Best Practices for Talent Acquisition

Practices For Talent Acquisition in the Security

Cleared Community

Enhancing Your Recruiting with Social Media

Don’t Whine “I Don’t Have the Time”…..

There are at least 2 or 3 things you are currently doing inefficiently that could be done more efficiently

Who Are You? Does the talent even know about your company?

You have a tough case to present to the talent community. Finding and keeping your talents is a foundation for your contracts. You are an unknown and you don’t have the resources that your primes do. There are some things you can do: You can move more quickly and make a stronger connection with your candidates. More opportunities to make a difference. Use multitalented individuals. Allow professionals to be part of something.

LinkedIn Company Profile An opportunity to share your products and services with your network. Get you customers to write recommendations about you. Interact with your followers. More effective than your website in community engagement .

Create a Good Summary on Your Personal LinkedIn Profile Using the Summary as a good place to showcase your Company’s brand and your brand as well. This is something to share with all of your employees. This is an area to use your keywords and the specifics on what kind of candidates you are looking for. You want to keep within three short paragraphs. Adding applications like Events and Slideshare.

Participate in the LinkedIn Groups Thousands of groups on a variety of topics from alumni groups to specific types of professionals. You can join up to 50 groups to increase your opportunities to participate and make connections. Participate, comment and connect, not just advertise. Think about setting up your own and maybe an Alumni group. Use the Settings to control how much email you get from the various groups.

Client Facing Managers Everyone in your company is part of your brand and should emulate the key values of your brand as they will be interacting with many professionals who could be part of your team.

These will be the people who may eventually come to work for you or may know folks that they can recommend to you.

Your Candidate Experience Remember to build a rapport with each candidate, to share with them the benefit of being part of a smaller company. Receipts and thank you’s for application. Status of applications. Feedback on the process. Why they didn’t meet the requirements and what they may want to do. How difficult is it to go through your application and hiring process?

Job Descriptions

These are advertisements to entice and inform future talent. Don’t just copy the contract requirement. This is one of the first things talent will read, make it interesting, accurate and very descriptive. Company details, program descriptions, culture environment, how advancement happens, what other opportunities are available – all great places for search words.

Job Boards Targeted community of job seekers. Ability to reach out to more job seekers than you can on your own. Searching and connecting with key talent – if you know how to do a search correctly. Resume agents. Statistics for job descriptions. Direct advertising. Brand building.

Job Fairs

This is brand building, getting your name out. Don’t just talk to “one kind” of talent. This is a meet and greet for the community. Bring your frontline managers not just your recruiters.

Employee Referral Programs

The cost of the program versus the total cost of recruiting a professional for your team. Be sure that your team knows the positions and types of individuals you are looking for. Provide the information in a shareable format – quick description and link.

Alumni Programs Treating your current employees well even if they decide to move on. Remember: Word of Mouth ( skunk reports ) Keep them in your employee referral program. Set up a LinkedIn group for your alumni, post contract announcements, new opportunities

Becoming the SME in your industry

If there is a particular technology that your company is an expert on, you need to share this information. Even if you are not the expert, and many others are working in the field, provide updates, comments and information on the topic. Twitter LinkedIn updates and groups Blogging

Setting up a quick blog that is part of your site that shares tips & tricks about your area of expertise. Builds a following and increases your Google search results for your site.

Bonus – What are you doing to attract veterans to your organization? Cultivate your current veterans employees to help you build a recruitment and support strategy for veterans Develop a military friendly posture for your company. Don’t just say it, do it! In your job board searches, click “Any Location” which will pull up many veterans who will be relocated by the government. Make sure your LinkedIn profiles reach out to military personnel. Participate in the Military Support LinkedIn groups by providing advice and opportunities. Support the local TAP and ACAP offices.

Kathleen Smith [email protected]