Finding the right job candidates is becoming more and more difficult. Recruiter and other HR professionals that don't use innovative recruiting strategies are often unable to find job candidates that are suitable for their open positions. With all the changes and advances in HR technologies, there are many new solutions for some of the biggest recruiting challenges, and many are now implementing these new solutions to improve their hiring strategies and find job candidates easier and faster.
According to the Recruitment strategies report 2017 done by GetApp, the biggest recruiting challenge in 2017 was the shortage of skilled candidates. Companies are facing the biggest challenges trying to find job candidates! 
To find the right job candidates, recruiters have to have a well-planned and developed recruiting and hiring strategies. When putting together a strategy like this, it is important to understand that the process of Talent acquisition never stops.
This process has changed significantly since a few years ago when, to find job candidates, was enough to post a job on job boards and wait for candidates to apply. Today, if you want to find job candidates, you need to build a strong Employer Branding strategy to attract high-quality applicants for hard-to-fill roles.
Here are 8 key steps that will help you find job candidates easier and faster:
1. Know your ideal candidate
If you don't know who your ideal candidate or candidate persona is, you will not be able to find job candidates and attract them. Knowing these people's characteristics, motivation, skills, and preferences is extremely important for finding candidates that are a good fit for your company.
Defining a candidate persona is a multiple-step process and involves planning, but it will help you find job candidates easier, faster, and more efficiently. Here's our free guide for defining your candidate persona.
2. Engage your current employees
Use your current employees to understand why they love working with you. This is a great way to learn about things that attract them. Use these facts to attract others. Your employees are your best ambassadors, and people trust people more than brands, CEOs, and other C-level executives.
Involving your current employees can not only help you build a strong Employer Branding strategy and find job candidates faster and easier, but it can also help your employees feel more engaged and important.
3. Write clear job descriptions
Writing a clear and detailed job description is important to find job candidates with a good fit. Don’t only list the duties, responsibilities, and requirements, but talk about your company’s culture and Employee Value Proposition.
To save time, here are our free job description templates
4. Use a Recruitment Marketing tool
Finding the right job candidate is hard without the right tools. Solutions offered by recruitment marketing software are various, and with them, you can build innovative recruiting strategies such as Inbound Recruiting and Candidate Relationship Management to improve Candidate Experience and encourage Candidate Engagement.
Sending useful, timely and relevant information to the candidates from your talent pool is a great way of strengthening your Employer Brand and communicating your Employee Value Proposition.
5. Optimize your career site
Career site optimization is one of the first things you should do to find job candidates easier. Candidates that come to your career site are already showing interest in you, so don't let them leave before applying. You can start by adding employee testimonials, and fun videos, introducing your team, and writing about the cool project that your company is working on.
Get our free guide for optimizing your career site!
6. Use recruiting software with a powerful sourcing tool
Today, there are powerful sourcing tools that find job candidates, extract candidates' profiles and add them directly to your talent pool. Manual search to find job candidates takes a lot of time and effort and is often very inefficient. With a powerful sourcing tool, you can make this process of finding job candidates much faster and more productive. These tools help you find candidates that match both the position and company culture.
7. Use an Applicant Tracking System
Solutions offered by applicant tracking systems are various, but their main purpose is to fasten and streamline the selection and hiring processes. By fastening the selection process, you can significantly improve Candidate Experience and increase your application and hire rate for hard-to-fill roles. Did you know that top talent stays available on the market for only 10 days? You better hurry up if you want to find job candidates that suit you!
Looking into an Applicant Tracking System? Get our guide for buying an ATS!
8. Implement and use employee referral programs
Referrals are proven to be the best employees! Referrals can improve your time, cost, and quality of hire, and make your hiring strategy much more productive. Yet, many companies still don't have developed strategies to find job candidates using employee referrals. This is another great way to use your current employees to help you find job candidates. To start, use these referral email templates for recruiters, and start engaging your employees today!
According to the same GetApp survey, employee referrals take the shortest to hire and bring the highest quality job applicants.
If you don't have ideas about how to reward good referrals, here's our favorite list of ideas for employee referral rewards.
For more details about finding the right candidates, here is our 2018 guide for finding high-quality talent.
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