The main challenges for recruiters and hiring managers are residing in answering these two questions:

How do I build a strong pipeline of qualified candidates?

What should I do to beat the competition and secure a great candidate?

Building a Great Candidate Pipeline

There are multiple ways to advertise your openings in this day and age. Indeed and networking referrals proved to bear the most fruits for me.

Job posting tip: a creative ad would attract more candidates than the cookie cutter type that mimics the job description.

Stay away from the overused buzz words when describing the qualities you are looking for in a candidate. My favorite one is "dynamic". Reading Indeed ads, I get the feeling that I would get kicked towards the unemployment line unless I describe myself as being, well, dynamic.

Refresh your ads often. I recommend every 3 days if possible, but at least once a week. If the candidates are searching by the date posted, an old ad has way less chances to be seen than a newer one. I get most of my leads within the first 48-72 hours after placing the ad.

Another source of great candidates comes from employee or network referrals. Some of my best hires came from referrals.

Securing the Best Candidates

Most recruiter and hiring managers are discouraged by the numbers of job interview no shows.

Here are a few things to consider to help you improve your success rate.

Make the job application and hiring decision process as short and painless as possible. A candidate will always tend to choose the path of least resistance.

Understand how the Internet have altered candidate behavior.

A person job searching can apply for 10 to 15 jobs in less than 5 minutes, by simply using the Indeed app on their phone.

Treat this part of the process with a sales person mindset.

Drop everything and call your candidate as soon as the lead comes through.

If you aren't one of the first 3 people to call the candidate, your chances of ever hearing back or meeting the candidate in person are slim to none.

Try to secure an interview for as soon as possible. If the candidates interview elsewhere before you get to meet them and like that they see/hear, there is a good chance that they will accept an offer and cancel the remaining interviews, often without notifying you.

Everything you just read here doesn't come from an intense reading exercise on my end, but from years of talent searching with  on the past 12 months, translated in thousands of resumes screened and hundreds of in person interviews.

By deploying a combination of the tactics I have described in this article, I helped reducing the number of service openings for the group I work for by over 50% in one year period, being currently in a position where I have to turn down exceptional candidates due to a lack of openings for the positions they are applying for.