Five Ways to Improve Your Hiring Tactics

By Rich Wellner

The company I work for, Univa UD, is hiring and I was sitting down with one of the managers to talk about approaches. Since long before I joined Univa UD, I've been very interested in recruiting as I ran a few small companies and hired on an international basis. Recruiting is the single most important thing that we do. Everything else -- serving our customers, building insanely great products, profiting or creating a fun workplace -- is the result of hiring well.

Talking with that hiring manager, we put together the essential five tactics to managing the candidate acquisition process:

• When using an online system, buy a multi-month plan. Even if you are feeling a cost crunch, it's unrealistic to believe that the right candidate will walk through the door during the first couple weeks that you're engaged in a search. If you are staffing more than one position, this is even more true. We will be hiring for more than a month, we're going to buy access for more than a month.
• Spread the work across multiple hiring managers. Recruiting is work. This is important, so I'll say it again. Recruiting is work. Treat it like the important work that it is and make sure the right people are involved in the process. If there are folks who are wordsmithing geniuses get them involved in the production of the posts. If you have people that are brilliant at interviewing, make sure they are talking with candidates even if they will report to another manager. Conversely, your companies success depends on everyone performing well. Be generous with your time and add value to the hiring processes of the other teams in your company.
• Spend a couple hours reading sites like Copy Blogger. It has great tips on making your writing better and, let's face it, a help wanted ad is marketing. We need to stand out among the thousands of other companies if we want to attract the best people.
• Update your ads at least once each week. This shouldn't be a rewrite, but each time you update your ad it pops back to the top of the search stack. This may seem like gaming the system, but it works. When I had a break in hiring this summer and I stopped doing this I noticed immediately the tail off in responses as each week ticked by.
• Don't post a requirements list, tell a story. The posting may well be the only contact you have with people. The posting needs to draw them in and compel them to make the next step and respond to your ad.

And, in the spirit of giving out a free lunch for thanksgiving, a bonus tip:

• Find more ways to to get the word out. Use your blog, LinkedIn account or Facebook to let people in your community know that you are hiring. Reach out to people in as many ways as you can think of, the IT market is competitive again and you can't stand still waiting for people to come to you and expect to make great hires. Get out there and be great at recruiting, it's the most important thing you can do!