In a highly competitive job market, the onus is on recruiters and HR professionals to think outside the box if they want to hire the best talent. Creative recruiting strategies are critical to source, attract and then retain the cream of the candidate crop.

Read on for inspiration from some of the best pieces on the web right now. Did you know that Recruiteze was the best, free online recruitment system on the marketplace? Click here to start using Recruiteze without obligation.

‘10 Creative Recruiting Strategies To Hire Great People’

Business Insider

This piece by Business Insider is one of the most popular on creative recruiting strategies, and with good reason. Let’s look at the strategies they recommend, because these ideas come up a lot throughout all these pieces.

Self-selection Screening

Self-selection screening is a way of pre-qualifying applicants. Simply introduce an open invitation event to candidates, before the interview stage. Those who turn up are really keen – those who don’t, not so much. This also gives you an opportunity to assess candidates in a group environment while giving candidates more insight into who you are and what you do.

This allows you to cut down the time you spend sifting through resumes and conducting interviews, by identifying the candidates who are genuinely interested in the role.

Group Interviews

Working on the same principle as above, group interviews give you a chance to evaluate candidates without conducting time-intensive one-on-one interviews with every candidate who applies.

You probably want to limit the numbers here though. While you might get hundreds of attendees to an open day (depending on your industry and the level you’re recruiting for, of course), a meaningful group session needs to give you a chance to really assess each person there.

Handpick and flatter

This is a strategy for when you’re recruiting for a more niche role, perhaps, or a senior-level role. Identify your dream candidates for the position, research them in as much detail as possible and reach out to them personally.

This article gives the example of Red 5 Studios, who handpicked 100 perfect candidates and sent them all a personalised iPod with a message from the CEO. More than 90 responded, 3 left their current role and joined Red 5 Studios, and they raised their employer profile significantly from word-of-mouth buzz.

Look in unexpected places

Step away from LinkedIn, this piece recommends, and head to the unexpected places. For example, try going out to local stores and offering interviews to anyone who really stands out. Obviously this is less relevant if you need specific skills for your role, but if you’re hiring entry-level then personality traits are likely to be just as important.

Attend events (not job fairs)

Similar to the above, the piece recommends attending unusual events if you want to find unusual talent. Look for relevant Meetups, for example.

Use non-traditional media

Instead of relying on plain text job adverts, why not think outside the box and make your company stand out? Podcasts, videos, graphics – anything that your competitors aren’t doing is fair game.

Active search

Recruiters have been doing this for decades, but it’s worth a reminder if your sourcing efforts fall a little on the passive side. Stop waiting for resumes to fall in your lap and develop a proactive sourcing strategy. You can keep track of your new clients using our free online recruitment system. Keep reading to learn more

Savvy advertising

We’ve said before that recruiters must become marketers if they want to succeed, and this point exemplifies this. Try investing in online advertising on online forums related to your skills, or targeting relevant keywords.

Don’t ignore past applicants

It makes sense, in a talent-tight market, not to ignore talent that’s already shown an interest. Use an online recruitment system to effectively keep track of your candidates and ensure you can contact them again in the future.

Incentivise referrals

Referrals are one of the highest quality sources of hire, so it makes sense to try and increase the amount you get. Offering and publicising incentives can be a great tactic.

(Read original)

‘5 Creative Recruiting Strategies’

While this piece from Interview Mocha goes into less depth than some of the others we’re looking at, it’s definitely worthwhile to look at. They’ve broken their ideas into infographic form, if you want to check out the original.

These are their suggestions:

Go paperless

Use videos instead of paper job descriptions, to give insight into what it’s like working at the company.

Use social media

Social media is less costly and has a much greater reach than other sourcing methods, and allows you to build a passive talent pipeline. Critical.

Attend Meetups and conferences

As in the Business Insider piece, Interview Mocha suggest getting away from traditional recruiting environments to seek out talent that your competitors might be missing.

Group interaction events

Save time interviewing, filter applicants and get direct insight into how your potential employees work as part of a group. What’s not to love?

Use pre-employment skills testing

Pre-employment testing can eliminate up to 70% of unqualified applicants before you waste time interviewing them, and proves your candidates can actually do the job you’re hiring them for.

