Recruitment best practices are always evolving — and the global pandemic kicked that evolution into high gear. Now, we’re firmly planted in a candidate-driven job market, with job seekers and employees leading massive change in the way we think about engaging and hiring talent. Your job as a recruiter or talent acquisition professional is all about reimagining your employer branding, messaging, and candidate experience to meet the needs of today’s modern job seeker.
Understanding a candidate-driven job market
Traditionally, employers control the recruiting and hiring process — they dictate opportunities, salaries, and employment terms — in a candidate-driven market, talent has the upper hand. In a candidate-driven market, jobs are abundant — as of February 2022, there were more open roles than job seekers. At the same time, companies are adding more and more jobs.
With more jobs than people to fill them, employers are being pushed to compete for talent. That’s leading to everything from increased salary and bonus offers to added perks, unique benefits, opportunities, and more. Seventy percent of employers actively promote a flexible environment to attract new talent while 50% use additional wellbeing benefits in their strategy to attract new talent, as a growing number of job seekers place greater value on health, personal, and professional development.
All of this should be reflected in your employer branding. More than ever, job seekers are looking for brands and businesses that deliver the right employee experience — the right workplace environment that syncs with their expectations in terms of flexibility, professional development, social responsibility, diversity and inclusion, and other key factors. Your employer branding is, essentially, a promise to candidates — if you come work here, this is what you can expect from company culture, mission, and values to leadership, policies, and priorities.
With relevant and authentic employer branding, you’ll be better positioned to proactively engage talent. Employer branding is also a critical competitive advantage during the recruitment process — the right messaging can reduce recruitment and marketing costs, shorten hiring windows, and increase your ability to attract top job seekers.
Delivering the right candidate — and employee — experience
By taking these steps to meet mounting employee expectations driven by the Great Realization, companies are better positioned to successfully engage and recruit talent. At the same time, it’s important to reimagine your actual recruitment workflows, adopting a marketing and sales mindset.
- Recruiters should think like marketers, creating cross-channel connections that activate job seekers where they are when they’re most likely to be focused on their search.
- Once talent is engaged, recruiters should think like salespeople, identifying and acting on a candidate’s wants, needs, and goals. This helps strengthen the relationship — also central to the sales and recruitment process — and create a positive candidate experience that moves talent from recruitment to “hire.”
It’s important to also remember that the recruiting process is moving faster than ever. It’s not uncommon for a recruit to have a screening with HR, a meeting with a hiring manager, and an offer letter all in one day — and that can be a significant competitive advantage.
How Indeed Flex is supporting a candidate-driven market
We’re in a candidate-driven market, and success demands new recruitment strategies. Flexibility and creativity will be essential to meeting your current, and likely future, staffing needs. As you consider more flexible work arrangements for traditional employees, a flexible workforce may also be a viable solution for filling gaps in the immediate and even long term.
Indeed Flex provides a large pool of fully vetted, temporary and on-demand workers to fill your workforce needs. And as an experienced managed service provider, we can shoulder the entire burden of your temporary recruitment processes for better contingent workforce visibility, scalability, and flexibility, allowing you to focus on other business priorities.
By adjusting your approach to what job seekers want right now — and leaning on resources like Indeed Flex to help deliver — you’ll efficiently secure the right talent every time. Sign up as a business today and start filling your available shifts with highly-skilled, flexible workers at the touch of a button.
