The post 5 Simple Fixes for the Toughest Recruiting Challenges appeared first on Brazen Life.
]]> Unless you’re an in-house recruiter at Apple or Google — two highly sought-after places of employment that enjoy an endless stream of resumes — you probably struggle with the same recruiting issues most companies face. Particularly with a continued talent shortage, recruiting can sometimes feel like an uphill battle.Here’s how to solve a few common recruiting issues:
Talent shortage aside, attracting candidates is a whole new ball game these days. Job boards, career fairs and a standard “we’re hiring” message on your website just aren’t enough. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)
Work with your marketing and PR teams to ensure your social media presence is strong and has a substantial following. Come up with creative ways to announce job opportunities.
For example, at GrubHub Seamless, where I lead the people team, we include messages about joining our team throughout our product, from when a hungry diner places an order to when they get a confirmation and receipt. News of open positions reaches people who are familiar with our brand but maybe never thought about our company as a great place to work.
The perennial recruiting challenge: you seem to attract tons of candidates, but they lack the skills you need. According to the Job Preparedness Indicator, only about 17 percent of employers find candidates who present the skills they need to fill open positions.
To begin, take a closer look at your job descriptions. Do they accurately describe the skills and qualifications required? Are you asking for qualifications that are nonexistent or too lofty? Are you putting too much emphasis on the amount of experience or education?
Help candidates visualize the role by highlighting day-to-day tasks and skills necessary to do the job. Involve current team members in drafting these positions so they’re as accurate as possible.
Another opportunity to find great candidates is to source internally. Taking the time to train a hardworking, dedicated employee for an open position could be the right move, and it sends a message to all employees that the company is willing to invest in its employees.
Perhaps you’ve already experienced the disappointment of extending an offer to a candidate, only to find they’ve accepted another. Or, worse, the candidate is no longer interested. Top performers don’t stay on the market long, and the longer the time between interview and offer, the less excitement candidates can begin to feel about the position and your company.
With criticism sites like Glassdoor.com sharing firsthand accounts of a company’s hiring process, recruiters must consider the candidate experience. Take a moment to map out the experience at your organization, from the moment a prospect learns of a job opening to the end of the new hire process. This means getting everyone from recruiting coordinators to hiring managers on board with the process and timeline.
Is your application and interview process too lengthy? Do you set reasonable expectations for when a decision will be made? Do you let a candidate know when they’re no longer being considered? A Candidate Experience Awards Survey of 8,500 job seekers found that one of their biggest job complaints was an employer’s failure to communicate their status.
It’s easy to offer competitive salary, but the ability to offer a vibrant and engaging environment is a new benchmark for companies vying for top talent.
Employee perks are one area that can be used to create a work environment that empowers, motivates and enriches employees’ work experiences. Health benefits, flexible work schedules and education subsidies are some of the top perks companies offer to strengthen their commitment to employees and give them a competitive hiring advantage.
Another perk that’s getting increased attention is food. At GrubHub Seamless, we conducted a nationwide survey of nearly 1,100 full-time professionals. We found that 60 percent reported more food at the office would make them feel more valued and appreciated by their employer.
While free food all the time is unrealistic for most companies, the occasional catered meeting, pizza party or sweet treat can bring a smile to everyone’s faces, while also bringing them together to talk, collaborate and form meaningful relationships.
In our highly connected world, news about how companies treat their employees travels fast. If your company has had layoffs, cuts in compensation or general bad press, its “employer brand” may be suffering. Repairing the image may be necessary to get top talent to consider your company.
Look to your employees to help you with the effort. If your employees are happy, they’re more likely to help build new relationships for the company, share positive news and help with the recruiting process.
Consider a referral program as an incentive for your employees to bring in their contacts, who will most likely make excellent hires. Stay on top of employee engagement by conducting surveys or using other forums or vehicles to collect feedback and take action on what you learn so your people strategy remains focused on the areas of greatest impact.
