Rapid best practice learning is the only competitive advantage in today’s highly competitive recruiting world.
Until you realize the criticality of rapid learning, you will continue to struggle to meet your recruiting goals. Yes, few seem to realize that rapid “best practice” and “next practice” learning from the leading recruiting functions are the only maintainable competitive advantage in a rapidly changing world. However, many recruiting professionals are so overworked that they frequently fall behind in their reading.
My Top 10 “Must-Read” Recruiting Articles From 2021:
My specialty for decades has been discovering and sharing advanced aggressive recruiting practices. And with so much change in recruiting, I published over 50 articles covering these advanced practices each year. However, because so many recruiters are overworked these days. It’s easy to see why some busy professionals may have missed some of my articles. So this year, I have asked my associate Michael Cox to put together a shortlist of my “must-read articles.” The articles on the list were selected based on their strategic impact, how they reveal best practices, and how they could help resolve the direct recruiting challenges facing today’s recruiters. The most powerful articles are listed first.
1. Why You Can’t Attract Enough Applicants During This Pandemic… Fully Explained
This is #1 most widely read article highlights the current pandemic and economic factors limiting the number of qualified applicants you are receiving and hiring. It also includes action steps for overcoming each limiting factor. This market-research approach is critical for developing an effective data-driven strategy. Here is the link to that article.
2. Is Your Recruiting Function Data-Driven?
Use This Quick Scorecard – this #2 most widely read article covers the key drivers to current and future recruiting success. Which is shifting to a data-driven recruiting approach. Fortunately, you do not have to spend more money or time to make the biggest difference in your recruiting results in 2022. Because simply eliminating your low (or negative) ROI recruiting approaches will by itself lead to measurably improved recruiting results. Here is the link to the article on how you can assess what you must do to complete that shift to data-based recruiting.
3. A Unicorn Recruiting Function
Learn From Those With No Talent Shortages – fortunately, several recruiting functions do not suffer a talent shortage. So it makes sense to learn from the best practices in these provided examples. Here is the link to the article covering these best practices at these rare unicorn recruiting functions.
4. Proactive Referrals From Your Top Performers
The World’s Most Effective Recruiting Program – data reveals that a well-designed employee referral program is the most effective recruiting approach in almost every case. When done well, this recruiting source will produce the most hires, and the highest performing hires faster and cheaper than any other source. This article highlights how to identify and then fix the all-too-common flaws found in most ERP’s. Here is the link to the article that highlights those referral improvement actions.
5. Death By Interview
Another Stealth Killer Of Recruiting Results – you can speed up hiring and improve your results if you fix these common interview flaws and reduce the number of required interviews. Here is the link to that article.
6. Improve Your Hiring Results
By Increasing Transparency In Your Interview Process – in addition to reducing the number of interviews. You can improve your interview results by realizing that unnecessary stress increases candidate dropouts. While at the same time, it degrades candidate interview performance. Fortunately, unnecessary stress can be easily reduced by increasing openness and interview transparency. Here is the link to that article.
7. Interview Trick
Excite Candidates By Adding A “Feedback Minute” – another way to improve your interviews is to add a “positive feedback minute.” At the start of the interview, you reassure the candidate by briefly highlighting what you liked about them to excite and stimulate your candidates. Here is the link to that article covering this effective approach.
8. Recruiting Practices That Are, And Deserve To Be Fading Into History
Another method for dramatically improving your recruiting result. Consciously reduce or stop ineffective recruiting practices that are no longer effective in our pandemic world. Here is the link to the article highlighting these practices that should be fading from use.
9. Your Job Offer Process Needs Upgrading
So More Finalists Will Say Yes – a painful 17% of US job offers are rejected (almost 1 in 6). However, you can stop losing such a high percentage of your finalists. If you first identify and then fix the many likely flaws common in most offer processes. Here is the link to the article that provides multiple tips on how to get more finalists to “say yes.”
10. Why Your Diversity Results Stink
Explained In 10 Quick Bullet Points – most recruiting functions have now put a much higher priority on diversity. And as a result, many of my older articles on diversity recruiting are now seeing spikes in readership. So if you want to stop coming up short in the results column, this article highlights the many flaws in most diversity efforts and how each one can be fixed. Here is the link to that article.
The remainder of my 50+ 2021 articles, and over 1300 additional articles, can be found at www.drjohnsullivan.com
Final Thoughts
Now that 2021 has finally ended, every recruiter deserves a hardy congratulations for their hard work during that difficult year. During that single year, the recruiting role shifted multiple times as COVID and the economy accelerated, changed, and receded throughout the year. We should all also remember that this volatile VUCA environment has also introduced many new factors to the labor market. Including record voluntary turnover, more powerful unions, more employee walkouts, antiwork, increased automation, and the expanding gig economy.
2020 vs. 2021, vs. 2022 – What If 2020 Was The Good One? – and now that 2022 is upon us.
Unfortunately, we must all prepare for the fact that just like 2020 turned out to be “the good year” compared to 2021. Last year’s 2021 may turn out to be “the good year” when it is eventually compared to what happened during 2022 (ouch). So it’s essential that you continue to improve your recruiting approaches and results through both rapid learning and the use of data to make decisions during 2022.
Author’s note – if you found this list of top articles helpful, I recommend that you sign up for our Advanced Recruiting Newsletter here. You will receive Dr. Sullivan’s thought-provoking recruiting articles each week directly to your email box.
