Until Talent Acquisition gets better at proving its ROI and direct business impact beyond just making hires, they will continue to be considered overhead. That means fighting for resources and often just doing without them. Internal departments will be treated as a cost center, whereas agencies & RPOs, after winning the work by slashing prices, will have to use most of the revenue just to cover headcount. Throw in a pandemic, complete with additional layoffs and hiring incentive cuts, and it goes from bad to worse.
The best companies are successful despite all this. They are resourceful. Not only are they constantly on the hunt for tips, tools, strategies, and hacks, but they keep upping their game as algorithms change, tools come and go, and free platforms monetize.
That is all well and good for finding talent, but then you still have to sell them on the opportunity. The best scenario though is having talent come to you because they want to work for a company like that. Like what? Like that one that seems to have an awesome company culture. The one where so many people seem to love to work. The one that has a noble set of values that it is living every day. The one that looks like it values people over profits and image awards.
Let’s take a look at some of the most impactful recruitment tools that costs nothing.
Get Prospects Excited About an Opportunity
I do NOT mean by merely announcing, “Hey, we have an exciting opportunity!” That is so empty and so lazy. And it doesn’t work. Usually, because it is followed by a dry, boring, and demanding job description. What’s exciting about that? Some TAQ (talent acquisition) folks might just conclude when people aren’t responding, that they aren’t making hires because all they have are free job postings and LinkedIn organic.
They may say, “we need budget for job distribution tools, retargeting and paid ads”. Why? So that you can broadcast your crappy message to a wider audience? There are tons of articles on effective recruitment marketing, on how to promote culture, tell stories, and create brand ambassadors. Read one… or 2… or 10.
Here are a few more hints.
SHOW prospective candidates that your (or your client’s) company has what they want. What do they want? Something better than whatever they are least satisfied with at their current job. It’s your job to figure that out when you source candidates, but to get them to come to you, you need to be telling stories.
Stories about the company culture, about their overall mission, about the people, about the values and how they live them, about the perks. Also think about how to communicate these stories in mediums they are already using, namely social media, video and texting platforms.
Nurturing Your Tribe
People don’t like to feel used. Yes, you are helping people FIND jobs and helping hiring managers FILL jobs, but it is still very possible to do this with an all-about-me mentality, the subtext behind your actions (or lack of) being, “you can’t help me get this job filled so I have no use for you”. And when you do, it shows. Every time you fail to close a job that is no longer or not really open.
Every time you fail to send a courtesy rejection letter to those who are not being considered (those should be automated, but you still have to disposition applicants to trigger it). Every time you ghost someone. And every time you fail to respond to a prospective candidate’s outreach because they can’t help you fill one of your currently open jobs, it shows. And people won’t want to work with you (or the company you represent) again.
Your tribe is anyone in the industry you serve, and anyone who knows anyone in the industry you serve. You must have heard the quote from Maya Angelou, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” You never know if you will need that person you burned in the future when a role you need to fill opens up that “might be a great fit for you or someone you know” as your sourcing outreach email might say.
Don’t pass up any of the million little opportunities to do the right thing, share information, give advice, or refer a connection. It stands out in a big way and people will remember that too.
Remember, it costs nothing to make people FEEL a certain way, whether that be enthusiastic about a position or company, or valued as a human being.
Author
Chris Russell has spent 20 years on the digital recruiting space and is considered the ‘mad scientist of online recruiting’. As Managing Director of RecTech Media his job is to inform and educate the modern recruiter.
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