Two of the primary goals of any human resources (HR) department are employee retention and recruitment. In today’s increasingly connected and social media-driven world, HR departments must constantly adjust their strategies to the changing landscape of modern business, especially in the area of recruitment. Expectations of both company executives and potential hires change constantly, and HR representatives must satisfy both groups while attracting the best talent to an organization.
The following are some of the most pressing challenges that recruiters face:
1. Recruiting with limited resources
Departments with large budgets have the ability to place advertisements across the Internet and ensure that their recruitment efforts stretch across a variety of venues. However, those with limited resources need to think more strategically about how they can find their ideal candidates and attract them to the company.
To solve this problem, recruiters can turn to social media networks like LinkedIn or Facebook, which are much less costly. These sites can help HR professionals learn how the people they want are looking for jobs and enable recruiters to get the word out about open positions through viral sharing.
2. Finding candidates quickly
In recent years, an increasing number of HR professionals have had to expedite their recruiting process. This pressure to hire quickly does not always come from managers at the company. Rather, different HR organizations now have to compete for the best candidates, so dragging one’s feet can mean losing the perfect potential employee.
HR representatives used to have much more time to make a decision due to the high unemployment rate during the recession. Since the economy’s recovery, competition for top talent has increased. Organizations are growing faster than ever and often need to fill multiple positions at once. To address this issue, recruiters can implement tracking systems that allow them to look up vital data at the push of a button. While this may sound like a minor benefit, this process can save a significant amount of time by cutting down on the steps needed to find basic information.
3. Using Antiquated Recruiting Metrics
To prove their effectiveness, recruiters must be able to quantify the dollar impact of their highest-performing new hires. Doing so lends credibility to the HR department and provides a concrete way to judge the effectiveness of its current hiring methods.
Metrics should also track retention rates, especially those of new hires. A good way to do this is to employ one of several different software products that manage key data points. To take full advantage of these programs’ capabilities, HR professionals should dedicate time to learn how to use these tools and understand what kind of data they can extract. Data analytics experts can also work with HR teams to develop better systems for monitoring recruits and quantifying their impact on a company.
4. Struggling to Recruit Innovators
In today’s business world, the rise of forward-thinking companies like Google has revealed the large role that innovation plays in the success of an organization. Many companies look to bring industry leaders aboard, but few are able to draw the interest of these workers. One reason for this may be that most recruiting processes are not designed to appeal to innovators, who search for jobs using cutting-edge tools and want companies with a strong brand.
Innovators expect to see ingenuity and technology integrated into the hiring process. Therefore, HR professionals should consider strengthening the employer brand and creating a separate sub-process specifically designed to recruit innovators. This mechanism should involve new technologies and unique challenges for potential recruits. Without having a conversation along these lines, companies stand little chance of hiring true game changers.
5. Not Appealing to Candidates with the Right Background
HR departments can begin to doubt their effectiveness when they receive numerous applications, but none demonstrate the skills and background required for the position. Attracting the best talent can prove extremely difficult, especially as competition for these individuals grows. This problem can become amplified when departments have limited resources.
The solution to this problem is two-pronged. First, HR professionals can leverage technological tools to manually search for individuals with the desired skills and background. For example, LinkedIn allows people to search for candidates based on certain criteria. The other part of the solution involves a different approach to recruitment altogether.
On the one hand, HR representatives may want to change the wording of the job description because it has not attracted the right candidates. Recruiters should ensure that the requirements and expectations are clearly outlined and that the stated qualifications are actually realistic for the position in question.
On the other hand, HR departments may want to think about adopting a more universal approach to recruitment and focus on attracting great talent, even if they don’t meet specific requirements. Companies mistakenly focus more on finding the perfect candidate than on securing a smart candidate that can be trained to do the job. This can severely limit choices and ultimately inhibit an organization’s growth.