There is no doubt that when it comes to making tough hiring decisions, you don’t want to skimp on the due diligence process. However, taking all the time in the world to find a good fit does not always lead to a very efficient hiring process. Keep in mind that the great candidates you may have short-listed will not wait around for you if a better opportunity came their way. Let’s take a look at some of the common characteristics that contribute to an efficient hiring process.
A common shortcoming of most job descriptions is that they fail to properly articulate the needs and the specific characteristics that would make them noticeable and attractive to the most suitable candidates. The position must communicate the unique attributes of the job that would make it stand out to the right individuals. When most employers complain about a shortage of qualified candidates, companies must put great thought into effectively communicating their needs, while making it sound interesting and exciting to the kind of talent that they really want to attract. An efficient hiring process needs a well-written job description.
Most job seekers are repelled by the idea of applying to companies that are not likely to respond to an online application. A lack of proper candidate communication makes applicants think less of an organization in general. Furthermore, many applicants say that they would feel better if they would simply get back some sort of feedback after applying to jobs on a company careers site. Many candidates would be less likely to recommend a company’s products or services, if the company does not communicate with them properly.
When you are receiving a large number of candidate applications for your open positions, it’s hard to give each application the attention that it deserves. What you need is the right set of tools to help you screen fast and efficiently. The ability to screen fast at any time and from anywhere is a critical part of an efficient hiring process. Maybe the biggest challenge lies in effectively screening and categorizing job hopefuls in order to determine which candidates are the most promising potential employees.
Keeping track of all the details for each candidate interaction can easily take up a lot of time. Conducting multiple interviews on a daily basis could also make it difficult to separate similarly qualified individuals. Notes taken by interviewers can be helpful but an unstructured process with a lot of unstructured data to process could quickly get out of control. A recruitment platform that provides a structured approach to managing the hiring process and supports candidate evaluation scorecards can be extremely helpful.
Gaps in communication, incomplete information, unclear timelines and lack of consistency can all lead to a failure in making a timely decision as a team. Providing your hiring team members with the right information at the right time can help the team converge to a hiring decision quickly. A faster decision can lead to an early offer, improving your chances of acquiring the best talent before someone else steals them away.
Your hiring team will need to have a clear vision of what type of person would be the best fit for the open position. However, the qualifications for the best fit will need to be translated into an objective set of criteria that can be used by the hiring team to evaluate the candidates that are interviewed. A platform that provides an easy way to measure and evaluate each candidate against such criteria is an essential part of an efficient hiring process.
Your employer brand is the magnet that attracts the best candidates to your company. Creating and then branding your company’s career site is an essential part of making your company brand stand out. It is where candidates can learn more about your business, read about the position details, or be directed to the appropriate sources should they have questions. Having the ability to easily build and maintain a branded careers site for your company is necessary when you are aiming for an efficient hiring process, so you can easily post new jobs and update content yourself at any time.
Recruiting is increasingly a collaborative and team-oriented process. Whether it is about screening applicants, scheduling interviews or simply exchanging notes with other team members, successful recruitment requires teams to communicate with each other on a regular basis. A system that provides teams the platform to easily access all the necessary information while interacting with each other for decision-making helps in building an efficient hiring process. A collaborative approach to hiring increases the amount of collective enthusiasm to fill open positions faster, by allowing multiple team members to effectively contribute in the hiring process.
Stressed and overworked employees are more likely to make costly mistakes, leave their jobs, and report low satisfaction with the company on social media. This ultimately can make it more difficult to hire, or extending the hiring process as your open positions pile up. When your hiring process is inefficient and individual team members are burdened with keeping track of interview-related paperwork and other information, delays are inevitable. An efficient hiring process also means keeping things simple and making it easy for your employees to participate in the hiring process. The right system keeps track of everything instead of relying on individuals to track documents, time schedules etc.
Every company is somewhat unique in the way it manages its recruitment workflow based on its business requirements. However, this workflow may need to be reconfigured sometimes to keep the process moving forward efficiently. Employers need a platform that provides them with the most relevant data and analytics to understand which part of the process represents the biggest delays or bottlenecks. This information helps build an efficient recruiting process.
Interested in learning more about building an efficient hiring process? Get in touch to see a demo of the Simplicant platform.
Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash