A massive demographic shift is taking place in the world of work. As Baby Boomers retire, companies should seize the opportunities to bridge experience gaps and adapt to trends like remote work and machine learning. Millennials and Gen Z bring fresh enthusiasm, making dynamic adjustments essential.

However, a survey of 521 HR professionals by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that only 20 per cent of respondents were very confident in their organisation’s ability to assess the skills of entry-level job candidates.

As a result, recruitment managers must embrace modern recruitment strategies to find and hire great talent to maintain high performance and productivity.

While tried and tested traditional recruitment methods are still beneficial to the recruitment process, modern recruitment techniques need to be employed to attract, recruit, and retain top candidates. Here are some effective recruitment tactics to adopt:

 

1. Internship Programs

Entry-level professionals have to start somewhere, and paid internships are an excellent way to identify their strengths and potentials – consider it a working interview. Well managed internship programs are fertile ground for recognising future leaders. Assign the candidate to an experienced mentor who will initiate them into the company’s culture and evaluate their performance to determine which interns to retain and train to fill future roles.

 

2. Internal Recruitment

There are many great reasons to recruit internally. To begin with, it is cheaper. Also, a culture of internal recruitment can provide good motivation and engagement for employees because it shows that you are committed to their career growth. Internal recruitment can also be applied for promotions as a strategy for succession planning. 

Recruitment is often thought of as an external exercise; however, hiring someone from within your organisation is perhaps the best way to ensure you get the right person for the job.

Using a recruitment management tool, you can mark a job as open to current employees and allow them to apply, reducing your time-to-fill and cost-per-hire significantly. You would also be hiring people who already understand the company objectives, culture and work ethics.

 

3. Collaborative Hiring

Collaborative hiring brings line managers and executives into the recruiting process. Apart from the recruitment specialist and hiring managers, these stakeholders can evaluate candidates based on the requirements and expectations of their departments. Give these stakeholders access to candidates’ data, test scores and any other available information and get their feedback in shortlisting or interviewing candidates.

 

4. Boomerang Employees

Hardworking employees who left the organisation on good terms can be rehired. Rehiring former employees is a good recruitment strategy as you already know their abilities and how they fit into the organisation. All you need do is reach out to them to see if they are interested in rejoining the workforce. They could even bring in more insight that would be valuable to the company’s growth.

 

5. Passive Recruiting

The idea behind this recruitment method is to actively find and reach out to qualified professionals in your industry who aren’t actively looking for a job. You can get their attention with tempting offers and get them to move to your organisation. Even if they are not considering a career change yet, you can build a relationship with them with continual engagement, and when they are ready, your company will probably be the first that comes to their mind. Recruitment specialists can tap into the passive candidate pool to fill important technical and executive roles.

 

6. Niche Advertising

When a new position opens up, create a profile of the ideal candidate. What skills, personality traits, and experience would you expect the perfect candidate to have? It would be helpful to get input from line managers and employees who have held that position in the past. Armed with the candidate profile, you can then use recruitment marketing to create niche adverts targeting these kinds of potential employees.  

Niche advertising is a technique designed to strategically position and advertise your company in the most efficient way possible. Recruitment marketing refers to the various strategies an organisation uses to find, attract, and nurture prospects before they apply for a job. These may include customised marketing content, job adverts, and social media materials that will catch the attention of your preferred candidates.

 

7. Structured Interview and Online Testing

Are you asking your candidates the right questions? Do your questions help you get to know your candidates better? Are you able to make the right decisions based on the outcome of the interviews? If the answer to the questions above is “no,” then it is time to reform your interviewing process. Ask relevant questions that allow your candidates to showcase their abilities and achievements. Doing this can further encourage the top candidates to accept your offer. 

You can also administer recruitment tests remotely using recruitment management software like SeamlessHiring.

 

8. Applicant Tracking Systems

Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a must-have in modern recruitment. With it, recruiters can access a wealth of easily accessible candidate data that can be used at every stage of the recruitment process. You can efficiently collect an unlimited number of applicant CVs and search through them using keywords. ATS also gives the candidate a good recruitment experience because of the convenient virtual process.

 

9. Mobile Recruiting

A mobile recruitment experience is an effective way to reach the new generation of the workforce. This strategy utilises mobile technology to attract, engage and hire talents. 45% of job seekers search for jobs daily on their mobile devices. Millennials and members of Gen Z are increasingly reliant on their phones, so it makes sense that you try to reach and engage them through these handheld devices by communicating via mobile apps. Mobile recruitment experience covers everything from job posting/application to interview.

 

10. Social Media

LinkedIn is the most popular professional networking site where potential employees pitch themselves to employers with catchy profile headlines. LinkedIn is already used for recruiting, but other social media platforms can also be helpful for this purpose. If you go beyond the big four — LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – the possibilities for social media recruiting are endless. 

Recruitment specialists have to be innovative with the recruitment process. Where are you likely to find your ideal candidates? You will discover that platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, Quora, etc., depending on your brand, can get you those desired candidates.

 

11. Talent Pool

You may already have a database of previous candidates who were not hired but were impressive enough to be added to the talent pool. When a new vacancy comes up, search your talent pool for the required skills and experience.

Recruitment specialists can also approach reputable institutions and organisations, e.g., universities and professional institutes, for promising talents that can be trained to fit into crucial roles – this is called body shopping. 

Create a talent pool made up of these prospective talents, and when a position opens up, candidates can be easily reached.

 

Some other recruitment techniques that you may want to consider include:

  • Use networking events to body shop for prospective talents.
  •  Evaluate and improve your company’s impression on employee review sites to attract the ideal candidates.
  • Introduce incentivised employee referral programs. Involving employees in the recruitment process also has more positive implications for your organisation.
  • Optimise internal recruitment by initiating a mentoring program, where executives can mentor upcoming talents who would take over from them when they retire. 

 

SeamlessHiring is a recruitment management software that takes care of your end-to-end recruitment, making it easy to list job openings to the public, track ideal candidates, collect their data, and filter for similar skills and experience. Interviews can also be conducted virtually and shared with other recruitment stakeholders for review and decision making, offering a seamless experience for recruiters and candidates.