To create more successful hiring campaigns in Q1, we’ve put together our best tips to help you do things more effectively, efficiently and annoyingly better than your competitors.
There is no getting away from it, January and February are the busiest and most competitive hiring months of the year. Whether it’s larger companies flexing their hiring muscles with their renewed budgets or the 1 in 5 employees looking to change jobs in January (Source: Glassdoor). If you want to attract the best talent you need to make sure your process is nailed on and your people are clued up on the best tips.
7 Tips to Improve Your Hiring
Luckily, we’ve run thousands of hiring campaigns (with the odd mistake along the way) so know just about everything that can make your hiring campaigns shine and what can make them flop. Here are our tried and tested tricks to upgrade your approach to hiring and win over the best talent. We hope you’ll put them to the test.
1. Define Your Requirements Before You Start
To avoid wasting time further down the line it is important to understand the task ahead and who you are actually looking to recruit. Ask questions such as
- What does our ideal candidate look like? – Use existing staff profiles and experience to understand who it is you need and how to spot them.
- Where do they currently work? – Useful for headhunting as well as briefing recruitment suppliers.
- Are these skills available and in our location? – Be realistic, consider the market and your requirements to set expectations.
- What are the essential skills – would we consider training? – Rule of thumb… More skills = Less Candidates.
- What do we offer above what they might already be getting? – Understand what your selling points are and leverage this with candidates
2. Be On The Front Foot
Ensuring visibility of your vacancy from the first week of the year is essential. Candidates returning after the Christmas break are often disillusioned by their employment and are quick to look around (often on the first day back), be sure your vacancy is live, visable and ready to capture these opportunists. Brief recruitment suppliers and forward schedule your job board advertising in December to achieve this.
3. List The Salary And Get It Right
Research shows that the biggest driving factor for moving jobs is money. Put simply, candidates do not leave jobs to be paid the same amount. Vacancies that include a salary attract 30% more applications and have a lower drop off, so when distributing your adverts list a competitive salary range.
If you would like to know what makes a competitive salary then send us your vacancy and we’ll let you know.
4. Write An Engaging Job Advert (Not A Job Spec)
A great recruitment advert isn’t just about explaining the job in a creative way. It’s about doing it effectively. If the length is too long or too short (350 words / 2500 characters is about right) or say the content is structured incorrectly your job seekers will instantly check out, if they even find it in the first place (are your keywords OK?). Every part of your advert affects it’s visibility and engagement levels.
To brush up on your recruitment advertising, learn how to write a job advert and follow these tips to ensure it complies.
5. Maximise Your Coverage
Job board advertising is still the most effective and productive channel for employers and recruiters to find engaged, active candidates. For a truly successful campaign you need broad exposure, target a mix of generalist, niche, agregator, regional and social job sites to increase reach and cover all bases.
Utilising a recruitment advertising network is the best way to ensure maximum exposure for the best return on investment.
6. Review Candidates Quickly (We Mean Twice Daily) And Don’t Hang About With The Interviews
If you see a great CV, call the candidate that day. The longer you leave it the greater the chance the candidate will be snapped up by a competitor. Try to book interviews as soon as possible and make sure that the relevant people internally are available to ensure a quick decision.
The Lifespan of an Active Jobseeker will highlight just how important it is to act quickly.
7. Get Commitment From Your Candidates
It’s frustrating, very frustrating to lose a candidate after an offer has been accepted. So, move quickly to avoid this happening. After you’ve offered your candidate include a deadline date for response (make this no more than 2 days), keep lines of communication open and ask for transparency. If they have concerns about your position better you know than don’t.
Upon acceptance secure references as soon as possible including 1 from their existing employer (this ensures the process can hurry along) and request they cancel all other interviews, update their LinkedIn status and remove their CV from any active CV databases.