Attracting, hiring and retaining top talent is not a game of chance — it’s all about strategy. In fact, there are right ways, wrong ways and optimal ways to go about hiring that can increase your chances of attracting the right people for your open roles.
When completed with care, you can:
Get your job listings in front of the most qualified candidates.
Attract passive candidates.
Engage job seekers.
Improve the candidate experience.
Retain top talent.
In this blog, we’re discussing some of the most important and lucrative hiring best practices that can help set you up for recruiting success in 2024 and beyond.
The Benefits of Getting Your Hiring Process Right
At the end of January 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported approximately 8.9 million job vacancies nationwide. This figure is down from an all-time high of 12.2 million in March 2022, but there’s still some work to be done to fill these millions of open roles.
And, while hiring best practices can change significantly from one industry to another, we believe there are a few core principles and strategies that provide value to recruitment and retention across the board.
Before diving into those best practices, let’s first understand some of the benefits that a focused and well-balanced recruitment process can provide for your organization.
Higher Quality Talent Acquisition
A well-executed hiring process can increase your chances of attracting the most qualified candidate for your open role — someone who possesses the skills, experience and cultural fit necessary to excel at your company.
Well-executed, of course, means a genuine, optimized and fair hiring process. Unfortunately, this is something that employers need to be reminded about. A recent study revealed that a surprising 36% of hiring managers admit to lying to potential candidates. Even more surprising, a whopping 80% of hiring managers believe that lying is “very acceptable” during the recruitment process.
So, what is the cherry on top of all this fibbing? About 35 percent of prospects that were lied to and then hired ended up leaving the company within one month, and 31 percent within three months.
Finding and retaining good talent needs to start off on the right foot: the honest one.
Improved Performance and Productivity
Hiring the right people can enhance team dynamics and productivity, which can lead to improved performance and better business outcomes. McKinsey calls this employee archetype the “thriving stars.” And, based on research, they say that employees belonging to this archetype “bring disproportionate value to the company” and “have a hugely positive impact on performance and productivity by, among other things, creating psychological safety and trust in a team setting.”
Cost Savings
Hiring the right candidates from the outset can help reduce recruitment costs associated with turnover, training and onboarding. No study is required to discern that hiring is an expensive mechanism of the modern workplace.
Job advertising and interviewing aside, high turnover sometimes means higher severance pay for fired employees, while onboarding new ones may mean more signing bonuses and relocation assistance.
Beyond the cost of the recruiting process itself, there are plenty of other expenses that can strain your budget quickly.
Enhanced Company Culture
Hiring individuals who embody your company’s core values and contribute positively to the workplace culture can strengthen your organizational ethos and foster a sense of belonging among employees.
The result? Oftentimes, hiring individuals who are a good cultural fit results in higher employee engagement, reduced turnover and better performance all around. By consistently hiring and retaining top talent, organizations position themselves for long-term success, growth and sustainability in today’s increasingly competitive business landscape.
The Negative Impacts of Hiring the Wrong People
We’ve discussed a few benefits of hiring an ideal new employee, but what about some of the less obvious, negative impacts associated with poor hiring practices?
Have a look:
Wasted resources: Unoptimized processes take longer, are more prone to error and may unnecessarily extend your time-to-hire, which costs money.
Missed opportunities for innovation, growth and achieving strategic objectives: With a drawn-out recruiting process, you risk losing the interest of qualified candidates.
Reputational damage: Poor practices are pretty evident — especially to prospective hires who have no stakes in your organization. An unideal process may warrant criticism, which can harm your brand image.
5 Hiring Best Practices
Hiring isn’t easy—but it also doesn’t have to be rocket science. Employ these five recruiting best practices to get the ball rolling in your organization’s favor (while also appeasing prospective employees).
1. Define Clear (and Honest) Job Descriptions
Harkening back to the research done on employer honesty, you absolutely should not lie to a potential candidate at any point throughout your recruitment strategy. Not in the job description, during the interview process or onboarding.
For curiosity’s sake, here are the top five things that employers lie to candidates about — so you can do the opposite:
The role’s responsibilities (40 percent)
Growth opportunities at the company (39 percent)
Career development opportunities (38 percent)
Company culture (31 percent)
Benefits (28 percent)
Be honest about the responsibilities and expectations of each role in your job postings, and your new hires may just stick around for longer.
Workplace culture is at a bit of a strange juncture these days. With an increase in remote/hybrid working arrangements, employees say that feeling less connected to their organization’s culture is a major challenge.
For organizations, some believe that hybrid work has negatively impacted their workplace culture. So, what’s the solution?
