5 Smart Tips That Immediately Improve Your Hiring Process

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Hiring new talent is important for the growth of your business. As your team grows, you want to attract good people to your company. Even then, improving your hiring process is more than simply sitting there and looking at resumes and doing quick interviews. Your business can’t afford to make a bad hire. Choose the wrong candidate for the role and you can expect to lose not only productivity but time and money as well. Here are x smart tips that will immediately improve your hiring process. These can help you find the right people for the roles you need them to take.

1. Nail The Perfect Job Description

Before you plan on doing thorough employment verification, the most important move you need to do is to hit the perfect job description. The idea is simple: widen the talent pool first to give you a big sample size. The bigger the selection you have, the more chances you can find the right person.

What qualifies as a good job description?

For starters, you want something that’s beyond a simple checklist of hard requirements. Do an elevator pitch on what the company is about, as well as the culture within the company and what you expect from the employee. Mention where you’re based and mention the specifics of the role that you’re filling in.

What is expected for the role? What characteristics and skills do you need for the job? Which areas are negotiable for you and what are the pluses that you don’t need but will be an advantage? It’s important that the employee is a good fit not only for the team but the expectations from them as well. Ask the managers and the team members what skills they expect the new hire to have. This creates a level of accountability for everyone, as well as a closer connection with the new hire.

2. Maximize Your Onboarding Process

A smooth onboarding process is pivotal in making employees feel like they belong from day 1. It sets the general tone for a candidate’s upcoming tenure, as well as lays the foundation for retention in the future. With that said, there’s no single way to improve onboarding, but rather you need a series of steps to make it feasible.

The first move you need to show is to tell how valuable inclusion is within the company. Sharing your business’ commitment to inclusivity informs candidates that you have a good culture that listens and cares for its employees. It also tells them that they will have full access to the resources they need to succeed.

Make sure you paint the broad strokes for the candidate, giving them the latest news within the company. Share to your new hire your current roadmap and strategies, as well as the team’s priority. Prepare your team for the upcoming hire and make it so that inclusivity is a responsibility for everyone.

Contextualize the experience that the candidate will see when they start. Have a buddy to look over them and teach them everything there is about the company. You want your new hire to learn the company language and build meaningful relationships within their team, which helps them set their roots on company soil.

3. Use an Applicant Tracking System

Technology is now much better than before and your human resources need to start using it. Use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to help monitor applications, as well as candidates. It simplifies recruitment by screening and ranking candidates, from work experience to training and education.

An ATS processes every resume and keeps track of all interviews you do. This gives you a chance to pull back and see how the entire process goes. You also don’t have to manually sift through papers and detail everything first, which can save you time and money.

You can also use an ATS to track your communication with potential candidates. Not only does this give you a record of every detail that you tell a candidate, but it also gives you a way to connect with potential candidates for future roles.

If you have a surplus of talent with a pool of candidates, you can use the ATS to tap into qualified talent. Rather than search your email and a stack of papers for a resume or interview notes, the ATS will automate everything for you.

4. Conduct Your Background Checks Early

Screening is a time-consuming task but a background check can be important for your business. Background checks not only contextualize the skills of your employees but also give you a general idea of what a candidate is capable of.

Many companies try to streamline the entire process by simply screening their final candidates. To improve this process even further, start by reversing the order and screen early. Tailor your screening process according to the role that you’re looking for.

Conduct checks for criminal records and use driving records to see about the person’s risk. Verify education claims and make sure that they have the skills they claim to have.

5. Offer A Competitive Salary

At the end of the day, a job is still about money. In a post-pandemic world where everyone knows their worth, many people don’t want to go to jobs that pay paltry sums. There’s no shortage of workers willing to do their jobs, but there’s a shortage of businesses willing to pay employees the value they deserve.

Offer a competitive salary. Do thorough research on current market value and see if you can match it or improve on such value. Every location has a different pay scale, even within the same state at times. Knowing the pay grades within your industry can give you a good idea of where to start.

The Bottom Line

The hiring process is more important than some organizations think. If the business is at the cusp of explosive growth, doing the right hire each time assures that you save time and money throughout. Streamlining your hiring process can maximize whatever resources you have.

If you want to improve your hiring process, it’s not about picking one step and forgetting about everything else. Optimize what you do at every step. It’s easy to accept that it’s not an exact science, but through consistent improvements, you set your organization for success.

This article was guest written by Regi Publico. Regi Publico is a full-time writer based in Manila who is also an artist for fun. She takes pride in her towering collection of books and loves reading about anything under the sun. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge through every article that she writes.