Successful recruiting practices: industry-specific cases and real-world strategies for attracting top talent

Surely you are familiar with this situation: You are in desperate need of skilled staff, yet it seems, that nobody is interested in your job advert. Why does this happen? How can companies become successful in recruiting?

The following article takes you on a journey through the recruiting process: proactive talent search strategies, convincing job ads, internal recruiting, optimisation of the recruiting process and much more. So let’s dive into the recruiting world together to find the right solutions for your business.

List of contents

What is staff recruiting?

Recruiting comprises all activities necessary for finding, selecting and hiring staff. It’s not simply a matter of finding the right employees, but also of showcasing your company as an attractive employer.

The aim of the recruiting process is finding staff who bring the skills and expertise necessary to perform the job and are also a good fit for your company.

Skilled and driven staff form the very heart of your company, therefore, effective recruitment practices support your ongoing performance in the marketplace.

Short overview of the article contents
  • Employee recruiting is an essential process for attracting qualified personnel to a company.
  • Modern recruiting requires the employer to keep up with the latest trends, using innovative technology to find the best possible candidates.
  • Proactive strategies such as identifying passive jobseekers, using employee referrals, writing compelling job ads and measuring recruiting success can help employers to hire good staff efficiently.
  • An inclusive recruitment strategy is vital to building a diverse workforce that will help the company achieve its goals.

The importance of recruiting

Many industries, especially the handicraft and healthcare sectors, are suffering from a serious shortage of skilled workers. As a result, job demands increase as positions remain vacant.

Recruiting plays a key role in the success of a company, by helping to hire the best talents as well as to retain staff over the long term.

Inside our guide, you will find everything you need to know about staff retention.

It allows you to build a skilled and motivated workforce with the skills and experience to perform their job.

In addition to this, recruiting allows job applicants to get valuable insights into their future working conditions and get a glimpse inside the company’s culture. Giving you a unique opportunity to engage potential team members early on.

An effective recruitment strategy also contributes to a reduction in resignations and fewer open vacancies, which ultimately leads to a productivity increase and a better financial standing of the company.

Simply put, staff recruitment is a crucial means of constructing a professional and motivated workforce, which is essential to the triumph of a company.

Industry-specific example: the importance of recruitment in facility management

Efficient facility management requires a skilled and dedicated workforce that possesses the right skills and experience. Insufficient staffing can lead to compromised maintenance and equipment service, resulting in an immediate impact on customer satisfaction.

The facility management industry faces a significant obstacle due to both high demand and a shortage of qualified personnel. Finding professionals with the skills and expertise required in this field becomes more and more difficult.

Because of this, the facility management sector should modify its recruitment strategies to harvest the potential of the current job market.

Effective recruitment of skilled staff enhances the facility management standing and improves its market position. This includes steps like implementing employer branding strategies to promote the company as a desirable workplace.

7 promising practices in the recruiting process

To fill your vacant positions with competent and motivated staff, it is imperative to comprehend the various recruitment methods and procedures.

The art of internal recruiting

Internal recruitment, i.e. filling vacant positions within your company using your current workforce, can prove an efficient method to identify employees showing high potential and enabling their career growth.

In-house job advertisements can help reduce staff turnover while enabling them to take on new responsibilities. Plus, an in-house promotion demonstrates the possibility of career growth inside the company and boosts staff morale.

Onboarding is an important aspect of internal recruiting, as it helps new employees to quickly adapt and become productive members of the team.

Tips to success!

By clearly communicating the advantages, duties, and procedures, setting up software logins, providing the required hardware, and establishing connections with other team members, you can guarantee a seamless transition into your employee’s new role.

One of the most important factors contributing to employee retention is encouraging career growth within the company.

Investing in education and training enables employees to recognise their potential and gain extra skills and qualifications to meet ever-changing work demands.

Professional development can build a picture of future career opportunities within the company, thereby strengthening the employees’ loyalty to the organisation.

Identification of staff with high potential

Valuable insights can be obtained by speaking to an employee’s current supervisor about their potential. Assessing both the current performance and future potential of your staff is fundamental in identifying those who operate at their most effective level, substantially adding value to your company’s growth.

A conversation about an employee’s potential with his or her current supervisor can provide valuable insights. Assessing performance and potential is essential to determine which employees are performing optimally and contributing significantly to the growth of your business.

Encouraging career growth

Skill assessment can be facilitated by means of self-assessment, workshops, online courses and feedback provided by supervisors.

