It’s time for human resource professionals to get a makeover. For far too long, they’ve been seen as enforcers of rules, administrative slaves, and paper pushers. We believe the time has come for HR to reinvent themselves—to finally get the respect they deserve, and to execute new recruitment strategies that attract today’s best talent. Career […]
It’s time for human resource professionals to get a makeover.
For far too long, they’ve been seen as enforcers of rules, administrative slaves, and paper pushers. We believe the time has come for HR to reinvent themselves—to finally get the respect they deserve, and to execute new recruitment strategies that attract today’s best talent.
Career reinvention starts with acknowledging changes in the workforce. As the labor market changes, the workforce will adapt and will need new types of training and development. For example, the effects of the pandemic saw remote jobs rise by 135%, but only 16% of HR professionals in the U.S. are ready to adapt to online recruitment, hiring strategies, and training, says My Shortlister.
HR professionals may have started their career as someone who facilitates hiring, compliance, and training, but in 2022, you’ll need to do more and be more to appeal to the top 10% percent of candidates everyone else is scouting. If you don’t, you may fill your vacancy—but not with the right people!
In this article, we’re going to address ‘the new HR professional,’ what your job role may look like and where it’s heading in the future. We’ll also share what top candidates want to see in your marketing and job listings and how to recruit them onto your team.
What is a recruitment strategy?
A recruitment strategy is a detailed and clear plan that human resource professionals use to outline their next hiring round. It covers what positions and roles they need to fill or add, what day they need to be filled by, and how they’ll identify, market to, contact, interview, and hire top-quality candidates for the position.
Recruitment strategies should focus on the ‘bigger picture,’ the ultimate goal or direction the company is moving toward. For example, if the company wants to go from startup to multinational corporation within a year (good luck, we believe in you!), a hiring strategy that doubles marketing reach and the amount of job advertisements and interview rounds, while focusing on top talents with experience in working in a rapidly growing environment, will be integral to your success.
What is a recruitment method?
If a recruitment strategy outlines your plan of action, a recruitment method is a specific action step to identify, target or attract new employees. When it comes to looking for top candidates, there’s two main categories: internal and external hiring.
Internal hiring methods
Internal hiring is when HR looks at their current employees to fill a position. Companies might also look through their databases for shortlisted candidates that may not have been the perfect fit for a previous role and invite them to come back in for a new one.
Many companies look to this hiring strategy first, and for good reason. For one, it saves time, since they don’t have to post job ads and waffle through hundreds or even thousands of applications. It also cuts out the lengthy interviewing and onboarding process, since the employee is already familiar with the company and its procedures and culture.
How to recruit employees internally:
- Promotions
- Transfers
- Internships and apprenticeships
External hiring methods
External hiring covers hiring outside your organization—including the most traditional methods of job postings, cover letters, and interviews. It’s arguably the best way to hire employees who bring in fresh perspectives, and put strategy, organization, and polished systems in place.
Here are some external recruitment strategy examples:
- Advertising through media: A company can make an announcement through radio, internet, or press that their company is hiring.
- Posting on job boards: There are dozens of sites you can use, from local and niche job boards to broad-based websites like Indeed, ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn. The best sites have tools for job seekers to upload resumes and cover letters and apply directly.
- Referrals: This is when human resources work their networks in person or online—often starting with their current employees—to get suggestions for candidates.
- Email marketing: There’s nothing like a round of good old-fashioned cold recruiting emails to a list of potential hires. It’s cost effective and usually much cheaper than advertising.
- Hiring agencies: How to recruit through a third party? If you’re a small company and don’t have the time to manage all this on your own, a hiring agency can look for employees and take care of interviewing you.
- Events: Finally, you can host or sponsor recruitment events (job fair, networking event, open houses, etc.) where recruiters talk to top talents in your industry.
