How to recruit cost-efficiently?

There are plenty of ways to find suitable candidates for a vacancy. However, it’s up to the future employer to make the right decisions:

• Which channels do I use?
• Which tools do I use?
• When do I hire an external agency?

If you urgently need to fill some vacancies, it might be interesting to engage an external agency. After all, they know the market and have valuable insights that you don’t have yourself. However, it’s essential to be critical in the selection of external parties. Most organizations don’t have the basics in order. Therefore, they already optimize a lot when advised by the right people.

Besides the cost and quality of the recruitment, it’s essential to measure the time-to-hire, the duration before a vacancy is filled. This way, you can conclude which channels provide the best quality at the lowest cost.

Contemporary employer marketing involves offline and online marketing techniques. If you use the proper methods, you get many opportunities to reach potential employees, generating an influx of candidates cost-efficiently. Therefore, investing in employer branding is a must, especially in the medium to long term. This blog focuses on a short-term recruitment approach and provides a helpful roadmap for recruiting candidates. In a future blog, we will elaborate on the benefits of employer branding as part of a long-term approach.

Step 1: the basics

In the first phase, you have to make sure the basics are in order. Why would potential candidates come to work for your organization?

Create vacancies

A well-written vacancy performs significantly better in comparison to one that blends in with the masses. The vacancy must appeal, not only in terms of text. The structure and graphics should also be spot-on. Also, don’t forget about SEO optimization so that search engines or platforms such as Indeed can pick up your vacancy.

Video

Classic vacancy texts will not disappear any time soon. However, the rise of video as the ultimate employer marketing tool can’t be ignored. It's the ideal way to authentically and creatively highlight an organization's USPs, let the team speak, and convince a candidate of the unique opportunity.

Career site

An attractive vacancy page is indispensable. It’s where you must convince potential candidates why your organization is the place-to-be. A simple PDF format is an absolute no-go, if only because Google can’t find it. Also, always provide the right candidate experience. You don’t want applicants to drop out because they have to fill in too much information or because they can’t easily upload their CV. Also, consider the mobile aspect. After all, many people search and apply via their smartphones.

A new evolution in this context is 'Google for Jobs,' recently launched in Belgium. The way people search and find jobs has evolved a lot, so this will undoubtedly have a significant impact. You have to add structured data to your website code for Google for Jobs to find your vacancies and include them in the overview.

Through this link you can see per page which 'structured data' is available on your website.

The credo 'to measure is to know' also applies here. Implement tracking so that you gain insight into the behavior of website visitors. That way, you can develop targeted digital marketing actions and reach precisely whom you need to reach. Try installing tracking on Facebook & LinkedIn for retargeting, setting up Google Tag Manager, and using Google Analytics.

Step 2: Job advertising via social media and job boards

The next step in the recruitment process is the use of social networks. This requires relatively little effort, and also placement and promotion can be pretty low-cost. Besides, social media are great for engaging existing employees as ambassadors. The most famous social networks are:

• LinkedIn: the largest professional network in the world. You can promote jobs on LinkedIn to the right target audience via ‘Jobs' and possibly 'Advertising.'
• Facebook: an affordable instrument to position jobs to a specific target group and region.

And last but not least, you have the classic job boards. VDAB is free and works well for particular vacancies. Other options are Monster, Stepstone, Jobat, and more, although the cost can be higher here. You can post vacancies, advertise them further on social media or Google and search the candidate database through these platforms.

Always analyze all options to know which channels are best to reach your target group.

Step 3: Proactive sourcing via Linkedin or other databases

One step further, the “real” recruitment work (headhunting) starts. To do this, you can collaborate with an external office. For example, 'LinkedIn Recruiter' (Boolean Search) is great for approaching passive talent, people who aren’t looking but who might be open to exciting opportunities. In addition, there are also some AI players on the market that automate the process of matching skills and vacancies

Step 4: Screening, selecting, and onboarding

At last, we’re selecting the right employee and ensuring efficient onboarding. Onboarding is crucial to get your new employee up to speed quickly. In addition, it increases retention and re-impacts the employer brand, concerning both the administrative and the social and more 'learning'-oriented aspects of onboarding. But that’s for another blog!

Software

To be complete, we want to add that there is a lot of useful software available on the market to manage and automate these matters. Also, for small to medium enterprises. Recruitment software can help with:

• managing applicants from application to recruitment: the ATS (applicant tracking system)
• employer marketing: job sites, posting on job boards/social media, referral systems, and more.
• video interview

Some examples for SMEs are Recruitee, Workable, and Jobtoolz.

Do you want to optimize your recruitment process? Could you use our help with this? Contact us via hello@unikoo.be or call us on +32 3 376 00 98. Also, be sure to keep an eye on our blog if you want to learn more about the benefits of employer branding.