Recruitment season is a flurry of activity and in many organizations, there never seems to be enough time to review, improve, make the process more seamless, and encourage more integration among current and new employees. So today, let’s talk about how to position your company now to have a great recruitment season.
Recruitment planning happens in two phases
1 . The Long Game: Internal Preparation
Recruitment is not the same as sales. Whether you’re preparing for a career fair, recruitment season, or a huge product launch, how you brand your company matters. The most successful companies recruit like they sell. That doesn’t mean recruiting is just like sales, it means the way that you prepare to recruit needs to be taken as seriously as any product launch. To do this, recruiters need to do three things:
- Ensure consistent marketing/branding. Work with everyone from employees to top executives to create not only one unified physical representation of the company but also one consistent story of the company, from website to job descriptions and physical displays.
- Create recruitment funnels. Sales funnels aren’t just for products. They’re also a great way to stay engaged with interested candidates, but we call them recruitment funnels. You can share employee success stories, company news, and new job postings to keep prospective applicants warm and involved with the company. And always guarantee you have a quick mechanism in place for follow-up.
- Use social media to your advantage. A 2015 Inc. article quotes ManpowerGroup, encouraging companies to “give employees some training on what is and isn’t appropriate to post to social media and then turn ’em loose! Companies that take such an approach will have to be “error tolerant,” they acknowledge. Still, “the authenticity of voice and the creation of trust among employees have outweighed the downside risks.” Create a fun #hastag to encourage employees to promote the career fair on social media. And if you’re tech savvy, you can use that social media coverage to feed your recruitment funnels.
2. The Short-Term Game: Recruitment Season Specific Planning
If your company is playing the long-game, recruitment season preparation won’t be an issue. Follow these 6 strategies to position your company for an exceptional recruitment season.
- Set Goals. Set specific metrics for your recruitment season. Document exactly which positions you will fill, with what kind of people and by when these new employees will be on-boarded.
- Communicate. Recruitment is not a closed-door event. This is a team sport. Communicate the recruitment goals with all employees and seek their support and assistance to achieve your specific goals.
- Create An Employee Referral Program. Get employees on board by rewarding them for referring their friends, family, and former colleagues to work for your organization. Again, this is a team sport, so make sure the full team is encouraged to play.
- Develop A Promotion Plan: Don’t just attend career fairs and hope to attract qualified candidates, stack the deck in your favor. Use social media to your advantage, advertise available positions among the various circles where your ideal candidates will see it. Let your perspective applicants know when and where you’ll host career fairs or have representation at career fairs. Create a NOW plan to share anecdotes, employee profiles, and job openings and be visible where your ideal candidates will see you!
- Train your people. Make sure the people you choose to represent your company know what is expected of them. They need to know the company’s key priorities (and goals). They need to have a mechanism in place to quickly sort and funnel applicants to appropriate stakeholders. More specifically, they need to know what is and isn’t allowed when they interact with potential employees.
- Create a plan for follow-ups in advance. Know who will be responsible, when, and how your company will follow up with the candidates who apply for jobs at your company. This should not be an afterthought. How you treat prospective employees is a sign of how you treat your actual employees. Know who will be responsible. Decide if you’ll use an email management system or if you’ll send personal emails. Then, determine by when follow-up contact with each unsuccessful applicant will be sent after each position closes. Remember, your branding and reputation can be strengthened or broken based on how you treat applicants. Prepare for follow-up in advance.
Recruitment season can draw exceptional talent into your organization, but preparation is key. Let us at JUMP Recruits help you make a bigger impact during your next recruitment season. Contact a representative to set up a discovery call today.