Recruitment Strategies for 2023: How to Prepare for the Future

This article is presented by our partners at Greenhouse.

The recruitment process is an integral part of running any business. Whether you are a small business owner, a hiring manager, an HR professional, or the CEO of a large company, you will have to recruit at some point in your career. However, the most successful recruitment strategies and recruiting software depend on your business’s unique needs and the type of candidate you’re trying to hire.

What are the most successful recruiting strategies?

The top recruiting strategies to attract and hire quality candidates include:

1. Develop a clear employer brand
2. Create job posts that reflect your company
3. Invest in an applicant tracking system
4. Use social media to target talent
5. Explore niche job boards
6. Pay to boost job listings
7. Revisit old resumes
8. Consider college recruiting
9. Attend industry events and job fairs
10. Engage passive candidates
11. Conduct effective interviews
12. Consider an employee referral program

1. Develop a clear employer brand

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Your company brand isn’t just important for reaching potential customers; it’s also a key element of any effective recruitment strategy. Your employer brand is what will set you apart from other hiring companies and show job candidates why they should work for you. Employer branding should reflect your business’s mission, culture, and values.

When developing your hiring materials, think about questions such as:

• Why would someone want to work for this company?
• Does your company support a diverse workforce?
• What percentage of your current employees would recommend your company as a great place to work?

Once you have answers to these questions, check that your business’s “about” page, social media profiles, and advertisements align with your branding and recruitment plan.

2. Create job posts that reflect your company

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Writing a clear, thorough, and concise job post is both an art and a science. Since your job post is one of the first impressions the candidate will have, it’s an early opportunity to establish a reputation for being organized and professional while still showing off your company culture and the qualities that set it apart.

This creative recruitment strategy will help you acquire a higher volume of qualified candidates who are best suited to the role. Then do a final editing pass to confirm that your job descriptions are aligned with your company’s branding — such as color, typography, and logo — to convey professionalism.

Read more: Best Practices for Writing the Perfect Job Description

3. Invest in an applicant tracking system

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You can save your hiring managers time and your company money — not to mention speed up the recruitment process — by investing in an applicant tracking system (ATS). An ATS is a software tool that automates the process of posting jobs and finding qualified applicants. This often includes one-click job posting to multiple sites, applicant sorting, interview scheduling, automated onboarding, and more.

Some ATS features are built into a comprehensive HR software suite, such as BambooHR. However, you can also find standalone ATS options like JazzHR if you only need an ATS or need to take your applicant tracking capabilities to the next level. 

Also read: Best Applicant Tracking Systems

4. Use social media to target talent

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Social media recruiting involves leveraging social media to source talent, advertise jobs, and communicate with potential candidates. Many brands have been successful in finding quality talent on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Be sure to create a presence on the channels that make the most sense for your company.

It’s also important to focus on sharing content that reflects your company’s values. For example, if your company values philanthropy, share photos or videos of a recent successful philanthropy campaign that your organization spearheaded. Current employees may also share company-branded messages about job vacancies on their social media networks, which will then reach people in their network who may be looking for jobs.

Also read: 7 Ways to Build A Strong Social Media Recruiting Presence

5. Explore niche job boards

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Depending on what job you are hiring for, it may be difficult to find talent on one of the many large job market sites. If your company falls into a smaller, more defined category, try looking into recruitment marketing on niche job boards. These are smaller job sites devoted to a specific niche industry and often have a community of job seekers and recruiters.

You can find job boards that are specific to industries like retail and construction, and there are others that focus on increasing visibility for women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ applicants, and other marginalized groups. Posting to these job boards helps cultivate a diverse talent pool and reach prospective employees who may not otherwise see your job opening.

Choosing an ATS with lots of job board integrations can make it easier to find and post to these specific job boards, speeding up the recruiting process. For instance, recruiters can connect Greenhouse to more than 1,000 free and paid job boards to widely promote job openings with just a few clicks.

