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Any business fully understands how recruitment is important in terms of expanding and generating new income. However, many fail to grasp what is the most important element of staff recruitment. The most important step is in fact candidate identification.

The internet can be both a help and a hindrance to staff recruitment. Far too many companies, after all, simply perform the most generic Google searches, using the same keywords that everybody else is using – and as a result, are often overlooking stand out potential candidates.

The most important thing in the initial stages is to make a search that will pull up candidates that are relevant to your vacancy, perhaps experimenting further with various search terms.

Another thing that is essential to staff recruitment is fully understanding the process of reading CVs. So many hiring managers will exclude a candidate on the basis of certain missing skills and experience that they actually do possess, but have simply forgotten to include on their CV.

Also remember that a source of candidate can lead you to your ideal candidate. Perhaps the person you are interviewing isn’t the best possible fit for your company, however he may be connected to the candidate who is.

It’s also possible that they actually are a great match in the context of your longer-term business goals, despite seeming slightly under-qualified or over-qualified right now.

It is imperative to remember that online recruitment is nothing to scoff at, as it is an  industry that is growing exponentially year by year, especially within the IT business.

Given the surge of internet advertising on social media sites, many companies are taking advantage of Twitter’s ability to send out short, concise and useful tweets advertising their business. However, many companies are often misusing Twitter, unaware of how to successfully attract followers.

The first step is to remember to use Twitter in an interactive way, rather than simply posting job vacancies.

You must be careful with your posts, as flooding your followers’ feed will lead to your company developing a reputation for being annoying.

When posting job offers, always mention it as part of a conversation, for example when announcing industry news, such as the creation of a new department.

Also Tweet-worthy are points which make your organisation of interest to potential candidates, anything that makes your company worth keeping an eye on and anything happening in your industry that could be of interest to potential job-seekers.

Hashtags (words or phrases, lacking either spaces or special characters, which are immediately preceded by the # sign) are a useful way of finding out what your desired demographic is talking about.

The actual hashtag #staffrecruitment will likmost likely be used too often, but more specific hashtags related to your industry will increase your company’s presence on Twitter when recruiting staff, attracting more retweets and connecting with potential candidates.

Most importantly, in terms of increasing your presence, it is important to remember that a person doesn’t have to be a follower of your company Twitter account to see tweets that feature a certain hashtag for which they have searched.

1.  Your company page needs to be eye catching, but it also has to be personal in order to attract a sincere and authentic candidate. Describe the working culture within your company, and showcase awards, outline career paths and describe the opportunity to make an impact within your business.

2. Use the careers page to advertise your job listings, as LinkedIn’s ease of use and clarity will allow everybody within your company to advertise employment vacancies. This way, people who are not necessarily looking for work, but are in demand, are given exposure.

3. The ‘Share With’ button allows you to share certain messages with certain groups, allowing you to tailor posts to certain demographics and candidates.

4. Joining groups that are relevant to your industry may provide you with professional acquaintances that can help you to source the best candidate.

5. Company status updates are a simple and hugely effective way to engage with your followers. You will likely have the most followers on your company page, therefore advertising there is key.

6. If you’re schedule is too restrictive, a tool such as Hootsuite allows you to write one status update which is then broadcasted across all of your social media accounts.

7. Encourage your followers to share, like and comment on your posts. If they do, your posts will be shared within each of your followers’ network, giving your brand even more exposure.

8. Be helpful and post relevant content that like-minded people will be interested in. You will boost your company’s profile and build your reputation as an expert in your field.

9. Take full advantage of SEO; research on how to fully utilise key words and phrases that will increase exposure to your site.

10. Some small business owners worry that if their employees have great LinkedIn profiles, they will be targets for prospective employers and recruiters. An employee’s professional profile on LinkedIn will reflect well on your company, which will make the company appear that much more respectable.

Ask your employees to help. If your current employee is doing an incredible job, their input could be valuable to understand things from an employee’s perspective. Ask the employee about what is expected of the job, and if they are able to identify a good candidate for employment, you could even offer a reward.

Simplify the CV checking process. As a hiring manager, you will no doubt understand how time consuming the CV checking process can be. To combat this, you could ask for a simplified CV and five reasons why that applicant is perfect for your role.

