The recruitment stage can be a real strategic asset for a company. A well-conducted recruitment process enables the company to attract the best talent that will bring it growth and competitiveness. It also allows the company to convey its values, its challenges and its requirements from the outset. How can you optimise your recruitment process to attract the best candidates in a minimum of time and at a minimum cost? Here are our tips for making your recruitment process your best ally.
Clarify your needs
Whether you’re looking to digitise your business, create a skills development plan or open a position, it all starts with your needs. To find the right person to help your business grow, start by making a comprehensive list of the essential requirements you are looking for in your future employee.
To be relevant, these selection criteria must accurately reflect the job’s tasks. Start by defining your essential criteria for the profile you are looking for. They may be technical (number of years of experience, mastery of a particular software, experience in a particular sector, etc.) or behavioural (analytical mind, ability to adapt, good interpersonal skills, etc.). Once this essential information has been defined, you can add a few criteria that are not essential, but which have strong added value. Finally, prioritise all your criteria, from the most important to the least important.
Beware of cognitive bias!
Define your selection criteria while remaining as impartial as possible. They should embody the needs of the job. Move away from your vision of the ideal candidate, which belongs to you alone, and may be biased (by your fears or your own experience, for example).
Write a clear and precise job description
Once you have defined the needs of the post and validated the selection criteria, you can write the job description. It must be clear, precise and true to reality! It must reflect the objective of the position, its challenges and the tasks that will be entrusted to the future recruit. Be honest: if there are any specific constraints to the job, point them out straight away, and don’t embellish anything. Also communicate the practical details of the position: desired start date, proposed remuneration, required diplomas, etc. A clear advertisement saves you time at the first stage of CVS selection! Conversely, the more vague your advert is, the less relevant and targeted your applications will be.
Finally, don’t forget to make candidates want to join you. An effective job description conveys the reality of the position in a transparent manner, while arousing the interest of readers. This new position will most likely mean challenges, a new adventure, a career path and training. Write your job advertisements well and try to inject this positive spirit into your description.
When posting your job offer, concentrate on the most qualitative sites. Multiplying the number of distribution channels does not always optimise recruitment. To identify these value-added sites, your recruitment tool should provide statistics on the number of CVs received and, above all, the number of interviews conducted per source of application.
Develop your employer brand
A company’s employer brand is halfway between recruitment and marketing. It corresponds to the image conveyed by the company to its employees and potential candidates.
Choosing to develop your employer brand is a strategy that may require sustained effort and investment, but its benefits are long-lasting.
What is the purpose of your product or service? The values of your employees, and why did they choose to join your company? What is your expertise and differentiation? What measures has your company put in place to help your teams grow? These are all elements that will allow you to define your company’s DNA, its differences, what makes it unique and worthwhile.
Also remember to look after your e-reputation and keep an eye on the opinions left about you by your employees on social networks! According to a survey by Région Job (2018), 82% of candidates find out about a company’s employer brand before applying. If you have specific processes in place for hiring, human resources, training, etc., don’t hesitate to publish a e-book.
By clearly communicating your values and ambitions, you allow candidates who share the same values to recognize themselves in you. They will apply more naturally to your company. In addition to generating unsolicited applications, a good employer brand also has the effect of attracting targeted profiles to the positions to be filled. As soon as they are hired, you can be sure that your future employees are in tune with the spirit of your company. A doubly virtuous circle and a positive effect on the optimisation of recruitment.
Take care of your candidate experience
Developing your employer brand also requires a pleasant and efficient candidate experience! However, the candidate experience is still an area where many companies have room for improvement. That’s a bit rich when you consider that the balance of power between recruiters and candidates has slowly changed in recent years.
Still according to the survey conducted by RégionJob, 62% of the candidates questioned said they had already complained about a lack of follow-up or transparency during a recruitment process. Many recruiters still disappear from the radar of candidates without giving any explanation during the recruitment process. Beware, this highly unsavoury practice has the effect of permanently damaging your employer brand and irreversibly discouraging candidates.
To deliver a memorable candidate experience, follow these simple principles:
➢ Be transparent from the beginning of the recruitment process. Take the time to explain to the candidate how the process works and the different stages. This way, the candidate knows what to expect and has visibility on the duration of the recruitment process, the interviews
Simplify the application process as much as possible: recruitment processes that take too long discourage potential talent. In a “war for talent” context where certain skills are in short supply (web development, data science, UX/UI…), a lengthy recruitment process is rarely appropriate.
➢ Ensure the quality of service of your external recruiters: recruitment firm, service companies (ESN).
Start by defining the shortest possible recruitment process. Then add steps to it, depending on the job requirement and your needs. You can do this with our recruitment software JobAffinity, which makes it easy to modify the steps in the recruitment process.
There is no need to discourage the best candidates with a lengthy motivation questionnaire or a time-consuming case study.
➢ Be responsive and communicate! Minimise the time it takes to get back to you between the different stages of recruitment. Make accurate and honest comments. This approach, which is still too rare today, will be all the more appreciated by your candidates.
➢ Try to give constructive feedback to candidates, even if they are rejected. If the candidate has had at least one interview for the job, give preference to feedback by phone. If not, a personal and empathetic email should be enough to leave a good impression. Don’t forget to outline areas for improvement and to explain, in a transparent manner, the reasons for your rejection. Motivated feedback will help the candidate to direct their job search and helps to convey a good employer brand.
Pay attention to the market
In order to attract and retain the best talent and offer them a competitive package, you need to understand their concerns and requirements! To be relevant, a remuneration policy must, for example, reflect market trends and prices in France or internationally. Also think about offering attractive working conditions: teleworking boom, comfortable working environment, work-life balance… Today’s expectations are not the same as yesterday’s: try to stay up to date with changes in the world of work.
Eliminate time-consuming tasks with recruitment optimisation software
Remove repetitive tasks from your daily routine with recruitment management software! A recruitment management tool will save you time. Designed by recruiters for recruiters, Jobaffinity software adapts to your business and its specificities to save you time. Easy to use and intuitive, our recruitment optimisation platform allows you to
customise and set up your recruitment process,
- distribute your advertisements on websites, job boards or social networks,
- centralise applications on the same recruitment optimisation platform to build up a CV library,
- invite candidates for interviews and save the desired information,
Jobaffinity is the easy-to-use recruitment platform that allows you to manage your entire recruitment campaign. It goes from posting job offers to sorting applications to recruiting the right candidate. It is the tool that allows you to recruit in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Freed from the time-consuming tasks involved in any recruitment, you can concentrate on your core business: people.
