Because of today’s candidate-centric job market, organizations now face steeper challenges when it comes to recruiting. One of the biggest obstacles recruiters face when it comes to reaching top talent? Breaking through all of the online noise to grab job seekers’ attention.

In this post you’ll find nine processes, tools, and technologies that will help recruitment professionals like you understand how to recruit talented employees despite the increased competition for applicants and attention.

Preparing to Attract Top Talent

There are already a lot of articles about methods to use during recruitment, so let’s focus on an area that sometimes gets short shrift: preparation to recruit. Incorporate these three steps into your recruitment process to help you reach the right candidates.

Competitive research

What are other employers in your space or community doing to attract top talent? Study their careers page and content. Look into what recruiting events they attend. What are they doing differently than you and how can you incorporate their best ideas into your strategy?

Employer branding and marketing

One thing you may observe among the most successful of your competitors is how they have developed and positioned their employer brands. In a tight talent market, you have to “market” your open jobs to woo the ideal candidates. Here are a few areas to address when developing your employer brand.

• Current company culture. Is it good? Do employees like working at your company? If not, culture is the best (but toughest) place to start.
• Employee personas. Have you taken time to define the ideal candidate for a job? Take a page out of marketing’s playbook and develop employee personas for each job type that you hire for.
• Employee value proposition. Why should people want to work for your business? Define how your organization can enrich potential employee’s professional lives and career journey. Make sure this employee value proposition (EVP) aligns with corporate mission, vision, and values.
• Candidate-facing content. Do you have a branded careers page? Are you creating content that entices your employee personas and is SEO-friendly to ensure your company gets found by job seekers? What about your signage and collateral for recruiting events — is it appealing and align with your EVP and employer brand?

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Targeting and nurturing

This step goes hand-in-hand with employer brand building and marketing. After you’ve defined your EVP and target employee personas, start developing your targeting criteria. Do candidates have to be in your local search area or can they work remotely? Where do they spend time online? How can you reach them? Once you do reach them, how do you nurture those relationships for future opportunities?

Tools to Help You Recruit Talented Employees

The processes above can help you prepare your strategy and tactical plan. These tools help you stay focused, efficient, and effective.

Job descriptions

Sure, this one is obvious. Job descriptions are incredibly important. Unfortunately, most of them are dull or vague. Read a job description for one of your current openings. If you were perusing a job board, would this one grab your attention? Are you clear on what you would actually be doing if you got hired?

Write a job description that is attention-grabbing, concise, and lists a salary range. Make sure the language is free of bias and doesn’t unintentionally alienate different segments of job seekers.

Pre-screening questions

Let’s face it; resumes aren’t all they are cracked up to be. A resume tells an applicant’s story in the best light possible. Sometimes resumes are too generic — a gifted software developer may only be a so-so resume writer. You need pre-screening tools, in combination with resumes, to help you get a fuller picture of a candidate’s potential.

You can incorporate pre-screening questions as part of your online application process. Imagine how much more quickly you’ll get to the good stuff when you pre-screen for the right fit.

Employee referral and advocacy programs

What better recruiting tool do you have than employees who will share their experiences and refer other great potential team members? Set up a referral program that offers incentives to team members when their recommendation results in a successful hire. Also, partner up with marketing to get an employee advocacy program in place to encourage employees to promote your company on social media. A win for marketing, sales, and HR!

Technology for Recruiters

We’ve covered some essential processes and tools that recruiters can leverage for success. In this section, we’re talking about three technologies that can make everything come together a little more effortlessly.

Chatbots

Companies have begun to use chatbots to make first-touch, on-website communications easier and more efficient. With a chatbot, you can lessen your administrative load and reduce the amount of time you have to engage with job seekers up front. A chatbot can collect contact information and resumes, answer frequently asked questions, pose pre-screening questions, schedule interviews and more.

Video interviews

Video chat and communication platforms are commonplace now, and many hiring professionals have begun to use video interviews instead of traditional phone interviews. With video, you can observe a candidate’s body language and get a better sense of someone’s personality. Additionally, many younger candidates are comfortable with video chats and may prefer that option to phone calls.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

An ATS is a must-have platform that ties together many of the previously discussed elements. With an applicant tracking system, you can automate a lot of the steps in the hiring process. An applicant tracking system like TAM offers features such as:

• A branded careers page.
• Applicant management tools like pre-screening, tracking, and comparison.
• Email and scheduling tools to ensure all communications are centrally tracked.
• Passive applicant search.
• Job board integrations.
• Secure confidential data for compliance with EEO, Disability, and VETS.
• Applicant verification.

How Do You Recruit Talented Team Members?

The hiring process has to evolve with changing technology and people’s behaviors.  While some aspects remain the same, the way you use these tools and processes need to break through the chaos of information overload and appeal to the up-and-coming crop of talent. Has your organization adopted any of these approaches and tools yet?

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