In the same vein that a PowerPoint® deck is not a presentation, and a GPS is not a trip, recruiting is not an app or a job board. To be clear, we’re entirely onboard with using technological aids to enable recruiting processes, but if you desire a discerning process that consistently yields people with the requisite talent and organizational fit, when and where you need them, a lot of skillful human effort is still involved.

If your business is at all labor intensive, here are some tips to bear in mind when it comes to recruiting:

1. Make sure recruiters are armed with job profiles that are completely up to date and based on performance characteristics that have proven instrumental to success – recently. These can be gleaned from a combination of analytics and the considered opinion of a wily veteran or two. Challenge education and experience requirements that are more than a couple years old particularly hard, as much has changed.
2. Expand your sourcing channels. Just as farmers know that you can’t expect to farm the same ground for the same crops year after year, recruitment sources need to be cultivated and rotated. Moreover, as Ross Perot has suggested, “Eagles don’t flock – you find them one at a time.”
3. In view of the fact that the decisions about who winds up on your payroll are perhaps the most important decisions any leader makes, make sure that your business leaders at every level are well-skilled in this area. I’ll wager that a lot of your managers have never learned how to do an effective employment interview (from the hiring side of the desk). Further, if such decisions are truly important to the organization, make sure that quality of hiring metrics show up on every manager’s performance rating criteria, and that there is significant money at stake.
4. Lastly, stop disrespecting your recruiters and instead show them some love by making sure that they have adequate tools (and yes, technology) to work with, but even more importantly, that their efforts and contributions are appreciated. They have a tough job that is getting tougher by the day. If you really want them to be focused and fired up, make sure that they have some serious outcomes-driven cash at stake.

Good luck, and happy hunting.