As the world economies seems to be collapsing around us what will be the best practices in recruiting for 2009? Will video resumes be the killer app? Will niche job boards take over from the big boards? Will social media be the killer app?
Nope, none of these alone will get you the best candidates. Sorry.
If the economies do completely collapse there are a couple of outcomes; unemployment will rise as companies go under and people in secure jobs will be less likely to want to move. At the same time companies will need to do more with less and work hard to keep good talent.
So where should you focus?
- Quality of hire. Some people looking for jobs will be B grade, from layoffs, while some will be A grade. Given companies will be operating on thin margins you cannot afford to recruit the wrong person, ever!
- Time to hire. While there will be more candidates to choose from, as with quality the time to hire will still be critical.
- ROI, ROI, ROI. Every single recruiting activity must provide a positive return on investment. You can no long afford to just engage agencies to find candidates, it must be justified and most likely a last resort.
- Use your talent pool. Following on from the previous point companies that leverage the data in their talent management systems will reduce the time to hire and cost to hire.
- Look for innovative and cost effective advertising. Post 10 job ads on the biggest job board for $1,000 might seem easy but is it the best use of the $1,000? Maybe providing micro-sponsorship to an industry event will get you in front of better candidates.
- Branding. Everyone is talking about it, but it is true. If people want to come ane work for your organisation you are half way there to hiring them. The best people want to work for the best organisations, no matter what the economy is doing.
- Referrals. Time and time again referrals provide the highest quality hire at the lowest cost.
- Social media. While it will not save you, social media will help. Look at social media to help improve your brand, and engage with top talent.
- Social networking. As with social media it will not save you but it will help you find candidates and improve your brand. Not to mention the ROI is very high.
- Learn to use search engines to find candidates.
You might look at the list and think, so what’s new? Well not a lot. It is just how you apply the processes which differs.
Checkout medical jobs at Health Jobs USA.
Michael Specht 
Referrals are the key – there is a subliminal trust there which you can’t put a value on or quantify. I agree with all the points but using technology tools in the right way can differentiate yourself in the market and offer an added value service rather than trying to strip it down all the time. Using technology to cut your costs is also key – video CV’s being the killer ap? – nope but using video as a tool to streamline the recruiting process, saving time and costs on travel must be a way to look at something without actually removing core recruiting principles which give a great ROI. Using Software as a Service is low cost but highly effective so lets not right it off just yet!
Lisa, I’m definitely not dismissing SaaS nor technology, although we might want to start talking about cloud computing and other things. Thanks for stopping by.
Great insight, Michael — everybody’s looking for the smoking gun, the one “killer app” that’s going to save recruiters from the clutches of an worldwide economic meltdown. Setting aside the dubious possibility of an actual global economic catastrophe, certainly we’re headed for a slowdown, and I do think that folks will be turning to HR and recruiting technologies of all kinds. Why? These introduce efficiencies and, thus, cost savings to the full circle of talent management.
As Employees are right now more concern of their job-lessness than their current work.
In addition to to all the 10 trends discussed above:,
I believe giving more & suitable job responsibilities to the employees along with their proper training & development and stress management program, would be going to be a better option in these times, rather than to make immediate salary cuts as happening everywhere.
Also promoting confident and positive message from the top management towards employees is very neccessary at this stage in every process including recruitment.
We need to understand that people or talent hub is still the same from where we used to do recruitment, what is changed is our mindset becoz of market.
So we need to assess our current needs, future needs, and do the planning for best utilization of the human & all resources.