Engaging Passive Candidates

Filling upper level positions has always required a longer term engagement with C-suite candidates as the majority are typically currently employed. As you might expect with the increasing difficulty in finding even entry level employees to work, Recruiters are taking a more proactive role in all positions to try and get candidates in the door.

Interestingly, even Recruiters will become the recruited as talent continues to be a top concern of most companies and as many aspects of hiring become more automated each year, creativity will be needed more than ever. Since 2016, according to a LinkedIn Survey, demand for Recruiters themselves has increased by 63% and that trend has continued to date.

These three skills that a Recruiter can possess are very important right now, but in a few more years, they will be invaluable: engaging passive candidates, analyzing talent data, and advising business leaders. Over 80% of Staffers in a LinkedIn survey agreed these three items are all growing in importance for recruiters. Meanwhile, Recruiters’ top priority in their current role is to keep up with rapidly changing hiring needs for all of their clients.

Branding

If your staffing agency brand isn’t communicating that you care about your permanent and temporary employees, you better start focusing here. After all, employees are your business. You can’t serve your clients without Recruiters to advertise and recruit for temporary members to fill their vacancies. Recruiters expect that you care about them as well as the employees they are working hard to get in your door for your clients. They don’t want to sell anyone a bill of goods that isn’t satisfactory at a minimum.

This is why it remains so critical that the clients you work with are quality employers that your prospective employees will want to work for. It’s 100 times easier to recruit for a company that employees seek out. You don’t have to advertise an opening for a client when potential employees come to your office and ask to apply for that specific firm.

When you do need to advertise, remember the value of social media platforms when utilized consistently and well. Greg Lewis shares that “As platforms like LinkedIn make it easier to identify candidates, recruiters will focus more on bringing them into the funnel. That’s where storytelling and personalizing your approach can make a big difference.” Sharing a specific client’s unique culture and success stories of candidates who have been hired permanently for example, can really hit home for an applicant who is considering applying with your firm.

Generation Z

Generation Z is heading into the workforce and their top expectation is speed. They may not stay around if your online application is clunky and difficult to use. Most will just exit and move on to another company’s platform that is hiring, rather than be frustrated with your process that might be timing out or requires multiple steps.

According to Ms. Jain of Recruiterflow, “Recruitment Automation, mobile-optimized application processes, and candidate engagement at each and every step of the hiring stage will become a necessity.”

Passionate and self-assured, Gen Z also known as Zoomers, includes those born between 1997-2012. Generation Z prioritize their own well-being, they stand for themselves and support equity and human rights. They also are the first generation to really break out of the typical school to work then marriage and kids “cookie-cutter” life and rather live as individually as possible.  Work-life balance takes on a new meaning for this generation as they are not fitting life into their work, they are fitting work into their lives.

Generation Z wants to ensure they are aware of everything possible that could affect them and expect transparency from their employer. This is transitioning the workplace power balance from the employer to the employee. They want to be in the driver’s seat if they are going to continue to be employed with their current company.

Generation Z is living during a time of political and social conflict, pandemics and inflation. They don’t want to function like a robot: get up, go to work, come home, go to bed and do it all over again. They require more meaning in their daily work life. And, because they are living during a time where food, gas and daily living expenses are at an all time high, Gen Z expects to be paid a fair wage to show up to work on a regular basis.

Metrics

As a staffing business owner for over 30 years, I’ve always considered the candidate’s personality and character to be as vital as experience and education in finding the right fit for each company’s open role and culture. This has always been as important for the employee’s happiness and success as it is for the clients, and ultimately staffing firm. If an employee isn’t comfortable in the right organizational culture and environment, they won’t want to stick around.

The metrics of the future will focus on the right fit considering each candidate’s personality and traits aligning with each client’s open role. “Future recruiting will revolve more around strategic metrics that measure the business outcomes of the team’s efforts—not just the actions they take. Developing a client’s talent strategy will be just as important as executing it,” according to Recruiterflow. COATS Staffing Software shares that time to hire, attrition (positive and negative), candidates and interviews per hire will continue to be as valuable to Recruiters and Staffing agency owners on a daily basis. This data will be fine-tuned over the years as a strategy for each client will be implemented based on their specific hiring needs.

Recruiting automation with COATS Staffing Software allows you to parse resumes, post job openings to several locations at once, manage your employees and job candidates, document all communication with every client, note all jobs accepted and declined per employee, produce direct deposits, invoices, statements and more. These tasks will continue to develop with more efficiency each year allowing more time for the Recruiter to use creativity and communication to engage candidates and keep clients satisfied throughout the hiring process.

As they say in real estate: location, location, location. In staffing, it’s candidates, candidates, candidates – and it has been for a number of years. Focusing on passive candidates, learning how to attract the future generation, using the right set of metrics to measure success and ensuring your agency is branded properly are critical items to focus on as we move into 2023.