Four essential pillars in a recruitment strategy.

An effective talent acquisition & recruitment strategy goes beyond simply filling a vacancy when someone leaves. To truly make an impact with a sustainable acquisition strategy, it's essential to establish a comprehensive process that allows your business to scale, sourcing and placing talent that will grow alongside your business as it evolves.

While the current unemployment rate continues to hover at 4%, a robust talent acquisition & recruitment strategy will help your business navigate the inevitable fluctuations of the job market for years to come. Based on our experience, here are some proven techniques for building a recruitment strategy. 

1. Align business goals and strategic direction with recruitment strategies.

Your broader business strategy forms the foundation upon which your recruitment strategy should be built. Before advertising roles, it's crucial to clearly define your long-term objectives, business values, and the direction and pace of your growth.

Here are a few ways your business strategy and recruitment are interconnected:

• Budget: Your business strategy will outline the budget allocated for recruitment. This will determine the types of candidates you can attract and the return on investment in human resources you expect over time.
• Goals and Objectives: If your business goal is to double your client base and revenue, your recruitment strategy should reflect this by planning for the necessary growth and skill sets, such as sales or marketing teams. Every hire should align with the bigger picture strategy.
• Timeline: A key aspect of a business strategy is setting timelines for achieving goals, which in turn informs the timing of your talent acquisitions in line with budget and growth.
• Values: Hire in line with your values. The people you bring on board should not only match skill-wise but also share your core values and be committed for the right reasons

Aligning your recruitment strategy with the broader goals of the business is something [insert company] can help with. As your acquisition partner, we can advise on available talent within your budget, set realistic timelines for acquisition, and prospect with your future business goals in mind.

2. View your brand from a job seeker’s perspective.

Viewing your company from a job seeker's perspective is crucial. Understanding how your brand is perceived by the public and curating it to attract the type of talent your strategy aims to hire requires time and attention.

Every public-facing aspect of your business is an opportunity to showcase what your company stands for and attract value-aligned talent. This includes:

• Social Media: Your social media channels are the first point of contact for potential candidates to get a feel for your organisation. Share staff-generated content, day-in-the-life videos, client and customer success stories, and imagery that highlights your company culture.
• Branding: Branding encompasses everything from your brand colors, logo, typeface, imagery, and tone of voice across all marketing assets. Consider how these elements come together to represent your brand and what message they send to future employees.
• Values-Led Content: If you want your recruitment strategy to reflect company values, ensure your branding does too. For example, if you aim to hire a diverse group, include diversity in your imagery.
• Reputation Management: Your reputation as an employer will precede you. It's important to build a trustworthy and reliable brand throughout the onboarding, employment, and offboarding processes, and to monitor review boards like Google My Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor.
• Job Descriptions and Advertising: Job ads and descriptions are not just advertisements for a role; they are advertisements for your business. Utilise talent acquisition partners, like the team here at Drake International, to tailor your job ads to attract the right talent.

3. Data should inform you talent pipeline.

Data is a crucial tool for developing an effective recruitment strategy. Instead of making educated guesses about what kind of talent to hire and when, collecting, analysing, and leveraging data can help create an accurate picture of your business needs. The first challenge is ensuring you capture the right data to build your talent pipeline and inform your recruitment decisions. We recommend:

• Predicting Workforce Gaps: Keep records of workforce joiners, leavers, and movers, as well as information on average tenure and qualitative data on employee experience. This helps understand human resource turnover in different areas of the company.  There are tools also in the market to understand the cost of employee turnover.
• Competency Assessment Technology: Many businesses rely on gut instinct during interviews. While this is important, a successful recruitment strategy will also use competency assessment data to make final decisions. For example, at Drake International, we use Drake P3  - to assess key behavioural traits of each candidate helping us make more informed decision on the “culture fit” as well as provide valuable data-driven insights during the selection process.
• Market Data: Regularly reviewing market-wide data helps you stay competitive with job offers, perks, and remuneration. Keep tabs on market-rate salaries, non-financial benefits, changing candidate expectations, and skill shortages or surpluses.
• Candidate Journey: Monitor your talent pipeline to notice trends in applications, identify drop-off points in the recruitment process, and recognise what is working well.

4. Source a talent acquisition partner to provide the necessary recruitment support.

Managing and developing talent acquisition can be challenging while also handling other critical aspects of your business. Finding a talent acquisition partner to support you through this process and help build a recruitment strategy that truly serves your business. At Drake International, we help with:

• Strategic Planning of Acquisition Channels: Sourcing candidates beyond typical job-board channels is essential for a successful recruitment strategy. Talent should be sourced from a broad range of channels to target both active and passive job seekers.
• Screening, Interviewing, Assessments, Background and Reference Checks: A significant part of a recruitment strategy involves screening, interviewing, assessments, and conducting background and reference checks on candidates. Working with the right partner who understands your brand and business needs alleviates this workload.
• Onboarding Process: Recruitment doesn't end with an accepted offer; it continues until your employee is trained and performing at the expected level. The right recruitment partner will help your business overcome barriers to integrating new hires and reduce the time it takes for them to contribute to your bottom line.

In conclusion, an effective talent acquisition & recruitment strategy is more than just filling vacancies; it involves creating a comprehensive process that supports business growth by sourcing and placing talent that aligns with your business needs. Key elements to a solid recruitment strategy includes defining goals and strategic direction, curating your brand & value proposition from a jobseeker's perspective, utilising data to inform & build your talent pipeline, and partnering with the right talent acquisition experts.