The overwhelming shift to online recruitment was a windfall to talent acquisition professionals, particularly those responsible for high volume recruitment. It is an easy process to source and hire candidates if quantity is the only issue.
Online sourcing strategies through the major job search engines like Indeed, can provide a continuous flow of candidates to recruiters and hiring managers for consideration. As discussed in previous blogs, many of these candidates are not high quality and can be overwhelming to recruiters without the appropriate technology and tools. To help recruiters identify quality candidates from this flow, most organizations pre screen demographics which are often are either inaccurate or embellished questions/items. In our 2021 Summer Blog Series our talent analytics team researched the predictive power of demographics and found that only 6 factors predicted future performance.
To further complicate the search for quality candidates, some recruiters are reinforced for quantity only. The quality of new hires (in terms of future performance and retention) is either not tracked and/or the recruiter never receives feedback. Without this feedback, recruiters and hiring managers are simply “checking the box” and repeating the same process with the same results. This type of process will not improve outcomes such as reducing turnover and even worse, it could contribute to furthering systemic legal and bias issues.
How do we help recruiters become strategic partners who are focused on sourcing & converting quality candidates and not just fulfilling the quantity requirements?
RECRUITER EFFICIENCY
Use Technology to Warm up Online Source Candidates – Our top clients track the demographic screening variables that are predictive and put them upfront at first contact. This not only saves the candidate time but also relieves the recruiter of the administrative function of sorting through resumes and application forms.
Increase the Investment in the Best Sources – The easiest way to improve and grow is to do what you do well more often. Track, assess and invest in your top sources.
Reinforce the Recruiters and Hiring managers for both Quantity and Quality – In our validation studies we assess the ROI associated with hiring top performers who remain with a company (i.e., Effective Retention). The increase in the performance and reduction in replacement costs is substantial. As pointed out in the previous blog, reinforcing quality will result in more quality hires.
Learn from your Recruiters and Hiring Mangers (Leverage and Share Individual Intelligence and Competence) – Track the effectiveness of individuals to source and hire top quality candidates and ask them to share their expertise with other recruiters.
Develop Referral Cards for all Recruiters – Creating referral cards for recruiters is a great way to develop & track nominators and Centers of Influence.
RECRUITER EFFECTIVENESS
Train Your Recruiters and Hiring Managers on how to Sell the Career. From our experience this is the biggest requirement in helping recruiters hire top quality candidates. In a previous blog we stated that training recruiters on how to sell the career opportunity, increased the hiring conversion ratio of top candidates from 13.1% to 23.7%. The recruiters were able to talk to half the number of candidates to hire the same number of quality candidates.
The Sales Process. Effective selling always begins with a fact find. This allows the recruiter to focus on what is important to the candidate (i.e., benefits) rather than selling features of the career. Using a Career Management approach, the fact find requires only 3 basic questions:
- What do you like about your current career or past careers?
- What additional things would you like in your ideal career?
- How does our career fit into your career planning? OR What do you know about our career/company?
These 3 questions will provide the recruiter with the necessary information to present the career opportunity that will be more candidate focused than centered on the features of the company or career.
Leverage Your Assessment Tools. Our POP™ assessments not only provide career information to the candidate but also provides a predictive snapshot to the recruiter and hiring manager. Our top clients leverage this information to convert top quality candidates as a third-party endorsement. This becomes an opportunity for a more powerful conversation with the candidate, for example:
“You are probably wondering why I think you will do well with us? The assessment you completed was created by one of our partners who assesses and tracks all our candidates. You have the characteristics they found to be associated with our top performers.”
REFERENCING. At the end of a meeting, ask the candidate for referrals to others in their network who might be interested in your career opportunities. Give them referral cards to hand out with tracking information so you can reinforce any referrals. Again, leverage the complimentary Candidate Career Feedback report and indicate that you will treat all their referrals with the same respect and information.
To learn more about how to leverage your Recruiter Effectiveness, please reach out to one of our consultants at 416.746.0444 or info@selfmgmt.com.
Stay tuned for our next blog…”The 3 Strategies for Developing an Effective Recruiting Pipeline.