4 ways to up your recruiting strategies

At the end of June, there were 10.7 million jobs available with an average of two open positions for every unemployed person, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And despite the fact the number of job openings fell to a nine-month low, the demand is still greater than the supply.

Despite the looming recession, employers are still battling it out for the talent that’s out there. So now is not the time to ease up on your recruiting programs and talent acquisition.

So what can you do to get a leg up on your competition?

Employ Inc.’s report Staying the Course In a Challenging Labor Market reveals the current state of recruiting and looks at how companies can optimize their efforts during this unprecedented hiring climate. The report is based on 1,202 recruiting and HR decision makers from an online survey of the current talent acquisition climate.

“Companies of all sizes today are grappling with an increasingly complex and unpredictable hiring market, which means prioritizing talent acquisition is more important than ever,” said Allie Kelly, CMO of Employ.

Shorten hiring time

Step one is to prepare to be in the war for talent for the long haul. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the labor shortage will continue until at least 2030.

The June 2022 report found that 60% of recruiting professionals expect hiring levels to continue to rise through 2022. And 52% of recruiters said their No. 1 challenge is that there’s not enough talent to fill the open positions.

The only way to compensate for that is: Be the first one to make an offer. Recruiters now need to look at hiring as a race and to get the talent you must cross the finish line first. That means making your hiring and onboarding process as efficient as possible. Standardizing the procedure will also significantly cut time. Eighty-five percent of talent acquisition professionals said the average hiring time is four weeks or less. To cut that time down even more, recruiters have trimmed time off their:

• Interviewing with the hiring manager and team (63%)
• Screening interviews (62%)
• Sourcing (39%), and
• Offer process (37%).

Invest in technology

With fewer candidates and more open positions, employers need to invest in their future.

One way to do that now is up their recruitment technology game. In fact, 63% of HR decision makers and recruiters plan to increase their recruiting technology investment in the next six to 12 months. Here’s where they plan to increase their spending:

• Career sites (48%)
• Sourcing, including recruitment process outsourcing (47%)
• Job boards and job broadcasts (46%)
• Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives (26%)
• Candidate relationship management (45%)
• Offers and onboarding (43%)
• Applicant tracking systems (42%)
• Reporting and analytics (32%)
• Video screening (26%)
• Intelligent messaging or texting (25%), and
• Social media (25%).

Employers need to listen to their recruiters and invest in solutions that empower them.

Recruiters who feel listened to and supported by their firms stay in their positions longer.

Using benefits as recruiting strategy

Certain benefits have the ability to make open positions more attractive to candidates. The ones that attract the most attention:

• Remote work: Forty-five percent of job seekers said they’d be willing to accept a lower salary if they had the ability to work remotely. To emphasize even further how important flexibility is and how much it’s desired, 48% of recruiters said that in the past 12 months, they’ve had candidates turn down interviews or job offers due to a lack of flexibility or remote work options.
• DEI initiatives: Understanding what candidates want will be important in the success of employers’ recruitment from this day forward. Recruiters who’ve been successful up to this point said they’ve focused on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Why is that important? Because it allows them to connect with candidates who value DEI initiatives. Twenty-seven percent of recruiters have had candidates refuse an interview or a job offer because the firm lacked diversity in its workforce.

Incorporate recruiting metrics

To stay ahead of the pack, you have to know where your successes and failures are. Including key performance indicators (KPIs) is vital.

For instance, knowing your quality of hires and time-to-hire help measure your recruiting progress. They also point out areas that aren’t doing so well. This is important if you want to continue to advance your recruiting efforts.

Make sure to have metrics like turnaround times for your managers in your service level agreement (SLA), too. Don’t have a recruiting SLA? Whoops! Better make one ASAP. Hands down, it’s one of the most effective ways to reduce drag and bring order to the chaos of multi-department hiring and onboarding processes. The University of Kent’s HR team has a great example.