Finding good job candidates can sometimes be tough, especially for positions that require specialty skills. However, human resources recruiters can make it a little easier on themselves by utilizing these three tips.
1. Broaden Your Online Network
It’s not enough for an organization to set up a Facebook page, then sit back and hope candidates flock to it. Someone needs to be actively marketing your organization – whether through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or any of the many other networking websites available.
Part of your role as a human resources recruiter must be to interact with the online community in order to identify potential job candidates. That might mean having a Facebook page aimed specifically at discussing job search and employment issues, regularly tweeting job openings on Twitter, or developing a following on the question and answer website, Quora.
Additionally, you can use LinkedIn as a tool to expand your network. Connect with colleagues, employees, and even your best job candidates by asking them to connect with you. Their contacts then become visible to you, enabling you to find other potential contacts and job
candidates. However, before you contact their connections, courtesy dictates that you ask the primary contact first.
2. Track Down Potential Candidates
Finding potential candidates just may be a click away, if you know where to look. Recruiting is not about being passive. It is about moving around – the Internet, throughout your company, industry meetings, the country. Go to where the candidates are located.
In the Dice.com article, “Thirty Innovative Recruiting Tips for 2012,” writer David Spark notes what one person did to find an engineer for a job in Vietnam: they visited a popular local Vietnamese restaurant and asked the owner for any ideas on potential candidates. The owner’s connections unveiled the perfect candidate.
3. Remain in Touch with Top Talent
Identified a passive candidate who isn’t ready to move? Met someone that might be a fit somewhere down the road? Interviewed several great candidates, but only have one job opening? It’s important to nurture these relationships, so when that candidate is ready to move or that job opening does become available, you’ll have potential candidates.
Even if you didn’t hire someone or don’t have an opening right now, your role as a human resources recruiter is to proactively maintain sources of candidates. To do that you need to keep job seekers interested in your organization. And one of the best ways to do this is by maintaining candidate profiles through your applicant tracking software.
However you source job candidates, it is important to take advantage of all the tools available to you; whether that means reaching out to people online, at a conference, or at that little restaurant down the street.
Citations:
- Image via Microsoft Office
Writing about everything from the recruiting and interviewing process to onboarding and employee engagement. Visit this great tracking software site for more info.