STRATEGIC RECRUITING

Strategic recruiting is an approach to winning the best talent based on three

components: employer branding, recruitment-directed marketing, and skilled
selling. Combined, these components create effective responses to dynamic
market conditions in support of an organization’s strategic objectives.
Guidelines for Creating a Strategic Recruitment Plan:

 Well Defined Strategy. Develop a well-defined and communicated

recruiting strategy based on a clear understanding of your organization’s
values and vision for the future. Include your brand messages, target
candidates, primary sources, and most effective marketing and closing
tactics. This helps ensure closer alignment between candidates and your
corporate culture.

 Strong Employment Brand. The external image you present has the
highest impact and longest-term effect of anything you do related to
recruiting. You should make it easy for potential candidates to read, hear,
or see why they should consider working for you. Candidates are a key
audience you need to market your message to regularly. Pay attention to
what your message and value-proposition are, how you communicate
them, and what specific segment of the talent market you are trying to
attract. It’s only the organizations with a poor image that suffer a talent
shortage. Build a positive, compelling image and you’re likely to have a
surplus of top talent eager to work for you.

 Prioritized Jobs and Targets. Strategic recruiting processes maximize

the use of resources by identifying and focusing on the positions with the
highest business impact. This usually means revenue-producing and
revenue-impacting jobs, and roles in high margin and rapid-growth
business units. Your processes should also target high-impact individuals
like top performers, innovators, influencers, and game-changers.

 Effective Sourcing. Sourcing is the most critical element after

employment branding. If your sourcing doesn’t attract top performers, you
can’t make a quality hire. The most effective source is employee referrals.
Make sure you develop a referral program with a reward that motivates
employees to refer good people. Recruiting at professional events is also
an excellent way to find top talent. Whatever your means of sourcing,
make sure it’s appropriate for the particular position. You should use
various sourcing tactics depending on the individual, locale and other
factors, targeting both “non-lookers” who may be happily employed at
competitors or elsewhere as well as candidates who are actively looking.
 Effective sourcing saves time and money on candidate screening and the
high cost of weak hires.

 Talent Pipeline / Recruiting Culture. Like every good salesperson, build

a continuous “talent pipeline” of applicants you might want to hire in the
future. Build your pipeline with impressive people you meet or hear about
in a “pre-need” approach that includes workforce planning, employer
branding, and continuous sourcing. Your pipeline should be part of a
companywide “recruiting culture,” where every employee is an active talent
scout, spreading your employment brand and identifying possible future
candidates as they interact in the community. The very best candidates are
in demand. When every employee contributes to your pipeline, you gain a
competitive edge in getting to the right people quickly.

 Speedy Decisions. It’s worth emphasizing that candidates in high demand

have many choices. When the right people decide to change jobs you
need to be ready to hire them, even if you don’t have quite the right role
defined. Build flexibility into your hiring decision process so that you can
hire on their decision timetable, not yours.

 Data-based Decisions and Metrics. Making decisions based on objective

data rather than on emotion, intuition, or “we’ve-always-done-it-this-way”
practices helps eliminate biases and produce more consistent, high-quality
hires and outcomes. Similar benefits result when you put metrics and
rewards on key aspects of recruiting. When managers are measured,
recognized, and rewarded for their contributions, and results are converted
to the manager’s revenue and profit, recruiting dramatically improves—and
processes are meticulously followed. Using metrics/assessments also
sends a clear message about the importance of recruiting and its business
impact on revenue goals and cost reductions. Marketing made the switch
to a data model, recruitment must too.

 Technology-based Processes. The best recruiting processes, in all of

their aspects, are based heavily on technology and the internet.
Technology can improve screening, increase decision-making speed, cut
costs, and enable global hiring. It gives you the ability to do market
research to identify the particulars of your recruiting segments and targets
and then customize marketing and communication based on the data.
Technology also gives you the capability to offer candidates remote work
options, giving you a distinct competitive advantage, especially with
younger generations who prize that kind of flexibility.
 Candidate-centric Focus. The primary reason candidates reject job offers
is because of the way they were treated during the hiring process. Hiring
managers and recruiters need to be laser-focused on creating a positive
end-to-end experience for diverse candidates. A significant part of
recruiting is “selling” candidates on why they should apply for and accept a
position with you; another part is building trusted relationships.
Throughout, communication should be clear and frequent; processes
smooth and easy; and interactions personal and respectful. Treat every
candidate as you would your best prospect or customer or, better, how
you’d want to be treated yourself. After the hiring decision is made, make
certain that the positive experience continues with a thoughtful onboarding
process that ensures your new employee feels welcome, important,
confident, and ready to make a meaningful and near immediate
contribution to your productivity.