Even though the candidate market looks completely different compared to a couple of months ago, this still is true: \”the person who actively approaches you isn\’t necessarily the best candidate for the vacancy, and the person who doesn\’t, isn\’t necessarily a bad fit\”. I have found many, many superb candidates for the roles at my companies. Going the extra miles does really pay off.
The coronavirus has truly changes the candidate landscape. Unemployment, reduction in hours, companies closing – it made for a drastic shift in people\’s needs, and a sharp increase in the number of applicants for your positions. Be that as it may, it is still the right approach to be pro-active. Do not rely on the candidates coming to you alone, but in addition, build in time to scout the market and connect with potential, future talent. Today, we discuss the three things you can do to make your efforts that more effective.
1. Enlist Your Full Team
You don\’t have to do all the work yourself. Your employees are the perfect ambassadors for your company and its vacancies. It is a good idea to have a policy in place for employee referrals. While employees will do their best to help their friends and acquaintances towards a job, having a financial incentive will definitely help. Create a job board with all open positions and actively advocate for a talent community in which people leave their information so you can easily find their information when the need arises.
When you implement a policy like this, make sure you also create rules on working with or for relatives or friends to avoid conflicts of interest.
In addition, make sure the hiring manager of current of future open roles is on board. If you can double the effort with reaching out to candidates, you will certainly double the impact. In the worst case, the hiring manager spends time in a couple of sessions, talking to potential candidates.
2. Know Where to Look
The most popular job boards, such as Indeed, Ziprecruiter and Glassdoor, hold incredible amounts of talent, many of which would be a good fit. But for your vacancies, especially for those in leadership positions and in critical or hard-to-find areas, you have to move beyond the boards.
For one, LinkedIn is a tremendous pool of talent with a strong emphasis on networking in a professional setting. If you don\’t have a (free) account yet, I urge you to do so, and start working on building your network.
Secondly, it takes time and effort, but for your critical roles it makes sense: analyze competitors and companies that employ your typical, ideal employee, and start mapping their organization. Where is the talent, who are they and start building the relationship.
3. Be Patient
Because you are building the network and reaching out to candidates in ways that are not standard, it\’s going to take more time. Mapping out the candidate landscape, searching on social media and building relationships with candidates in your network are time consuming efforts. If you are in dire need of a candidate for one of your roles, this approach may not yield the quick results you need, and you should by all means go about it using your usual techniques, and even external help.
But on that note, it helps to start working now, for your future roles. The time you invest now will leave rewards for when you need it as soon as positions open up. As a valuable side effect, you are building and strengthening your employer brand as you do.
Next Time
In our next blog, we\’ll talk some more about how to effectively communicate with your candidate network environment.
About us
AskAway is disrupting the way recruitment is done, by eliminating the need to plan and schedule time-consuming meetings in packed agendas and by offering tools to record or even prerecord interviews. This allows you and your hiring team the opportunity to share and analyze the candidates for your interviews when it suits you. We pre-screen so you don’t have to.
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