How to successfully attract and recruit the ideal candidate?

According to HR Voice, successful recruitment can save a company between €45,000 and €100,000.

Recruitment is essential to developing your business with the best possible resources. To be sure of success, recruiters often use a recruitment campaign to maximize their chances of finding the right candidate. In this way, you can integrate new employees into the various positions to be filled within your company.

Here's how to become an ace recruiter and find the perfect candidate!

See all software Recruiting

Step 1: Identify the position to be filled

As a good HR manager, you need to be clear about what you want, so that your candidate's vision is as clear as yours.

The first step in your recruitment strategy is to precisely describe the characteristics of the position to be filled, in order to select the right target and define a recruitment policy. Based on this description, you'll be able to create a job description quickly and efficiently.

Don't panic if you don't know where to start, we've spared you the trouble 😉

Just get straight to the point with this information:

• List your future colleague's main tasks (feel free to jot down anything that comes to mind!),
• List his or her daily tasks: answering e-mails, answering the phone, organizing meetings, etc,
• Specify his or her responsibilities : managing a team, responsible for professional development, career management, performance indicators, etc,
• Positioning: this is essential so that your candidate knows why he or she is here and feels comfortable,
• Links with other departments (who does he/she report to, apart from the big boss?),
• Working conditions,
• Possible difficulties of the job (a candidate who knows what to expect will be more effective).

Now, imagine THE ideal candidate for you!

And here again, we've got a little present for you: a table you can fill in in 5 minutes flat.

• Knowledge: academic background and qualifications
• Know-how: mastery through experience
• Personal qualities

List complementary skills, skills that aren't essential, but that have charm, such as mastery of a foreign language. Don't forget to mention geographical mobility, availability, driver's license and any other information you consider useful or essential for the position.

Step 2: attract the perfect candidate

Your job advertisement must be enticing and really make you want to apply. Working conditions are an important criterion, especially for recruiting in high-voltage professions, but there are also other elements that employers often overlook:

Personality

You may employ candidates for their skills, but are you really interested in them? Their passions, their travels, their moral values, their fears... It's all very important, because these questions give them the confidence to open up to you. For the recruiter, it's an element that reveals your potential soft skills, in other words, the qualities and skills you call upon on a daily basis.

Be curious and ask them questions that let them reveal themselves.

Ambassadors

What would life at work be without Barbara's coffee-break gossip? In fact, they help you recruit! Your employees are your company's ambassadors when it comes to recruitment, the best way to stand out from your competitors and attract the attention of genius candidates. If your employees feel good, do you seriously think they won't spread the word to others?

Step 3: Get the job out there

You've got the profile of your ideal candidate, and you know his or her duties at your company - great, but he or she doesn't know you (yet!).

Distributing your ad will enable you to reach your potential candidates, and recruitment communication is essential for this stage.

According to Jobvite, 55% of recruiters are influenced by social networks and digital recruitment. Since the health crisis, these figures have increased, and e-recruitment is on the rise. So it's impossible to ignore this channel.

Make sure your recruitment offer is adapted to your distribution channel, such as :

• APEC and Cadremploi for jobs aimed at executives,
• Studentjob, Jobteaser, Wizbii, Linkedin and other social networks for recruiting young candidates (79% of candidates under 35 use social networks in their job search),
• StepStone for sales people, engineers and technicians,
• and Pôle emploi, Indeed, Meteojob and Monster, which are more general recruitment sites.

👉 Applicant tracking software such as Softy saves you time in posting your ads, while boosting your visibility over the long term. Directly via the tool, you can multicast your ads on over 70 job boards (Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn, Pôle Emploi, Apec...) in addition to managing your entire recruitment process via customizable functionalities: customized career site creation, unlimited recruitment tests, intelligent CV management, live and deferred interviews, and much more!

Ḗtape no. 4: organize an effective interview

That's it, you've finally received some applications! Now it's time for the fun part: the interviews.

Here are a few steps to follow:

1. Pull out your job description and your perfect candidate chart,
2. Compare its contents with your applicants,
3. Select at least 3 candidates who meet the maximum of your criteria and whose profile interests you,
4. Define an order of preference and don't hesitate to discuss it with your work colleagues to validate your final choice.

Suit up, little suit, your candidates are all fresh and beautiful for the interviews. For 30 minutes, you'll be admired, respected and complimented, but don't fall under their spell just yet!

When you conduct the interview, ask the right questions! We've put together a quick selection that works every time:

• "Introduce yourself": pay attention to their speech, the way they hold themselves, while remaining attentive to your candidate... mission séduction, remember?
• "What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• "Why did you choose our company?": judge their motivation.
• "What is your ideal job?
• "What are your interests?
• "Do you have any other questions?

Feel free to be original, but take care not to make your candidate feel uncomfortable.

💡 If after the one-to-one interview you're still skeptical, you can proceed with recruitment tests. This part often scares candidates, but it's very useful for both him and your company.

