The End of 'Post & Pray' Recruiting

Despite (maybe even due to) COVID-19 shaking things up, the job market is hot, and companies continue to compete for the best talents out there. A great team with talented, high-performing people is the key asset fueling your company’s growth. While the objective of building a talented team hasn’t changed for organizations, the way they achieve it has - massively. Let’s take a look at some key strategies, businesses are using:

Newspapers & Professional Magazines

Until not too long ago, posting job ads in newspapers or professional magazines was a great way to reach large audiences. But only a fraction of readers were actually potential hires. The channels lack proper targeting. Thus, the ROI on these methods can be dreadful.

Referrals & Internal Recruiting

Have an open position in your team? Ask your friend you have worked with before. You know that she delivers and that she would have a great cultural fit within your organization as well. Or promote a high-performing Junior. Recruiting internally has been shown to be one of the most effective recruiting methods over the years. But let’s face it: Especially in growth stage companies, relying on your network and existing employees alone is not enough. You won’t be able to fill all your vacancies without reaching out to candidates outside your company and beyond your current network.

Job Listings on Platforms & Professional Networks

Posting on job platforms like Indeed and Monster or on professional networks such as LinkedIn and XING has many similarities with traditional publishers like in newspapers. While there is also only minimal targeting when posting the job, the platforms offer filters making it easier for active job seekers to find vacancies relevant to them - but what about the ones that are open for new opportunities but not actively looking for a new job yet? 

Active vs. Passive Job Seekers

According to a LinkedIn report, only 30% of the global workforce is actively looking for a new job, while 70% are passive, meaning they are currently employed and are not browsing job boards or sending their resumes out to companies and recruiters. 

Furthermore, active job seekers aren’t active for long. In fact, the most prolific candidates are only actively seeking for about 10 days. That does not go well with an average hiring time of 20-50 days for most industries (DHI study, US). 

So what does that leave you with, as a recruiter or founder looking for talent? 

Even though the majority of candidates are not actively looking for new jobs, the same LinkedIn study found that about 9 out of 10 candidates - both active and passive - are open to new job opportunities. You just have to find a way to reach them. That leaves you with 2 essential questions:

1: How do you reach out to as many quality candidates as possible? (→ Outbound)

2: How do you get as many quality candidates as possible to get to know about the opportunity of working with you and reach out to you? (→ Inbound)

 

1. Outbound Talent Acquisition: Active Sourcing - done right.

Networks like LinkedIn or XING give recruiters great tools to search for candidates. Specify the details of the position, create a search string et voila, your search delivered 1257 results. 1257 incomplete profiles with many question marks left for you to figure out: Current availability? Willingness to switch jobs? Future plans? Salary expectations? Get this information from 1257 candidates? Happy emailing!

Even the best and most efficient recruiters can only reach out to so many potentials. And oftentimes, the first tedious steps of the recruiting process (the sourcing and pre-qualification) just don’t require their level of expertise. Their biggest impact happens when it comes to interviewing the candidates and evaluating their match with the company based on these personal interactions. It surely does not lie in reaching out to hundreds of candidates on LinkedIn asking for basic information and scheduling calls. But this is the reality for many recruiting agencies and scale-ups: Recruiters struggle with a lack of qualified candidates and spend too much time on filling up their candidate pipeline.

So what is the solution here? In order to maximize efficiency, recruiters should deal with high-value tasks only. Offload the groundwork like sourcing and pre-qualification. Shameless plug #1: With Scout&Screen, we aim to do exactly that: Our active sourcers build your candidate pipeline and deliver pre-qualified profiles to you so that you are left with a hotlist of top-candidates waiting for your call. Sounds better than contacting, following up and vetting 1,257 on your own, right?

2. Inbound Talent Attraction: Don’t Post & Pray. Post & Track, Analyze, Optimize

The average European spends about 2 hours on social media - every day (other regions even more)! That is 2 hours of opportunity to get your job opening in front of their eyes. B2C companies have long been leveraging the benefits of performance marketing on social media. They know which audience they want to reach and advertise their products and services with content tailored to the preferences of their potential buyers.

If you think about it, a position you are trying to fill is surprisingly similar to a product you want to sell. You are trying to create awareness for it, then interest and finally you want to convert your audience. Only this time, the button says “Apply Now” instead of “Buy Now.” By using social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram, you can reach your target candidates in an environment where they 1. spend a lot of time each day and 2. are attentive yet relaxed and open to new ideas. Highly targeted distribution and accurate tracking of the interactions with your posts enable you to allocate your budget in the most efficient way possible. Add machine learning to reach the people with the highest interest in the position and you will be able to reduce time- and cost-per-hire while at the same time ensuring a high applicant quality.

Key take-away: Post. But don’t pray, at least not for the right candidates to come knocking on your door. Post and track your interactions with candidates, analyze your results and optimize your approach toward low-cost conversions. With BoostRecruit, we offer a service that allows you to do exactly that - at minimum costs and no additional effort for you (shameless plug #2).

So what now?

Look at your current recruiting setup and ask yourself: Are my colleagues and I spending our time on tasks that require our level of expertise and insights? Are we monitoring the ROI of all our recruiting methods? Am I satisfied with that ROI? Am I capitalizing on the opportunities that social media and performance marketing present for talent acquisition? If you can answer all these questions with Yes, then well done and happy hiring. If not, then now is the time to act. Your competitors might already be snatching the best candidates before you even find them.

Reach out to us to discuss how we can leverage outsourced active sourcing and talent attraction through performance marketing for your business or agency. Let’s get things started together!