Stuck in the same old recruiting routine? Improve recruiting value with these two enhancements

Welcome to 2024!  The hustle and bustle of the holiday season has passed and now the reality of winter and little time off until spring is upon us.  You have also moved passed organizing last year’s files, updating the status of your requisitions, and jumping right back when where you left off in 2023.  But, hey, it’s a leap year.  Maybe time to think differently.  No new year’s resolutions but new year changes to make an impression on the business and better align your recruiting function to find the best candidates.  Two ideas to consider this year, segmentation and deeper client relationships, to jump start your recruiting efforts in 2024.

In this post, we will look at segmentation as a way to better align recruiting efforts to business needs as well as increase productivity of recruiting activities.  I will follow up with a post to discuss business-aligned recruiting strategies.

Segmentation

One thing I enjoy about my job is the opportunity to work with many different companies.  It gives me the chance to compare and contrast different parts of the recruiting process and gather insights on the best recruiting practices and how they are applied across companies and industries.

One trend I have noticed is often companies try a “one size fits all” sourcing strategy.  They have an in-house recruiting team to work on all openings or they have outsourced an external vendor to handle their recruiting efforts.  These may very well be the best solutions for their recruiting needs but it’s worth looking across all hiring areas and considering segmentation – applying different recruiting strategies to different hiring needs.

The first step to segmentation is understanding any trends in hiring.  Look at hiring data with different lenses:

• What geographies/locations have the most volume of hires?  Which functions?
• What positions are most difficult to fill?
• What positions are most important to the organization?

Do any trends emerge?  In the event none do arise, it may be the best solution to continue with your current strategy.  For example, filling all roles with your current in-house recruiting team.  After doing this exercise, one company realized that sales roles were the most important to fill quickly, they could be the most difficult to fill (depending on geography), and they were the highest volume of openings.  All of the rest of the companies openings occurred in two locations, easy for a small in-house team to handle.  But having the expertise and manpower to recruit sales people in every state overwhelmed the recruiting team.  Solution – let the in-house team manage all non-sales requisitions and outsource sales recruiting to a company with more expertise and resources to recruit across the country.

Segmentation can be quite sophisticated depending on the company dynamics, size, locations, etc. and there may be a large number of segments to implement (in addition to in-house and outsourcing, consider agency usage, advertising spend, new technology, etc.).  All of these efforts are rewarded by providing the business with customized solutions which work best for their groups as well as identifying qualified candidates faster.

Another tool I have seen to help identify segment recruiting plans revolves around marketing  strategies adopted to the recruiting function.  Companies selling products research the “Buyer Persona”.  Who buys our products, what are their age demographics, what social media do they spend most of their time on, etc.?  By building the profile of the person they want to target, companies can identify the best strategies to reach them.

In this sense, consider researching the “Candidate Persona” for specific roles.  Are there any trends that stand out?  Can we identify strategies not only to find these candidates but also to map the journey they would take to apply, interview, and work at your company. 

Segmentation can be a powerful tool that is easy to implement.  Taking the time to take a deep dive into the details of hiring trends and leveraging insights to better align recruitment activities is one great way to jump start recruiting in 2024!

In the next post, I’ll share the second great tip and the positive effects of being a true recruiting partner to the business.

If you would like to explore additional ideas on this subject, check out SmartDreamers “How (and Why) Recruitment Marketers Should Segment their Audience“.

Share your experiences by commenting on this article or feel free to reach out to me directly with any comments/questions.