By passing the test, your candidate will feel confident and legitimate about belonging to your company. Above all, it tells you something about the candidate's abilities and seriousness. To all those who pride themselves on being punctual, now's the time to prove it!

Step 5: Use software for greater efficiency

You're in a real hurry and looking for a way to get your collaborative recruitment campaign up and running as quickly as possible? We've still got solutions for you: adopt a recruitment software that will do all the work for you.

👉 softgarden is cloud-based applicant tracking software, recognized as a Core Leader in the "2022 Fosway Group 9-Grid" for talent acquisition and recruitment. Thanks to a wide range of features, softgarden simplifies your recruitment processes with automated tasks and the publication of your job offers on partner sites. With the app and Smart Calendar, you can set appointments quickly and meet your candidates without going through lengthy email exchanges.

👉 Beetween is an intuitive digital platform that lets you manage all your recruitment processes seamlessly, from sourcing to onboarding your new recruit. Multi-post your vacancies on over 150 partner sites in just one click, and automatically populate your CV library with the applications received. The selection of your dream candidates is facilitated by an intelligent matching function and the sending of tests to automatically pre-qualify the most promising. Its communication functions help you to keep in touch with candidates throughout their experience with you, to engage them more easily.

👉 Nicoka ATS is a dynamic, easy-to-use software package designed for both companies and recruitment agencies. It enables you to centralize and organize your recruitment processes, but that's not all! Thanks to its ergonomic interface, your daily tasks are digitized and structured. Mail thousands of candidates, browse their CVs, import contacts directly from social networks like LinkedIn, and integrate an application form directly into your website.

👉 RecrutOr is a comprehensive recruitment and application management software package for small and medium-sized businesses. Ergonomic and easy to use, it lets you multi-post your job ads free of charge on a multitude of job boards. The editor also develops a personalized career site for you, optimized for natural referencing. All applications received are then centralized in a collaborative CV database. This enables you to manage your applications efficiently, filter them according to the criteria of your choice, and find the ideal profile in just a few clicks.

👉 Taleez ATS is a collaborative tool for managing and monitoring recruitment from A to Z. Simple to use, Taleez handles every stage of the recruitment process, from posting job offers on multiple channels, including over 90 job sites and 13,000 higher education courses, to validating new recruits. Track your applications step-by-step, and assess your talents as a team in a single tool.

👉 Tool4staffing, the software that uses Artificial Intelligence matching for your candidate base. It targets jobs in short supply by providing a range of modern functionalities. The solution offers an interface on which recruiters, managers and candidates evolve together. The immersive candidate portal (chatbot, collaborative meetings, etc.) is ideal for integrating candidates into a transparent recruitment process and enhancing your employer brand.

Recruitment testing software can also save you considerable time in your recruitment process:

👉 With People In, there's no longer any need to search for the rare pearl amongyour applications, as the solution enables you tocarry out a pre-selection thanks to personalized skills tests. Attract andevaluate candidates with case studies, quizzes and videos, and never miss out on a competent candidate again!

See all software Recruiting

5 examples of inspiring recruitment campaigns to help you stand out from the crowd

Example 1: Google

Google knows how to talk to developers... and their playful side! The company came up with the idea of targeting users who typed "python lambda function list comprehension" into its search bar, because only an informed public can understand what it's all about. On their screen appeared an invitation to play a game that was in fact a recruitment test. Those who passed were put directly in touch with HR.

Example 2: Ikea

Using its specific features to recruit? Ikea has done it! The company added a special leaflet to its customers' boxes explaining how to apply to join its workforce. The operation, which took place in Australia, attracted over 4,000 applications from customers who were already brand fans. All to the good!

Example 3: Bonduelle

During the pandemic, many people lost their jobs and job insecurity increased in almost every country. In Canada, the brand came up with an idea that was as original as it was philanthropic: on the tins of food distributed to food banks, job offers were written with the contact details of the HR department. A great way to deal with the real recruitment difficulties while doing a good deed (and doing your employer brand a world of good!).

Example 4: Burger King

A festival or a recruitment event: why choose? Burger King organized the Whop! Music & job festival to create a unique hybrid event. Donuts, concerts, photo booths and a relaxed atmosphere to meet recruiters and soak up the quirky corporate culture... and land a job. The fast-food restaurant managed to hire 300 people following the event, no less!

Example 5: Michel et Augustin

Recruiting directly in the field? Many companies would shy away from it, but the Michel et Augustin brand dared, and its HR department went to shout out job offers in the metro. It was an original, useful recruitment initiative, in line with the company's values, which did not leave public transport users indifferent.

So if recruiting can be complicated for certain profiles, don't hesitate to be creative and find an original way of making yourself known to your target candidates and attracting their attention!

What tips do you have for successful recruitment? Tell us in the comments!