What is the ‘new HR professional’? + the best recruitment strategies for them
Human resources emerged in the early 20th century as a way to make employees more productive. The basic principle was that if staff are healthy and happy, working in a safe environment with responsible leadership, they’ll stay loyal, work harder, and bring in more profit.
HR professionals started out helping to increase workers’ performance, finding the best ways to recruit employees, train and develop them, and help manage their working conditions throughout their time at the company. Today, top talent still expects all this from their HR department; however, they face new challenges and have higher standards for their work environment.
What new challenges is the workforce facing?
- They might have spent too much money on avocado toast to ever afford a house, but millennials are driven by purpose—in one survey, half of millennials said they’d choose work that makes a difference over a high salary. As for jobs that don’t make a change or have a purpose, they may not feel motivated to stay with the company long term.
- Applicants are having a difficult time keeping up with the required skill set needed for a role. In one study, 87% of managers said their company is either experiencing skill gaps now or will in the near future!
- Diversity and inclusion are becoming increasingly important for job seekers, with 76% saying they look for a diverse environment when considering a new role.
Do HR professionals really need to reinvent themselves?
Maybe not—if you don’t mind slipping behind competitors and settling for moderate talent over the next decade. But if you want to appeal to the cream of the crop, the answer is yes. To create a recruitment strategy that will excel in 2022 and beyond, you’ll need to address the new needs and challenges your potential hires need support with.
Once you understand what your new employees’ needs are, you’ll be able to develop the right mindset and implement the best compliance policies, training programs and hiring strategies to attract talent to your open job roles. This may require you to present yourself in new ways from how you did in the past.
Below are a few recruiting strategies for the future HR professional!
1. Go from compliance police to leading important conversations
When you think of your human resources, what image comes to mind? Some have described the department as the “principal’s office” of the workplace, where employees wait outside like naughty children and are called in to deal with colleagues’ problems with them. Or maybe HR is where you go to get justice if your rights have been violated by managers or leaders. In any event, HR professionals have been seen as ‘compliance police’ or ‘guidance counselors’ for quite some time.
Thankfully, all that’s about to change. HR professionals are proving that they have so much more to offer in terms of recruitment strategies, and many are deciding to lead the conversation online about what’s changing in their industry, connecting with job seekers as thought leaders and influencers.
A thought leader is someone who’s respected and seen as an expert voice in an industry; they’re clear about their vision and have original ideas, data, and opinions to share. An influencer is someone who’s amassed a devoted audience and has the power to sway their mindset or behavior. Today, you even have HR thought leaders and influencers on LinkedIn who share recruitment tips on the best ways to hire employees.
You may ask: how does this recruit people?
Today’s job seekers want to hear about a company’s values and mission. That’s where you come in as an HR professional—you can give them a window into the company and show them which causes you stand for.
- For example, if you own a trucking company that gives a portion of proceeds to retired veterans, you can talk about how your organization is helping to solve their growing poverty issue. Make potential employees feel like they’ll be a part of something that drives change in the world.
- Top talent also wants to see your employees’ work-life balance and how happy and fulfilled they are in their roles. Share testimonials from your employees who believe their role gives them a greater purpose on social media as a part of your recruitment strategy.
- Also, point out the mistakes you see being made during the interview process and provide fresh, innovative tips on how candidates can do better. This way, candidates increase their chance of coming into an interview more prepared, and you show you care about their time.
You’ll find that HR professionals who build a substantial audience (or their company’s page) will have their positions filled in no time, with targeted job seekers coming directly to them and their peers recommending top talents. According to LinkedIn, you’re 2x more likely to find high-demand candidates compared to other platforms. Being a thought leader and influencer will not only transform how you discover and employ workers, but also help shift the image of HR from ‘compliance police’ to respected voices and leaders.
2. Embrace the new self-service education model
You don’t need to be in school to see that learning has changed drastically in the last couple decades. According to Lorman, 59% of millennials claim development opportunities are extremely important when deciding whether to apply for a position. Unfortunately, the same number have shared in other studies that they had no workplace training and that most of their skills were self-taught.
