Hiring and retaining a reliable, skilled staff is one of the most essential aspects of any business. The number of people looking for jobs may be large, but in a competitive market, that makes it even more important to have a strong Human Resources department who can select the strongest and most qualified candidates. The HR department can recruit in many different ways, but they all relate back to finding ways to build your company’s brand name and add value to the business. Recruiting should simply be about making your company somewhere that talented candidates want to work and then communicating that.
1. Advertising
It’s important to present your company as being unique from its competitors when you are advertising for available positions. The HR department has the task of communicating the ways in which the company values their employees. What benefits do you offer that not every company provides? What ways do you celebrate success? What’s different about your corporate values? When you’re advertising for particular open positions, the goal is to provide as much specific information about the job as you can while making the tone friendly and welcoming.
2. Working with Universities
One important aspect of recruiting for many companies is making their presence known in the university system. College graduates are all looking for work, and they are a great source of educated, skilled, and enthusiastic employees who are willing to be more flexible in their demands. HR recruiters often advertise the company at campus job fairs, where they can meet face to face with students and have the added benefit of representing the company personally. They can also set up internship programs, where candidates who want to work for you can experience the job firsthand. Many interns who are successful at their work end up becoming people the company wants to keep on a permanent basis.
3. Hiring from Within
Recognizing talent that’s already inside the company is just as important as looking for talent in an outside pool of candidates. After all, it’s likely that many of your employees signed on with career advancement in mind. The HR department can also send out company emails to employees telling them what positions are open and offering them a chance to apply. How often you hire from within is up to the managers, but if you can find a truly qualified person already in your ranks, it can save money as well as promote a positive message to the rest of your staff and to other entry-level workers who come on board.
4. Using Social Media
It’s important not to overlook that in the digital age, social media is becoming a more widely used tool to find qualified employees. Companies are already working to build their presence on Facebook and Twitter, which can make advertising for open positions cheap and easy. But HR departments also scout Facebook for qualified candidates or get a more personal look at candidates who have already applied. Social media is valuable because it allows you to engage with potential employees on a personal level, making your company seem all the more appealing.
The recruitment methods of your HR department directly influence the quality of employees at your business, which makes their strategies important. But HR doesn’t happen in isolation. Everyone at your company should be working together to commit to the goals and standards of its founders, so you can more easily look for others who will commit to them too.
Traci Waters writes for business blogs. Click here to read her writing on developing creative HR solutions for your business.