Why Thanksgiving is the Perfect Time to Relax, Recharge, and Think About Your Recruitment Needs
After a busy and stressful year for many businesses, we’re sure you’re greatly looking forward to your Thanksgiving break! The holiday is the ideal time to relax and recharge your batteries while spending time with loved ones.
This time of year is also the perfect time to take a look at your recruitment strategy and give it a boost. If you’re a job searcher, now is also a good time to think about your career path and how you can work on landing your dream job.
As you enjoy your time off and return to work refreshed, keep in mind these recruitment and work productivity tips that you can implement between Thanksgiving and the new year.
Recruitment Tips for Businesses
As the year comes to an end, it’s the ideal time to reassess your recruitment needs and hiring process. There are many things you can do to update your recruitment strategy to ensure you make the best hires in the new year and going forward.
The following are some recruitment strategies to look into after the Thanksgiving break.
1. Setup a Continuous Recruitment Program
The vast majority of companies only think about hiring when a vacancy arises. Despite this being a common practice, it’s definitely not a best practice, and the importance of continuous recruitment cannot be underestimated.
You want to be continuously recruiting and discovering top candidates even if you don’t have any vacancies. There are various ways to do this, from having an applicant database to requesting unsolicited applications and working your network.
Once an opening does occur, you’ll have an incredible pool of talent ready to choose from.
2. Create a Recruitment Marketing Plan
Continuous recruitment and recruitment marketing go hand in hand. To get the most from your hiring process, use the end of Q4 to generate an effective recruitment marketing strategy.
The goal of recruitment marketing is the same as the goal of marketing efforts for your brand’s products or services. You want to make candidates aware of your company, interested in working for you, and ready to apply straight away once a relevant position becomes available.
To be most effective, create a recruitment brand that focuses on who you are as a company, what the culture is like, and why it’s a great place to work. Then create content around this brand, targeted to high-quality candidates across various platforms.
3. Update Your Internal Hiring Policy and Invest in Employee Development
A significant untapped resource that many companies ignore when trying to fill an open position is current employees. Internal hiring brings an array of benefits and shouldn’t be ignored.
A great way to end the year is by improving your internal hiring methods and making it clear to current employees that if they want to move up the ladder, they can. Highlight how this can be done and put in place processes that streamline internal hiring, such as having an internal job posting board and sending out notifications when vacancies open up.
An ideal way to make internal candidates ready for advanced roles is through an employee development program. So definitely look into this when updating your internal hiring methods.
4. Start Posting Entry Level Positions
After Thanksgiving is the perfect time to post for any entry-level roles you’ll have available. Many students graduate at the end of the Fall semester and will be looking for entry-level jobs to start in the new year.
To ensure you access the best new graduates, check out our top tips on hiring entry-level candidates.
5. Learn How to Write More Effective Job Descriptions
If your job descriptions aren’t optimized and written in the most effective way, you won't attract top candidates. Once you return from your relaxing Thanksgiving weekend, spending a few hours to learn how to improve your job descriptions is a great idea that will bring amazing returns in terms of the candidates you attract.
Just a few small changes to the way you write these postings can take your job descriptions from okay to incredible!
6. Improve Your Interviewing Techniques
When looking at overhauling your recruitment processes, you can’t ignore your interviewing techniques. From doing sufficient pre-interview preparation to asking questions that get all the info you need from candidates, there are many things you can do to improve your interview strategy as an interviewer!
7. Generate an Effective Remote Onboarding Strategy
A successful hiring strategy doesn’t end once you make a hire. Onboarding is incredibly important and can make or break the success of your new employee.
If your end of year is a bit quieter than usual, take this time to update your onboarding processes. Doing this is especially crucial if you plan to keep some or all of your operation remote. In that case, be sure to check out our advice for creating a remote onboarding strategy.
Recruitment Tips for Job Searchers
If you’re looking for a great new opportunity in the new year, now is the time to work on yourself as a candidate. The following tips will help you optimize your job application, improve yourself as a candidate, and land that perfect position!
1. Increase Your Work Experience and Grow Your Career
Along with using the holiday to reflect on what you’re thankful for, use your time off to think about how you want to grow in your career and what you must do to make that happen. If you have gaps in your resume, there are many ways to increase your work experience, from volunteering to freelancing and taking courses.
As you reflect, you may even decide that it’s time to switch up your career path and try working in a new type of job or industry. If you’re unsure whether that’s the right move for you, consult our list of signs it’s time for a career change.
2. Optimize Your Resume and Cover Letter
Once you’ve decided that you’ll be applying for new jobs in Q4 or 2021 and Q1 of 2022, you must ensure your application is optimized. Along with reading over our expert tips for boosting your resume and improving your cover letter, be sure to learn how to optimize your resume for ATS (Applicant Tracking Software.)
Running applications through ATS is often the first step in a company’s hiring process. Therefore, you want to make sure you succeed in getting your resume past this software and in the hands of the hiring board.
3. Boost Your Interview Technique
Having got onto the interview stage, be sure to update your interview techniques to ensure you get that second interview and, ultimately, the position. If you aren’t sure where to start with this, our interview tips for candidates can help.
Have you been asked to present in an interview? No problem! Check out our advice for acing interview presentations.
Why Not Partner With a Recruitment Agency?
If the thought of job searching or hiring new employees is a bit overwhelming, partnering with a recruitment agency could be for you. There are numerous reasons to use a recruitment agency, especially a boutique recruitment agency that focuses specifically on your industry niche.
If in the publishing or medical communications industries, be sure to consider working with Lynne Palmer. We have over 60 years of experience connecting world-class companies with incredible candidates.
Ways to Recharge and Improve Your Work-Life Balance
With the stresses of the pandemic and an altered work model still affecting the majority of employees, ensuring you have a healthy work-life balance is more important than ever.
From ensuring you take breaks allotted to you during the workday, to improving time management, and making sure you make time for personal activities each day, there’s a lot you can do to maintain a healthy work-life balance!
If you’re continuing to work remotely, you may also be after some ideas on how to stay motivated working from home. We’ve created a useful list of ways to stay motivated and efficient when working remotely.
Having recharged over Thanksgiving, these tips should help keep workplace productivity and satisfaction at a high through the end of the year.
In Conclusion
Thanksgiving offers the chance to reflect, relax, and, of course, give thanks. It’s also a good time of year to think about your career or business and how your work life can be improved and accelerated.
Hopefully, these recruitment-related tips have given you some ideas for how to update your recruitment or job searching strategy once you’re back to work after the holiday.
We hope you all have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!