The economy has rebounded enough since the great recession that job seekers are no longer desperate to get a job or keep a job they aren’t happy doing. Today’s savvy job seekers can easily research companies on Google and quickly have alerts for multiple open positions delivered to their inbox several times a day. Competition to hire and retain quality workers in a knowledge-based environment is fierce.

1. Recruitment advertising is marketing. Make your recruitment website and job ads inviting and part of your company’s marketing message. Add branded visuals and video to make your ads compelling and informative. Take notice of what employees are saying about working for your company online; it is an important part of your company brand. According to LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends 2016, 59% of companies felt company brand influenced the quality, referrals, and retention of candidates.¹

2. Focus your recruitment with data analytics. Employers frequently suggest job seekers not blanket employers with their resume. Similarly, employers don’t need to run blanket ads in every possible location. Data analytics allow today’s HR professionals to reach the right audience – even passive job seekers. 

3. Leverage digital resources. If you aren’t already, use keyword screening and review digital profiles and social networks to give focus to your candidate field. According to Marley Dominguez, CEO of Haystack Job Search, the coming trend in recruitment will be applying intelligence to online data so that HR professionals can focus on the actual hiring of candidates.²

4. Streamline the hiring process. Let candidates know that you have received and reviewed their resumes. Every day that passes without communication is a negative impression left on the prospective employee.  According to Laura Kerekes, chief knowledge office of ThinkHR, “Talent acquisition has become a seller’s market…it’s all about maximizing the candidate experience through the job application process.“ ³

5. Balance recruitment and selection. Today’s job seekers may not wait forever to go through a long, drawn-out hiring process if they see something else available. Continue to “sell” your open position while you are assessing a prospect’s abilities for selection. Make your hiring process thorough but as quick as possible. 28% of respondents in the LinkedIn study considered “time to fill” the most important metric.⁴

6. Interview and test. Don’t waste time with magic bullet questions.⁵ Have a conversational but structured discussion about a prospect’s skills and experience. Include other key employees in the hiring process. Put together a practical test that will give you some idea about the candidate’s abilities. LinkedIn’s Global Trends study found that 44% of employers consider “quality of hire” as the most valuable Key Performance Indicator.⁵

^{1  https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/GRT16_GlobalRecruiting_100815.pdf
2  http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6975-future-of-recruiting.html
3, 4 https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/GRT16_GlobalRecruiting_100815.pdf
5 http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2016/02/11/nine-ways-employers-screw-up-hiring-3/#1731d2761cd2}