Not the most amazingly original suggestions I know, but when certain ideas come up frequently it’s a pretty good indication that you should get on board. Even if you pride yourself on institutional traditionalism, every organisation can benefit from these methods.

(Read original)

‘13 Of The Most Creative Recruitment Campaigns’

Social Hire

It’s little surprise that Social Hire comes up frequently in our monthly Round Up posts, and this piece on creative recruitment strategy is another well worth reading. In this article Social Hire share 13 real-world examples of companies embracing creative hiring methods with success, grouped according to the strategy they’ve used.

Hidden Messages

Social Hire sum it up well: “Hidden job descriptions and messages help companies approach candidates in unexpected situations. They’re a good way to connect if your target market is employed elsewhere, and they tend to be very cost effective”.

They give three examples:

Ikea Australia

Hid job descriptions inside their sold furniture, costing them nothing and resulting in over 4000 applications and nearly 300 new hires.

Volkswagen

Placed job adverts for mechanics on the undercarriage of cars needing repair, quickly establishing a reputation for innovative hiring.

Red 5 Studios

Red 5 Studios have come up before, with their personalised iPod recruiting method.

Puzzles

Using puzzles is a great way to generate interest and filter out unsuitable applicants. Here are two companies we could be learning from:

Quixey

A Silicon Valley start-up competing with the likes of Google for talent designed a 60-second programming quiz, aiming to lure out the best of the best.

Google

It’s little surprise that Google are embracing creative recruiting strategies. Their 2004 creative problem billboard did just the trick.

Competitions

Competitions can be a fantastic way to arouse interest and can quickly gather momentum online if they capture people’s imaginations. Social Hire offers 3 noteworthy examples.

MGM Grand

MGM Grand was looking for a new head chef for one of their restaurants so ran their own version of reality TV show, Iron Chef. The eventual winner and successful hire increased sales by 400% – that’s some pay-off.

OgilvyOne

Another brand we’d expect to be embracing creative recruitment, Ogilvy one ran a social campaign the find ‘The World’s Greatest Salesperson’. Contestants were asked to give their best shot at selling a brick – and the winner received a three month paid internship with the prestigious agency. Win/Win.

MasterCard Canada

An online competition to give students a chance to win an internship, this campaign resulted in more than 500 qualified candidates for the brand.

Guerrilla Recruiting

Think off-the-wall, majorly outside-the-box recruitment… Campaigns like this lend themselves to going viral and can be a great way to raise your brand profile as well as finding top talent.

Uncle Grey

Leveraging insight into their target market, Swedish agency Uncle Grey formed partnerships with top gamers to create a highly successful in-game recruitment strategy.

Swedish Armed Forces

A four-day live streamed social experiment, this guerrilla strategy saw Swedish Armed Forces gain nearly double the amount of qualified applicants they’d been targeting.

Jung Von Matt

Another advertising agency to make the list, Jung Von Matt attracted creative directors by embedding their job description in the Lorem Ipsum generator used by creative. Exceptional.

Royal Marine Commandos

It’s a classic advert format but with a conceptual twist, focusing on the confrontational ’99.99% need not apply’ tagline. Award-winning and highly effective.

Atlassian

Australian software company Atlassian quite literally drove a bus around the world looking for engineers to hire and relocate. The bus was labelled ‘We’re coming to steal your geeks’ and its progress could be tracked online, garnering huge support.

Some campaign ideas we could all learn from, even in more traditional industries than tech or advertising.

(Read original)

‘TGI Fridays received 2000 applications for 80 minimum wage jobs’

As this article from the Telegraph observes, TGI Fridays are being inundated with applications in what Chief Executive Karen Forrester calls “a rush to work with the company”

Ms. Forrester credits their huge successes as to the companies status as a “UK Success story”, having been named the ‘Best Big Company To Work For In The UK’.

The secret to their success?

With 82% of employees saying that feel a “strong sense of family” with TGI Fridays, it’s fair to say that they’re doing an amazing job of building a community.

TGI Fridays offer an apt example of the power of community, with their online ‘Fridoids’ hub. The online community has been made to celebrate and project the culture of TGIs, and has proven a valuable way of elevating their employer brand. The corporate website now receives 600% more page views, making it an impressive recruiting tool.

