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If you’re a recruiter, you know how it feels to work with your hair on fire.
You’ve come in to work to find a laundry list of open requisitions – but you rolled up your sleeves and made some magic happen. You’ve filled placements on a tight timeline and made great submissions that wow’ed clients.
But if you’re like most recruiters, there are days when it’s just too much.
When you have way too many open requisitions…and you’re tired of working overtime and skipping lunch.
When you have a hard to fill position, and you can’t find the qualified candidates.
This has become the norm in the recruiting industry…but it doesn’t have to be that way.
If you’re struggling with finding qualified candidates or a high volume of reqs, here are three tips you can put into action today.
Get Active on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is more than a channel to reach candidates. It’s a platform to showcase your industry expertise and demonstrate that you can relate to candidate’s concerns. The best recruiters post actively on LinkedIn, commenting on trends in the industry and offering their opinion on relevant issues.
You should not use your update status to pitch jobs! Most audiences will think of this as spam and learn to tune you out. Instead, focus on writing quick updates and posting short videos and offering your opinion on current events.
You want candidates to see that you’re a real human being and understand their concerns. If you do this, you’ll get a lot more responses to your messages.
Get Creative With Your Outreach
We all know that LinkedIn, emails, and candidate databases don’t always do the trick. If you’re not able to surface enough candidates through the traditional methods, you might want to try Instagram or Twitter.
Don’t be afraid to get creative with your messages, either. Sometimes standing out from the pack and enticing a candidate to read your message means thinking outside the box. One of our biggest tips to new recruiters is to read through the candidate’s whole profile and comment on some of their achievements. This shows that you’re interested in them personally, not just every candidate with the right keywords in the tri-county area.
Don’t Forget to Sell the Position in the Job Description
There’s a lot of terrible job descriptions out there. Hiring managers and recruiters get caught up in spelling out every last qualification for their ideal candidate but forget to sell the job!
The job description is a prime opportunity to showcase what this position has to offer. You should punch up why candidates should at least take a moment to consider the job. Pay and benefits are great but dig deeper into why this is a rewarding opportunity for the right person. Whether it’s the ability to make a big impact on the organization, provide a vital service to customers, or something else, you need to spell this out.
You might think this is unnecessary if you’re already receiving a lot of applicants, but it’s always necessary. If you’re not selling the position, you’ll miss out on great candidates who don’t see the value of the opportunity. The better your J.D., the better your odds that candidates actually apply after you send it to them!
Recruiting Shouldn’t Feel Like Pulling Teeth
With unemployment at record lows, being a recruiter is a harder job than ever. Recruiters are getting more and more requisitions while it only gets more difficult to find qualified candidates. However, it shouldn’t be hard to find candidates and make quality submissions.
Applying these tips will help, but if you’re serious about adding value to your organization and easing your workload, you need to explore different sourcing methods. You shouldn’t have to chase candidates who aren’t interested or scour LinkedIn for hours. You can make the change, but you have to take initiative.
