No matter how big or small your business is, if you want success, you must invest in Talent. Here is where talent acquisition strategies come into play. Talent acquisition implies the process of recognizing and developing skilled workers to satisfy your administrative needs. With appropriate long-term and short-term HR strategies, you can create a skilled and robust workforce for your firm.
After the recession in 2022, every business has undergone a massive change in its functioning. It is needless to say more challenges have evolved if you are undertaking talent acquisition. Therefore, a clear idea of the challenges and effective strategies can help you to hire the top talents.
Today’s Challenges For Talent Acquisition
The emerging challenges of talent acquisition involve the following issues.
As most people have switched to remote work during the pandemic, numerous employees are looking for more freedom in working through remote and contractual work for earning their living. Therefore, if you are an HR undertaking talent acquisition, you can easily hire the top talents by creating screening strategies that target the strengths and skills required for small work.
2. Increasing the Value of Compassion
Even though most companies have enlisted compassion in their core value, they lack it in practice. In the pandemic, most employees were jeopardized to work for longer hours, forgoing holidays, deduction of salary, and many other insensitive measures. Most people have been looking for a bit of compassion from their employers. If you want to hire talented people, you must not present yourself as an insensitive employer while building your strategies.
3. Growing Dependence on Technology
Developing technological compatibility has become a challenge to numerous industries. Artificial intelligence has overtaken HR jobs of sourcing, shortlisting, and selecting candidates for jobs. The best way to deal with this challenge is to supervise the growth of artificial intelligence. This does not mean you should not use the latest technologies in the recruitment process, you should. But before hiring, you must organize a live interview to judge the potential of the candidate. After all, bookish knowledge reflected with degrees does not portray an individual’s talents.
4. Employees Experience is the Top Priority
In order to hire and retain the top talents, the company must have employees who can preach about their job satisfaction. Retaining high-performing employees will demand some efforts from the company to provide benefits like health insurance, seasonal incentives, tax advantages, etc. Moreover, happy employees will definitely attract more talent to your company, as everyone does check reviews about the company on platforms like Glassdoor before taking up the job.
Proactive Talent Acquisition Strategies
Some of the proactive strategies that can definitely help your company in talent acquisition are as follows.
Industry forecasting: Understand where your industry is heading and cross-match the talent acquisition according to your business goals.
Data and marketing: Create a database or talent pool and use marketing techniques like email marketing, branding, etc. to reach out to talented or high-performing candidates. Do not forget to highlight the benefits that your company offers to the employees.
Retention of talent: Most companies do not utilize this effective strategy to hook and hold their talented employees. Offer attractive benefits, packages, or incentives for the high-performing employees in your company.
Employee branding: Branding and outreaching as recognized as the ‘go-to’ careers manager in your enterprise
Talent Acquisition professionals are a significant factor for an organization. Their actions play a vital role in the development of a business. In a situation like the COVID-19 epidemic, everything is indefinite; until a vaccine gets fully developed and execute, no one can guess what will come next. The basic strategy to grow in such an atmosphere is to pass over from reaction to pro-action by simply rediscovering, reinventing, and redefining Talent Acquisition in an exotic light.
At Pragna, Talent Acquisition strategies and the ideas built to back them are an essential part of our recruitment process. We use our analytics-backed tool to come up with new strategies and techniques to attract the right talent. We have helped several clients to successfully execute and manage recruitment using our overnight sourcing and recruitment strategy. To know more about Pragna, do check out our website.
The pandemic has laid a significant impact on the recruitment industry, obstructing the execution of the natural flow of recruitment strategy due to numerous lockdowns and quarantine periods that occurred all over the world in different periods. After the drastic dip in 2021, the recruitment industry made a difference in 2022 with the correct recruitment strategies in its pocket.
Is a recruiter or staffing agency prepared for 2023?
Let’s find out
Technological Adaptation and Use of AI
As most companies have shifted to remote working, there is essential recruitment of adapting suitable technologies to aid the remote working situation. The recruitment industry is no exception. The days of face-to-face interviews are gone. Most recruitments are automated with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital interviews.
