Recruitment In A Post-Rolodex World

Rolodex was quite a fine invention, wasn’t it? Back in 1956, when it was created, the Rolodex was a fantastic way to keep all of your contacts in one place. With a few flips of the attached index cards, you could eventually locate the contact you were looking for. Of course, these were the days long before the advent of the smartphone. In 2020, the average person can easily create a never-ending contact list in his/her mobile device.

Modern technology, many would argue, has completely changed the recruitment industry.

There are many who feel that LinkedIn Recruiter killed the entire concept of head hunting. By uploading your profile to LinkedIn, you join millions of others in tossing away whatever version of the Rolodex you may have still had in exchange for this unique cloud-hosted filing system.

However, LinkedIn and other online Rolodexes have made it so that it’s difficult for job seekers to differentiate between the various recruiters that may contact them. There really is no skill in sending thousands of emails in hopes that just one recipient will be the golden ticket candidate your client plans on paying tens of thousands of dollars for. Most candidates simply delete those messages.

What reason do candidates have to respond to spam about your mystery client?

After years of having to endure unreturned phone calls from so-called recruiters, today’s job seekers know they have highly marketable skills and experience. They are not desperate enough to return phone calls emanating from lazy recruitment tactics. In 2020, the era of agency recruiters telling candidates “don’t call us, we’ll call you” is officially over.

It’s important to come up with sound recruitment strategy. And, naturally, not all recruitment strategies are the same. It all depends on the type of business you run and the specific types of talent you’re looking for. Atta Tarki and Ken Kanara of Harvard Business Review write that the “post-and-pray” strategy is still the most popular way of hiring candidates.

Is “post-and-pray” really the way to go?

According to the duo, the act of posting job roles on job boards and company websites to find new hires is how 42 percent of new employees are found. Recruiter-sourced candidates represent only 10 percent of new hires, they inform. This means in-house recruiters need to develop stronger methods of locating ideal candidates for their company.

“While job postings have some benefits, hoping that star performers will fall into your lap, during the lowest period of unemployment in nearly fifty years, is not advisable,” write Tarki and Kanara, “Successful recruiters help organizations by building a repeatable and a scalable formula for finding and engaging star performers. Recruiters can do this by experimenting with and increasing the efficiency of other sourcing channels.”

It’s all about creating positive candidate experiences.

No matter the recruitment strategy you choose, one thing is for certain. You can’t simply cast your fishing rod into the ocean in hopes of catching the biggest fish. A strong recruiter moves quickly, lives the company brand and puts the candidate experience as their top priority.

“One candidate we spoke with who had recently declined an offer cited how she had originally been excited about the company’s pitch about being entrepreneurial and fast-moving, but started doubting if this was true when their interview process dragged on for three months,” Tarki and Kanara explain.

For more expert recruitment advice, contact Hire Value Inc. today!