From start to finish, the hiring process can feel like an uphill battle. It presents many challenges, obstacles, and headaches for recruiters and hiring managers alike—not to mention for candidates.
If this sounds like your company’s hiring process, perhaps it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate how your organization handles hiring. We’ve created this list to provide seven ways to dramatically improve your hiring so you can make the process smoother while enhancing business results altogether.
On job boards that rely on candidate reviews, one of the most frequent frustrations that candidates express is that companies tell them that they'll hear back from the company on the status of their application—hired or not. Unfortunately, these companies often don’t deliver on their promise and leave the candidates hanging. When jobseekers read these reviews, they're left with the impression that they won’t be taken seriously by the organization and should apply elsewhere. This can happen by lack of an email, phone call, or even an InMail.
This is a big red flag for potential candidates and can dissuade them from applying to your company altogether. To remedy this, it’s best to implement a plan to improve candidate communication and deliver on all promises. Developing a deeper knowledge of your hiring tools and making the extra effort to update all candidates on their status can make a huge difference in what they say about your company, whether you offer them a position or not.
A creative idea to improve the quality of new hires is to compare them to top performers already found within your company. To do this, gather data on employees who’ve been with the company for over twelve months. This will highlight staying potential while demonstrating a proven culture fit. Next, narrow down the pool by analyzing the quality of work these employees produce, focusing on the highest-quality performers.
Once you have a narrowed-down group to analyze, focus on their personalities and attributes, then look for similar assets while vetting and interviewing potential candidates. This will give you a more well-rounded idea of the qualities a candidate needs to succeed in the role and can lead to a far lower turnover rate.
Many employers believe that, when considering candidates, it's best to think with their emotions and “gut feelings”, rather than focusing on facts and data. The hiring process, however, is where data and facts should be prioritized.
This doesn’t mean that employers should focus on candidates as if they were only compiled of information. Targeting data simply means to take the time to analyze your hiring process data (both pre- and post-) and look at the numbers. Find out what has worked, what hasn’t, what leads to high turnover, and what leads to long-term positive results.
Speaking of results, your ultimate goal during the hiring process should be positive business results. Yes, you want to connect hopeful candidates to positions they would do well in. When done right, this directly leads to positive results for your business by saving costs on further hiring or trying to combat turnover rates.
Set your company up for success by taking an in-depth look at business needs, goals, and current data to see where hiring would be a good idea. Remember, you’re not just hiring to fill a role, but to place a talented hire in a position where they will have the maximum positive effect on overall business.
When hiring, a best practice is to strive to improve diversity at every chance. This creates a unique and dynamic company culture while providing several benefits to business’ bottom line. A mistake often made is hiring based on diversity and talents alone. The longevity of your hires is more important than initially getting them into the door.
Focus on the skills candidates need to succeed and how they will fit into the company culture. A valuable trick is to diversify your hiring managers and interviewers to match the candidate. For instance, a female interviewer paired with a female candidate. This practice may improve hiring numbers, so it's best to add and analyze this data to your overall analysis from tip three.
Before you begin reaching out to candidates, and before you even begin to think about job postings, you must know your company’s needs and capacity for hiring. The last thing you want is to over-hire, costing the company extra funds that could have gone back into the company. Even worse, is under-hiring, which can lead to an unnecessarily high volume of work and contribute to a high turnover rate.
Meet with management above the roles that need to be filled. Find out what needs to be done and how many people are needed to do it. Also, note the company’s current turnover rate and employee staying power. From these metrics, identify a set number of hires to bring in and go from there.
A big mistake in the hiring process is focusing all the manpower toward job boards and the active candidates who utilize them. This may sound counter-intuitive since you want to look for candidates who are looking to get hired, right? Not necessarily. Passive candidates, or those who are already employed but open to new opportunities, are a very valuable target when hiring.
These candidates actively demonstrate and exercise their talents in their current positions, which shows they currently provide value to their employers (and can provide value to yours!). Active candidates who have been out of the workforce may require extra training or break-in time to get familiar with their skill set again. Often, passive candidates will only take a position if it is a perfect fit, unlike active candidates who may say “yes” to an offer that isn’t right for them (or the company) due to the need to find a job quickly.
At GoGig, we made it our mission to reinvent and improve the hiring process—and succeeded. Our platform is perfect for finding passive candidates, highlighting matching skills, and promoting diverse culture fits. We utilize cutting-edge technology to analyze candidate personalities, so you can measure how well they would fit into your company’s culture with the tap of a button.
Don’t believe us? Watch our webinar on How To Hire A Culture Fit; your company will thank you.