That means one employee recruitment strategy is to offer ample training, development, and learning resources for your new hires. It looks very appealing when your company is willing to invest in your education, but it looks even better when they can adapt to your learning style and preferences.
If you want to get more superstar applications in your inbox, offer education, training programs and resources that also include self-service models—where new hires can experience the onboarding process plus on-demand training at their pace online either at work or at home. Plus, when employees know their company supports their ongoing learning and development, you’ll keep employees from leaving.
3. Become a diversity and inclusion advocate
Diversity and inclusion have been buzzwords for several years now. But what do these two words really mean?
Well, diversity means a variety of individuals are represented at your organization, across dimensions like race, gender, nationality, economic background, sexual orientation, learning and physical disabilities, political beliefs, and religion.
Inclusion means that your employees feel welcomed, appreciated and utilized to their full potential by leaders and colleagues.
Diversity and inclusion is one example of a recruitment strategy that can both be beneficial and bring challenges for an organization. When companies, especially large enterprises, are diverse, you may produce more innovation and creativity than if most of your staff think and behave the same. For example, more female leadership could be a benefit if you have a majority female customer base.
It’s clear that HR departments need to implement diversity and inclusion in their hiring strategies. But they need to do it the right way so it doesn’t backfire on them. Diversity is important, but it can create communication issues; people from various backgrounds and identities usually communicate differently, which can cause conflict.
You want to have just enough diversity to add value, but not so much that you end up with a ragtag team that doesn’t get along and drag the company down. A downside of inclusion is that it can be tough to make everyone feel included and support diverse needs and rights.
So, you want to know how to recruit people who are diverse and feel welcomed at your company? Ensure your recruitment marketing has clear statements about your policies to support diversity and share how you make everyone feel included.
Examples:
- Mention on your job listing that your company is equal opportunity and does not discriminate against gender identity or expression, race, nationality, sexual orientation or economic background.
- As a part of your hiring strategy, start an initiative that reduces socioeconomic, racial, or income-level biases when reviewing resumes and during the interview process.
- Market to and target underrepresented candidates by visiting their communities, and host recruiting events in their areas.
2 recruiting strategy tips for the new and improved HR professional!
Tip #1: Use Lusha Extension to identify and reach candidates fast
Lusha Extension is an HR management tool that does two major things: one, it verifies if your candidate is a match, and two, it locates contact data for your talent.
This contact finder takes seconds to install into your browser and milliseconds to find you data about any applicant when you’re checking out their LinkedIn page or other social media profiles.
Lusha will deliver the name, address, current company, and job role so you know right off the bat if they have the right experience for your vacancy. And next, it’ll give you their email address and phone number so you can send cold recruitment messages or set up interview calls before other scouts do. It’s a valuable tool in any recruitment strategy.
Tip #2: Stop making embarrassing mistakes on LinkedIn
LinkedIn offers an ocean of opportunities for HR professionals to find the best of the best. However, we still see so many recruiters and headhunters not using the platform correctly— wasting energy, money and, most importantly, your top candidate’s time.
How to recruit on LinkedIn without annoying your prospect?
First, stop sending InMail to the wrong people. We’re talking to someone who doesn’t work in your industry and has not shown interest in your position, for christ sakes!
Secondly, stop sending recruitment messages and not responding back. If a top talent has taken time out of their day, whether you’ll be moving forward or not, the least you can do is automate a response.
Key takeaways
- The new HR professional is someone who does more than compliance and training; they’re leading important conversations that affect their organization and the workforce. They implement recruitment strategies that take risks and stay on top of the workforce’s challenges.
- Linkedin offers the best ways to recruit employees for any organization. Spend time building your company page and a strategy for your HR professionals to share company values and purpose to attract top talent.
- Download Lusha Extension, an HR management tool that verifies if your candidate matches your job requirements like past work experience as well as quickly find email addresses and phone numbers.
