In my recent piece, I shared about the dividends paid by planning, crafting and shaping a fully evolved job profile as opposed to a tired, list like job description to be truly clear about WHAT you are recruiting for.
Traditionally, smaller businesses have jumped straight to advertising following a very siloed and singular approach; an ad on a industry job board, a tried and tested recruitment agency or putting the word out. None of this essentially wrong, but often yields little or no relative successes, leaving us questioning our actions as business owners later down the line when a new recruit “just doesn’t work out”.
The potential cost of a tribunal case far outweighs any spend on recruiting differently, so which tack is right for you?
The greatest successes I have seen, are when owners/recruiting managers what I call a “blended” approach to recruiting. One size cannot possibly fit all, just like your customers and clients who have differing needs so do candidates along with their career expectations. Roles move on, businesses evolve, the job market changes and technology brings more recruiting options than ever before. From a highly dispersed agency market which at last count has more than 27,000 registered agencies to a vast job board market being disrupted by Job Apps.
Just as you would seek out customers to understand who they are an what you can sell to them, the same is true of candidates. I believe this is why the industry has seen an evolution in the partnering of marketing and recruitment teams which has been long established for products. On the flip side think carefully how your customers purchase from you, they use a far more fragmented approach to buying and these patterns are seen in candidate search behaviour.
Smaller businesses can flex their ability to sell quickly and nimbly, not having to wade through organisational “red” tape to engage differently with potential employees. Playing to this strength using your service model you can indeed find the right talent at the right time. Often in SME’s recruitment is about single digit sourcing, so long term investment ATS (Application Tracking systems) or platforms are just not viable.
Much like a pop up restaurant that combines amazing taste sensations with a highly attuned interior aesthetic it is this combined experience that leaves you wanting to return. Recruitment is no different, pick and choose the best and most relevant ingredients that uniquely match your business and give the best balance. There are a myriad of recruitment ingredients and here are just some of the channels that you can begin to think about how you might apply them to your business:
Internal – Succession planning, referral programmes, employee platforms and talent pipelines
External – Advertising both paid and organic, social, digital, your own website, Apps, specialist agency, print media
Some of those most overlooked are succession planning, referrals and pipelines as it is presumed you need both resource, time and money. This is not necessarily the case, independent specialists and/or external providers such as The Hoxby Collective have expertise that can evaluate, identify, shape and deliver to the scale you need. It’s not to say that the more established ways of finding talent but its has to work for your business and doesn’t need to be quite so black and white. If your business demands that you think differently about recruiting, an independent consultant not tethered by agreements and relationships can work with you providing invaluable insights into how each and every channel performs individually and together you can secure the best talent match to your companies values, team dynamics and job need.
Photo courtesy of Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash
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