Connecting with top talent is getting harder every day. We look at three corporate recruitment strategies that can help you win the war for talent in 2020.
The unemployment rate dropped to an incredible 3.6 percent last month according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the lowest rate since 1969. Corporate recruiters in search of talent know that hiring in a tight labor market is anything but easy and hiring becomes even more challenging for positions that require higher levels of skill. In addition to this, the skills gap across the American workforce is real and growing, especially as the labor market continues to shrink.
So how can corporate recruitersOpens a new window respond to a market where talent is increasingly elusive?
Fortunately, there are a few innovative corporate recruitment strategies that can help you land top talent without having to break the bank. But before we dive into the strategies, lets take a look at what a corporate recruiting strategy means.
Table of Contents:
- What is a Corporate Recruiting Strategy
- 3 Innovative Corporate Recruitment Strategies for 2020
- Key Takeaways
What is a Corporate Recruiting Strategy?
A corporate recruiting strategy can be defined as a formal plan of action that involves finding and hiring the best-fit candidate for an open position from outside or within the organization in a timely and cost-effective manner. A key difference between corporate recruitment and staffing is that corporate recruitment applies to internal recruitment or HR recruitment that is performed within an organization, and the term staffing can be applied to recruitment that is performed internally (inhouse) or outsourced to an agency.
For example, if an organization needs data scientists, the HR team or department within the organization will create a plan to identify, target, and persuade data scientists to come and work for the organization.
Although real corporate recruitment strategies are a tad more elaborate than the three steps listed above, these steps are essential to all recruiting efforts.
Learn more: What is Full Cycle Recruiting? Definition, Process and Best PracticesOpens a new window
3 Innovative Corporate Recruitment Strategies for 2020
So, now that weve established the basics, well take a closer look at how some of the leading companies in the world take an innovative approach to hiring top talent. Here are three innovative corporate recruitment strategies for forward-looking organizations:
The launch of the first smartphone, 12 years ago, changed how the world went on the web. From desktops and laptops, people moved to the comfort of their smartphone apps and browsers. Today, smartphone penetration in the U.S. stands at nearly 72 percentOpens a new window , with 73 percent in the 50-64 age group owning at least one smartphone and 94 percent of people under 29 years owning a smartphone. This makes it crucial for corporate recruiters to leverage smartphone and social apps as a recruitment channelOpens a new window to tap into a wider talent pool.
Lets start at the very beginning of your recruitment campaign. When marketing your jobs to your talent pool, what people are you targeting? Is it millennials, Gen Zers, or baby boomers? If you are hiring early career professionals, then social media is the best place to meet them. And alternatively, if youre instead hiring for senior roles and targeting baby boomers, programmatic recruitment advertising campaigns will be your best bet. In either case, it is safe to assume that most candidates will respond to your job marketing advertisements from their smartphones. So, it is crucial that you have a mobile-responsive career page, text messaging services, or an app through which candidates can apply for open positions seamlessly through their smartphones. Dedicated mobile recruiting software can help you segment and target your audience based on open positions.
A great example of a brand reaching out to its talent pool through an innovative smartphone strategy is McDonalds recent Snapchat campaignOpens a new window . The fast-food chain wanted to attract millennials looking for work in Canada, so, it created a Snapchat recruitment campaign that would allow candidates to apply (or Snapply) through the Snapchat app. McDonalds calls these applications Snapplications, that lets candidates upload a 30-second video resume that can be easily shared with the companys Canadian hiring portal. The campaign launched last month in Canada is not McDonalds first social outing. The company had launched a similar campaign in the U.S. and Australia, back in 2017Opens a new window . The company that positions itself as the best first employer for Americans, walked the talk when it came to engaging with younger, tech-savvy candidates.
McDonalds Snapplication is a part of its larger mobile-first strategy (McDelivery, Mobile Rewards, Mobile Ordering, MyMcD app, etc.) that aims at keeping the brand fresh and relevant to its employee- and consumer-base.
Goldman Sachs, the major investment bank, also experimented with an advertising campaign on the music streaming app, Spotify, to lure younger candidates to apply for jobs at the bank. The campaign which was launched in both the US and the UK in 2016, directed candidates to the banks careers quizOpens a new window that helped candidates explore roles that were best suited for them. Goldman Sachs had earlier also worked with Snapchat and Vox Media to cast a wider recruiting net and attract younger employees.
Learn more: What is recruitment? Definition, process, techniques and methods with examples for 2020Opens a new window
What do Steve Jobs, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan all have in common? Each of these celebrities left their jobs and later returned to their former employers under new conditions. Call them boomerang employees or comeback kids, these employees form a talent pool that organizations facing a skills and talent gap cannot ignore.
A study by Kronos found that 76 percentOpens a new window of the professionals surveyed were more accepting of hiring boomerang employees today that in the past and nearly 40 percent of employees said they would consider going back to their former employer. From a recruiters perspective, boomerang employees bring solid value to the table, considering it is much cheaper to hire, onboard, and train them than new employees. Moreover, you know your former employees personally, and it is much easier to reach them and establish contact than strangers who respond to your job ads. Returning employees are also a crucial part of the overall work culture they boost company morale and drive increased loyalty.
When creating your boomerang program, ensure that your target the right employees. After all, you dont want to be rehiring employees you were glad to see go. Kronos on its careers site, encourages former employees to apply and explore open positions. Want to come back to Kronos? The door is open, the company says. If your ideal career opportunity knocks twice at Kronos, we invite you to answer the door. We openly welcome high-performing former employees to rejoin our workforce.
Organizations like Kronos realize that there has been a profound shift in the employee-employer relationship. From employers holding the bargaining chip in the relationship providing employment, and deciding wages, the equation has now changed to employees enjoying more influence in the recruiting process. Even traditionally conservative firms like management consultancies are now open to hiring former employees.
However, for your boomerang recruitment strategy to really takeoff, you need lots of data. Especially exit interviews. Data from exit interviews could prove to be invaluable when re-hiring former employees. If you have an employee exit survey software, collating and analyzing this data can help you understand the key motivators behind an employees exit and their subsequent desire to come back. So, before you begin your boomerang campaign, be sure to tap into your exit interview data.
While campus recruitment might not be considered innovative by many, new technology solutions and tools put a whole new spin on-campus recruitment. With nearly 20 million students enrolled in college in 2018Opens a new window , the sheer volume of the talent pool makes campus recruitment a must-have strategy for forward-looking organizations.
By creating career pages designed specifically for recent graduates, to giving students a VR tour around your office from a career fair, HR technology has transformed how employers go about campus recruiting. Companies like Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Black Rock have dedicated graduate applications career pages to attract and hire fresh graduates. Adding integrations like AI-chatbots to student career sites can also help deliver a strong branding message to prospective employees. Many recruitment solutions available in the market today also allow recruiters to set up engagement workflows that leverage career sites, email marketing, and text messaging to build and nurture graduate relationships.
A well-planned and executed campus recruitment strategy can go a long way to ensure better recruiting ROI and improve key hiring metrics.
Learn more: Top 10 Recruitment Software and Tools for 2020Opens a new window
Key Takeaways
Lets face it corporate recruitment has never been as challenging and complicated it is today. If you want to attract and hire top talent at your organization, you need to be creative and take a new, innovative approach to recruitment.
Doing so not only helps build your employer brand but also demonstrates to prospective candidates that youre an exciting organization to work for, and that you embrace technology and prioritize the candidate experience.
Use these three innovative corporate recruitment strategies to refresh your hiring process and snag top talent before it gets away.
What recruitment innovations have you rolled out in your organization? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , LinkedInOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window Were always listening.