Recruiting is a time-consuming job. There are candidates to hunt for, resumes to read and job seekers to interview. Should your company be recruiting full-time, or only when the need presents itself?
Recruiting on a regular basis can provide you the opportunity to find top talent in an instant. Waiting to recruit only when you have an open position may save on resources, but it puts you at the mercy of a limited number of candidates. Which is the best way?
Below, 13 members of Forbes Human Resources Council discuss whether organizations should recruit on an ongoing basis or only in response to newly opened positions — and propose ways to ensure recruiting efforts are both useful and effective. Here’s what they recommend:
HR professionals weigh in.
All photos courtesy of Forbes Councils members.1. Build Your Pool Early And Often
Any good recruiter will tell people to keep their resume up to date and never wait until they need a job to do so. Well, let's follow our own advice. We should be recruiting all the time — at the grocery store, at parties, at networking events, online. Don't wait until you have a job opening to look for someone. Build your pool early and often. - Lotus Yon, NCH
2. Create Strong Pipelines To Meet Talent Needs
The ABCs of sales, “always be closing,” apply 100% to the recruiting world. Recruitment teams should always be recruiting. Talent acquisition is not a reactive function. Companies that wish to take proactive measures to build solid talent pipelines for current and future needs should start by identifying the critical talent segments of their business. These are critical roles that are in some cases tougher to fill. - Candice McGlen, Gifted Works, LLC
3. Recruit Only In Response To Vacant Positions
In my opinion, we should recruit only in response to newly opened positions. First of all, because hiring demands can change every quarter, it's neither efficient nor fair to your HR team to expend resources on positions that may change or disappear entirely. Secondly, if recruiters are actively working on a position that doesn't exist yet, it can make existing team members nervous, leading to employee churn. - Steven Jiang, Hiretual
4. Build An Active And Live Network
You should always be developing relationships with people who, while maybe not suited for your needs now, may be perfect fits for great roles in the future, or may even become clients. Maintaining an active and live network is important to reduce the time to hire, but much more importantly, to shape the empathy and personality of your company's brand and culture. - Cat Graham, Cheer Partners
5. Schedule Exploratory Interviews
Organizations should always be recruiting to keep a finger on the pulse of available talent, with interviews framed as exploratory conversations. Doing so keeps the company top of mind with candidates, while also determining their overall interest in a future open position. This saves time and money, creates a pipeline of ready candidates and also shortens the interview-to-onboarding process. - Genine Wilson, Kelly Services
6. Always Be Having The Conversation
Today it’s an employee’s market, so it's incumbent on me to make sure I’ve got a good bench of potential employees in case I need to add to my team or there's an opening because someone took a position at another company. I always want to have an idea of the type and quality of candidate out there should the need arise. It's important, though, to be honest that there's no immediate opening. - Zach Montroy, SPHR, Navigate the Journey
7. Ask For Referrals In Your Network
If you want to find the best talent, the latent talent, the happy-at-their-jobs talent, you must recruit on an ongoing basis. And it needs to be a small part of every leader's and manager's job. Have coffee with potential candidates to get to know each other, or ask someone in your network for referrals to top talent. Share that info with your recruiters and keep the pipeline full. - Sara Whitman, Hot Paper Lantern
8. Always Be Promoting The Company Brand
Companies need to focus on promoting their company brand online. Showcase current employees and post pictures of employee events, meetings and accomplishments. Promoting the company brand and employees throughout the year will allow visitors to see what the company culture is like. When you are ready to post a position, the job seeker will look at the company website and social media and see a glimpse of what your culture is about. - Debi Bliazis, Champions School of Real Estate
9. Build Talent Communities
You should be recruiting all year long regardless of how many positions you have open. The best way to do this is through the use of talent communities. Many HR software tools offer solutions for collecting contact information of candidates so that you can stay in touch with them through updated company news briefs or targeted campaigns to keep them engaged and interested in your company. - Stephen Childs, Panasonic Automotive
10. Recruit Constantly For Hard-To-Fill roles
For most positions, ongoing recruitment is ineffective. But for hard-to-fill roles, it is essential. Roles that generate revenue for the business should always be open — you can always make room for a super salesperson! It also helps to see what your competitors are doing. Other hard-to-fill roles, like those in cyber security or new technologies, can also benefit from having an open role. - Karla Reffold, BeecherMadden
11. Develop A Talent Management Plan
HR should recruit in accordance with a talent management plan that anticipates needs years down the road. Rather than continuously recruiting for the same, stale positions through the years, HR needs a dynamic, proactive approach that shifts with the organization. This is achieved by working closely with leadership to align talent acquisition with operating models changes on an ongoing basis. - Mark Lascola, ON THE MARK
12. Recruit New Talent To Boost Your Brand
If you’re only recruiting talent when there are open positions, you’ll end up with the best of the leftovers. Unless your product or service is extraordinarily niche and the only game in town, recruiting must be constant and consistent. Continuous recruitment boosts your brand and helps you establish critical relationships with top talent who may never work for you, but they may refer others. - Michele Markey, SkillPath
13. It Depends On Industry And Organization
For a company with relatively stable employee retention it makes sense to only recruit for positions as needed. However if you are a company in an industry where employees are constantly being poached (e.g., tech), it is wise to have a repository of resumes you can turn to should the turnover rate start to spike. Odds are at least a handful of those applicants will be in the market for a new opportunity. - Charlene Collier, Capitol Consulting Group
Michael Roberto/Getty Images
Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today and have never done a worse job of it, says Peter Cappelli of Wharton. Much of the process is outsourced to companies such as Randstad, Manpower, and Adecco, which in turn use subcontractors to scour LinkedIn and social media for potential candidates. When applications come—always electronically—software sifts through them for key words that hiring managers want to see. Vendors offer an array of smart-sounding tools that claim to predict who will be a good hire—but whether they produce satisfactory results is unknown. Cappelli explores what’s wrong with today’s recruiting and hiring and how to fix it.
Employers continue to hire at a high rate and spend enormous sums to do it. But they don’t know whether their approaches are effective at finding and selecting good candidates.
The Root CausesBusinesses focus on external candidates and don’t track the results of their approaches. They often use outside vendors and high-tech tools that are unproven and have inherent flaws.
The SolutionReturn to filling most positions by promoting from within. Measure the results produced by vendors and new tools, and be on the lookout for discrimination and privacy violations.
Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today. They’ve never spent as much money doing it. And they’ve never done a worse job of it.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review.