3 Ways to Help Your Recruiters Attract the Best Talent

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As an employer, you know that it’s not enough to fill empty chairs with disinterested bodies. You need to invest in people who will boost sales, innovation, and the company’s bottom line.

But your recruiters can’t seem to pull the best talent. Why not?

Many candidates feel that, despite recruiters’ best efforts, the recruitment process is impersonal and off-putting. These unsatisfied candidates are taking their talents elsewhere – to employers that provide more engaging and convenient recruiting processes.

To put a stop to this loss of talent, you need to help your recruiting team avoid these three major pitfalls of the recruitment process:

  1. Your recruiters don’t understand the position they are trying to fill.
  2. Your recruiters don’t follow up with candidates.
  3. Your recruiters are dragging their heels and slowing down the process.

The good news is that you can solve all of these issues by providing your recruiters and HR pros with some relevant training:

1. Familiarize Your Recruiters with Different Departments

According to Mystery Applicant, 52 percent of applicants complain about recruiters’ impersonal approaches during the recruiting process.

It’s obvious that a one-size-fits-all treatment is a major pet peeve for highly-skilled candidates. They want to know what the role specifically requires of them, and many recruiters can’t explain even the most basic responsibilities of the position.

That’s why training should ideally start with recruiters familiarizing themselves with different roles and departments within the company.

Recruiters should gain insight into the specifics of a department, the type of candidate needed, and the role itself. They should take time to observe the best employees to see what it is that makes them successful in their environments. It’s also a good idea to look at the worst candidates from past recruitment processes to see what types of candidates they should avoid.

Training your recruiting team to hone in on the specifics will allow them to develop more individualized approaches to the recruitment process.

Join the Conversation: Are Your Recruiters Familiar With the Roles and Departments for Which They Recruit?

2. Find and Follow Up With the Best Candidates Using LinkedIn

The next step is to train HR staff to search for candidates via LinkedIn.

Why?

Because that’s where you find passive talent.

Think about it. The most attractive candidates are generally already employed. They aren’t frequenting job boards. They will, however, pay attention to attractive job offers they happen to come across.

Where are these candidates most likely to stumble upon such a job offer? On LinkedIn! We were able to put together our entire team at Uptowork  by courting candidates on LinkedIn.

Recruiting teams that are trained to use LinkedIn can:

– identify optimized profiles that use keywords for specific positions;
– find candidates with niche skills and knowledge;
– build databases of candidates;
– and create eye-catching messages to stay in touch with candidates.

The last two points are crucial here. By getting your staff on LinkedIn, you’re giving them an easy way to reach out to candidates throughout the recruitment process.

While recruiters should conduct follow-ups via phone, the access to a database and the ability to remain open to candidates will help keep them on track.

It’s true, allowing your staff to be active on LinkedIn means giving them permission to spend time on a social media platform that may be packed full of distractions and time-wasters. But it also allows them to remain available and to respond quickly and efficiently to anyone they happen to be in the middle of recruiting.

In the end, LinkedIn allows recruiters to personalize their approaches to recruitment, headhunt incredibly talented people, quickly follow up at every stage of the process, and save your company time and money.

3. Shorten the Recruitment Process

FeetYou should be aware of the fact that the average recruitment process lasted 3.5 days longer  in 2015 than it did in 2009. In other words: Most companies’ recruiting and hiring processes are getting longer.

That’s significant because recruiters have approximately ten days to snag the best talent  before they get snatched up by someone else.

So, if you want the best talent, you’ve got to have a short, efficient recruitment process. Here’s how you can build such a process:

1. Have Your Team Check Applications Daily

Talent leads are like sales leads. If your recruiters aren’t closing, that talent is going to go elsewhere. It is crucial for recruiters to be vigilant and address new applications the moment they arrive.

2. Make Sure Recruiters Schedule Interviews for the Day After a Resume Is Accepted

Recruiters shouldn’t require candidates to be flexible about the interview. In fact, it should be the other way around, with recruiters adjusting the meeting time to fit the scheduling needs of the candidate.

3. Recruiters Should Present Offers the Same Day or the Day After the Hiring Manager Agrees to Hire a Candidate

The longer a recruiter takes to follow up with an offer, the more likely it is that the candidate will accept an offer with another company (or a counteroffer from their current employer).

4. Candidates Should Always Know Where They Are in the Recruitment Process

Recruiters should regularly follow up with candidates so that they know what stage of the recruitment process they are in and when they will enter the next stage.

Key Takeaway

There is a direct relationship between talented employees and overall profits, which means it is critical for any business to attract the best candidates. The only way to do that is to invest in helping recruiters avoid the three major pitfalls of the recruitment process.

Trained recruiters who are aware of the cost of a failed process are essential to a smooth recruitment process. Remember: The end goal is not to fill a vacant chair, but to hire and retain employees who are going to innovate, sell, and make the most of their jobs.

Natalie Severt is a writer at Zety.

By Natalie Severt