"Companies continue to face a severe shortage of skilled workers."
That was the conclusion of the Recruiting Strategies 2018 study (PDF from Personalwirtschaft.de). Other key findings of the study include:
- Online job boards, career websites, and employee referrals are the top 3 channels for reaching candidates.
- Digitalization offers new (technical) possibilities for recruiting – but these often remain unused.
Aschenputtel is here to change exactly that, which is why we're presenting our top 10 effective recruiting strategies:
- 1. Online Job Boards
- 2. Career Pages
- 3. Employee Referrals
- 4. Inbound Recruiting
- 5. Artificial Intelligence
- 6. Sourcing
- 7. Social Recruiting
- 8. Talent Pools
- 9. HR/Career Events
- 10. Your Own Network
- Our Conclusion
The Goal and Requirements of a Recruiting Strategy
All recruiting strategies serve one overarching goal: filling vacancies with qualified applicants.
Every company has different recruiting requirements, and every position calls for a different candidate profile. That means there is no one-size-fits-all strategy – on the contrary, HR professionals need to be able to adapt their strategies and options flexibly to these conditions and to each target group. In general, a recruiting strategy should:
- have clearly defined and communicated strategy elements (who, what, where, how long, and how?).
- be flexible enough to adapt if conditions change.
- ensure a steady flow of applications (pipeline approach).
- also take passive candidates into account.
- enable fast decision-making.
Our Top 10 Recruiting Strategies at a Glance
As mentioned at the outset, among the sea of recruiting strategies and ways to perfect talent acquisition, three channels for reaching candidates have become established. Here they are:
1. Online Job Boards
This recruiting strategy is simple and, according to the current study, is the most popular channel for almost all applicants.
First, you define a target group: everyone who could be a fit for the open position(s). Next, you write an engaging text tailored to that target group:
- A brief introduction to the company and its area(s) of business
- The responsibilities of the position to be filled
- The requirements of the position to be filled
- Benefits
In the final step, a job ad is created on an online job board and published for a fee. The best-known job boards are Indeed, StepStone, and Jobware. Job seekers then see the ad when searching for relevant keywords and can apply if interested.
2. Career Pages
A company's career page is one of the most important channels for reaching candidates and should therefore be seen as a recruiting strategy in its own right. It is a subpage of the main company website. There, employers don't just present job openings to visitors – they also offer insights into their areas of business, everyday work, teams, culture, and more. To keep this part of the website up to date, it needs regular maintenance and updates. That takes time and requires careful preparation.
The goal is to convince prospects so that they go on to apply. For that to happen, potential applicants must be addressed in a way that resonates with the target group, and relevant information must be provided. We explain how to create the perfect career page in a separate article.
3. Employee Referrals
In the war for talent, they are the most powerful weapon: motivated employees. They act as the company's own promoters and can report authentically and first-hand on what goes on at the company in general and in the workplace. These are, of course, just some of the insights a promoter can share with their audience (e.g., friends and relatives who are looking for jobs). At the same time, a promoter is well placed to judge whether a contact is a good fit for the open position. In effect, a pre-selection takes place.
Promoters therefore have a major influence on how the people they talk to perceive the company. In the best case, they create a strong desire in the listener:
"I want to work for this company too."
If a hire is made, the promoter receives a bonus. This strategy is advantageous because the application process becomes shorter and simpler, which saves costs. The risk of a bad hire is also low.
How do you win such promoters? It's simple: with the candidate journey in mind, the employee experience must be designed optimally. Employee motivation also plays an important role.
4. Inbound Recruiting
The inbound recruiting method originally comes from marketing. Essentially, it is about reaching a previously defined target group on exactly the channels where they spend their time. Information and content relevant to these people are placed there in a targeted way. Sooner or later, candidates will come across this content and thus come into contact with the company. If the information offers real value, the company leaves a positive, lasting impression.
The goal is to become so attractive through this content that it leads to an application. A decisive advantage of this strategy: it also reaches passive candidates who aren't actually looking for a job or are currently employed. They only apply if they can identify with the employer and the role. A strong employer brand helps you convince these candidates and get them excited about your company. Since the share of passive candidates keeps growing and they can't be reached through traditional job ads, there is enormous potential here.
