In order to make their own recruitment process more candidate-driven, the companies need to renew their recruitment process and find new ways of attracting potential candidates. Tommi Talja, talent agent at Talented Solution, shares his views on how to modernise the recruitment process and how to make the process more agile.

Over the last few years, recruitment has started to be more and more about sales and marketing. When a company wants to reach the best people and get them to be interested in it as a potential employer, the company often needs to do much more than just publish a recruitment advertisement on its own social media channels or in recruitment media. This is particularly true in sectors where competition for the best talent is becoming increasingly fierce.

In sales, there is a strong focus on managing and leading the sales process, and on getting salespeople to do things better in customer meetings. This effort is still missing in the recruitment processes of many companies.

–If you want to get results, the recruitment process should be modelled on the sales process, where the aim is to impress the candidate. In sales, there is a strong focus on managing and leading the sales process, and on getting salespeople to do things better in customer meetings. This effort is still missing in the recruitment processes of many companies, says Talented Solution's talent agent Tommi Talja.

He says successful recruitment, where an organisation gets the talent it wants on its team and the talent gets the job it wants, is not just about screening candidates and scheduling them. 

–It is at least as important to build genuine trust in the candidate and to openly share the strengths and challenges of the working community. This will ensure that the candidate has the right image of the company as an employer and that there are no surprises for either party later on.

Data for Modern Recruitment

When a company wants to start improving its own recruitment process, it is worth using data collection to help. Data can help identify areas for improvement and bottlenecks in your recruitment process. If data collection is not done, it is impossible to say where in the process the company has succeeded and where it has failed. This also makes it challenging to improve the recruitment process. 

–However, data should not be stared at blindly, Talja continues. –Otherwise it can distort the process too much and negatively affect the candidate experience. For example, if a company is trying to get through the recruitment process as quickly and efficiently as possible, the rush may also be reflected in the candidate experience, and the recruitment process will naturally not be the best it can be. 

For this reason, it is important for the recruiting organisation to carefully select the metrics and ensure that they support the objectives.

Investing in Employer Image Work

There is a lot of talk about employer branding, but Talja thinks it would be more important to discuss the different aspects of employer branding in more depth.

–Discussing things on a practical, day-to-day level makes things much more concrete than if employer branding is only discussed as an umbrella concept. Instead of just talking about the teleworking opportunities offered by the employer, it is more interesting to discuss what teleworking is like in everyday life and how it can be developed further, says Talja.

According to Talja, companies should deconstruct the whole concept of employer branding and think about what employer branding and employer image mean in their own work community and what are the things that work there. 

–It's also important to ask your own work community about these issues, rather than having those in senior positions just discuss things amongst themselves. It is also worth asking people outside the workplace what kind of image their organisation has of them as an employer, or whether they are familiar with the organisation at all. Once these things are clear, it's worth taking similar organisations into consideration and finding out what people's perceptions are of those places. In this way, you can find ways to improve your own performance.

Employer branding work must always be done honestly and openly – what is communicated to the outside world must be based on facts.

–If there are any issues that need to be addressed in staff interviews, it's definitely worth putting them right before embarking on employer image marketing.

Correcting Mistakes Is the Key

To make your recruitment process applicant-driven, agile and modern, you need to go through the whole process from start to finish, identify where the problems are and fix them.

–There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Often it's about very simple things, such as the need for more flexibility. Another good question is how many people are leaving the company? Before you start recruiting new people in large numbers, it's worth finding out why people are leaving and how to make them happy at work. 

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