You can be  proud of yourself from the very moment you opened this article. It means that you can easily see that the recruitment market is constantly changing. You also know, that if you are not going to follow these changes you are taking the risk to be left out of the picture and just see all your competitors to run by.

But do not worry, we’ll take care of you and share all the knowledge we gather about new trends and movements as well as about the practical things you can implement to ensure you prosper and succeed this year and beyond. We make sure that you will be always one step ahead of thousands of employers and recruiters stuck in the market.

Finding top talent becomes more and more challenging in 2019. The main European countries are showing the record unemployment rate and in a number of sectors, skills shortage is hitting critical levels. All this leads to recruitment of great candidates is not getting any easier. Employers have to work even harder and think about some smarter approaches to attract or keep the very best talent. So, what can you do to stay on top in 2019 and make recruiting your competitive advantage?

1. Create Employer Value Proposition

If you have never heard about words Employer Value Proposition or  “EVP” you have definitely missed something.  Make yourself some strong coffee, hit Google and enjoy some time of pleasant reading. It will take some time to understand, develop and implement the EVP strategy in your company.

But long story short, EVP should make your company attractive to prospective candidates, hidden somewhere from your eyes. New candidates should find your company accessible so they can easily interpret it and will get excited about working with you.

Examine everything in your company from your values and culture, up to benefits and flexibility, approach to work, work-and-life balance and include it in your Employer Value Proposition. In 2019 “EVP” is becoming a must rather than a “nice to have”. If you haven’t yet worked out your EVP, do not wait and go for it.

2. Move fast

While we are living in a candidate-short world we need to speed up? And this speed is one of the main values in          B-hiring. Well-qualified candidates are in short supply, you need to hurry up. Our advice is quite short and obvious:

1. Use different tools to accelerate your hiring process, do not relate to one tool only.
2. Communicate more with candidates throughout the recruitment process.
3. When you find the right candidate, do not play a waiting game, move swiftly and make an offer.
4. Stay in touch with them even before they start in your company, during their notice period.

3. Increase salaries

Sorry to say, but that´s the true. And if you are recruiting for customers you should give them this message as well. In 2018 wages have risen over 3% compared with the previous year, and a salary growth is predicted to continue in 2019 as well, so keep tabs on your market.

With the unemployment rate around 5% in Denmark and in some branches less than 2% make no mistake we are pressed to go up with salaries?,  especially in sectors like Digital & IT where the skills shortage is hitting hard.

4. Brand recruitment

We are living in a consumption world, and we can not treat candidates in 2019 as we did 10 years ago. They want to be treated as customers, not as a workforce, so you need to adjust your approach. Recruitment team of a big company needs to be a part of a brand. Focus on effective communication with candidates –  how do you communicate with them during the recruitment process? Are you friendly? Efficient? Can you be seen as a part of your brand? It is the same as if he or she was ordering something from the sales department.

Invest in training of hiring managers, to ensure that the candidates get a strong impression of their company regardless of whether they’re offered a job at the end of the process or not. Try to go through the same process as your candidate from searching, applying for, and being interviewed for a job. Consider every touchpoint and if something does not match the brand, fix it. Your candidate need the passion to work for you.

5. Think about diversity

Diversity is a fashionable trend, and also a nuclear of thousands of jokes in HR world. But diversity is not about hitting a quota and following the modern HR trends. This is about proclaiming individualism and understanding that a diverse workforce actually results in a better business that’s more reflective of the general population outside of your office.

How well do you know your office? How many male and female employees you employ? What’s the average age? Are minority groups represented? Examine your organisation’s DNA and see the results. If some groups are underrepresented, ask yourself why? Think about what you can get by getting this group in and seek to address the balance.

6. Automate what you can

Human resources branch is the human business and when we talk about global automatization that is the last branch we take into consideration. It is hard to imagine that technology can ever replace humans in this branch. However, a lot of processes that exist around the recruitment can be automated without lack of quality. Technology can help you with widening your candidate search, accelerating your hiring process and standardization of working processes etc.

What do you use in your company? Do you use marketplaces like b-hiring.com? Do you have a modern CRM system designed especially for recruiters, like Workable, BambooHR or Jobadder? Do you use gamified assessment platform like Cognisess to figure out what your candidates are all about? Maybe video interviewing? Is it something that you have not tried? Now it’s a good time to embrace it! Technology is not your enemy and is not going to depersonalize your work, the opposite – it allows you to focus and invest more energy in the human elements, like interviewing all best talents and giving them a fantastic impression of your company.

7. On-boarding

It is really horrifying but a lot of businesses, even the big ones, ignore on-boarding process. So what’s the point of investing all that time, money and energy into finding and recruiting candidates if you can’t retain them? Of course, we would like to see you as our loyal customers but not because you can not keep your candidates after employing. Make your new hire’s first few weeks ones to remember, tightening their commitment for the long term. However, do not allow all the managers to do it their own way. Maybe it is a good idea to collect all the loyal employees that are with you for more than one year and ask what they can remember from their first day, what did they miss that day and how did they want to be treated. Afterwards, create one on-boarding guide that will be used by all managers, so you are sure that all your new employees get the exact same positive experience.