7 Out of the Box Recruitment Strategies

Many organizations are in constant search of talented, highly-skilled, and top-performing employees. Because of this, they pay recruiters a premium to identify and recruit these candidates on their behalf. As a recruiter, it can be difficult to break through the standard search process and find top candidates before the competition. Therefore, it is essential for recruiters to test out new out-of-the-box recruitment strategies as potential means of gaining a competitive edge. Most likely, the perfect candidate is not looking for a new job— they're probably content within their current role. A recruiter must therefore find innovative methods to find, compel, and recruit these candidates in unique and effective fashions.

Here are a few out of the box recruitment strategies to try:

1. Leverage on Social Media

According to Statista, over 3.6 billion people used social media in 2020— a number projected to rise to approximately 4.41 billion in 2025. This number represents over half of the internet users. Social media users comprise professionals, students, academicians, job seekers, and others who may be interested in changing roles. Therefore, it's a great place when looking to hire an employee. Here are a few strategies recruiters use to find top talent:

• LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a platform for professional recruiters to build their brand and reach out to prospective candidates. Keep your profile active by posting valuable content regularly or participating in conversations. This will help keep you and your brand top of mind for high-caliber candidates on the site.
• Facebook: Facebook is another excellent platform to seek talent. You can use sponsored posts or groups to scout potential employees. If you're looking for a real-estate consultant, join a few real-estate groups to boost your chances of success. Alternatively, you can create regular content to attract followers and top talent organically. Post informative updates, infographics, industry updates, links to blogs, and ensure you reply to comments.
• Instagram: Instagram is a unique platform where users utilize the power of images and live videos to connect. Instagram is popular with people in the creative industry like fashion designers, graphic designers, culinary artists, artists, photographers, etc. As a recruiter, you can find top talent from Instagram by posting stories or sharing pictures with relevant captions and conversations.

2. Invest in University Recruiting

Universities are the breeding ground for all industry experts and therefore present an undeniable opportunity to recruiters. Companies can acquire the best brains from campus and train them afresh to take on new projects. Fresh university graduates come with great energy, attitude, and minimal demands. Recruiters can maximize in the following ways:

• Being Physically Present: Plan to make your presence felt on campus when things get back to normal, and people are back in person for everything. You can achieve that by attending career fairs or supporting the students in mutual causes like climate change initiatives, community projects, or environmental projects.
• Social Meetings: Arrange remote meetings—for example, Zoom or Skype sessions with students, student bodies, and company representatives by partnering with career development departments within universities. The virtual meetings are essential in developing a rapport that recruiters will rely on to find top talent in the university.
• Measure University Recruitment Success: University recruitment involves time, planning, and resources and should yield commensurate results. Record the number of hires, interviews, and retention rate to assess the method's effectiveness.

3. Host an Interview Skills Webinar

Successful recruitment is a series of steps that includes lead generation and rapport-building with candidates. Therefore, it can be valuable for recruiters to host webinars and other relevant events that keep candidates engaged and benefit them professionally. Offering this type of valuable advice to candidates through webinars can attract them organically and build a sense of trust intrinsically. From there, you can stay top of mind and serve as a resource to these individuals, until eventually helping them fill one of your open roles.

4. Using AI Recruitment Technology

Recruiters can apply artificial intelligence to minimize manual processes and improve the speed of decision-making and accuracy. The AI technology sieves through multiple applications and talent pools simultaneously, minimizing the time needed to process a candidate. Consequently, the recruiter is able to spend more time creating impactful relationships with their talent pool.In addition, recruiters can train AI technology to automatically source, filter, and rank top candidates specific to their own roles and organization. A point to note: industry experts believe that artificial intelligence will not replace human recruitment. Instead, it will boost efficiency, quality, return on investment, and aptitude.

5. Optimize Your Network

Use your network to find the ideal candidates — if you know someone perfect for the role, reach out to that person, bring it up to your Facebook friends, post on your LinkedIn, e-mail your friends, and encourage them to share with others. Also, it never hurts to ask for help. If you know someone within the industry you are recruiting, don't hesitate to reach out and see if they know any candidates who would be a strong fit for the job. Utilizing personal networks is one of the more cost-effective strategies that also leads to the highest rate of success for recruiters. Make sure you build out and speak with your network, and great talent will soon be filling your pipeline.

6. Referrals

Referrals are also an awesome means of finding and engaging with top candidates. Through a good reputation, trust, and authority within the industry, recruiters can build out an effective referral program with colleagues and business partners.A referral system offers the following benefits to you:

• Cost Optimization: Those who refer candidates to your agency understand and approve of your services. Therefore, you'll get these candidates without the need to fully advertise, promote, or endorse your organization.
• Speeds Up the Process: Normal recruitment involves setting adverts or reaching out, which may take weeks. A recruiter with a good reputation frequently receives referrals from past candidates and clients, reducing the time needed to recruit an employee.

7. Data-driven Approach

Data is the biggest driver of business in modern times. Similarly, a recruitment agency can utilize data to analyze its method, results and assess resource utilization. Some of the metrics you can use include job offer acceptance rate, source of hire, application conversion rate, cost per hire, and hire quality. The data approach can benefit your process in the following ways:

• Budget allocation.
• Increase productivity and efficiency.
• Create benchmarks and forecast hiring behaviors.
• Justify improvements in the hiring process.
• Recruiters can utilize web analytics to collect data on their websites and subsequently analyze results to improve decision-making.

Let Us Help You Improve Your Success Rate There's a constant demand from employers in search of top talent to fill their roles. Consequently, Recruiters must invest in the right solutions to meet these standards. Using these 7 unique and out-of-the-box recruitment strategies should help you gain an edge in finding top candidates and ensuring the perfect talent match. To that end, Loxo is the ideal recruitment solution provider for those seeking a competitive advantage. Loxo's platform offers an applicant tracking system, recruitment CRM, AI sourcing, and automated outreach. To learn more about how Loxo can help you in your out-of-the-box recruitment efforts, request an overview from a team member here.