Lou Adler wrote a great post on LinkedIn regarding the importance of adopting a new hiring strategy as the talent shortage continues to get worse. I have attached the link here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/low-unemployment-job-growth-demands-new-hiring-strategy-lou-adler/
He provides some valuable insight into the talent acquisition process and how to adapt your talent hiring strategy to get better results for your company. Some key take a ways from his post are:
- The quality of the candidates that you attract from direct sourcing and referrals are far better than using job postings.
- Direct sourcing works best when you engage talent around the opportunity that you are recruiting for and have a solid career discussion about how this opportunity can better the talent’s career position.
- The interview process is a weak link for a lot of companies. Asking hard to answer or demeaning questions turns off most great candidates.
- Put value on other parts of the hiring proposition not just on the compensation. Candidates are interested in opportunities that can better their career by providing better opportunities for growth, stretch by providing more job responsibilities, more work satisfaction, and an opportunity to make an impact. He recommends 30% of the total employment package should include non-compensation benefits.
As headhunters/executive search consultants we always adopt the above approach whether there is a shortage for talent or not, as this methodology/approach brings the highest quality talent to our client partners. We are amazed at how many companies are still falling short in understanding the importance of candidate experience to the hiring process. Even the smallest things can create a poor employer brand performance and if the process is riddled with small mistakes the overall impact to the candidate becomes large. Being thorough is key to a great employer brand experience from beginning to end.
Lou Adler makes a very valuable point that most companies are focusing 80% of their hiring efforts on the lowest quality areas of attracting candidates which is primarily job postings. We focus the majority of our efforts on the best sources with is sourcing passive candidates and referrals.
For more information on the ineffectiveness of job postings to attract the best talent, you can read more from our blog post here:
https://hagerexecutivesearch.com/executive-search/more-job-postings-cannot-close-the-skills-gap/