You may have asked yourself: “ How do we position our company to ensure that when we need new top skills to join the team, we have excellent profiles contacting us left, right, and center? ” In essence, how do we make our business a desirable one to work for? Well, the easy answer to this is to establish a fruitful relationship with a skilled recruiter, whose reputation in the market speaks for itself and can help you fulfill your recruitment needs. When the time comes for a growing firm to onboard new talent to join the team, it is important to consider that the recruitment process lends itself to building a sought after brand which will attract great talent down the line, making the need for outsourced recruitment services obsolete in the future.

In this sense, it is pivotal the senior management team, line managers, and HR professionals guiding the process align themselves with the opportunity to leverage the marketing activities of the recruiters who are conducting the top talent skills search for your company. Simply put, this means that you need to properly outline your niche in the industry, determine the culture of your company and what types of individuals would thrive in your organisation as well as consider other factors that may impact the recruitment process. All of this is useful information to the recruiter, which they will utilise during the recruitment process to get the candidates on board.

When one speaks of the recruitment process as a branding opportunity, it means that you will have specialised recruiters who are well networked and connected in the industry which will be used to their advantage in order to conduct verbal engagements with a minimum of 15 prospective professionals through a variety of communication channels. Of those 15 prospective candidates, a maximum of 5 will be shortlisted before CV’s land in your inbox. A great recruitment firm will focus on getting talent on board for the idea of joining a firm prior to interview stages which ensures that your firm does not find itself facing counteroffers. In summary, they will effectively screen the requirements against the skillset you want the profiles to possess, and in the same breathe shed light on why the candidates cannot afford to miss out on the opportunity to work for your firm. This would include discussions on what makes your company better than its competitors, why your company culture is perfect for them, and what they can expect when beginning the recruitment process with your team as well as where a career with your firm may take them. See how those initial conversations with your team are so important?

One of the major factors companies tend to overlook is how their management of the recruitment process creates perceptions of the brand in the candidate’s minds. Be cognisant of how professionals in the industry talk, and if your processes left a bad taste in their mouth, others would likely find out about it too. So how do you manage this? First off, the HR team or hiring managers need to outline how many steps there will be in the process, who will be involved and what the timelines are. Those involved in the hiring processes need to take responsibility for their deliverables in the procedure if they are going to secure the best candidates. One of the biggest disappointments to candidates who have been involved in a recruitment process is not receiving feedback within the stipulated timelines. Simultaneously, companies have often lost exceptional talent they were engaging with because they simply took too long to make an offer, did not outline the next steps in the process, and/or did not keep the lines of communication open with the representative recruiter or candidates in the process.

So the next time you decide to engage with a recruiter to assist you with filling your companies vacancies, clearly define the process with your team as well as provide insight to your recruiter on why your firm is better than others and what it is that makes your team and brand unique in that space. The aim is to develop a name that attracts the right talent whether you are presently seeking new talent or not.

If you have questions during your engagements with our recruiters, please speak up! If you would like to enquire about our Career Coaching services, feel free to drop us an email at careers@altgen.com.