The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) have noted from their monthly survey in May 2015 that eight out of 10 employers are planning to hire more people in the remainder of the year. It is vital that in this candidate led market employers appreciate the need to manage their recruitment processes in order to attract the best candidates quickly or they’ll risk losing the best talent to other companies.
Top tips for employers looking to attract candidates in a candidate-driven market are:
- Recruit the best person for the job rather than someone with industry knowledge.
Recruiting from outside of your industry can mean more work initially in training them but it can often reinvigorate a team. A new engineer from outside the sector will no doubt have a different view point, a new approach to marketing your company and will spot potential issues that have so far remained unseen.
- Differentiate yourself from other employers to increase the volume of high calibre applications.
In a candidate driven market place, employers are often competing within the same talent pool. Using your company’s branding when advertising your vacancy can often attract those candidates that may not be fully active within the job seeking market but who keep an eye on job boards in hopes of inspiration among the plethora of generic job adverts.
- Be prepared to make a decision when you have only met a handful of candidates.
As an employer, when you start any recruitment campaign the ideal scenario is to compare and contrast a number of candidates to ensure you have seen enough talent to make a well-rounded decision. In a market that is lacking high calibre, companies have to complete recruitment processes on the back of between one and three interviews or risk losing a good quality candidate. Speed and decisiveness is of the essence.
- Manage your recruitment process in reverse.
Too often hiring managers get sign off for a role and take the position to market but then realise that annual leave, bank holidays and meetings have blocked their diary out for a few weeks. To secure the best talent in the current market, interview processes need to be smooth, succinct and timely. Employers will often need to tweak their normal process to get a decision made and offer out before a candidate has another final interview with other companies.
