Building your Recruitment Infrastructure: 5 Tips for Success

By: Zoe Stanley

 

Recruiting great talent for your company is crucial for its long-term growth and success. However, finding and retaining top talent requires a sustainable, well-rounded recruitment infrastructure.

Building a solid recruitment infrastructure can feel overwhelming, but it can be a smooth and gratifying process with the proper steps and strategies.

This blog will share our top five tips to help you build a robust recruitment infrastructure to attract and retain the best talent. Whether you are a startup or an established company, these tips will help you establish a recruitment process to set you up for long-term success!

 

 

1. Comparing Your Offerings to Candidate Demands

Before you can even begin searching for candidates, you must do the necessary prep work to set yourself up for success.

A holistic recruitment strategy usually includes 60% prep work, 20% recruitment tasks, and 20% onboarding.

Prep work is critical because it sets the stage for the rest of the recruitment and hiring process. This is where you’ll get clear on your hiring needs and how you plan to accomplish this.

For example, prep work involves assessing your company offerings, who you are, and what gap you want to fill with this open role.

Be sure to pull in the hiring manager here to discuss the position’s offerings and qualifications, such as:

• Schedule (days and hours)
• Location
• Compensation range
• Desired soft skills
• Technical experience and/or education
• Certifications and/or licenses

During this step, you should also consider your company’s strengths and weaknesses and how they align with candidates’ needs.

So, what are candidates looking for right now?

Here is a short list of some key things people want in their next role:

• Fair and competitive pay
• Comprehensive benefit and wellness offerings
• Greater work-life balance
• Flexibility and the option to work remotely or hybrid (when possible)
• True inclusion and belonging
• Career development and progression opportunities

Now that you know about some things candidates are looking for, spend some time comparing these to your company’s current offerings. Are there any significant gaps you notice?

 

 

2. What Things Will Set Your Company Apart?

Once you’ve determined some gaps in your company’s offerings, start thinking about what different things your company can realistically offer employees and candidates.

Dig into your total benefits package to learn more about each benefit’s value to employees and how they translate to candidates’ wants.

This process could involve sending a survey to current employees. This survey can help assess satisfaction with current benefits and suggest new offerings they’d like to see in the future.

Remember, whatever exciting perks and benefits you offer to new hires should be applied to current employees too!

Considering the criteria for your position, do your offerings match up in a competitive way to be attractive?

There are many companies to choose from, so you need to consider what will make a candidate want to choose your company over someone else.

Another question to ask yourself is, based on your offerings, what kind of technical skills or educational background will your company attract?

For example, you might find a candidate who enjoys autonomy and mission-based work. But can you afford them or offer them experiences encouraging them to stay with your organization?

Consider creative and realistic ways to tweak your offerings to differentiate yourself from competitors and attract your desired talent.

Here are some examples of just a few ways you could stand out to potential candidates beyond higher pay:

• Autonomous, Flexible Schedule
• Development stipend and tuition reimbursement
• An Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Mentorship opportunities
• An internet and cell phone stipend

 

 

3. Optimize Your Job Ad and Evaluate True Job Requirements

Now that you’ve assessed and revised your benefit offerings, it’s time to prepare to begin recruiting for your positions.

Before starting recruitment, it’s critical to be extremely clear about your process, offerings, and position requirements.

Revisit the position’s criteria and qualifications from earlier and how this aligns with the job description. What are the things a candidate absolutely must have to do the job well?

Consider why you’re asking for a particular degree or years of experience. Is this necessary for success in the role, or is it nice to have?

Avoid adding something unless it’s 100% necessary for the job – a laundry list of qualifications can deter more diverse talent.

We also urge you to focus on the soft skills that make a great employee rather than technical or hard skills.

Soft skills are inherent qualities that can significantly impact an individual’s success as part of a team. While technical skills can be taught and improved upon, a person’s ability to communicate effectively, work well in a team, and show empathy are far more challenging to learn.

Next, consider the structure of your job ad and how it can help attract candidates.

Be sure to include who you are as a company, what kind of experiences you can offer candidates, the position’s responsibilities, and what sort of person you’re looking for.

Other essential items to include are hours, scheduling, pay ranges, and your benefit offerings. Remember to ensure managers know that your benefits are a form of compensation!

Another great thing to consider here is career mapping. Before you start interviewing, everyone should know and be able to explain how this role can develop and grow.

It’s vital to educate managers or anyone involved in the interview process about all these things. Everyone involved needs to be on the same page, so the candidate isn’t getting different information from different people.

 

 

4. Create a Modern Recruitment Marketing Strategy

More folks are leaving their current jobs, and a new generation is entering the workforce. Plus, the market is more competitive than ever before.

So, how do you break through the noise and successfully reach your desired candidate pool?

The answer: integrate a robust recruitment marketing strategy into your recruitment infrastructure!

Recruitment marketing involves various strategies and tools used by an organization to engage candidates in the pre-applicant stage, encouraging them to want to apply. These strategies include social media platforms, website optimization, and targeted messaging.

Before you begin, it’s critical to understand that a one-size-fits-all recruitment method will no longer work – you need to adapt your value proposition to the distinct employee persona that best matches the role you’re looking to fill.

Next, you must understand your brand, values, voice, and what speaks to your target employee persona. What appeals to them, and how can you communicate this to them?

People spend more time online than ever before. Hence, prospective employees will likely look at your online presence (i.e., your company website, social media platforms, Glassdoor reviews, etc.).

On average, we’ve found that our audience spends 250% more time engaging with content than with written job ads. A strong, positive online presence is essential to attracting top-notch talent!

A robust recruitment marketing strategy will use your online platforms (and in-person touchpoints if you have any) to educate potential candidates and encourage them to apply to your open roles.

Here are some examples of the various ways you can creatively market your open role:

• Post a job ad flyer in a high-traffic place (if you operate a brick-and-mortar location)
• Create an Instagram graphic with key points from your written job ad
• Post about the role on LinkedIn
• Film a day-in-the-life reel or TikTok
• Create a career map graphic to add to your career page
• Utilize employee ambassadors

No matter your chosen strategies, the end goal should be to help candidates envision themselves working at your company!

 

 

5. Standardize and Optimize Your Interview Processes

The final part of building your recruitment infrastructure involves solidifying your interview process. Standardizing this process can increase efficiency and help you fill roles more quickly.

Besides, you want every candidate to have as similar of an experience as possible throughout the interview process. A standard interview process will make evaluating a group of candidates much easier – it reduces bias and facilitates more informed hiring decisions.

Additionally, consider offering the candidate several options for conducting the interviews, such as in-person or virtual.

A great way to standardize the interviews is to ask each candidate the same bank of questions. Try to use mainly open-ended behavioral interview questions to evaluate the candidates’ skills through stories and their past experiences.

Ensure all interviewees know what they can and cannot ask during an interview. Need help creating a compliant, effective interview template for your open role(s)? Explore our Custom Interview Template on our online shop!

You’ll also want to reevaluate how you’re contacting candidates. Throughout the last few decades, recruiters have relied mainly on phone calls.

And while phone calls aren’t obsolete, there are now many more ways to contact people more easily!

We’ve found great success in diversifying our contact methods – we’ve begun to use a combination of texting, emails, phone calls, and direct messaging on LinkedIn to contact candidates.

Lastly, we recommend using an applicant tracking system (ATS) to stay organized and keep all your recruitment documents in one place – including job ads, resumes, interview notes, background checks, and offer letters. Ask us for our ATS recommendations!

 

 

Once you’ve gone through the entire recruitment process and hired a great candidate, you’re not done!

It’s time to plan their onboarding process to ensure success and a long-term fit. Onboarding is crucial to make the new hire feel prepared and excited to start their new role.

A solid recruitment infrastructure and onboarding process will build the foundation for long-term success and satisfaction in your organization!

Contact True Calling Recruitment for support in building an effective, robust recruitment infrastructure!

---

Zoe Stanley is the founder of Quill & Pine Digital Marketing and a content marketing extraordinaire. She’s passionate about helping small businesses worldwide achieve their top digital marketing goals. Connect with her to see how she can make your content marketing dreams come to life one blog, email, and article at a time.