No Budget, No Problem: Creative Recruiting Tools

Shoestring Recruiting

 

My Top 3 Free Recruiting Tools

I recently spoke with a client who told me her CEO told her to spend whatever it took to hire the right person. However, the CEO’s definition of “spend whatever it takes” didn’t mean an unlimited budget. It turns out that “spend whatever it takes” meant not spending a lot of money. Does this sound familiar?

Imagine how easy it would be to recruit with an unlimited budget. That dream doesn’t come true for most of us. Instead, we have to break down our recruiting to the core components, remove duplication, combine steps to speed things up, and get creative with how we recruit. Doesn’t sound too difficult ­— until you add in the no budget piece. That’s when things get tricky.

You are not alone in this struggle. I’ve been in your shoes and know how hard recruiting without a budget truly is. I’m going to share my three free and creative recruiting tools with you to help you hire the right people without spending a lot.

Tool #1: Recruit your customers. IKEA, the Swedish retailer, has some brilliant ideas on recruiting. My favorite is to recruit your customers. Marketers spend a lot of time getting to know their customers and a good recruiter does the same with their candidates. Who better to recruit than the people who already love your products or services? IKEA put flyers in their product boxes along with the assembly instructions. When customers opened the box to begin assembling their furniture, they also found instructions for assembling their career at IKEA. Brilliant! You can also find creative ways to recruit your customers. Brainstorm with your marketing people and with a small investment in printing and graphics, you will have plenty of great candidates.

Tool #2: Use Google Trends. Good recruiters understand their candidates and know what’s important to them. Marketers already use Google Trends, and as a recruiter, you need to think like a marketer. This is a great tool to identify the job titles and keywords that your candidates are using in their search. If you are using creative job titles that include words like ninja, guru, or curator, your candidates may never even see your job because they are not searching for those terms.

Tool #3: Use social media to build a candidate pool who are waiting for you to post an opening. You don’t need to be on every social media channel, only the ones your candidates use.

The days of major job boards being the go-to spot for job postings are over. It’s about reaching your ideal candidates, not what’s most convenient for you. Candidates are using social media to interact with companies they would like to work for and connect with the people who work there. If your ideal candidates are using Snapchat, that’s where you should be too.

With a little creativity and these three tools, your recruiting efforts will return high quality candidates without spending a lot of money.

Please share your budget friendly tips in the comments. Your insights may be just what someone else needs to move forward.