One of the most exciting tasks a human resources professional takes on is hiring new employees. The hiring process requires strategic recruitment practices, which can change over time depending on the job market, a company's needs and talent brand awareness. HR departments can maximize their ability to attract and recruit top talent with outsourced HR administration software.
Why revamp current recruitment strategies?
The recruitment landscape constantly shifts in reaction to economic health, product demand and company reorganization. Currently, according to LinkedIn's 2015 Global Recruiting Trends report, hiring budgets and needs are increasing for the first time in four years.
However, the gap between the two is also widening; in 2014, 63 percent of business leaders in LinkedIn's survey claimed their hiring volumes were growing, while only 46 percent claimed to be increasing the budget. This means HR professionals have to find more candidates with fewer resources available to them. It would be wise to reconsider current hiring policies, making changes to increase efficiency and success rates.
This year, both large and small businesses consider the quality of hire as the most valuable metric when determining recruiting teams' positive contributions. Rather than measuring a hiring strategy's effectiveness on the time it takes to make a hiring decision or the HR department's satisfaction with the candidate, recruiting leaders measure a strategy's effectiveness by the quality of the hired talent. If companies routinely hire employees that are ill-equipped to handle their new role or leave the business soon after, it's time to revamp policies.
It's also worth noting the largest issues for businesses looking to hire new workers these days are being able to provide top talent with exceptional compensation and standing out among competitors. If an organization feels they can't compete with other companies in their sector, it's definitely time to look for new recruitment strategies. New recruitment methods can improve brand awareness, and when 56 percent of global recruitment leaders place brand awareness as their top priority in 2015, it's a smart idea to focus on boosting visibility.
Improve recruiting and hiring with EVP and data
In order to improve brand awareness among the most talented candidates on the market, HR departments must distill their employee value proposition down to a specific set of features, then promote those sentiments throughout professional online social networks.
In an article written by LinkedIn's Brendan Browne, businesses are encouraged to dig deep into current employee experiences to find out why people chose to work at a particular organization and what's kept them there over the years. This research gives a company the insight it needs to accurately represent itself to the world.
A solid, well-marketed talent brand can reduce employee turnover by 28 percent and 75 percent of LinkedIn's survey respondents claimed strong brand identity had a meaningful impact on their hiring capabilities. Promoting a business's brand on social media and the company website is a necessity.
In fact, it's this presentational method that can make or break the EVP delivery to potential recruits. Rather than simply listing job perks on the company website, businesses can post videos of employees discussing their favorite aspects of working for a company.
HR professionals also need to harness the power of data available from online networks. A study completed by LinkedIn and Deloitte found talent acquisition teams are twice as likely to improve recruitment results and three times as likely to reduce the cost of recruiting efforts when they use available data. Social professional networks now account for 46 percent of the highest quality hires in the U.S. Internet job boards were cited by 74 percent of global recruiting leaders as their preferred source for quality candidates. These sources give recruiters and HR professionals greater insight into talent pools. Seventy-seven percent of HR departments effectively utilizing this information when seeking candidates are more efficient and produce better results than those who ignore data.
Don't forget about internal investments
Forbes pointed out when businesses want to grow, yet remain tightly-knit and cohesive, it's best to promote from within when possible. Nurturing talent of current employees not only increases EVP, it establishes a stronger company foundation.
It's imperative that recruiters continually hire people with innovative ideas who can take the business further with their skills, not set it back or keep it stagnant. First Round Review recommended HR leaders ask reliable, insightful and dedicated employees within a business to offer input on whether a candidate would raise the talent bar at an organization, or lower it.
"A lot of companies say, 'We only hire people better than ourselves.' But what does that actually mean?" Anurag Gupta, general manager of Amazon's Amazon Redshift and Amazon Aurora platforms, asked the crowd at a recent First Round summit. "If you try to mechanize it, you end up with a forest of questions: Better than whom? The best person? The average person? Better at what? How does one calibrate what better even means?"
HR consulting services can help companies create internal strategies to get the most out of their brands and recruiting efforts.