How To Deal With More Than One Great Candidate

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Recruitment is all about finding that perfect candidate, but what happens when we end up with more than one? Every now and then, an effective recruitment process gathers multiple suitable applicants, any of which you would love to hire, but unfortunately only have one position.

While this is a good problem to have, it can be a situation where we miss out on strong talent that could be valuable down the line or even currently in a different section of the business. So how do we address it?

 

How to Handle Several Excellent Applicants

 

  • Find a Lateral Position – Often we find applicants who seem like excellent organisational fits but due to a slightly better applicant, they miss out on the position and you miss out on a potentially valuable employee. When you have situations like these make sure to keep in mind any upcoming or other current  positions you will be hiring for that may match the candidate’s skill-set. Furthermore, communicate this consideration to the candidate. This will keep their job seeking mentality engaged with your organisation and potentially line up a strong hire down the line.
  • Talent Pooling – Building off the last point, even if you have no other positions available, communicate your own positive feedback to the candidate in terms of their application performance and their strong fit and ask to keep their details on file in a talent pool. While this is not revolutionary, this is often just used as a way to mollify disappointed candidates, but if managed correctly can over the long-term, build a database of already positively-screened candidates as your first port of call for future roles. Additionally, a strong Candidate Management System, such as Scout, is invaluable in the process of building these kind of pools.
  • Keep them on in a Project or Contract Basis  – An additional approach you can take is to consider outsourcing work to the promising individual on specific projects or for a particularly busy period. This has the double effect of keeping them engaged with a presence in the organisation for when a role becomes available, while allowing you to examine their on-the-job performance. While many candidates may not engage such a proposal, the individuals who are exceptionally motivated to join your organisation will often seriously consider such an offer, and relish the opportunity to get their foot in the door.

 

Now while this may seem a best-case kind of problem, it still is a problem. Recruiters need to be ready and possess the tools to track and manage human talent as it moves around their organisation. By building a positive connection with all candidates through strong candidate care and considerations like the above, you can streamline your recruitment to not only make current applicants more valuable, but build your employer brand positively within the market.

 

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Talent Pool Fishing

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While for many ‘talent pooling’ is still a buzz word – In reality, it no longer is. What is often a pool of forgotten people is in fact a group who are already bought into your organisation – they’ve either taken the time to subscribe to your content or they’ve previously shown interest in you and applied. Leading organisations investing in their long-term strategy are seeing the benefit of nurturing high-quality talent in overcoming recruitment challenges.

Talent pooling done right can save you time, reduce ongoing recruitment expenses, and deliver you high quality candidates. When it’s done poorly however, it can negatively affect your recruitment results, your reputation as an employer and your wider organisational brand. Remember, candidates are often your customers too.

Read on as Holly Taylor, Employer Branding Specialist at Employment Office, shares how to articulate your Employer Brand and nurture your talent pools through ongoing content. Here she shares the top 5 mistakes Talent Managers commonly make

  1. Mass production of depersonalised content

Let’s imagine your talent pool has a Sales Account Manager and a Graphic Designer – both positions you employ for. These candidates are motivated by unique factors, interested in specific benefits and ultimately seeking different things. Should these people receive the same content? No!

A good rule to follow: always segment and always send content that is relevant. Think employee videos, project highlights, infographics related to your industry or published by your company, employee blogs or profile stories.

  1. Enough said. 

No one likes opening their inbox to see the same email at the same time, every day! Especially when their previous application experience with you might have been not too long ago. Ultimately, how often you choose to engage your talent pool will depend on your frequency of hires and volume of positions. Invest in working with experts in talent nurturing to strike the right balance between exciting and inundating.

  1. Where do I hit unsubscribe? 

Not giving people an unsubscribe button is not only annoying for them, but also illegal. They need to be able to opt out, particularly if they are a previous candidate automatically added to the pool, having not actively opted in. If people don’t want to receive your content – that’s okay! It will do a lot more for your reputation to give people this option. Transparency really is the key to successful recruitment… plus, you want people who want you too!

  1. Don’t get lost – map it out.

If you don’t plan, you plan to fail – and this will definitely be clear to your potential talent! Providing candidates with an engaging and seamless recruitment journey will not only improve their perception of you as an employer, it will also help streamline your operations. As a start, put yourself in the candidate’s shoes and consider what experience you would like to have. Map out all the possible ‘routes’ a candidate could take once they join your pool – whether they join, apply for a role and are acceptable, or maybe they leave your pool after a year. No matter their journey, it’s a chance for you to make an impression as a great workplace and employer.

It’s also important to think about your internal teams and who needs to be involved at what stage. For example, do your hiring managers need to be in control of their own pool or, will HR Managers take complete responsibility? Ensure you regularly update your hiring manager with who’s swimming in your pool so when they’re ready to hire, they know where to look first before going out to market on mass. This will save time, resources and money – what’s not to like about that?

  1. No Employer Brand? No Idea! 

What underpins all communication with potential candidates is your Employer Brand. Simply, it is the way you differentiate and market yourself as an employer, and ideally, as an employer of choice. This is articulated through images, stories and videos, but most importantly your Employee Value Proposition – this is the ‘why work for us?’ that should engage candidates. This should be embedded within all your talent communication and is fundamental to ensuring your brand is perceived accurately and honestly to what the experience as an employee is! Most importantly your Employer Brand gives you a voice and that voice is integral in sharing the organisation’s feel. Authenticity is key!

Editor’s note: Employment Office’s Employer Branding Specialists are experts at understanding and articulating your Employer Brand.  Contact our Specialists to learn how we can craft your Employee Value Proposition and amplify this to target segments of your talent pool with our technology Scout Talent: Engage. We will nurture your high-quality potential candidates so they are ready, right when you need them. 

 

All I want for Christmas…is candidates for my roles!

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Generally, when we think about Christmas recruiting we think about the manic Christmas casual hiring period that occurs between October and January each year. But what about all the organisations who happen to be looking for full-time, permanent employees during this time?

Two of the biggest questions the Recruitment Advertising Team here at Employment Office get asked at this time of year are; ‘Are candidates looking for jobs over the Christmas period?’ and ‘Should we be recruiting during this time?’.

And the answer to both is a resounding ‘yes’! Why you ask?

  1. Less competition = better chance for success.

Have you noticed how much competition there is on job boards these days? Job advertisements that used to sit on page one of a search for anywhere up to 2 weeks are now dropping off page one into oblivion in a much shorter time frame. In particularly busy categories and locations, this can happen in one day!!

The plus side of advertising over the Christmas period is that there are more often than not, less companies recruiting at this time, meaning your ad will stay at the top of search results longer. More visibility, better ROI and less competition? – tick!

  1. Tis the season…to find a new job!

Did you know that more people change jobs in January than any other time of year? However –  9 times out of 10 they have already started thinking about the move BEFORE the festive season starts

If you are holding off on starting your advertising until the end of January, you run the risk of losing visibility with this active and engaged talent pool. Instead – why not schedule your advertising to run for you while you are on leave? That way while you’re relaxing pool side with a cocktail in hand, candidates can still be applying for your positions and their applications will be there ready and waiting for you on your return to the office.

Feeling overwhelmed about how you can achieve all of your recruitment goals in the next couple of weeks? Our team of advertising and shortlisting specialists at Employment Office can help!

 Give us a call today to see how we can help you hit your hiring targets for December/January and take advantage of our great Christmas special giving you fantastic savings on our shortlisting services.