As part of SHRM’s webcast series, Talroo sponsored a webinar hosted by Tim Sackett, author of The Talent Fix: A Leader’s Guide to Recruiting Great Talent.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the U.S. unemployment rate has dropped to below 4 percent for the first time in more than 15 years. In the United States, there are now more job openings than there are candidates to fill them.
If you’re trying to attract quality job candidates, or hang on to the good employees you have, you know the challenges of recruiting in what essentially is a full employment market. It requires a whole new approach. In a recent webinar, now available on-demand, Tim Sackett of HRU Technical Resources will provide you with a new recruiting paradigm in the form of seven new recruiting strategies. And you’ll get insight into what lies ahead and how you can reshape your recruiting approach as the job market evolves.
View Webcast: Finding Talent in an Ultra-Low Unemployment Environment
You can still watch the webcast, but we’re also providing you with a summary below. In a near zero unemployment economy, we’re all interested in the magic formula that helps us find the best talent for our open positions. Tim began his session with some data on where talent is, how we’re seeking talent now, and how we should adapt our strategies. First, 75 million workers in the U.S. will retire in the next decade and be replaced by a talent pool of just 45 million.
How to Create a Candidate Funnel to Fuel Your Recruiting Efforts
So how do we create a workforce? 50% of jobs in the US will be replaced by automation, but it can’t replace all things. Recruiters build relationships that cannot be replaced with AI. Factory line and administrative positions may be threatened by AI, but jobs that have a human element will not be replaced. Sacket says, “The secret sauce is: there is no secret sauce.”
While those words from Tim might not be comforting to some looking for an end all be all recruiting solution, most recruiters understand that each requisition is not the same as the one before.
“It’s going to be a long time before we’re out of this low unemployment market,” says Tim. “You can find great talent in small cities, especially around larger metropolitan areas. Right now we’re worried about putting out fires, but long-term we have a larger problem as employers.”
Recruiting Collaboration Wins: Build Networks with Complimentary Companies & Recruiting Teams
Your competition is not your enemy. Tim suggests webcast listeners to reach out in your own community and marketplace and connect with other talent acquisition professionals in your area. It’s about building a great network of people you can rely on.
#1 Employee referrals
No matter what the unemployment level is, Tim recommends investing in employee referrals. They must be a focus for every recruiting team no matter what the talent market is.
“Your best employees are going to refer people whether you give them a bonus or not. The best tool is employee referral automation. Many ATSs have integrated a job referral program. Make it easy for the 10-20% of employees to share open positions, you can track via automation, and create a scoreboard style tracking that you can share with the company. When you make it public, senior leaders and other employees will follow suit,” suggests Tim.
“You can segment your target demographic, which is useful for diversity and inclusion programs. For example, your female engineers are more likely to refer female engineers.”
#2 The forgotten talent pools
Tim says his recruiting silver bullet is stay at home moms and other forgotten talent pools. These candidates become loyal employees who are high performers and offer low turnover. Don’t forget about considering candidates with a criminal history, semi-retired, and those with a disability as candidate options to fill your talent funnel. Your state and local workforce agencies offer great programs that can help engage and reach this underrepresented communities.
“Hiring managers still have a bias about what it means to work in military service and are overlooking great opportunities for hiring veterans. We really have to change some of these biases around forgotten talent pools. We have to make hiring managers comfortable when you’re pointing out their bias. We tend to hire people who are mirror images of ourselves,” says Tim.
#3 Your ATS is a gold mine
This is key for candidate rediscovery.
The ATS are filled with talent that applied for jobs, but never connected with you. The person that applied the day you closed the job might actually be your perfect candidate. Consider using AI technology to go in automatically to mine your database for qualified candidates that you haven’t seen yet and do periodic data refresh or qualifying to better identify talent within your own databases and networks.
“The majority of your database are candidates who have already said I love you, I want to come and work for you – even those who applied years ago. Get to know them and keep nurturing them,” mentions Tim.
#4 Programmatic Job Advertising
While some traditional job ads work great, some don’t, but the cost is the same. Programmatic will move your investment to the jobs that need it. Programmatic advertising is an online data-driven media buying service that uses software (not humans) to improve pay-for-performance media and reduce wasted spend. It has an on/off switch. Programmatic better uses your resources.
“Programmatic job ads are put in front of candidates who meet the criteria you want, wherever they are on the web. This is something you should be testing and trying out,” says Tim.
Programmatic allows top of funnel job distribution that has an on-off switch. Recruiters have a level of control and allowing teams to set limits and rules to control spending and the number of qualified candidates for each role ahead of time. Tim suggests that programmatic job advertising offers companies a lower cost per hire and more control over their candidate funnels.
#5 Texting is the most effective form of reaching candidates quickly
There are many platforms out there for automated text and response. People are busy, but are typically receptive to communication that allows them to respond when they have time. In his own experience, Tim has found that text messaging offers a response rate is four times more than just email or calling not to mention that at his staffing firm, his recruiters with the highest close rates are sending four to seven messages to job seekers.
“Set up rules of engagement. Capture both sides of the communication. Don’t have recruiters text on their personal phones,” says Tim. “We’ve set up nurturing campaigns for texting and get 70% response rate.”
#6 – Google for Jobs
Do you know where your candidates are currently coming from? Is your job schema aligned? If you’ve noticed your job board traffic dropping or cost increasing, this is why.
“This is the future of job search. Most of you are getting a lot of traffic from Indeed, but now Indeed comes to you asking for more money for the same performance. This is not because of the low unemployment rate; it’s because Google is not indexing job listings on Indeed.”
“Your job listings are going to show up higher in the search algorithm with Google for Jobs,” suggests Tim.
One recent change in the Google for Job algorithm comes in the form of salary history. Job postings with salary or hourly wage listed rank higher in search results giving recruiting teams a distinct advantage in reaching top talent with little to no additional recruiting dollars spent.
#7 – Automated sourcing
Should I hire a Sourcer or should my Recruiters be sourcing?
Automation is critical to success in this high competition talent market. With so many sourcing automation options, these tools can free up your recruiters to focus on qualifying talent instead of being overwhelmed with Inmails and internet messaging.
“You have to figure out how to automate sourcing at the top of your funnel when it comes to getting people interested in your jobs. I don’t need to pay a salary to someone to send InMail on LinkedIn when there are technologies that can do this for me,” shares Tim.
Recruitment Marketing Puts Your Recruiting Team in Front of the Best People
The final message from Tim’s webcast comes full circle. In order to have a competitive advantage, reach, and build rapport with qualified job candidates, you have to turn on your recruitment marketing machine. Tim reminds listeners that marketing works and is more than posting your jobs on your career site. “You can no longer sit back and wait for the traffic to come in. The right place to invest to ensure success of your long term recruiting efforts is by putting money into the optimization and marketing of your own career site.”
