The new year is approaching, and the downtime between the holidays and the start of the new year is time to reflect on your recruitment efforts this year, and start thinking about how you plan to set and reach your recruitment goals next year.
Here are 5 New Year’s Resolutions for Recruiters that can help up your game in 2021:
- Eliminate Bias – best practices for eliminating bias in recruiting aren’t just for tokenism, widening your pipeline and candidate pool to include diverse segments can help strengthen your clients’ performance. Check how your job adverts are written and positions are defined, to ensure there isn’t any bias. Make sure your job descriptions aren’t inadvertently deterring one gender from applying and utilize sourcing tools that aren’t susceptible to human bias.
- Treat every interaction like a potential placement – Recruiting isn’t a reactive business, it is proactive and it is about relationships. Many recruiters get a lot of their clients and candidates through referrals. So no matter where you are, a coffee shop or a job fair, bring up your firm and tell them to pass your name along to any friend who happens to be looking for a job right now.
- Improve the candidate experience. Along the lines of the last tip… reply to every candidate who submits a resume – they may not be a fit for the role, but you never know who you’re going to meet or what you’ll learn from them. By giving them the common courtesy of a response, it will improve your brand in their eyes and they are more likely to come back to you or refer friends to you.
- Make your marketing stand out. It can get easy to get caught up in the typical formula for recruiting: post a job ad, screen CVs, telephone interview, etc. Inject some creativity into the job adverts, learn about and utilize new tools, and engage in social media to break out of your recruiting comfort zone. Think outside the box to draw in those highly sought-after candidates – host a career fair or “speed-dating” event for your open roles, or offer incentives like gift cards or your professional services (resume review, video interview tips, etc) to boost social media engagement.
- Embrace social recruiting. Posting a job ad and praying just doesn’t cut it anymore. Make sure your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn feeds are more than just ads – you want to post content that brings value to your audience. To get more likes and follows, you need to have engagement and back-and-forth dialog with candidates and clients. Post articles and videos that your audience will find useful… You could even post quick weekly videos with tips for candidates – or host a Q&A session.