Your recruitment process should shift as your business expands. However, this creates a challenge for HR professionals who have to update their strategies to accommodate the growth. Even if your recruitment processes worked very well in the past, there might still come a time when they are no longer enough. 

What can you do to meet changes in your company, and how can you create a recruitment process that grows with your needs? 

You will learn the top tips from experts for developing recruiting strategies that help you fill spaces faster, and with more qualified candidates, so your business is never left shorthanded. 

Challenges HR Recruiting Professionals Face Today 

The world of recruiting has changed in recent years. What once was a relatively straightforward process is made more difficult by the current talent shortage resulting in a limited number of qualified candidates and many competing businesses. 

According to a recent ManpowerGroup Talent Shortage survey, 69% of companies reported a talent shortage, which is a 15-year high. 

Because of this shortage, when businesses grow, HR professionals have difficulty keeping up with filling the new positions because recruiting takes longer and is more challenging. However, with the right strategies in place, you can build a recruitment process that prevents employee gaps in your business as your organization grows. 

Benefits of Upgrading Your Recruitment Process 

To be successful at recruiting, you must keep your processes updated to match your organization’s changing talent needs. When you invest in upgrading your recruitment process, you will experience five primary benefits: 

• You will save money because you are using your budget on the most effective techniques for recruiting and hiring new talent. You will also prevent revenue loss from having shorthanded teams or underqualified employees. 

• You will see more quality employees that understand the position and mix well with the company because you had the appropriate time to search through candidates versus rushing to fill a role last minute and settling with less-qualified options. 

• You will save time through streamlined recruitment processes. Only 30% of businesses fill a gap within 30 days. Meanwhile, 70% take several months. Upgrading your recruitment process will help you identify the most effective channels for recruiting staff quickly without compromising on quality. 

• Your business will have greater productivity because of a better-qualified staff. You will also have more time to perform other tasks like training and supporting current employees to help boost your productivity further. 

• You will experience fewer gaps in your employment because you can fill positions proactively instead of reactively when an employee leaves or your company creates new jobs. 

10 Tips for Upgrading Your Recruitment Process and Preventing Gaps 

When you use these expert tips, you will improve your recruitment process and keep up with your company’s growth. 

1. Incorporate Artificial Intelligence 

About 88% of companies use AI in HR departments to help them improve job tasks. Artificial intelligence can perform the job of dozens of people in a fraction of the time, which makes it a valuable asset for speeding up the recruitment process when working with many positions that need to be filled in a fast-growing company. 

Artificial intelligence can process data, review resumes, and manage information that will help streamline your recruiting and fill gaps with more talented candidates. 

For example, many recruiters find sorting through hundreds or thousands of applications to identify the few qualified candidates is one of the most challenging parts of the hiring process. However, AI can perform much of that process before you need to look at resumes by searching for keywords from your list of qualifications and requirements. This creates a smaller pool of applications for review. 

2. Develop Data-Driven Strategies 

Data can eliminate much of the guesswork out of your recruitment strategies because it helps you identify trends and talent potential before making any time or budget investments.  

Here are several specific areas within your recruitment where data is essential for success in a growing business. 

Filling gaps within your business would be much easier if you only knew there would be an opening weeks or months before it happened. While some losses are impossible to foresee, you can anticipate many others by examining employee behaviors. For instance, a change in work patterns or frequent time-off requests might tell you there are issues you should address. Then, when you see these patterns appear in your data analysis, you can begin looking for potential replacements if the employee does leave. 

You can build a data-driven team by identifying strong candidates with the help of predictive analytics. Predictive analytics uses business and employee data to predict how well a potential candidate may perform within your business. Then, using the analytic results, you can confidently choose the best candidates. 

Your data analytics can also point out the best channels and processes for successfully recruiting talent by looking at recruitment patterns from past employees. Using the same strategy will reduce the time you would have wasted on processes that previously yielded very few results. 

3. Fill Your Talent Pipeline with Qualified Candidates 

Are you maximizing the benefits of your talent pipeline? 

A talent pipeline is a proactive strategy for ensuring you always have a quality talent pool ready to fill gaps within your company. Your pipeline can include resumes from past qualified applicants for which you didn’t have an available position. You can also add job seekers you met through networking events, social media, or other recruiting methods. Then, you keep a record of these potential hires and continue to nurture them until positions are available. 

To get the most use out of your talent pipeline, you must also actively manage the talent you add to your pool. Instead of listing names in a long list inside a giant database, use proactive measures for sorting and managing potential hires by their qualifications, experience, and level of interest. When you have an open position, you can easily sort through your list of ready talent according to the position’s needs and requirements to find the best-suited candidate for the open position. 

