Whether you are a professional recruiter, HR manager, or small business owner, recruiting the best talent can be challenging.

With a booming job market, potential employees have several choices. Companies need to be attractive to potential team members by having a great culture, strong benefits, and clear paths for personal development.  Often, the first impression of your business is the recruiting process, and a welcoming, cohesive, and smooth recruiting process can differentiate your business. 

Yet, the world of recruiting has changed. While once conducted solely via phone calls, recruiting can now involve text messages, in-person meetings, and even take-home projects.  We've gathered the best tips to keep top prospects engaged during the recruiting process and ensure you grow your team with the right people. 

The Top 3 Challenges for Recruiting and HR

Before we discuss some of the ways to improve your recruiting efforts, let us review the top three challenges.

A Workforce With Changing Priorities

While much has been written about the benefits and disadvantage of millennials entering the workforce, it is undeniable that they are bringing a different set of priorities to the workforce and require a different set of workplace benefits.  With Millennials quickly becoming the majority of the workplace, their priorities are now dominating workplace benefits.

On-site training and time and funding for personal development is quickly becoming a regular benefit. With 87% of millennials saying that development is a top priority for a job, companies have had to prioritize continued education. Additionally, workplace norms like going into an office are no longer. 69% of millennials believe that in-office attendance is not mandatory all of the time.

Recruiting teams must be mindful of these changes. While today’s top talent want to see employers offering competitive retirement benefits like 401k matching, financial planning services and alternative investing in assets like cryptocurrency, work-life balance is emerging as a top priority.

The Gig Economy

The gig economy is all about jobs being seen more as “gigs” than permanent or semi-permanent places in a person’s career. People are more likely to bounce around from job to job these days. In fact, 91% of all millennials expect their job to last less than three years.

Companies now are competing against other businesses as well as the flexibility of gig jobs.  Talent may decide the benefit of making their own schedule may outway the security of a full-time job.

Too Many Jobs, Not Enough Talent

While great for the economy, today's job market is massive, with more and more companies hiring in 2021. This means that attracting top talent is harder than ever. Additionally, baby boomers are retiring and leaving the workforce, opening even more positions.

An abundance of jobs means that the job seeker has the upper hand. They can shop around for the best job offer. Ultimately, all of these factors converging means that you, the recruiter, have to offer something compelling, and offer it quickly enough before your prospective employee moves on.

4 Ways to Maximize Your Recruiting in 2021 (and Beyond)

Try these tips below to supercharge your recruiting and hiring for 2021, 2022, and for years to come.

Streamline Your Hiring Processes

“Candidate experience” is a somewhat pretentious way to identify the “experience” a candidate goes through in the hiring process. The “Candidate Experience” covers all the steps taken during the hiring process, from the initial interview, background check, job offer, and acceptance.

With competition for top talent so strong, you cannot have a long, drawn-out hiring process. A long recruiting process, or one with a poor candidate experience will encourage top candidates to move on to the company that makes the process easier.

Streamlining your hiring process should improve your “candidate experience” and make your business more appealing to new hires.

Use Artificial Intelligence to Screen Candidates

To help speed up the recruiting process, HR teams should look at Artificial intelligence (AI).  AI can be a big boon to recruiters and HR managers. It can help screen those hundreds of resumes that are clogging your inbox. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can help streamline the process of reviewing resumes, so only candidates that are truly “applicable” to the job get reviewed by a human.

Respond More Quickly with Email Automation

Email automation is a great way to maintain a quick and efficient recruiting process. Email automation can help you provide personalized emails to candidates will still automating part of the process. One of the easiest things to do is to set up email templates using software like MixMax. Rather than type the same message over and over again, templates allow you to create set emails of acceptance, rejection or next steps and send then with a single click. This allows for email template for each of recruiting stages. You can create these templates with all the information you need, so you do not have to search for it or write it up again from scratch.  Once it is time to send the email, you can quickly select the template, adjust it to your liking, and add a personal note.

Improve Your Online Content

Improving your content might sound like a really odd thing to add to a list of recruiting tips. However, improving your online content is a top tip for 2021.  With so many distractions both in work and in life, it is vital for a company to stand out and grab a prospect's attention.  By making sure your company appears to be engaged and “happening,” you make your company more appealing to potential hires.

Content creation, digital marketing, and social media posts can all be a part of the recruiting picture. For example, an infographic could be created that relates to your company, and at the end of it, it might say “Want a great place to work? Check out our job opportunities”.   Alternatively, evening having a company social media page where you post regular photos with team outings, news and quotes can show prospects that you care about sharing your business cultures.

By getting creative with your online content creation, you can not only improve the visibility of the business for marketing reasons, but you can also get more and better applicants for your open job positions.

Recruiting Can Be Challenging – But Doable

2021 is a tough year to be recruiting, with a growing economy, changing trends, and many openings companies must change their recruiting process to engage top prospects. You have a lot of competition for the top talent, and you have to act fast to build the team you want. Fortunately, tools like AI and email automation can help, while improving your online presence can make your company more desirable.