Last week’s further fall in unemployment prompted REC chief executive Kevin Green to warn HR and recruiters of a ‘candidate scarce’ market in the New Year.
Despite the predicted January job application surge that scarcity of candidates will force employers to become more responsive and forward thinking in their recruitment processes. Here are some reminders of the basics to attract more candidates to your vacancies:-
Use normal job titles
The current number of vacancies stands at an estimated one million and some companies are turning to what they hope are attention grabbing job titles to attract talent. Global jobsite Indeed revealed that 'ninja', wizard' and 'genius' have all featured in this year's job adverts [1].
Their advice is:-
- Be concise – your job title should be a maximum of 80 characters without capital letters or quirky characters to ensure it matches the exact searches being carried out by job applicants.
- Ensure the job title is ‘normal’, for example, ‘big data developer’ or ‘machine learning engineer’. These are the phrases your candidates will use to initiate their job search.
- Use titles that are relevant to external talent, rather than using internal jargon or acronyms that only your employees will understand.
- Ensure that the job title highlights what the job is rather than use vague job titles such as Business Development Manager. Make it clear what area your new hire will be working in.
Reduce your use of zero hours contracts
Downward pressure on wages is prompting candidates to prioritise salary in their job search but the final decision will be influenced by additional factors such as job security and flexible working. An estimated two in five jobs are described as ‘bad jobs’ by the New Economics Foundation’, ie, those that don’t offer a living wage or are based on zero hours contracts.
Promote flexible working
Over half of businesses offer flexible working but job posts do not necessarily reflect that. To ensure you attract and retain scarce candidates in 2018, promote the option to work flexibly or remotely in your job posts and on your careers site. Combined with job security, flexible working may be the tipping point in your favour for talent evaluating your job against that of your competitor. Less than half of workers enjoy their commute and 60% would prefer a job with a shorter journey to work – or a less frequent one.
To review your most successful job posts, review the analytics in your applicant tracking software and compare applications for those jobs offering permanent employment and flexible working against those without.
Transform your candidate experience
The success of your hiring process pivots on your candidate experience. From a difficult to navigate careers site and a lengthy application process to an unresponsive hiring team and a distracted interviewer, a failing candidate experience costs your business talent. Recruitment software enables you to streamline, track and manage multiple recruitment processes.
Over three quarters of employers who support their talent acquisition process with recruitment software stated that their ATS makes it easier to attract great talent.[2]
Identify opportunities to improve your candidate experience with our checklist, designed to help you understand potential challenges in your own hiring process. An ATS brings together disparate systems and processes resulting in significant time savings and efficiency improvements which deliver a better candidate experience across the entire candidate journey
Review your employer brand
Rather than trusting in the employer’s claims made across their careers site, candidates place more trust in a candid online opinion from an employee or a rejected job applicant on sites such as Glassdoor.[3] The reality is that a bad reputation can cost your company at least 10% extra per hire and damage your employer brand. Automating key processes enables HR to focus on paying attention to the talent in your pipeline and creating a positive employee experience.
Support your hiring process with an ATS to help your business attract talent in a candidate scarce market. Book a free demo with Kallidus Recruit today.
How can an ATS optimise your recruitment processes? Take our Cost and Efficiency Test to identify the gaps in your talent acquisition strategy.
You might also like to read:-
Developing A High Impact Talent Acquisition Function
7 Essential Recruitment Trends For 2018
Sources
[1] http://blog.indeed.com/2017/12/14/weird-job-titles-the-year-in-review/
[2] CareerBuilder Candidate Experience Survey 2017
[3] Recruitment Buzz, Job Hunting Treated Like Booking A Holiday, 24th May 2017
