions it closes in a month. More positions they close better revenue they generate. A mid size recruitment agency, on an average, works on 80 positions in a month. But they are not able to close more than 10% of these positions.
Hiring company takes its time to select right candidate. It has more stakeholders involved than a recruitment agency could have. It could have a shorter or longer interview process depending on its recruitment and selection process.
Let’s take a look at main challenges these companies face while hiring best candidates.
Basic Challenges Faced
Most commonly faced challenges while hiring are
- Not able to reach best candidates sooner
- Candidate experience in the recruitment process in not good
Let’s diagnose above reasons.
Not Able To Reach Best Candidates Sooner
Many time recruiters gets disappointed when they get to know that the candidate is already approached by some other company. This happens to almost every recruiter.
Below could be some of the reasons for not able to reach best candidates sooner.
A. Lack Of Use Of Recruitment Marketing
Here is a simple question; what would you prefer, a candidate approaching to you for the job you are hiring for or you calling or emailing hundreds of candidates to know if they were interested in the job? At this point it is not important to know if the candidate is suitable for the job or not. That would come at the screening stage.
“The aim of marketing is to reduce the need of selling”
Marketing is pivotal in any sector for desired results. Recruitment marketing should attract right candidates. According to a survey by Jobfully, 40% of the jobs are never listed. Some of the most effective ways to attract best candidates are
- Social Media Recruitment Marketing
- Writing Effective Job Description
- Using Career Page For Keeping Open Requisitions Updated
- Engaging Employee Referral Programs
- Posting jobs to various job portals like dice, Indeed, monster
Recruitment marketing help you in attracting candidates. It also help you to attract passive candidates. Use effective sourcing strategies to source best candidates from various platforms.
Also, you should be able to use your existing candidate database effectively. Use recruitment technology to map existing candidates to open job positions. Discover candidates in your recruitment database. Attract them with new career opportunities.
All above methods are inexpensive and you must use these effectively.
B. Is Your Recruitment Technology Most Productive ?
After you source resumes from various channels like internet job boards, employee referral, career page you need to screen resumes as quick as possible. This is the phase where most of the time is spent. Resume screening is largely a manual tasks. Some ATS or recruitment software may provide keyword based search which is wrongly interpreted as resume screening. Remember searching is not resume screening!
When you are screening resumes manually you are relying on your luck to come across right candidate. You will always be limited to number of resumes you can screen manually. Also, many a times recruiters don’t even get a chance to go though all the resumes they source. They work on first come first basis. Hence, often it is not you but your competition catch hold of the best candidates. Remember, every company is looking at the same set of candidates that you are looking at! Ever wondered why it is not you who is finding the best candidates on most occasions?
Recruitment technology that you are using should enable you to automate most of the tasks. Tasks such as
- Candidate sourcing
- Resume Screening
- Candidate calling
- Email Marketing
- Emailing Candidates
- Interview scheduling
C. Unconscious bias
Unconscious bias is another reason why hiring manager or recruiter may overlook candidate. They may make a judgement such as candidate being over qualified or candidate not suitable to company’s work culture, etc.
Sometime we make an assumption that the candidate wouldn’t be interested in our offering or we assume that the candidate wouldn’t be interested in changing city. Such assumptions often result in overlooking potentially good candidates.
Many companies are exploring innovative solutions such as using AI in recruitment to reach best candidates first, overcoming such unconscious bias.
Recruitment automation should help in freeing up recruiter’s time from mundane tasks. Therefore, it will allow recruiters to focus on humans aspect of hiring such as talking to potential candidates.
Candidate Experience Is Not Good
Candidate experience at various stages like sourcing, phone screening, interviewing and on-boarding is a good measure for hiring process. Also, this has been the area of concern for years. Needless to say that the bad candidate experience can severely hamper your hiring efforts and also your brand of company.
Some of the common examples of bad candidate experiences are
- Unclear job descriptions
- Wrong job for the wrong candidate
- Long job applications to fill
- Radio silence – no continuous updates on the job applications
- Treatments candidates given during the hiring process
- Long Interview process
- Hiring team not reachable
Improve Communications Efforts
Recruiters are often overwhelmed by multiple manual tasks like sourcing resumes, resume screening, phone screening candidates, interview scheduling, etc. Therefore, it is human to miss out on important communication.
Candidates when they apply for job or when they are shortlisted for an interview process or even when they are not found suitable for the job profiles should be communicated.
Recruitment software or ATS help you automate most such routine tasks including various types of communication. An applicant tracking system also help you choose from various kind of email templates. It helps in saving recruiting recruiter’s time further.
Advancement in recruitment technology like AI recruiting software help in identifying best candidates early in the recruitment process and also help in sending personalized communication to them.
Interview Process
Some organizations focus on “Same Day Hiring” while some organizations have lengthy interview process. While you do not want to rush into hiring new employees you also need to make sure you do not compromise on candidate experience.
First Impression Is Last Impression
We speak about how candidates should prepare or behave or present themselves when appearing for the interview. However, we often forget that candidates are also assessing your organization.
The impression that you create through the hiring process is going to be important factor for candidates. It is not uncommon for candidates rejecting to join the organizations because they did not have good experience during the recruitment process.
Final Thoughts
There could be multiple reasons why you may not be able to close open positions in time. However, you are competing in a tough candidate driven market. If you want to hire best candidates you need to put the best foot forward. Therefore, you must consider investing into best recruitment technologies to stay ahead of your competition.
