9 Recruitment Strategies for Successful Hiring

In this article, you’ll find 9 recruitment strategies and best practices that’ll help you get the best talent on board.

We’ll cover:

1. Enhance your employer brand
2. Invest in an applicant tracking system
3. Create enticing job ads
4. Explore niche online job boards
5. Use social media to target talent
6. Build a talent pipeline
7. Engage passive candidates
8. Set up an employee referral program
9. Source and hire for diversity

Let’s get started.

1. Enhance your employer brand

Your employer brand isn’t just important for reaching potential customers: it’s also a vital part of your recruitment efforts.

An employer brand functions as your org’s reputation. Having no reputation won’t help you in your recruitment efforts — and having a bad one can severely hurt your chances of getting the best talent on board. Recruiting, after all, is just as much about getting the right candidates to seek you out as it is about sourcing them yourself. Hence, a strong employer brand is crucial to your hiring efforts.

For this recruitment strategy, ask yourself:

• Why would candidates want to work for us?
• How many of our current employees would recommend our org as a great place to work?

The answers to these questions should help you determine if your employer brand is clear and truly reflects your org, your mission, and your values. Check that your website, “about” page, social media profiles, and marketing efforts align with your branding.

2. Invest in an applicant tracking system

Keeping candidates engaged through a lengthy recruitment and hiring process isn’t an easy task. Recruiting is a race. The best talent is likely getting multiple offers, and you don’t want to lose them because it took you too long to make an offer.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software tool for talent acquisition and recruitment. An ATS often includes features such as one-click job posting to multiple sites, applicant sorting, interview scheduling, and more.

Importantly, it allows you to automate two crucial parts in the recruitment process:

• Posting job ads, and
• Finding qualified applicants.

Not only can this save your org time and money — it can also help you get the best talent on board before it’s too late. This makes investing in an ATS a best practice in recruitment.

You can read more about applicant tracking systems here.

3. Create enticing job ads

For many applicants, your job ads are the first impression they get of your org. For that reason, creating enticing job ads is a best practice in recruitment. Your job ads need to appeal to your applicant pool — and that goes far beyond offering the right position.

You want your job ads to be clear, thorough, and concise. They should reflect your org and show that not only are you organized and professional — you’re also the best place to work.

When writing your job ads, make sure that the information you include is presented in a concise, active manner that highlights all the most attractive aspects of the role. Include the essentials about your org, the job, and what candidates stand to gain from working for you.

Finally, remember that your job ads are an important part of your org’s reputation — so make sure to check that the style of your job ads matches your company branding.

Want to learn more about writing job ads? Read our article on how to write job ads here.

4. Explore niche job boards

Don’t get us wrong — big online job boards like Glassdoor and Indeed are popular for a reason. The downside to this, however, is that since every startup is competing to get the best talent, your job ads might get lost among the thousands posted every day.

One recruitment strategy that can help you get around this is to post your ads on niche job boards. Investing in job boards where your targeted candidates are most active can go a long way towards ensuring that you get the best talent on board — and that makes it a best practice in recruitment.

Examples of niche job boards include:

• Pallet — tech
• Behance — designers
• HRCrossing — human resources
• ProBlogger — writers

If you want to reach as many qualified candidates as possible, this is a great time to use your ATS’ quick-post feature to get your job ads on multiple platforms with just one click.

5. Use social media to target talent

Millennials and Gen-Z make up a significant chunk of the talent pool. 41% of millennials say that they prefer to communicate electronically to engaging over the phone or face to face. That means you need to meet them where they are — on social media.

For many orgs, using social media to source talent is a successful recruitment strategy. Some of the best social media platforms for this purpose are:

• LinkedIn,
• Twitter, and
• Instagram.

LinkedIn is one of the biggest social media platforms for professionals. Twitter and Instagram have less work-focused profiles. However, having an active social media presence on these platforms is still a recruitment best practice.

Social media platforms allow you to have a two-way conversation with candidates quickly. And even if you don’t see a high influx of candidates from your social media, being active on social media platforms can help you enhance your employer brand. Just make sure that the content you share reflects your company culture and values.

6. Build a talent pipeline

When recruiting, you’ll always encounter applicants who aren’t a match for the role you’re looking to fill — but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be a great fit for your org. That’s why building a talent pipeline is an integral strategy and best practice in recruiting.

A talent pipeline lets you keep a record of all candidates who didn’t get through, but might be a great match in the future. This allows you to speed up your recruitment process, as you already have a reliable list of qualified candidates available when you need to fill a role.

An ATS is a great resource for this purpose, as it can help you “archive” candidates and easily resurface them for specific roles next time you’re recruiting.

7. Engage passive candidates

You don’t have to wait for candidates to start actively looking for a job before engaging them. Engaging passive candidates is an excellent recruitment strategy. It can help you build a relationship with candidates and make them more likely to be interested in applying in the future — and that can be just as valuable as candidates who want to apply now.

Engaging passive candidates requires you to personally reach out to them. This is a best recruitment practice because it shows them that you’re genuinely interested in their talent and are willing to go the extra mile to get them on board.

This recruitment strategy can also help you build a network. Even if the candidates you engage don’t end up working for you, they may refer qualified professionals in their network to you somewhere down the line.

8. Set up an employee referral program

One of the most popular recruitment strategies today is employee referral programs. In short, these programs encourage already existing employees to refer network contacts and friends for open positions within the company.

The programs typically offer rewards — such as gift cards or cash bonuses — to encourage employees to participate in finding the next new hire.

An employee referral program can help you reduce the time you spend writing job postings or finding the right channels for your job ads. Moreover, employees hired via such programs are more likely to be a good fit for your company culture, and they usually stay longer than other employees.

9. Source and hire for diversity

A diverse workforce means a diverse set of thoughts, ideas, and approaches. This is incredibly valuable — and that makes sourcing and hiring for diversity a recruitment best practice you don’t want to miss out on.

We talked about niche job boards earlier. But did you know that there are job boards for diverse hiring, too?

Examples of these job boards include:

• Mogul — women and minority candidates
• Pink Jobs — LGBTQ+ candidates
• abilityJOBS — candidates with disabilities

Recruiting for diversity brings different opinions to the table. This enhances office discussions and helps you foster a positive, inspiring, and welcoming company culture. It also helps you show your talent pool that your org sources and hires without prejudice or bias.

Note: The best way to prove that you hire for diversity is to show candidates the people behind your org. Want to stand out in the crowd? Set up your company page and let The Org help you with your talent acquisition efforts.

Key takeaways

The best recruitment practices take effort. You need to show your talent pool that your org is the best place to work.

Our recruitment strategies above will help you achieve this by:

• Speeding up your recruitment process,
• Helping you explore different recruitment avenues to attract the best talent, and
• Enabling you to establish a reputation for your org as a professional company that truly values its most important resource: its people.

Getting the best talent on board isn’t easy — but with the right recruitment strategies, you can increase your chances of success.