How to Improve your Recruitment and Talent Acquisition Process Top Five Tips

How to Improve your Recruitment and Talent Acquisition Process - Top Five Tips © - Complygate, Feb. 2021

Raveena Shoker

Associate at Complygate

The recruitment and talent acquisition process of a company can determine its success in the future.
It's important to regularly revise and check your recruitment procedures, to make sure you stay up to date with the newest trends and needs of your organisation.
Failing to do so can have a negative impact on your company since it can result in bad hiring decisions, and employees that don't fit the profile for their job role.

In this post, you will find 5 tips that will help you ensure your recruitment process is optimised, and that the overall experience of the candidates (and potential future employees) is as well.

1. Utilise a robust and complete Recruitment and Applicant Tracking Software

Having good Recruitment Software is key to succeed in your talent acquisition process.
The benefit of having talent acquisition software is that it will automatically highlight the top candidates that highly match the job role. Therefore, having a recruitment process can decrease the chances of the Human Resource department (HR) missing the right candidate for the job role. Utilizing recruitment software will assist them with keeping track of the potential candidates throughout the entire process, from the application to hiring them.

Recruitment software will enable HR teams to identify the candidates in categories. Such as, where they applied from, for example, Indeed, Careers page, etc.
Allowing your HR teams to see where the most successful applications are coming from will give them an understanding of the platforms they should put more focus on.

2. Job Descriptions to be Short and to the Point

Job descriptions do not need to be-long and complicated, the shorter they are the more they just get to the point. As stated in Cappelli, P, in a job role of 3,600 applications only 47 candidates were qualified. This can result in applicants coming across dragged-out job descriptions and becoming overwhelmed. Causing applicants to either just apply to the job for the sake of it, or even good applicants not understanding the job and not applying. To prevent a company’s job description from outcoming the above, sticking to bull points throughout the job description can help stop lengthy and complicated descriptions. Helping possible candidates to have a better understanding of the job role before applying to it. Lessening the chances of candidates who do not match the job role in applying, and saves the HR department time and money.

Presented in a research women only apply to a job if they match the job description 100%, whereas, men will apply to a job if they only match 60%.
This puts the company at risk of not gaining qualified candidates, as women may not feel like they are the right match when in fact they are or men may feel like they are the right match when in fact they are not. If your job descriptions are longed out it can become overwhelming for applicants. Resulting in losing qualified candidates or wasting time and money by receiving unqualified applications, therefore, having a specific job description is key. Allowing the company to receive applications that match the job role.

3. Work on your Employer Brand: Good Company Culture can attract highly competent candidates

Build your company culture to make it clear who you are and make the brand as eye-catching and attractive as possible internally and externally. Do this by having a consistent message of the brand, including what goal’s the company desires to achieve and what applicants can receive from them.

Internally:

To build an employee culture to help attract highly competent candidates you can:

• Have a dress code, makes the company look professional and smart. Whereas, not having a dress code will make it not look unpresentable in meetings and outside of the workplace.
• The office/ workplace to be appealing and not dull or lifeless. Prevent this by having some colour or theme in the office to liven the workplace to make your employees more motivated to work at their desks.
• Making sure that not all days are the same. Do a weekly day in the office where the employees can just be themselves. Even though having a dress code is presentable and appealing, perhaps on a Friday doing a non-uniform day. This way it can change up the routine in the office in some ways, motivating the employees and building your culture. It will not make them feel like it is an uptight environment.

Externally:

By focusing on the current employee experience in the company, can interest potential candidates. As they will be able to see the employee culture, being in a happy working environment. The current employees can present the company by advertising the culture. This can be done by using the ‘spreading the word’ technique. By asking your current employees to give positive reviews on social media platforms such as Linkedin, Pinterest, Indeed, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Allowing applicants to see what could be in store for them. It will help with the recruitment process as applicants can get a direct feel of the employee culture within the company.

4. Make sure your Talent Acquisition Managers are up to date

To expect a diverse and inclusive workforce you need to make sure that the talent acquisition managers are up to date. Do this by updating their training regularly. By doing this it can help your employees to stay on track with things, allowing them to make the right decisions. Also, allowing them to have all the resources and skills that they need to be successful in doing their job. Giving your employees training can allow them to keep on track with your company's goals and objectives. The training itself can boost your employee's confidence and knowledge again allowing them to be successful in their role.

5. Consider your employees for new job positions before outsourcing

When looking for a new skilled employee for a new role in your company, you might want to consider first the employees that are already working at your organisation.
Current employees have a deeper knowledge of the company, they know the other employees, the procedures, etc.
They might only need some extra training, because they may already have almost, if not all, the required skills.
If your organisation has a robust HR analytics solution within the HRMS Software, the talent acquisition team will be able to analyse the data from all the existing employees and make an informed decision on whether initiating a recruitment process of other candidates is needed or not.
This as well increases the motivation of employees, since it creates a sense of dynamism within the company and shows that there is an opportunity for professional development.

Further reading:

Cappelli, P., 2012. Why Good People Can't Get Jobs. Wharton Digital Press, p.15.

 

Why Women Don't Apply for Jobs - HBR

https://harver.com/blog/talent-acquisition-process/

https://builtin.com/tech-recruiter-resources/improve-recruitment-process-efficiency