How to Make Great Candidates Come to You

Recruiting is increasingly competitive and challenging these days with it being so heavily an employee’s market and with more recruiters operating than ever before. When it comes to finding the best candidates, it seems like a dream that they might just come to you, but there are a number of steps you can take to improve your odds of attracting the right applicants.

Develop a Marketer’s Mindset

Marketers are trained and practiced in the art of bringing people in. As the job market continues to tighten, more and more companies are implementing recruitment marketing strategies to target potential hires. It’s a simple concept: Make use of the same approaches marketers have used successfully for decades, but target candidates rather than consumers. This could include a number of different things from making greater efforts to get to know candidates and customizing the candidate experience to social media campaigns and implementation of the AIDA model (attention, interest, desire, and action).

Reach Out to Where Your Candidates Are

If you want to get more of the best talent to come to you, make contact with them where they are. Text messages overall have a 98% response rate, and people are almost always near their phones. The mobile part of today’s job market uses the smartphone for business. Only 12% of millennials and 29% of Gen Xers prefer phone conversations for business communications. Members of these two generations make up more than two-thirds of the current workforce. Indeed, recruiters and hiring departments are increasingly using text messages to conduct interviews as this method is preferred by candidates.

Understand the Passive Candidate Market

The largest part of the candidate pool is made up of people who are not actively looking for new jobs but who are open to potential new opportunities. These are passive candidates, one of the best performing pools for recruiters. In today’s job market, passive candidate recruiting is absolutely necessary for those who want to maximize the potential of their business.

Use Your Employee Advocates

The most effective channel for recruiting is referrals by previous placements and hires. There is no marketing method as trustworthy for candidates as a recommendation from a friend. As many as 30% of hires come from employee referrals. Recruiters who are not making use of their potential employee advocates are missing an enormous opportunity to engage with candidates.

Simplify, and Keep It Simple

If you want to have candidates reach out to you, easy is the name of the game. The whole of the recruitment process should be as seamless as possible. This is especially true for targeting passive candidates as they are more or less content in their current positions. They are likely to give up on the new position if they cannot get through it simply and efficiently. Your career site and any job descriptions should be clear and accurate. Candidates who reach out should hear from you quickly regardless of whether the initial communication was via text, email, social media, or another platform.

Employ the Right Technologies

Advancements in technology are improving the recruiting process, assisting with tracking candidates and simplifying the jobs of recruiters. Resume tracking software, talent acquisition software, and applicant tracking systems can help you identify and secure the best talent. Text messaging and other communication can be scheduled and employed automatically. Social media, too, is a great place to find candidates and should be a part of your efforts. Automation software and ATS systems can help you implement a strategy across media to increase the number of candidates who come to you.