How much time does it usually take your corporation to find the ideal employee for a job opening? As per estimates, it takes around 36 days and approximately costs $4,425 to fill one vacancy.

Most companies don’t have that much money or resources to spend on employing each new hire. This makes it even more important to make the hiring process more efficient and effective.

If your firm already has a recruiting process, it’s likely that it could be improved to better meet the needs of your company. So, let’s check out how you can improve the way you hire people.

7 of the smartest strategies to improve your recruiting process

In this blog, we’ll talk about seven of the best ways to improve your hiring process by using what you already have and with the appropriate tools.

1. Use an applicant tracking system (ATS)

An ATS is a vital part of a good recruitment plan. It lets recruiters keep a record of applicants throughout the whole hiring process — starting from the proposal to the letter of offer, and optimize interaction so that leading contenders don’t slip through the net.

For instance, this guide by Recruitee ATS explains this tool’s main functions and features, alongside how it can accelerate hiring by building the foundations for smarter and faster recruitment

More notably, an ATS can assist you in finding out where most of your suitable candidates are arriving from, whether it’s your career site, social networks, or employment agencies.

This information helps recruiters figure out which ways work best and should get more funds, and which ones they can cut back on.

If you’re not already utilizing an ATS, you must stop what you’re doing and start using this resource right away.

2. Include Only Must-Haves in job descriptions

Research demonstrates that female candidates are less inclined to seek employment in firms where the job description doesn’t meet all of the prerequisites.

Male applicants, on the other hand, will seek employment in a firm where around 60% of their criteria are met.

Adding details that aren’t necessary, like accreditations you’re interested in training for or other duties, will restrict your talent base by a significant amount.

Because of this, you might have to keep looking for candidates for longer, which will cost you more time and money.

Here’s an illustration of a job description for a lead web developer, which is crisp and targeted to attract only the best candidates.

Additionally, when you have a small talent pool, it will be hard to recruit a group that is diverse and represents your company and the people you serve. Make job descriptions more specific to get more and better applicants.

3. Consider candidate communication and pre-assessments

If you leave engaged prospects hanging, they will move on to another corporation. Keep in touch with applicants during the whole procedure, even if it’s just a casual update on the job-application progress.

Talented candidates probably have more than one offer or have their names on the wishlist of more than one company.

If they don’t hear from you for some time or don’t know if they should wait for updates on any development, they won’t linger for long. Remain at the center of applicants’ minds and inboxes to sustain people as a possible choice and avoid starting your search over.

Again, all of your candidates are tested on the same things in pre-employment tests. They assist you in finding out how good they are at the abilities that are most important for your open job.

And they put them together on an identical scale so that you can see who is the best among them.

But, by combining different types of pre-employment assessments into ready-made, mass-mailable evaluations, you can begin to know more about your applicants.

4. Rely on your existing employees

When you need to fill job vacancies, ask your current teammates for help. This will save you money and speed up the hiring process. Use these 3 techniques to get your current employees involved in your plan to find new employees.

a)    Hiring within the company

Before you request for employee suggestions or publish a job posting, look for people you could promote from inside your company.

Then, let your existing workers apply for the position. An inside recruit already recognizes your team, industry, and corporate culture, which makes the orientation and training process easier than for someone who comes externally.

Also, allowing staff to apply prior to starting the recruiting, officially demonstrates to your teammates that you appreciate them and want to help them move up in his\her career paths.

This method will make employees more interested in their jobs and decrease churn rates in other positions.

b)    Establishing a referral system

Set up a referral program, let people recommend candidates, and think of creative ways to reward your staff members.

Usually, money is given as an incentive, but your crew might be more interested in experiences, such as a weekend trip with a friend.

Set rules about how and when rewards will be given. It’s normal to wait a while following the date of hire to incentivize an executive for a recommendation. This makes sure that employees only get paid for good recommendations that lead to good hires.

c)    Using your staff members as recruiters

Decent people know other decent people. Create an intrinsic employer branding squad and use the digital networks of your employees to utilize them as recruiters.

Give your workers social copies and an interesting image. This needn’t be professionally done. You can request them to share the same on social media accounts.

It will make it more likely that good candidates will apply, which will assist you in building your talent pool.

5. Showcase a strong brand identity

Choosing where to look for candidates is a big choice. A social networking hiring strategy is likely to work well if you’re searching for individuals who are just starting out in their careers.

On the other hand, it’s highly probable that seasoned applicants will be listed on conventional job websites. If you’re not using the apt sourcing techniques, you’ll waste resources.

Getting in touch with good candidates faster will be simpler if you look in places where you know experts in your profession hang out.

Before you start your recruitment plan, you need to find out where such passive potential employees are. If you concentrate on the correct sourcing tools rather than trying all of them, you’ll get qualified applicants and have to do less work while hiring them.

Additionally, your firm’s track record as an employer is defined as employer branding. It’s what job applicants and the broader population assume about your brand.

Even though you can’t change what people think, you could help shape how they feel about your corporation. The first stage is to compose your employee’s value proposition — which shall help you tell potential candidates about your open positions and your business.

Then, you’ll need to update any public-facing materials you already have and make new marketing content, which showcases your fresh and enhanced employer brand.

It’s among the foremost things people who want to work for your company will see. Therefore, ensure that it precisely describes your firm and enables it to stand out from the rest.

A strong, positive corporate culture and employee branding can assist you in finding more tech applicants and make a good impression on the ones you already have.

6. Simplify the way you do your interviews

Your HR (human resource) staff and recruiting managers have everything they need to find candidates, check people out, and meet them.

However, have you considered your firm’s hiring managers? It’s likely that you would like the professionals who’ll be teaming up with a prospective target to do one or two interviews.

Staff members should know the law and how to conduct interviews in an appropriate way. They should also know how to evaluate credentials in an effective manner.

Make a blueprint for evaluating candidates that you can use for all the jobs you’re recruiting for. Once you start looking for a job, speak with people in charge of hiring to understand what the position entails and what kind of individual they would like to fill it.

Then, make questions that focus on the things they say. For instance, if they are looking for a salesperson who can be assertive in the job, ask each applicant about a moment when they struggled for a cause.

This method makes sure that you always ask the correct questions to the people you interview.

This, along with instructional interviewers, could reduce the amount of time it takes to hire someone, minimize the time lost by employees because of a long interview session, and render it simpler to locate the right person for the role.

7. Create your talent pool

If you are always looking for people to fill positions before they are available, your time-to-hire shall be much shorter.

Establishing your talent pool will help you get in touch with viable applicants early, particularly for jobs that have had a massive turnover in the past.

Join a virtual professional community where you can meet people who aren’t actively looking for jobs. In today’s modern candidate-driven economy, passive job hunters are very essential to boost your hiring process.

Most of the time, the applicant journey is broken up into 6 steps, and filing an application does not happen until the 4th phase.

Also, in this digital era, applicants are interested in visiting the official website, career sites, social networking sites, and employee opinion review websites before making a decision to seek employment.

Again, this is an applicants’ market, and they can be selective and look for the best deal. What would that imply for the HR and hiring team in your company? Be diligent and get the search going early by getting in touch with passive job seekers.

Conclusion

Getting your hiring process to work better is a big job, but not unattainable.

The best approach is to use the assets you have and make decisions based on real information. And we hope our tips on how to improve your hiring process will prove beneficial for your firm.

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