An efficient and strategic hiring process is perhaps one of most important building blocks of any successful business. With a highly functional hiring process, a business is able to recruit top talent, while being able to avoid situations involving candidates that seemed promising at first glance, but ended up being complete nightmares during the on-boarding process. Let’s take a look at some helpful tips that any business can make use of to improve hiring strategies.
1. Improve the interview process.
According to a study by Leadership IQ, many common failures made by new employees are a direct reflection of a mishandled interview process. Oftentimes interviewers lack the confidence and preparation needed to accurately assess candidates’ levels of emotional intelligence, willingness to learn and general temperament. Interviewers will instead get caught up in a candidate’s prior job experience, and fall into an automated process of asking them common questions about how they’ll navigate challenges in a new workplace. The last thing any company wants to deal with is an employee that looked great on paper, but ended up being a slow learner with a quick temper who brought nothing but toxicity to the workplace.
The interview process can also move faster if background checks are done with haste. Companies should consider hiring a third-party criminal record checker to handle this step, so they can focus on improving their interview process and other vital aspects of hiring.
2. Use the social media tools at your disposal
The wonderful and wild world of social media brings with it multiple channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that can be helpful for researching various candidates’ lifestyles outside of the professional working space. Of course, the decisions a candidate makes outside the office and the way that someone carries themselves is directly tied to their work performance. Plus, no company wants to bring on a candidate that was a picture perfect on the surface, but is actually a nightmare with a closet full of skeletons that came dancing out of the closet when they start to work. So, do a deep dive on whatever social media accounts that you can find for each candidate.
3. Use an online interviewing scheduling platform.
With all this wonderful technology at our fingertips, it’s more evident than ever that we should be using available tools that are capable of making our lives easier. Seriously, it seems like every day a new app is unveiled that figures out a way to do our jobs for us. In this case, an interviewer and the company itself can reap the real time benefits of a great online interviewing scheduling platform, GoodTime. It’s all in the name—it really does make for a good time. The platform allows companies to automate their interview scheduling process, which results in up to a 90% reduction in time to schedule an interview. That reduction in time then cuts the total time that it takes to hire a candidate by seven days. That kind of timesaving can be a game-changer for any company that just lost an employee and is actively trying to maintain normal productivity levels with less people around to pitch in.
4. Monitor reviews people leave about your company
Glassdoor reports that 46% of its members will research a company by checking its reviews before they even consider reaching out to a hiring manager. On top of that, 69% of these members are reported to have passed on taking jobs with companies that had bad reputations. Some of these members that passed on open positions were unemployed at the time as well! That should speak volumes to the importance of any company doing what it can to uphold a clean and positive reviews section. It would be a shame to lose a talented candidate because of what they read about another candidate’s interviewing process.
Focus on writing quality job descriptions
The interview is doomed from the start if the candidate sitting in front of you read and connected with a job description that doesn’t actually reflect what the job requirements are. An effective way to make sure the job description is doing its job is to emphasize what your company can do for the employee. This is basically a way for the company to sell itself to candidates and attract top talent.
We’ve covered some effective ways to improve the hiring process. These are strange and tumultuous times. Every company is navigating an especially stressful period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing any company wants to have to worry about is whether their hiring process is up to speed. Keep these tips, along with Agile ATS in your back pocket, and you’ll be sure to have excellent candidates filling every position.