4. Use a Virtual Hiring Process 

COVID-19 caused many changes in the recruiting and hiring process. One of the most notable is the shift towards virtual recruitment. Even though workers are returning to in-person offices, many businesses still use virtual recruiting because of its convenience and accessibility. 

Video interviews and other virtual recruitment processes can save your business hours by allowing you to reach more candidates faster since you don’t have to work around travel and strict schedule complications. As a result, about 61% of recruiters say that video interviews will become the norm in the hiring process. 

5. Involve Your Current Employees 

Your current employees are a valuable tool for finding and hiring new talent because they understand how your business operates and know the type of employee that would fit best in the workplace. Employee referrals account for nearly a third of all new hires. Employee referral programs will encourage your current talent to actively seek out new qualified candidates. 

Your employees can also be active participants during other steps of the recruitment and hiring process. For instance, you might use current employees for a panel interview. They would be able to ask questions based on their personal experience on the job, and you can see how well the new candidate blends with the current workplace culture. 

You can make your recruiting process more manageable if you also look to your current employees for rising talent. Moving trained and qualified talent within your company to fill new positions will streamline your hiring process. In addition, as you move employees up in the company, you will leave entry-level positions open, which are easier to fill with outside talent as you will have a broader pool of qualified candidates. 

6. Optimize Your Job Description and Application Process 

You will save your department valuable time if you can sort out poorly qualified candidates before they submit their resumes for consideration. Optimizing your job description to target the right candidates is the first step you can take to attract the right people for each position. About 52% of job seekers look at the quality of a job description when deciding whether they want to apply. 

An effective job description will use specific terms to help your posting appear in relevant searches. For example, the job title is the most crucial part of your description as nearly a third of job seekers search by job title.  

In your job listing, limit your qualifications and requirements to only the most essential functions. If you list too few qualifications, you will have more unqualified candidates apply. However, if you list too many, you might lose talented candidates who feel underqualified. 

You can also add an extra step in the application process that gives candidates the chance to show their skills. This assessment will eliminate candidates who quickly apply to dozens of posts regardless of their abilities. It also provides proof of each candidate’s skills. If you add an assessment, keep it simple enough not to discourage qualified candidates. 

7. Improve Your Online Branding 

Your website shouldn’t only market to your customers and clients. It is also a way to bring in potential hires. About 80% of HR professionals say their company’s branding is vital for attracting new talent. 

Your website is an effective place to highlight your most significant achievements, like awards for being the best place to work. In addition, you should use your social media to highlight your company culture with images of events, benefits, and employee interactions. These images showcase what you can offer new talent and gives them a glimpse of your company’s diversity and current workplace culture. 

8. Highlight Your Employee Benefits 

Since quality employees are in high demand, you want your recruitment process to make your business rise above your competitors. That involves a careful balance of finding what employees can bring to your company and highlighting what you can offer new employees in return. 

Listing your benefits and salary on your job listing can help position you above your competition and encourage applicants to hold out on other options while waiting for you to respond to their application. 

9. Combine Active and Passive Strategies 

LinkedIn published a report revealing that 70% of the workforce is passive talent, which means they aren’t actively looking for a job. However, 87% of those candidates are open to new positions if it offers a better opportunity or benefits. 

While passive strategies are necessary for finding active job seekers, consider adding more active recruiting processes in your strategy that helps you reach potential passive talent with known skills and qualifications that match your needs. 

Some examples of active recruiting strategies include: 

• Searching for employees on job boards 

• Finding talent through LinkedIn 

• In-person networking outside of job fairs 

• Using employee referral programs 

10. Outsource Your Recruiting Process 

If your business continues to grow, you will eventually hit a point where you can’t keep up with your recruiting needs on your own. Don’t let your business stagnate because you don’t have the time or budget to recruit the necessary talent. Instead, use recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) to access the best talent for your business. 

A recruitment agency has the necessary tools to analyze your data and identify the best candidates for your business. RPO can stay on top of your needs with the latest knowledge of business trends and help you find qualified candidates even when markets shift and change. With their help, you will see profit growth and increased productivity because you will have fewer recruitment tasks to juggle and will see more significant returns. 

ManpowerGroup offers RPO as a comprehensive global solution for employers that need support in the recruitment process to prevent gaps in hiring as their business grows. 

Stay on Top of Your Business Expansion 

Don’t let your business’s growth overwhelm the HR department. Instead, be proactive in your recruiting process by using these ten strategies and staying on top of your employees' needs. When you have a streamlined and focused strategy in place, you will see increased profit and productivity in your business from your team of qualified talent.