Recruitment - How to stand out from the crowd

Recruitment is something that we are increasingly being asked about by clients as everyone is struggling to find suitable candidates to fill their vacancies. The new practice of 'ghosting' by candidates can be extremely frustrating but as it is a sellers' market out there, employers have to change the way they do things if they want to fill those vacancies. The alternative is to try and do without new employees, which will mean spreading workload around your existing staff, which in turn will involve training and up-skilling across the business. This can be a successful strategy for some businesses who have the right people already employed, but if you really do need more people in your business, you need to try and capture those who are actively seeking new opportunities.

Many employers rely on recruitment agencies to find candidates that the business can interview, which can be extremely time-saving for busy business owners. It does not however give you the opportunity to publicise your employer brand, or to link all the good stuff that you do and publicise on social media, to prospective candidates, as most recruitment agencies place confidential advertisements. Candidates really need to see who you are and what you stand for before they apply to your business. Active applicants are even looking beyond companies' own websites to try and open the door to life behind the scenes at your business. They want to know what is the real story about your values and what it is like to work with you.

So, to be successful in recruitment, businesses need to become active recruiters, rather than remaining passive. This means standing out from the crowd as much as you can. Our webinar on 24 November 2022 will provide you with lots of tips and techniques to help you to do this, along with providing advice and support on the other two key things that are essential if you are to find good candidates.

The first of these is to act quickly. As soon as you receive an application, you need to respond swiftly if the individual looks as if they have something to offer. Gone are the good old days when you could wait until the closing date and then shortlist applications and invite applicants into an interview on a set date by email or phone. These days, you need to build a relationship with the candidate quickly, often via instant messaging, so that you engage candidates early that you wish to invite into interview. The time from application to interview has also reduced significantly, so we recommend that from the initial communication, candidates are invited in for interview very quickly. Often a telephone interview, or a virtual interview on Teams, is a good place to start, so that a lot of time is not wasted by you or the candidate. It will still annoy you if the candidate ghosts you, but less time will be wasted at that stage. Those candidates that are truly interested in working with you will then be more likely to turn up to a face to face interview.

The second change that employers need to make when actively recruiting, is to look at what candidates can do, rather than what they cannot. The days of having stable employment with job titles that mean something has long gone, so it is important to look at the things that applicants have done in their jobs, rather than job titles. If you begin to match experience and skills with what you are looking for, you are likely to have more applicants that are of interest to you, rather than dismissing them because they do not have a job title on their CV which matches the job title you have given to your vacancy.

If you want to get ahead of the competition, but are still passively recruiting, you will undoubtedly benefit from changing the way you do things so that you become an employer of choice to the candidates that are actively looking to change roles. There is much more we can advise you on, but the tips above make a good start.