50%.  That is the percentage of human resource managers that tell CareerBuilder¹ they currently have open positions for which they cannot find one qualified candidate.  Finding the best talent for your company has never been more difficult than it is in 2019.  To add insult to injury, 32% of workers² say they are planning to change jobs in this year.

Other Statistics that shed light on this:

• Turnover is increasing; even more telling is this:
• Voluntary turnover accounts for 70% of all turnover
• 50% of voluntary turnover occurs in Year 1
• 40% of voluntary turnover occurs in the first six months
• Tenure is decreasing
• In 2014, average tenure was 4.6 years
• In 2019, average tenure is 3.2 years
• Engagement suffers
• 73% say they are “thinking about another job”

You can see the disparity in the percentages for yourself and it paints a very clear picture:  recruitment has never been more important.

With that said.  Here are the top 10 tips for recruiting the best talent.

Recruiting Tips

1.       Workforce Planning

Workforce planning must be conducted regularly.  HR professionals must understand talent supply and demand.  Focus should be put on what is happening in the labor market and how it relates to the business goals of the company.

Other areas of focus should include:

• What products and/or services are the company planning to provide or is already providing?
• What is the competition doing?

2. Improve the candidate pool

In many cases HR misses out on their best candidate because they’ve not built the candidate pool in advance.  The majority of these names in the pool belong to passive candidates, or candidates who are currently working for someone else and are most likely not actively looking for a new job.  Other ways to build the candidate pool:

• Look to and build relationships with universities, recruiters and search firms.
• Allow current staff to take part in external professional activities to help attract new talent.
• Look for potential employees on LinkedIn and other social media outlets.

3. Look internally

Providing promotional and lateral opportunities for current employees increases morale.  It also makes staff feel their talents, capabilities, and accomplishments are appreciated. Giving an internal candidate an interview gives HR a chance to know them better. In return, the employee learns more about the goals and needs of the organization.

4. Modern Recruiting tools

There a lots of tools out there HR teams can and should be using in the recruitment process.  These tools often improve effectiveness.  Take smart recruitment technology.  AI-equipped recruiting technology allows for some key increases.  It allows for faster screening.  It also allows for more fairness in the process.  Translation:  it can help combat bias.

5. Focus on Candidate Experience

Next, HR should give adequate attention to the candidate experience.  The best way to better the candidate experience is to simply respect the potential new employee as you would a current employee.  The same can be said for those internal employees.  What does this entail?  For starters:  transparency.  HR should be completely open and honest and communicate as much as possible.  81% of job seekers say continuous communication betters the overall experience.

6. Employer Branding

HR should take a look at the company’s employee practices for retention, motivation, accountability, reward, recognition, flexibility in work-life balance, promotion, and involvement. These are key to becoming an employer of choice.  If these practices are successful, current employees will brag about the organization being a great place to work.  This will help increase the odds of candidates searching out the company.

7. Involve current employees

As mentioned previously, current employees can be a big asset in attracting new talent.  Look to employees to recommend candidates.  They can event assist in outlining the qualifications of potential candidates.  Employees can help in the interview process.  As they are the ones doing the job, they can help ask questions that go to the reality of the job.

8. Offering the best pay and the best benefits

This often goes without saying:  the company that pays better and has better benefits will attract the better employee.  It is important for HR to keep track of the pay scale both at their company and their competitors.  The same can be said for the benefits.  Being able to compete in this way will help HR attract the best candidate possible.

9. Check references

HR should ALWAYS check references and do background checks.  In today’s society, HR needs to pursue every avenue to assure that the people being hired can do the job, contribute to the company’s growth and development, and have no past transgressions which might endanger the current workforce.  In fact, the company may be liable if a background check was not conducted and it was later learned the new employee attacked another employee at a previous job.

10. Offboarding is as important as onboarding

The majority of the information included in this article focuses on finding and hiring the best talent.  Many of those strategies include using current employees.  HR should also harness the power of former employees.  Not all relationships that have ended between employee and employer are negative.  Those who left the company on good terms will often speak positively to other potential employees.  Even better, these former employees could turn into boomerang employees meaning that they eventually return to work for the company.  If the relationship ended on bad terms, neither of these prospective strategies will work.

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In summation

It is worth reiterating that recruitment is more important now than it has been in recent years.  HR has to be laser focused on bringing the right and best candidates.  Talent is the lifeblood of a company.  Without it, a business cannot hope to survive.  The stronger the recruited talent, the better the future of the business.

Photo courtesy:  Stock Photo Secrets