Both of these revelations communicate that culture is still important, even if employees are going into the office less and less as time passes. So, when hiring new employees, it may be more important than ever to assess cultural fit and how a candidate could positively contribute to your hybrid atmosphere. Here are some questions to ask during the interview process to glean good cultural information:
Can you describe your ideal work environment?
Tell me about a time when you successfully collaborated with a team.
How do you handle ambiguity or change in the workplace?
Describe a situation where you had to resolve a conflict with a colleague.
What do you value most in a workplace?
4. Invest in Your Employer Branding
According to Universum’s 2023 Employer Branding NOW study, employer branding is a top priority for organizations right now and a critical HR investment.
What’s influencing this investment? Well, 86 percent of surveyed employees revealed they are likely to research a company’s reviews and ratings when deciding on where to apply. Moreover, half of all candidates say they wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation. Here are a few ways to improve branding to optimize the hiring process:
Create consistent brand messaging
Provide growth opportunities
Emphasize employee well-being
Welcome, monitor and respond to employee feedback
5. Promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
DEI in the workplace is a bit of a difficult topic these days. There’s a strong political divide between those who support DEI efforts and those who believe having strict race requirements for certain roles, grants or opportunities is iffy.
What we do know for certain, however, is that everyone—no matter their background—deserves an equitable chance at success in their work.
As we progress further into 2024, the way organizations approach DEI may change, so it’s important to stay abreast of hiring trends to determine the most beneficial path forward for everyone—job seekers, employees and organizations included.
Here are a few ways to help promote that success:
Foster inclusive leadership: Train managers and leaders to promote inclusivity in their teams, to actively listen to diverse perspectives, advocate for underrepresented employees and create an inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued.
Review and address pay equity: Regularly review your organization’s compensation practices to identify and address any disparities based on gender, race or other characteristics.
Create employee resource groups (ESGs): Establish employee resource groups or affinity groups where staff from diverse backgrounds can connect, share experiences and advocate for positive change.
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The job market is a dynamic, living thing that demands adaptability. For businesses of every size, intuition and personal connection are vital for finding ideal candidates. But they are only part of the hiring puzzle: analyzing recruitment metrics gives a more accurate picture of where your hiring process is succeeding and where you could stand to improve.
Understanding Recruitment Metrics and Why They Matter
Recruitment metrics refer to the data that provide insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of your company’s hiring process. Metrics are individually insightful but the data is also symbiotic, informing the other. For example, if the most expensive recruitment source you use yields the highest quality candidates, it may be a mistake to reduce that budget because an overall budget metric suggested cost-cutting.
Analyzing hiring metrics gives companies ideas on how to work more efficiently, which hiring methods work the best for your type of business, and can even anticipate growth to generate a long-term hiring plan before it’s critical. In small businesses where employees may wear many different hats—including participation in hiring—collecting and reviewing these metrics is essential to focus and coordinate your efforts.
Recruitment Metrics to Track
Consider tracking these important recruiting metrics:
Time to Fill
Simply put, “time to fill” indicates the number of calendar days it takes to find and hire a new employee. The Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) offers a few different starting points:
A hiring manager submitting a job requisition
A job requisition’s approval
A job posting going live online
The end date is typically when a candidate accepts a job offer. This metric can show internal delays in approvals or posting.
Time to Hire
While “time to fill” analyzes the company’s time efficiency, “time to hire” is a more candidate-centered metric. This number indicates the time from when the candidate applies to accepting an offer. It can show lags in company response time, a leading reason for losing out on a potential hire.
Cost Per Hire
This is a metric that accounts for all the costs your company incurs while hiring new employees. It may include:
Internal hiring administrative and legal costs
Cost of job postings
Advertising costs
External recruiter fees
Travel expenses
Recruitment or hiring bonuses
Relocation costs
To calculate cost per hire, add up all costs in a time frame and divide it by the number of hires. This metric helps the company know how effective the hiring budget is being used, and where to make adjustments if the cost per hire is limiting the number of new employees you can add in a year.
The average cost per hire is $4,700, according to SHRM data. But some estimates come in as high as three to four times the total salary of the position your company is seeking to fill. It’s worth identifying areas to trim the overall cost.
Application Completion Rate
If your company uses an online application system, this metric can show how many candidates start but never finish the process. It can indicate bottlenecks in the application, or note if candidates consistently leave sections blank or seem to have insufficient space to answer questions. This metric allows you to make the appropriate edits so the application process is smooth for the applicant and provides the right amount of data for the company.
