Most recruiters have a well-planned, thoughtful process that they follow to ensure hiring success. They know that finding human resources is just like any other business process, and should be customized for the size and needs of the company.

Success in hiring a great candidate at a competitive job market comes from well-thought out recruiting strategies. Top recruiters spend time formulating a sound recruitment tactic that is both efficient and effective in getting the best and the brightest employees.

Here are some of the best practices used by seasoned recruiters in streamlining their recruitment efforts to find and hire the best candidates:

1. They value great talent, even if they don’t hire them.

There are times when a recruiter finds several good candidates for one position. Sadly, you can only hire one person, but this doesn’t mean you have to lose touch with the qualified applicants who didn’t get the job.

A good way to stay in touch with the other qualified applicants is to connect with them on LinkedIn and other professional platforms so you can regularly reach out and engage them again at the right time.

You can keep track of their career changes through professional networking sites so that when relevant roles become available, you can reach them.

It’s good to develop and maintain strong candidate pools so that you won’t have to start from scratch the next time you need to quickly fill certain positions in the company. By keeping in touch with these other great talents, you can keep your candidate pool responsive.

2. They are creative with their recruitment ads.

Great recruiters know how to be creative in finding the best and the brightest talents by employing creativity in their job ads. Nowadays, having a text description of the job is not enough to get noticed by candidates. You can use creative videos, blogs, memes, etc. to advertise your opening and attract more talent.

You can share these creative ads on your company’s various social media profiles and then ask your employees to help you spread the word online. This will surely bring in more candidates to the pool than your average job ad.

3. They use analytics.

Being successful in recruitment requires taking time to analyze the data on who’s engaging with your crafty job posts online.

For example, if people engage more with your job ads on Twitter than on LinkedIn, consider investing more of your resources to this channel, so you can further attract more qualified applicants.

Top recruiters use analytics to identify online recruitment trends so they can better allocate future spending .

4. They know how to streamline processes.

The best recruiters know how to streamline processes to save time and money for both the company and the applicant. For example, Jason Jeffreys, director of program management and operations at LinkedIn, was tasked to hire 100 customer success representatives in 60 days. He initially set up three rounds of interviews, but later allowed candidates who aced the first round to skip to the third. His reasoning was that the data showed 90% of candidates who were rated highest by recruiters after the first interview, eventually made it to the third round anyway.

If you want to be a great recruiter, you should be aware of these possibilities where you can shorten the recruitment process and remain flexible in cases where it would be beneficial to skip some steps in candidate vetting.

5. They inspire employees to recruit for the company.

What better way to find great talent than by empowering and inspiring current employees to become recruiters themselves? There is better traction when current employees are the ones spreading the word about current vacancies.

You can assist them in becoming “recruiters” by teaching them to ramp up their profiles on social media and join relevant groups to share their expertise and find other experts for the company. Your employees can reach and engage like-minded individuals that may not be accessible to you otherwise.

In the end, no matter what industry you’re in or what products and services you provide, human resources will always be your most important asset. This is why the responsibility of finding those valuable assets definitely requires thorough thinking and strategizing, especially in this fiercely competitive job market.

Are there other tricks that you employ as a recruiter? Share them in the comments section below.