If you want to hire the best, you have to go after the best because, on average, only about 17 percent of the workforce is actively looking for a job (and many of those are people you probably would not want to hire).
At the other end of the spectrum, we have the 83 percent who are working (most likely the people you do want to hire), so you need to actively recruit them.
The following excerpt from an Inc. article summarizes a Google recruiter’s tips that anyone can use to win the war for talent:
- Recognize the inherent strengths of the amateur: Read resumes with an open mind. Remember resumes are just a marketing piece.
- Be a language detective: Look for active versus passive language.
- Make being small work for you: It can make you unique and you can offer a lot the larger company can’t.
- Don’t believe the social media hype: Referrals are still the best source of great employees.
- Write great headlines and tell people what they will get to do and why the job is so important.
This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.