By brightspyreOn
Recruiting includes all the organizational practices and decisions that affect either the number or types of individuals willing to apply for and accept job offers. It is different from sourcing as sourcing only deals with “locating” the qualified individuals and labor markets from which to recruit. Recruiting is to actually reach out to the prospective candidates.
Recruiting strategies and methods have evolved over the period of time all over the globe. However, still there is a great variance in the use of preferred methods depending on the size of the organization if we talk about one country and the laws, regulations, economic condition and culture when it comes to different countries.
In today’s world, internet has become the biggest player in the recruitment war for talent. Like all other countries, Pakistan has taken full advantage of e-recruiting and most of the companies are using internet in different forms to hunt the qualified candidates. BrightSpyre.com has been the pioneer in Internet Recruitment in Pakistan. It is the most trusted brand in Pakistan and has a member base of 1 million users.
There are still many areas where Pakistan needs to focus. Let’s have a look at the popular recruiting methods being used in US today and to what level they are practiced in Pakistan.
Employee referral:

According to industry surveys, employee referrals are the most effective and commonly used recruiting method in the fortune 500 companies in US today. Asking your best talent to recommend the best people they’ve worked within the past or people they feel would be good performers can generate high quality leads. Research shows that employee-referred candidates remain on the job three times longer than other applicants. Employee referrals help the employers to shorten the recruitment process, save the advertising costs and access qualified candidates. Top companies have an employee-referral hiring rate greater than 50%. For every candidate referred, a referral bonus is given to the employee if the candidate gets selected for the job. Google gives $2000 for referring employees who remain for 60 days. Apple hires 30% of its workforce through employee referrals and gives $1000 to $10,000 as referral bonus depending on the position.

In Pakistan, the employers are still hesitant to use employee referral as a key recruiting method. Some of the companies in telecom sector do realize its importance and use it as an additional recruiting technique but still they need to implement it in a way to get its real benefits.

Brightspyre however, has been helping its client organizations in designing employee referral programs. The referral programs have significantly improved the quality of hiring, increased employee motivation and helped save the resources in terms of time and money for the organizations.

Social media:

Social media websites are very commonly used by the recruiters in US today to seek for passive yet qualified job candidates and to match them to the right job/profession. Research has shown that more than 92% of the companies in US use social media for recruiting. Moreover, 7 out of 10 employers have successfully hired a candidate through social media. The most commonly
used social networking websites are linkedIn, facebook and twitter, etc. LinkedIn is growing its network with 2 new users joining every second. From the year 2009-2012, the number of users on linkedIn has increased from 45 million to 161 million with more than 2 million company pages, facebook users have increased from 250 million to 901 million and those of twitter have increased from 25 million to 300 million. Overall, there is an increase of 305% in the use of social media all over the world. One out of every 7 people referred through social media have been hired. All these websites are serving as a huge recruiting pool for the hiring managers and recruiters and no company can afford to ignore this media for locating and attracting candidates. Many companies are using these sites to advertise jobs, source candidates and communicate with the potential candidate and have considerably reduced their recruiting expenses.

IBM has launched its TalentVine site which allows IBM employees to share the job openings on their social networks and allow their friends and families to apply for positions and earn extra money too. Microsoft recently saved £60,000 on recruitment costs by using LinkedIn to find candidates for a new project.

In Pakistan, recruiters have started using linkedIn to search for passive candidates who possess rare skill sets or work at a level and position where they are satisfied with their current jobs and saies. Such candidates neither apply for jobs online nor they respond to job advertisements. One example of such candidates is the software developers who excel in the latest technology and the demand for their technical skills is very high in the market.

Facebook and twitter however are not as famous in Pakistan for recruiting as is linkedIn. Some companies do have their company page on facebook which they use to post jobs but these sites are not aggressively being used for recruiting so far.

Brightspyre is extensively using social media sites to post jobs and recruit people. Our linkedIn group has been followed by more than 8000 members from different professions. Similarly, BrightSpyre’s facebook and twitter pages keep the followers well informed about the upcoming jobs and updates on the company’s initiatives.

Employer branding

Employer branding is the image of the organization as a “great place to work”. If the employers convey to the world why their workplace is appealing and unique, they will have an easier time attracting good workers. The key to employer branding is to align the company’s brand with its business plan. i.e. to attract the people who are most needed by the company.
In employer branding, the “product” of the company is the employment experience it offers, and the “customers” of this product are current and prospective staff.
According to a recent linkedIn survey, Google is the world’s most in demand Employer brand, followed by Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Unilever rounding out the top five.
Employer branding is yet to become a source of recruit
ing employees in Pakistan. Employers here are still reluctant to invest time and money in creating an employer brand. However, by creating more awareness about the concept backed up with its long term benefits, there is a chance that employer branding will be considered as an important recruiting strategy in the coming years.

Poaching & Acqui-hire:

Poaching is the latest mantra being followed by the top organizations in US today. Poaching means attracting a competent and skilled person already working with another reputed company, often a competitor, by offering him attractive benefits and perks, better than his current employer. Employee poaching often happens in the IT industry because of high-demand of technical skills and accounts for 30% of the total movement in labor.
Some of the top US organizations practicing poaching aggressively as a recruiting strategy include Apple, Google, Intel and Facebook. Google has a team of individuals specialized in and dedicated for poaching only.
Apart from poaching, there is a recently introduced term called “acqui hire”. It happens when the big giants in tech industry are willing to buy the whole company just because they want to acquire their team of skilled developers and engineers. “Having two or three extremely talented engineers can be worth their weight in gold,” says John Coyle, a law professor at the University of North Carolina.
Poaching and acqui-hire are the phenomenons way too elite for Pakistani industry. Poaching requires an employer to go far and beyond its limits to attract and raid a competitor’s employee. Pakistani companies try to play it safe and do not normally go that far to recruit. The reason could be the economic condition of the country and the availability of talent in the market due to bad job situation.
Pakistan still needs to go a long way to keep itself updated and in line with the changing trends in recruiting. The employers would need to think beyond the traditional recruiting approaches and build trust in their employees and themselves while going out hunting people. With the increase in awareness and spread of success stories, we might witness a steady yet significant change in Pakistani recruitment as well.
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