The top 6 best recruitment strategies for Associations

Finding the right employee is hard these days, especially when there are less people applying.  So what is needed to use different strategies, to recruit.

A survey carried out by LinkedIn found that:

• 63% said that talent shortage is recruiters biggest challenge 

• 76% percent of hiring managers admit attracting the right job candidate is hard to do

• 75% of people would not take a job with a company that had a bad reputation – even if they were unemployed!

• The best candidates are off the market in 10 days

• Nearly 60% of job seekers quit online job applications mid-way due to their length and complexity.

• 41% of recruiters say entry-level positions are the hardest to fill.

• 75% of recruiters say they’ve seen a candidate change their mind after signing an offer letter.

• 75% of recruiters have noticed an increase in salary negotiations from their candidates.

How are Australian Associations doing recruitment these days

One of fastest growing strategies for recruitment involves social media, because you have the ability to reach a wide and targeted audience. 

In Australia, 82.7% of the population is active on social media, according to Statista.

The most used social media platforms for Australian internet users aged 16-64 are:

• Facebook: 76.8% 

• Instagram: 57.7% 

• Snapchat: 32.5% 

• TikTok: 32.3% 

• Twitter: 29.5% 

• LinkedIn: 26.2%

Then a recent study found that 73% of job seekers between the ages of 18 and 34 found their last job through social media, and 86% of job seekers use social media in their job search. 

The following tips, will guide you through some top strategies to make a difference for your recruitment success...

1. Create a careers section on your website

This is the first place to start, because wherever you promote your roles you want to direct them all back to one location - so you can measure the results, and create a more streamlined process for managing the recruitment process. 

Start by creating a careers page on your website covering all the key elements of why someone will want to work for you.  Show off your culture, business personality, outline your mission, and vision. 

List each job that you have available, talk about the benefits of the role and where possible get some of your team members who are already doing the role, or work for you to do an interview with you on video.  Add in a form, asking the key questions you would like candidates to answer (don't go overboard) - as well as enable them to attach their resume and covering letter.

2. Encourage your staff to get involved

Ask your employees to rave about the company, the culture, show off interesting projects they have worked on, events/activities they are involved in... on their social media profiles. This can help to add validity to your employer value and enable candidates to get a feel that your organisation is worth joining.  Ask them to list the roles in their posts on their own profiles, and possible other groups they belong to online, linking to your web landing page.

3. Update your social media profiles

Make sure your social media presences are up-to-date and well-managed, as it is crucial for successful online recruitment. 

Having a strong reputation and positive online presence can be particularly appealing to passive job seekers, with 75% of active job seekers being likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand. 

To develop a more active and positive social media presence, work on how you can highlight your people, values, and what is so good about working in your organisation. This could include featuring your current team and giving candidates a behind-the-scenes look at your company culture through written, audio, or visual content.

Remember, a work environment that reflects your employer brand will be attractive to top candidates. Organisation culture is a key factor for many job seekers, particularly those in the top 20%. By showcasing your team, events, and other company culture touchpoints, can give candidates a glimpse of what they can look forward to if they join your team.

Include your Google profile in your list - make sure you maintain lots of good positive reviews from members, and good quality images within.

4. Be where your candidates frequent

It's important to be present on the platforms where your candidates are, but also in the groups that they belong to. This means understanding their preferred channels, interactions and meeting them there. 

5. Leverage the advanced search features on Socials

Sadly Facebook has stopped their recruitment marketing solution for anyone outside of US and Canada, so your only options now on Facebook are to produce a post, boost it, and create a normal business ad to a targeted audience.   It is highly recommended that you produce some video content to promote the role - show off the benefits of working in your location, business and team culture.  

LinkedIn's advanced search capabilities offer significant advantages for recruiters compared to other social networks. While only about half of these advanced search features are available for free, they provide a lot of flexibility and power for finding qualified candidates who may be a good fit for open positions. If you have a LinkedIn Premium account, you will have access to even more advanced search features.

Twitter's advanced search feature may be more limited than those of LinkedIn, but it can still be a useful tool for finding candidates. By using specific phrases or hashtags relevant to your industry and location, you can narrow down your search results and find individuals who may be a good fit for your company. 

6. Measure your results?

Whether you are a small group recruiting only a few roles each year, or a bigger organisation doing it more frequently.  Always measure your results, to establish which campaigns worked better than others, which strategies and socials delivered the best candidates, so as you promote your next role using some base data to build on to continually improve the results.

Within the Membership Manager forms, you can set it to measure many aspects of the campaign that delivered the candidate (ask your consultant on how you can do this).  Also set it up to be measured in Google Analytics so you can see the traffic coming to your landing page and the percentage that applied (completed the form).

Additional strategies: 

Pull together over the years your list of candidates who have applied in the past, and send them an email; Contact the local school, universities, clubs in your area and ask them to post the ads on their noticeboards;  Add an announcement in your newsletter, email communication to members; create an email signature promoting careers at your business and add it to each team members emails; add signage at your premises, at your events... add your message to as many locations possible to get your message seen.

Improve your recruitment process

It is not just about having a presence on social media. It's also important to have an efficient and intuitive application process. 

A survey found that nearly 60% of job seekers quit online job applications due to their length and complexity. In addition, 41% of recruiters say that filling entry-level positions is the hardest task. This highlights the importance of having a straightforward application process to ensure that you don't lose potential candidates.

Some suggestions include:

• Automatically add applicants to a group in your email and send them a trigger email thanking them for their application, and send some additional information to get them excited about working for your company

• Every day review all candidates (remembering as there is shortage in the market, it is important to act fast if you get a good one) and get in contact with the ones you feel could be good to do an initial interview.  You could do this via phone, or after a quick chat - set up a time the next day to do an online (zoom, hangout, messenger) call.

• Some businesses get some of their team to do a follow up call.  Telling the candidate to ask them any questions they want, to establish if your business is the right fit for them (this will overcome some potential drop off, as well as enable them to get more excited about working with you).

• Whatever your process, act faster than what you would have done in the past and make the interview process a positive experience.

If you would like any help marketing your roles, please feel free to reach out to your Membership Management consultant to help you.