TGI Friday’s serve as a gentle reminder that creative recruiting strategies are all well and good, but the critical thing is to keep an authentic, genuine voice behind them all – because community is what matters most. Their focus is not just on finding the right skills, but on attracting the right personalities too and in building this sense of family, TGIs are able to attract and hire candidates who will stay with them long-term. Indeed, Ms. Forrester points out their success not only in hiring talent but in retention, with a staff turnover rate that is less than half the sector average.

(Read original)

‘Recruitment Strategies to Attract and Win Top Talent’

Tiny Pulse

This piece starts by outlining the importance of social media recruiting – something that shouldn’t be disregarded for not being novel. After giving tips for each of the major social networks, this article launches into a list of the top ten creative recruiting strategies. Worth a read in full, here’s the breakdown of the list.

Referral incentives Pay them to leave

This is a particularly interesting strategy, more for the long-term company culture and employer brand than sourcing. Zappos is the example, a company who pay new recruits who aren’t fitting in to leave.

Sponsor an open house Attend external events Look at past candidates Sponsor schools and clubs

Another novel suggestion, Tiny Pulse recommend sponsoring schools or clubs as a great way to get into the hearts and minds of young candidates. Start ‘em young.

Focus on fit over skills Talk about your USPs Coffee shop interviews

This is an interesting point. By taking candidates out of the traditional formal interview setting, employers get a chance to see their candidates in a new light. This means you can better assess cultural fit, getting candidates to drop their interview face.

Focus on perks that matter

A lot of the points this article gives is about how to better sell your company to new candidates, but they’re valid points nonetheless. Once you’ve sourced great people, you need to know how to make your opportunity stand out.

After their top ten list, Tiny Pulse share a bonus point of sorts (or a warning): watch out for word of mouth. Their point is this – what the public, candidates and current employees think of you is as important as any creative recruiting strategies. A strong employer brand is one of the most important things you can have, and the biggest string to your creative recruiting strategies’ bow.

(Read original)

‘The 17 Most Creative Recruitment Campaigns’

Beamery

There is a fair bit of overlap in this piece from the Social Hire article above, but there are some unique campaigns they mention that are worth a look. In particular, this piece serves as a great reminder that creative recruiting strategies aren’t new. In fact, they’ve been around for centuries…

Sir Earnest Shackleton’s famous newspaper advert is the first example they offer, notable for its deep understanding of the target audience (death or glory, springs

to mind):

“MEN WANTED for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success”.

They also draw our attention to the famous Lord Kitchener advert, responsible for bringing the British army 1M new recruits.

More modern example this piece shares includes the NFL Draft recruitment strategy employed by National Oilwell Varco, and Lego’s The Master Model Builder campaign. GCHQs coding puzzle campaign (solved by less than 1% of 400,000 applicants) is also worth looking at, another creative recruitment puzzle that saw success.

(Read original)

‘Why UPS Has One Of The Most Successful Social Recruiting Strategies’

LinkHumans

Let’s continue looking at real-world examples of creative recruitment, with this in-depth case study from LinkHumans. We’ll pull out the most important points, but it’s definitely worth reading the original if you have time.

UPS perhaps isn’t a brand you’d automatically guess uses creative recruiting strategies. You probably should though. They’ve won multiple recruitment awards for their efforts, including Top 50 Recruiter on Twitter.

Initially, their recruitment was completely print orientated, with 90% of their investment going into print. Fast-forward a few years and 97% of their budget goes into social media instead.

UPS had three major goals:

To address high-volume, seasonal and part-time hiring needs

To do so at a reduced cost

To improve their employer brand

Although their strategy naturally evolved over time, these are the steps UPS went through to achieve those goals.

Step 1: Build careers page

They built a simple careers page, focusing on the core benefits of working for UPS, including a ‘day-in-the-life-of’ video to show potential candidates what working for UPS is really like.

Step 2: Drive traffic and engagement to careers page

UPS created a multi-channel marketing campaign to drive traffic to their careers page, starting with print and branching into SMS and mobile advertising. They also created a number of videos filmed around the US, getting over 1M hits in one month.

