Creative Strategies for Effective Recruiting

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The modern working world is increasingly global and moving toward remote work, hence the rise in virtual office platforms.  Add to that the current workforce situation wherein employees are shopping around for jobs, and holding out until they get what they want.  It adds up to a market where businesses aren’t just getting creative for their customers, they are using savvy techniques to recruit good candidates as well.

Hiring has never been easy.  It’s incredibly hard to know if a prospect can deliver what they promise or if they will be a good fit for your team. The hiring and training process is unavoidably expensive and time consuming. It’s vital for your new hire to work out.

Businesses are turning to innovative solutions to streamline their hiring processes and ensure they secure top talent. Online recruitment software for agencies offers advanced tools for candidate sourcing, screening, and tracking, helping companies to optimize their recruitment efforts and make more informed hiring decisions.

Chances are high that if you have ever hired an external candidate, you are familiar with the well-established job posting platforms like Indeed and Monster.  You know how to write an appropriate job description, are adept at reading resumes and cover letters for content and attention to detail, and are competent at doing some basic internet sleuthing to check out your applicants.  Those are the modern basics. 

What else can you do to give your company an edge in hiring the right person?

Questions, Answers, and Observation

During the initial stage of mobile recruiting, standard interview questions are used so often because they are effective..  Keep an arsenal of them at the ready.  If you find yourself with a group of applicants and need to narrow down, or if you think you have good prospects but want to get a better sense of their personality, employ some creative questions and then watch them as they answer. Use pre-employment skills tests to ensure you’re bringing in the right candidates for interviews.

There are two key pieces to this strategy.  The first is to ask a question that has no wrong answer and won’t be something they had ever considered.  For example, ask, “Would you rather fight one duck the size of a horse or one-hundred horses the size of a duck?” 

Then comes the second part, watch carefully.  It makes absolutely no difference which option they choose, but it makes all the difference in the world how they make their choices. Do they scowl, laugh, or sweat? Do they interrupt each other, collaborate, or hang back? Are their rationales tactical, strategic, emotional?  If you were paying attention, you just learned a lot about your candidates’ personalities. You might even consider working in a recruiting tag-team, one to ask questions and engage, the other to observe and make notes.  If team cohesion is essential for your pick, you have the option of upping your game and hiring a psychologist or other trained observer to provide comments.

Be Prepared to Sell Your Company

Especially in a market of more positions than employees, companies who put thought and resources into quality marketing directed towards potential job candidates will see a major return on that investment.  Be prepared to not only explain what sets you apart, but to show potential applicants.  Something as innovative as virtual event software that lets you stage an online job fair in a way that mimics all the best aspects of a job fair, the dialogue and social fluidity, with the practicality and reach of a virtual event could be a major stand out moment for your firm. 

You have a whole team of terrific people with varied skills.  Use them.  Even if you can’t bring them to your recruiting events, you can offer to link up prospective candidates with current employees for a phone call or coffee, so candidates get a better sense of who they’d be working with and the culture of your company.  Remember that applicants want this job to be a good fit for them too.

Take a good look at your online and social media presence.  Of course, you considered how to impress and woo your customer when you designed your site and posts.  But did you consider how prospective employees would view you?  Any candidate worth considering will check out how your company presents itself before applying to or accepting a position.  If you treat the “Careers” page on your website like a throw-away, people looking at that page might assume you don’t invest much in making it a good workplace.

The big takeaway is to watch your candidates as much as you read about and listen to them and to assume they are watching you just as closely.