Tony Moroney

shared this article on Twitter and I was interested in a quote.

"Rather than sit back and wait for applicants to send resumes, companies are proactively targeting prospective employees on digital platforms and social media, often with a recruiter's help, says research by Rembrand Koning."

If we think about recruitment today, people advertise jobs on job boards, in newspapers (yes still) and on Linkedin.  You must have seen people with summary titles on Linkedin that state "we are hiring".

Many of us know about the "recruitment consultant" and the "headhunter" who trawl social media platforms like Linkedin looking for candidates. 

But What Do We Really Want From Candidates?

We are looking for high achievers, people who will not only contribute to the business, but will be long stayers.  We are also looking for a diverse pool of talent.  While companies will always ask for "A-Players" we know that a group of "A-Players" actually does not exist and we will always get a "bell curve" of talent.

What I want to take you through is a new and radical way to get (the best) talent without using adverts and without using headhunters.  Why do you want to do this?  Because this process will sauce you the best talent, the best contributing talent and the longest staying talent, while saving the cost of advertising and recruitment fees. 

Freeing Human Resources (HR)

The first thing you need to do as a business is free the Human Resources (HR) team from the "hamster wheel" of job adverts and recruitment and empower them to get onto social media.

1. First you need a great Linkedin profile.

  Think about the needs of your audience, the people you are trying to recruit and work back from there.  

Show the world your purpose, your beliefs, don't be a corporate robot, nobody wants to work for a company of corporate robots.  They want to work for a business of human beings.  Humans who are empowered to show the world who they are through their social media profiles. 

Your Linkedin profile is your shop window and should show case you 24 hours a day.  The days that Linkedin was a CV have long gone.

Don't forget, people will be checking out you and your employees as they go through the recruitment process and before, let's move onto how we can find and recruit people, even those not looking for a role.

Check out these examples

Eric Doyle

Vanessa Gartell

Adam Gray

2. You need a network (not contacts).

  The average person on Linkedin has 903 contacts and they will be x colleagues and recruitment consultants.  You need to be connected to the people you want to influence.  

Your alumni, your employees, the people you would love to recruit, the people who influence the people you would love to recruit.

Remember that in B2B the trick is to be memorable.

3. Finally you need content.

  When somebody comes to your Linkedin profile, you need content to show people what you stand for.   Please don't share boring corporate content, nobody is interested.  Also let's not forget that "people buy people" so why not share humanised content about yourself.

Get the HR team to write their own content, future employees will be captivated by your insight and your educational articles, but most of all they will love your business being authentic.  If we have a business that is forward thinking and wise enough to understand that employees talking on social about their beliefs, skills, behaviours, environment, empowerment, diversity, inclusion, etc, etc.

This will turn the heads of your future employees and they will see what you are doing and will want to be part of it.

I'm not saying you will be the employer of choice for your industry but it's got to be close.

It's Critical That You

It's critical that you give your HR team the power to do this, people can smell fake a mile away.  You have to empower the team, you have to give them the skills and train them so they are the people writing.  Content writers don't work, again people can smell fake a mile away.

Business Case

There is a clear business case in the savings you will make from cutting the cost of your recruitment and the recruitment fees.  That said, if you went to the Board and said you had a way to get the best employees and become the employer of choice in your category (and could save some money) the Board would want to know. 

Where Do We Go From Here?

Just give me, or one of the DLA Ignite team and hour of your time and we can walk you through what we are doing for other companies.  No hard sell, just take you through what other companies are doing to transform.

Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality.  Our website is here.