3 Obstacles Recruiters Should Avoid to Attract the Best Talent

Good recruiters define a successful recruitment process as one that brings talent to the table.

Great recruiters know how to bring that talent to the table.

So, how do you make good recruiters great?

Lucky for you the answer is simple.

You can train recruiters in the art of attracting and retaining talent. All you have to do is instruct your team to avoid a few hang-ups. Here are three obstacles to get you started.

Obstacle One: An Impersonal Approach to the Process

The number one pet peeve for talented candidates is not receiving an individual experience during the recruitment process.

In a study by Mystery Applicant, the majority of candidates (52%) said they felt that recruiters did not treat them as individuals.

It’s not surprising that highly-talented candidates want a little red carpet treatment. If you’re the Brad Pitt of Mechanical Engineering or the Angelina Jolie of Front-end Web Development, you expect a small nod in your direction.

At the very least, recruiters could avoid various mistakes that result in a bad or generic experience for candidates. Like making a faux pas as basic as not knowing the responsibilities of the role. Yes, that happens.

For many candidates, it’s quite simple. The bottom line is that an uninformed recruiter decreases their interest in the position and damages their image of the company’s brand.

That’s why training should begin with an introduction to the specifics of different departments in your company. Recruiters should know the ins and outs of departments and the intricacies of the roles they will fill. That way they won’t seem uninformed to candidates.

When a position opens, recruiters should collaborate with team leaders and the top performing employees from that department. These relationships will give them a greater sense of what skills and character will make a good hire as they begin to interview candidates.

The ability to tap into departments for insight provides recruiters with the capacity to deliver a much more tailored, individual experience across the board.

Obstacle Two: Sticking to Job Boards in a Search for Active Talent

Where do your recruiters post job offers? Where do they actively look for talent?

If your recruiters aren’t trained to write attractive offers and to search actively for candidates on LinkedIn, then you are missing out on a motherload of talent.

Why?

The most talented candidates are probably employed. After all, they are the best. That means they only conduct job searches passively, i.e., they won’t visit job boards. So, tracking down the crème de la crème for your position is about as hard as spotting a unicorn. Right?

Wrong. Almost 130 million professionals in the USA alone are now using LinkedIn. So, it’s the perfect headhunting grounds for recruiters who have attractive offers on-hand.

When we put together our IT team at Uptowork, we based our entire strategy on leveraging LinkedIn. Why?

To tap into passive talent.

Training your team to use LinkedIn to identify profiles that use specific keywords well, that display niche skills, and that exist within specific networks, will give them the edge they need to headhunt valuable candidates among competitors.

You can also train recruiters to write attractive offers and build a database of leads. That way their skill set goes beyond identifying candidates, extending into the realm of attracting and retaining them.

Yes, your staff may need to spend many working hours on a social media platform. But LinkedIn is currently the premier tool for locating and sourcing passive talent. That’s why it is so important that your HR professionals know how to develop connections on LinkedIn.

Obstacle Three: A Long, Drawn-out Recruitment Process

Recruiters have approximately ten days before talented candidates leave the job market.

The problem is that the average recruitment process lasted 3.5 days longer in 2015 than in 2009.

That means that recruitment processes are getting longer instead of shorter.

So, what can you do to shorten your recruitment process?

You’ll need to train recruiters to manage various stages of the process without exceeding a turnaround period of one day.

The first step is to encourage recruiters to treat the applications of highly-talented candidates as hot sales leads, i.e., resumes that lay around won’t convert. Recruiters should address such applications as they are received. That way a diamond resume doesn’t sit undiscovered for days.

The next crucial moment is after a resume is accepted. Recruiters should schedule interviews as soon as they can. They can bend this rule if a candidate wants to adjust the time to meet their needs. Encourage your recruiters to approach candidates’ needs with elasticity and flexibility. Even if it takes more time, that’s okay. The candidate will remain engaged until after their interview.

After a positive decision is made to hire the candidate, recruiters should prepare and present an offer the same day or the day after. Keep in mind that when your team extends the time it takes to pitch an offer, the risk of a candidate pitching a counter offer or taking a job from a competitor soars.

Overall, recruiters should know how to keep the process fluid and fast-paced with one-day turnarounds.

Key Takeaway

Boston Consulting Group reports that companies that actively source talent show 2.4x the revenue growth over those who don’t.

And the good news is that if you’re keeping your recruitment process in-house, you are already saving resources that you can reinvest into the optimization of your recruitment process.

The investment in your HR team is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to boost your bottom line, your brand image, and your company, and to stay ahead of your competition.

Author: Natalie Severt is a writer at Uptowork. She writes about how to create successful resumes so that you can land your dream job. When she isn’t writing, she reads complicated novels. You can find Natalie on Twitter.