How multi-platform recruitment can help companies

Miles Skelton

In an increasingly digital dominant world, organisations are starting to recognise that traditional tools and print media are no longer effective as the sole methods in any recruitment process. Miles Skelton explains

More and more companies that are looking to recruit senior talent are investing in online, bespoke solutions. Companies offering bespoke resourcing services are seeing strong levels of growth from both new and existing clients.

Challenging times

Recruiting high-calibre candidates with the necessary experience is always a challenge. For the public sector this is even more difficult, as it is faced with the further challenge of the draw of the private sector, which attracts many candidates with its significantly more lucrative opportunities.

A skilled and efficient workforce is essential to providing effective public services in the face of significant economic uncertainty. This is something of which Sir Albert Bore, Leader of Birmingham City Council, is all too aware.  When looking to appoint a new Chief Executive, he has been attracted by the cost and success rates of multi-platform solutions when compared to traditional expensive search consultants.

Multi-platform gets results

An increasingly business-focused approach from local government often requires sourcing candidates with commercial, private sector experience to compliment this new direction.

The need for a high-quality and diverse shortlist requires the attraction of passive as well as active candidates. For this a multi-platform approach must be used in order to be able to reach a wide audience whilst also targeting specific individuals. 

Assistant director of HR at Birmingham City Council, Tarik Chawdry believes that the recent successful recruitment of its new chief executive, Mark Rogers, was due to the organisation adopting digital search strategy, which was able to cast a wider net than methods used by traditional search consultancies, which often draw on the same pool of candidates.

Digital media in recruitment today

Google continues to dominate the search market with 9 out of 10 jobseekers using it as the start of their search. This powerful tool is not to be ignored, together with social media – of which the most popular in terms of recruitment is LinkedIn, followed by Facebook, Twitter, companies’ blogs, and then Google+ and YouTube.

The continued rise of social media is a double-edged sword in terms of aiding recruitment. On one side there is a greater visibility of talent in the marketplace together with opportunities for easy and direct engagement, on the other hand to screen potential candidates on these platforms can be a challenge especially given the size of the databases, coupled with the often incomplete information provided.

This means that an effective and efficient approach is needed when using technology to identify, shortlist and then engage with talent. In an increasingly competitive industry the critical combination is that of a strong understanding of digital trends coupled with a flawless customer focus. 

Miles Skelton is general manager at Jobsgopublic