Josh TolanTop talent doesn’t grow on trees (but wouldn’t that be nice?). Finding suitable job candidates can be challenging. In fact, ManpowerGroup’s ninth annual Talent Shortage Survey revealed that nearly 40 percent of employers globally have difficulty filling jobs. And nearly half (47 percent) of those employers are adopting new recruitment practices to address the issue.
To come out on top in today’s global competition for talent, recruiters have to do more than write a semi-decent job ad, set up shop at a hiring event or create a “Careers” page on their website. They need to adopt innovative ways to locate and, more importantly, attract top talent. See how these three recruiting professionals do just that:
1. Become a social influencer.
A recruiter who truly gets the opportunity that social media presents will understand that they can use it to gain influence by becoming known, liked and trusted. In the same way you’d start a conversation at a conference, you can identify who you want to talk to, start with small talk, and, in time, lead the conversation to your opportunities.
A great social recruiter will look for the people they need on the sites they actually use, use the plethora of available free tools to map their activities across networks, and use this information in their conversation to build influence.
For example, you may see from someone’s Facebook profile that they’ve recently had a child so you could mention your childcare facilities, when you connect via LinkedIn. Showing your interest in ‘what’s in it for them?’ and using the information you find in a bit of social digging, will give you influence and is where the magic happens.
Katrina Collier, Winning Impression
2. Hand out recruiting cards.
We learned long ago that it was far better to hire someone for their attitude and teach them the necessary job skills, than it was to hire for skill and try to teach attitude. Because of that, we had a deep desire to find people who exhibited their attitude in a setting outside of a job interview, where we felt it was far more authentic.
In order to find these people with the right attitude, we had recruiting cards printed up and given out to our existing employees. We gave each of them the instruction that whenever they were out and about and either personally experienced or witnessed an employee providing amazing customer service, they should hand that person a recruiting card.
In those moments, we felt it was a powerful tool to have our employee compliment the person that did a great job and tell them your company really appreciates people like them — then hand them a recruiting card that had the company logo on it and stated something to the effect of, “Tell them [employee name] thinks you’re awesome and referred you to apply at [company name].”
Then on the website make sure to have a spot where the person applying fills in the name of the person who gave them the card. This is an amazing way to see people in their “natural habitat,” so to speak, and to see their character in action.
Amy Rees Anderson, REES Capital
3. Organize an open house.
As a recruiter, I am always speaking to passive candidates who might not be actively looking for a job. Even if they are not interested right now, or the job I have in mind isn’t quite right for them, many can be persuaded to consider a new opportunity at a later stage.
Organizing informal events could be very effective. Last year, we knew of a company that had a lot of people, at the risk of redundancy, and we were looking for several developers for various brands within our own company.
We invited about 50 employees to our office for an informal event, and a technical lead from each brand would do a short presentation talking about working for their brand, technologies, etc. It was very successful and we hired seven candidates from this event, if I remember correctly.
What are some other unique ways to attract top talent? Feel free to share your tips in the comments!
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