Employee Journey Series: Recruitment Best Practices

The employee journey is a five-stage process that every single employee goes through at your company. These stages are:

• Recruitment
• Onboarding
• Engagement
• Development
• Separation

From the first time they read about your company on social media to the last day of their tenure, organizations need to plan for each stage and employee milestone so that employees feel like they’re continuously learning, improving, and contributing.

In this blog series, we’re going to break down each stage into greater detail so that you have the inspiration you need when you’re planning your own employee journey strategy. In this post, we’re going to talk about employee recruitment strategies.

Understanding Employee Recruitment

The recruitment stage of the employee journey encompasses everything from the first time a potential employee hears about your company to the day that they’re hired. This is a vital stage because it sets the stage with powerful first impressions that your employees will carry with them as they start their jobs.

Recruitment is all about getting people excited to work for your organization by spotlighting your culture, benefits, and people. Social media platforms, job board websites, and similar digital mediums are great for this.

Your recruitment strategy should have a fully planned job posting and interview process, where each job application is written accurately and well, and where each interviewee has a pleasant and educational experience.

But enough of the high-level stuff—let’s dive into the nitty gritty recruitment strategies and best practices you need to hire the best fit for your openings.

9 Recruitment Strategies to Be the Best Recruiter

1. Utilize Social Media to Spread Your Brand

Social media is the easiest way to spread the word about your business and culture. It’s a great way to show off cool events, amazing employees, industry insights, and more. Yes, it’s important to use these platforms to share your job postings far and wide, but it’s even more important to give applicants a peek into what it means to be a part of your company.

If you assume that applicants don’t research a company before applying, you’re wrong—a stunning 75% of people research an organization’s brand before applying to their open jobs.

2. Incentivize Employee Reviews

Another source of applicant information is job board sites, such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and Glassdoor. Employee reviews on these sites are worth their metaphorical weight in metaphorical gold because they show potential employees what it’s like to work at your organization (without the lens of social media marketing).

One great way to get more employee reviews is to incentivize participation through an incentive program. Offer employees cash or points for each review they leave on these sites. However, keep in mind that they need to be totally honest—if employees feel like they can’t leave honest reviews, the impact of this strategy is eliminated.

That means you have to create a culture that employees genuinely enjoy so that they’ll leave genuinely positive reviews.

3. Create a Compelling Company Page

The last source of information you should build out for potential employees to research is your company page. Don’t neglect the “About Us” or “Careers” pages on your site—instead, build them out to be informative, accurate, and easy to understand.

Show off some of the perks and benefits your organization offers, along with promoting your mission and brand, and use imagery and text to give people a taste of your culture. 

4. Set Up an Employee Referral Program

Another way to utilize your existing talent to recruit more talent is with an employee referral program. According to one survey, 62% of organizations with these programs have reduced their average time to fill positions, and employees hired this way stay for 70% longer.

To set up an effective employee referral program, there are three steps you should follow:

1. Incentivize participation with things like cash, points, extra PTO, or the like
2. Provide feedback during the hiring process to those who referred someone so that they know they’re referral is being taken seriously
3. Recognize those who use the referral program with a shoutout or something similar to show your gratitude

5. Partner With Local Universities

Get young, talented people who are excited about their careers by partnering with local universities. Host events that students can attend at your office, implement an internship program, and show the students concrete career paths to show that their futures are bright.

Another similar strategy is to host and attend job fairs. Send an effective team of HR staff, managers, or whoever will be effective to contact students, spread the word, and get future talent thinking about your organization and the opportunities you can offer.

6. Empower Internal Mobility

By upskilling existing employees to fill your talent gaps, you’ll save money and time during the recruitment process. 

This should be more than simply posting jobs to an internal job board or communication app. Build out strategies to truly upskill your employees in ways that they are passionate about. Be open to horizontal and diagonal moves, and empower your people to follow the responsibilities and careers that they’re most interested in.

7. Write Accurate and Informative Job Postings

Job postings are often the first thing that people read after they get serious about looking for a new job. Before researching any companies, they see what options are available to them. That’s why you should never settle for a haphazard posting written by a manager with a dozen other things on their plate.

Instead, have a member of the hiring team work with the manager of the open position to create an accurate, organized, and concise posting that:

• Shares a little about the company
• Explains the job responsibilities in as much detail as possible
• Goes over benefits and perks to look forward to
• Is transparent with a salary range and work requirements

8. Improve Your Interview Process

Do you have a set interview process? If not, you definitely need one. The interview process is the first time applicants interact with your company, and it needs to leave a good impression. Here are some strategies to improving your interview process:

• Ensure initial interviewers (during phone interviews or video calls) are knowledgeable about the job so that they can answer candidate questions
• Be ready to share more about the salary range you’re willing to pay
• Set up a schedule of communication so that no candidate has to wait long to hear about next steps
• Ensure candidates’ first in-office experience is positive—provide drinks or snacks, make sure they have close parking, let them meet their future manager, etc.
• Recognize applicants with a genuine thank you card after the interview (mailed or handed to them in person)

Candidates should never leave the interview process with a bitter taste in their mouth. Make sure they’re comfortable, they get their questions answered, and they don’t wait to hear whether they’ve been hired or not. If not, share strengths with them and kindly share potential gaps in their experience that they could target before inviting them to apply again in the future.

9. Promote Diversity and Avoid Bias

Everyone knows that it’s important to hire the best candidate for the job. To that end, do all that you can to avoid bias, nepotism, and similar mindsets that can cause you to unknowingly miss out on top talent.

Use diverse language in job descriptions, standardize your interview process for every applicant, and potentially ask applicants to participate in a work sample test, giving you an unbiased slice of work to compare to other applicants.

Using Technology in Recruitment

With the above employee recruitment strategies in mind, you should also know about the modern tools that make recruitment easier than it’s ever been. These tools can help you modernize your process and make things easier for your hiring team:

• Applicant Tracking System (ATS). An ATS is a software that helps you store and organize applicant information in a secure way. These platforms help everyone involved collaborate and stay up to date during the hiring process.
• Psychometric tests. These test an applicant’s aptitude, skills, and personality to ensure that you interview and eventually hire the best people for your job opening and culture. They shouldn’t be the end all be all, but they can help you get a good idea of candidates’ personalities.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is still in its infancy, but you can still use it to automate your hiring processes by identifying candidates in your ATS that best fit your requirements. Just don’t let AI accidentally eliminate candidates with unique experiences or non-traditional backgrounds.
• Recognition programs. A recognition platform like Awardco streamline many of your recruitment strategies, such as employee referral programs, candidate recognition, and internal mobility. Contact us to learn more about how!

Start the Employee Journey Off on the Right Foot

Recruitment is the first true experience any candidate has with your company. By making sure this impression is positive, accurate, and informative, you can attract the best talent while finding the best fit for your particular needs. Hopefully, these recruitment strategies help you level up your processes!