What is the number one challenge most companies are facing today? Finding good, dependable people and keeping them.
Today we’ll discuss your recruitment process, what marketing and outreach strategies are you using, what does your applicant process look like, and how quickly are you completing interviews and making offers.
These are the first steps in attracting candidates and converting them to hires. We’ll discuss later how to retain and keep the best.
If you drive up and down the street everyone has a “now hiring” sign. Signage works, especially for those who are frequent shoppers of your brand or are aware of you because of your presence in their community. But, what else can you do?
Make sure your signs have a call to action. Consider job postings through traditional job boards, social media ads, Google organic searches and paid ads – all of these work too.
Depending on your business and job requirements, you can position yourself nicely with local high schools, colleges and return-to-work programs.
Ok, I understand you are doing all those things as well. Some aren’t cheap, and it seems that you still aren’t able to staff up and potential sales are going out the window. So, what else can be done?
I know... cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching. But think about this: you are looking at potentially a short-term investment for a long-term gain.
Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet and one solution isn’t going to work, but you should find greater success in some areas as compared to others and that is where I would recommend you put most of your time and resources.
Well, this is a time to know before you go. Find a way to track your applicants and know where your target candidates are coming from. If you have a career website, you should have analytics in place to know where your traffic is coming from.
If you don’t have a career website in place, there’s always the old fashioned “how did you hear about us” application question. Just know, you can’t always rely on responses if they aren’t tracked by technology. Once you know where your applicants are coming from you can track if and when those applicants convert to hires.
Converting is a multi-step process. Someone is likely completing 1,000’s – ok 10’s – of applications and they may not bother spending a lot of time on your application if it asks a lot of questions upfront.
Do you need an application? The answer is yes, but at what stage in the process really depends on your company’s structure. There is such a thing as a short application and long application to fit in the appropriate stages.
Keep in mind: time is of the essence. Once the application submission is complete, that individual is waiting on nine other companies to call them back. Hopefully, your screening and interview processes are fast, thorough, and effective and you land the hire(s).
Once hired, you can track and measure tenure, rate of turnover and performance which ultimately will give you an ROI for your recruitment marketing.
Sounds crazy? Not really! There’s a lot of moving parts that can be broken down.
Sounds expensive? Not really. You are probably already spending more on all the recruitment advertising, cost of turnover, cost of training, cost of overtime and loss of potential sales.
Need help? HR Insights is here for you. Schedule a meeting with our HR experts to review your recruiting strategy today!
