The pandemic has changed our work landscape more than any other event in recent times. People are leaving old jobs in mass numbers and looking for work that provides what they want out of life. We’re seeing more and more employees refusing to come back to the office full-time and looking for work that offers at least partially remote opportunities.
Some employers are freaking out and scrambling to replace their talent. This could potentially help your new recruitment drive convert to a level you’ve never seen. Keep reading below for some tips and tricks to take advantage of what’s going on.
Why Do You Need a Recruitment Drive?
A successful recruitment drive needs a solid plan. This is an opportunity for you to acknowledge gaps in the company and strategically fill them. It’s about finding the right person for the right job.
This may involve hiring someone from within. It may involve looking for new talent outside of your city or even your country. Know what you want and what you’re going to offer in advance before you begin the process. Here are a few tips to help your recruitment drive bring in the talent you need when you need it.
6 Tips for Creating a Recruitment Drive That Converts
1. Know Your Needs
You have a vacancy. You need to fill it. Before you scramble to hire, think about people who have held the position previously. What were their strengths and weaknesses? What do you want a new hire to do differently and what similarities should they have to the previous employee?
This is going to be a lot like coming up with a buyer persona. Take some time to develop your ideal hire in your mind, write down the ideas, and make sure you keep an eye on these notes while reviewing resumes and interviewing.
2. Use the Right Tools
Once you have a team in place and everyone is on the same page, it’s time to put your positions “out there”. For this effort to be successful, you’ll want to use the right marketing tools for the job. Everyone has a marketing budget. Use the cheapest ones as much as you can. We like to start with email.
Most companies have some kind of email software they use to send out information about the company. This is the best possible place to begin your search. You can also use this email list to offer incentives for employees or customers who refer a successful candidate.
Post a job ad on your website. Most companies, both for-profit and charitable, have a page on their website with open positions. Make sure this page shows up in search engines.
Sometimes top talent will find you by simply doing a Google search. With anything left in your budget, you can post an ad on job sites like Indeed. Posting an ad requires you to be creative. If you make your charity or the work the hire will be doing sound boring and unfulfilling, then you’re not going to bring in the best possible candidates.
Instead, draft an ad that makes your charity sound worthwhile. Mention what you do and why you do it. Why should a candidate believe in your cause?
You’ll want to discuss the job and work entailed, but if you have any perks or incentives that come with the job, you can bring these up in the ad. People looking for work are less concerned with money and more concerned with work-life balance, health and wellness programs, and remote opportunities. If you can offer incentives like these, your recruitment campaign will be easy.
See Also: 10 Best Recruiting Software for Small Businesses
3. Use Artificial Intelligence
This one isn’t going to work for everyone. Many charities and non-profits run a pretty tight budget.
In the long run, using AI in your recruiting process, especially if you are wanting to mass hire, could save thousands of dollars if not more. Artificial intelligence software can help make your screening process more efficient and remove human bias.
For large companies, check out Eightfold. They claim their software can review millions of candidates in just a few seconds. It doesn’t matter how awesome your HR team is, they can’t be that fast. For smaller companies, you may find XOR more to your liking. As far as pricing, they scale with your needs as a business.
XOR is a chatbot at its core. It can communicate with potential hires, screen candidates, and schedule interviews. The best part is it can answer common questions via email, through the chatbot itself, and even via text message. If you want to save time and money in your budget, going with AI software may be a solid choice.
4. Screenings and Interviews
Before your start to screen candidates, it’s important to know what you’re looking for in an employee. Do you want someone straight out of university? Someone with lots of real-world experience? Or maybe you want to take advantage of people looking for internships?
Everyone is different. We all have backgrounds and skills that vary based on a multitude of factors. This is part of what finding a great candidate is all about. Structure the screening process to minimum criteria. An example of this would be:
- Some form of higher education
- Credentials
- Experience
- Amount of time they spent at their previous employer
- Their desired salary
Once you have a decent pool of potential hires, you’ll need to structure the interview process. List out the questions that will be asked along with acceptable answers. What red flags are you looking for?
Make the interviews engaging. This is an opportunity to learn as much as possible from these candidates and it shouldn’t take long to realize if someone isn’t going to be a good fit.
Another idea is to have multiple rounds of interviews. This comes in handy if you’re using more than one hiring manager to conduct the interviews. Maybe one of them missed something or didn’t catch a red flag.
Keep in mind hiring managers can’t know everything about every department. It may be a good idea to bring in a department manager to the interviews to help vet potential hires.
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5. Followups and Offers
One of the issues we all face when hiring is potential damage to our brand. If you don’t follow up with candidates, especially those who were actually interviewed, this may leave a sour taste in their mouths.
This could result in poor reviews on your company or the hiring process, which is the last thing you want when you’re in the middle of a recruitment drive. Not everyone handles rejection with grace.
Nothing is worse than choosing a candidate or multiple candidates and then losing them because the offer isn’t sweet enough or you waited too long to make a decision.
If you have multiple rounds of interviews, it’s a good idea to take this time to discuss salary expectations as well as any perks included with the job. Come to a decision on your choice in a timely fashion and reach out promptly.
Give the chosen candidate time to get affairs in order in case they need to leave a position to take yours. Communicate often to keep them aware of orientations and onboarding processes, as well as any training they may need.
You want to make sure to handle the onboarding process as efficiently as possible. Losing an employee in their first year is costly to businesses, especially charitable ones with limited budgets.
More than 25% of new hires quit within the first 90 days of their new job. Inadequate training and not giving them the resources they need to be successful are the biggest culprits.
6. Optimize the Process
It’s pretty rare for anyone to be perfect the first few times they try to hire new people. It’s a learning process. Be aware of the mistakes you made and what you would like to do differently the next time you look for new employees. Keep notes and keep your team updated on new hiring policies and practices.
See Also: 9 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
Conclusion
Creating a recruitment drive that converts starts and ends with your team. You want to have a plan and execute that plan and then learn from anything that doesn’t work the way you want. It sounds simple but when is anything as easy as it sounds? Mastering the process will take time for any company.
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