68% of recruiting professionals say that the best way to improve recruiting performance over the next 5 years is by investing in new recruiting technology. Therefore, if you are preparing an effective recruitment strategy for 2023 to tackle emerging challenges, you must consider investing in technologies.
Greater Emphasis on DEI
In 2021, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) has come up as an eminent challenge to the recruitment industry. Therefore, diversifying your workforce at the ground level, i.e., during the recruitment process, is essential for the growth of your business. Moreover, a report by Glassdoor states, 67% of job seekers said a diverse workforce is important when considering job offers. Therefore, if you are in the business of talent acquisition, the only way to upskill your recruitment strategy is to consider equality and equity through greater emphasis on diversity in the workforce.
Focus on Relationship
the global recession has shown every industry a more significant number of layoffs and salary deductions to manage the situation for the organizations. Most job seekers are looking for employers who can handle such a situation with more compassion. Therefore, the recruitment strategy for 2023 requires a greater focus on the empathetic approach of recruiters to enhance the company-employee relationship.
One of the best ways to attract top-tier talents to your organization is to ensure that you have an excellent employee-employer relationship within the organization, making it a better place for work.
Branding as Employer
As of the current situation, there is greater social media recruitment than traditional recruitment sources. Introducing yourself as a good employer has never been so important earlier, but employer branding is the most crucial recruitment strategy today.
Social media platforms like LinkedIn have become an eminent part of recruitment now. Therefore, the recruitment strategy for 2023 revolves around creating an employer brand for your company. You can build several strategies that require engagement, reflects your employee retention facts, and has a greater emphasis on good candidate experience.
Skill gap and how to fix it
Skill gap refers to the requirement of the right set of skills that are not being fulfilled by the employees. Formulation of recruitment strategies usually involves assessing if there are any skill or talent gaps within the company. If yes, is it a temporary or permanent skill gap? This leads to another vital question, i.e., can this skill gap be overcome by upskilling, or does it require new recruitment?
Upskilling can be a good option if recruitment or talent acquisition is more costly. However, if the upskilling requires a longer time, say more than 3 to 6 months, to fill up the skill gap, the wisest way out is to recruit a new employee who has those skills. In case of a temporary skill gap, you may hire a freelancer to complete the job within a contract period.
Onboarding Experience
In most companies, new employees undergo an orientation program to acquaint them with the culture and working environment of the company. But as most companies have moved to remote working, new recruitment strategies are required to enhance the onboarding experience of the new employees. It is an essential area of focus, as this serves as a basis for talent retention. According to a recent survey conducted by well-known consulting firms, companies lose 25% of all new employees within a year.
During the recruitment process, it is essential to understand the candidate’s expectations and ability to adapt as these two factors do play a significant role when it comes to candidate experience. If you are still curious why we have emphasized candidate experience, again and again, let the survey answer you. According to a recent study, 72% of job seekers who had a bad experience told others about it online or in person. When this happens to your company, you can hardly find any top-tier talent coming to you for a job. The only way to avoid such a situation is to ensure precise and exemplary communication of recruiters to job seekers.
The Bottom Line
Even though there was an unprecedented setback due to the global recession, the recruitment industry has a more significant scope of turning over the previous year’s disappointment with the right recruitment strategies for 2022. It can be a tricky and challenging call to make as we do not know what 2023 has in store for us, but it is worth trying to make yourself strategically equipped for the future.
The first thing that comes to mind when we hear the term “Recruitment marketing” is probably various methods used to attract active and passive candidates to build a pipeline. It includes everything from your organization’s employer branding and job advertising to your candidate engagement and conversion strategies.
For few people this may seem like a lot to take in. But each and every step plays a significant role in creating an efficacious, well-rounded recruitment marketing approach for your business. It’s quite alike to how marketers engage and convert clients.
Let’s understand this whole process step by step. Recruitment marketing funnel consists of mainly four stages:
1. Entice
Top talent is not easy to find everywhere on the planet. Majority of candidates are passively, looking out for jobs. But passive candidates can quickly become active if they come across a right opportunity. They key to find passive candidates is by thinking and analyzing like them.