6. Pay to boost job postings

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Paying to boost or “sponsor” your job postings can be an effective way to increase the number of qualified applicants who see your job openings. This may not be necessary on niche jobs with fewer entries, but it can be very helpful for more popular job boards such as Indeed and LinkedIn, where your job opening will immediately get pushed down by the sheer number of other posts.

If you have the extra budget, you might also find it helpful to pay for ads on social media sites as part of your hiring process. If you pay for ads, you can target profiles that match the candidate personas you are trying to reach, which can increase the quality of applicants that make it through the pipeline

Also read: 8 Best Job Listing Sites for Employers

7. Revisit old resumes

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Just because a candidate wasn’t the right fit for one role in the past doesn’t mean that they won’t be perfect for a different job opening in the future. If you’ve been using an ATS for a while, your hiring team should have a big database of resumes from past talent. They can search through these resumes using keywords and screening rules to find candidates who are qualified for your current openings even if they weren’t a good fit in the past.

8. Consider college recruiting

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College campus recruiting can help you discover emerging professionals in a particular industry, while also aligning your company with internship hiring opportunities and campus connections. You can recruit from colleges in many ways, including attending career fairs or job fairs, volunteering to speak at events for your industry, and being featured on campus online job boards.

9. Attend industry events and job fairs

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Attending local career events and job fairs can connect your company with job candidates from a wider range of backgrounds. If your local area doesn’t already have these events in place, then offering to host them can also connect you to fellow businesses in the area as well. An ATS with a mobile hiring app makes it easier to add candidate information and upload resumes onsite, so recruiters can move prospective candidates through the hiring process as quickly as possible.

10. Engage passive candidates

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Passive candidates are people who are currently employed and not actively looking for a job. Engaging in passive recruiting involves personally reaching out to them, and it should definitely be one of your company’s recruitment methods. Doing so shows that you are truly interested in their talent and will be sure to grab their attention.

Using social media and personal connections will help you identify potential candidates as well as raise awareness for your company. Some ATS also harness the power of machine learning to help your talent acquisition team quickly find passive candidates who are qualified for open roles. For instance, Zoho Recruit has a “Source Boosters” feature to help recruiters identify promising candidate profiles.

Also read: 4 Ways to Recruit Passive Candidates

11. Conduct effective interviews

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It’s important to remember that the interview process is a two-way street. While you are interviewing your candidate, they are also interviewing you. Whether you are meeting remotely or in person, be sure to make it comfortable and low-stress to create a positive candidate experience. Remember that you are looking for both values alignment as well as professional qualifications.

When interviewing candidates, be aware of unconscious hiring bias that might lead your HR team to unfairly overlook an otherwise qualified candidate. Standardizing interview questions and having an objective rating system will help your team to avoid this unconscious bias when making your final job offer selections.

Also read: 7 Tips to Avoid Unconscious Hiring Bias

12. Consider an employee referral program

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Employee referral programs allow existing employees to refer qualified candidates for open positions within your business. These programs usually offer rewards such as gift cards or cash bonuses to encourage employee participation. Some ATS platforms, such as Workable, come with an employee referral tool built into the system to make it easy to gather employee referrals and reward them for their recommendations.

Employee referral programs help source pre-vetted candidates with minimal effort from the recruiting team. Referral programs also often improve the most important recruiting metrics, including time to hire, cost per hire, quality of hire, and retention rate. 

However, referral programs can sometimes impede DEI efforts if employees are only referring candidates who are from a similar demographic or background. To promote diversity in the referral program, it may be beneficial to increase the reward value for referrals who are from an underrepresented group.

What’s the best recruiting tool for your hiring process?

In addition to implementing effective recruitment strategies, recruiting software can help at every stage of the hiring process, including posting job descriptions, emailing candidates, and sorting through resumes. Recruiting tools also help to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up your talent acquisition team to spend their time and effort on more valuable activities like conducting interviews and sourcing new talent.

To find the best solution for your business, explore top vendors in our HR Software Guide, ATS Software Guide, and Recruiting Software Guide.