December 31, 2023
If you’re thinking about hiring talent in the new year, you’re not the only one. Year after year, we see hordes of businesses jump-starting their hiring in January as they gear up for the year ahead – and often all competing for the same pool of talent. By starting your recruiting now, you won’t have to contend with a plethora of positions flooding the market. And in a candidate-short field, this could mean the difference between securing a great new recruit or losing out to a competitor.
Here are five key steps to help you begin.
1. Tick Your ‘Process’ Boxes
Our first piece of recruitment advice for employers is to ensure you’ve secured the budget and any requisite approvals before advertising for the role. You could also consider building in a buffer if you can, in case you find an outstanding candidate that seeks a little more than your asking price.
Doing this upfront smartly removes any possible impediments to decision making, enabling you to move quickly when you find a great candidate (an essential in a tight-talent market).
2. Position Yourself as an Employer of Choice
A strong employer brand, alongside a unique selling point, is powerful across many levels, not least of which is the ability to attract top candidates. This is why it’s crucial to take some time to critically assess yours, carefully considering the message you’re conveying from the perspective of a potential employee.
While nurturing your employer brand is an ongoing process, your current employees are your best brand ambassadors. Consider how you can effectively employ their stories in your recruitment campaign, paying particular attention to your social media and professional networking profiles and website.
3. Get Your Hiring Team in Place
Your team plays an essential role in helping you locate your ideal candidate. That’s why it’s imperative that everyone involved deeply understands the role requirements, and are on the same page about the type of candidate you’re looking for.
While you can opt to keep it internal, there are many merits to partnering with a specialist recruitment agency that has experience in your industry. Aside from having best practice recruitment processes in place to help you move quickly, they also have a vast network you can tap, one filled with both active and passive candidates. Other bonuses include assistance in crafting your recruitment materials to entice the best to apply, in-depth market insights, as well as the expertise to help you spot a candidate who is just the right fit.
4. Provide an Enhanced Candidate Experience
Most recruitment mistakes occur during the candidate interview process. These include ending the interview on vague terms, not letting an interviewee know what a great impression they made or failing to advise them of the next steps in the process. All these leave the door open for a top candidate to move forward in their job search, risking that they might accept another opportunity before you swing back to them.
This is why you will be richly rewarded by enhancing your candidate experience, placing communication and quality feedback at the forefront, with particular attention given to providing an expected timeframe for your response (and sticking to it). If you’re working with a recruiter, they will take care of managing the candidate experience for you, leaving you free to focus on other things.
5. Act Decisively and Move Fast
In the current climate, it’s not unusual for top-class candidates to have more than one job offer on the table. By keeping your decision-making process tight and ensuring the offer details are ready to go, you reduce the chances of your first-choice accepting another position.
We’re Here to Help
We hope these five steps will help you quickly shift into recruitment mode, so you can snap up great talent right now, rather than waiting to compete with the multitude of open positions in January and February.
As a leader in the Sydney recruitment market, please let us know if we can support you in quickly ramping up your hiring efforts, or simply reach out for further recruiting tips for 2022 and beyond.
