I often speak to companies about how they recruit and the challenges they experience. One of the questions I ask is “How do you recruit new people into your business?”, followed by “What recruitment challenges do you have?”. Many companies see a similar set of challenges regardless of their industry or sector:
- Can’t find people quick enough
- There is a shortage of suitably skilled, qualified and experienced people
- It is crazy expensive to recruit people and it is even more expensive to lose people
The next topic of conversation for me is “What is your strategy for how you will recruit people in the future?”. Often the strategy for the future is the same as what is already the norm. Even though the recruitment challenges have such an impact on business, there is no plan to change.
It is time to change:
The methods of attracting people to join a business have changed and the effectiveness of new methods has greatly enhanced the opportunity for companies to attract people. The best part today is that people do not just want a job, they want a career with a company they believe in. It is the perfect time to rethink your strategy of how you attract people tomorrow and in the future. It’s time to get a recruitment strategy!
The essentials of a recruitment strategy:
1) Research:
Research is the first stage of creating a successful recruitment strategy. Here are some tips for the research you might want to do:
- Historical: Create an honest report of how your recruitment function is currently delivered, the cost and timescales associated.
- Talent pool research: Find out how the people you would like to recruit like to find new jobs, what content engages them and what they want out of a career.
- Channel research: What channels are there that you can use to attract people, both online and offline, and are they used by your intended audience?
- Employer brand research: What do your employees and prospective employees think about you as an employer, and is your employer brand believable?
2) Plan:
Next we need to create a plan that will help keep us on course for the next period of time. I would suggest that this plan should set the course for the next year with opportunities to review and make changes along the way. A typical plan might include:
- A definition of each segment of your intended audience.
- Which channels you will use to advertise jobs.
- How your jobs will be created to maximise impact.
- Which channels you will use to engage your audience.
- The type of content you will engage each segment of your audience with.
- A campaign calendar for the year.
3) Measure:
Possibly the most important part of any strategy is to state what benefits you expect to deliver along the way. By doing this, you know if your strategy is a success. These might include:
- The target cost per hire.
- The cost saving you intend to deliver.
- How quickly you want to recruit people.
- How large you want your talent pools to be.
- The engagement metrics you want to see from you talent pools.
Make sure all your goals are SMART and don’t make you goals too easy, stretch yourself.
The benefit of a strategy:
One of the best parts of creating a strategy is when you get something a bit wrong. The great thing is that when you track progress with SMART goals, you now know if something is going wrong. Previously you may have been stressing and wondering why you were not getting enough candidates or why your competitor had many more followers than you. Now with the research you have and SMART goals, you know if something is wrong and you can change them, having learnt from your experience.
Have you a strategy, what have you learnt from it? Let us know in the comments below!
Image: Shutterstock