Offer Acceptance Rate
This metric helps you know the percentage of offers accepted by prospective employees. Considering that it always costs you something to make an offer, this metric is valuable in analyzing each step of the recruiting, interviewing, and offering process. If your company has a high initial response rate but a low offer acceptance rate, this may indicate:
Your job descriptions may be misleading about actual job responsibilities
Your interview process could be too long or too demanding
Your communication has some lag time that’s causing you to lose out on desirable hires
Quality of Hire
Once a prospective employee has been hired, analyzing metrics doesn’t need to stop. In the first few months of a new employee’s tenure, you can evaluate whether they are meeting the company’s standards. If you have a trial period, this can be a useful metric to determine whether you and the new employee are a good fit after all.
According to Indeed, “The basic calculation for quality of hire would work as follows: job performance score + social engagement score + productivity score / total number of factors = quality of hire.”
These criteria will vary from company to company, but a noticeable decline in quality of new hires can motivate you to examine the factors that lead to low productivity, for example. Can they be attributed to a point in the hiring process that could use some scrutiny? It’s better to address those issues long before hiring, onboarding, and a period of lesser quality work.
New Hire Turnover Rate
While analyzing quality of hire comes from the company side, turnover comes from the employee side. This metric shows how many new hires stay on for some defined period of time. If you’re seeing an unexpectedly high turnover rate, this can indicate:
Problems with onboarding
Confusion about or dissatisfaction with job responsibilities
Mismatch of employee to supervisor
Interview mistakes regarding skills or experience
Analyzing Hiring Metrics
Modern software makes gathering hiring metrics a breeze. A tool like ApplicantStack offers reports for a whole suite of data, allowing your company to track recruitment metrics with ease. These reports can provide great insight before a hiring push puts you in a bind.
A budget-conscious company is always looking to save on the bottom line, but the right metrics can do much more than just encourage an overall slash and cut. This data can give you insight if your recruiting spending is in the right places, and offer guidance to reallocate resources to actions offering you the most quality hires. Get access to the reports your company needs to track hiring metrics when you start your free trial.
In most cases, and for most job openings, recruiters want to secure top industry talent for their open roles. Why? Beyond being the most qualified or suitable person for the position, top performers come packaged with an array of benefits that can give organizations a competitive advantage, improve company culture and help develop organizational leadership.
But attracting and retaining the most befitting employees is easier said than done. So, what exactly are the best ways to ensure you’re attracting the most qualified individuals? And, what does an effective and successful recruitment strategy look like?
Here, we’re breaking down the basics required of a solid recruitment strategy to ensure you’re getting your money’s worth not just out of your newly recruited, talented employees but your hiring efforts, too.
The Basis of a Strong Recruitment Strategy
There’s more to attracting, sourcing and securing top talent than simply posting a job listing. Even if it’s well-written and alluring, there are always others that are more so. This can be especially challenging for smaller organizations looking to get on the same playing field as their larger corporate counterparts.
Hiring managers must not only curate their job listings to a tee but also their strategies to identify and attract those most suited for a particular role. If you’re unsure where to start, or where it went wrong for your organization, start with these seven recruiting basics and get them right:
1. Identify Your Needs
You can’t fill a ravine with water and expect it to be as easily traversed on foot then if there were a bridge instead. Before you go looking for candidates, you first need to identify what you need to help your organization succeed.
This involves collaborating with relevant stakeholders to:
Define job requirements and expectations.
Clearly understand the specific skills, experience and qualities desired from the ideal candidate.
Once everyone is aligned on the best way to proceed, you can start building the hiring bridge.
2. Attracting Qualified Candidates
To attract the right people, you need to create compelling job descriptions and employer branding strategies. This includes, but is not limited to:
Clearly stating the company’s values.
Effectively communicating your culture.
Identifying and making evident the growth opportunities with your organization.
Doing these three tasks the right way will help you attract high-caliber candidates.
3. Sourcing Qualified Candidates
In a perfect world, highly qualified candidates seeking employment would deliver themselves straight to your front door. Unfortunately, hiring isn’t that easy and, oftentimes, top talent needs to be head-hunted. Hiring managers should leverage various sourcing channels, including job boards, social media platforms, professional networks and even industry-specific events, to proactively seek out qualified candidates. A passive candidate is someone who isn’t actively searching for new opportunities but would be happy to entertain an attractive offer.
What Do Top Candidates Want From Organizations?
Before jumping into more concentrated efforts that will help you land top talent, let’s take a look at what job seekers actually want from their prospective organizations. While fair and just compensation is still highly important for a lot of candidates, especially top talent, other elements are equally, if not more important.
