Have we learned any recruitment lessons yet?

Here are four things businesses could and should think about when it comes to talent, if they aren’t already:

Posting an advert is not enough in this job market, especially for in-demand skillsets

According to data from Seek NZ, the average time to hire is now 50 days. That’s a long time! Sometimes the best candidates are passive – interested in their next great opportunity, but too busy achieving good things in their current role to be looking on job boards all the time.

Businesses that are quickly managing to secure the best talent have proactive sourcing strategies to access and engage with the people they need, utilising a mix of approaches. These include investment in dedicated internal recruitment resources, utilising recruitment tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter and recruitment agencies, and hiring people who fit their culture and values, then providing them with technical skill gap training where needed.

Your leaders are your secret weapon to accessing the best talent

If you have amazing leaders in your business, great! People don’t quit a job, the saying goes – they quit a manager. The same lesson can be applied to attracting talent – more people choose a manager than the company. If you have great leaders in your business, they need to be front and centre in the recruitment process working alongside internal and external recruitment partners to come up with innovative ways to engage with the intended target audience.

Think long term – build sustainable talent pipelines

It’s easy, especially in a talent-short market, to get caught up in spending your time, energy and resources to fill the vacancy you have right now and neglecting to think about future hiring.

Wouldn’t it be great if the next time you recruit for a similar position you are not starting from scratch? Organisations that are winning the war on talent have strategies to build their employee value proposition (EVP) with their target audiences. Whether this is through regular networking (online or in person) with key industry groups and meet-ups or building talent pools using recruitment tools and partnerships with specialist recruitment agencies, the key is to do this on an ongoing basis so that you have warm leads to contact when you next have a vacancy.

Embrace a data-driven approach to drive better return on investment (ROI)

Businesses collect and analyse data, often to extreme levels of detail, to help inform decision making about which customers to target or what price a product should be, yet when it comes to recruitment it seems most organisations have little if any data.

You should constantly measure key questions around your recruitment strategy. Which channels have produced the most suitable applicants and ultimately the most successful employees? Which channels are bringing the most engagement from good talent? What is your time to hire? Recruitment costs have doubled across New Zealand over the past year. How much have you spent on recruitment agencies in the past 12 months?

Having a system in place, whether it is a simple spreadsheet or a more sophisticated Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to collect accurate data that highlights how your business is going about recruitment, can be an important first step to identifying what your key talent problems are and improving your ROI at the same time.