To celebrate 20 years in the recruitment industry WCN, the leading global e-Recruitment software provider, has created 20 top tips to help HR professionals and recruiters improve their recruitment techniques when attracting top talent. Working with some of the biggest names in the world, WCN shares their recruitment secrets.

Graduate Recruitment
1. Candidate Driven Market – Companies need to have the candidate in mind and cater its website appropriately. Graduates want to connect with real people, hear the voice of the employees, and see the authenticity of the brand.

2. Automatic Engagement – Automation turns best practice into common practice, allowing companies to stay in constant contact with future hires. It facilitates human interaction through CRM tools, giving recruiters more time and increases candidate interaction.

3. Positive Candidate Experience – With more graduates thinking with their feet it is crucial to create a positive recruitment reputation for all potential and future hires. Candidates and their families are your customer base, so the recruitment experience is crucial. John Lewis Partnership stated that they would expect to lose up to £4.8 million per year without adopting a positive approach to its candidate experience.

4. Find the Right Candidate – It might sound simple, but you have to attract the right person for the right role. Interacting with graduates in the relevant locations (social media, blogs, LinkedIn and mobile) can increase the number of applicants, creating a wider and more diverse talent pool.

5. Use Better Technology – Graduate recruiters need to move away from outdated tools, such as Excel, Survey Monkey and Word in favour of new online technologies, including video interviewing, Big Data, automation and social media. These new methods will help attract and identify top graduate talent, leaving the most desirable candidates. 

Volume Recruitment
6. Have an End Goal – You need to step back and analyse exactly what you want from the volume process. You must have an idea of what a great hire looks like, before using all the technology (computing intelligence, video, Big Data, gamification and online assessments) at your disposal.

7. Clear Brand Messaging – Be upfront and have a clear company message. Who are you and what do you want? It’s important that your brand message and candidate engagement is consistent and carries on throughout the whole process for candidate expectations and experience.

8. Internal Brand Engagement – Make your employees your brand ambassadors. Their reach is ten times more powerful than the company’s. However, it is important that your ‘brand ambassadors’ are representing your business positively.

9. Diversity Needs – You must make sure you understand the difference between diversity and inclusion, and what it means for individuals applying to your organisation.

10. Collate Results – Once you have the raw data captured, make sure you use it for the next recruitment push. Having the data that shows where the right candidates are found is invaluable as it keeps cost and cycle time to a minimum. 

Emerging Talent Recruitment
11. Talent Banking – With the fight for top talent starting as early as school in some cases, having a ‘vault’ where you can interact with these future hires, keeping them interested in the organisation, is imperative. Automated messages, blogs and social media are just some of the engagement methods available.

12. Take a Virtual Approach – The world Generation Y live in has been completely revolutionised by technology and organisations need to change its approach in order to keep attracting the top talent. Candidates seem to prefer a virtual recruiting process, with pre-recorded interviews becoming a crucial part of the process.

13. Work/Life Balance – The Millennial generation would rather have a better work/life balance, over big salaries. Ensuring their own personal happiness is a clear factor when selecting or even applying for a role. Companies need to reflect this in its job description and interview process.

14. Be Clear – The emerging talent market does not like being misled. Make sure your brand messaging and job descriptions are accurate, or risk losing top talent. Clear communication of brand values starts initial candidate interaction truthfully, avoiding disappointment further into the process.

15. Responsibility is Key – It is hard to relinquish power or trust someone new, but one proven way of keeping top talent happy is to give them greater responsibility earlier. It makes them feel trusted and part of the team, with many highlighting it as a key career motivator. 

Public Sector
16. Shared Services – A centralised function of a shared service has many benefits, no more so than with HR and payroll. It is not a one size fits all, but for some organisations it allows useful and mutually beneficial sharing of data and best-practices. 

17. Build Your Reputation – Use social media to build your profile. It is key to breaking down myths about the culture of organisations in local government. 

18. Great Hire – Once you have identified what a ‘good hire’ looks like (especially when hiring in volume), adjust the recruitment process to reflect this. Analyse the data available, which will tell you which processes were key to finding the right employee. 

19. Redeployment – It is a cost effective way to retain the most experienced and high quality staff, with statistics showing that it can save up to £30,000 for every position filled. With the right technology in place, you can maximise the recruitment process, ending up with the right candidate for the right role. 

20. Anonymising Recruitment – Technology enables the application process to be fully anonymised up to the interview stage, only allowing information relevant to the task at hand to be seen. This means that the recruiters focus selection on merit and nothing else. This also increases the level of diversity with the workforce, which is something every organisation strives for.