Businesses (from small to large-scale investments) have never hired as much as they are doing today. According to a 2017 PwC report, employers attest to scarcity of skills and talents as the most significant threat for business growth. Therefore, it is not surprising that companies usually spend massive resources on hiring and recruitment–$4,129 per job on average in the USA alone, as outlined by findings from numerous Human Resource estimates reports to find suitable job candidates. Despite this, many employers still face difficulties hiring eligible candidates.
All businesses with employees must conduct a recruiting process-planning for management succession, filling a job post, or hiring a new person for a new position. Nonetheless, according to findings from a recent SHRM research report, over 80 % of HR specialists find it difficult to recruit suitable candidates for their companies. So, how do you find the right candidate and ensure an effective recruitment process?
Recruitment is essential for human resource experts because it identifies new talent that inspires growth in a quickly shifting marketplace. Despite the numerous ways you can improve your recruitment process, the most effective approach is to hire a professional recruitment agency or recruitment consultant to help improve your recruitment strategy.
At Mapertunity, we are a professional recruitment agency that uses an innovative graphical approach to perform real-time candidate and job searches to reach your prospects and hire suitable candidates successfully. What’s more, we have the expertise and experience necessary to offer helpful information on proper and successful recruitment.
So, do you want to find suitable job candidates easily? If so, this post is for you. Here, we will highlight vital concepts about proper recruitment and explain employers’ different external recruiting methods to suit their unique needs. Furthermore, we will also discuss the prevalent issues facing companies during recruitment and a few practical solutions.
Let’s get started.
What Are the Most Popular Recruitment Options Companies Use to Find Potential Candidates?
Many companies, when recruiting, either hire active or passive candidates. Ideally, the recruitment process is geared towards finding experienced personnel who aren’t seeking to move or internal recruitment process and opt for external recruitment when internal efforts fail.
Typically, external recruitments account for the largest porportion of hiring since they mostly require little or no training, and the workers bring experience from their previous employers. However, it adds additional referral bonuses, plus associated relocation and travel costs depending on where they are currently working. In contrast, internal recruiting is relatively less expensive since it eliminates recruiting fees, not to mention the expenses mentioned earlier, like extensive training and referral bonuses.
Even so, despite the benefits of each recruitment mode, hiring is still a constant headache for most employers. So, where does the challenge start?
What Factors Make the Recruitment Process Difficult for Employers?
Many surveys highlight a continuous trend by employers who complain about the difficulty of hiring. While there are many explanations for that, like employers being very choosy when picking candidates, studies indicate that employers are hiring more over the years than before and for a good reason.
Recruitment Efforts Overly Focus on External Hiring Rather Than Internal Promotions
First, employers are now focusing on hiring an external workforce rather than promoting personnel from within (internal recruitment). Back in the ’70s and post-World War II era, organizations recruited internally and finding qualified personnel from within the organization. However, the current figure is slightly less than a third.
The primary reason is that employers avoid paying for the training and development of the new employees by hiring from outside. Nowadays, it is easier to identify and hire experienced talent externally. Nonetheless, less internal promotion means that recruitment no longer focuses on recent graduates and entry-level jobs.
In the current job setting, organizations must gear their hiring efforts towards incorporating talent across diverse levels since suitable and experienced candidates are otherwise working somewhere else. Since these individuals need no training, they may be inclined to start right away, although they are more challenging to get.
The Retention Problem
The second main reason for the difficulty of hiring is that retention is now more problematic: organizations now hire from competing companies and vice versa, hence must keep replacing departing personnel. Typically, the main reason behind the high recruitment rate is significantly poor retention rate.
What Steps Can Hiring Managers and HR Professionals Take to Get Suitable Workers?
1.  Advertising the Vacant Position (Job Ads)
Narrowing down the ideal candidates for the job begins from within an organization. First, you should put up a notice relaying information about a new or vacant position. Why? A current employee in your organization may adequately fill the vacant post. However, if you are also searching for external recruits, be sure to put across the message when you inform your in-house employees.
To get qualified external candidates, you can utilize various practical methods, including social media platforms, your website, and other Media options like newspapers, events and industry magazines referrals, and job fairs.
While this is an effective recruitment approach, you should ensure that your recruitment initiative focuses on getting suitable hires and remove the job Ads once you identify the right candidate. This is because some rogue recruiters will put up job adverts in search of CVs to acquire clients. Due to such fake job postings, the job market may seem more constricted than it is. This barbaric practice makes it difficult for economists and job seekers to identify economic gaps that need addressing and frustrate candidates in search of job opportunities, respectively.
2.  Adopt Artificial Intelligence Recruitment Platforms
One of the biggest challenges for job recruiters, especially in large organizations, is interviewing all job applicants. Therefore, recruiters should leverage Artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their recruitment process.
