Regardless of the type of recruiter you are, and whether you are just starting out in the field or are a seasoned professional, you know that in order to be successful in your line of work, you must find and place exceptional candidates. But this is not always an easy feat. How do you find and recruit exceptional candidates? It’s an important question because your success as a recruiter and the success of the company you work for are dependent upon the success you have in that task.
Below, you will find the top four tips that will help you find the best candidates and ensure that you become a successful recruiter.
Recruiting Tip #1: Network to Find the Best Employees
The easiest way to ensure success in your line of work is to ensure that you have the most talented pool of individuals from which to choose. The most effective way to do this is to network. This means creating relationships with a variety of people and institutions who will be able to help you with your search. To accomplish this, you may network with other recruiters, search firms, or with university employees who deal directly with students looking for employment. You may also be able to develop beneficial relationships by attending events such as meet-and-greets for professional associations or conferences. Finally, you can look for candidates on association job boards for the industry in which there is a job opening.
Recruiting Tip #2: Look for Employees Who Have Held Similar Positions in the Past
One of the best ways to ensure that an employee will be successful in his or her future position is to determine how much it’s like his or her past job. If a candidate will have the same responsibilities in the new position, and he or she excelled with those responsibilities previously, it can be safely assumed that he or she will succeed in the new one. Candidates who have held the same job in a similar industry with a similar company can more often be considered “safe bets.” That is, they will most likely be very successful in their new roles.
Recruiting Tip #3: Make Sure Employees Want to Work for Your Company
Of course, your primary duty as a recruiter is to go out and find viable candidates for your company, but there are ways to ensure that candidates seek you out, too.
- Does your company have a reputation for treating its employees well? It is important that a company is known as one that values its employees and actively seeks to enhance their skills and their work lives. Are there company programs that support employee retention and motivation, or reward positive behavior? One of the best ways to find great candidates is to have the company’s employees serve as real-life advertisements that tout the positive attributes of your company.
- Does your company compensate its employees as well as or better than competitors? As the old adage says, “You get what you pay for.” So, if this is the case, you want to attract the best employees in the industry with their desired level of pay. Yes, paying below market level may help the bottom line temporarily, but often the individuals that are hired with these less-than-stellar salaries are themselves less than stellar. And, in the event that the candidate is a great one, he or she will be likely to leave as soon as he or she finds a position that pays more.
- Does your company offer superior employee benefits? As with compensation, the benefits your company offers should be, at minimum, competitive with other companies in the industry. This is yet another tool by which your company can recruit the best individuals without going out into the marketplace and recruiting. Offering perks such as flexible work schedules or tuition reimbursement are just a few of the ways that you can attract top-notch employees who otherwise may be taken out of the candidate pool or would not be interested in working for your company. (Case in point: a mother who wants a job that will allow her to drop off and pick up her children from school.)
This is the best way to make sure that your prospective employees are who they say they are and will be what you hope they will be when they begin to work at your company. The whole point of checking references is to find out, from a third party, what an employee will be like once they begin working for your company. After all, you want to make sure that a given prospect will be a productive member of your company’s team. The candidate may look great on paper, but once you talk to a previous employer, you may find that that candidate isn’t as great as you thought he or she would be.
Ultimately, it is your responsibility to ensure that your company achieves its goals and thrives in the marketplace, and this task can only be accomplished if the right people have been hired for the job. In the end, finding the right people goes directly back to the tactics you use to find professionals in the industry. Only then will you guarantee that you have found the best employees and created a workforce that is positioned for the future.
