Finding the right job candidates is becoming more and more difficult. Recruiter and other HR professionals that don't use innovative recruiting strategies are often unable to find the right candidates for open positions. With all the changes and advances in HR technologies, there are many new solutions for some of the biggest recruiting challenges, and many are now implementing these new solutions to improve their hiring strategies.

According to Recruitment strategies report 2017 done by GetApp, the biggest recruiting challenge in 2017 was the shortage of skilled candidates.

 To find the right job candidates, recruiters have to have a well-planned and developed recruiting and hiring strategies. When putting together a strategy like this, it is important to understand that the process of Talent Acquisition never stops.

This process has changed significantly since few years ago when it was enough to post a job on job boards and wait for candidates to apply. Today, it is more about building a strong Employer Branding strategy to attract high quality applicants for hard-to-fill roles.

Steps to find the right job candidates

1. Know your ideal candidate

If you don't know who your ideal candidate or candidate persona is, you will not be able to find and attract them. Knowing these people's characteristics, motivation, skills and preferences is extremely important for finding candidates that are a good fit for your company.

Defining a candidate persona is a multiple step process and involves planning, but it will make finding talent easier, faster and more efficient.

2. Engage your current employees

 Use your current employees to understand why do they love working with you. This is a great way to learn about things that attract them. Use these facts to attract others. Your employees are your best ambassadors, and people trust people more than brands, CEOs and other C-level executives.

Involving your current employees can not only help you build a strong Employer Branding strategy, but it can also help your employees feel more engaged and important.

3. Write clear job descriptions

Writing a clear and detailed job description is important for finding and attracting candidates with a good fit. Don’t only list duties, responsibilities and requirements, but talk about your company’s culture and Employee Value Proposition.

4. Use a Recruitment Marketing tool

 Finding the right job candidate is hard without the right tools. Solutions offered by recruitment marketing software are various, and with them you can build innovative recruiting strategies such as Inbound Recruiting and Candidate Relationship Management to improve Candidate Experience and encourage Candidate Engagement.

Sending useful, timely and relevant information to the candidates from your talent pool is a great way for strengthening your Employer Brand and communicating your Employee Value Proposition.

5. Optimize your career site

Career site optimization is one of the first things you should do to make finding the right job candidates easier. Candidates that come to your career site are already showing interest in you, so don't let them leave before applying. You can start by adding employee testimonials, fun videos, introduce your team, and write about cool project that your company is working on.

6. Use a recruiting software with a powerful sourcing tool

 Today, there are powerful sourcing tools that find and extract candidates profiles and add them directly to your talent pool. Manual search takes a lot of time and effort, and is often very inefficient. With a powerful sourcing tool, you can make this process much faster and more productive. These tools help you find candidates that match both the position and company culture.

7. Use an Applicant Tracking System

 Solutions offered by applicant tracking systems are various, but their main purpose is to fasten and streamline the selections and hiring processes. By fastening the selection process, you can significantly improve Candidate Experience and increase your application and hire rate for hard-to-fill roles. Did you know that top talent stays available on the market for only 10 days?

8. Implement and use employee referral programs

 Referrals are proven to be best employees! Referrals can improve your time, cost and quality of hire, and make your hiring strategy much more productive. Yet, many companies still don't have developed strategies for employee referrals. This is another great way to use your current employee to help you find the best people.  According to the same GetApp's survey, employee referrals take shortest to hire, and bring the highest quality job applicants.

  Source: Source Kristina Martic:2017. How to Find the Right Candidate For the Job