The major means to reach out to them should include both in-person networking combined with social media platforms like as LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+, Facebook etc.
One way could be to do job postings in similar LinkedIn Groups. To make great candidates to apply to your jobs, you should promote your company as a potential employer. Spotlighting your company’s success brings to attention the positives of your company. This branding can help get the term out about your company.
2. Engage
After evolving candidates interest next step should be to engage them. Tactics like providing a potential candidate with details that will boost his interest levels in your company. For this to be successful develop content that is logical and closely related to your employer branding campaign.
3. Convert
Your pitch is set, now it’s time to reel them in. Now that candidate has shown consistent interest in your company, it time to speak about your opening in detail and how it is different from other jobs in the market. Also you can provide more specific information about your company as a potential employer, the benefits, perks, compensation you offer and everything else an applicant needs to know before concluding and making a decision to apply.
4. Hire
This is the final step where the candidate is interviewed and hired. But an absurd interview process can turn down candidate’s interest. Simplify the hiring process short and simple starting from applying to job. Trim out any unnecessary qualification and application requirements, and provide them with all the juicy details of your offer.
One of the key components of victorious recruitment marketing is using the mindset of a marketer. That means approaching candidates not for their resumes; but as consumers that needs to be impressed, and won over. Because today’s candidates expect a lot more from the recruiting process.
To conclude job seeker’s are driving the job market. There are more job openings than potential applicants thus leaving more options for candidates to choose from. Candidates are more selective and resourceful; they tend to compare company’s strengths and weakness before applying to jobs. In this environment recruitment marketing is the only solution to excel.
A good marketing strategy enables recruiters to lure right candidates even before they submit an application and the hiring process is in full motion. Curated marketing efforts can help you find great hires quicker. Data driven reports can be used to track down the performance and make changes accordingly.
The process of making an employment offer to a candidate may seem a simple task at first glance. But do you know critical factors based on which applicants are weighing job offers. A recent study proves that salary isn’t the only factor that candidate looks for in a job offer.
The key to a creating a successful job offer extension is to consider it as a process that starts from the very second you start engaging a potential candidate. As employers, we all experienced that annoying feeling that comes along after finding a great candidate and rolling out a job offer and then the candidate reacting to it with unwillingness, taking too long to respond or even accepting a counter offer.
A compelling offer is anything that makes your organization and position stand above all other potential competitors in the market. Here are the tips to keep in mind while creating an offer that candidates just can’t resist:
Gather Information
This might seem simple, but it is one of the most commonly made mistake while making a job offer, lack of details and rolling out offer too early in the process. Most offer rejections happen just because hiring manager doesn’t know the candidate sufficiently. During the interviewing rounds, make a conscious effort to know the candidate well and note the key information points. A couple of must have notes is the candidate’s desired start date, financial outlooks, ability and willingness to commute to the office etc.
Apply the standard 10% rule
Generally, professionals expect a minimum of 10 to 15 percent increase in salary when they switch to new job. You noted down their present salary during the interview, so while making an offer keep this in mind that you will just get a tepid response if the amounts on table is less than 10 to 15 percent. But sometimes less salary can be compensated with additional bonus, healthcare, investment or lifestyle benefits, also highlighting your work culture, flexible work arrangements can act as a sweet topping on your offer which candidates just don’t want to miss.
Act Fast to Make an Offer
If you’ve made a decision and found your right fir then why wait? Time is always ticking on your head if you don’t act fast then you will miss out your found treasure, because in a down economy exceptional talent is rare. Reach out to candidate soon after they are interviewed and turn their interview anxiety into enthusiasm of cracking it successfully. This will ease the candidate’s stress during the post-interview waiting period. While informing the candidate don’t forget to mention how he was best among the whole lot of other candidates, show that you are thrilled to make them a part of your team.
Follow Up in Writing
Most important, many candidates don’t believe an offer to be real until it’s sent in writing. Then put your words in an email or letter. Clearly lay out all the elements in the offer letter including job title, base salary, benefits, vacation, holidays, perks, etc. Once the offer is sent to the candidate, don’t forget to follow up at least once a week until the start date. The risk of candidate backing out last minute is slightly high if the time period between acceptance and start is longer.
