Proactive vs. Reactive Hiring: Improve Your Recruiting Strategy

When do you start the hiring process? For many businesses, the hiring process probably begins when the company decides to add a new role, when an employee leaves their position, or when a big project is coming up and you need more manpower. This is called reactive hiring: hiring when you realize that a position needs to be filled.

While reactive hiring makes sense on paper, it doesn’t work as well in practice. The hiring process can take weeks or even months to find the right fit for your business. If you hire reactively, that can leave positions vacant or your other employees overworked while you search for the perfect candidate. This can slow down productivity, cost your business money, and stress out your current staff members. Reactive hiring can also lead to a rushed hiring process, resulting in a poor hiring decision that wastes even more time and money. 

Learn how proactive hiring works and why it is a better strategy for your business. 

What is Proactive Recruitment? 

Proactive hiring does not mean that you hire new employees before you actually have work for them. Rather, it means that you begin and maintain the early stages of the hiring process well before you anticipate the need to hire. 

This means networking, sourcing, and engaging with potential candidates regularly, so that those relationships are already formed once you are ready to hire. Then, when a position opens, you can turn to your existing pipeline or network of pre-sourced and screened candidates, cutting down time to hire and improving the quality of your hires. 

Proactive hiring can include everything from creating a talent network to your employer branding and recruitment marketing. If your business is always working to attract and connect with talented candidates, you’ll have an easier time hiring once the time is right. 

Benefits of Proactive Hiring

Implementing proactive hiring practices offers various benefits for your business. Consider these reasons to use proactive instead of reactive hiring: 

Faster Hiring Process

While proactive hiring is technically a year-round practice, it will shorten the time to hire once a position opens up. Since you’ve pre-sourced and screened potential candidates, you can contact them and fill the position faster. Proactive hiring cuts out the time it takes to post a job listing, wait for applicants, and sort through their resumes and credentials before contacting them, as you’ll already have qualified candidates in your network. 

Find a Better Fit

When you hire proactively, you have more time to get to know the candidates in your network, and they have more time to learn about your company. This can result in a better fit, as you don’t have to rush through the hiring process without proper vetting. A better fit will also improve employee retention, as the candidate has more time to understand your company’s values and culture, so they can take their time to consider if your company is right for them. 

Access More Candidates

Proactive hiring gives you the time to connect with more potential candidates, including the top talent in your field. Creating connections with more candidates through your recruitment marketing, newsletters, talent networks, or other proactive steps can ensure that you find the absolute best fit for the job. By cultivating a network of talented candidates, you’ll have access to the best when the time to hire comes around. 

How to Implement Proactive Hiring

If you want to be more proactive in your hiring process, begin today. There are a few different ways to start hiring proactively:

• Improve your employer branding: Define your message, values, mission, culture, and more to attract candidates that match your goals and beliefs.
• Step up your marketing: Bring more visibility to your brand and attract more potential candidates to your website, social media, and other outlets by improving upon your existing marketing strategy.
• Create a talent network: If you don’t already have a talent network for interested candidates to join, create one. Learn how to build a talent network here. 
• Improve your application process: Make it easier for candidates to apply so that they are not confused or discouraged.
• Network and Engage: Connect with applicants, members of your talent network, or talented professionals from your larger network to create and maintain useful relationships. 

Proactive hiring is beneficial for various reasons, and can help your company grow with the best talent. If you need help hiring or want to learn how to improve your recruitment strategy, contact us at TalentFlex Solutions.