Step 3: Launch Facebook careers page

UPS primarily used Facebook as a way to get further demographic insight into their audience, so they could continue to hone their strategy. They also used Facebook to continue to drive traffic back to the careers page, getting UPS employees to write blog posts about working for UPS.

Step 4: Twitter Hiring

Building on their insights into the technology-focused nature of their audience, UPS started proactively using Twitter to recruit.

Step 5: Measure, measure, measure

As this article points out, “measuring and tracking is part of the DNA of UPS and they have applied it to the recruitment world and especially in their strategy”. They use their own bespoke applicant tracking system and use Google Analytics extensively.

And what did UPS get out of this long-running strategy overhaul?

The majority of their hires are social sourced Their quality of hire is significant better, with an interview/hire ratio of 2:1 The cost of hire reduced by ~900% Time to hire was reduced especially for seasonal staff and during peak times

They’re some pretty impressive figures, reminding us all that creative recruiting strategies don’t need to be as outside the box as VW or Swedish Armed Forces. Social media is still one of the most solid recruiting strategies out there.

(Read original)

‘Innovative Recruitment Strategies’

Recruiting Division

This piece might be from way back in 2014, but it’s still relevant today. As the article points out, creative recruiting strategies:

“…change the way we communicate, free us from old school telephone cords and paper processes, cutting through the time-sucking vortex of traditional recruiting strategies and provides all-important cost savings in a chameleon economy and job market”

They re-emphasize the importance of ‘going undercover’ to find top talent when the guard is down, and suggest (as do many of these pieces) that critical challenges are a key part of creative recruiting. They mention too the need to promote referrals, to turn your employees into talent scouts in order to find and hire the best talent out there.

They also mention the rise of headhunting, to “hire them out from under the competition’s noses” as they put it. This is certainly a valid strategy in an unusually tight talent market, and certain companies can become a powerhouse playground for developing your talent before you hire them.

They mention Gyros as a great example, who found out where their competitors’ employees ate lunch and persuaded restaurant owners to use Gyros branded recruitment sandwich bags. There’s nothing like a tuna-on-brown with a side of ‘where’s your career going?’.

Not a hugely original piece, but interesting ideas for creative recruiting strategies nonetheless.

(Read original).

‘Creative Recruiting: 7 Innovative Ways to Find Your Dream Hire’

HR Morning put out some great content for recruiters and HR professionals, and this piece on creative recruiting strategies is worth a read.

These are the 7 creative recruitment strategies they proffer:

Gamification Go undercover Snag the competition Create competitions Contests Referrals Social

While most of these have been covered in the other articles we’re looking at, the first is worth a look in more depth: gamification.

Gamification is the “use of gaming principles and design in non-gaming situations, [to] identify potential employees by posing virtual challenges that require the skills necessary for a given job”

Gamification is the hot trend of the moment, playing a role in everything from recruitment to education. As creative recruiting strategies go, it’s particularly worth considering. It has huge social-sharing potential and sets you apart as an employer, as well as offering an easy way to pre-test and pre-qualify candidates.

This article shares a couple of great examples, of which Marriott’s My Marriott Hotel game particularly stands out.

Players manage a virtual hotel restaurant kitchen including supplies and employee management. Marriott generated interest in the hospitality industry, increase brand awareness and sourced talent from 120 different countries: an overwhelming success in an industry you might not expect this sort of creativity from.

Throughout all these pieces, a lot of similar ideas are coming up. This should demonstrate two things. Firstly, there is no shortage of creative recruiting ideas if your recruiting is still stuck in 1999. Secondly, there is space to really differentiate yourself by coming up with novel ideas of your own.

Creative recruitment is still a relatively new space and many HR departments are dragging their heels. As a result, brands have a real opportunity to build their employer brand and solidify their identity as an employer. Standing out is critical in a talent-tight market – but a little bit of inspiration and a lot of creativity is all that stands in your way.

Searching For A Free Online Recruitment System? Try Recruiteze!

If your agency or HR team needs a free online recruitment system, click here to start using Recruiteze today! Our easy-to-use technology makes recruiting easy! Call us today to learn more.