17 Recruiting Strategies To Hire Top Talent In 2025

1. Tap into the hidden workforce

The hidden workforce, also referred to as the ‘forgotten’ workforce, represents between 14-17% of US workers and includes people like:

• Retirees who want to (continue) work

• Caregivers Neurodiverse individuals

• People with long-term health problems

• Ex-inmates People without a degree

2. Design an effective employee referral program

Using an employee referral program as (a part of) your recruitment strategy has plenty of benefits, including:

It accelerates the hiring process. 62% of organizations with employee referral programs have reduced their average time to fill

It increases the chances of culture fit. Employees will only refer people they know will have similar values and work styles.

It lowers the recruitment costs. 84% of companies consider employee referrals the most cost-effective sourcing strategy.

It decreases the overall turnover. By 15%, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Also, referred employees stay at an organization 70% longer than employees from other sources. It increases employee engagement. An employee referral program can boost engagement from both referred and current employees, as they will be more invested in the company’s recruitment efforts. Creating an effective referral program doesn’t have to be overly complicated or expensive. Just make sure your program includes the following elements:

Incentives. This can be cash (which usually works best), but extra holidays or other perks also work. You can ask employees what they prefer if you have the option. Keep it simple. Ensure that your referral program is easy to understand and use. Feedback. Keep employees who’ve referred someone up-to-date about the status of their referral. Recognize and celebrate. Think of a good way to celebrate employees who’ve successfully referred someone to give them the recognition they deserve. This doesn’t have to be complicated; a mention in your internal company newsletter can be enough.

3. Prioritize internal mobility and talent access

If companies want to stay competitive, they cannot just rely on acquiring talent to fill gaps. While this will remain important, they’ll also need to focus on identifying, unlocking, and nurturing the potential from within.

Two main pillars play a role here:

• Evolving talent strategies. This involves the emergence of internal talent pools and a re-evaluation of traditional career pathing. Companies will move away from classic career ladders and adopt a career lattice approach to promote horizontal and diagonal career moves.

• Enabling true internal mobility. This should go beyond simply moving employees internally and aim to create access to skills that the organization needs. Using data and technology like internal talent marketplaces, companies can link their mobility practices to workforce planning, proactively pool and access talent, and deploy skills where they add the most value.

4. Work on your employer branding and employee value proposition

Your employer brand is the face your company shows the outside world as a potential employer. It’s the sum of all the different things people think when someone asks them what it would be like to work for company X or Y.

Employer branding and employee value proposition (EVP) go hand in hand. Your EVP is the promise you make as an employer to your employees in return for their commitment. It’s the sum of all the benefits and rewards employees receive from their organization.

A strong employer brand reflects your EVP and helps you recruit candidates. A well-known brand means applicants will find you easily and apply naturally. This, in turn, leads to lower recruiting costs. In fact, companies with a strong employer brand see a 43% decrease in hiring costs.

In a similar fashion, a robust EVP makes your employees proud to work for your company – and more likely to talk positively about you. This can result in more referrals and more good publicity for your organization as an employer.

5. Use recruitment data to make decisions

You can use the best recruiting strategies in the world, if you don’t measure what you’re doing, you will never learn if they bring the desired results. Recruiting metrics help you evaluate your recruiting process and whether you’re hiring the right people. That allows you to iterate and optimize your strategies based on data.

Some metrics to keep track of include:

• Time to fill

• Time to hire

• Source of hire

• New hire turnover

• Quality of hire

6. Improve your company’s online (and offline) presence

Your company’s online and offline presence is a snapshot of your brand identity, values, and the quality of services or products you offer. It’s what makes the first impression on your potential candidates and sets the tone for their expectations.

Your online and offline presence comprises channels like your career page, social media accounts, employer review sites, email campaigns, recruitment events, referral programs, and community engagement.

Coherent online and offline presence builds credibility in the eyes of your audience and reflects your professionalism.

Here are some ideas for improving your company’s visibility:

• Use employee testimonials. Testimonials can come in the form of a video, but they can also be written with accompanying pictures. You can add them to your careers page and use them on social media.

• Add Recruitment Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). A great way to tackle some of the questions and concerns that candidates often have is by simply adding a hiring process FAQ section to your website.

• Ask employees to share content. People tend to trust information more when it comes from real people instead of companies. When employees share their company’s content, it increases the views of those posts and engagement up to eight times.

• Advertise jobs to customers. For instance: Adding a note on your website or app Including job openings in your email newsletter Printing them on to-go coffee cups, paper bags, napkins, etc.

7. Develop a recruitment marketing strategy

Akin to marketing your products or services to your potential customers, recruitment marketing means using various marketing tactics to get your organization and job openings in front of your potential candidates.

Recruitment marketing involves activities like:

• Leveraging programmatic job advertising to attract your highly qualified candidates to your vacancies

• Sharing your employees’ experiences through social media channels, blogs, podcasts, and videos, painting a vivid picture of life at your organization

• Organizing and attending recruitment events like virtual job fairs, hackathons, and informal lunch-and-learn sessions.

• Using recruitment marketing tactics can have a significant impact on the success of your recruitment process

For example, job postings with videos have a 34% higher application rate, and 75% of candidates say that the look and feel of a posting influence their decision to apply.

What’s more, companies that use a dedicated recruitment marketing platform report shorter time to fill and 3 times better quality of hire.

8. Engage with passive candidates

According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce consists of passive candidates. These are people who aren’t actively looking to change jobs but will consider moving if the right role comes along.

One way to engage with passive candidates is to get them to join your talent pool (solid employer branding helps here). Regularly sending them relevant, educational content – that can help them with their career, for example – can be an excellent way to stay on their minds and create a relationship.

Another way to engage with passive talent is through sourcing by building a talent pipeline for future job openings – more on that in the section just below.

9. Step up your sourcing game

Sourcing is a proactive approach to recruitment where recruiters actively search for potential candidates and cultivate relationships with them, even if they are not actively job-hunting (like the passive candidates we mentioned just above).

Here are three reasons why sourcing should play a critical role in your organization’s talent acquisition strategy:

It creates access to a larger talent pool. Sourcing allows you to tap into a wider candidate pool beyond direct applicants. It also enables you to build a talent pipeline for future job openings with (passive) candidates.

It makes it easier to fill hard-to-fill positions. Sourcing is beneficial to fill positions that need more qualified candidates. You can personalize your communication with candidates by reaching out directly, increasing the chances of connecting with them.

It creates a competitive advantage. Proactively reaching out to potential candidates through sourcing gives you a competitive edge in attracting and hiring top talent. You can get ahead of the competition by engaging with candidates before they actively apply for jobs.

Here are a few tips to get your candidate sourcing started:

-** Create an ideal candidate persona.** This involves creating a profile that outlines the desired candidate’s skills, experience, and characteristics.

• Explore LinkedIn Recruiter. LinkedIn remains the world’s biggest professional network. As such, it provides recruiters unparalleled access to a vast talent pool.

• Optimize your careers page. Think of your careers page as a passive sourcing channel. To optimize it, consider: Ensuring easy navigation and user-friendliness Implementing a user-friendly job search function Providing an option to subscribe to the talent pool and/or job alerts.

10. Stay in touch and on good terms with alumni

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