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13 Employee Recruitment Tips for 2021

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Cassandra Rose, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
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Over the last year, com­pa­nies have been forced to rethink how they approach hir­ing and recruit­ment. As of April 2021, there were 9.3 mil­lion open jobs — a record-break­ing job short­age that has forced Amer­i­can indus­try to its knees. There’s no deny­ing the huge impact this has had on busi­ness­es across the country.

Orga­ni­za­tions are short-hand­ed, teams are stretched thin, peo­ple are over­worked and old recruit­ment strate­gies are inef­fec­tive. The fact is, there are sim­ply too many jobs and not enough peo­ple, so the com­pe­ti­tion for top tal­ent and high-lev­el employ­ees is fierce.

Recruiting in a Post-Pandemic World

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As a result, new strate­gies have emerged in the recruit­ment space cen­tral­ized around employ­ee well-being and com­pet­i­tive ben­e­fits. This method­ol­o­gy has quick­ly become the indus­try standard.

If orga­ni­za­tions want to sur­vive these try­ing times, they must learn to adapt their recruit­ing prac­tices, alter their hir­ing process and think of inno­v­a­tive ways to build their teams.

Here are thir­teen onboard­ing and recruit­ment tips and strate­gies that can smooth out the hir­ing process and sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost recruitment:

1. Companies Must Know Their Brand

Since employ­ees can now freely choose who they work for, brand iden­ti­ty has nev­er been more essen­tial. Orga­ni­za­tions with­out a keen sense of their brand iden­ti­ty, com­pa­ny mis­sion and what they stand for will have a mas­sive recruit­ing dis­ad­van­tage. Addi­tion­al­ly, a com­pa­ny with­out a clear brand will nev­er be able to appro­pri­ate­ly sell itself.

2. Prioritize Employee Well-Being

It will nev­er hurt to be the com­pa­ny known for how well it treats their peo­ple. Offer­ing gen­er­ous vaca­tion time, flex­i­ble work envi­ron­ments and robust ben­e­fits pack­ages are just the begin­ning. If com­pa­nies want to stand out in this job mar­ket, they must learn to pri­or­i­tize the well-being of their employees.

3. Offer Flexible and Remote Work Environments

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As the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues for the sec­ond year, 41.8% of Amer­i­can employ­ees are still work­ing remote­ly full-time. These num­bers are expect­ed to rise, and as they do, more peo­ple are going to pri­or­i­tize jobs with remote or flex­i­ble work envi­ron­ments. As a result, com­pa­nies that offer remote work will have a sig­nif­i­cant recruit­ing advan­tage over com­pa­nies that don’t.

4. Promote Diversity and Inclusion

It’s not enough to sim­ply claim to be diverse or inclu­sive. Peo­ple are way too smart to be tricked by false claims. If an orga­ni­za­tion wants to recruit from a high­ly skilled and social­ly con­scious work­force, they must prac­tice diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, mak­ing it a cru­cial part of their orga­ni­za­tion­al structure.

5. Perfect the Pitch

The pow­er has shift­ed to employ­ees, so orga­ni­za­tions must rethink how they’re sell­ing them­selves. The old pitch, which relied on a pow­er dynam­ic that favored the com­pa­ny, sim­ply doesn’t work any­more. Peo­ple know what they’re look­ing for, and they have options. It’s now the employer’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to prove that they’re the right fit.

6. Utilize Online Recruiting Tools

There are new and emerg­ing web­sites, appli­ca­tions and online recruit­ing tools that are rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the way peo­ple find work. If orga­ni­za­tions want to excel at hir­ing and recruit­ment, they need to uti­lize the tech­nol­o­gy that is available.

Inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal tools can help stream­line the hir­ing process and dip into a larg­er pool of appli­cants. New entrants into this space, like Chat­ter­Works, can help you eas­i­ly find, engage and hire the best tal­ent for your team across mul­ti­ple plat­forms, includ­ing social media channels.

7. Expand Digital and Social Recruiting Efforts

Cre­at­ing and uti­liz­ing social media net­works is one of the best ways to reach peo­ple where they spend much of their time. There­fore, com­pa­nies should devote time to cre­at­ing great con­tent and engag­ing with their fol­low­ers. As a bonus, these efforts will also help with branding.

8. Advertise Growth and Educational Opportunities

Peo­ple are look­ing for careers that will grow with them. It’s not just about finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion, health insur­ance and retire­ment ben­e­fits (though those are impor­tant). Peo­ple want to know that the com­pa­ny they devote much of their lives to will give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow, both in their careers and their per­son­al lives.

9. Create a Multigenerational Team

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Orga­ni­za­tions can­not and should not lim­it their recruit­ment to one age group. Instead, they should adjust their recruit­ment and hir­ing strate­gies to accom­mo­date mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions, appeal­ing to the entire work­force, not just a part of it. Multi­gen­er­a­tional teams pro­vide dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and con­tribute to a well-round­ed environment.

10. Transparency and Open Communication

When it comes to recruit­ment, rep­u­ta­tion is every­thing. If an orga­ni­za­tion wants to prove that it’s a great place to work, it must boast a com­pa­ny cul­ture that pri­or­i­tizes trans­paren­cy and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This is also a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of cre­at­ing a team that feels like a family.

11. Embrace a Virtual Hiring Process

Orga­ni­za­tions that sole­ly recruit, inter­view and hire face-to-face are lim­it­ing them­selves. There are high­ly skilled, incred­i­ble employ­ees all over the world who might be will­ing to relo­cate pro­vid­ed they find the right com­pa­ny and the right incentives.

Beyond that, many peo­ple are uncom­fort­able leav­ing their homes (COVID) for an inter­view or appli­ca­tion process that could eas­i­ly take place vir­tu­al­ly. Peo­ple who are unwill­ing to risk their well-being and the health of their fam­i­lies shouldn’t be penal­ized. A vir­tu­al hir­ing process is the best way to ensure inclu­siv­i­ty and broad­en the recruit­ing pool.

12. Automate the Recruiting Process

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With enough prep work and orga­ni­za­tion, the recruit­ing process doesn’t have to be exhaust­ing and chal­leng­ing to man­age. Adver­tis­ing, social recruit­ing and brand work are all process­es that can be auto­mat­ed. Plus, com­pa­nies can cre­ate a defined hir­ing process com­plete with pre-writ­ten offer tem­plates and onboard­ing pack­ages, which will take their recruit­ing pre­pared­ness to an elite level.

13. Offer Personalized Lifestyle Benefits

Offer­ing tra­di­tion­al ben­e­fits is no longer enough to attract, recruit and retain high-qual­i­ty employ­ees. In addi­tion to ben­e­fits like health insur­ance and retire­ment pack­ages, com­pa­nies should also offer lifestyle ben­e­fits. These ben­e­fits pro­mote a healthy work-life bal­ance and are proven to pos­i­tive­ly impact an employee’s emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal and men­tal well-being.

Fringe’s per­son­al­ized, cus­tomiz­able lifestyle ben­e­fits plat­form is the per­fect solu­tion for diverse orga­ni­za­tions. It elim­i­nates the guess­work and gives employ­ees the abil­i­ty to choose the ben­e­fits that are right for them. Want to try it out? Con­tact our team to sched­ule a demo!

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