Set a deadline
Make sure to you set a deadline for the candidate to accept the offer. A three-day deadline is typical but if the candidate takes too long to respond then its not a good sign. Follow up again and ask the right questions to discover if you still can expect a positive response or candidate has made other plans in mind to do offer shopping.
Finding the right candidate in today’s competitive employment market is tough, you should be prepared to entice top talent at all levels in the recruitment cycle. And when you found the perfect fit for your job opening don’t risk losing out on them. Streamlined job offer process is one of the most important steps which includes designing a well-tailored offer letter that address the candidate’s needs, wants and pain points and is just too irresistible. The above discussed tips will definitely help you make a compelling and effective job offer and results in positive experiences that compel best talent to join your company.
“When you hire people that are smarter than you are, you prove that you are smarter than they are.” — R.H. Grant
Talent acquisition is the talk of the hour in the recruitment industry. Amidst several requirements, innovation and lateral thinking are something you invest in when you opt for quality hires. As a recruiter, it is essential to judge if the candidate you are interviewing has the potential to step up with his own ideas.
If you are hiring smart people, you are paying them for their innovation. But if your hire has the mindset of just following the superior’s orders, you have hired a wrong candidate. Smart people are not to be taught how to do their work. Instead, you can have their out-of-the box ideas to grow your business.
When investing in top tier talents, do not forget to tick the innovation checkbox if you want a sustainable solution for your organization.
How is innovation the key to success?
Innovation can evidently become a competitive advantage for your company in this cut-throat era. It is essential to ensure that your talent acquisition strategies understand the importance of innovation. Here is how innovation can help your organization to stand out in the crowded talent space.
Perspective: If you are allowing your employees to share their ideas, you can figure out how you can do the same thing in 1000 in other ways. Indeed, you can crack the nut that seemed hard enough earlier.
Area of improvement: Innovation moves your organization towards improvement. Knowing where and how to use innovation is essential if you are looking for sustainable growth.
Identify weakness: It is the innovation that can expose the weakness of any strategy and tell you how to make that strategy fool-proof. If your employees stick their necks to the desk and follow your orders only, no one will ever tell you about a minor error that can be a backfire later.
Competitive advantage: Innovation can actually take you two steps ahead of your competitor. Be it figuring out your competitor’s next move or independently designing a strategy to beat them; you cannot do it without innovative employees.
Why opt for innovative talents?
If you are paying your employees, it is not just for the paperwork they do. When hiring top talents, you count on their contribution to the growth of the company. That is only possible if they can think, unlike you, with adequate reasons.
High-performance is undoubtedly on the top priorities of quality hires. But if you need to tell them what to do every time, do you think you have invested in the right place? Innovation opens up a broad scope of opportunities for your company. Therefore, if you are using your authority to curb it, you are actually harming your organization.
Investing in innovative talents ensures that you have made a smart choice for your organization.
Is investment in innovation overhyped?
Never. If you have innovative minds working for you, you can expect breakthroughs are on the way. Moreover, you can just avoid the hassle of passing orders on how to do and what to do on a project. Moreover, if you value your employees’ ideas, you also get the result in retention rates.
How to bring out innovation?
An innovative mind can be overburdened and destroyed if the superiors always practice their authorization rights. Therefore, it is essential to educate your managers on how not to say a straight ‘no’ to every idea that counters their ideas.
When a new employee enters a company with innovative ideas, you must teach them how to pitch it and where to pitch it. Brainstorming sessions not only bind your employees as a team but also ensures the exchange of ideas to figure out the best solution.
One thing that you must ensure is that a failure of a new idea does not become a barrier to the employee’s participation in any discussion.
The Bottom Line
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” — Steve Jobs
The contribution of innovation is undeniable in any success. A sustainable business plan is actually based on innovation. Therefore, undermining innovation in your recruitment process can be a grave mistake that you should avoid.
Pragna is a competent recruitment solution for hiring the most innovative minds in the market. With us, you can definitely get access to quality hires. To know more about our services, please check our website.
