Unusual Recruitment Hacks To Source The Best Talent

So how do we make recruitment a much fun filled activity? It all depends on how we experiment with it. For instance, if we use social media instead of recruitment portals to source candidates, we not only end up getting the best talent but also promote our brand to a much larger audience. Besides, we get a chance to learn social media marketing and online brand management.

We all know recruitment is a versatile activity while it can adopt any and every practice in its fold. Over a period of time, recruitment has evolved to its zenith. New technologies are taking over and the industry is getting even more competent.

At Han Digital, we decided to go the extra mile with our hiring activity. We made a list of unique recruitment practices in order to experiment the same with our recruiters. We waited for the results to emerge and voila! We were successful in sourcing the best profiles for a client.

Here are some exclusive recruitment hacks that we asked our recruiters to adopt while sourcing, screening and interviewing potential candidates for a job:

Talent Stalking Technique

Sounds creepy…. But helped us source the best team lead for a client.

Of course, we used social media website like LinkedIn to stalk potential candidates.

Talent stalking also known as Online Stalking or Social Media stalking is a recent recruitment practice where a recruiter monitors the social media profile of a potential candidate. Recruiters analyse their profiles, blogs and professional contribution. Besides, a recruiter can also be a part of their online groups and search for appropriate profiles.

Professional consistency of the candidate is the most important criteria a recruiter must look for while stalking a candidate. Right from their educational qualification to their job history – almost every little detail they provide in their profile should be consistent. For example, a candidate having a different start date and finish date for a job on their LinkedIn profile could be a sign of inconsistency and fraudulence.

Con: You need to have a relevant criteria beforehand to reduce the screening efforts.

Pros: You get an overall picture about the candidate’s professional and personal life.

Unusual Ads

When we flip through magazines and newspapers, we come across unique advertisements which is not only pleasant but also memorable.

McDonald’s for instance made an attempt to put to rest the general misunderstanding people had about its employees. It released a simple yet powerful message through its ad stating – “We don’t hire Turks, Greeks, Poles, Indians, Ethiopians, Vietnamese, Chinese or Peruvians”                                             

The notion that McDonald staff constitutes of people belonging to a particular ethnic group was brought to a standstill.

Attracting good talent in order to promote a job is always a tough task. Thanks to the many possibilities of this digital age, we are now in a position to create tonnes of unique marketing strategies that fetch us good talent in a jiffy. According to experts, recruiters can develop creative ads through visualisation and imagination. An internal study showed that people are attracted more to colour than mere black and white ads. Thus, it is up to the recruiter’s vivid imagination on how to proceed with job descriptions.

Recruitment the Al- Qaida way

Yes! You read it right – recruiting the Al-Qaida way. Recently, I was reading about the arrest of an Al-Qaida recruiter, a British national – who is supposedly Al-Qaida’s key recruiter in India. What fascinated me was how structured and well-planned the recruitment cells of such banned outfits are.

What I learnt from their recruitment model –

The Al-Qaida recruiter stayed in constant touch with his main contact through a custom developed recruitment app. As a recruiter, he exchanged every meaningful recruitment related information with his manager – a crucial step in accomplishing recruitment targets.

According to the reports, the Al-Qaida recruiter managed to radicalise/recruit a Bangladeshi elite. Here the recruiter was bold enough to approach talent who belonged to the gentry. As a recruiter, what I understood from this motif is if you find an applicant right for the job, then approach them. Your eagerness will make the best talent listen to whatever you have on offer.

Lastly, the use of social media. The Al-Qaida used social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram to radicalise/recruit the youth.

Recruitment and social media are now two sides of a same coin. Without social media, it is practically impossible to think about recruitment. It is must for all recruiters to have a social media profile to attract the best talent. Also, leadership hiring is incomplete without LinkedIn scanning.

What we can infer from this read is recruitment is a highly flexible activity. Every little instance we come across teaches us recruiters something new or the other. Recruitment does not stop here, there are plenty of methods that are yet to be experimented with.

As a concluding remark, I would like to share this inspiring quote – “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger–but recognize the opportunity”.