A good way for management to encourage education and development is to reimburse tuition fees, provide access to online courses and offer workplace training.

Furthermore, fostering a learning culture by promoting the sharing of knowledge and experience among team members can create a nurturing environment for career growth.

Mentoring programmes may be established by partnering experienced staff with new employees, introducing formal mentoring programmes or establishing access to external mentors.

You can provide resources and support within your company to ensure that mentors and mentees are successful in their career growth.

Managers can be trained on how to promote career growth by advising their staff and helping them to identify open career possibilities.

Promoting career growth: 3 tips for managers

  1. Provide constructive feedback on performance
  2. Assist your staff in setting and achieving their goals effectively.
  3. Recognise and incentivise progress through verbal acknowledgement, bonuses, rewards or public recognition.

Top talent sourcing: Proactive strategies

In the ever-changing world of recruitment, it is essential for employers to adopt proactive strategies to secure the best talent.

Identifying passive jobseekers and utilising employee referrals are efficient methods for discovering the most suitable candidates.

Approximately 86% of recruiters prioritize passive candidates either “very much” or “to some extent”. With around 15% of the workforce not interested in switching jobs, it is essential for employers to engage with this pool of potential candidates.

Please take note!

Before reaching out to a potential team member, it is important that you do some research and gather some background information on them.

You could, for example, review the candidate’s LinkedIn profile or reach out to their references to obtain information about their previous job experience.

This may help you determine whether the applicant meets the required criteria, resulting in significant time and money savings.

Addressing passive jobseekers

One of the effective ways to target passive jobseekers is to attend local events and industry meetings. These events allow you to network with industry professionals who are motivated to advance in their field.

Important to note!

For passive jobseekers, salary is typically the main driver behind a job change.

Partnering up with a staff recruiting agency

Collaborating with a human resources recruitment firm can facilitate access to a wider range of skilled applicants.

To establish a successful partnership with an HR recruitment company, it is imperative that you articulate your needs and objectives clearly and carry out thorough research before deciding on a staff recruiting agency.

Closely examining the contract prior to giving consent can also help to prevent any unforeseen problems, guaranteeing a productive professional relationship.

Using a specialist staffing company can simplify the recruiting process to a great extent while increasing its efficiency at the same time. The primary disadvantage, however, is the cost involved, as recruitment agencies usually charge a fee for their services.

Building a diverse workforce

Developing an all-inclusive recruiting strategy is crucial to creating a diverse working environment.

An inclusive recruitment strategy involves acknowledging and appreciating diverse backgrounds, establishing comprehensive representation goals, creating integrative job descriptions, expanding the pool of potential candidates to include individuals from various demographic backgrounds, and mitigating bias in the recruitment process.

To adopt an all-encompassing recruitment approach, employers could use job boards and social media platforms that target a wide range of candidates, as well as participate in job fairs.

Furthermore, networking events exist, which focus on diversity in particular and partner with organisations that specialise in recruiting a wide array of candidates.

Bias can be mitigated by implementing blind application processes, conducting structured interviews, and utilizing automated decision-making tools throughout the recruiting process.

Industry-specific example: The share of women in facility management.

Attracting women to facility management is a recruitment challenge because of the traditional  “male-dominated industry” image of facility management. This fact often holds women back from pursuing a career in FM.

Facility management companies should make the promotion of women a priority and proactively approach them during the job search process.

To attract skilled workers, companies should develop strategies to engage more women in facility management and provide them with a gateway to career progression.

Measures to increase the proportion of women in the FM sector

To bring more women into the facility management industry, companies need to make a specific effort to target women in their job advertisements. Show their faces behind the FM processes and describe the career paths taken by women in the industry.

Furthermore, it is essential for women to feel a sense of well-being, security, and appreciation within the company and to have a platform to address unpleasant situations.

Adapting the working conditions and creating family-friendly work models can also help to attract and retain women in facility management.

Together with 4 female facility management executives, we investigated the question of how to increase the number of women in FM:

YouTube video

Writing convincing job ads

Creating appealing job ads is a key component of recruiting in order to reach the right candidates.

An engaging job ad will include information about the company, the specific role, the desired level of experience, the necessary skills and the remuneration.

Accurately defining job criteria can enhance the recruitment procedure and entice suitable applicants.

Optimising the recruiting process

Streamlining the recruitment process can optimise your hiring efforts and reduce the time it takes to fill vacant positions.

