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Oct 23, 2020

When the pandemic hit, businesses asked their teams to work remotely without having much time to make the changes necessary for such a transition. Subsequently, recruiters have spent the past several months doing the best they can while trying to make their old processes work at home.

Now that some time has passed, it’s clear that traditional recruiting strategies aren’t going to cut it in this era of digital job seeking. Recruitment teams must upgrade their tactics to enable long-term success. Your own organization can get started today by letting go of these seven recruiting strategies you’ve been hanging on to:

1. Attending the same job fairs every year.

It’s easy for recruitment teams to fall into a pattern of attending the same job fairs year after year. You’ve built relationships, and you know that you get quality candidates, so it makes sense to keep up your attendance. But is this really the best way to reach a diverse range of candidates?

Instead, consider new opportunities each year to reach job-seekers with more varied backgrounds and experiences. For example, more organizations and schools are making their job fairs virtual, so you can recruit from cities to which you might not have been able to travel before.

Additionally, you can use a combination of job boards, social media, and sourcing tools to connect with candidates based on their interests and experiences. With a virtual environment, your talent pool is limitless.

2. Using the same old ATS.

When you’re growing your recruitment team, one of your tasks is selecting the right applicant tracking system. But just because the ATS you chose years ago was right at the time doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore, and make the case for, new and improved options.

More and more systems are integrating with CRM (customer relationship management) capabilities, which can be valuable in a remote working environment. CRM has its roots in sales to help manage relationships and engagement with customers, but this technology is just as critical in the recruitment space.

While your old ATS may be excellent at keeping track of resumes, when you add CRM, you can also easily stay in contact with past silver-medal candidates and reach out when positions become available. While it might be daunting to change up your core system, this feature will save you time and make you more successful in the long-run.

3. Sticking to your tried and true interview process.

What did your in-person interview process look like? It might have been a full day of one-on-one interviews or hours of interview panels with different teams. It’s time to ask: Is this method the right way to find new hires?

If you were to use this same interview format in a virtual setting, your candidates would get Zoom fatigue, and you’ll miss out on the quality conversations that lead to a good hire.

Your time is valuable, but so is your candidate’s. Use video interviews to change up your old interview formats. Limit the number of interviews in a row or use group features to have one single panel. This will allow your candidates to present their best selves and your recruitment team to maximize their time, too.

4. Avoiding gig workers.

There’s a long-held belief among recruiters and hiring leaders that a “job-hopper” is bad news for your company. The worry is that you’ll have to hire someone else for the same role a year from now because the candidate is not loyal to any one company.

The problem with this theory is that short-term work is the way of the world we’re in now. Just because someone didn’t stay long at their last few jobs doesn’t mean they won’t be a good fit for your company, or that they won’t stick around. You might be missing out on a quality hire whose skills and background would be great assets to your company.

5. Requiring advanced degrees.

You’ve always required a Bachelor’s degree for every job at your company. It just makes sense to ensure you’re narrowing your pool down to qualified job-seekers. It’s one of those recruiting strategies you don’t even think about. You just do it. So here’s a question to ask yourself: Is a degree really necessary?

Educational requirements are barriers to jobs for hard workers who might not have been able to attend college. Maybe they couldn’t afford higher education or didn’t have time to attend college due to other things happening in their lives. This does not mean that a candidate won’t be outstanding at your company. 

Reflect on the jobs that truly require a degree. If they don’t, replace that line on your job description with other experience you need people to have had.

6. Ruling out resume mistakes.

Most recruiters will automatically disqualify candidates with typos in their resume. But does a slight typo or grammatical error genuinely mean that a job-seeker is unfit for your company? Unless you’re hiring a writer, probably not. 

People make mistakes all the time, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t excellent at their jobs. It’s time to rethink punishing candidates for making the same error you probably made in a random email to your team last month. Instead, focus on whether their skills and experience match your needs.

7. Taking months to decide.

It’s no secret that the U.S. unemployment rate is incredibly high right now, and the future of our economy is uncertain. Job-seekers are scared. The competition for jobs is fierce right now, which means the power is in your hands. Use it wisely.

Don’t waste any time. Tighten up your recruitment process, so it doesn’t take months to get from the application stage to the hire. Ask your hiring managers to commit to opening their schedules for interviews and making decisions as quickly as possible. With so much up in the air, the last thing you want to do is have dozens of candidates waiting and waiting on a decision from you that will impact their ability to put food on the table.