Recruitment teams can feel overwhelmed during the hiring slowdown, but you can use this downtime strategically to upskill and optimize your processes. These seven strategies will ensure that when the hiring inevitably backfires, you’ll be in a position to win.
You can and should identify as many opportunities as possible to keep your team engaged and add value to the business, and to ensure that your team can rebound once the market does.
The first months of 2022 will be a boon for hiring managers. These are the hottest job markets in decades, with each month of recording the numbers of job openings and resignations. Now, as we launch into 2023, companies are tightening their belts in a way not seen since the financial crisis of 2008, with a high profile deletion after another.
I’m not worried. If there’s one thing over 20 years in this industry has taught me, it’s that hiring is always repetitive. And when it does, it often does so with a vengeance, leaving many companies caught off guard and unprepared.
The solution is for talent acquisition teams to use this downtime strategically. Now, if you are not recruiting, is the time to level-up your skills and optimize your processes. If you do it well, if the hire inevitably gets retrenched, you’ll be in a position to win. Here are seven of the best ways to prepare.
Build and nurture your talent pipeline.
Recruiting top talent is a long game. Although it may seem counterintuitive for recruiters to reach out to prospective candidates before a role is open, this is the perfect time for recruiters to build real, genuine relationships without pressure. -os any experiences on the side of trying to fill a role or find work.
Of course, the conversation is a little different if you don’t have an open position. Being upfront and honest is the key here. Don’t hide the fact that these conversations are exploratory and completely transparent about what hiring looks like in your org today. Then ask for permission to stay in touch. If the candidate agrees, engage them in a long-term nurturing campaign that sends frequent, personalized touchpoints with information about your organization, company culture, team, and product.
Clean up your tech stack.
One of the best ways to impact your company’s bottom line during a hiring freeze is a thorough audit and evaluation of your tech recruiting tools. stack: your applicant tracking system, customer relationship management tool, search platforms, email search, interview schedulers, video interviewing. platforms, and referral platforms. Evaluate and grade each tool on efficiency and adoption, and identify which should be kept, abandoned, or replaced.
Double the variety.
Improving your diversity hiring efforts is a sensitive and time-consuming process that can be difficult to monitor when you are faced with aggressive hiring goals. That’s why the slowdown is the best time to focus on creating better, more objective hiring processes.
Start by looking closely at the interviews your team has completed. Are there specific questions that accidentally exclude qualified candidates from non-traditional backgrounds? If that’s the case, can you change it or replace it with something that might be a better indicator for success?
You should also take this time to look closely at your overall data hire a funnel. Are there certain stages where candidates from underrepresented groups disproportionately drop out of the funnel? Are there hiring managers who consistently disqualify these candidates? Now is the time to identify these problems and address them through things like unconscious bias training, again job descriptions to be more inclusive, or invite an external organization to meet with your team.
Improve your team.
If your team has a lighter-than-usual workload, consider helping them increase their skills. Give your team the time and permission to do skill evaluations, and then design a plan to fill the gaps through learning and development. This is the perfect time for recruiters to take online courses or pursue certifications through SHRM or LinkedIn Learning. Tech recruiters can look to options like Geekruiter Academy or DevSkiller to refresh their knowledge of tech skills and provide them with best practices for the roles they are filling.
Get in touch with your hiring managers.
The biggest performance driver in talent acquisition is a strong relationship between your recruiters and hiring managers. Organizations that improve hiring manager satisfaction are three times more likely to reduce time-to-hire two times more likely to improve quality of hire.
You can nurture relationships when hiring is slow. Take the time to dig into the details of how your managers envision the future of the team and to get feedback on the past performance of the recruiting team in terms of turnaround times and quality of hire. This is also a good time to determine which roles to prioritize when hiring ramps up again so you have resources available when openings do occur.
Check in with new hires.
As tempting as it is for recruiters to move on once new hires are on board, this is an important time to stay in touch, because 86% of new hires decide whether they will stay with a company within the first six months. Use the downtime for recruiters to reach out to new hires they’ve made in the past six to 12 months to find out what their daily flow is like, what projects they’re working on, and what surprised them. their role and the company. Not only will the answers that recruiters receive to these questions improve their interactions with prospective candidates, but it will strengthen the retention of new employees knowing that someone cares about their happiness and career.
Strengthen your talent brand.
Find out what resources you have and what you need to create a compelling narrative for your company, whether that’s blog posts, videos, podcasts or something else. You should also look at conversions on your career page. How can you optimize it for a better experience? Do you need more pictures? A FAQ? Employee testimonials? You should also consider launching an ambassador program if you don’t already have one. Messaging shared by employees garners 561% more impressions than the company shares, so it’s worth investing in workflows and tools that inform employees of new content, training sessions that offer best practices for social media sharing, and guidelines to ensure that the voice and tone of the brand will remain consistent.
. . .
While slowing down can be difficult, it can also be an opportunity to demonstrate the full value and relevance of your recruiting team. Taking advantage of this time, and taking the actions recommended above can make the difference between going to the starting block when getting hired again, or being in the waiting room. You can and should identify as many opportunities as possible to keep your team engaged and add value to the business, and to ensure that your team can rebound once the market does.
