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By Till Achim Lobenstein
How can staff be successfully recruited?
Hand on heart: how do you rate your latest staff-recruitment arrangements? Over-long processes? Too many refusals? Unsatisfactory people appointed to the job? Given the lack of professional staff, demographic change and the ever-faster march of digitalisation, the personnel departments of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) are faced with extreme challenges. How, nevertheless, is it possible to recruit staff successfully? In this article we would like to indicate some approaches which may enable you to work on staff acquisition.
Developing a recruitment strategy
Times have changed. Instead of a lack of jobs, there is now a lack of professional staff – at some 70% of all companies. A change has also taken place in the attitude of job applicants, who know their market value, assert their own requirements, can select their employer...or leave it to the companies to recruit them. In short: recruiting is no longer a soft-sell. The best thing is for you to work out a recruiting strategy, oriented clearly towards your target groups. Stick to it and develop it further in a purposeful way.
More structure: defining paths, goals and areas of responsibility
So here’s three cheers for organisation! Bring structure to your recruiting. Set areas of responsibility, concrete procedures, binding goals and response times for all those involved. This applies particularly to all digitalised processes and e-recruiting, but just as well to direct personal communication. Does that take too much time and resources? Then just outsource your recruiting to an external service provider.
Classical recruiting and active sourcing
Placing an advert, inviting applicants, filling the vacancy – for SMEs or their outsourced personnel-services provider this continues to be a tried and tested method. When it comes to larger corporate groups it may be worth considering more active HR methods, such as active sourcing. In this process recruiters talk to suitable candidates in a targeted personal way. Making a person-to-person exchange and keeping up an intensive and individual contact are one of the keys to successful personnel searching.
Optimised communication and mobile recruiting
One of the most important recruiting channels are adverts on job portals. But take a critical look at your job posting – are you actually reaching your target group? In many postings there is room on the upside, and not every portal is suitable for every vacancy. In case of doubt, ask the HR experts, who know their way around it all.
If you are aiming for Recruiting 4.0, i.e. a digitally supported personnel search, you should be careful of the pitfall. Mobile recruiting is a demanding process. The task is to generate personnel via mobile devises such as smartphones and tablets. In this process the company must ensure that interested parties can deal with the whole application procedure simply and rapidly via the smartphone – from initiating the job search, to gathering information about the job and the firm, to the moment of sending the application. This means, for example, that the mobile processes on your career pages should be as convenient, self-explanatory and simple as possible. Make job application easier for your top candidates – through user-friendly, well-functioning online job-application processes for smartphones, laptops and all the rest.
Employer branding – the foundation
Utilising analyses of the recruiting data which you have collected (“controlling”), you will identify where you can place the lever. But everything together should be subordinate to a well-honed, holistic HR strategy, which you follow consistently. Equally important as your strategy is your employer branding: your employer trademark should be both well thought-through and authentic, and should be regularly put to the test, to develop it further. Successful employer branding will form the basis for your successful recruiting.
More target-group orientation – discovering new formats
To sum up: A higher level of target-group orientation is the order of the day. Never mind in which channels you invest, the task is always to cast a more critical eye on them, to see whether they are suitable for your target groups or whether your campaigns can be adapted to make them more specific. Overall, a personal approach plus an intensive, eligibly structured exchange of views and information must follow. By utilising your key success indicators you will be able to adjust your measures even better. Testing new recruiting formats is also a good idea. If it is all too consuming of time and resources, simply outsource it. The specialists will give you the backing you need. So you can concentrate on your core areas of expertise. Try it out!