13 Effective Employee Recruitment Strategies for 2022
Today’s job market poses a series of challenges for recruiters.
In the economic wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, America has experienced what experts are calling “The Great Resignation,” with workers quitting their jobs in droves.
In August of 2021 alone, 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs. This climate has made it difficult to attract and retain qualified applicants.
Fortunately, it’s still possible for companies to find and recruit highly qualified employees — as long as they’re willing to employ a few intelligent recruitment strategies.
Here at iprospectcheck, we work closely with HR managers nationwide to provide pre-employment background checks for companies hiring new recruits. We understand what attracts employees to a company, and how the best brands land top talent.
In this blog, we’ll share a few of our top recruitment strategies for 2022, and all the information you need to apply them to your own company.
Let’s dive in.
What is a Recruitment Strategy?
A recruitment strategy is a plan that delineates which roles you’re recruiting for, when recruitment starts, and how you’ll conduct recruitment.
Certain aspects of the recruitment plan may relate to certain portions of recruiting, such as social media use or deployment of an applicant tracking system (ATS).
Developing an excellent recruitment strategy is one of the best ways to improve your recruiting process and attract highly qualified applicants.
Before You Start Recruiting, Do This
Great recruiting is a little bit like building a house: you’ve got to lay the foundation before you can construct anything on top.
With that in mind, complete these must-dos before you turn your attention to recruiting strategies:
1. Review your existing recruiting numbers
Before you can improve and overhaul your recruiting strategy, you need to get a sense of where it sits now. Consider the following:
- What’s working and what’s not?
- Where could you stand to improve?
- How many recruits are you interviewing versus how many you’re hiring?
- What are your most successful sources for finding recruits?
- How many recruits are you engaging with over three months, six months, and a year?
Taking a real look at the current data is an excellent way to establish a starting point. Plus, it will allow you to look back later and see how much progress you’ve made.
2. Set goals
According to a study that looked at more than 250 small and medium-sized businesses in the US, establishing goals and growth targets and tracking your progress dramatically boosts your chances of reaching said goal.
Look at your current recruitment metrics and use them to develop realistic goals that you can work toward in the coming year. Once you’ve identified the roadblocks in your current recruiting process, you can pinpoint areas for improvement moving forward.
For example, if you’re struggling to get candidates to apply for your jobs, consider increasing your LinkedIn activity or holding a hiring event.
The more creative you can get about solutions for your company’s existing problems, the better off you’ll be.
3. Adopt some new tools
If you’re not already utilizing recruiting tools like an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), now is the time to find what works for you.
Today, more than 90% of Fortune 500 Companies use recruitment software, and for good reason: the right software can save you time, money, and effort, and make your recruiting process much more streamlined for applicants.
13 Recruitment Strategies to Use in 2022
Whether you’ve got a handful of positions to fill or a whole new team to create, these smart recruiting strategies will help you find and onboard the candidates you need:
1. Leverage your existing employees
Did you know that 75% of candidates research a company’s reputation before they decide to apply for a job?
And what they find may well make or break the process.
Fortunately, one of the best ways to highlight your culture is to let your existing employees help.
We recommend featuring employee testimonials on your careers page, social media profiles, and in your job postings to help candidates get a real sense of what your company is all about and encourage them to apply.
2. Let your personality shine
Just like candidates want to know about a company’s reputation, they also want to know about its culture.
In fact, company culture is an important consideration for 46% of job seekers, and 88% say it’s at least somewhat important.
Because of this, it’s important to showcase your company culture in every facet of your recruitment strategy — from the way you write your job posting to the content on your employment page.
Don’t be afraid to be a little quirky: today’s candidates are looking for authentic, inclusive workplaces that prioritize people and offer a flexible, adaptive work environment.
3. Build a better careers page
Let’s face it:
Most companies leave something to be desired regarding the careers page. This is unfortunate since your careers page could be one of your greatest assets.
To draw top candidates to your job openings, create a careers page that does the following:
- Provides detailed, authentic descriptions of your open roles.
- Shares native content that your company has created.
- Provides information on the company’s mission, policies, culture, and benefits.
- Includes information about employee demographics.
- Includes testimonials from existing customers.
- Offers candidate FAQs.
Searching for a new job can be stressful and overwhelming, and many candidates apply to companies without knowing much at all about the business.
The more information you can give them upfront, the easier it will be for them to create a bond with your company and commit to the recruitment process.
4. Get faster with your first touch
Did you know that 75% of candidates never hear back from a company after applying, and 53% don’t hear anything for three months?
Slow responses from companies can ruin the recruitment process. To combat this, consider using chatbots to provide a faster first-touch to candidates.
Here’s an example:
Intel uses chatbots to help candidates learn more about the company and answer simple questions. The bot provides tailored responses to candidate questions and can direct them to content designed to help them learn more about the business.