For example, a recent study revealed that 91 percent of new hires who received quality culture training felt more connected to the organization than those who didn’t—underscoring the importance of a healthy, active culture for new and prospective hires. Culture training involves educating and familiarizing new hires with the values, norms, beliefs and behaviors of your company’s culture. It’s not just about learning the job tasks or responsibilities; it’s about understanding the organization’s ethos and how to thrive within it.
This often involves training about how to effectively handle challenges within the organization and be a strong leader, as well as expectations for collaboration; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and more.
Beyond culture training, here are a few more nice-to-haves in today’s market that can bolster your organization as one worthy of employing the most talented candidates in your industry:
Evident opportunities for professional development
Strong work-life balance
Open and honest communication
How To Attract Top Talent
Great, so we know how to get the basics right and what job seekers truly want from their prospective companies. Now, let’s streamline, optimize and condense everything we’ve learned into one actionable checklist that will surely help you secure the right people for the jobs at hand.
You attract what you exude. When your brand communicates enticing qualities like excellence, transparency and drive, you’ll inevitably entice like-minded people who wish to work for such a strong, reputable company.
In terms of recruiting, here are a few to-do’s:
Define your employer value proposition (EVP): Identify what makes your company unique as an employer.
Craft a brand message: Develop a clear, concise and compelling message that communicates your EVP to potential candidates.
Build a strong online presence: Leverage social media platforms to share employee stories, company achievements and behind-the-scenes glimpses of your workplace.
Provide an exceptional candidate experience: Ensure a seamless and positive experience for each and every potential candidate throughout the recruitment process — which translates into a better employee experience if you play your cards correctly.
Invest in employee well-being: Prioritize employee well-being by providing work-life balance initiatives, mental health support and wellness programs.
2. Write Compelling and Detailed Job Descriptions
No one wants to be left guessing after reading a job description. Clear, compelling posting should include:
A clear title that’s representative of the role.
An engaging overview of the job.
Key responsibilities.
Requirements and necessary qualifications.
Salary information.
Expected working hours.
Information about company culture.
3. Use More Than One Sourcing Channel
Casting a wide net is key to attracting more talent. The larger your sample size, the more likely you are to catch qualified candidates. This is especially important for small businesses that, by default, aren’t on the same playing field as their larger counterparts.
To do this effectively, post your job openings on popular job boards, industry-specific websites and social media platforms to maximize visibility. But, instead of doing all of this manually, use an applicant tracking system that can cast the net for you.
4. Offer Competitive and Creative Benefits
According to research by the Harvard Business Review, 60 percent of employees say the cost of going into the office outweighs the pros. That being said, one of the most important benefits employers can offer in 2024—beyond insurance and the like—is a well-balanced hybrid working model.
This and other creative benefits, such as student loan assistance programs, more paid time off and funding for professional development are all attractive incentives for today’s workforce.
5. Emphasize Career Development
According to a 2023 study by LinkedIn Learning, providing learning opportunities is the number one strategy for retaining top talent employers can use. This is important because, when you secure top talent, you want them to stick around.
For recruiting, this means:
Highlighting growth opportunities from the get-go
Building attractive and effective training and career development programs
Actively encouraging continuous learning
Providing adequate mentorship and coaching
Conducting performance reviews and providing actionable feedback
6. Commit To Continuous Improvement
You don’t have to get recruiting right on the very first try. Each organization is different, and depending on the type of industry you’re operating in and what your ideal candidate looks like, your recruiting strategy can change. But that’s the beauty of it!
The easier you can make the hiring process on yourself, the quicker you can adapt your recruiting strategy to fit the needs of diverse candidates — no matter where they are in the talent pipeline.
Streamline Your Hiring Process For Success in Securing Top Talent
From candidate sourcing to retaining top talent, Applicantstack makes it easy to quickly scale your team or fill niche roles without any of the hassle associated with traditional, drawn-out hiring practices. Text-to-apply functionally puts control back in candidates’ hands: While they continue their job search, you can start reviewing resumes.
These features, and many more, are what make Applicantstack the premier choice for streamlining your hiring process to attract the most high-quality candidates for your team. Interested? Try it for free today.
Connecting job seekers with hiring managers happens in a variety of ways. Word-of-mouth, networking, promoting from within, cold calling: these are all tried-and-true methods to find candidates for open positions. The speed of technological advancement has changed the hiring landscape and demands that hiring managers look to new methods to reach a wider audience.
According to a survey done by The Cambridge Jobs Board, 85 percent of job seekers reject the popular recruiting websites that bombard with relentless messages and impersonal communication. Those disenchanted job seekers may be uniquely prepared to be reached by thoughtful and powerful recruitment marketing.