Efficient CV screening and effective interviews are essential components of an optimised recruiting process. By quickly and accurately assessing skills and experience, employers can quickly discover the strongest candidates for their available positions.

Efficient interviews are intended to assess the candidate’s qualifications, confirm their statements and evaluate their behaviour, character and potential to fit with your company’s culture.

By focusing on these key aspects during the interview process, you can ensure that you are selecting the right candidates for your company.

Efficient CV screening

Effective CV screening is an essential part of the recruitment process and can help to identify suitable candidates quickly. In practical terms, this means that recruiters will be specifically looking for relevant qualifications, experience and skills in a potential candidate’s CV.

Take note!

Some prospective candidates may struggle or simply not want to complete a CV. To avoid excluding such candidates, recruiters may use alternative methods of information gathering, for example, standardised questionnaires, telephone interviews or skills tests. This way, the ‘application threshold’ can be lowered and a wider and potentially more diverse talent pool made available.

Online job portals commonly offer notification features that allow you to receive e-mails on a daily basis with links to potential candidates who match the criteria to fill your open positions. You can also add a notification feature to your career website if you wish.

This tool can facilitate a targeted search for candidates simply by entering the relevant job title or qualification and the geographical area of interest.

Applicant tracking systems can assist in the process of identifying and retaining the most appropriate candidates for further evaluation by recruiters.

After assessing the applications or results from the interviews and other relevant procedures, it is necessary to pinpoint the most suitable candidates in order to proceed with the next steps in the recruiting process.

Conduct efficient job interviews

Interviews are held to assess if individuals are suitable for the particular position. During face-to-face interviews, it is key to ask both open-ended and close-ended questions to gain a full picture of the candidate’s hard and soft skills.

Take note!

Particularly in technical professions such as facilities management, there is a widespread issue of cheating in competency tests and video interviews, For this reason, you should make use of specialised software to detect fraud attempts in real time.

Furthermore, reference verification helps to ensure that candidates gave you an accurate account of their skills and abilities.

Optimising the recruitment process is also vital in terms of candidate experience to build employer branding, for a smooth application process is synonymous with quality and trust.

Measuring success in recruiting

Measuring recruiting success through metrics such as time-to-hire and quality of hire can help you optimise the recruitment process.

Measuring employee turnover and staff absence is a relatively straightforward way of assessing the performance of your workforce.

Assessing staff performance is crucial in identifying the team members who are excelling and making a noteworthy contribution to the company’s success.

Time to fill

“Time to fill” is a measurement which refers to the number of calendar days between the publishing of a job ad and the time a new employee accepts the job offer.

This metric is of critical importance as it can have a significant impact on the quality of new hires, the cost of recruiting and the overall success of the recruitment process.

By reducing the time it takes to fill a vacancy, you can improve the quality of candidates you hire and the overall recruiting success.

Ways to shorten the time to hire include leveraging employee referrals, targeting passive jobseekers, writing compelling job ads, streamlining the hiring process, and working with a recruiting agency. We aim to streamline the recruitment process for you by addressing all the aforementioned measures in this article.

Quality of employment

Quality of employment is a metric that assesses the value of a new employee to the company. A particularly important factor is the contribution to the long-term prosperity of the company.

Employee engagement, job performance, staff turnover, team and customer feedback, and training time are all indicators that can be used to judge the quality of a hire.

Concentrating on these principles will ensure that you attract the best talent to your company.

The 5 main recruiting channels for hiring staff

Recruitment channels allow you to promote your vacant positions across multiple platforms and to increase the reach of your job ads.

There are several recruiting channels available, including online job portals, social media platforms, career websites, personal contacts and career fairs. We have put together a list of the most important ones for you.

1. Social media platforms

Social media recruiting is one of the most important strategies for reaching potential candidates to fill open positions today.

There are numerous benefits to using social networks for recruiting purposes. Social media platforms offer a more direct and reliable channel to communicate with candidates and attract the interest of potential team members.

In addition, it allows you to showcase your team and culture, helping to establish yourself as an appealing employer.

LinkedIn is a particularly useful platform, as it is dedicated to the professional community and facilitates professional networking.

4 tips for successful social media recruiting

  • Make sure to research which platform your potential employees are using: In addition to LinkedIn, Facebook can be a viable platform for professionals in manual trades, facility management and healthcare. TikTok and Pinterest are ideal for the fashion industry.
  • In any industry, you should be using TikTok, Facebook and Pinterest to fill junior positions in your company.
  • When it comes to social media, don’t be afraid to try unconventional recruiting methods.
  • Be sure to integrate ads into your social media activities in order to extend the reach of your posts.