Artificial intelligence significantly saves time by easing the hiring process and helps to pinpoint the best candidate for the job through specified algorithms. Ideally, these platforms boast unique algorithms designed to update the job-seeker database and respond to job applicants continually.
This offers a diverse and open communication channel between employers and job candidates. Engaging with potential candidates frequently places your organization in a position to hire the best candidates and encourages job seekers not to give up.
3.  Use of Referrals
Employee referral is arguably the most common means human resource departments use to recruit additional staff in most companies. Seemingly, this approach is less expensive than many executives would perceive and saves significant costs associated with recruitment processes. However, the issue with referrals is whether it is an effective way of choosing suitable job candidates.
Emilio Castilla’s recruitment research identified that referrals are the most effective hiring approach; the referrer guiding the candidates promotes its success. Moreover, a referrer’s absence (whether due to retirement or other circumstances) may significantly affect the recruits’ performance pushing them to uphold the reputation of the referrers. Due to these referral-linked benefits, many companies offer referral bonuses- a somewhat costly but most worthwhile expense where successful.
Despite its efficiency, the primary concern with employee referral is that it often results in a static task force. Why? Referred candidates are familiar with their referrers and are likely to have similar traits, not to mention instances of slacking off due to the backing of their referrer. Workers with diverse personalities in organizations are essential to allow for free workflow and regular exchange of ideas amongst employees and employers. Therefore, finding and incorporating a diverse and dynamic workforce is crucial despite the benefits of using employee referrals.
Although these methods are some of the most effective ways to find suitable job candidates, why is the hiring process still a problem for employers? Here is where the trouble starts.
What Are the Challenges with These Recruitment Processes?
Entities strive to narrow their human resource gaps by allowing for applications by as many candidates as the market holds, more so, “passive candidates,” i.e., those applying for a permanent position. In most cases, firms advertise non-existent jobs in the hopes they will interest individuals for future reference if an additional workforce is required.
The problem with these recruitment practices is their inability to define an employee’s performance after hiring. Unsurprisingly, most organizations in the US overlook the crucial process of reporting and screening through their recruitment protocols and how they help acquire the ideal new employees. Moreover, companies don’t constantly monitor costs per hire and duration. So how do you solve these concerns?
How Do You Overcome the Recruitment Challenges and Ensure You Find the Right Candidates?
Avoid Vendors promising unrealistic results.
With the increasing use of technology in most sectors, the hiring process is often susceptible to sham technological platforms. While such platforms usually allege having new and refined recruitment techniques that guarantee ideal candidates, most don’t have any certifications and expertise on proper recruitment.
Ideally, these vendors don’t guarantee consistent and accurate results as projected. This is evident by the numerous eruptions of cheat codes helping candidates bypass and score better results even if not qualified. But by hiring professional recruitment consultants and agencies, you can avoid cases of real-time cheating and ensure you get the ideal candidates.
Overhaul your interviewing process.
Interviews have proven problematic when determining the ideal employee since recruitment panels are often limited to basic interview questionnaires. Many employers only focus on the candidates’ current or previous performances related to the posted vacancy. Such brief and common questions only play a small role in determining the best recruit for the job.
The best approach to revamp your interviewing process is reviewing your interviewing techniques and questions to ensure they are suited to help you identify the right candidate.
Measure and monitor the results.
A majority of employers lack adequate knowledge on the proper hiring techniques and their efficiency. This is because they don’t conduct follow-ups on the outcomes of their recruitment initiatives.
For instance, if you hire university graduates, work with institutions offering candidates at their peak performance. On hiring, assess various components, including how long the applicants perform optimally and the minimal starter wages, among others. This way, employers can monitor and evaluate the outcome of hiring such candidates and ensure they land the best personnel.
Conclusion
With the evolving market needs and recruitment process dynamics, employers shouldn’t be afraid to utilize new and modern recruitment methods to find job candidates-both external and internal recruitment methods. Essentially, it is unlikely that you’ll improve your hiring competence if you can’t properly discern the best and most promising candidates.
Know what you are looking for in a candidate, like creating proper job Ads, referrals, social media, and innovative AI techniques; you can revamp your hiring process and get suitable candidates for the job. What’s more, by enlisting the services of professional recruitment consultants or recruitment agencies, employers can ease the hassle of recruiting new employees and get the suitable personnel suited to fill your post appropriately. At Mapertunity, we help you revamp the hiring process by opening you to diverse and extensive resources on available personnel and direct ways to contact and interact with the pool. With our unique GIS based visual job and candidate search and matching system, you will quickly identify and hire available employees ready to meet your hiring needs. Visit our site, and our recruitment consultants will help you learn more about finding the right job candidate.