Recruiting Tools: Spend a Little, Gain a Lot

The American economy is in recovery, but if you’re in a sector that requires heavily skilled workers, you could be facing long-vacant positions and a lack of qualified workers. According to ManpowerGroup’s annual “Talent Shortage Survey,”  employers in industries such as construction, IT, and engineering are having trouble recruiting the right candidates.

This talent shortage is costing companies millions of dollars per year. How can an organization step up its recruiting game and hire the talent it needs under such harsh conditions? The answer is actually quite simple: invest in and upgrade your recruiting process.

Why Would a Company Upgrade Its Recruiting Process?

In a talent shortage, recruiters finding it increasingly difficult to attract top talent. As a result, open positions often go unfilled. According to a recent CareerBuilder report, 1 in 6 CEOs claim their company loses an estimated $25,000 per open position.

In companies that specialize in technology, the cost of an open position may not only be lost time and productivity, but also a dulled competitive advantage. In the tech industry, it’s all about having a team that’s always firing on all cylinders to get your product to market first. When these companies can’t release a product quickly, they could be giving away business to their competitors.

Many companies are limited in their talent acquisition efforts. Absent an upgraded recruitment process, a company is often stuck attracting and hiring talent in one specific geographical area. If much of the top-tier talent in a company’s industry is now overseas, a local recruiting strategy will fail to reach the best candidates.

Invest in Winning Recruiting Tools

The good news is, there’s hope for the recruiting-challenged. There is a variety of recruiting tools that can all provide advantages to companies seeking highly skilled workers. Let’s take a look at some of what’s available:

• Video Interviewing Software : Video interviewing software offers recruiters a low-cost opportunity to recruit across borders. Now, recruiters can screen and interview talent from around the world. Hiring managers are able to send questions to candidates in advance and watch recorded interviews at their leisure, or interview candidates live from anywhere, whether it be an airport lobby, the office, or a more remote location. Video offers border-free recruiting on recruiters’ schedules.
• Applicant Tracking Systems: Applicant tracking systems have helped recruiters spend more time with quality candidates and less with thise who don’t meet basic qualifications. ATSs allow recruiters to attract passive talent, filter resumes, communicate throughout the hiring process, and schedule interviews automatically.
• Branded Career Sites: The newest buzzphrase in HR and recruiting is the “candidate experience.” To no one’s surprise, top talent is increasingly weighing employers’ branding efforts as they make decisions about where they want to work. Through branded career sites, employers can offer candidates a wealth of important information, including insights into teams within the organization, benefits and perks, company culture, and what an average day is like at the company. With so many suitors looking to fill these candidates’ dance cards, the best branded and most transparent organizations are the ones who will really catch job seekers’ eyes.
• Cloud-Based Talent Management Systems: Many organizations have found that the best way to source talent for hard-to-fill positions is to cross-train current employees. Using cloud-based talent management systems, employers are able to train employees across the globe, and they’re able to do so at a minimal cost. Gone is the necessity of sitting a team in one room to listen to one consultant or expert. Now, employers can send training links to employees anywhere to help them build the skills the organization needs.

Think Differently

During the economic downturn, HR technology was a cost center that many companies cut in favor of free methods. But now, we’re seeing a paradigm shift. HR technology is responsible for driving the health of many businesses, and recruiters are becoming the heroes of their organizations and leaders of change.

Using the right HR and recruiting technology, hiring managers and recruiters can deliver more qualified candidates sourced from a variety of locations. This, in turn, can help employers fill vacant spots with top-tier talent more quickly and efficiently.