7 Ways to Capture Job Candidate Attention When They Aren’t Looking

Time to hire is growing. Cost per hire is, too. According to SHRM, the average cost in 2016 was over $4,000. And although most people who want a job already have one, company loyalty is becoming a thing of the past. People jump ship, but another company’s loss could be your gain as long as you keep your best and brightest on board.

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How do you find the candidates you’re looking for when they’re already engaged someplace else? The only way turn the odds around is to work proactively. Here are 7 ways you can shine brighter than the company next door and hang onto the team you’ve already cultivated.

#1: Refine Your Employer Brand

If you’re not completely sure about your brand image, it probably needs work. Refining the employer brand is vital when the odds are in the candidate’s favor. Research your competition, too. Harvard Business Review says branding is ”strategically more important” now than in recent history. They recommend:

  • Develop an Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
  • Post content/share stories regularly on social media and measure results
  • Scour sites like Glassdoor for positive and negative feedback.
  • Use negative comments to spot areas for improvement
  • Educate everyone in the company about the importance of a strong brand

#2: Collaborate with Hiring Managers for Better, Intriguing Job Ads

You can’t count on organic job seekers to find your job ads. But that means job ad quality is more important than ever. When you have their attention, make every second count. If job ads are boring, they’ll be bored and move on. Chances are, you don’t know the jobs in the company as well as hiring managers do. Collaborate with them for better ads that hit all of the important marks with the people you want to hire.

#3: Predict Job Ad Performance to Hit More Than it Misses

You can post and pray or you can work proactively to improve job ad results. Technology is increasingly important in a full employment economy. Candidate matching optimizes job ad placement so more of the right eyes see your ad in places such as social media and their email inbox without actively looking for it. Predictive analytics uses past performance to predict how the next ad will fare. AI improves processes continually.

#4: Develop a Strong Social Media Presence

Candidates might not need a new job, but they do need social interaction. Social media is still hot, so that’s where you need to be. Social can help generate candidate leads, boost engagement and build the company brand. It also gives insights into what motivates candidates to act. LinkedIn still matters, and so does Facebook. You can also share content on Twitter. Think about branching out, too. Use Instagram to share the excitement about working for your company and encourage current employees to tell their stories, too.

#5: Ramp up Content Marketing Efforts

Content marketing puts you in better control over marketing results. The more consistently you produce and the more you treat content like a candidate lead generating tool, the more you’ll get out of it. Sujuan Patel, founder of Web Profits, recommends the 80/20 rule. Spend 20 percent of content marketing time creating content and 80 percent promoting it. And don’t let old posts wither away and die. Get more mileage by recycling top performing content on different channels.

#6: Refocus on Your Talent Pipeline

The talent pipeline has never been more important than now that most of the great candidates can’t automatically see you. That applies to talent for nearly every level of employment, but it’s especially important for key positions where cost per hire and time to hire typically increase. Oracle recommends these and other steps for a high-performance talent pipeline.

  • Identify current and future talent needs
  • Determine the skills of those currently in the pipeline to find gaps that you need to fill
  • Include current employees in the pipeline
  • Develop candidate engagement strategies for every level of the pipeline
  • Streamline sourcing strategies
  • Define important KPIs and always be measuring

#7: Let Technology Help You Work More Efficiently

Now that the fear of robots stealing HR jobs has mostly waned, it’s time to get down to the business of using technology to work better. That’s what tech tools like programmatic recruitment do best. Data and data analytics should already play a significant role in your department. Automation takes chores such as email responses and job ad posting out of your hands so you can focus on something else. Candidate matching software continually searches for the best job/candidate match and refines postings automatically to maximize your efforts instead of spreading them too thin.

In a full employment economy, sourcing is different. It doesn’t matter how great the job happens to be if nobody can see it. The tables have shifted, but that doesn’t have to put you at a talent deficit. It only means that you should work differently now.

Sourcing and hiring strategies are getting smarter, which is the best possible plan for the future of hiring. Full employment probably won’t last forever. When the odds shift back in your favor, your refined processes can make your company soar.

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