Charles Hipps is the Founder and CEO of Oleeo, an award-winning provider of innovative talent acquisition technology.
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Starting in the spring of 2021, workers began leaving their jobs in record numbers—a trend that has been deemed the Great Resignation. Employees have drawn a line in the sand. This has led to high demand for workers, as well as put power in the hands of new hires.
While employers had numerous candidates to choose from in the past and could almost count on their first- or second-choice applicant agreeing to the position, today’s job market is different. As the Great Resignation continues, employers have to be competitive and proactive if they want to attract top talent.
Let’s take a look at five ways you can attract top candidates and improve time-to-hire in today's war for talent.
1. Create inclusive and detailed job descriptions.
When applicants search through job boards, your job description is one of the first things they see. A job description may even be the first encounter applicants have with your brand. As a result, your job description is a great place to offer a brief discussion about your work environment and to ensure that applicants know that their differences will be respected in your workplace.
With this in mind, not only is your job description a great space to outline your expectations of a candidate's previous work experience, but you also get to state exactly what they can expect from the position you’re offering. Paint a picture so that applicants can see themselves in your office building doing the job you’re hiring for. Creating an inclusive and detailed job description has the benefit of ensuring that the right applicants find your job and apply to it. The more detailed you make your job description, the more likely it is to appear in Google searches and job board searches when applicants are hunting for their dream job.
Lastly, by ensuring top applicants are able to find your job description, it will also be easier for you to sift through applications down the road and find the right candidates to interview and hire.
2. Improve your employer brand.
Branding matters, and that has never been more true than today. Studies show that having a better brand helps hiring managers recruit higher-quality candidates. One of the most important things prospective hires look for is whether the business is a good place to work. You can improve your brand by:
• Working to make current employees happy, which can improve employee satisfaction surveys and ratings on sites like Glassdoor.
• Focusing on sustainability efforts and social responsibility. Employees find this incredibly important from their employers.
• Increasing your social media presence so that more people understand what your brand does and what you represent.
• Updating your “About Us” page to include your brand’s story, ethos and mission.
3. Speed up your résumé sifting with intelligence.
One of the hardest aspects of the hiring process is sifting through résumés, parsing out your top applicants and setting aside applicants that don’t meet your standards.
Consider whether recruitment automation can help you improve this process. Companies can use recruitment AI not just to sift through applicants, but also to reduce implicit biases that can prevent qualified candidates from making it to the top of the applicant pool. In fact, 98% of Fortune 500 companies were using applicant tracking systems (ATS) in 2019 to help sort through applications.
Although AI can solve a lot of problems for recruiters, it is important to note that it is not completely unbiased. It can also struggle with unconventional résumé formats. To keep AI from rejecting qualified applicants based on formatting, you might consider having someone do quality assurance (QA) on rejected applications. In fact, this QA process can even be done by an intern, saving your hiring team time and allowing them to focus their energies on top candidates.
4. Personalize your communication with candidates and keep them in the loop.
Far too often, candidates apply to jobs and never hear back about their application. This can be difficult at any time, but if candidates don’t know where they’re at in the hiring process for your brand, they don’t know whether to wait for an interview from you before making a decision about another job. Not only can this be frustrating in the short term, but it can actively turn them off from applying for other positions at your company down the road.
For the first round of applicants who don’t make it through to interviews, a generic “you’re not the right fit” letter is probably enough to let them down and encourage them to seek jobs elsewhere. But for your top-tier applicants, it’s important to keep communication lines open throughout the hiring process and let them down gently if they don’t get the job. This can help qualified candidates have the confidence to apply for different positions in your company down the road.
5. Don't hang around if someone great comes along.
If the right candidate comes along, make an offer sooner rather than later. Far from making your company seem desperate, same-day job offers can show candidates that you’re serious about finding the right candidate and bringing them on board as quickly as possible.
If you’re not in a position to offer a job right away, at least ensure in-demand talent knows when to expect to hear from you. This foreknowledge may prevent them from taking another position or at least delay their decision until they hear from you.
Ultimately, however, it’s on you to make sure you hire the right candidates. In today’s competitive market, if you don’t hire top talent when you see it, you can guarantee your competition will.
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