You notice indulgent treats start streaming in the office. More colleagues using up their vacation and sick time. And company leaders preoccupied with allocating budgets and prioritizing action.
This can only mean one thing: the holiday season is upon us once again.
For recruiters this time of the year usually equates to a slower time for hiring. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to coast until the new year—it’s actually quite the contrary. You can spend this holiday season focusing on recruiting efforts that don’t make your day-to-day list of tasks.
Here are five ways you can continue recruiting through the holidays:
Since you won’t be spending as much time sourcing or recruiting over the holiday season, use the free time to evaluate this past year’s efforts. Identify what has worked for you and what hasn’t.Did you find success in posting job ads to certain job board, visiting career fairs or creating print materials? Or did you find more talent using your career site or sending out video links? Commit to investing more in the efforts that worked for next year.
Recruiters and hiring managers—and most other business functions—have gotten very good at collecting data. Now is the perfect time to actually use it. Look back at the statistics you’ve collected over the year and identify patterns.What quarter do you hire most for sales? How often does a IT or marketing position show up? Is there consistency in the time of year when either of those roles open up? Understanding the patterns in your open requisitions will help you better prepare to fill those roles next year
When employers choose to apply a marketing approach to their recruiting, they usually find it’s easier to maintain a full pipeline of talent. That’s because they’re building a brand that continually attracts qualified talent regardless if there is a position for them. So why not you? Use this “slow hiring season” as a time to implement new marketing efforts. Codify your employment brand and invest in channels that make the most sense for your recruiting. That could mean implementing a career site, using branded social channels or investing in recruiting videos.
During the hustle and bustle that occurs during most of the year, it can easy to pass over the most important piece of candidate communication: the job description. Use the extra time you have in the day to improve this critical foundation.Look over all of the job descriptions you currently use. Are they up to date? Do they communicate a honest representation of the job? Or do they need some fine-tuning? The reality is you should do this exercise more often than not because it will improve the quality of your applicants and improve employee retention over the long run.
Use everything you’ve learned from this exercise to identify the recruiting objectives you want to achieve in the new year. It’s not enough to keep these ideas within your head. Post them somewhere in your office or in your notebook. The fact is if you want to achieve better results, you need to create a plan to get there. Whether you want to update your career site, write better job descriptions or invest in your employment brand, make the goals tangible. Doing so will help make reaching those objectives even more feasible.
We know the holiday season can be a painfully slow time for recruiters and employers alike. Use this time to assess your previous efforts, predict your future talent needs, evaluate your employment brand, update job descriptions and make goals for the new year. We know you’ll find that your recruiting and your future candidates will improve because of it.
