There’s a saying within the recruiting industry that goes: “Managers spend 2% of their time recruiting, and 98% of their time managing their errors”. Now, that’s clearly exaggerated, but it does highlight the concept that recruiting isn’t a role that should be taken lightly.

Professional recruiters are pricey. The good ones are worth the money and the bad one’s aren’t, but why take the risk when a HR member can step up?

Unfortunately, becoming a recruiter isn’t exactly easy or straightforward, and mistakes cost (a lot of) money. So what do you do if your duties have just gone from doing the payroll, to doing the recruiting?

Recruiting, a quick overview

In the softgarden glossary we’ve outline some of the basic principles of modern day recruitment, and the key word here really is modern, because recruiting has come a long way in the last century, more on that in a second. For now, here are the basic duties that a recruiter needs to fill, in order to effectively source and hire the right candidate for the job:

Analyzing the job position
Writing the right job ad
Circulating the advertisement
Pre-screening applicants
Preliminary telephone interviews
Face to face Interview

Sounds straightforward enough right? Now here’s that bit on modern day recruiting. These days the competition for top talent is high, and 21st century recruiting has some new tactics up it’s sleeve, for example:

I’m guessing if you weren’t worried before then you might be now, but theres no need. Without going into the specifics of each bullet point (feel free to follow the links for more info) the key issue here is that recruiting has evolved, but it doesn’t make it impossible for newbies.

Recruiting, from the beginning

Lets start at the beginning, say you’ve taken the appropriate amount of time to analyze the vacancy and work out exactly what you’re looking for. You’ve written an effective job ad and now you want to post it online. Bearing in mind you’re up against a lot of competition (Monster, for example, holds over a million job postings at any one time) you need to make it stand out from the rest.

I’m going to go ahead and say right now that I’ll be plugging for softgarden in this article because, well, that’s what we do – we make recruiting easy. The advice however, remains impartial and you don’t have to use our product to get the same results (although that would be nice).

Ok – I get the message, so where do I start?

So you’re posting your job online. You’re up against millions of other recruiters. What can you do? A. Post it and cross your fingers, B. Make it irresistible.

Lets go with plan B.

A while ago we posted our version of the perfect job ad: It’s bright, colourful, there’s engaging text, the office look great and hang on, is that a espresso machine?! Where’s the apply button – that’s right, under your nose.

The key to a great ad is not just having all of the information on there, it’s about it being too good and too easy to pass up on.

Recruiting software lets you you make a regular ad into a great one with pre prepared layouts, helpful hints and tips and professional services. At softgarden for example, we can help you out with everything from copywriting to photographing your office (including that irresistible espresso machine).

Bearing in mind that each candidate takes around about 30 seconds to scan a job ad, you want to make sure they like it and apply within seconds. So make it pretty, and make sure the ‘apply’ button is nice and visible at all times.

Awesome, my ad looks great – what next?

Like any good marketing scheme, recruiting is all about exposure. You want to make sure that your ad is getting as many views as humanly possible, but that’s not going to happen by itself.

Asides from posting your job ad onto your corporate website, there are several way that you can make sure you’re getting as many hits as possible, including:

Multi Posting – Simultaneous posting to all of the mainstream job boards
Employee Referral – Using your employee network to spread the word
Social Networking – Spreading your job ads via social networking channels

Additionally it’s helps to have some kind of affiliation with a local university or college which will allow you to advertise your job ads within their intranet (particularly useful if you are specifically trying to recruit attract tech-savvy Gen Y’ers).

You can do all of the above separately, or you can do it with the click of a button. At least, with softgarden you can. We basically took a look at what everyone in recruiting was doing for maximum exposure, and effectively bundled it together to make it a million times easier. So, you can get maximum viewings in minimum time!

My inbox is in overdrive!!!

Ah. See, this is the trouble with successfully getting through that first stage of recruiting, candidates will apply! Hurrah! Unfortunately, it could require the whole HR team to pitch in if you want to asses them all properly. Next week we’re going to have a look at how you can easily overcome that pre-selection hurdle. In the meanwhile have a look at our article on the Top 5 Hiring Tips for more helpful hints on successful recruiting.

Any comments or suggestions? We’d love to hear them, feel free to leave your comments below.