Confessions of a Generationally Confused Recruiter
OK, OK, it may not be en vogue to say it out loud, but I’m 43 years old. A typical girl of the 80’s...
The Internet never sleeps and your talent acquisition process shouldn’t either. Whether your internal HR department handles the process or you outsource your staffing solutions to a partner, the key to a good recruiting process is a sustained, focused, and consistent effort.
When I started in the staffing industry, we employed part-time recruiters, many of whom had hopes of joining the organization on a full-time basis. Like the temp-to-perm services that we provide to many customers, we were trying the recruiters out to see if they could do the job.
These part-time recruiters would generally start around 5 p.m., just as many others were going home. They would be given a list of positions, a file cabinet of resumes, and if they were lucky, a list of candidates to call.
Why in the evening? Because they were often calling people who had jobs and they were trying to catch them at home. This was before everyone began carrying a cell phone and had an email address.
The best part was that this was before caller ID and the pervasive use of answering machines and voice mail. People actually picked up the phone!
Fast forward to 2012. We have the opposite problem. We have too many ways to reach people and so many people trying to reach us. It’s pretty hard to get someone’s attention and get that person to pick up the phone or respond.
Just like that strategic, evening call to the house way back when, you need to make sure that you’re tailoring your recruiting efforts to your audience. That’s why some social media recruiting efforts work and some don’t.
If you haven’t read our eBook, "Five Steps to Creating a Social Media Recruiting Strategy," it’s a good start. But here are three more things to consider regarding your overall recruiting strategy.
One thing that hasn’t changed since the old days is that people like to deal with recruiters on their terms. Keep that in mind as you think about your recruiting process. Where’s that .net programmer going to be at 10 p.m.?
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When I started in the staffing industry, we employed part-time recruiters, many of whom had hopes of joining the organization on a full-time basis. Like the temp-to-perm services that we provide to many customers, we were trying the recruiters out to see if they could do the job.
These part-time recruiters would generally start around 5 p.m., just as many others were going home. They would be given a list of positions, a file cabinet of resumes, and if they were lucky, a list of candidates to call.
Why in the evening? Because they were often calling people who had jobs and they were trying to catch them at home. This was before everyone began carrying a cell phone and had an email address.
The best part was that this was before caller ID and the pervasive use of answering machines and voice mail. People actually picked up the phone!
Fast forward to 2012. We have the opposite problem. We have too many ways to reach people and so many people trying to reach us. It’s pretty hard to get someone’s attention and get that person to pick up the phone or respond.
Just like that strategic, evening call to the house way back when, you need to make sure that you’re tailoring your recruiting efforts to your audience. That’s why some social media recruiting efforts work and some don’t.
If you haven’t read our eBook, "Five Steps to Creating a Social Media Recruiting Strategy," it’s a good start. But here are three more things to consider regarding your overall recruiting strategy.
- Is it focused? Do you track where you get the most candidates or hires? If you are using social media, are your efforts effective or are you just there? Where are the candidates hanging out, what are they searching for, and what are they reading about?
- Are your resources aligned with your recruiting strategy? Have you evaluated your recruiting strategy and resources since the start of the recession (or recovery)? Things have changed greatly. Our recent Workforce Trends Survey showed that most companies don’t evaluate their recruiting strategy often enough.
- Is your recruiting process accessible and always on? I could have said 6 a.m. in the title of this post, when many people are catching up on emails. The point is, to be truly effective, we have to be accessible to candidates on their schedule as well as ours. If you find one time doesn’t work, try another. Or publish job posts and tweets when they are most likely to read them and make it easy for them to respond.
One thing that hasn’t changed since the old days is that people like to deal with recruiters on their terms. Keep that in mind as you think about your recruiting process. Where’s that .net programmer going to be at 10 p.m.?
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