No matter how successful your company is, it's vital to apply recruiting strategies that allow you to hire the most talented candidates in your field. Integrating solid recruiting best practices enables you to build a talent pipeline that propagates your success. As you continue to identify the best talent, you'll continue to reap the benefits. 

Let's take a closer look at five recruitment strategies you can employ to get the best talent on board.  

1. Recruit proactively

Don't think of recruitment as a process that begins once you're in search of a candidate. To attract the top talent, you'll need to think of it as an ongoing process. You can do this by engaging in proactive recruiting, including doing the following: 

Have an applicant tracking system (ATS) where you store resumes of the finest candidates. You can get these from LinkedIn or other sources. You can also use ATS systems to store promising candidates that you may have moved forward with, but didn't hire for one reason or another. If there's another position that becomes available down the line, you may want to reconsider them for it. Platforms like Bryq provide valuable insight on candidate fit for different positions and integrates with your ATS for seamless use. 

You can also target candidates you found online who may have not reached out to you yet. One survey found that 86% of responding companies focus their recruiting on "passive" candidates like this. For candidates you have yet to interview, this gives you the chance to contact them before they've reached out to you. You can state your case as an attractive place to work and tell them why they'd be a good fit for the role. It helps you get ahead of other recruiters who may also be looking for their services.

Another way to stay proactive is to introduce a "Do not have a what you are looking for?" section in the "careers" page of your website that allows candidates to apply even if they don't find a perfect match among your open positions. This ensures you don't let any potential high performers fall through the cracks. 

2.Establish a strong social media presence

When it comes to attracting candidates online, you'll need to meet the top talent where they are. Did you know that LinkedIn has over 530 million users? Or that Twitter has 326 million people that are active users each month? Included within those figures are most likely the candidates who will help your company thrive.

Simply posting on job boards isn't enough. By establishing a strong social media presence, you increase the likelihood you'll get your message in front of the best talent. 

By targeting the most popular and relevant social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you can get in front of even more top candidates. You can develop content specifically for these platforms. Each platform has a different purpose, so you'll want to approach each one differently. For example: 

• LinkedIn features a more professional tone of voice. Use this to post blogs where you share your subject matter expertise on your industry as well as reasons why your company is a great place to work. 

• Twitter is more conducive to short-form content, so interactive polls and other brief messages talking about your company's mission and values are more appropriate there. 

• Facebook is something of a combination of the two. You can use your Facebook business page to post content and then also communicate with prospective candidates quickly and easily. Since Facebook is such a ubiquitous social network, it's highly likely most of your candidates will have a presence there. 

The content you develop will also help boost your search engine optimization (SEO), ensuring more online job searchers will connect with your messaging. 

3. Make the online application process as painless as possible

Applying for a job is a whole process that involves many steps: researching companies, preparing your resume, filling on-line applications and more. It can be a truly daunting process. Check out this guide from Glassdoor on how to apply for a job to get an idea of the steps involved. So many factors play into a candidate's decision to submit an application. If you want to get the best people, you should make the process easy for them to get their information in front of you.

Attracting the best candidates means getting them from considering what your company can offer them to hired as quickly as possible. That means your online application process should be straightforward and painless. Don't make your applicants jump through hoops. Simply ask them to share their resume, contact information, and any other relevant information related to the position. Requests for additional information can leave them feeling overwhelmed or exhausted. All things being equal, they may decide to opt-out of applying if the application process is too lengthy or complicated. 

By using pre-hire assessment tools that are short and interactive, you can help lessen the load on your candidates as it will enable you to assess candidate fit for a role and thus reduce the times required by long and unnecessary processes. You'll help them connect with you faster and get them started on their path to joining your team. 

4. Keep your online information up to date

Your company's information is always changing. When you connect with a great candidate but opt not to move forward due to circumstance, you still want to keep them apprised of your company's new developments in case of future opportunities. 

Updating your company's online information to remain fresh will help you attract past candidates as well as new ones. You can create short videos with updates on “what's new” with the company. You can provide updates on changes of roles in your company's leadership or expansion into new markets. You can announce new contracts your team has won as well. Any information that can make your company a better place to work for prospective employees should be included. 

5. Have an engaging career site that reflects your company's culture, values, and experience

The career section of your site should plainly explain your company's mission, who you serve, the values you hold dear, and what the experience of working there is like. Talk about your company's culture, and tell them what makes it a great place to work.

This would be a great place to include testimonials from other happy employees. You want to project the environment that makes your company a great place to work. Describe, in great detail, all the benefits the top candidates can expect to experience while working there. Additionally, have a clearly labeled section where they can view the current open positions you have to see where they'd fit best. 

Ultimately, strategies to attract and retain top talent may be simple, but they are definitely not easy. It's all about being able to properly demonstrate your company's value proposition to potential future employees then explaining to them how they fit into it. Make it as easy as possible for top candidates to both envision working with you and also to connect with you.