Here are some additional thoughts on what recruiters are planning for 2017.
The first one comes from Stefanie Frenking, Global Feel Good Manager and Corporate Recruiter for Spreadshirt, e-commerce platform for spreading of ideas on something tangible. Savvy employers that compete for the best global talent have realized that they must brand their company culture to keep employees engaged:
Branding the employer culture from the start is the best way to keep the company culture alive and recruit and retain top talent in a competitive global landscape. The innovators at Spreadshirt, have practiced Feel Good Management for 5 years and infuse this mindset into all global locations. A low cost initiative but boosts retention rates and lowers recruitment costs. Spreadshirt will continue with this approach in 2017 and beyond.
“ At Spreadshirt, we embraced Feel Good Management 5 years ago and have infused this approach into our global workplace and deliberately shaped our corporate culture. Talented workers expect to be productive and continually developed professionally, be empowered to be creative and innovative to tackle new challenges, feel welcome in the enterprise and expect a work life balance.
We deliver all of this from any location in our business and constantly communicate with existing and former employees about our needs and listen to their input. We have the ability to compete for top talent with big players like Google or Amazon. As millennials shape the workforce, traditional items like bonuses, perks don’t matter as much as fitting in with the culture and sharing a common vision. Your company must focus on their unique culture and deliberately shape it to stay relevant to top talent.”
In 2017, recruiters will be doing a lot more marketing to employed individuals who may not be active in the job market.
There is an increased need for people with specialized skills and experience. Because unemployment is so low, there are few people responding to job applications. Busy people don’t have the attention span that they had in prior years. They aren’t acting upon job opportunities that might come their way. The WorkPlace Group is directly connecting job opportunities to people’s aspirations.
One way to go about it is knowing something about a candidate in order to infer that a position matches their career path. Look at things people are sharing on Facebook and Twitter. Increasing activity on LinkedIn (ex: frequent posting) makes them far more noticeable to recruiters. This becomes analytic information to target the talent we are looking for. When we reach out to them, it is meaningful contact connected to a theme or topic that aligns with candidate’s interest.
What we’ll be doing less of?
Plain vanilla job postings (generic, template looking job postings and emails that are impersonal and do not call attention to the employer’s brand) that can be used for any position. A posting has to be much more specific to the employment brand. Generic ads are just noise, no one pays attention to it.
TalentRise, a Chicago based recruiting firm told us this.
- Leverage hiring managers’ networks to amplify the employment brand. Recruiting should be part of everyone’s job and hiring managers can be invaluable allies in sourcing strategies by, for example, posting targeted messaging on their social networks.
- Related to that, employers should train hiring managers on how to be good interviewers. Too often, hiring managers unintentionally put the brakes on the hiring process by sending candidates the wrong messages.
- Evaluate – or re-evaluate – how you outsource recruitment. Investigate newer, more flexible models that are scalable and offer businesses tools and expertise that are difficult and expensive to replicate in-house.
- Make cultural fit” a primary criteria for hiring, ESPECIALLY if your company is on a path to become more innovative. Hiring the same kinds of people won’t necessarily move the needle towards innovation and growth [for more on this, see this article]
- Expect the recruitment team to “do it all” – be social media experts, be researchers, be “salespeople” for the company. Instead, focus in-house resources on what really matters. [read more here]
- Oversell job opportunities. Never over-promise future promotions, pay, opportunities, etc. Not only will it hurt retention of new hires but it will erode your employer brand. With sites such as glassdoor.com and vault.com, disgruntled candidates and employees can really do damage.