Seasonal Lull is Coming in Hot - Keep Your Hiring Cycle Cool

Starting at the end of October through December, leading up to the holiday season, we see a lull in candidate flow and there's a couple of reasons that happens. People don't want to search for a new job during the holidays and they’re also planning for vacation as well as their kids being out of school. Employers, however, especially in 2022, are still actively looking for candidates to keep the hiring funnel active. But the lull doesn’t have to be so bad. 

There are some impactful things that recruiters can do when applications aren’t coming in to ensure a more active hiring funnel in the future. While none of us are sitting around twiddling our thumbs, we can be more strategic about how we use this time.

Using Seasonal Down Time to Improve Talent Attraction 

According to Glassdoor, 86% of employees and job seekers research company reviews and ratings to decide on where to apply for a job and 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand. Be aware that your own employees could be looking elsewhere, according to another Glassdoor stat, 92% of people would consider changing jobs if offered a role with a company with an excellent corporate reputation. Are you losing employees to competitors who have a better reputation or are you working to build a better brand to entice that 92% away from their current employer? Now is the time to turn that L into a W.

Think about all of the things that you don’t have time for at other times of the year and use this time productively. Your employer branding efforts tend to go back burner when you’re busy, so investing some time when applications are lower can pay off year-round.

Review your pay scales. I think one big thing from an applicant’s perspective is they want transparency. It’s important to be very clear about your pay scales and not inflate them just to get applicant flow, but quite literally being very direct and making sure that you're paying within market range. If you have not already reviewed your pay scale (or done so recently), now's a really good time to make sure you're being competitive in the market and making sure you're attracting top talent.

Competitor analysis. Who is your main competitor in the market? Go look at their job descriptions. Go look at what they're offering. If you can match it or beat it, do it, because then that's going to put you a level up compared to someone who is competing with you for those same types of employees.

Your employer brand. Branding is a big piece of being able to compete in the talent marketplace. This can be done really easily with your current employees getting additional reviews on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor. Creating brand advocacy campaigns internally and involving your employees can even uncover some not-so-great things about your company at the same time, like feeling unappreciated or undervalued – these might be things that are easy to fix and refocus on by listening to your employees.

Optimize your job descriptions. Take advantage of the down time by going through your job descriptions, making sure they're SEO optimized, and making sure you're on the right job boards. This is a really good time to clean things up – such as your job titles. Indeed has some really great hiring insight tools that can help. When’s the last time you looked at your job descriptions? Do you even know what’s out there? Review them! Ensure that they’re current and necessary. If you have something in them that's not a requirement, take it out. Hello?!... Writing 101: You want it to be clear, concise, and about the applicant. So, if your job description is sitting there doing nothing but talking about your company and how great you are (not at all conceited) What does it do for the applicant? It needs to have “you” language. We need to be talking to the applicant directly, for example, “in this position you will X, Y, Z,” and have realistic descriptions of what it’s like to work for your company.

Fix your recruiting process. Clean it up and streamline it. If you don’t need more than one person interviewing and making hires, remove that step. If you have too many hiring managers jumping through too many hoops, it’s going to slow you down, and the candidates are going to jump out of your funnel really fast. When your competitors make it an easy process, you will lose out. If you’ve been postponing something that can make your team more productive, this is the time to implement it. I can’t say it enough, but candidates respond to texts. If you’re calling and emailing and not getting traction, you need to implement a texting platform as soon as possible. 

Instead of dreading the slowdown that typically happens in hiring over the holiday season, this time can be used more effectively to focus on strategy and planning (along with forecasting and candidate personas and all of the other things that you don’t have time to do because you’re intaking 50 applicants a day…). 

Recruiting of frontline workforces and employer brand strategy is a big part of what we do at Talentcare and we’re ready to help. Drop us a line or slide into our DMs.