Hiring talent is a big issue holding brands back from reopening and ramping up their experiential programs. It's no secret that the world of recruiting has changed, and if brands don't embrace this, they may continue to lose talent to brands that are making changes in order to find the right team.

Here are 3 reasons to rethink your recruiting efforts: 

1. Reduce costs: open vacancies bleed money in several ways. The longer it takes to find someone, the more it costs and the more frustrating the whole process becomes.
   
2. Find the right people: hiring velocity has increased significantly, and the talent market has become very competitive. Candidates are also deciding where to go quickly, so brands are under a lot of pressure to bring people in through the door quickly.
   
3. Improve your candidate experience: doing this will give your brand a better chance to attract the best candidates and will give your brand a boost.

Now that we have established the importance of rethinking your hiring processes, let’s dive into 9 strategies to boost staffing at your brand home: 

Set a solid structure and goals

Clearly define the main goals of your talent team and then work backward to implement technologies and a hiring structure that will help you achieve these goals. A great place to start is setting up a clear candidate hiring journey, with distinct progression steps, and fixed deadlines that are communicated across your entire organization. As your staffing needs grow, an organizational chart that clearly outlines all job functions required to effectively operate your brand home will also be helpful.

Choose your platforms wisely

Choosing the job boards and platforms you will post on depends on your hiring goals and how many positions you are looking to fill. Posting on all major job boards available might get you a lot of applications, but that doesn’t mean your applicants will be right for your open roles, and it will put an additional strain on your team to process these applications. A niche, industry-specific job board or platform might be more suitable for your needs, as well as capitalizing on strategies like hosting an open day, launching a referral program, or recruiting internally first. And of course, the more precise you are in your job descriptions, the more likely you will be to attract the right candidates.

Automate where you can

It's never too early for a brand to implement recruiting technologies to increase the top of its funnel and optimize its processing flow. The less your team has to do manually, the quicker the process will become. There are a plethora of tools available to hiring teams today, ranging from sourcing candidates to crafting clear messaging. Ensuring that you're able to move candidates quickly through your hiring process and that your brand offers a great candidate experience that can effectively secure new hires is critical. 

Totally Promotional hired over 100 new employees during its peak season. To accomplish this, they created a series of email responses that allowed them to quickly schedule, respond to and engage applicants in a timely manner. They also created a process for hiring that allows them to interview, screen, and onboard an employee within a 2-3 day timeframe. By keeping the timeline succinct, the company was able to process applicants and new hires quickly with ease.

Leverage social media

93% of recruiters today use social media to source talent. Social media is a great place to not only find talent but also promote your company brand. Highlighting your company culture, benefits, perks, well-being programs, and life outside the office through social media, ad campaigns, and open house events can be a very powerful means to remain relevant and authentic, but also engage candidates even before they start going through your hiring process. 

Optimize your job listings for mobile

Globally, 68% of all website visits in 2020 came from mobile devices. That’s a significant increase compared to 2019. Ensuring your job postings are optimized for users on mobile will help your brand achieve higher SEO rankings, improve your brand’s credibility and reputation, and enhance your candidate hiring experience. 

Build a talent pipeline

Building your own talent pipeline is an excellent strategy to make hiring easier, quicker, and less expensive over time. Brands that take a proactive approach with recruiting, and focus on building relationships with their candidates are able to attract better candidates, engage passive applicants, are shown to be less brand dependent, have an improved diversity pool, and are able to offer a better candidate experience.

Pre-screen 

Saving time is essential when it comes to boosting hiring at your brand home. Implementing some form of pre-screening steps in your recruitment process, such as a preliminary skill test, phone interviews, asking for a cover letter, or requesting a short video introduction from your candidates is an effective way to weed out applicants who aren’t right for the role from the very early stages. This way your team will have the opportunity to only select the very best candidates to come in for an interview. 

Launch an employee referral program

Ideally, a brand would like to see approximately 30% of new hires coming from referrals. With the right incentives in place, your current team will likely be great at identifying people within their network that would be a good fit for an open position in your brand home. Having a strong company culture and putting your people first is an excellent start in sparking word-of-mouth. Plus, including your team in these decisions can make them feel like a valued part of your company, increase engagement with your brand, drive loyalty, and improve productivity.

Hire internally

Recruiting new talent can be around 1.7 times more expensive than hiring a current employee. Hiring internally is less expensive, less risky, offers an easier transition, and promotes employee engagement for everyone involved. An internal candidate will know more about your company, its culture, values, and will likely perform better compared to a new recruit. 

Finding the right people to staff your brand home as quickly as possible can be an overwhelming process. There are goals to achieve and needs to be met, but try not to rush the recruitment process by cutting corners in your candidate experience or at the expense of your hiring process. Hiring the wrong person will waste more time and money in the long run. 

If you're interested in learning deeper insights on this topic, read our latest interview series with AnyRoad's Head of Talent, Nicole Khazanedar. In this series, Nicole will answer 10 questions to help brands gain a deeper understanding of the new recruiting landscape and discuss some of the challenges employers face hiring in today's market.