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Digital Recruitment Service Strategies
Almost 4.4 billion people use the internet and only a fraction have ever used a digital recruitment service strategy. The reasons they use it vary from contacting friends, shopping, or booking travel plans. Looking for a job is no exception. 79% of job seekers use online resources and information to help their job search. This means that as an employer, in order to find the best candidates, you need to be online. The competition for quality job candidates is growing every day. Recruiters for jobs can no longer simply post job vacancies on job boards to find the right people. This article is going to discuss how you can build a digital recruitment service strategy.
What is Digital Recruitment?
Digital recruitment refers to the use of technology and the internet to find, attract, analyze, select, and hire job candidates. This includes online job board advertising, posting on career websites, mobile recruiting, using online assessments, and social recruiting. Many companies utilize one or a couple of these tactics, but do not have a true digital recruitment service strategy.
These days, recruiters for jobs are utilizing more marketing tactics than they are traditional HR processes. This starts with thinking of candidates how marketers think of customers. Then, recruiters should use this to create an ideal candidate persona. From there, you can determine the best way to attract these ideal candidates. Recruiters for jobs may actually find teaming up with the marketing department beneficial. Likely, they are already using some of the tools that you may need. Plus, you can help each other achieve your objectives.
Advantages of Digital Recruitment
Recruiters will gain a more extensive reach by utilizing digital recruiting processes. Using digital tools, you can reach potential workers outside of your geographic area. Plus, you can reach passive candidates who may not be actively looking for a job.
Automating parts of the recruitment process, such as HR outsourcing, will increase the efficiency of the recruiting process. From finding, selecting, and hiring employees, this can all be automated, saving you significant time.
Setting up a fully optimized digital recruitment strategy will cost both time and money. However, your ROI is typically higher than when using traditional methods. When used effectively, companies can expect to hire top candidates in a shorter time period.
Tips for Building a Digital Recruitment Strategy
Create Relevant Content
Having a profile of your ideal job candidate will help recruiters for jobs come up with what content they should be creating. For example, if you are specifically looking for people of a certain generation, your approach should be tailored to them. Their online habits, interests outside work, general lifestyles, and expected income are just some things to consider. The more research you can do into them and their interests, the better you can target your content. In general, one of the most enticing pieces of information to include is testimonials from current employees. You can also publish salary reports for people within your industry and post exciting, relevant industry news.
Next, you will want to decide where the best place is to share your content. Having quality content will only be as effective as where you share it. Where is your ideal candidate going to look for information on your company? Some options are your company website, your social media profiles, your email newsletter, or external blogs. For assistance in creating effective content, SEO Design Chicago is here to help!
Have a Social Media Strategy
If you don’t yet have a social media presence, or you don’t update it regularly, you need to start now. Employers who started using social media in the recruitment process saw a 49% improvement in candidate quality.
This also goes back to who you are looking to recruit. For example, if you are looking to hire Millennials having a strong online brand is extremely important. Up to 80% of Millennials look for a good “culture fit” before sending an application to potential employers. Give these candidates an idea of what working for your company is like. Videos and images are some of the best ways to capture their attention.
To directly target your ideal candidate, utilize the targeting capabilities on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook’s targeting tools allow you to get very specific. This can really work to your advantage. In addition, Facebook and LinkedIn both offer guides that can help you get started with targeting your audience.
Social media is also a great way to attract passive candidates. These are people who have a job right now but may be casually looking for another job opportunity. They may be looking for more responsibility, a more attractive work environment, or higher pay. Through your social media, you can show them what your company culture looks like and how they fit into it.
Over time, you can analyze which platforms are giving you the best results and tailor your approach accordingly.
Think About the Candidate’s Experience
Many recruiters for jobs get caught up thinking about how to make this the most efficient experience for them. In doing so, they neglect to think about the candidate’s experience. Digital recruiting processes should be established to make the recruiting process as efficient as possible, for both the recruiters and for the candidates. Recruiters for jobs should go through the application and selection process themselves, so they can understand the candidate’s experience.
One aspect of this is ensuring your career site is optimized for mobile devices. Almost 90% of job seekers think mobile devices are critical to job hunting, while only 20% of employers say their career site is mobile optimized. It should not be hard for a candidate to find information about the job vacancy or get through the application process on their mobile device. If it is, they will simply go to the next job posting.
Similarly, if your career website requires a long questionnaire, this should be streamlined at once. Candidates much prefer a quick application process that doesn’t take a lot of time to fill out. Plus, a longer application process generally increases your bounce rate.
There are other general guidelines recruiters for jobs should follow to ensure candidates have the best overall experience. The first is communicating with the applicants clearly and regularly. This will show that you have respect for them and help you build a rapport. You should also provide updates about the status of their application. Tell them whether they have made it to the next round or not. They should never be confused about where they stand in the process. Lastly, stick to your hiring timeline.
Consider Your Reputation
Reputation is everything. This is not just about your reputation as a company overall. Your reputation specifically as an employer is vital to getting high-quality candidates. This is another area where marketing and HR may overlap.
You should first create a strong employer brand online. Make sure your content and messaging are consistent on all of your online platforms. This will help you build a stronger, more memorable brand for potential employees. Make sure your photos are current, all relevant links work, and the description of your business is 100% accurate. Creating cohesive branding across platforms will also eliminate any possible confusion.
Managing your reviews is also important to maintaining your reputation. Just like you can get customer reviews, you can get employee reviews. Ignoring a negative employee review is not the best approach. You obviously don’t want to start an argument with them or reply passive-aggressively. Still, show them that you read it and you heard what they were saying. This is a chance for you to emphasize your commitment to constantly improving. It will show anyone who reads it that you listen to what employees say and you are committed to rectifying issues.
Create Feedback Loops
Recruiters for jobs should not be afraid of asking candidates what they think about the process overall. Encourage them to share their comments and opinions, positive or negative. This will give you a starting point for how to improve and continue refining your digital recruitment strategy. This should not be a one-time process. It should be continuous as you keep posting job openings.
Track Recruitment Metrics
You cannot improve what you don’t measure. To continue optimizing your digital recruiting processes, decide on what your performance indicators will be. Is the goal to improve the quality of new hires? Perhaps it is to gain more applicants for each job opening? Is it to improve your reputation as an employer? Setting specific objectives will allow you to continue to improve your digital recruitment strategy.
Be Prepared for What’s Next
Many employers have had to adjust to the rise in popularity of video interviews. Luckily, these save both time and money for recruiters. Allowing candidates to interview from their home, or wherever else is convenient, saves both you and them time. There are so many services available now like Skype, Google Hangouts, and Microsoft Teams that make this extremely easy.
Other new technology may not offer the obvious benefits that video interviews have. However, they are still going to be important for recruiters for jobs to utilize. Keeping up with these advancing technologies will help you stay ahead of the game. Virtual reality has been used as a way to offer candidates more exciting and engaging content. It also shows the candidate that the company is innovative and creative. Artificial intelligence has also been used to reduce some of the burden on recruiters. It can be used to review previous applicants to determine whether they may be a fit for a job. When dealing with large volumes of applicants, it can be used to quickly scan applications for keywords and experience.
Digital recruitment service strategies are not one size fits all. Your geographic location, your industry, and the size of your company will drive what strategies you should be using. Reach out to SEO Design Chicago for help with any step of implementing your digital recruitment strategy.
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