Karen Miller is the Vice President of the People Team at GrubHub Seamless, the leading online food ordering service that makes it easy to feed the office where she is responsible for defining and executing Seamless’ people and HR strategies.
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]]> http://blog.brazencareerist.com/2013/12/03/5-simple-fixes-for-the-toughest-recruiting-challenges/feed/ 4The post 5 Powerful Ways to Recruit and Retain Top Talent appeared first on Brazen Life.
]]> Graduation is right around the corner, and for recruiters, that means a flood of resumes in your inbox. Among the score of applications, you’ll always receive one or two from real superstars who have exactly the skills you’re looking for… right?Maybe this happens at Google, but for most in-house recruiters, attracting the most talented workers is a whole new ball game these days. Relying on job boards, attending career fairs and having a standard “we’re hiring” message on your website just isn’t enough.
So here are five powerful tactics for finding all-star employees who want to stay the course and help the company grow:
Today’s digital world has created a recruiting environment centered around screens. Your organization will stand out if you get off your computer and attend live events to meet candidates. Having a face-to-face connection with a rising star will leave a lasting impression, while an email can easily be forgotten.
To determine what events to attend, think about who you are targeting, learn where they hang out and then go there. For instance, attend a local hackathon to find hard-to-reach tech geniuses. For harder-to-reach candidates like those in the emerging field of “big data,” you may need to think outside the box and host a special event that will draw in great candidates.
Collaborate with your marketing team to create innovative ways to announce job opportunities. For example, at Seamless, the online food ordering system where I serve as Vice President of the People Team, we include messages about joining our team when our customers interact with our service. They’re likely to see it even if they aren’t actively looking for a job.
By doing so, we’re putting a bug in the ears of people who are already familiar with us, but maybe never thought about our company as a great place to work. Infuse all of your outgoing communication with the message that you’re actively looking for candidates to extend your reach.
You may have a top-notch recruiting process in place, but if a supportive and dynamic company culture isn’t there to back it up, your efforts may be all for naught. Today’s prospective employees are looking for a workplace that’s fun as well as purposeful and fosters appreciation. When your employees are excited to go to work every day and find meaning in the work they do, they’ll share that with their friends and, in turn, provide you with a continuous flow of candidates.
Creating the type of environment in which today’s top talent wants to work requires investing in building their leadership skills, recognizing their accomplishments and rewarding hard work. In other words, it means helping build great careers. This will not only improve your recruiting efforts; it will also help your company retain the best employees.
The entire organization should be involved in bringing in top talent; it should not solely fall on your shoulders. Managers should feel responsible for building out their teams—and then engaging team members so they can continue to build new relationships for the company, attend live events to advertise and help creatively announce openings.
This may include using a referral program as an incentive for employees to bring in their contacts as well as encouraging them to tap their networks for potential leads. In all likelihood, those referrals will make excellent workers who want to stay with the company long-term.
At Seamless, we recently conducted a nationwide survey of nearly 1,100 professionals across more than a dozen different industries and found that employees highly value the perks their company offers. We learned that the presence of food (surprise, surprise!) can play an important role in motivating employees to spend more time in the office, work more effectively and view their workplace more positively. In fact, 60 percent reported that having more food at the office would make them feel more valued and appreciated.
While offering free food all the time may not be feasible for your company, you can show you care about your employees by hosting special birthday get-togethers or celebratory lunches.
Offering competitive salaries is nice, but the ability to nurture a vibrant and engaging environment will separate you from the competition and help you retain the best workers. In our highly connected world, news about the ways in which companies treat their employees travels fast—hopefully to the ears of a rising star considering a position within your company.
Karen Miller is the Vice President of the People Team at Seamless, the leading online food ordering service that makes it easy to feed the office, where she is responsible for defining and executing Seamless’s people and HR strategies. Karen has more than 15 years’ experience in organization development, including talent management, employee engagement, performance improvement, communication, facilitation, coaching and cultural transformation.
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