In April’s webinar, Winning the War on Talent: Recruitment, Denise Gredler, Lindsay M. Smith and Michael S. Seaver discussed a variety of topics including trends impacting recruitment, data from azcentral.com’s Top Companies to Work for in Arizona award, Arizona’s Most Admired Companies award, innovative client approaches and key lessons learned through 15+ years of serving our community.
Through live polling, we learned the webinar‘s attendees were struggling to find qualified applicants, but were finding the majority of their hires through job boards such as LinkedIn, Simply Hired, Indeed, etc.
Michael started the webinar discussing workforce demographics and how they’re shaping talent acquisition. He then reviewed the different generations in the workplace, how they’re similar and a few examples of their differences in mindset. He briefly discussed Gallup’s Q12 – the 12 statements that best predict employee engagement and performance. Michael shared studies from Cornell University, Development Dimensions International and Virginia Tech that show how a diverse workforce vastly improves company culture, financial performance, communication, innovation, recruitment processes, employee retention and employer branding.
Through live polling, we found out that webinar attendees weren’t yet employing a defined employer brand or talent CRM, but they did have meaningful career pages, job descriptions and were sourcing proactively.
Lindsay then shared examples about how traditional interviewing processes are falling short in today’s workplace. She discussed the value of untraditional interviewing approaches including events, in-job auditions, more casual interviews, virtual reality and more. By trying out-of-the-box approaches, an organization may be better at assessing fit. Lindsay then reviewed big data and how human resources teams can use it. She also shared best practices around the creation and use of a talent CRM – a system that creates a talent pipeline where the profile of the ideal candidate is continually shared with a database of interested persons. Lindsay reviewed the importance of transparently sharing your organizational culture, through employee stories, to proactively connect with these passive candidates.
Michael and Denise talked about how long BestCompaniesUSA has been involved with Top Companies to Work for in Arizona award. Denise shared interesting recruitment trends and what it takes to make the list. Michael and Denise went through a handful of Arizona’s Most Admired Companies award winners and what they’re doing to engage their employees and then actively share that when recruiting talent.
Major lessons that BestCompaniesUSA has learned while consulting on recruitment topics and building employer brands include –
- Staying committed to a process is more important than outcomes
- Expanding your employee referral program may yield higher quality hires
- Get creative in where you brand… high schools, boot camps, mentorship
- Invest in your recruiters’ skill development so that it’s treated more like a sales function
- Build a community with your talent CRM; truly share your culture through employee stories
Maybe you’re like our webinar’s attendees? They said they were going to be far more creative in their recruitment efforts and search in new places. And, they needed more information about recruiting in new places. Listening to it on our podcast may spark a few new ideas.