The Metiss Group's Blog

According to us.gov the top five New Year’s Resolutions are:

1. Lose weight
2. Volunteer to help others
3. Quit smoking
4. Learn more
5. Get a better job

With sixty-percent of hiring managers expecting an uptick in hiring in the year ahead, now is the best time to start your recruiting efforts — especially since it’s one of the top 5 New Year’s Resolutions for potential applicants!  January is the best month to reach passive candidates capitalizing on their New Year’s resolutions.  Often, these newly resigned job seekers will begin searching for new positions that first week in January even before they have their resumes prepared.

Whether or not you have an immediate need, identifying superstars when they are emotionally committed to change jobs and courting them until you have a spot for them is a strategy that will give you a long-term competitive edge.  We’ve all learned the hard way that waiting until you have an opening is too late to begin searching for just the right person.  Granted, there is some effort required to keep the candidate engaged as the year progresses, but that’s nothing like the effort required to find someone out of thin air once an opening occurs.

As the holidays are upon us, so are lots of gatherings with people looking for safe topics of conversation.  Use the time wisely by preparing a little pitch you or your direct reports can use to describe the culture of your organization and the pros of working there.  When people begin to search for positions, they’ll start by thinking about the type of place they’d like to work — let one of those places that come to mind be yours.

Empower your direct reports to plant seeds of candidate sourcing now, so they can reap the benefits when you need to actively hire but don’t want to settle for any warm body.

This entry was posted on December 12, 2014 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Selection. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.