Have plenty of open positions but could do with some help finding candidates? Noone applying for your jobs? Recruiting doesn’t have to be boring. You can do more than just ‘post and pray’. Rather than wait for them to come to you, find them yourself! Here are some tips to find suitable candidates:

Look beyond LinkedIn

Try using other social media methods. Platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Youtube are great to find candidates for community management/social media roles. Use websites such as Github, Stack Overflow and Quora to find developers. Don’t forget to engage your followers on your social media platforms, as this can also help you find suitable candidates.

Organise events

Get people interested in your company by putting on industry events. Organising meetups that aren’t specifically recruitment drives but focus on what’s new in your industry can bring in passive candidates. If you want to know how we use events to find IT staff, have a look here.

Consider past applicants

Just because someone wasn’t suitable before, doesn’t mean they’re still no longer suitable now. Maybe they have more experience or a more appropriate role has opened up. This is why giving your applicants a positive candidate experience and rejecting them properly is so important. (Find out what candidates want here.) Leaving them with a positive impression of your company means you can always contact them in the future.

Ask your employees and encourage them to spread the word

Implement an employee referral scheme if you haven’t already. Employees that are happy and incentivised make the best brand ambassadors. Let your employees know which positions need to be filled and what they can stand to gain if they bring in a successful recruit.

Still need some inspiration? Here are a few creative recruiting strategies companies have used in the past…

Ikea Australia

Problem: Needed to fill 100 positions for their new store in Sydney.

Solution: Placed instructions on how to ‘assemble a career at Ikea’ in their flat packs. A cost effective way to reach out to people who were already fans of the company.

Result: 4285 applications, 280 people hired.

Quixey

Problem: Needed to recruit software engineers.

Solution: Set a coding challenge where contestants had to fix a bug in a 10 line algorithm in less than a minute. Participants had the opportunity to win $100, as well as a job. This challenge was fun for participants, while allowing Quixey to identify talents.

Result: They paid $35100 to 351 winners and hired four full time software engineers. Quixey estimates that it would have paid around $80000 if it had paid a recruitment agency to find them these candidates.

Jung von Matt

Problem: Needed to hire a new art director.

Solution: Used Lorem Ipsum to their advantage. When designers pasted this placement text into their work, they were shown a link to the jobs page of Jung von Matt.

Result: 14 000 visitors to their careers website.

Atlassian

Problem: This Australian company needed to hire 15 developers but couldn’t find them in their own country.

Solution: Took a bus to Europe to create a buzz around their company, organise meetups and find recruits to relocate to Australia.

Result: Found more than 1000 qualified applicants in 5 weeks, 5 times the amount they receive normally.

Heard of any other creative or crazy ways to find talent? Let us know below!