Winning the talent war is what it is all about for companies. Coming up with different strategies is what the master-brains behind organizations are working on at all times. To advertise and promote products, hoardings are put up in the busy areas of a city. Would companies be able to do the same when it comes to hiring key talent?
Certainly not!
Or do they? Certain top companies are being innovative in their hiring strategies and there have even been recent instances of hoardings being put up in order to catch the attention of passersby. This alters the medium of hiring and is just one example of how companies are working on innovative ideas with the ultimate goal of attracting the best minds.
This talent crisis is not restricted just to hiring; training and retention also pose big challenges. Due to the demand supply gap in the market, firms come up with several strategies to beat competition. These strategies include campus recruitments, employee-referrals, placement consultants, job fairs, advertising in newspapers, internet job postings and lately, the trend is also moving towards leveraging the immense benefits of social networking sites.
Companies have faced increasing talent crunch in the past decade and the hiring scenario has witnessed dramatic changes. This is because employees have now begun to call the shots and a transition from the employers’ market to an employees’ is very evident, with employers willing to give everything to appease the employee, in terms of several types of benefit packages.
People in recruiting try and demonstrate to candidates, how their organization is great and the excitement that is to be found within the organization. Most people rely on “words” in websites, brochures and paid advertising; but words are so outdated that they may fail to make the required impact.
It is very obvious that the number of people reading books and newspapers is rapidly declining and most people look for information from other forms of media, which includes TV, videos and films. The reason is because videos get across a powerful message and are convenient to watch. The once powerful tools, “words” have now become weak and do not transmit messages with the same passion as they did earlier. Pictures are better than words, but even they are proving to be limiting.
The saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, gives way to the saying, a video is priceless. Videos help potential candidates see and hear the organization. Videos allow people to get a better feel of the organization and are aimed at exciting the potential candidates and are aimed at showing the compelling features of a firm and their jobs. With the traditional strategies for hiring, such as brochures, pictures posted on websites and many others, losing their engaging power, videos are becoming powerful recruiting tools. Many organizations are beginning to woo potential candidates with online videos placed on career websites, popular video sharing sites such as YouTube, or even by providing them as podcasts that can be downloaded, for mobile media devices.
Some companies are applying a unique employee referral program, where the current employees are encouraged to recruit the right talent.
There has also been a significant shift to online recruiting, with the emergence of job portals. While job portals are still considered important for the recruitment process, it is the next generation of web that is taking over; Web 2.0. The social networking websites like Orkut, Facebook, and Linkedin etc. are being seen as a great cost-effective method of recruiting.
With job portals; although, employers were successful to an extent in finding people looking for jobs, they still had a problem of finding the right kind of people. The reason is that people who are in good jobs and are satisfied with the companies they are working for would not put up their resumes on these job sites.
Web 2.0 hiring changes that scenario. It is all about using the power of the social web to reach the right candidates, interact with them and hire them. The social networking sites have seen immense growth in a very short time. There are several business-oriented social networking sites that give instant credibility to a professional’s profile, along with the recommendations and referrals of the candidate, thus helping employers in captivating this talent.
Experts say that the best part about Web 2.0 recruiting is the fact that it gives people looking for jobs a chance to scan the firms and vice versa. Most companies highlight on their websites the kind or work environment and benefits they provide. For new startups, social networking sites provide the perfect virgin ground for recruitment and more and more organizations are taking this route.
Human resource specialists say that the hiring scenario is going to further change dramatically over the next few years and innovation helps corporate as well as employees make the correct choices and avoid making errors while hiring.
Nice post. This takes a good look at where hiring practices are and gives a sense of where they might be headed. I might argue, though, that “the hiring scenario” isn’t changing so much as professional relationships are changing. Another thing to consider is telecommuting — as recent as 5 years ago it was far less common to find telecommuters in various industries; now the internet has become an industry within itself. This is making competition a lot fiercer but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The recruiters I send job listings to in a marketplace like Dayak (our recruiting website of choice) are the same guys I’m hooking up with in Linked In, who are in turn connected to their own Linked In networks with a wealth of potential candidates, etc. We’re saving money on hiring as a result of this (and because of innovation in the highly competitive recruiting sector, too). This doesn’t solve client retention, but I feel like the amount of networking that goes on every day online has opened up business to a wealth of opportunity; it’s far easier to build a team you can trust.
Excellent post and thank you. Recruitment has always been a kinda hit or miss game depending on the experience of the recruiter. As a potential candidate I would feel much more secure if I can get as much information about a company as possible, before the dreaded interview day.