After the festive season, many of us will be thinking about New Year resolutions, re-energising for work or learning, or maybe just thinking about shifting some yuletide pounds…undoubtedly, many of us also turn our heads to thinking about work and what we want to achieve in the New Year. Many organisations focus on having a refreshed recruitment strategy for a New Year, but what can be the benefits and pitfalls of this? Read our latest blog to find out more!
Look to last year’s recruitment strategy
How can we know what we need to do if we don’t know what we have done before? Before completely revamping your recruitment strategy, it is important to look backwards at what has gone well and what could be improved upon; available data is key to influencing this, as well as connecting with stakeholders to gain honest and open feedback.
A danger is looking to completely overhaul all recruitment related processes – the advisable thing to do is make incremental improvements and efficiencies so you can continually gauge whether the right decisions are being made. When looking at recruitment data, it is good to look at application flow, time to hire, fill rates and more, as well as feedback from candidates and hiring managers in the process. Ensuring you have an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that has a strong reporting suite will help with this data capture and analysis, as well as working alongside onboarding interviews and other engagement activities to improve your recruitment strategy.
Refresh or overhaul?
Once looking at the data available to you, you may be inclined to refresh aspects of your recruitment strategy or to look more holistically at a complete overhaul. Where many organisations start is looking at their talent attraction strategies and what can be achieved by tinkering with the current advertising and employer branding engagement plans – you may want to look at whether your adverts are truly fit for purpose? Or whether they are selling the role and your organization as best as can be? Sometimes, it can be good to get an outside perspective on your adverts, and who better to engage with than candidates or hiring managers! They can give honest feedback as to whether the adverts truly match up with the role itself and what is expected once a candidate starts.
Time to hire v Time for admin
Time is always of the essence and a challenge for anyone involved in any recruitment process, and as is often the case, getting a candidate in as soon as possible is normally the aim. Factoring in the need for speed, it is important to reflect on your recruitment processes and recruitment software, and whether they positively or negatively impact your time to hire or not or take you away from other tasks that could be beneficial to your recruitment and engagement efforts.
When looking at improving upon recruitment process and strategy, many circle back to whether their ATS or other system is truly fit for purpose or not. A clunky, non-intuitive system can take time away from engaging with candidates, organising interviews, or getting stuck in with new starters to afford them the best welcome to your business. If you are able to, conducting a real time analysis (RTA) or your recruitment process can help you identify where improvements are truly needed to help speed up your recruitment process and strategy, as well as reduce time wastage.
If you are looking for help to improve your recruitment strategy for 2022, Webrecruit is on hand to help! Whether you are looking to implement an intuitive, user-friendly ATS or to shake up your advertising strategy with stand-out job advertisements or a stunning careers site, we have tools and services at your disposal. Get in touch to find out more!
