Recruiting Strategies
Basically, there are three ways to go about recruiting employees: you can do it yourself, use an outside company or agency, or combine the two. Before you get out there and start recruiting like mad, you'll need to decide on a strategy. Do you need an employee yesterday, or do you have time to move slowly? Are you looking for one or two people, or will you be bringing on a whole new staff?
You'll want to use slightly different strategies depending on the time you have to spend.
1) Immediate Recruiting
If you need to hire someone quickly, it might be worth the extra cost to use a
private employment agency, which is faster and saves you much of the legwork involved in recruiting someone yourself. Otherwise, the best bets are to place an ad in the classifieds, post your job with CalJOBS, and ask people you know for referrals. You can also post job openings on local websites, and they're usually free. You can list your job order with the County's Employment Training Division, too, by phone.
2) Recruiting a Large Staff/Hiring Frequently
If you have to hire employees frequently or need to staff a number of vacancies at once, you'll probably want to contact private and/or public employment agencies to help with your recruitment. This way, you're more likely to reach a wider audience, and spend far less time doing so. Depending on your budget, you might also consider extending your advertising campaign beyond the classifieds to include local radio and TV stations.
3) Specialized Recruiting
If you require specialized skills, training, or education, you might need to widen your recruiting to include a larger geographical area. CalJOBS is a free service that will advertise your job opening throughout California and the US (using America's Job Bank), so that's a great place to start. If you need someone with lots of high-tech experience, you might also think about placing ads in the San Francisco Chronicle or on the widely-read website Craig's List.
If you're recruiting for a specific industry, you might also contact the local chapter or union that represents that occupation to see whether they have bulletin boards or can offer a referral. You could also consider taking out an ad in a trade journal that relates to this industry, though you should only do this if you have considerable time to recruit, as these journals are often published quarterly, and in any case need substantial lead time to plce your ad.
4) Do-It-Yourself Recruiting
If you have more time to spend on your recruiting efforts, you'll be able to conduct a more comprehensive, and potentially more rewarding search for employees. Spend time thinking about your ideal candidates, and consider where you might find them. You can talk with colleagues and ask where they found their star employees, conduct recruitments at local colleges, develop a network of people who can provide you with referrals (link to Referrals), and put out as many classified ads and Internet postings as your time and budget allow.
Get creative about where you recruit. You can take advantage of bulletin boards wherever you find them. The library is a good bet, as are coffee shops, community centers, apartment complexes, bookstores, and public kiosks.
