Few events can flip the entire world upside down, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of them. At the start of the pandemic, recruiters had to deal with uncertainty on the hiring front while companies struggled to stay afloat. Meanwhile, as layoffs increased and job openings declined sharply, the labor market saw a surge of candidates.
For quite a long time, candidates have had the upper hand in the job market over employers. In this job seeker’s market, there were fewer candidates than there were open jobs.
The pandemic turned the tables by shifting power to the employers, heralding the advent of the employer’s market.
The question of who holds the power in the job market is a matter of supply and demand. Unemployment spiked during the pandemic, flooding the market with job seekers and causing the character of the job market to change. Now, as companies look to recover from the slump in business, employers and recruiters must wield their newfound power with wisdom. We’re likely to remain in an employer’s market for some time into the future.
Now that it’s an employer’s market, two things are happening:
- Job seekers are applying for any open role they can find, rather than focusing only on roles that fit them.
- Recruiters are having a harder time than usual surfacing the right talent for the position.
This brings us to the paramount question: What do recruiters and companies need to do to succeed in hiring when they hold more power than before? This article provides a glimpse into the top three secrets for recruiting successfully in 2021.
Secret No. 1
The first secret comes from a very familiar proverb, but it’s one that recruiters and HR folks rarely apply to their recruiting efforts.
A workman is only as good as his tools. This couldn’t be truer for recruiting. Having the right tools is more than half the battle when it comes to recruiting, especially when dealing with a high volume of applicants.
New technologies have transformed businesses, and companies are more than willing to invest in tools that promise a direct impact on their bottom lines. Yet organizations often put their HR needs on the back burner. Companies are only as good as their people, and to get the right people, you need to invest in the right recruitment tools to filter through all the candidates in an employer’s market.
Find out if you have these must-have tools, without which you will be left behind in today’s world.
Secret No. 2
Getting a strong response to a job post used to be a common concern for recruiters. In the present circumstances, it might be tempting to search for talent on all channels and platforms. After all, job seekers are everywhere, so any job posting has the potential to bring applications pouring in.
The better option is to focus on the channels that are most relevant to the role you are looking to fille. Restrict your openings to platforms your ideal candidates are likely to frequent. This will reduce the number of misfit applications. For example, you can focus on GitHub for recruiting tech talent.
Some of these platforms have hidden sourcing techniques that can help you make the best use of your postings. Save time on trying to figure these techniques out by checking out this candidate-sourcing bible, which compiles the latest tips and tricks to help you hire ten times faster.
Secret No. 3
Get ready to unlearn some of the strategies that worked for you in the pre-pandemic period. Start by using data analytics to help you figure out the bottlenecks in your current process so you can stop using methods that are no longer effective.
Analyze and review all the stages of your hiring process. You need to adjust your hiring strategies to suit the changes to the job market and the large-scale shift to remote work.
For instance, screening resumes manually with the help of the hiring manager could be a potential bottleneck, given the large number of applications pouring into your job openings. Similarly, it doesn’t make your job any easier if you have to follow up on emails or phone calls multiple times for each candidate.
Do recruiters need to do anything different to be successful in an employer’s market? The answer, of course, is “Yes!” But what do they need to do differently? There is a playbook to guide recruiters on the new rules of the game. Recruiting great talent successfully in 2021 might be easier than you think — with the right guidance.
