There’s a lot of debate about what skill is the most important in recruiting.
What makes a good recruiter versus a great one? I believe it’s so highly debated because we’re expected to be good at so many things. Recruiters should be great at discovering, engaging, creating and connecting with candidates. Constantly moving from project to project. Ultimately, that’s it. That’s what makes the best recruiting – the ability to pivot. A quality that’s innate in the growth hacker mindset said our guest and founder of FlyingGang.org / co-founder of DBR, Tris Revill.
Tris loves a challenge and that’s exactly what he found in his niche: start-up recruiting. “In a startup you literally have nothing. It’s a question of being very scrappy and making the most of what is.” Working with new companies with little to no brand left Tris to rely on his laptop alone to fill upwards of 26 roles with one client alone. While many would find that overwhelming, Tris found it exhilarating.
“It means I can just get really, really stuck into recruiting at pace. I have to automate.”
A growth hacker approach
Taking a growth hacker approach, Tris evaluated the recruiting process for automation points. His ultimate goal? Get the candidate to apply quickly. Seems simple, right? Optimising time and volume was critical to filling the number of roles open. Yet experience taught Tris not to buy-in to typical approaches to recruiting.
In his evaluation, Tris found a few key points he recommends for recruiters interested in a growth hacker methodology:
- Create a better approval process for job postings. “If I write an amazing job ad and I target it in the right manner, then I’m going to get great applicants I can streamline to interview.” In a big company that can take 3 to 4 weeks, when it could take 3 to 4 hours. Optimise for hours.
- Speed to the short list. You don’t need to contact hundreds of candidates. Extract and sort data to find your top 5 options then leverage networks to connect with them. Find the right ones, not all of the options.
- Use data. Strategically advise recruiters and hiring managers on how they are hiring and what is available to them in terms of the market. Understand your pipelines. Leverage behavioural data to predict and optimise outcomes.
- Build automated talent pipelines with content. If you hire high volume/low retention roles, you can activate thousands of candidates by understanding how to interpret data to deliver targeted content. “Make sure that your experience is high value. To do that well, you need to optimise.
If that wasn’t enough, below you’ll hear Tris share more:-
