The job market is always in a state of dynamic flux; more so in the post-pandemic period that is witnessing a radical transformation in the way employees look at jobs and work-life balance. Many workers are quitting the workforce altogether or changing jobs to suit themselves, and employers are facing continuous challenges to building a supportive and more inclusive workplace. It takes more than traditional hiring practices to attract qualified and competent candidates in an intensely competitive staffing marketplace. Some handy tips on adopting a new approach to hiring talent:
Prioritize Skills over Qualifications and Experience
If you are finding it difficult to find candidates to fill open positions, you may consider demolishing some barriers preventing suitable workers from applying. While the conventional approach to recruiting involves specifying the desired qualifications and years of experience, an increasing number of recruiters are dropping this approach in favor of specifying desired skills. According to many recruiters, this new approach is proving successful and allows businesses to assess candidates that would not have made it through the gate otherwise.
Hunt for Potential
The recruiter’s battle is not over with finding talent because retaining them is also tough. When someone new joins the organization, he invariably sees it as a long-term commitment, so it is probably a good idea to hire people with a good cultural fit, but may not necessarily have all the desired skills. According to Corporate Resources, a leading recruitment agency, hiring candidates and expecting them to fire from Day One without training may lead to disengagement from work and disconnection from the rest of the employees, which may make them keen to move on if they get a better opportunity. Employers need to implement separate screening tests to discover the cultural fit because traditional recruitment interviews do not address it. According to Forbes, recruiters are leaning on behavioral science and analytics to find the ideal candidates.
Leverage Technology
While many recruiters had started using technology in recruiting, the pandemic catalyzed its use in many ways. Nowadays, tech-savvy recruiters use several methods to stay on top of the recruitment process like a database-led applicant tracking system, using sourcing software to match available positions to resumes, including reaching out to passive candidates, and using referral automation to bring in high-quality candidates by tapping into the social networks, using AI recruiting tools to sort through the best-fitting resumes, using chat bots to engage with candidates in the absence of recruiters, and using interview scheduling tools to allow candidates choose a convenient time for interacting with the recruiter. Many recruiters are using automated candidate screening assessments to remove biases from candidate evaluation and determine if they have the personality characteristics that make them a good fit for the position.
Conclusion
Hiring is no longer sifting through resumes to find candidates with the best qualifications and experience. The focus now is on identifying candidates with the desired personality traits, practicing diverse and inclusive hiring, minimizing administrative workload, and permitting recruiters to delve deep into the candidate profiles to identify the best candidates from a wider talent pool.
