A comprehensive hiring event strategy is essential for HR executives to efficiently attract, engage and hire top talent. Having a well-planned and executed hiring event strategy ensures that your recruiting practices are in alignment with organizational goals and streamlines the recruitment process, while making the most of your resources. By combining diverse channels, technology and innovative approaches, a hiring event strategy can also enhance the candidate experience and foster long-term talent acquisition success.
Definition of Hiring Event Strategy
A comprehensive hiring event strategy is a plan that includes strategies for hiring events and how events strategically fit within the context of a broader TA playbook.
A hiring event strategy is not just “how to host successful hiring events” or “how to plan a recruiting event.” Creating a bigger picture hiring strategy requires TA leaders to consider:
- What are the organization’s most important recruiting goals?
- Which HR initiatives can hiring events support?
- What’s the best balance of virtual and in-person hiring events?
- What metrics should we track to measure success?
Here’s a deeper look into each component of a hiring event strategy and how planning for each consideration benefits your overall TA plan.
What are your most important recruiting goals?
In most organizations, these goals will already be clear by the time you set out to create a hiring event strategy. But, if they need updating or clarification, it’s important to take the time to do that before moving forward. If your hiring event strategy is built around outdated or misaligned goals, your team will likely struggle to produce the results you hope to see. Common recruiting goals may include DEI hiring, early career positions and finding specialized talent. For some organizations, a top goal may be related to opening a new location or the expansion of a department. Whatever your goals, you can find ways to support them with hiring events.
Examples:
Hiring events that feature employee resource groups can promote DEI and attract diverse talent.
Campus recruiting strategies that include virtual and in-person events can support early career hiring.
Hard-to-find talent can become easier to find with proactive candidate-centric hiring events.
Which HR initiatives can hiring events support?
While some HR initiatives might overlap with the top goals you identified earlier, the lists don’t have to be identical. Some HR initiatives that hiring events can support include sourcing more diverse candidates, increasing candidate engagement and reducing time to hire.
Modern TA execs want to deliver results for their organization while building a reputation for effective strategies. Learning more about how hiring events can drive positive results in a wide variety of areas – often simultaneously – is crucial in creating a hiring event strategy that exceeds expectations.
What’s the best balance of virtual and in-person hiring events?
The most effective TA teams strike a balance between the speed and efficiency of virtual recruiting events and the personalized experience of in-person events. While the mix might look a little different depending on the types of roles you hire for, the strength and size of your local talent pool and the size of your TA team, we’re seeing many organizations settle on a mix that is around 80% virtual and 20% in-person.
The key is to make strategic decisions about which types of events to hold, when to host them (or how often) and – crucially – the objective of each event. Most TA teams who are getting good results are hosting virtual recruiting events in strategic ways: to control spending, to target niche talent pools and/or to tap into new audiences. In-person events are reserved for more opportunity-based goals, such as engaging with local university students or inviting candidates to a site tour for their final interview.
What metrics should we track to measure success?
Identifying key metrics to track – and setting targets for each – is an important part of turning your hiring event strategy into an actionable plan. Looking back to your goals and initiatives, consider which metrics reflect the areas you hope to improve. Research benchmarking data to help establish targets and timelines. Create a plan for evaluating metrics after events and measuring your progress. And make sure you’re using the right technology to support your efforts.
Hosting virtual events as a purpose-built solution gives you access to all the data you need to plan, execute and update a successful hiring event strategy. You can get even more out of your strategy when you use the same technology to support virtual and in-person events. With the Radancy Talent Acquisition Cloud, you can easily measure what’s working across all your events – and compare in-person events against virtual events – without having to jump through hoops to make equivalencies.
Strategic HR Drives Business Growth
Creating a comprehensive hiring event strategy takes some time and effort, but it’s well worth it. TA leaders who already do this understand the ROI: a more effective, efficient recruiting process that generates better results. By linking hiring events to your goals and initiatives, you can use them to ramp up talent pipelines when needed, improve on candidate experience and empower your team to do their best work. And all of this helps your organization operate more efficiently, save money and pave the way for innovation and growth.
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