5. Artificial Intelligence
Many HR leaders are familiar with artificial intelligence in recruiting, yet according to the study, most make little or no use of its potential. And the possibilities are wide-ranging:
- Targeted search and identification of talent (e.g., programmatic job advertising)
- Screening and evaluating incoming applications, i.e., candidate selection
- Candidate communication, e.g., via chatbots
The reason such tools are underused is simply that decision-makers lack a sufficient understanding of these topics. This is where companies need to catch up: education, developing a strategy that incorporates such tools and ensures their implementation, and ultimately making full use of the existing potential.
All of these tools have one thing in common: they make the application process easier and take work off recruiters' plates, freeing up time for other priorities.
6. Sourcing
Sourcing means approaching people directly on various social networks, at trade shows, university events, networking meetups, and workshops. The best-known variant is active sourcing. Here, the recruiter approaches potential candidates who match the target group definition for the open position. With this strategy, it is important to make the outreach as professional and at the same time as personal as possible. To do so, relevant background information on the candidates should be researched. If candidates aren't interested at the time of contact, they can at least be added to the talent pool.
Outreach shouldn't be limited to conventional channels: especially for hard-to-fill positions or when the candidate needs specialized skills, it can make sense to search professional forums, relevant associations, and alumni networks. You'll often find what you're looking for there.
Stack Overflow, for example, is a forum where IT specialists help each other and share knowledge. So if you're looking for IT specialists, it's a particularly good place to start. You can also place targeted job ads there.
7. Social Recruiting
Gen Y and Gen Z will turn the labor market upside down – by now that should be clear to everyone. These are digital natives. Social media is a natural part of their everyday lives. For HR professionals, this means they can reach young talent in particular on exactly these channels.
Companies therefore need to develop their own social media strategy: Who is in the target group? Which social networks do they use? Does the company have a profile on these networks? Is the company providing relevant content there, addressed in a way that resonates with the target group? These are the questions companies need to consider in social recruiting in order to initiate the right measures – for example:
- Posting job ads (e.g., in groups)
- Direct outreach
- Running paid ads
8. Talent Pools
A talent pool is a central human resources database. It contains information and skills profiles of promising employees and applicants collected over the course of the candidate journey. HR decides who makes it into the pool based on outstanding performance, results, qualifications, certifications, and more. Using this data, recruiters can then match the requirements of open positions against the profiles in the pool. This ensures fast matching, shortens the hiring process, and lowers costs.
9. HR/Career Events
Career events are a great opportunity for companies to connect with many different groups of people (career changers, job seekers, graduates, university students, high school students, etc.). To make sure your booth is well attended, your trade show presence should be carefully planned:
- Which trade shows should you attend?
- How big does the booth need to be?
- How should the booth be branded?
- Which promotional materials and giveaways need to be produced?
You should also ensure an attractive employer presence by hiring qualified booth staff. Appropriate training can close any remaining knowledge gaps. It is important that staff approach visitors proactively and always come across as friendly. The contacts made during the events should always be documented and, where appropriate, added to the talent pool.
A little insider tip: if you attend non-career trade shows that are relevant to your target group, you'll often have no competition there.
10. Your Own Network
Network! Network! Network! As an HR professional, it is especially important to have an extensive network and to maintain and continuously expand it. Your network should include people both inside your own company and outside it. Career networks such as XING and LinkedIn are particularly well suited for this. When staffing needs arise, you can tap into these networks. Since you know the people in your network, you can reach suitable candidates quickly and easily through direct outreach, significantly reducing time-to-hire.
Our Conclusion
For a recruiting strategy to be truly efficient and successful, several of these strategies should be used in combination. It is important that the strategy can be adapted to each vacancy. Candidates for an internship, for example, need to be reached differently than those sought for an open executive board position. The requirements for a strategy described above should also be met in order to successfully recruit new staff.
In the war for talent, hiring is becoming increasingly difficult as more and more companies compete for qualified talent. Only companies that proactively approach candidates – within the framework of their respective strategy – can secure a lasting advantage.