All recruiting and staffing professionals know that best practices yield the best business results, and the vast majority of experienced recruiters know what those best practices are. So, why are some best practices rarely practiced?

The answer is that recruiters servicing a demanding and disparate group of hiring managers, specifically managing a workload of 20-40 requisitions each, simply don’t have the time.

The unfortunate reality here is that:

• Most recruiting best practices (that remain ‘unpracticed’) don’t really take that much time
• When time can be allocated to these best practices, it will, undoubtedly, free up time in other areas. This is because the impact of these practices on recruiter productivity and the company’s overall business performance can be quite significant.

Here are four examples of recruiting best practices that organizations should consider implementing, or find partners who can implement on their behalf:

1. Proactive, continuous sourcing – Proactive sourcing, ahead of demand - versus sourcing in response to a specific job requisition. This is the well-known, less-practiced talent warehouse concept. Most organizations do not have the staff to manage/maintain a large number of candidates in a talent warehouse, which is much more than a resume database. Others try to employ this concept for the top 5 to 10 percent of candidates that would make great employees.

2. Candidate Value Capture – This refers to the practice of assigning a theoretical dollar amount to each incremental investment made in the candidate screening process. For example, once a resume is looked at ($250), after first phone screen ($750), second phone screen ($1,500), first face-to-face interview ($2,500), second interview ($5,000), etc. Once a company has invested $5,000 - $10,000 (or more) in a particular candidate, that “value” must be captured or retained until a decision has been reached on employment.

A logical implication here is that every candidate that drops out of the process before a decision point, or offer, is a major investment with limited or no return. In summary, process bottlenecks or a sub-optimal candidate experience can cost a company millions over time.

3. Candidate Relationship Management during down business cycles – Some companies find time and resources to steadily communicate with viable candidates to keep them warm until the right opportunity arises. However, only a handful of companies reach out to their competitor’s employees who are being laid off during a down business cycle. Even though a company may not be in a hiring position, a genuine and supportive communication to a displaced employee shows them that they’re well thought of in the industry. Perhaps more importantly, it goes a long way toward demonstrating you are their “employer of choice” in the future.

4. Two-Way On-Boarding – Most organizations collect benefits and other administrative information from candidates during the on-boarding process. However, a few will use on-boarding as an avenue to collect market or competitive intelligence, candidate feedback on how the company or the company’s hiring process is perceived, and/or referrals for potential business or other high caliber employees.

These best practices are foundational to the Talent Acquisition Life Cycle. Proactive sourcing and a talent warehouse will shorten sourcing time, thereby reducing cost to fill, keeping candidates from opting-out of the process, and keeping internal customers satisfied. Implementing Candidate Value Capture will highlight efficiencies (or inefficiencies) in your process and allow you to make adjustments accordingly.

Candidate Relationship Management includes much more than communicating with potential candidates to establish a rapport. It establishes a company’s reputation within the industry as a “great place to work” and helps reduce the cycle time on attracting and closing a deal with best-fit candidates.

Finally, employee’s competitive information and feedback are essential to recruiting process improvements and competitive advantage overall. Learn to leverage the perspectives of candidates and new employees as “industry operatives” versus just engaging them about their role.

Steve Goldberg