It’s 10 am on a Monday, you start your day flipping through those resumes sitting on your table. As you cover 50 resumes and the clock ticks to 3 pm, you’re still not satisfied. And as you sit there tired of the same old, traditional recruitment strategies, do you wish there was some way you could tweak it? There’s got to be something that you could do out-of-the-box, something to grab the right attention.
If you’re looking to attract the best talent, especially in highly competitive professional sectors like programming and engineering, you must employ inventive, out-of-the-box recruiting strategies. This entails taking a look at your current recruitment strategy and asking yourself the following questions:
What can we change about our recruitment strategy? What is the most effective method of recruiting new employees? What are my competitors in the market doing, and how do I beat them?
And this is where creative recruitment strategies enter the scene.
What is creative recruitment?
Creative recruitment is a new technique in talent acquisition that transforms our very understanding of hiring. Innovative recruitment strategies are advantageous for businesses that aim to attract better applicants while also sharing their corporate culture. It’s also a terrific way to get noticed, which is essential in this current market. According to the Society for Human Resource Management report, there are millions of unfilled job ads with low interest to fill them.
The traditional employee recruitment strategies involve:
- Preparing a job description
- Putting it on the internet
- Interviewing the top applicants who apply
While job boards may be an essential part of creative recruitment strategies, it doesn’t end there. You may quickly exceed your competition in the perspective of top talent by incorporating some unconventional recruiting ideas with aspects that signify the distinctiveness of your organization and business.
Why is creativity important in a recruitment process?
Creativity is vital in the recruitment process because it allows businesses to reach out to candidates even when challenging circumstances. It’s also helpful in locating people that suit your company’s culture, have a market edge over other candidates and have highly specialized talents.
For instance, with the onset of Covid-19, the United States has had a labour shortage, and there have been rumours of bidding wars for entry-level posts and suggestions to fill the vacancies with prison labour. By using recruiters, employers may preserve their usual operations and locate employees to pay reasonably. Even when the gloom of Covid is over, recruiters will be on hand to help their clients traverse complex social and economic concerns with innovative solutions.
Another example is the disclosure factor provided by GlassDoor and other websites that expose and rank business culture via the eyes of current and former employees. Furthermore, sites such as LinkedIn allow people inside businesses to connect naturally. Hence, companies need to employ creative recruiting ideas to get the best talent for their business and vice-versa.
Top 10 Creative Recruitment Strategies for 2022
The ability to think and act creatively is merely the first stage. After you devise your employee recruitment strategies, you should test, experiment and assess your creative recruitment strategies again and again until you find what works best for you.
If this appears to be a tricky task, don’t fret — we’re here to assist you. We’ve produced a list of 10 out-of-the-box recruiting strategies. Start with these, and you’ll soon witness long term gains.
1. Optimize Your Career Page
It’s essential to have a well-designed careers page, and it’s a necessary part of any recruitment strategy. For starters, prospects anticipate finding a careers page on your website. Second, it’s an excellent resource for promoting vacant positions, sharing content, and providing information about the company’s goal, culture, and benefits.
The career website should cover everything from the company’s basic principles to internal diversity data, honours they’ve received as an employer, and lots of options for applicants to understand more about the company and their career prospects.
2. Share Company Culture on Social
It’s one thing to have a strong company culture within your particular applicant pool, but it’s quite another to be renowned internationally as a fantastic place to work.
Using the power of social media for recruitment and to boost your employer brand is one creative recruitment strategy you can utilize to achieve this. Share engaging material, engage in public dialogues, encourage employees to share their experiences, and promote yourself and your principles. When done correctly, this creative recruitment strategy has the potential to deliver tremendous results for your company globally.
3. Create In-Depth Incredible Recruitment Content
Generating in-depth content about your business is an excellent method to provide prospects meaningful insight into your business that goes beyond the fundamentals. Many companies have begun to publish long-form blogs on various topics that applicants may be interested in learning about throughout the recruiting process.
Many businesses also make their open-source material available for everyone to use and replicate in their organizations. This creates a sense of belonging and goodwill for their business, enticing potential employees.
4. Film a Recruitment Video
While careers pages and generating website content are essential for developing your brand, videos may assist achieve the intended result much more quickly. You can use a video converter to change various video formats and utilize outlets like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to distribute your recruitment videos to a large audience instantly.
Using the aforementioned creative recruitment strategies in conjunction with the beautiful broadcasting channels available today, you’ll be able to compete with companies who employ television and radio to market their brand image continually, but at a fraction of the expense.
5. Utilize Niche Candidate Networks
Many hiring managers may advertise job openings on sites like Monster.com and Facebook. But have you thought about looking into other popular online networks that don’t often see these sorts of posts?
To locate the right fit, you may start a strategic Q&A podcast on Anchor, open a branded recruiting room on Clubhouse and host group interviews, or even employ sponsored advertising on local dating services like Hinge or Bumble.
6. Take Advantage of AI & Search Engine Tools
About 76% of hiring mangers believe that using AI in recruitment can bring in significant improvement in the quality of hiring. Similarly, using search engine tools helps in saving a lot of time for the recruiters.
However, ranking for anything on the first page of a Google search is a difficult task. There are, however, a few search engine techniques and tactics that can help you enhance your recruiting strategy without the help of an SEO expert. Because Google is the starting point for the majority of job searches, it must be an essential element of your hiring.
Google’s Job Search feature is an excellent approach to get your job ad in front of qualified people before they visit a website or job board. When prospects search for a specific job title, Google will compile a list of jobs in their region that match their search.
7. Boost your employee referral program
You can also make use of buzz and word-of-mouth to find talented people. Employ your employees to serve as brand ambassadors. This is especially useful if you are a young company.
Find relevant employees who breathe, eat, and exhale your goal – and provide them with the tools they need to promote your company’s vision and values. After all, if people enjoy their jobs, why wouldn’t they want to share their enthusiasm with others? Provide them with information to post on social media and in emails, and train them on how to talk about the firm when they’re out and about.
8. Re-engage qualified past candidates
Another great hiring strategy is looking to the past. Sometimes the best applicants are already in your ATS, or they are ex-employees. If you’re running out of options in your search for top talent, go to your ATS database. There is a potential treasure trove of pre-screened prospects who were previously interested enough in your company to apply for a position.
Sort through your ATS to locate people that fit the bill, and then follow up with them to see if they’re still interested. Alternatively, if you’re feeling daring, contact former employees to see if they’d be interested in making a return.
9. Conduct Virtual Job Fairs
Through video chat, messaging applications, or virtual presentations, you can now pitch your company and job vacancies at fairs and universities all around the world.
While being personally there to speak with prospects is preferable, virtual access to these job fairs allows you to interact with substantially more candidates. When it comes to hiring strategies, quantity is undoubtedly an attractive choice for recruiters trying to fill their prospect pools with future recruits.
10. Use College Newspapers
While this creative recruitment strategy is geographically limiting, consider advertising in the college newspaper and on the university’s website if you’re looking to recruit in a college town. Alternatively, you can also collaborate with local sororities and fraternities to spread the message.
To sum it up
Sure, recruitment is more complex than ever, but it’s much more difficult for hiring teams who are stuck with outdated hiring strategies and technologies. Jobs are plenty these days therefore yours needs to stand out from the crowd.
That’s where creative thinking and out-of-the-box recruiting strategies like text messaging and recruitment automation come in, and the benefit isn’t limited to large corporations. Improving or upgrading your recruiting system can help you attract more applications. Be inventive, try out different channels, and figure out what works.
