How to be a good recruiter? You need to go beyond simply finding and engaging candidates that fit your organization’s job descriptions. You need to boost your game to be more effective and efficient by using the best tools and techniques available.

Recruiting experts from around the country shared their favorite resources for how to be a good recruiter in this session of the “Let's Talk Recruiting” series, hosted by Checkster Community Manager and Recruiting Work Community Host Sean Rehder.

Our panelists:

Strategic Social Media

In this recorded webinar, panelists talk about how automating job postings on social media is a must, says Lisa Wrezel of Centric Consulting. Tools like HootSuite make it easy to create and deploy posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms to hit key goals, such as increasing candidate interest and attracting passive job seekers.

Here are a few best practices that will help streamline social posting:

• Chain of command: Nominate one person (or more, depending on the size of your team) to “own” the social media recruiting process so that others can contribute while brand standards are maintained.
• Quick response: Set turnaround targets so posts are approved quickly and appropriately.
• Protect the brand: Create job post templates to save time and ensure they reflect your company’s values.
• Seek balance: Strive for quality and a well-distributed publishing schedule so post creators and candidates alike aren’t overwhelmed with too many posts at once.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel: If you’re developing an employer brand awareness campaign, adapt content from your company website or blog.

Candidate Campaigns Made Easy

If you use LinkedIn to source candidates, take a look at Gem.com, an all-in-one recruiting platform that integrates with LinkedIn, Gmail, Outlook, and your ATS, suggests Susan Ross of New Relic.

Create and send out customized emails to candidates and generate a variety of reports (response performance, diversity, etc.) to share with key stakeholders. You can also let hiring managers set up and share the campaigns, which can help improve response rates.

To ensure quality hires, the easiest step is to automate your reference checks. The top ranked product in the market is Checkster’s Reference Insights tool. It’s quick to implement and can integrate with your ATS. A bonus: people giving references can opt to stay in touch with your company, which creates a valuable evergreen funnel of candidates.

Edit Out Bias

Removing biased language in job descriptions can be a tricky prospect. But, if you’re looking to increase diversity and inclusion in your company, the words used really do matter.

That’s why Eric Miller of Viacom talked about Textio.com, which uses continuous learning/machine learning and AI to “unbias” job descriptions. It can, for example, point out “masculine” language in a job posting and help you normalize it. The software service scores your job descriptions, based on comparisons with thousands of job descriptions in the talent market, and halves the time it takes to develop a competitive and unbiased job description.

Eric reported a 28 percent increase in applicants over the course of six months and an 11+ percent increase in people self-identifying as female applying for roles as a result of the unbiasing process.

However, he warned that states have begun passing legislation to require AI-involved recruiting/hiring tools to be audited. He says the goal is to ensure the technology is achieving D&I instead of promoting discrimination.

Drip Recruiting Design

An improved drip recruiting campaign process can also up your game, says Marvin Smith of Lockheed Martin. Here some ideas to get you started:

• Tell a story in four, short emails: Get potential candidates thinking about their careers by sending brief, relevant messages that are about the candidates, not your company. Automate the process using a service like CandidateID.com.
• Build a pipeline: Fill your funnel with long- and short-term critical talent. If people don't respond within three or four emails, put them into a long-term “nurture” campaign.
• Create relationships: Be a positive force in your candidate’s lives by asking if you can help someone they know whose job security has been adversely impacted by the pandemic or other circumstances.
• Find effective messages: Humantic.ai is an AI tool that determines a candidate’s personality based on their LinkedIn profile and advises the best approaches to interest them in your job posting.

What You Can Do Today

The resources and tips mentioned in the video are intriguing to research, but to take steps today to be a good recruiter, here are more takeaways:

• Keep your own book of candidates in a CRM that you can take with you throughout your career.
• Use the ZapInfo plugin for the Chrome browser to collect info and add it to your CRM or ATS.
• If you use LinkedIn, take advantage of the power in project folders.