With the right social media strategy, you can demonstrate your openness to new talent and your willingness to grow and develop your workforce. Enabling you to access a more extensive selection of eligible applicants.

2. Career websites

A career site integrated into your corporate website allows you to showcase your values, culture and vision. A career website is an essential tool for highlighting job vacancies and attracting the right candidates.

A clear job description with specific responsibilities and who to contact is a must-have, along with ensuring that your career website is listed in search engines and visible on the company website.

Tips for success

Use compelling calls to action such as “Apply Now”. Ensure that applying for a job is easy, even for mobile browsing.

A career website is a powerful instrument for turning curious visitors into committed candidates. Make sure you take advantage of it.

3. Online job portals

Online job portals are e-recruiting channels where your HR department post job ads to bring potential candidates and recruiters together.

Candidates can upload their CVs to online job portals and apply for open vacancies. In order to fill executive positions, it is recommended to use platforms such as Karriere.at, Glassdoor, Stepstone, Monster and Indeed. For junior roles, both hy!hokify and the willhaben job portal are suitable options.

Give this platform a try

Have you heard of join? This recruiting platform allows you to create job ads on over 100 platforms for free. Online job portals have become an indispensable tool for efficient recruiting over the past years.

4. Employee referrals

Employee referrals are a highly efficient and cost-effective recruiting strategy to find qualified candidates for open vacancies.

Current staff members often have good insight into the company’s culture and way of working and are therefore ideally qualified to recommend appropriate candidates.

A personal recommendation from current staff members can facilitate the candidate’s integration into the company and help them quickly become a productive member of the team.

You can encourage employee referrals by offering incentives such as bonus payments or premiums for successful referrals. This strategy can help increase staff retention, as employees are more motivated when they become ambassadors for the company in its search for a qualified workforce.

All in all, employee referrals are a cost-effective and efficient way to attract skilled staff while strengthening employee retention at the same time.

5. Career events

Career events are excellent for your company’s employer branding, as well as a great way to gain direct insights into the skills and experience of potential candidates, helping you to make the right choices – it’s all about hiring the right people after all.

Tip!

Take advantage of this opportunity to expand your professional network and establish connections with other firms and HR companies.

There is a wide range of career events, including industry-specific exhibitions, post graduate and job fairs, where employers and jobseekers come together.

In general, career events offer a unique opportunity to directly meet with jobseekers and build long-term relationships with other companies.

Making the right choice is key!

Each recruiting channel comes with its unique pros and cons, so choosing the right one is crucial for effective recruitment.

Online job portals allow you to attract numerous candidates, while social media helps you to present your company as an appealing employer while reaching out to passive employees.

Personal contacts and staff referrals are particularly efficient in sourcing qualified staff.

Career events offer you another opportunity to meet potential candidates and promote yourself as an attractive employer.

Don’t rely on any single recruiting strategy, try out a number of different recruitment channels instead.

Summary

The implementation of modern recruiting strategies is essential in times of professional staff shortages.

Especially in technical professions, such as facilities management, adopting proactive approaches to find top talent is a promising strategy. Likewise, increasing the quota of female employees remains a major priority.

By utilizing the aforementioned channels and strategies, you can optimize your recruiting efforts and attract the best candidates to your company.

Armed with these strategies, you’ll find yourself well-placed to revolutionise your recruiting process and build a thriving, diverse workforce.

Frequently asked questions

E-recruiting refers to the use of digital media and technologies in the recruitment process. Companies can utilise e-recruiting to exhibit their corporate brand, advertise open vacancies, manage candidate applications and automate the hiring process. It includes a variety of technologies and approaches to the recruiting process, including online job portals, social media recruiting, candidate tracking systems, video interviewing and mobile recruiting solutions.

Finding new members for a company is commonly known as recruiting, but it can also be called recruitment, staff acquisition, finding personnel, employee hiring or sourcing human resources.

Recruiting is the process of attracting, selecting, and screening the most qualified individuals for an open vacancy. Through the implementation of a comprehensive recruitment process, companies strive to attract top talent that can help them reach their business goals.

By finding the right staff, companies are able to build a successful workforce, which leads to organisational growth as well as an improved overall performance.