Being a company, HRs have to adopt several alternative ways to recruit candidates for the job. There can be no business success if the people doing the job are not right for the position. This obvious remark actually highlights the importance of proper recruiting and training, which is one of the most important tasks for each HR manager.

Depending on the way you look at things, you could argue that finding the best candidates has never been as tough or as easy as it is today. If you are inclined to think that recruitment is a nightmare, you might want to take a look at the following ways to recruit candidates following which some companies are finding the right candidates and conducting assessment events.

1. Phrasing job adverts appropriately

You have to be careful how you phrase your job adverts, because wrong words and phrases can put off entire groups of the candidate population, such as ethnic minorities, the elderly, women… Since you don’t want that to happen and you wish to keep the candidate pool as large as possible. Some of the forward-thinking companies use AI-driven writing tools which scan heaps of documents and based on this data predict exactly what job advert will succeed where others fail based on this data.

2. Programmatic advertising

This is not a new method, but it has become more popular now due to the expansion of remote working and recruiting. This is the automated posting of job ads that targets the candidate profiles you are looking for, but you can do it with a twist. Recruiting on niche sites where your target candidates hang out (like Amazon job ads on Tinder or Goldman Sachs’ on Spotify) can easily prove to be the right thing.

3. Video interviewing

One very effective recruiting method is video interviewing, which has been around for quite a while now, but has also developed significantly, mainly due to advancements in technology. With modern online event management platforms, HR managers can recruit people and conduct assessment events from anywhere, thus saving so much time. Some video technology allows you to do a lot of pre-employment assessment by collecting data on things like verbal response, eye movement and non-verbal communication. This is all used to predict a candidate’s likelihood of success in their future job.

4. Passive candidates

Before the social media era, it was almost impossible to reach talented workers who weren’t actively looking to change jobs. However, the situation is now completely different, mainly due to professional social networks, such as LinkedIn. Passive candidates can be reached much more easily and even if they aren’t interested right now, a connection has been made and your company will probably be the first one that comes to mind when they eventually opt for a career change.

5. Employee referrals

It’s widely accepted that referred new hires are usually more engaged, more productive and less likely to jump ship, which is why many companies have established an employee referral program. To make the most of it, you need to include the following in the program:

● Incentives. Whether these are monetary (cash) or non-monetary (extra holidays or gift cards), incentives are always highly appreciated by employees who recommend someone.

● Follow-up system. When an employee has referred someone, they should know how their referral is doing, e.g. whether they made it to the next round of interviews. So, keep the referrer in the loop.

● Recognition. Praise those who have helped the company find great new hires. Think of a nice way of giving your employees the recognition they deserve when they’ve successfully referred someone.

6. Mentoring

With the global workforce aging rapidly, it has become increasingly important to manage more experienced workers in a way that is beneficial to your company. One of the ways to do that is to include those workers in your recruiting plans, ask them to postpone their retirement if possible and create a mentoring program. Their knowledge and experience can prove invaluable when it comes to evaluating how well new employees are progressing and whether the management has made the right decision hiring those young colleagues.

7. Mobile recruitment

If you want to get in touch with someone these days, the safest way is to use the mobile recruitment process. The fact is that more than 98% of messages sent on the mobile phone are read, which is a much higher percentage than the one related to the number of email messages that are actually read. Also, younger generations are addicted to their phones and expect everyone else to be available 24/7, including the company they are applying to.

As you can see, recruitment is challenging, but at the same time exciting, probably more than ever. If you really want to find the best candidates, you should be creative and try some new, innovative recruitment methods occasionally. The thing is that not all of the alternative ways to recruit candidates for Jobs will work for you, but you shouldn’t stop experimenting. That will show potential applicants you’re an exciting company to work for, that you embrace technology and that you attach great value to the candidate experience. So, entertain these ideas, if you’re not already using them, and see which one(s) works best for you.

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