New Recruitment Strategies Every Business Should Use

by Bryan Hyland, Commercial Director at Morgan McKinley

The hiring world was already changing, but now the transformation is clearer to see. New recruitment strategies, accelerated by the recent different ways of working, have come to the fore.

The hiring market has seen some dramatic highs and lows recently. In some areas, the demand for new talent has never been so high, whilst in others recruitment of new employees has remained flat or dropped off.

But one consistency across almost every industry, regardless of whether recruitment has been prolific or not, is the shift in attitudes when hiring.

This shift is towards the realisation that each new hire is an important jigsaw piece in the puzzle of building a business for the future, not simply replacing the workforce of the past. But how?

Why it’s worth changing the way you recruit

Hiring managers and business leaders have realised that simply reusing job descriptions no longer attracts the right talent.

Today, more of a focus is being placed on emerging and evolving skills. Part of this is also recognising the expiring skills which aren’t as relevant as they were a couple of years ago.

As a result, a more creative approach is widely being adopted. Leaders are now looking beyond just the immediate needs of their teams and thinking about what skills the business as a whole will need to succeed in the future.

Digging out old collateral used when a previous hire was made only yields the type of candidates that are prepared for yesterday’s challenges, not tomorrow’s. And being able to react to the challenges of tomorrow is exactly what’s important to businesses in such an agile working world.

Here are 3 new recruitment strategies that every business, regardless of size, location or industry, should be implementing…

1. Skills-Based Hiring: Focus more on soft skills and look beyond traditional qualifications

As you know, the pace of change in the working world has gathered momentum in recent years.

This constant requirement for businesses to quickly adapt to variable market conditions has made it increasingly tricky for hiring managers to keep up with role demands, especially if they are hiring for a diverse range of positions at the same time.

The skills relevant for job functions seem to have an increasingly short shelf life. In reaction to this, those hiring new employees to build for their company’s future have done so most successfully by placing more importance on certain interpersonal skills over the more traditional aspects such as industry specific experience and university degree.

Drive to upskill, curiosity, agility and teamwork, now top the list of requirements as companies increasingly seem to be hiring for potential, not based solely on past experience.

Of course, there are professions where qualifications and industry experience are more integral to day-to-day tasks than others. But even still in those areas of expertise, the less conventional skills are becoming more vital as organisations worldwide strive to be more agile.

2. Take a broader approach when sourcing talent

Sourcing talent is a business priority. From years of successfully hiring the best people for your teams, you think you know the right places to look – it’s worked numerous times in the past after all.

But that was the past. 

Where you historically found your new team members may no longer be the best place to look. Don’t worry, you don’t need to completely change what you’ve been doing, it will come organically…

Here’s why: As a by-product of placing less emphasis on academic degrees, certifications, and formal experience, your search will naturally extend to a broader pool compared to the past.

And that’s not the full extent of it! The fact that remote working has been more widely accepted and adopted as a credible way for businesses to function globally increases your talent pool even further.

If your company embraces this way of working, including fully remote workers in your search criteria means you are no longer tied to local talent and can source people from anywhere in the world – now there’s a thought!

Organisations adopting this broader approach to talent sourcing has culminated in the rising frequency of flexible, contract recruitment. Realising that they can hire a vast array of talent quickly helped them stay agile and react fastest.

The diversity of talented individuals you’ll come across in these new, unfamiliar places will definitely surprise you.

It’s a bit of a shift in mindset, but it will allow you to access the talent you truly want and that your business will benefit most from, rather than just hiring what’s available.

3. Adjust your perception of what job seekers want

Now more than ever before it’s important to position yourself as an employer of choice and to make sure your vacancies are attractive to the job seekers of today.

Talented professionals, especially those who are more experienced, are weighing up potential job opportunities differently these days; offering the highest salary is no longer the best route to securing new team members.

So what are professionals looking for in their employment nowadays? Well, there are a few key things that have become more abundant.

Due to the increased level of autonomy from being more in control of their working patterns (partly driven by the rise in remote working and more flexibility allowed by companies), candidates expect to have a say in the design of their jobs.

Humanised offerings are also more important. How can the job you’re offering improve their lives as a whole, not just professionally? Are you able to offer them some form of support in terms of their families and wider communities?

Some companies have started offering development opportunities to their employees’ families. Being able to understand what they need and desire on a personal level can be a hugely influential talent attraction and retention strategy.

One of the most prominent trends from the past 12 months has been the boom in online learning and upskilling. Whilst many professionals have undertaken this proactively in order to increase their value when looking for a new job or seeking a promotion, it can act as a powerful retention tool for employers to offer such opportunities to their teams.

Can you help them financially with some professional development? Are there any courses they would like to do which would in turn benefit the company as a whole?

Organisations may need to rethink how they are branding their vacancies so they are more aligned to job seekers’ expectations…are you doing anything different to boost your talent attraction? 

Are you ready for the future?

There is no crystal ball we can gaze into and accurately predict what recruitment processes will look like in the future. But from recent new recruitment strategies cropping up around the world, spanning numerous industries, a picture is being painted of what we should all expect.

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