Staying on top of effective recruiting trends is essential to finding and retaining the best talent today, especially considering the ongoing Great Resignation.
More than 4 million people quit their jobs just in December 2021 alone, and even companies that weathered the challenges of a pandemic relatively well still face serious hiring challenges.
If you’re among those organizations looking to catch the eye of top talent and make them part of your team, you need to take note of these important recruiting trends.
1. Invest in Employer Branding.
Organizations put a lot of time and resources into their consumer-facing brand, and they’re realizing that their employer brand — their reputation as a company — is just as important.
Eighty-four percent of job seekers say an employer’s reputation is important, and 90% of them would apply for a position if it’s with an organization that actively maintains its employer brand. Plus, a strong employer brand will actually save you money.
The Great Resignation shows us that workers want to contribute to companies that value them, and if they’re not getting that, they’ll move on to a company that does.
So invest in your employer brand with these strategies, and get everyone in the organization involved — it’s not a job for HR alone.
Another surefire way to improve your employer brand? Turn your employees into influencers with EveryoneSocial.
When your people share employer branding content to social media via our platform, they expose your brand to their personal networks in an organic, effective way.
2. Improve the Candidate Experience.
You can’t hire every great applicant that comes your way, but if you provide a top-notch candidate experience, you increase the odds that the person will apply again when another opportunity is available.
That’s why improving the overall candidate experience is one of the best recruiting trends to implement ASAP.
You can do this by investing in your employer brand, of course, but it’s also important to make a great first impression when a job seeker first arrives on your site or starts researching the company and its employee experience.
If you don’t already have a careers page or one dedicated to what life is like at the organization, now’s the time to create one. In addition to open positions, the page should delve into the company mission and values. And it should share information about working at the company and its culture, as well employee perks and benefits.
Another essential item to include is employee stories. Highlight your people, share their hiring stories, and get their firsthand experiences about what it’s like to work for you.
In addition to the company website, also take a look at sites like Glassdoor and Comparably to see what people say about your organization, ask employees to leave reviews, and, if necessary, develop a strategy to improve your reviews.
Communication is also key to the candidate experience, so ensure that you share essential information and next steps at every point of the hiring process, whether you’re scheduling a skills assessment or informing the person that they’re not a good fit for the role and inviting them to apply again.
When the candidate experience is positive and communicative, 64% of job seekers will increase their business relationship with the company, which could take the form of applying again, referring other applicants, or purchasing products.
However, if they have a negative experience, 43% of candidates say they’ll sever ties with the organization completely.
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3. Build Relationships With Candidates Early On.
Another one of the top recruiting trends is that HR departments reach out to candidates earlier than ever before.
This has long been common practice when hiring for highly specialized positions or for leadership roles, but today more recruiters engage candidates early on even for entry-level positions.
Why? Because they understand the need to establish a good relationship with potential future hires. When the right position opens up or the candidate is ready for a new job — or about to graduate — recruiters want the candidate to seek employment at their organization.
This is an important recruiting trend to implement considering the growing labor skills gap.
In fact, 71% of CEOs believe the skills and labor shortage will be this year’s biggest disruptor, and the digital skills gap specifically will cost businesses trillions by 2030.
4. Use Advanced Screening Tools.
In addition to garnering applications, recruiters also need to efficiently determine who’s qualified for the job and who’s a good fit for company culture. That’s why using tests and tools to screen candidates is one of the top recruiting trends today.
Such tools are often skills-based, such as coding tests for developers or editing, writing, or SEO tests for content marketers.
However, many companies also rely on behavioral assessments or personality tests as part of their screening processes. They use these to determine if a candidate possesses the necessary soft skills, such as communication, collaboration, and time management or to ensure the applicant has the personality traits that are core to company culture.
A LinkedIn study found that 89% of “bad hires” lack work ethic, motivation, and other soft skills that are crucial to success.
5. Expand Social Recruiting.
With 3.6 billion monthly users, it’s no surprise that social media is a key part of modern recruiting trends.
It’s where people spend time, making it the ideal place to advertise job openings, find qualified employees, and showcase your employer brand.
Social media enables you to reach passive candidates, easily target them, and show off your company culture — this last one is especially effective if you’ve activated your employee influencers because they’ll amplify your message.
And when employees share job postings and employer branding content, it actually saves the company money because instead of using job boards or paying for social ads, your employees help ensure the right people see your hiring content.
Learn more about social recruiting.
EveryoneSocial Helps You Tap Into Top Recruiting Trends
You may have noticed that one of the key themes of several of these recruiting trends is the importance of activating and amplifying employees’ voices.
That’s because job seekers put a lot of stake in what current workers have to say about an organization. If they see employees posting about job openings on social media and sharing company content, it shows them that this is an employer that values its employees — and that’s the kind of place people want to work.
EveryoneSocial makes it easy for your people to amplify company content and brand messaging by organizing it in a central location and making it shareable with just a couple clicks.
