Post and pray is not a good talent acquisition strategy

Source: www.social-hire.com

Great talent is out there.  The question is – where?  With more than 73 percent of online adults and 89 percent of job seekers using social networking sites the answer is clear – online.

Many companies employ a strategy of “post and pray.”  That is, they post the job on their website and then they sit back and wait for the applications to pour in.  If you want to attract top talent, you need to move away from post and pray and instead use an active talent acquisition strategy.

Here are the components of an active strategy– one that will enable your company to attract and land top talent.

Post

In addition to posting the job description on your company’s website, post it on industry job boards and on LinkedIn.

Share

LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are great places to share that your company has an opening and is looking for great talent.  When using social media to share the job posting remember that, for example, the lifespan of a Tweet is about 18 minutes.  Given this, it is necessary to share the job opening more than once so that it doesn’t get lost in the chatter.

Explore

Go out and look for talent.  Look to the LinkedIn groups to which you belong. Are there individuals who, given their contributions to the group, seem like they would be a good fit for the position?  If so, reach out to them and let them know they caught your attention.  Share the position with them, and go from there.

Similarly, look to Twitter and to blogs.  When looking at blogs to identify a potential candidate, look not only at the author, but also at people mentioned within a blog post.

Network

Use your network and your employee’s networks to share the position and to identify potential candidates.

The next time you have a job opening, try an active strategy.  You’ll be amazed – an active approach to talent acquisition will yield a stronger pool of candidates.