10 Recruitment Techniques for 2022

In what many call the most unique labor market in their lifetime, the hunt for talent is at an all-time high. Talent Acquisition is turning over every rock, viewing every LinkedIn profile, and dusting off every method in the book to reach top talent. But what’s actually working in this environment?

A few are old standbys, and others are newer tricks of the trade. Whether tried and true or shiny and new, these are the top ten recruiter techniques we’ve seen garner results for our clients.

1. Focus on Company Culture

A traditional recruiting technique you won’t soon forget is investing in your own culture. Even before The Great Resignation, but especially after, candidates are seeking out employers who nurture the positive company culture they’re eager to be a part of.

If your company lacks a strong culture, or if you’re not honed in on the type of candidate seeking your culture, the time and resources spent attracting top talent won’t get you far.

While this isn’t typically considered a recruiter technique, having a clear and concise brand is pivotal to today’s candidate. If you’ve done what you can to strengthen your company culture, promote it throughout the candidate experience, so it’s at the forefront of a job seeker’s mind. If company culture hasn’t previously been a priority, consider ways to improve it today.

2. Don’t Skimp on Internal Mobility

The recruiting industry usually evokes images of attracting external candidates to new jobs, but perhaps the best way to ensure a quality fit for a role is to promote a quality candidate already within the company. Internal mobility is the upward movement of employees within your own organization.

Hiring from within your own brand seems counterproductive because it still leaves another open role to fill. However, in a global talent shortage, internal mobility is a valuable asset for companies.

When you hire from within, you’re guaranteed to fill that vacant position with someone who knows and values your company. ‍Additionally, it strengthens employee retention when they feel you’re committed to helping them achieve their goals of personal and professional growth. As for the position they left? Assuming their new position is a vertical move, they’ll be leaving behind a more entry-level position that most talent acquisition leaders find much easier to hire in this environment.

Encouraging talent development, succession planning, and internal mobility is a great way to show employees and candidates that there’s a future for them at the company. During a talent shortage, it’s also a great way to safeguard your future success. A robust talent management program is one of the top ways to attract top candidates and improve employee retention.

3. Strengthen the Interview Experience.

Many recruiters feel by now that they could conduct an interview in their sleep. It’s perhaps the most widely used recruitment technique but also the most poorly executed. While it seems like second nature, your interview tactics could cost you quality candidates.

The most damaging mistake is to read a generic list of questions to every candidate, which limits the understanding you have of each candidate while also creating an awful experience for your talent. The most damaging mistake to a candidate’s experience? Generic interview questions for every role.

If you haven’t, or even if you have, start by looking at your standard interview process. Do you come away from each discussion with a true sense of the person’s character? Are you asking informed questions tailored to each candidate that garners the results you need to make the decisions? Unless the answer is a resounding yes, it’s time to make some changes. Hiring managers would do well to think of this process more as a conversation and less as a formal interview. Use this opportunity to get to know the person you want to work with and allow them to get to know you and the organization.

4. Leverage Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

While being all things to each candidate is ideal, most organizations simply don’t have the resources to do so. Whether your organization is a small to mid-size company conducting in-house recruiting techniques, or you’re a larger company only temporarily lacking resources: RPOs can help.

RPOs are firms you can hire monthly or annually to manage your recruiting strategy. Unlike traditional recruiting agencies, who typically only source candidates for your vacancy, RPOs work with you and your existing channels to find the best quality candidates.

They manage the complete recruitment strategy and process, including writing job descriptions, screening candidates, working with hiring managers to find the right fit, and improving your employer branding.

Leveraging Recruitment Process Outsourcing is a far more cost-effective means of recruiting talent than agencies because they don’t charge flat rates based on salary, and you control when you utilize the service, not a contract. Even better – even after ending your work with RPO services, you maintain continual access to all prospects you contact.

5. Deploy Data-Driven Insights

As organizations increase the usage of technology platforms to help streamline their hiring processes, data-driven recruitment drives more innovative strategies for sourcing and screening candidates. Recruiters leverage HR tech to securely manage candidate data, ad platforms, screening techniques, pipeline management, and onboarding so that they can focus on the human interactions your candidates need.

Predictive analytics can show insights into everything from which candidates are likely to thrive in your organization to which employees are likely to leave soon. Organizations would be remiss to miss out on this information.

Leaders in the talent acquisition industry are using insights to consider how to adapt, improve, and streamline their recruitment strategy. Doing so is a top recruitment method to embrace for teams looking to adapt and thrive in the future.

6. Revisit Your Workforce Analytics

Artificial Intelligence is no longer the future – it’s the present. Using AI is how most recruiters have freed up their time to connect with candidates because AI shoulders the weight of the tedious tasks that used to consume their day.

Workforce analytics and artificial intelligence can quickly consider and prioritize candidates based on fit, eliminating the need for hours spent reviewing and sorting manually. It can also auto-schedule interviews, send pre-written messages to communicate interest or next steps, or even let candidates know they have not been selected for the position – all of which increase the potential for a positive candidate experience.

7. Revitalized Employer Branding

Not only is this a trending topic amidst the candidate-focused market with the popularity of review websites like Glassdoor and Indeed, your employer branding is on prime display, for better or for worse. Candidates are spending more time investigating potential employers and are sure to report back with their own experiences. As a result, your company’s reputation and brand are decided before they ever speak with someone in your company.

In revitalizing branding, talent acquisition teams are quickly working to position their organization as a great place to work. Such a claim is supported by customized career pages, employee profiles and testimonials, and an active social presence (for responding to those candidate experiences – for better or for worse).

Managing your employer brand encourages a positive opinion of your company while also mitigating the impression of any negative opinions.

8. Consider A Comprehensive Platform

An Analytics Platform is quickly becoming a standard tool in any legitimate recruitment strategy, and for a good reason. The Analytics Development Lab by PREDICTIVEHR gives recruiters a monstrous amount of information on potential candidates, organized in a singular view for clarity.

The platform acts as the central funnel for your entire recruitment process, extracting data from your HCM, leveraging a patent-pending cleaning engine, and developing aggregated models for incredible insights into your hiring. As a result, you’ll identify high-quality candidates with ease and hire them that much sooner.

If you’re not utilizing such a platform yet, consider this your first priority in recruitment techniques.

9. Resuscitate Your Talent Pipeline

At this point, we know finding and attracting top talent will continue to be a priority for recruiting teams for the foreseeable future. As a response, talent acquisition teams are revisiting passive candidates and silver medal candidates from previous roles to fill future vacancies to revitalize their talent pipeline.

The methodology of revisiting these candidates allows you to maintain a pipeline of candidates you know are already interested in your company. If they aren’t a fit for one role, they may very well be a good fit for another when it becomes available. The aforementioned ATS platform is ideal for tracking and organizing these candidates in the meantime.

10. Social Media Sourcing

Not a new practice but an old technique that has become a lot more complex; social media is a powerful tool for sourcing and connecting with potential candidates. With the variety of platforms and a variety of tools within each one, there’s always something to gain from adding this resource to your arsenal.

Depending on your target audience or your company brand, one platform may be preferred to another. But to count out the unlikely platforms is to count out top talent. Even recruiting on Instagram and TikTok can provide excellent results.

Recruiting for the Future

These techniques all speak to the wave of creativity and innovation we’re seeing in the talent acquisition space. Right now, the companies that think outside the box to achieve their recruiting goals are the ones who come out on top.

Partner with PREDICTIVEHR and discover the best techniques for your unique hiring needs. Schedule your free demo today!