Employee Recruitment Strategies: Hiring the Top Talent

Recruiting is like trying to find a needle in a haystack — and then the needle moves.

It's a tough job winning top talent for your organization. Depending on the size of your company or turnover rate, it can seem never-ending. And hiring the wrong person can be expensive and time-consuming.

That’s why you need rock solid recruitment strategies to ensure you can fill those vacancies with star talent.

While there are many popular recruitment strategies that HR pros leverage, ultimately you need an approach that best suits your company culture and needs.

Let’s explore some actionable recruiting strategies you can try out.

What is Recruiting?

Recruiting is the process of marketing (finding and attracting candidates), screening (interviewing and assessing their experience), and onboarding (training candidates and supporting them as they adjust to their new role) talent for your organization.

Successful recruitment is not a simple task. For people outside of HR, recruiting methods seem straightforward. You weed through resumes, choose the right applicants to interview, and then offer the position to one of them.

But that's not all that you're doing.

You don't want to just hire someone to fill a position. You want to hire candidates who will enjoy the job, contribute to your team, and grow with your company. Employee turnover costs companies a great deal in training, time, and money.

If you invest in recruiting tactics as a long-term strategy, you're more likely to find the right employees to grow with your company.

What is a Recruitment Strategy?

A recruitment strategy is a combination of tactics for attracting, hiring, and retaining the best candidates for job vacancies. The goal of any recruitment strategy is to hire the best possible candidates to meet the company's current and future work needs.

An effective recruitment strategy will involve job listings, social media outreach, employee referral programs, and networking. It is tailored to the needs of the company and considers different aspects, such as the labor market and the company’s culture and values.

Recruiting Strategies to Attract Top Talent

Here are some excellent recruitment sourcing strategies to help you in your talent search.

1. Keep Your Website and Social Profiles Updated

Your online presence is one of the best ways to recruit employees. Most candidates will research your organization by visiting its website and social media profiles.

This gives you the perfect space to clearly showcase your company culture, what the job is, benefits, and how candidates can apply.

Don’t forget to share any job vacancies on your social profiles! Candidates will often follow companies on social media that inspire or interest them. And many of your current followers may know someone who's looking or share an opportunity to get more eyes on your listing.

Your website and social profiles are also helpful in establishing credibility and legitimacy. Today, most people expect a good company to have an attractive, updated website.

Generic job boards have also fallen prey to scam ads, so candidates will follow up on your own site to make sure the job listing is legitimate.

2. Cultivate Your Employer Brand

Who are you, what do you do, and what are your values? This makes up your employer brand, and can either entice or rebuff potential candidates.

Make a concerted effort to develop and promote your company's mission, values, and culture. Show them how awesome you are in everything you do, via social media, your website, employee testimonial videos, events, and more. Whether it’s directly related to recruiting or not, anything your organization puts out there is a chance to show off your employer brand.

Give potential talent a taste of your employer brand right in your job postings. Elevate your job description with a video of existing employee testimonials about working for your organization, or the CEO talking about the company mission.

Showing off your company culture and values increases the odds that your candidates will be a better fit and more engaged at your company.

3. Advertise on a Variety of Job Boards

Be intentional about where you advertise to make sure you’re targeting the right candidate.

Job aggregator sites can get the word out about your position and might be an excellent place to place ads for entry-level jobs.

You might also consider industry-specific sites, industry publications, and job boards where many people in your field would see the listing. If you’re offering a remote role, look into remote-specific job boards.

Tailoring where you advertise makes it easier to be where your ideal candidate is, and also reduces the likelihood that you’ll have to weed through applicants that are not a good fit.

Read More: 10 Virtual Job Interview Tips for Hiring Managers & Recruiters 

4. Create an Easy and Seamless Recruiting Experience

Have you ever submitted a job application and felt like you were sending it into the abyss? How about manually entering your resume details after already uploading a digital copy?

These are great ways to seriously kill a candidate's enthusiasm for your company.

Recruiting is about more than just sourcing the candidates, you need to take them through the entire process, from initial application to hiring. If this isn’t easy (and fast!) for the applicant, you might turn off a perfect candidate.

Make it as simple as possible to apply to your open roles, and get back to candidates quickly. If you have recruiting software, you can make the application process seamless and get in touch with candidates as fast as possible, through email, phone call, or text.

