Debate article by CEO of Ofir A/S, Karsten Vikke: Employers! Stop recruiting on autopilot!

In this age of climate awareness, there is much talk of the merits of reusing and recycling. While this is great when it comes to glass, cardboard and paper, it is toxic for a good recruitment process.

All too often, I see in my work at job portal Ofir that employers persist in recycling old job ads with just a few tweaks to the requirements and a new application date. So let me make one thing clear from the outset: the days when you could quickly rehash a job ad and still get plenty of applicants are well and truly over.

Far too many forget that job ads are a form of communication – you have a message that needs to reach a specific target group. I actually call it recruitment marketing. You need to approach recruitment in exactly the same way as your external marketing efforts. Marketing people know that target groups change their behaviour. Your job ads from previous years are no longer effective. The world has changed.
On top of this, employment in Denmark is sky-high.

This means that you need to be speaking to people who already have a job. They need to be tempted, and they need to be reached where they already are. You need to think in terms of channels, the places where relevant people might actually be in a job climate where most people are in work – things like social media. So, there are three key things for employers to bear in mind when recruiting: what channels will you use, how will you write, and how will you maximise applicant conversion? And it is Danish employers’ approach to conversion that worries me most. Many have clearly never attempted to apply for their own jobs, when they ask candidates to complete 50 fields of irrelevant information that never gets used.

Think about what is the absolute minimum you as an employer need to assess a candidate. In the current job climate, it is better to get in a pile of applications and then sift through them. Employers abroad are much more progressive in this area. An applicant might be asked simply for contact details and a link to a LinkedIn profile. And why not? My advice is to drop those tired old ads and go instead for the right language, the right channels and, not least, simple conversion. Because that is how you can get on top of your recruitment.

The article is published by Børsen. Read the original article in Danish here.