Top 6 worst recruiting mistakes to make in 2024.

It’s hard out here for Recruiters. Not that it’s ever been an easy job! But right now particularly, with the job market being extremely competitive and the unemployment rate holding steady at 5.5%, it’s harder than ever to find top talent to fill your open roles. This means that it takes more applications and more time focused on sourcing to find the right fit. And this is on top of all of the admin work that comes with the job. 

With that being said, there are things a Recruiter can do to make it easier to recruit top talent. And as businesses start to ramp up for the holiday and new year season, we want to share tips on the top recruiting mistakes to avoid. 

1. Not using personas

At the start of every great recruitment strategy is writing a compelling job posting. Recruiters have to list out job requirements, and ideal qualifications of the candidates they’re looking to hire. However, the “post and pray” strategy to attracting the ideal candidate is not enough in today’s competitive job market. 

Recruiters need to look at candidate attraction through a different lens. We recommend storytelling when writing job postings. To find the “perfect fit”, you need to know who the perfect fit even is. What are they motivated by? Why would they choose your role over hundreds of others like it?

By personalizing the copy in this way, it will speak to your ideal candidate more and convince them to apply. By understanding the needs and aspirations of different Candidate personas and crafting compelling narratives that address these factors, Recruiters can speed up the attraction process and find their perfect fit much faster.

2. Not optimizing job postings

 well-crafted job posting is the most important talent attraction communication. And as we outlined above, there’s more to it than meets the eye. In order to increase your application rate, you have to think like a marketer. This means including keywords for SEO, such as deciding which job title to use, making the job posting brief and to the point, posting your job to the right job board, and measuring your results to refine your strategy. And it works! In 2022, TalentWorld’s Indeed apply rate was DOUBLE the industry average. 

If you want to read more about how to optimize your job postings for cost savings and efficiency, click here. 

3. Disregarding transferrable skills 

Some jobs really do make recruiters feel like they’re looking for a needle in a haystack, whether that be because the qualifications are so specific, or because the market is oversaturated. And we don’t doubt that some qualifications are non-negotiables. But for those that aren’t, we should be thinking outside of the box. 

For instance, during the height of the pandemic, our client wanted us to hire a number of Personal Service Workers for them, but everyone with experience was already employed. Instead of working within the constraints of the job market, we opted to go outside of it. We realized that the skills needed to be a PSW, such as being a good listener, a customer-centric attitude, and being good at relationship-building were skills that could be transferred from other experiences.  

We identified that a great fit for the PSW roles would be folks from the Hospitality industry. Why? Because they had the transferable skills we were looking for and they were available to work. We ended up having great success in recruiting for these roles because of our emphasis on transferrable skills. 

4. Not sourcing

Did you know that only 30% of the population actively seeks new opportunities? That means that the traditional “post and pray” approach to finding your ideal Candidates may no longer be sufficient because they won’t come across your job posting anyway.

That means its up to the Recruiter to act fast before top talent is hired by the competition—through sourcing! Think of Candidate attraction as fishing with a wide net, trying to capture as many Candidates as possible to your posting. While, Candidate sourcing is like using a spear to target specific, high-value Candidates with tailored messages and experiences to drive measurable results.

If you want to learn more about how to source, click here.

5. Not #HiringWithHeart

At TalentWorld, building chemistry with people is what we do best. We recognize that the best fit for the job will be found when Recruiters have time to build meaningful relationships with the Candidates they’re placing. So our entire recruitment process is optimized with a Candidate-first mindset. But what exactly does this mean?

It means we are constantly refining our recruitment process so that it can enhance the candidate experience. We know that the number one piece of feedback Candidates have for Recruiters is the need for consistent and clear communication. We use technology where it makes sense so that Recruiters have more time to do what truly matters: hire with heart. 

For example, while many recruitment and staffing agencies chose to implement a chatbot to automate the prequalification stage, we chose not to. Because we believe that a Candidates story doesn’t live on their resume. It lives in the experiences and stories they can tell. And this is the only way to uncover transferable skills.  So, removing that human connection from the start was not for us.

Instead, we looked at our Recruiter's admin burden to identify repetitive yet time-consuming communications. For everything that should be automated, it is. But again, we ensure this doesn’t take away from the human connection, giving our Recruiters full visibility into what is being sent and allowing them to jump in when they are needed.

And our Candidates have a lot of positive things to say about this! (check out our hashtag, #HiringWithHeart, to see the kind words candidates are leaving our recruiters).  

6. Not having a recruiter brand 

Branding is not just for marketers! For a recruiter, branding means positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry and taking the time to consistently manage the communities you’re in. This allows Candidates to see that you’re an employer of choice. 

At TalentWorld, we give our Recruiters a range of tools from traditional to digital assets so they can support building brand awareness in their communities. This could be as simple as posters or social media templates that can be used on community boards (online and offline) or as involved as our Recruiters participating in community events where they know job seekers will be. We value these types of interactions with our communities, which is yet another reason for us to focus on alleviating the admin burden for Recruiters, so they have time to do it.

By addressing these common recruiting mistakes and implementing these best practices, recruiters can navigate the challenges of 2023 with greater success, ultimately leading to hiring more people. If you’d like to read more about our Recruitment Marketing strategy, download our white paper “10 Strategies to Attract and Retain Top Talent in a Competitive Job Market” here. 

Working with TalentWorld

We understand the complexities of hiring top talent, fast. And we want to ensure that your business always has the right people to effectively navigate seasonal ebbs and flows. By partnering with TalentWorld as an extension of your recruitment team, it’s the perfect opportunity to focus on growing your business and let us manage the people that will help get you to the top. Contact us here for more information.