THIS is what underpins effective recruitment strategies in a shrinking economy

Strong yet supple recruitment strategies are a must for weathering periods of market turbulence. And there’s been no shortage of that to keep you occupied lately! Just as you were getting lulled in to a false sense of security that everything was levelling out post-Covid. And, boom! A war in Ukraine; spiralling energy prices; and a cost-of-living crisis. Their collective result? A shrinking economy spanning U.S., Australian and UK markets, accompanied by the threat of looming recession.   

We continue to hope for the best. But it’s plain good business sense to pre-plan for the worst. That’s what robust yet flexible recruitment strategies help you to do.

Leading global job site Indeed explains, “Strategic recruiting is the use of skilled selling, employer branding and recruitment-directed marketing in sourcing talent, which allows a company to respond effectively to dynamic market conditions. In 2008, Dr. John Sullivan developed 20 principles of strategic recruiting that remain relevant today.” 

You need to be at the top of your game, should the situation deteriorate, in order to attract the best talent quickly and cost-effectively. And well thought out recruitment strategies put you in pole position, helping optimize your appeal to top-tier candidates.

The thing is, even the most copybook strategy might need some additional favors when economies are shrinking. To this end, a consummate ATS is your secret weapon for bringing your Plan B recruitment strategies life.

Here’s just a few of the ways an excellent ATS underpins leading-edge recruitment strategies that are fit for times of unpredictable market fluidity.

How Does an ATS Help You Deploy Your Recruitment Strategies?

We’re not got going to go through all 20 principles of strategic recruiting right now. But here’s our ‘focus tips’ that demonstrate just how powerful an ATS can. When used to best potential, it props up and deploys your recruitment strategies, equipping to mitigate potentially rockier roads ahead –

1) Pipeline & 2) Talent Shortages – These two separate principles of recruitment strategies are so closely intertwined that they can be though about as two halves of a while. In short, the first principle – pipeline – acts as your first line of defence against the second principle – talent shortages.

Having a pipeline approach sets you up to continuously generate and replenish a talent pool of potential candidates. When vacancies become available, your talent pool is ready and waiting, eradicating the need for you to repeatedly spring in to action from scratch whenever you have roles to fill.

 

A careers site is the powerhouse tool for building and maintaining a pipeline. And when your careers site is paired with an outstanding ATS, you’re on to a winner for averting talent shortages.

For example, you can build up a library of compelling content in your ATS, ready for publishing on your careers site at the push of a button. Your content can be tailored to sell-in individual vacancies and/or the organization as a whole to your ready-made burgeoning audience.

In addition, many candidates will arrive at your careers site to complete their first stage applications. Once they’ve been automatically screened by minimum criteria questions, their finished products land in your ATS, in a single place, ready for your closer consideration.

3) Speed – At every stage of the talent acquisition process, from job requisition to onboarding, the slick automated features of an outstanding ATS are geared towards less back-breaking admin and expedited time-to-hire.

Stuck with a legacy system that goes at one pace – slow, slow, slow – or outdated manual systems? Bear in mind that when the going gets tough, the best candidates are in higher demand.  Can you keep pace with their expectations and their availability?

4) Employer Branding & 5) Candidate Sell-In – Like principles one and two, principles four – employer branding – and five – candidate sell-in (or, more importantly from their perspective, candidate buy-in) are inextricably linked.

An exceptional ATS helps you to simultaneously boost your employer branding and secure candidate buy-in. How? The way it enables you to share awe-inspiring content with candidates is a factor. And so is practising what you preach, by giving them an exemplary candidate journey. For example –

  • Always a Pleasure Never a Chore – Sharing dynamic content on your careers site ensures that your shop window is enticing. In addition, it’s also becoming wildly popular (and not without good reason) to intersperse application forms with content that draws candidates in to your world. Think about interview clips with existing employees, case studies, and senior managers talking about your visions and values. During troubled times, you can even address head-on how you’re navigating any issues that market instability is causing in your sector or to your clients’ sectors.
  • A Pothole-Free Hand-Held Ride – Don’t just wax lyrical to candidates. Show them you care. Let’s be honest, expecting them to jump through hoops during a taxing application process doesn’t exactly endear you to them. A first-rate ATS gives you the hidden advantage of remodelling your application process to suit the changing needs of your evolving recruitment strategies.And if you haven’t previously experienced automation at this level, you’ll wonder how ever you coped previously. With an elite ATS, you’re empowered to automate friendly and professional end-to-end email and text comms that keep candidates informed about where things are up to, what to expect next and when to expect it.

6) Data-Driven Decision Making – You know knowledge is power, right? The data that a leading ATS puts at your fingertips is next level powerful. Imagine being able to generate facts and figures in seconds around important elements of your recruitment strategies, such as –

  • Which job boards are producing for you for different vacancy types?
  • What shared characteristics do your existing team members have that might influence your proactive candidate searches, e.g. did a large number of them attend the same university or work for the same company before they joined you?
  • Are you meeting your ED&I targets? (If not, a high ranking ATS includes features for eliminating subconscious bias and blind recruiting.)
  • What organic or paid social media ads are returning ROI and which are squandering your budget?

In conclusion, it all boils down to a single principle. In fact, without this principle it’s difficult to imagine delivering recruitment strategies as nimbly, affordably and rapidly as you need to when stormy economic weather is forecasted…

7) Technology – Recruiting a platinum standard ATS on to your team brings transformational automation that underpins a sensational candidate journey. In addition to making the process more pleasurable for candidates, it puts a wealth of resources at your disposal to make the process less strenuous for you, too.

And who doesn’t want that, in the great times, and the potentially challenging times?

At HireRoad, our modern ATS – Recruit by HireRoad – is purpose-designed to adapt and adjust at pace to the evolving criterion of recruitment strategies in the turbulent ‘20s.

Are you interested in finding out how it can support your recruitment efforts, even if the foundations get shaky? Get in touch today to arrange a complimentary look at Recruit by HireRoad.