Read More: Why Candidate Experience Matters (and How to Improve Yours)

5. Tap into Previous Applicants

Don’t forget about past applicants. Your recruitment management system should allow you to store information on previous candidates you can reach out to. They may not have been a fit at that time, but could still be perfect for a different role.

Remember, these applicants may already have positions elsewhere. But, if they were interested in your company in the past, they may still be interested in new opportunities.

This underscores why it’s important to have a positive recruiting experience, even for candidates you don’t extend an offer to. They could still be a new hire down the line!

6. Develop an Employee Referral Program

Your employees are your biggest asset in more ways than one. Leverage an employee referral program to source qualified candidates.

Your current employees often have many contacts within the industry which could be ideal candidates. Employees are also more likely to be careful about who they refer because they feel that it reflects on them. This means that you're getting candidates who are already pre-vetted by someone in your company.

You can even sweeten the deal by offering a referral bonus to your current workers if their referral is hired.

7. Attend Recruitment Events

Job fairs, local college or high school events, and industry recruiting events offer a wealth of entry-level applicants.

Even if your company is only hiring for a few positions, it's a good idea to attend these events. It lets you build a pool of contacts to consider for future openings and gets your name out there so new professionals are aware of your company.

8. Offer Flexibility

Flexibility is important for workers. Employees in flexible workplaces tend to have a more positive view of an organization’s culture, which can translate to higher retention rates.

The best talent doesn’t always live in your town, and relocating is often out of the question for potential recruits. But, in this age of digital work environments, you can take advantage of talent from across the world by offering flexible work arrangements or hiring remote employees.

And you won’t just be attracting people in different geographic locations — you’ll also be opening the door to people with disabilities who might otherwise be precluded from working for you.

Not every job is able to offer remote employment, but that doesn’t mean flexibility is off the table. Make it easy for employees to schedule time off or switch shifts as needed from a self-service portal.

Consider offering payment on demand, in case an employee needs some financial flexibility. Advertise these benefits within your job advertisements to differentiate from competitors.

How to Measure the Success of Your Recruitment Strategy

Recruiting strategies aren’t just set it and forget it. You need to monitor the success (or failure) of your initiatives, and then adjust as needed.

Here are some key HR metrics to keep in mind when evaluating the effectiveness of your recruitment strategy:

• Employee Turnover and Retention Rates: This measures how often people leave a company and how well it can retain them. High turnover rates can be expensive for companies in terms of recruiting and training new employees. Low retention rates can lead to a loss of knowledge and experience.
• First-Year Turnover Rate: This measures the percentage of employees that leave a company within their first year. It can be an important indicator of how effective a company's onboarding and training programs are, as well as the overall experience for employees.
• Cost Per Hire: This metric measures the total cost to a company to hire a new employee. It includes job postings, recruiter fees, background checks, and onboarding costs. Tracking this metric can help companies identify areas where they can optimize their recruitment processes to reduce expenses.
• Time to Hire and Time to Fill: These measure the time it takes to hire a new employee or fill an open position. A lengthy hiring process can result in lost productivity for the company.
• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEI&A): These metrics measure the level of diversity and inclusivity within a company and include factors like race, gender, age, and disability status. Companies that make an effort to prioritize DEI&A are more likely to attract and retain a diverse workforce, which correlates with better business outcomes.
• Pay Equity: This measures whether employees of different demographic groups are paid equally for similar work. Ensuring pay equity can protect a company’s reputation and avoid legal problems while fostering an inclusive and equitable workplace.
• Employee Performance Metrics: These measure the performance of individual employees or teams, focusing on factors such as productivity, work quality, and customer satisfaction. Tracking this metric can help companies identify where employees may need additional support or training.

Streamline Your Talent Acquisition with Recruiting Software

Once you’ve developed a comprehensive recruitment strategy and set clear goals for your team, it’s time to up your game with the right recruiting software.

You need a sophisticated, but easy-to-use HR platform that synergizes with your strategies and provides you modern functionality to recruit efficiently.

Paylocity may just the ticket! Our all-in-one HR & payroll platform can help you streamline your recruitment process, find star talent, and retain them with unique employee experience tools. Deploy branded job portals, video-enhanced job descriptions, automated hiring workflows, and more.

Request a demo today to see if Paylocity's recruitment software is right for you.