Navigating recruitment in an economic slowdown can be challenging. Because the future is uncertain, you might consider temporarily slowing or stopping recruitment for your St. Paul team until the economy improves.
However, because most companies stop recruiting in an economic slowdown, there is significantly less competition for top talent. Also, employees who feel financially vulnerable might be open to changing jobs. As a result, you have increased opportunities to hire the best candidates when the economy is slow.
Implement any of these five tips to better navigate recruiting in an economic slowdown:
1. Strengthen Your Employer Brand
Find ways to elevate your employer brand. What your employees say about your company impacts attraction and retention rates.
You can strengthen your employer brand with these methods:
- Promote your employee value proposition on your website and social media platforms.
- Align your employee benefits and perks with your target audience’s needs and interests.
- Encourage your employees to share positive work experiences on employer review sites.
- Email surveys to uncover what your employees like best about your company, then emphasize these aspects in company messaging.
2. Optimize Your Recruitment Process
Examine your recruitment process analytics to determine what is effective and what needs improvement. Focusing on how candidates move through your pipeline and whether there are any bottlenecks helps streamline your recruitment process.
Focus on the following areas when evaluating your recruitment process:
- How quickly candidates move through your pipeline
- Where in your process you lose candidates
- Whether your recruitment criteria are attracting the right candidates
- The quality of the candidates
- Whether your onboarding process contributes to a positive candidate experience
3. Expand Your Candidate Pools
Focus on your future recruitment needs to start finding qualified candidates. Increasing your candidate pools helps fill your roles as they open up.
Implement these tips to help build your candidate pools:
- Define the skill gaps within your team.
- Develop a candidate persona to target the right types of candidates.
- Connect with candidates where they tend to spend their time, such as social media, portfolio sites, and industry events.
- Tailor your outreach to attract your ideal candidates.
- Regularly measure your success to continuously improve your approach.
4. Upskill Your Employees
If you need to scale back on hiring, consider upskilling your employees according to market demand. Upskilling costs significantly less than hiring.
You might expand your employees’ roles by adding new responsibilities. Or, you could provide training to develop skills to take on additional projects.
Upskilling helps increase employee engagement, performance, and productivity. The results include stronger job satisfaction, employee morale, and retention.
5. Hire Temporary Workers
Adding temporary workers to your team helps reduce your recruitment costs:
- Receive experienced, vetted workers.
- Gain access to specialized skills.
- Scale up or down according to your business needs.
- Pay for only the services used.
- Avoid paying benefits, employment taxes, unemployment claims, and related expenses.
- Free up time and money for other business needs.
Partner with THE RIGHT STAFF
You can more effectively navigate recruiting in an economic slowdown with help from THE RIGHT STAFF. Contact us to get started today.
