September 13, 2013

Want To Know How Recruiters Find Top Talent? 4 Strategies Revealed!

After months of fruitless interviews and hours spent poring over LinkedIn profiles, you’ve completely exhausted your search for the talented professional your company desires.  The hiring deadline is fast approaching. It’s time to switch up your strategy.

So you meet with a recruiter and explain the seemingly impossible-to-fill position. Two weeks later, a shortlist of candidates arrives in your inbox.

Each candidate is highly qualified for the role, with the skills and experience you’d struggled to find. Your next hire is finally within reach, primed to bring your company to the next level of success.

“How do they do it?” you wonder. “How do recruiters find talent?”

Wonder no more.

Get insider advice for finding top talent with these 4 strategies used by professional recruiters:    

1.  Refine the search.

When you perform a basic search on employment websites like Monster, you’re going to see results based on the words you use for the job title.

But there’s more than one way to describe a position. That’s why recruiters brainstorm several keyword combinations for a job description and title before hitting the search button.

Whether searching employment websites or their robust pre-screened databases, recruiters refine their hunt with different keyword variations, adding filters for qualifications such as specific academic institutions or location-based experience.

This helps recruiters discover qualified candidates otherwise overlooked in the search process, and deliver the best results to their clients.

2.  Sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Recruiters know how to make a position attractive to prospects by focusing on what makes the company a great place to work.   When it’s easy for candidates to envision the perks and the effects of contributing to a company, they’re much more likely to respond to a posting or accept an offer.

That’s why it’s important to think about the image your business wants to project.  Does your online and offline branding communicate what makes your company desirable to talented professionals?  What can you do around the workplace to increase employee satisfaction and rally everyone around a positive company culture?

For more tips, check out Influence & Co’s “5 Easy Steps To Building Your Employer Brand”.

3.  Save everything.

It takes dedicated networking, ongoing communication with HR departments and hiring managers, and countless interviews and reference checks for recruiters to develop a database of exceptionally talented candidates.

Along the way, they get into the habit of saving everything. Business cards, resumes, company brochures – anything with contact information for a new professional connection.

This helps recruiters build up their resources, so when the hunt for talent requires extensive digging, they’re prepared. Having a storehouse of contacts to draw from opens up new avenues for discovering exceptional candidates, and adds to their living, breathing databases.

4.  Make every interaction count.

Recruiters strive to make a positive impact on every person they connect with.

Why? It’s simple: It feels great to make others feel great. It’s also a powerful way to be memorable.  Every conversation or email exchange is a new opportunity to strengthen a relationship and build trust.

Having a positively memorable presence also helps recruiters establish themselves in their professional communities. When employees within these communities decide to transition careers or look into new opportunities, they know exactly who to call.

What makes your business memorable?

Now that you have the inside scoop on recruiting top talent, it’s time to put these practices to work.  With the help of a professional recruiter, you can attract rock star employees with the experience and skills you need to build your business.  Let’s get started today!