10.3 Recruitment Strategies

As previously stated, the recruitment process is an important part of the Talent Acquisition process. It is defined as a process that provides the organization with a pool of qualified job candidates from which to choose. As a process, recruitment involves an element of marketing and sales, as its objective is to raise the level of interest of customers (i.e., prospective employees) in what the company has to offer (i.e., jobs).

Now that we have discussed the development of the job descriptions, and you are aware of the laws relating to recruitment, it is time to begin the recruiting process. In many ways, recruiting borrows from the field of marketing. The objective of any recruitment strategy and campaign is to generate as many quality applications as possible; this objective is very similar to a marketing campaign that aims to attract customers. As such, with some exceptions, many core principles of marketing apply to recruiting. A recruiting campaign must establish a clearly defined audience (e.g., future employees), create high quality, creative, and easy-to-share content (e.g., job posting, company videos, etc.), rely on multiple content channels (e.g., company website, LinkedIn), and be followed with rigorous analysis and reporting.

Let’s consider the role of company branding. This marketing concept focuses on the way that organizations differentiate themselves from each other. This can be in logo design, name selection or messaging. These marketing efforts tell a story to attract and retain customers. Today, branding is also very important for companies in their competition for talent. The rise of social media platforms has accentuated the importance of HR to manage the public image of companies. For example, Glassdoor is a site that allows current and former employees to anonymously review companies and provide salary information. In fact, a majority of job seekers aged 18-44 look at Glassdoor reviews when deciding to accept a job offer and sign at a new company. Review sites and social pages that collect ratings (e.g., Facebook) are more important than one would think.

Professional Recruiters

Many organizations have specific employees who focus solely on the recruiting function. Recruiters have to be strong networkers and they usually attend many events where possible candidates will be present. Recruiting agencies and individual professional recruiters (‘head-hunters’) have a constant pipeline of possible candidates in case a position should arise that would be a good match. There are three main types of recruiters:

1. Corporate recruiter. A corporate recruiter is an employee within a company who focuses entirely on recruiting for his or her company. Corporate recruiters are contracted by the company for which they are recruiting. This type of recruiter may be focused on a specific area, such as technical recruiting.
2. Temporary recruitment or staffing firm. Suppose your receptionist is going on medical leave and you need to hire somebody to replace him or her, but you do not want a long-term hire. You can utilize the services of a temporary recruitment firm to send you qualified candidates who are willing to work shorter contracts. Usually, the firm pays the salary of the employee and the company pays the recruitment firm, so you don’t have to add this person to your payroll. If the person does a good job, there may be opportunities for you to offer him or her a full-time permanent position.
3. Executive search firm. These firms are focused on high-level management positions, such as director, VP, and CEO roles. They typically charge 10–20 percent of the first year salary, so they can be quite expensive. However, they do an extensive amount of the upfront work, presenting candidates who have been pre-screened and interviewed, and effectively a ‘short-list’ candidate.

Internet Job Sites

The internet is proliferated with job posting websites hosted by different providers and available to any company wanting to post their available jobs. From an HR perspective, there are many options to place an ad, most of which are inexpensive. The downside to this method is the immense number of resumes you may receive from these websites, all of which may or may not be qualified. To overcome this, many organizations have implemented software that searches for keywords in resumes. Some examples of websites might include the following:

• Monster
• Indeed
• Workopolis

Company Job Sites

Company specific websites now include a career page and are a source of pride for many businesses. The effort put into the page layout, design, and messaging, demonstrates how many organizations rely on their career page to attract the right talent. Here are some examples of high-quality career pages:

• Verizon media
• Spotify
• Square

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube offer interesting opportunities to gain a media presence to attract a variety of employees. The goal of using social media as a recruiting tool is to create a buzz about your organization, share stories of successful employees, and tout an interesting culture. Even smaller companies can utilize this technology by posting job openings as their status updates. This strategy is relatively inexpensive, but there are some things to consider. For example, tweeting about a job opening might spark interest in some candidates, but the trick is to show your personality as an employer early on – and you may be casting too wide of a net for applications.

Campus Recruiting and Events

Colleges and universities can be excellent sources of new candidates, usually at entry-level positions. Consider technical colleges focused on culinary expertise, aerospace technology, or adult correctional interventions. These can be great sources of talent with specialized training in a specific area. In turn, universities can provide talent who have formal training in a specific field. Many organizations use their campus recruiting programs to onboard new talent, who will eventually develop into managers.

For this type of program to work, it requires establishing relationships with campus communities, such as campus career services departments. Attending campus events, such as job fairs, can also require time. Many organizations or associations also hold their own events to allow people to network and learn about new technologies.

Professional Associations

Professional associations are usually non-profit organizations aiming to further a particular profession. Almost every profession has its own professional organization. For example, Supply Chain Canada is an association that may be of interest to Operations Managers in Canada. See the link below to research the Supply Chain Canada website.

Referrals

Many recruiting plans include asking current employees for referrals. The quality of referred applicants is usually high, since most people would not recommend an individual they thought was incapable of doing the job. E-mailing a job opening to current employees and offering incentives to refer a friend can be a quick way of recruiting individuals. For example, Groupe Dynamite, is a very successful fashion retailer based in Montreal. It is recognized as one of the city’s best employers and offers referral bonuses as an incentive for employees to recruit candidates from their personal networks (up to $2,500 for a successful referral).

Advantages and Disadvantages of Recruiting Strategies

At the beginning of this section, a comparison was made between recruiting and marketing. It is true that there are many similarities between generating quality applications and attracting customers. However, these two processes differ in one specific area: the communication of less favourable characteristics of the job. In a marketing campaign, negative elements of the product will be minimized or non existent. When advertising pick-up trucks, a manufacturer may not stress the less positive characteristics such as gas consumption or comfort. The focus will instead be on the more favourable characteristics such as horsepower, suspension, and the large capacity of the cargo area.

In addition, we can look at the yield ratio when we look at how effective our recruiting methods are. A yield ratio is the percentage of applicants from one source who make it to the next stage in the selection process (e.g., they get an interview). For example, if you received two hundred resumes from an ad you placed within a professional organization, and fifty-two of those make it to the interview stage, this means a 26 percent yield (52/200). We can determine the best place to recruit for a particular position using these calculations. Note that some yield ratios may vary for particular jobs, and a higher yield ratio must also consider the cost of that method. For an entry-level job, corporate recruiters may yield a better ratio than using social media, but it likely has a much higher cost per hire.

“Recruitment Strategies” in Human Resources Management – 2nd Ontario Edition by Elizabeth Cameron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.