Hiring the right people is crucial for every company and its future success, but traditional recruitment that relies solely on advertising open positions and hands-on Search has its limitations.
Great employees are rarely active job seekers, and even if they are that doesn’t mean that they know of your company or see it as a potential place to work. An internal Search-function can circumvent this by actively approaching potential candidates and informing them about your company and what opportunities it has to offer; however, Search is inherently a very time-consuming way of handling recruitment it’s thus not very cost-effective, especially in greater volume.
To make volume recruitment cost-effective, you need to go above and beyond the boundaries of traditional recruitment and invest in long term initiatives that strengthen your employer brand and leverages it in order to attract and secure the right talent for your organization. Done correctly, this secures a more consistent candidate pipeline and effectively reduces the resources needed to attract and recruit employees. This not only saves money by enabling a streamlining of the recruitment organization, but it also helps increase the quality-of-hire and thus provides a very tangible competitive advantage.
Effectively leveraging your employer brand to support recruitment is by no means an easy feat and there’s no true one-size-fits-all solution to accomplish this. Ways of doing this may include producing and publishing branded content, incorporating employer branding with existing marketing strategies and organizing events and meetups that cater to the interests of relevant target groups of candidates that you are looking to attract.
It is, however, very easy to forget that good employer branding often starts from within an organization and before going all out with external campaigns, there are a few things to consider when setting up a strategy:
Remember your existing employees. Prioritizing your existing employees and committing to a great employee experience will go a long way to help create brand ambassadors for your team/organization.
Communicate your recruitment goals. Make sure that your current employees are up to speed about what positions you are looking to fill and what kind of skills you value in new hires.
Promote a referral culture. Make sure that every individual that’s involved in your hiring process gets the first-class treatment, regardless if they’re hired or not.
Secure a great candidate experience. Dedicate resources to sustain it. Make sure that every individual that’s involved in your hiring process gets the first-class treatment, regardless if they’re hired or not.
Also, engage with and utilise your network, make sure to gather impressions from other Employer Branding Professionals. Since there’s no one size fits all solution, you will have to tailor your strategy to your specific circumstance. An agile approach goes a long way towards building a successful long-term strategy.
erik cedergren
CEO & Consultant
erik.cedergren@recpro.se
