Land that new recruiting job & handle those active candidates

Episode three of The Tea on Recruiting brings two exciting topics to the table: How to start a new recruiting career, and How to deal with the dynamic candidate market. You’ll find the video and its transcript below. Have a good time!

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Transcript

Hello hello hello hello, welcome back to the Tea on Recruiting, where we share insightful and thought-provoking content that can help you shape your recruiting career. My hot cuppa tea and I are ready and steady and cannot wait to share with you the content we found. As usual, wear your bibs, ladies and gentlemen: there’ll be some tea-spilling by the end of the episode.

Adapting to an active candidate market

We read SocialTalent’s “How to adapt to an active candidate market”, and it was for sure interesting. First of all, because it tackles a hot theme: the great rehiring. Companies are or will be hiring again, but a few things have changed. As the title implies, there are a lot more active candidates than before, due to the violent financial hit that struck several industries and the subsequently sky-high unemployment rate. So, how can you improve? There are 5 elements you should focus on:

Number one, Employer Branding

As Epictetus said, “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals, not under my control, and which have to do with the choice I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.” Now that we’re all experts in stoicism, the areas of your employer branding that you can control are: your website, especially in its career pages /your social media /your application process /your branded content /and your employee advocacy.

Point number two, Job Descriptions

Your candidates deserve to have all the information that can help them figure out if they’d be a good fit. Don’t just put down the job requirements, but the role’s demands too. For instance:

What does day-to-day life look like at your company?
What are the challenges these candidates will face?
And what issues should they solve for the company?

Find yourself someone who’s excited by all this. They should know what they’re walking into, and do so proudly.

Three, ATS. Ohhhh yeah, Applicant Tracking Systems, LET’S GO!

Many roles will see an increase in volumes of applicants. Do you have proper tooling? It can help you avoid higher delays in your time to hire.

Four, my favorite words of all time: CANDIDATE – EXPERIENCE

I’ll start off by saying that, as we all know, poor Candidate Experience means that you might be publicly put to shame, at some point, and this will draw the top talent that could make your business thrive away from you. Appcast says that only 10% of people complete an application. A hard hiring process filters out candidates, but does it only filter out the less talented ones?

Five, Setting your HIRING MANAGERS’ EXPECTATIONS

They might think that since there are more candidates, they can aim higher. Well, you could share this funny analogy with them: “Just because a lake is full of fish, it doesn’t mean you’ll find a whale in there.” If this theme interests you, know that we at Starred have also written a cool article about it, which we’ll link below!

And now, onto the second article we’ll share with you today:

How-To Guide for Recruiters Seeking Work

Ok, so the odds are that some of you have either unemployed at the moment, or are looking into switching jobs. For a lot of us this crisis felt like…

It can be a scary time, but luckily, Lever shared a How-to Guide for Recruiters Seeking Work, and it’s quite well-made. Let’s check out their advice and help you find that job!

Ok, so, there are about 5 steps here.

First of all, you should work on your network. But who should you be reaching out to? Here’s a list:

Former colleagues
R4R recruiters (e.g. recruiters who recruit other recruiters)
Agency contacts
Online Slack communities like Resources for Humans, #people, people geeks, and more
Recruiter Facebook groups
Recruiter email lists like Recruiting Brainfood – Hung Lee’s newsletter also has an excellent recruiter job board in it

They also share a pro tip. Follow recruiting leaders at your favorite companies on social media and set up job alerts.

As a second piece of advice, if you were an agency recruiter, ask your customers for referrals.

Thirdly, how about updating your online platforms?

Your LinkedIn should be neat and complete. Make sure that your bio, experience, and skills are in order. Be specific and exhaustive: answer all the questions that a potential employer would be interested in asking you. Your colleagues across the core functions can support you by giving you recommendations.

As a fourth point, your resume’ deserves to be freshened up, too. Highlight your recent accomplishments. How did you impact the business, and what processes did you improve? Make sure to use talent metrics like time-to-hire, offer acceptance rate, number of roles closed, billing accomplishments, and more.

Finally, make sure to attend virtual networking events to make connections. Grow your skill set through online learning, webinars, training…

There are also options like Fiverr or Upwork. Depending on your desired industry it’s likely there will be more opportunities in the next near future.

On to theeeee

CandE Crash

You know it: the more barbaric your treatment of candidates, the more demonic their Glassdoor reviews of your company. Here’s a nasty review we’ve decided to share.

Shoutout to a company we won’t name for keeping a candidate involved for over three months and then just ghosting them. Your candidate even tried to reach you via email and phone calls, but to no avail.

Got something to say about this? Drop a comment below, we’d love to pick your brains. Your help helps us get better at helping you!