Creative Recruiting Strategies for Today
Recruiting has become a significant challenge for many employers, and professional recruiters must be more creative to find top talent. MRA – The Management Association helps hundreds of organizations across the Midwest find quality talent for their open roles, and has some ideas that are working for organizations, both large and small, to bring in the best talent.
External Recruiting Ideas
- Host in-house career fairs. Let people take a tour and learn about your company openings and benefits in a more relaxed environment.
- Purchase booth space at local festivals and county fairs. While this may produce less traffic than the larger events, the rental costs are much lower.
- Check local business news, trade, and professional publications to see what companies are doing. If a company is laying off, contact the HR person at that company and offer to conduct interviews on the spot.
Online Recruiting Ideas
- Include a careers page on your website that features open positions, your culture, and gives an opportunity to apply online. Many low-cost Applicant Tracking Systems offer career page extensions at no additional cost.
- Elevate your job postings or careers page with a 1 to 2-minute video showing a “day in the life.” With just a smartphone, you can create a video worth more than a thousand words.
- Encourage your team to use LinkedIn to ask other people in your “network” and “groups” whom they know to expand your reach.
- Make job postings marketing-focused and sell candidates on your company. What’s in it for them?
- Utilize free job boards and sites such as the workforce development center (some counties have their own, in addition to state boards), and university/tech school career service department sites.
- Use university alumni associations – they may offer a website or email service specifically for postings.
- Contact industry experts for paid postings on major sites like LinkedIn and Indeed, sponsorship can get expensive if not monitored correctly.
College Campus/Tech School Recruiting
- Attend career fairs at colleges and technical schools. Often alumni or community members will also attend.
- Contact college instructors who teach courses for specifically needed skills. They are always looking for guest speakers and want to know they’re teaching relevant information. Information can be found easily on most school websites.
- Present to universities and technical schools to increase your brand awareness on campus and improve the number of resumes you receive. Typically, these discussions are industry-focused on a particular course of study – not on your company.
Ongoing Recruiting
- Start an employee referral bonus program. That can include a bonus for the referral and referee!
- Keep track of how your interviewees and hires found your posting. Not only will this help you know where good postings are, but it will help you reduce expenses by cutting out the sources that don’t work.
- Develop and utilize an ongoing internship program for high school, technical school, and university students. This could cut your expenses and groom a loyal workforce.
- Work with Hiring Managers to determine transferrable skills for ongoing openings. With the changing labor market, you never know where your next hire could come from.
It’s time to make recruiting creative and fun to attract the right talent! MRA can help. Contact our dedicated Recruiting team at [email protected]
SOURCE: Kathy Seidel, PHR, CDR, Manager, Recruiting Services for MRA—The Management Association.
