Five Reasons You Need to Take a Proactive Approach to Recruitment

Proactive recruitment refers to a process in which a business, manager or recruiter reaches out to candidates and builds relationships with them as part of the hiring process. There are many reasons why a business might need to be more proactive in recruitment - whether because they are struggling to find a candidate who meets all their expectations, or because they have an urgent capacity gap to fill.

As recruiters, we know that we do our best work when we seek out talented people and build a network of high-quality candidates to draw from. Why post a job advertisement and wait for applications to come in when you can go directly to them and start the process? A proactive approach won’t be suitable in all cases, but here, Employment Solutions explains five reasons why proactive recruiting might suit your business’ needs.

1.    It can deliver hard-to-find skillsets

If you are recruiting for a highly specialised role, or you need an unusual and uncommon combination of skills from your ideal candidate, recruitment can quickly become more challenging. Wherever possible, businesses should consider whether they can compromise, for example by dividing the role into two. If there is no possibility for compromise and you need a highly specialised combination of skills, it can be hard to know whether your job advert is even being seen by potential applicants who match your profile.

However, taking a more proactive approach to the process can be a valuable strategy in such cases. Using LinkedIn, Twitter or other social media platforms enables you to directly target candidates who have the relevant skills and invite them to apply. Building these connections can also be valuable - if the people you approach aren’t looking for a new position, they may still know other people in their field who match your criteria and might want to apply.

2.    It can prevent candidates from dropping out of contention

One of the major reasons that talented applicants leave the recruitment process before it concludes is that the process drags on for too long. This can happen for any number of reasons, but it’s important to stay in contact with candidates throughout and keep them up to date on any progress that you make. Candidates don’t want to feel that they have been forgotten and will be quick to move on if there is a breakdown in communication.

Through the process of proactive recruitment, you will get the opportunity to build relationships with candidates, which can help to keep lines of communication open. Honesty and transparency during hiring are important because a candidate will then feel more able to trust you and will feel obliged to return that trust.

3.    It is often faster

The time it takes to recruit proactively will depend on many factors, including the role for which you are hiring, your ideal candidate profile, and the conditions of the job market at the time. With that said, there are many ways that proactive recruitment can speed up the hiring process.

As a manager, losing a member of a small team can bring about a number of problems at once - you need to cover the work, find the time to hire a replacement and consider whether there are any steps you can take to improve employee retention in both the short and long terms. If you have built and maintained relationships with candidates before (or even if you are only starting now) you can often find a temporary or even permanent replacement more quickly.

4.    It can maximise your use of resources

Some businesses expect that proactive recruitment will take up a large chunk of their hiring resources, because it can take more time initially to reach out to candidates and develop relationships than it does to post a job advert online and monitor incoming emails. On the other hand, you can spend much more time reading CVs and interviewing candidates who turn out to be completely wrong for the role. When done effectively, proactive recruitment can streamline the entire process in a way that can maximise the use of resources.

If you truly don’t have the resources, working with a professional recruiter can often be a way to achieve the same effect without going over budget. A recruiter will often have existing relationships and a talent pool to draw from that can make proactive recruitment even faster without devoting significant resources to the process.

5.    It keeps you ahead of your recruitment needs

The process of proactive recruitment is one of building relationships, and if you are able to maintain these connections with talented recruits, whose career goals are aligned with your business’ opportunities and whose skills are valuable to your industry, you have a place to start whenever you need to hire for a new role.

If a hire falls through, or if a member of your team leaves unexpectedly at a critical time for your organisation, you can reach out to your network and quickly source a replacement, or at least get the process underway.

If you feel your business could benefit by hiring from an existing talent pool, but you don’t feel that you have the resources to commit to proactive recruitment, speak to a specialist recruiter like Employment Solutions. We are experts in engineering and manufacturing recruitment and we can leverage our existing relationships with talented candidates to meet your recruitment needs quickly and efficiently. Call us today on 0161 839 5353, or complete the contact form on this page to organise a call back.