Beware of the candidate’s attitude and personality.  You can always teach a new candidate new technical skills, however it is very rare that an applicant’s attitude will change. When beginning a recruitment strategy, look for traits such as good decision making skills, commitment to service, a calm nature and a friendly manner.

Use recruitment technology. Using new technology such as video CVs, video interviews and aptitude tests will allow you to judge a candidate’s worth more efficiently, particularly when you are able to see the candidate’s face and read their body language. This works particularly well for roles that receive a large volume of applications.

Arrange impromptu interviews. This can weed out those who are slow to respond from those who immediately show initiative and character. A public setting such as a restaurant or coffee shop will allow you to see for instance how the candidate interacts with waiters and other staff.

Ask how the candidate is doing. A person’s response to ‘how are you’ can tell you a lot about how the candidate will interact with their customers. Maybe they talk about themselves a lot, or even complain of being tired. If the candidate is reserved, you need to consider just how much they’re really getting out of this experience, and ultimately, the role on offer.

Always be sure that you and your team always conduct an extensive reference check on those candidates you feel most strongly about. You don’t want to hire someone who was terminated from their last job for treating a customer unfairly.

Given how competitive the IT industry has become, recruiting has become even harder.

However, online recruitment has been able to adapt to the every growing industry, enabling hiring managers to source and identify candidates with a breadth of skills and experience with very little time lost

Here are the best recruitment methods available online:

1. Online skills tests

All applicants will claim they have superb IT skills. This is a perfect chance to test their abilities.

This works particularly well for positions with specialist skills. You can even go as far as creating your own custom tests to help identify which candidates are worth interviewing, and use the scores as a benchmark to assess applicants against.

2. LinkedIn

Hiring within the IT industry means dealing with positions in a very niche area of the industry. This  often results in searching for candidates with narrow skill-sets for specific positions, such designers or code writers.

LinkedIn’s keyword function has made it possible to identify potential IT candidates’ work experience and skills. This has been proven by Microsoft’s use of it for recruitment.

3. Automated online video interviews

Distinguishing one applicant from another has become harder than ever, due to the saturation of applicants and decreasing number of jobs.

Automated online video interview solutions, have made it possible to fairly and consistently interview any candidate located anywhere in the world.

4. CV databases

Whilst there are indeed a large mass of applicants actively seeking employment, it is also worth checking CV databases in order to research A CV database is an effective way of targeting relevant, passive IT applicants fast.

5. Online recruiters

There are a number of reasons why using a fixed fee recruiter can help you with your IT recruitment needs.

Recruiters have a variety of tools at their disposal, such as social network sites, networking and headhunting. IT recruiters understand how your particular company works and where to look to identify and attract the most suitable IT candidates.

With competition for IT recruitment at an all time high, attracting talent to your business can be a challenge.

Sales recruitment is an incredibly difficult aspect of recruiting to your company, and it is natural to approach the process with caution. The reason for this is that recruiting the wrong candidates will cost you potentially thousands of pounds as well as valuable client accounts.

A common mistake that many businesses make is the assumption that hiring one or two more efficient salespeople will help the company to recover from the damage.

The sales department is possibly the most complex department in any business, and  in order for it to be as effective as possible, it will require your attention and care until a robust and efficient team is constructed. One thing that is imperative to remember is that the sales team is in essence the face of your company, as it will be them who your customers will interact with initially and then regularly.

A sales recruitment strategy does take careful consideration, however before developing a new one, it is worth reflecting on your current processes and understand why it’s not working for you, and how you can rectify the mistakes.

Here is a list of three tips that will guide you towards developing a strategy that will attractthe best sales representatives possible.

1. Develop a plan that will persuade sales representatives to stay.

If you don’t have a sales recruitment strategy for on-boarding, educating, training and coaching any new employees, it can often leave them feeling undervalued, which will result in them searching for more promising job opportunities.

2. Make sure you highlight all the opportunities you provide.

In order to attract the best candidates, it is important that they understand what they can get out of your company. You should specify your work environment, guidelines and future prospective employment opportunities.

3. Define the financial prospects

All sales professionals are searching for a job with a comfortable level of pay, which you must provide.  Keep your commission structures real and simple so you can set gradual expectations that will assist them with being successful in your business.

In conclusion, an effective sales recruitment strategy can only be measured against its own performance. If your current strategy is not providing you with the desired results, it is time to reconsider and develop a new strategy.

