Recruiting has changed. The days when you could just put an ad on a job board and hope that great candidates would beat a path to your door are far, far behind us. In addition to partnering with a professional local recruitment partner, there are other ways you can ensure the best candidates choose your company by improving your recruitment process. 

Unemployment is at under 4.2% and is not expected to get back up to ‘normal’ levels until 2025, so the current shortage of good candidates is likely to last for some time yet. 

If you’re a manufacturing, precision engineering or logistics company based along the M3 corridor in Hampshire, Berkshire and Surrey in particular, this means that recruiting the people you need is becoming increasingly challenging. So it’s essential to make sure your recruitment process is as slick as possible to secure the best people. 

But how can you make sure that top talent chooses to consider joining your business, rather than one of your competitors? 

Here are some top tips from our experienced team in Basingstoke about what you can do today to make sure your company is a recruitment winner.

1.   Tailor your Benefits Packages

You know what you have historically offered for a particular role or skill, but securing the best people today is all about creating the right package. You need to put together appealing salary and benefits packages quickly if you want to steal a march on your competitors in the recruitment market.

More than ever, attractive benefits are a strong influencing factor in candidates’ decisions. Incentives such as a few days extra annual leave or the opportunity for flexible working are highly valued, and are something that smaller businesses, as well as larger corporate companies, can now use to attract the best talent. 

Applicants are demanding that job listings display salary information, so you need to make sure a realistic salary range is shown in the job ad, rather than statements such as ‘competitive salary’.

2.   Involve Colleagues in the Recruitment Process

As employees, we typically spend around 1,800 hours a year at work, so it is no wonder that job applicants are keen to know who they’ll be working with and where they’ll be based when they are considering joining your company.

So involve colleagues and peers as part of the recruitment process, perhaps arranging for them to briefly meet promising candidates on the day of interview. 

You can tell a lot about interviewees from how they engage with others, and listening to the questions they ask will give you a good idea of how interested they are in your company.

Current employees can have a huge influence on a candidate’s decision about whether or not to accept a job - plus, they are far more likely to trust information from other employees.

Ask your team to help find new colleagues by:

• Making candidates feel welcome during the recruitment process
• Leaving positive reviews on rating sites such as Glassdoor
• Writing positive posts about your company on social media

3.   Showcase your Company’s Culture

Job applicants are interested in more than just the details of the role they are applying for. They will also be looking for insights into the company’s culture when they come for interview. 

We visit every company we recruit for, so we’re able to talk to candidates about a company’s culture and ethos, as well as the job responsibilities. 

It’s very important to give every candidate a good experience when they come for an interview - even if you don’t think that particular person is right for the job.

Small gestures such as genuinely thanking someone for their time and interest in your company and - if they’re not successful - providing some balanced and constructive feedback about why they were not chosen are always greatly appreciated and will help enhance the reputation of your company as a great local employer. 

When you use the services of a professional recruitment consultancy such as Priority Appointments, we save you time by providing feedback to candidates on your behalf.

Our decades of experience ensure that feedback is delivered positively, even if the answer is not the one the candidate was hoping for.

Remember, a satisfied candidate might tell a friend about their positive experience. But a disgruntled candidate is likely to tell at least 10 friends how appalled they were with a poor interview experience!

And finally, do ensure that feedback is timely – don’t keep candidates in a state of uncertainty any longer than absolutely necessary.

4. Invite Feedback on Your Recruitment Process

It’s not just candidates who can benefit from feedback. You can learn how to improve your recruitment process by asking successful and unsuccessful candidates what they thought about their experience of your recruitment process. Gather information through a follow-up email which asks questions such as:

• How would you rate your interview experience?
• Would you apply again for a role in our company?
• How can we improve?

This way you’ll gain insight into your recruitment process from an applicant’s perspective and continue to improve the candidate experience within your business and make sure you’re doing all you can to attract and retain employees that will help your business thrive.

Find out How to Create an Awesome Candidate Experience with our short guide

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash