Building a Winning Recruitment Strategy

by Sigal Amano, VP Global Talent Acquisition, DriveNets

The way organizations conduct business has undergone some drastic changes in the past two years. It started in 2020 with the coronavirus putting a pause on hiring for many companies due to the pandemic sowing great panic throughout businesses that no one knew how to deal with.

Two fiscal quarters later, when we already understood that Covid-19 is here to stay, another extreme situation presented itself. All the positions that were supposed to be recruited during these quarters were reopened. Hiring was simply postponed, and this significantly increased competition, as if there wasn’t enough.

Simultaneously, large sums of money flowed into organizations. This cashflow tsunami gave reason to find investment opportunities, and so it happened that in 2021 over $25 billion were raised in Israel. Companies raised capital at a high valuation, and this resulted in 42 Israeli tech companies reaching unicorn status in 2021.

In the last two months, rising interest rates, rampant inflation, and a sense of uncertainty, have caused organizations to be more stringent with their money. This is once again reflected in the form of hiring freezes and even layoffs that we are hearing about from friends and reading in the news every day.

The main purpose of these measures is for companies to re-evaluate the funds they have left in order to prolong their survival in the market, understanding that now it will be even more difficult to raise capital.

In this article we will assess and explain the recruitment strategy at Drivenets and discuss how it is constantly changing depending on the period. The main goal being: to recruit the best talents in a way that will be optimal for the organization in which we operate.

Recruitment is not just about interviewing and making a job offer to a candidate, it starts at a much earlier stage with exposure to your brand, and includes many other points that need to be taken into account and addressed when building a recruitment strategy.

Here are some key points to consider:

Employer Branding

One of the most common strategies is employer branding which has several meanings.

At Drivenets, we have chosen to focus on capabilities that relevant candidates will recognize us as a company that develops virtual router management software, and not as a company that deals with autonomous vehicles.

Candidates are Customers

Seeing candidates as customers drove us to be creative and provide them with full transparency in each stage, in order to have prior knowledge of the whole recruitment process. Additionally we chose, together with our marketing team, to conduct SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so that on any search with keywords related to Drivenets, we would come up first.

Candidate Experience

One of the most important criteria for us. When a candidate has several offers, they are usually quite similar in their components. What will make the candidate choose a company is where they will feel that they’re in the right place and have the best fit with the people. For this reason we put a great emphasis on candidates.

Awareness

Increasing public awareness of Drivenets as a leader in the telecommunications market. As it goes, a company needs to be seen or read about at least 8 times in order to be remembered. This is why we worked in this arena to appear in press articles, participate in podcasts, and organize meetings and conferences for developers, networkers, and select military units relevant to us for future potential recruitment.

The Strategy

In order to reach a high quarterly recruitment quota, we built a program that focused every week on four different jobs. The recruitment criteria was very strict due to the fact that we were looking for people with specific experience, for a specific role, in a specific location, and with specific rolodex.


The program was divided into 5 key focuses:

  1. Management
  2. Sourcing
  3. Social Media
  4. Employment Agencies & Recruiters
  5. Recruitment Resources

Management

  • Managers within the organization are accountable and should collaborate with recruitment teams
  • Conduct weekly management brainstorming meetings on potential candidates
  • Each of the management teams checks with relevant contacts – venture capital firms, senior executives, past acquaintances, potential companies
  • Clear selling points and a competitive compensation package

Sourcing

  • HR approaches top potential candidates
  • Focus on the current recruiting needs
  • Management proactively approaches potential candidates from within their connections
  • Review active candidates, approach passive candidates, conduct interviews, and extend offers

Social Media

  • Actively research and appropriate candidates interests and presence
  • Publish relevant materials in the according channels to increase exposure
  • Build a social campaign for recruitment and promote with sponsored advertising
  • Organic posts Tech / management posts / blogs

Agencies

  • Expand the agencies you are working with to build a pipeline
  • Utilize recruiter customers, bearing location in mind
  • Create a close relationship that connects them to the process
  • Be transparent about their importance to the company
  • Include them into your wins

Recruitment Resources

  • Focus on recruiters relative to the specific location and field for which you are hiring
  • Utilize outsourced / freelance recruiters until the end of the project
  • Create initiatives such as sending a happy holiday message featuring a recent article and invite them to get in touch if relevant

When it comes to building a recruitment strategy we must always start with research, delving deep into the field, reading relevant content and articles, and gathering information that will help us succeed. Ask the right questions, build on past experiences, and understand where the challenges are and how we can deal with them based on the research.

Sigal Amano

Sigal Amano

VP Global Talent Acquisition, DriveNets


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