HOW TO CREATE A WINNINGRECRUITMENT STRATEGY

A winning recruitment strategy is the diff erence between companies that lead and companies that lag, and now is the perfect ti me to build or revitalize your recruitment strategy. As employers fi gure out how to remain competi ti ve and att ract today’s best candidates, you can stay ahead of the game by creati ng a plan to acquire the workers your organizati on needs.

Before you get started, ask the right questions.The ultimate goal of your recruitment strategy is to attract the best and the brightest individuals to work for your company. The candidates you want to attract will have some touchpoints with your company, so ensure they have the best user experience and apply to your jobs by addressing the following questions.

Are you writing compelling job postings? A great job posting is an opportunity to show off your culture, and if done right, it can give candidates a realistic taste of the type of work they’ll be doing, should they get hired. Use simple language and remove any internal jargon that may baffle candidates. Also, don’t use obscure terms such as “rock star” or “visionary”—it lowers the likelihood that your posting will show up in organic search results.

Are you using your career site to your advantage? Providing a good user experience shows candidates you value their time and appreciate their interest in your company. Optimize your site for mobile devices because that’s how a lot of candidates search, and create an efficient user experience to prevent applicant drop-off. Give candidates the option to quickly join your talent network or candidate pipeline so they can stay engaged with the company and learn about future opportunities rather than fill out an entire job application.

2Are you showcasing your unique employment brand? Think like a marketer and “sell” your brand to your ideal candidates to differentiate yourself from your competitors. You can use your employment brand to attract, retain and build a pipeline of talent. Think of the messages you are sending to attract the candidates you want—and that includes your career site. Make sure you are highlighting the information that’s important to your audience.

Are you maximizing your company’s exposure via advertising channels? If you’re looking to fill high-volume or hard-to-find positions quickly, consider leveraging job boards and recruitment advertising to drive more exposure. Don’t exhaust all avenues and post a job description everywhere: The law of diminishing returns kicks in, and you may get fewer and fewer results for all of your effort. Pick your channels wisely, and invest your time and energy in marketing your jobs to the right audience.

Are you getting strategic with social? Use some of the newest trends in social media to your advantage to engage and attract top talent—regardless of company size, culture or industry. It can be something as simple as making sure your job postings have social share links or more advanced options like Google+ Hangout-style screening interviews and more. Regardless of how you decide to leverage social media, make sure you take the time to think through how it will best fit into your overall recruitment strategy.

6Are you optimizing your recruitment strategy based on data? When you know who your candidates are, what they value, and how they approach their job search, you can use data to ensure you’re using the right messaging at the right times and through the right channels. You can use data to see what the market looks like and prioritize based on how easy or hard it will be to recruit there, saving yourself time and money.

By taking some ti me to think through the aforementi oned questi ons, you will have a more comprehensive understanding of how to move forward. Next, it’s ti me to focus on actually building your recruitment strategy—here are some ti ps to get you started right now.

Boost your college recruitment programs.Can you find engineers at the nearest public university? Should you target Ivy League schools for your next financial analyst position? Stop basing your campus selection on your alma mater just because it’s familiar. It’s time to get strategic. Take advantage of the wealth of graduation data and choose the right schools earlier in the college recruiting season so you’ll target the best and brightest graduates on the market.

Continually build your talent pipeline.Most employers (58 percent) do not have a talent pipeline, according to “The Talent Equation”. This could mean letting good candidates slip through the cracks, not to mention extended time to hire. With a talent pipeline in place, you get to take control of the recruitment process with regular emails and integrating texting directly to your candidates. You don’t have to go back to square one and wait for applicants to come in every time you have a hiring need—you already have an existing database of relevant applicants at your fingertips.

“Manage” your hiring manager.Communicate, communicate, communicate! Do it constantly to build trust. Consider setting up a meeting with your hiring manager to look over resumes together so you are aligned in terms of what constitutes the ideal candidate for the role.

Set the right goals and expectations up front to ensure you are both on the same page, and use data to manage them throughout the process. If hiring managers are not giving you feedback on candidates in a timely manner, don’t be afraid to be assertive and set up a meeting to solicit feedback and keep the process moving along.

Put the right framework in place to ensure an efficient process.What is your process when a position opens up at your organization? If you have never been one to capitalize on the opportunity to look internally first, give it a try.

Make sure that the talent acquisition system your company uses allows for parts of the process to be automated so that recruiters can focus on candidate engagement. Throughout the process, maintain regular communication so you can identify bottlenecks and minimize problems. And don’t forget to measure efficiency and benchmark performance using reporting tools.

About CareerBuilderAs the global leader in human capital soluti ons, CareerBuilder specializes in cutti ng-edge HR soft ware as a service to help companies with every step of the recruitment process from acquire to hire. CareerBuilder works with top employers across industries, providing job distributi on, sourcing, workfl ow, CRM, data and analyti cs in one pre-hireplatf orm. It also operates leading job sites around the world. Owned by TEGNA Inc (NYSE:TGNA), Tribune Media (NYSE:TRCO) and The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, South America, Canada and Asia.

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