How to Dive Good Applicants to Your Open Positions

How do you define a good applicant?

The one who fits in your work culture, has experience and accomplishments related to the job profile and is someone with a work ethic, right? Well, as easy as it may sound, it is difficult to attract the right candidate in this era where opportunities unlike resources are constantly rising.

If you want to attract the right candidates to your job profile, there are two ways to about it:

1. You eliminate bad hires
2. You explicitly focus on attracting the good ones

As seen in the graph above, a bad hire not only costs you money but also lowers the morale of staff and productivity. One way to eliminate bad hires straight up is by using recruitment tools. While recruitment tools have made the hiring process easy by eliminating candidates who are totally a misfit, it isn’t the only way to hire the right ones.

This article will focus on targeting the candidates that align with your company culture rather than eliminating the wrong pool. Depending on whether you want to hire a fresh talent or retain an existing employee, you need different strategies for hiring and retaining employees.

Here is when the basics of the hiring process come into the picture. Fundamentals like–crafting a job description that is clear and precise, setting recruitment goals, etc. are important to stand out as a company and get the right pool onboard.

So, without further ado, let us look at five such ways you can attract good applicants to your open positions.

5 ways to dive good applicants to your open positions

Use an Applicant tracking system (ATS)

An ATS is more of a must-have than a could have in this competitive world where every company wants to hire the top talent. Whether you want to bulk hire or hire a single quality candidate, using an Application Tracking system eases the process.

Sure, hiring at its core is following the traditional step by step approach–post a job profile, shortlist resumes, conduct interviews, and hire the candidate. However, ATS manages the paperwork and communication that goes behind each hiring step which makes hiring a smooth ride. In fact, with an ATS companies can fill vacancies 20% more quickly.

Using an ATS has several benefits. Below are listed a few of them:

• Tracks hundreds of resumes at a time
• Lets you identify and hire the best candidates before other companies
• Saves you a lot of money
• Post to multiple job boards
• Improves collaboration
• helps you comply with labor laws

So, if you are a small business wanting to hire talent in bulk or an established one looking to hire experienced candidates, you should consider using an ATS if already aren’t. After all, one good hire today will reap you rewards in the future, right?

Provide employee benefits packages

Providing a memorable employee experience is crucial not only to retaining existing employees but also to attracting new candidates. If you want to stand out as a company, you need to provide employees with some benefits that help them in making their lives a little better. The whole idea behind this is to ensure employees’ happiness quotient so that they perform to the best of their abilities.

Providers of employee benefits like Perkbox offer you services that cater to employees’ physical and mental health. There is a wellness hub that ensures the employees’ overall health. While the platform also allows you to add your own benefits like happy hour, Friday movie nights, etc.

49% of your employees will start hunting for a new job within a year due to dissatisfaction with employee benefits or sheer confusion.

Consider using employee engagement software for employee retention

As per Gallup, around 71% of employees are not fully engaged. What does this mean? Well, it simply means that employees do not feel connected to their employer. An employee who is even a tad bit attached to the company will any day perform better than the one who feels disengaged.

An Employee engagement software is the solution to employee disengagement. Communication lies at the base of employee engagement. If you have a strong communication channel with each employee, it will increase the overall employee engagement rate. This means employees are more likely to leave positive feedback about the company which attracts new talent.

Let us understand how employee engagement software benefits a company.

Increases productivity

If an employee knows his or her value in the firm and is appreciated for the same, then the employee is most likely to perform better than others. They will push their limits and go beyond doing the bare minimum.

Improves employee retention

Why do you think employees leave a job? If you look up the reasons, you will find that most employees leave because they feel undervalued. By using employee engagement software, employees feel safe to put their feedback forward and receive appreciation for their efforts. This open communication makes them feel heard and appreciated.

Makes a new employee feel at home

If a new employee joins your team, s/he may feel overwhelmed and intimidated initially. If these new employees are given a chance to offer their feedback right from the start, it makes them feel like a part of the team.

Overall, employee engagement keeps an existing employee happy while also attracting new candidates.

Use content marketing to your benefit

One of the simplest ways to attract candidates to your firm instead of you having to reach out to them is to create a reputation as an employer. If you have a unique brand reputation in the market, you are likely to attract a like-minded pool. What better way to use social media and content marketing for this?

You can use any social media channel and post interesting content on it. You should also post job postings in a way that resonates with the audience and your voice. You can design specific templates so that whenever you post textual content, you can use those templates. This makes your company feel personalized and people will identify posts from you after a while.

You can even use a humorous tone while posting content if you want to attract young talent. However, this entirely depends on the type of industry you are in and your target audience. The thing to note here is that you should use social media and content to your benefit and hire people that actually align with your company values.

Consider employee referral programs

This is one of the most effective ways to hire new talent as the conversion rate is high. Instead of reaching out to candidates via external mediums, these programs let your employees recommend candidates.

Since the existing employees refer candidates, it costs you less time. The primary advantage of this method of hiring is that the employees already know the work culture and functioning of the place. This means there is a high possibility that they will recommend candidates who they think will align with the work culture. This takes the pressure off your shoulder as half the job gets done by the employees.

You can offer rewards in cash or other special benefits to employees who refer other candidates.

Employee referral programs are a great way to boost employee engagement and increase employee retention rates.

Wrapping up ways to dive good applicants to your open positions

This is all for ways to attract good applicants to the firm. Hiring the right candidate is a two-way street. It is not simply flaunting your business or posting fancy content on social media. You need to have a really solid business mission and a crystal clear vision to attract the same type of pool.

Also, always remember to focus on the basics. Even if you invest a hefty amount in recruitment tools but if your job description is clumsy, it will not help you attract the right candidate.

While optimizing the hiring process is important, not avoiding the fundamentals of hiring is in fact more important.