We all know that talent is the key part of a business. Hiring the right talent has become one of the most crucial jobs for organizations these days. Businesses keep buzzing talent hunters to get the best talent in the market at right time. Here are some 21st century hiring practices for businesses that will help them master the talent acquisition.
Market Intelligence
In the 21st century, talent hunters should use this practice to position their program in the competitive market. They should understand the competition well and should be involved in locating new active and passive candidates. They must run the program on Glassdoor, Indeed, Vault etc. to get their own organization’s reviews and comments from both, current and former employees. Getting the latest updates on an organization's culture, salary information, awards etc. helps the employer to know what these people are actually looking for. They also should be active in knowing about hiring, re-structuring, layoffs etc. before it goes public.
Matrix Analysis
It is one of the best practices to measure the productivity of your business. It will help you to know your current situation and you will also know what other substitutes can be included to make your hiring plan and strategy more effective, with considering the factors like hiring timeline, sourcing channel, cost per hire, open position VS filled position, demand vs supply, offer acceptance ratio etc. (I will come up with more details in my next article).
Networking and relationship
These days, most of the professionals are active on social media and they prefer it over job boards for updating their profile and communicating with each and every talent scout. The main reason behind this is that the job boards are time-consuming to them at large. Hence, the talent specialists must be comfortable being on social media including LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook etc. to target such audience and must be comfortable with interacting and building a good relationship with them. Good talent specialists engage themselves in utilizing the referral channel, professional associations, blogs, and in checking out on meetups and local technical events happening in their area This gives the opportunity for direct interaction. They should be comfortable with Skype meeting, online chats, and other direct and private massaging platforms for direct business gathering.
Strategic Sourcing
Good recruiters go beyond the basic searches as basic search results are what everyone else can get. They should leverage all the channels to find the uncovered talent whether it is from their own maintained recruiting tracker, applicant's tracking system, referrals, through their network, or by phone. They should know the entire channels including internet and get creative when attempting to source right candidate as the internet provides many opportunities to be creative. Skills of writing personalized messages, engaging with the passive candidates, and making phone calls covers the information while talent assessment to track the record for future perspective. A good talent hunter should be proactive in approaching the talents and must build a strong pipeline as a backup if the top talent falls to back out. A recruiter should prepare the sourcing metrics for speeding the pipeline with quality sourcing and keep working on themselves to update with such an information like what is trending in the market, what are the most demanded technologies, and how their competitors are planning to approach the best talent.
Sell your job opening to the talent
Recruitment is all about selling. Yes, imagine there is a company product called "open position" that you are selling and the job applicants are your sales lead. The interviews are sales calls. Your job should be designed properly to interest the desired job seekers so that they consider your company as their first choice of employment. You should make sure that all the necessary information to be communicated to the job seeker gets a real engagement and also ensure that you have enough information about the job seeker to make a wise decision. Keep in mind that smart people don’t buy stupid products. So, in order to have intelligent and capable talent, draw a quality level at your product, i.e., your “open position”.
Time is money; know what you want! Before selling any product, we should properly research and choose the target audience. The same rule applies to "selling a job". Know what type of talent you want. It’s important for you to know everything about the position to communicate the same with your targeted talent audience.
Talent Assessment
Great recruiters are great assessors of talent. They understand hiring needs very well. Based on the need, they conduct assessment tests (simulation tests, cognitive ability/problem-solving tests, personality/Behavioral/conscientiousness tests, structured/unstructured interviews). It is just one part of a hiring process. This system or machine test can’t replace the actual assessor. A good assessor uses market intelligence techniques and their ability to analyze the profiles coming through any channel.
Communication
Communication is an essential part of any business activity, be it in written form or in oral. It is not only useful for building networking relationships or doing business or providing customer service, it’s all about doing anything quickly and effectively in order to convey the message from one to another on any subject. Having communication is good to start a business but having effective communication helps in building a strong relationship, increasing productivity (direct & indirect), assuring the stability of the business in the market, and reducing the cultural differences. Networking and communication are the main parts of a business. In recruitment, it is helpful in tracking all the activities related to an applicant, which we save for future use and to protect the company against false accusations.
I would suggest the talent hunters take an interest while communicating with each and every applicant. Make them feel warm and convey appreciation for their time. Put forth your best impression. You can win on a quality employee and fill the position quickly.
Hope you liked the post. Look forward to your comments/suggestions.