These three simple rules are key to developing an effective sales strategy, and you will soon attract the ideal salespeople that your company requires.

It was brought to light last month revealed the number of female directors has increased significantly over the past 5 years, with the increase in female directors outstripping men: 24% compared to 15%.

However, in today’s society the lack of female directors is a reminder of inequality between women and men, with almost 90% of boardroom positions going to men. Repairing this injustice is beneficial for your business by restoring balance and moral.

Those who are supporters of female board members argue:

- Men may naturally be more prone to risk taking and competition, but women are better collaborators and better at achieving long-term results
- The appointment of women to the board will reflect positively on the company in the public eye
- Encouraging women in positions of leadership provides positive role models to young women and other emerging leaders
- Female board members result in the attraction and retention of diverse staff and better staff morale
- Having more women in leadership positions is correlated with stronger financial returns

Whilst there still remains a great deal of progress to be made before complete equality is achieved, there are already initiatives in place to help increase the number of females in senior positions. Lord Davies, in his review of Women on Boards, has called for companies in the FTSE 100 to aim for a minimum of 25% females to be represented at the board of directors’ level by the year 2015.

But this sort of situation requires more than just a recommendation. And if we want to see a result, business leaders need to take action.

If you are looking to increase the number of women in leadership positions at your company, consider the opportunities you offer female employees for advancement and the barriers they face.

More often than not, women encounter gender-based stereotypes about who is qualified to do what kind of job. Address this challenge by offering female employees more flexible working conditions that fit around things such as child care.

You could also develop a specific recruitment plan for key vacancies that provide the best opportunities to attract women to senior roles and encourage them to apply.

Unfortunately, the subject of attracting and developing female directors is a topic that will continue to stir much debate. But by recognising some of the issues preventing women from participating in higher level roles, employers are able to begin addressing these issues

With handheld devices quickly encompassing all mediums of technology, online recruitment is rapidly evolving every day. The scope ranges from concentrating on the active job seeker via online job boards to building communities through the use of social media to target the active and passive talent.

Whilst mobile is unlikely to be the solution to hiring, it is undeniably becoming a key channel in the recruiting mix.

Statistics into mobile usage showed that:

- Mobile now accounts for 10% of Internet usage worldwide (more than double since 2011)
- 91% of mobile Internet is for social activities
- 1.08b of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones are smartphones

Some predict that with the ever advancing technology, mobile internet users will exceed desktop users in as little as 3 years.

Whilst research shows that people actively search for jobs on their mobile, unfortunately, the technology for applying and attaching CVs is still outdated and impractical. Therefore, those who do look at jobs on their mobile throughout the day must wait until they get home and apply via desktop.

More and more recruiters and companies are embracing mobile recruitment as a method of candidate attraction as it is an innovative way to capture and showcase their companies.

Employment rates in the UK are currently at an estimated 2.51 million, which makes the job market more competitive than ever before. According to online recruitment agencies, there is an average of 80 applicants for one job. This means that interviewers and recruiters are having to go further in order to identify the most suitable candidates, resulting in increasingly unorthodox questions.

Naturally, you still get the traditional, behavioural type interview questions: ‘Tell me about a situation in which you had to deal with a customer complaint’, ‘where do you see yourself in 5 years time?’ But now interviewers are beginning to throw curveball questions, which are becoming an increasingly common way to test a candidate’s critical thinking abilities, as well as providing an insight into their personality.

Another reason for these types of question is generally to gauge how well a candidate will fit within the company, as well as how you would take to an unexpected problem that initially sounds ridiculous.

You should always attempt to answer the question, as any attempt at all is better than no attempt.

It is also ok to admit that the question surprised you; it is also acceptable to ask for a few seconds to think. Maintaining a sense of humour is also important, as is often the case, approaching the question with humour can help you to relax and become more genuine with your interviewers.

Always bear in mind that your answer will reflect on your insight, thought processes and entrepreneurial ability, as well as how you deal with spontaneous situations which will have a much more resounding effect than your CV.

An essential thing to remember is that an interview is not just aimed to determine whether or not you will be employed. It is also to determine whether or not you will be a good addition to the company, which you should constantly be thinking about. Therefore, the unexpected questions are just as important to you.