In today’s hyper-competitive hiring landscape, your company must be able to attract, engage and onboard talent before the competitors get to them; Easier said than done. All too often, attempts to speed up the recruiting process turn this business-critical function into a race to fill a seat, emphasizing quantity over quality. But, take too long to hire and your best candidates will lose interest or be won over by the competition.
This represents a common struggle for recruiting teams: how do we recruit candidates that are quality candidates quickly and efficiently?
The answer lies in recruiting and communicating with candidates on a human and personal level in the most efficient manner possible. Sure, recruiting can seem like a numbers game at times, but candidates aren’t numbers. And, as far as I know, you don’t hold any semblance to the Terminator or Robocop, so stop taking a robotic approach to recruitment and make it personal again.
After all, you’re recruiting people, not a number or a “body in a seat.” Every candidate you submit is a representation of yourself whether you’re recruiting for a call center representative or a C-Level Executive. Take the time to listen to your candidates and see what they can bring and what sets them apart from the other candidates.
Show that you value your client (or the company you work for) by keeping the recruiting process a human process, dedicated to improving human capital at the organization. This will also ultimately increase the business’ value by employing quality hires and decreasing the cost of labor by not wasting time on egregious hires.
By committing to a human-centered approach, the hiring manager will truly appreciate your hard work and dedication, the business team will rejoice over their ROI and an improved CBA value, and you’ll be content knowing that you’ve filled the positions with quality candidates. (Plus, you’ll appreciate your phone not going off late at night with an influx of emails).
In relation to the paragraph above, the non-corporate recruiting and talent acquisition world has seen a shift in recruiting philosophy, which fully encompasses filling positions with the right candidates and improving recruiting processes. Recruitment process outsourcing companies (or ‘RPOs’ for short) are fully invested in the clients they work for and the candidates they hire, taking recruiting into a new and improved direction. The element of maintaining the human aspect of recruiting, the ability to build candidate and client relationships, and improving hiring processes all come into play when recruiting and retaining quality candidates.
In summary, it’s important to fill roles and to fill them quickly, but it is just as important, if not more so, is to fill roles with the right candidates. You can deliver on this goal by recruiting a candidate as a person and not as a number.
By Joe Griesbach | People Science Senior Talent Advisor