Your hiring process is either helping or hindering your recruiting efforts to attract the best talent. When you update and evaluate your hiring process, use a high-tech high-touch approach. High-tech software helps identify qualified candidates quickly but does not replace human interaction. If your goal is to attract top talent, align job requirements with internal stakeholder needs, and ensure that candidates have a positive experience for which you should not rely solely on technology.
In my experience, companies waste the most time, energy, and money on five aspects of the hiring process. The first is your Job Requisition which serves as the roadmap for the recruiting process. Unfortunately, that roadmap is often outdated, boring, and repetitive. Second are your Hiring Parameters which may include outdated flex time, remote options, or compensation practices that hurt recruiting efforts. Third is the lack of Performance Objectives that identify how the new hire will be evaluated and deemed a successful hire.
Too often there is a disconnect between the job description and required credentials and the performance objectives. Fourth is your Interview Process which should be limited to no more than a four-step process which will reduce your time to hire. Fifth is your Candidate Appraisal which often lacks consistency but when revised could eliminate emotion and bias from your decision-making process.
As a 30-year veteran whose recruiting firm has placed thousands of candidates, I can tell you that it takes more than a talented recruiter to attract top talent who become engaged and retained employees. I have personally witnessed companies spending thousands of dollars on recruiters and sophisticated recruiting technologies only to end up losing candidates because of excessively long applications or too many rounds of interviews.
Let’s take a more in-depth look at each of these five areas, starting with your Job Requisitions which should be considered marketing collateral for your company. Requisitions should list a job description and required credentials but should also provide candidates, with a sense of your company culture and opportunities for professional development and growth.
It should serve as a strategic marketing tool that will attract the best talent and save you time in the interviewing process.
Millennials represent over 50% of the workforce worldwide and want to know what challenges they will face, what development they will receive and how their work will contribute to your company’s goals and mission. When you evaluate your job requisitions, ensure they addressed the needs of your company as well as the candidates. Your requisitions should focus on the following: job title, performance standards, daily responsibilities, credentials, and experience required, company culture, mission, values, and growth potential.
Next, review your Hiring Parameters that include company policies and other “non-negotiable” areas. Some examples could include your location, the software/systems used, compensation and benefits offered. Overcoming objections to your company’s parameters requires getting to know what a prospective hire values and communicating your company’s values in a way that meets their needs. In my experience, I’ve seen candidates accept a lower compensation package, in exchange for a better work-life balance.Present your recommendations stressing how they will enhance your recruiting efforts, reduce your time to hire and increase ability to hire the Best talent.
Third is the necessity to create clear Performance Objectives, which prevents recruiters from wasting their time because they understand how candidates they present will be evaluated. These also establish clear performance expectations for potential candidates, so they can determine if they are able to achieve the objectives and if they are interested in the job.
Fourth, review your Interview Process which should be consistent and comprehensive. However, it is also imperative that candidates can move through your interview process quickly and efficiently. To keep your candidate engaged, I am suggesting you limit your interviews to four rounds. These would generally be a phone screen, panel interview, in-person “day at the job” if feasible, and final interview. Google established the “Rule of Four” which after five years of analysis proved our interviews were enough to predict whether someone should be hired. It also reduced their average time to hire by almost two weeks, saving employees “hundreds of hours in interviewing time,” according to Sharon Shaper, Google’s Hiring Innovation Manager.
Another change you may want to consider is Virtual Interviewing. I recently created a course for LinkedIn Learning on Virtual Interviewing because of the high number of requests they were receiving for this topic. Covid-19 forced many companies to convert their interview process to virtual as a temporary solution. When companies realized the many benefits of a virtual interview and hiring process, many companies have converted to a virtual process or have a hybrid model of on-site and virtual interviews.
Lastly, review your Candidate Appraisal process. Create a candidate assessment used by everyone in your interview process to quantify answers. This will help you remove emotion and bias from the decision- making process and prevents one person from screening out qualified candidates because the hiring decision is the consensus of the group.
My suggestion would be that you review the five aspects of the hiring process and select the one that will have the most positive impact on your recruiting efforts. Present your recommendations stressing how they will enhance your recruiting efforts, reduce your time to hire and increase your ability to hire the BEST talent who then become successful, engaged, and retained employees.