The pandemic has changed the way we function as a society, as businesses, and even as individuals by making it necessary to overcome unprecedented obstacles. But try as we might to get back to “normal,” many believe it would be wiser to accept that it just isn’t possible to get back to the pre-COVID world.
When it comes to hourly workforce industries, virtually every process has had to drastically evolve in some way. Talent acquisition is no exception. According to the Harvard Business Review, employers will have better recruiting, hiring and retention results by focusing on recalibrating, resetting and reinventing their processes – not just those trying to get to the other side of COVID-19. Let’s discuss strategy.
Key Recruiting Strategies
Hiring has become one of the most drastically altered HR processes since the rise of coronavirus, primarily due to the chaotic fluctuations of the labor market and accompanying social trends. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August, leading hiring to surge and forcing employe become even more competitive.
At a recent talent expo in Las Vegas, HR specialists discussed some of their key recruiting strategies for securing top workers and managing candidate expectations during the COVID-19 pandemic. SHRM summarized the most successful recruiting strategies as the following:
- Replace outdated applicant tracking systems (ATS). This may be the most critical element in giving your talent acquisition strategy a competitive boost. These platforms allow recruiters and managers to easily navigate and access new candidates, applicant profiles, and where individuals are in your process. They make identifying viable candidates, maintaining timely communication with applicants, and recording feedback between your team members quick and easy for a streamlined process.
- Make it easy to understand where candidates are in the process and how to move them from one stage to the next. This goes hand-in-hand with replacing outdated HR software tools, but it applies even if you don’t depend on an ATS. Considering how fast and intense the hiring game has become, you can’t afford to let internal communications slow you down. Make sure your hiring managers, team leads, and other relevant parties are aware of any promising candidates moving through your pipeline and are on the same page about their next required action to keep things moving.
- Reconsider your brand’s employee value proposition (EVP). Is your operational branding costing you hires? Evaluating your operation’s image may seem like a luxury compared to the laundry list of other pandemic-related concerns on your plate. However, your brand is one of the most crucial aspects for drawing in and keeping valuable employees. Think about what sets your operation apart, how you can maximize your incentives, and what potential employees are looking for in the pandemic-centered world.
- Stay open to employee referrals. Experts suggest steering clear of offering monetary compensation (some may even call it a bribe) to employees for helping bring in new hires because it might delegitimize the enthusiasm people have to work for your organization. However, referrals come naturally when people like working for you, so accepting candidates your own employees can vouch for can be a reliable way to keep your positions filled. Focus on why your employees want their acquaintances to come work for you to learn what other candidates might be looking for.
- Keep it personal. Ensure your recruitment team is optimizing talent acquisition strategies with good consulting and positive communication skills. Setting and managing expectations, for instance, means far more in the eyes of potential hires than rigid, outdated recruiting processes. Furthermore, forming a personal connection with a member of your hiring team makes it much more likely that the candidates will stay in-process and feel comfortable about joining your workforce when the time comes.
- Your talent acquisition team needs to partner with your workforce to ensure diversity. Hiring is a complex science, bringing together specific skillsets and personalities to achieve optimum results. To ensure hiring is most successful, different members of your operation need to be able to discuss which candidates will serve your organization best in the long run. Diverse teams tend to bring innovation and higher ROIs, so make sure your recruiters know the value of diversity and your hiring managers are communicating with team leads about exactly what types of candidates would be most beneficial!
For more recruiting and hiring tricks, check out, “Hiring in the COVID-19 Era: Changing Solutions for Changing Times.”
Hire Better with Industry-Leading Solutions
You can’t afford to depend on legacy software in the era brought on by the pandemic – not while your competitors are getting ahead with state-of-the-art talent acquisition tools!
At EPAY, we offer a recruiting and applicant tracking solution with industry-leading analytics as part of our Human Capital Management platform. The intuitive user interface allows you to connect with leading social networking sites and job boards from one centralized location and interpret your hiring data with immediate insights: where the best hires came from, which job sites produce the most turnover, and where gaps in your talent pool may still exist.
Let us help you reduce the time it takes to attract and engage new hires. Watch our full two-minute overview or request a demo today.