What can employers do to make sure they’re filling job openings with qualified candidates? This guide can help. This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique...
The job market is crazy right now — both for people looking for jobs and for employers looking for quality candidates. In the last quarter of 2021, there were 10.4 million job openings in the U.S., yet only about 6 million of them were filled.
That means companies are still missing more than 4 million workers. If you’re one of these companies looking to hire, you may need help understanding how to find employees.
So what can employers do to make sure they’re filling those job openings with qualified candidates? We’ve created a list to help companies who don’t know how to find employees in this job market, or just need a little help increasing their reach.
Start by Streamlining Your Recruiting and Hiring Process
If you’re a hiring manager, you know there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to creating a job opening, marketing the position, interviewing candidates and ultimately making a hire. By using a platform that simplifies the process, you’ll be able to focus more on making the right hiring decisions instead of navigating all the red tape.
One platform that can do this for you, whether you’re a small business or an enterprise corporation, is ZipRecruiter. Not only does it manage the hiring process in an easy-to-use dashboard (that’s also available on mobile), the job site brings quality candidates to you by using artificial intelligence technology to match resumes with your job openings.
ZipRecruiter’s dashboard simplifies the interviewing process by sorting, reviewing and rating your candidates — then sends you more applicants based on your ratings. By letting ZipRecruiter’s technology manage your hiring process from beginning to end, you’re able to focus on what matters most and less on the time-consuming minutiae of finding employees.
Focus on Branding
You could have the coolest job in the world open at your company, but if no one knows who you are or what your company culture is like, your chances of finding the perfect candidate slowly slip away.
Your company may not be an Apple or a Tesla, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a positive branding experience to attract employees. When job seekers are doing their research into their next potential role, they care about where they’ll be working — not just what they’ll be doing.
Social media is a solid way to get your name out there and make your company more attractive to future applicants. Include photos of company events, details on benefits and perks and show off the company culture. Having a Facebook or Twitter account can be beneficial here to highlight your company’s online presence.
Another way to promote your company’s brand is through a website like Glassdoor. Job seekers tend to use this website to do deeper research into what it’s like to work at a company and see reviews and ratings from past and current employees, as well as insights from people who have interviewed somewhere.
By having a robust brand created around your company, employees will be able to find you — taking some of the work off of your shoulders to find employees.
And remember to highlight your current and future remote work culture. In light of the pandemic, many candidates are searching specifically for remote jobs. Show off how well your company has handled the challenges and what to expect for the future.
Write A Quality Job Description
Nobody likes a bait and switch. When someone interviews for a job and it turns out to not be what they expected — or worse, they take the job and it’s not at all what was on the job description — the chance of them quitting is pretty high.
That’s why writing a high quality, clear and concise job description is an important part of how to find employees. If applicants know exactly what the job will be, they’ll be more open to applying and accepting a position at your company.
You can take some of the guesswork out of how to create a well-written job description by using ZipRecruiter’s pre-written job descriptions. They’ll nail down all of the main points you need to include in your job posting, beyond the perfect job title, to make sure job seekers understand exactly what to expect when they interview for your open position.
Get Your Job Postings in Front of the Right People
Once you’ve created your brand and your perfect job posting, you need the right people to see it and apply. Sponsored posts are a great way to target qualified candidates who may be a great fit for your open roles.
You could spam people on social media platforms who may or may not be looking for a new job, or you could target people who are actively searching for jobs to make sure your ad money doesn’t go to waste. ZipRecruiter uses artificial intelligence to find qualified candidates and get your job postings in front of them. Sponsored posts make it easier to get more applicants, for a small cost.
Post to the Right Job Boards
If paying for a sponsored post isn’t something your company is interested in or can afford, you should consider posting to multiple job boards. Not every job seeker uses the same job search engines, so by posting jobs on different sites, you’re opening up your potential applicant pool.
You can post individually to LinkedIn, Craigslist or Monster — but that can be time consuming to recreate a job posting over and over again. But if you use ZipRecruiter, it will automatically syndicate your job posting to more than 100 different job boards for no extra work on your end. It saves time, effort and can expand your applicant pool significantly.
Create an Employee Referral Program
Great current employees can be a solid resource for finding more great employees. Not only do they have access to a better-known pool of applicants, but it can save you hundreds of hours spent reading resumes online.
By utilizing your existing pool of employees, you can save time finding new employees and add an additional benefit to your current team. Some incentive ideas include prizes, extra vacation days — and what’s probably the most popular — cash referral bonuses.
Utilize Free Trials
If you don’t know how to find employees online, the amount of options that can help you may be overwhelming. How do you know which of these job boards will get you more bang for your buck?
Free trials are a cost efficient way to test out different job boards and find the best way to recruit good employees and fill open positions. Whether you have a niche role to fill or an entry-level administration position, different job boards can help you find the right employees. By taking advantage of a few days or a week of each of these job sites, you can trial-and-error the platforms to find employees without any upfront costs to you.
Try ZipRecruiter for free to see how it can streamline your hiring process and help you find employees faster.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.