Most importantly, chatbots allow candidates to ask questions and get answers without waiting around for a human in a different time zone to respond.
It’s the best way to streamline the first touch, and make sure you’re nurturing newly interested candidates.
5. Consider employee takeovers
We’ve said it before:
Candidates want to know about your company’s culture. They need to know what it would be like to work with you before they can envision themselves in one of your open positions.
Get proactive about featuring your existing employees on your social media platforms. Employee takeovers (where an employee posts to your social account for a day) or employee features (where you feature a photo, some background, and some quotes from a specific employee) are excellent ways to present this company culture in a real and believable way that appeals to candidates.
6. Create a recruitment profile on social
Speaking of social media, make yours work a little harder for you by creating a recruitment-specific profile. These profiles are designed to target job candidates.
They share different content than normal corporate profiles, and are more focused on showcasing awards, sharing content about company culture, publicizing recruiting and hiring events, and sharing information about open roles.
7. Nurture your talent community
A talent community is a pool of candidates that have communicated with, shown interest in, or applied at your company, but that — for one reason or another — were not a good fit for the role at that time.
Instead of forgetting these candidates entirely, keep them in a passive talent pool and continue to nurture them.
Monthly newsletters and email invites are great ways to notify them of new roles, or just to keep them up to date on your company’s happenings. When a new role pops up, they should be some of the first to know.
8. Make applications easy
Today, 60% of job seekers quit in the middle of filling out online job applications because they are too long or too complicated.
If you want to retain these candidates, you’ve got to make applying easy. Ideally, you should make it possible for anyone to apply at any time, and make sure that, when they do, the process is quick and straightforward.
This is where a good ATS comes in: many of these platforms allow candidates to input their own resumes and other information, track application status, and even communicate directly with a company.
Making the application process easier for candidates can reduce “ ghosting “ rates (when a candidate just stops communicating with a company), and help you move the most promising candidates through the pipeline even faster.
9. Focus on employee referrals
Today, 48% of businesses say their best hires come from employee referrals. To encourage this candidate source, begin an employee referral program.
Some companies offer financial incentives to anyone who refers a candidate that’s hired, while others offer perks like extra PTO.
10. Be inclusive
Being an inclusive workforce is essential if you want to stand out in today’s market.
While most companies operate under an equal opportunity employer clause, which states that they are welcoming to all people, regardless of age, sex, gender, sexual identity or physical ability, you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is.
The more diverse and inclusive you can seek to be as an employer, the stronger your workforce will be and the more attractive you’ll be to candidates.
With that in mind, tailor your careers page and job postings to mothers reentering the workforce, people with disabilities, veterans, and members of similar groups.
At the end of the day, inclusivity benefits everyone.
11. Speak directly to candidates
Some companies lift the veil on employment by hosting “Ask me Anything” (AMA) sessions on Reddit and using them as platforms to answer tough questions from employees and candidates alike.
This is a great way to brand yourself as a transparent, honest company that people want to work for, and to help on-the-fence candidates drop in.
12. Focus on remote recruitment
If your company is set up for it, now is an excellent time to focus on remote recruitment. Today, the willingness of employees to work from home is at an all-time-high, and offering remote work is an excellent way to make yourself more attractive as an employer.
Additionally, remote recruitment allows you to expand your talent pool and choose from a more diverse selection of candidates.
13. Make the background check process easy
Conducting a pre-employment background check is a critical part of hiring. Unless you’ve optimized the process, though, it can feel time-consuming and difficult for candidates.
No matter what industry you’re in, we recommend outsourcing your background checks to a skilled third-party like iprospectcheck rather than trying to manage them on your own.
Why should you take this step? Simple:
Our team will provide accurate, comprehensive checks in a fraction of the time it would take you to do them on your own.
Additionally, we integrate with popular hiring systems and ATS platforms, which only makes your hiring process even more seamless.
We’ll also help you provide a better candidate experience. Since we use SwiftHire Mobile, applicants can initiate their own background screening processes, submit their own information online, and get real-time updates about the process.
The result is happy, empowered, and engaged candidates who want to work with your company.
Improve Your Recruitment Strategies With iprospectcheck
Your recruitment strategies are about to get better — in 2022 and beyond.
At iprospectcheck, we empower teams to improve their recruiting and streamline the process for both HR managers and candidates.
When you work with us to complete your pre-employment background checks, you’ll enjoy our extensive access to reliable databases, which allows us to pull data in just minutes, while also complying with all relevant laws and guidelines.
No matter what you need, you can always count on us to deliver accurate, FCRA-compliant background checks you can trust.
To learn about the employment background check services we offer, contact iprospectcheck today.
Originally published at https://iprospectcheck.com on December 20, 2021.
