Recruitment Strategies for Companies Entering a Growth Phase

While the economy is still recovering from the effects of the pandemic, some industries are in a hyper-growth phase. Some sectors in tech, healthcare, pharma, and advanced manufacturing are advancing rapidly, and the recently passed Infrastructure bill is expected to have an even larger impact on industries that support those types of large-scale energy and engineering projects.

The ability to source and hire qualified personnel is one of the biggest constraints on growth for these growth companies. Hiring companies need to move to a proactive mode to identify the best pools of candidates. For example, Lever’s Recruiting Benchmarks research found that sourced candidates are more than twice as efficient as candidates applying for open positions at companies.

Here are some recommendations for effective recruiting in a high growth phase.

SET UP AN EMPLOYEE REFERRAL PROGRAM
This is a simple yet effective way to put your entire team to work sourcing great candidates. Put your team’s networks to work by launching an incentive for successful hires. If the referral is someone known and trusted by an existing team member, that’s already a positive. You can set the incentive up for a fixed period, let’s set a quarter or 6 months, and then extend if the program showing results.

It’s important, however, to create a sense of urgency, so setting an initial deadline is a good idea, with regular email or internal social reminders as the date approaches. That keeps up the pressure and reinforces the importance of the referral program. It’s also important to emphasize that the referral incentive will only be paid for candidates who are hired and joint the company, not just for putting someone into the pool of candidates.

CONSIDER PAID SOCIAL MEDIA
Either on your own, or working with a media agency, it’s not difficult to launch a paid social media campaign intended to drive recruiting. The same principles apply as with any social media marketing, except that the intended targets are candidates rather than clients. The advertiser identifies a set of competitors or companies from relevant other industries that you would like to source candidates from.

Next, they define the titles they wish to target from those companies, such a project manager or cybersecurity specialist, and geographies if relevant. Simple ad copy is needed, such as “find your next career move in cybersecurity with ___ Inc.” LinkedIn is a great social media platform for paid recruiting social media and will work with you or your agency to launch an ad campaign specifically targeting people with those criteria. The ads appear either on the side bar of the page, or directly in the target candidates’ feed, depending on the ad format you pick and invest in. The link should lead to your own recruiting landing page.

RE-ENGAGE EXISTING QUALIFIED CANDIDATES
There may be many candidates that went through initial phases of recruitment on other roles, but who for any number of reasons didn’t make the final cut. This is a great resource when looking at open roles. These candidates have already been through the first phases of evaluation and have shown some interest in your company. Revisiting the database of prior candidates can yield some good candidates for your current open roles and avoids the need to start all over.

MAKE SURE THE PACKAGE IS COMPELLING
It’s important to look at the whole compensation package — not only salary — and ensure that you’re staying competitive with other firms in your industry. Is there an equity upside, for example in the form or options or restricted stock units? Depending on the structure of your business and the long-term strategic outlook, that can be a compelling motivator for candidates to join a high-growth company. Are your employee benefits in line with competitors as well? A solid set of health and other benefits can be a differentiator. There’s clearly a cost to these benefits, but it can have an outsize impact on hiring and retention in the long-run.