Many organizations are in constant search of talented, highly-skilled, and top-performing employees. Because of this, they pay recruiters a premium to identify and recruit these candidates on their behalf. As a recruiter, it can be difficult to break through the standard search process and find top candidates before the competition. Therefore, it is essential for recruiters to test out new out-of-the-box recruitment strategies as potential means of gaining a competitive edge.
Most likely, the perfect candidate is not looking for a new job— they’re probably content within their current role. A recruiter must therefore find innovative methods to find, compel, and recruit these candidates in unique and effective fashions.
According to Statista, over 3.6 billion people used social media in 2020— a number projected to rise to approximately 4.41 billion in 2025. This number represents over half of the internet users.
Social media users comprise professionals, students, academicians, job seekers, and others who may be interested in changing roles. Therefore, it’s a great place when looking to hire an employee.
Here are a few strategies recruiters use to find top talent:
Universities are the breeding ground for all industry experts and therefore present an undeniable opportunity to recruiters. Companies can acquire the best brains from campus and train them afresh to take on new projects. Fresh university graduates come with great energy, attitude, and minimal demands.
Recruiters can maximize in the following ways:
Successful recruitment is a series of steps that includes lead generation and rapport-building with candidates. Therefore, it can be valuable for recruiters to host webinars and other relevant events that keep candidates engaged and benefit them professionally.
Offering this type of valuable advice to candidates through webinars can attract them organically and build a sense of trust intrinsically. From there, you can stay top of mind and serve as a resource to these individuals, until eventually helping them fill one of your open roles.
Recruiters can apply artificial intelligence to minimize manual processes and improve the speed of decision-making and accuracy. The AI technology sieves through multiple applications and talent pools simultaneously, minimizing the time needed to process a candidate. Consequently, the recruiter is able to spend more time creating impactful relationships with their talent pool.
In addition, recruiters can train AI technology to automatically source, filter, and rank top candidates specific to their own roles and organization.
A point to note: industry experts believe that artificial intelligence will not replace human recruitment. Instead, it will boost efficiency, quality, return on investment, and aptitude.
Use your network to find the ideal candidates — if you know someone perfect for the role, reach out to that person, bring it up to your Facebook friends, post on your LinkedIn, e-mail your friends, and encourage them to share with others. Also, it never hurts to ask for help. If you know someone within the industry you are recruiting, don’t hesitate to reach out and see if they know any candidates who would be a strong fit for the job.
Utilizing personal networks is one of the more cost-effective strategies that also leads to the highest rate of success for recruiters. Make sure you build out and speak with your network, and great talent will soon be filling your pipeline.
Referrals are also an awesome means of finding and engaging with top candidates. Through a good reputation, trust, and authority within the industry, recruiters can build out an effective referral program with colleagues and business partners.
A referral system offers the following benefits to you:
Data is the biggest driver of business in modern times. Similarly, a recruitment agency can utilize data to analyze its method, results and assess resource utilization. Some of the metrics you can use include job offer acceptance rate, source of hire, application conversion rate, cost per hire, and hire quality.
The data approach can benefit your process in the following ways:
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There’s a constant demand from employers in search of top talent to fill their roles. Consequently, Recruiters must invest in the right solutions to meet these standards. Using these 7 unique and out-of-the-box recruitment strategies should help you gain an edge in finding top candidates and ensuring the perfect talent match.
To that end, Loxo is the ideal recruitment solution provider for those seeking a competitive advantage. Loxo’s platform offers an applicant tracking system, recruitment CRM, AI sourcing, and automated outreach. To learn more about how Loxo can help you in your out-of-the-box recruitment efforts, request an overview from a team member here.