Does Advertising Jobs Online Work?
Online job marketing is a $36 billion dollar industry. The sector has seen a 15 percent increase in growth since 2015. So how can your business claim a piece of that hiring pie? Go where the people spend a huge majority of their time.
Online advertising for recruitment requires a diverse skillset: some marketing knowledge, some recruiting knowledge, and the ability to sell your company to a wide variety of eyeballs. Done well, your ad may reach an active job seeker and a disenchanted worker who becomes inspired to make a job switch.
Kepios estimates that 62.3 percent of the global population are active consumers of social media. That’s an astronomical pool to pull from. Even if your small business is really only looking to cover a smaller region of job seekers, that stat suggests your recruiting pool will be active social media users.
Statistics to Know About Your Recruiting Pool
Before you jump headfirst into creating paid advertising, consider defining the non-negotiables for your recruiting pool. This way your ads can be sure to reach out to the right candidates. You can identify metrics with market research, surveys, and analytics. In the modern world, personal data is valuable currency. Here are some of the many metrics to identify and tailor your ad dollars to the right pool.
Where are they located? Is the position remote? Is it in-person? You might want to tailor your ad to specific time zones or even cities to reach candidates who are able to meet this criteria.
Education level required. This metric can help you choose which social media platforms to use; ones tailored mainly to teenagers won’t give you candidates with a required Bachelor’s degree.
Where do they spend their time online? Tools like the Pew Research Center can give valuable insight into where various demographic groups spend time online.
Specific interests associated with your brand. Knowing candidates’ interests can help you parlay that positive association and experience into work.
How to Craft a Compelling Recruiting Ad
Follow these steps to craft a more appealing ad for recruiting.
Start with this question: What does the job seeker want to know? This requires understanding some basic metrics which you can acquire from each individual social channel you’re using.
Choose the right platform. Use statistics and demographic information to make sure you’re targeting the ideal candidate.
Deliver a punchy message within the first 10 seconds of the ad. Use graphics and word choices that define the value proposition for the viewer immediately. Give just enough information about your company to inspire further engagement.
Focus on SEO. What keywords will put this ad in front of the right eyes?
Define the Call to Action: “Click to learn more” or “Click to apply” for example.
Link the ad to a landing page that is also easily scannable and inviting. Include clear descriptions of requirements, instructions for applying, and information about company culture.
Critically evaluate your conversion data to figure out where you need to make tweaks to the ad itself or to the platforms where you share it.
Online Advertising Platforms to Consider
When you’re trying to stretch your advertising dollar, it’s important to know the pros and cons of the popular online platforms for reaching your targeted audience. Pew provides some important insight:
LinkedIn is more popular among those with advanced degrees. 51 percent of adults said they have a Bachelor’s Degree or higher, compared to 10 percent with a high school diploma or less.
Pinterest is used by more women (46 percent) than men (16 percent).
YouTube is the most widely used app by people of all ages: 95 percent of adults age 18 to 29 use it, 91 percent of those age 30 to 49, and 83 percent of those age 50 to 64.
Facebook has the lowest usage from adults age 18 to 29 at 70 percent, with the highest engagement coming from the 30 to 49 age bracket at 77 percent
Instagram users in America are 52 percent Hispanic, 49 percent Black, and 35 percent White.
Snapchat is almost entirely the domain of young people, with 65 percent of adults age 18 to 29 compared to 24 percent of those 30 to 49.
YouTube and Facebook are nearly equally used by urban, suburban, and rural Americans.
The data suggests that the majority of users visit their platforms of choice every day.
Demographics are a great place to start. After that, most social media sites provide very robust report options that can be customized to the specific metrics that are most helpful for your hiring process. Meta offers stats like reach, impressions, frequency, and clicks among many others. On YouTube, metrics include view rate and if the video was played to 25, 50, 75, and 100 percent.
Manage Your Applicants With ApplicantStack
The sheer volume of reported metrics can be overwhelming to parse and sort. A tool which ties these important metrics to individual candidates helps connect this important work with humans that can fill your open positions. Within ApplicantStack, you can record the results of your marketing recruiting efforts. Each metric becomes a potential valued member of your team. You can also take advantage of the integration with Indeed to utilize the Sponsored Jobs feature and get in front of a wider audience.
One of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is referred to as “the great resignation.” During this time, which began in 2021, employees resigned from their positions en masse. According to some estimates, more than 50 million employees voluntarily left their roles, resulting in a mad scramble for talent.
Some of the factors driving the mass resignation event included a desire for enhanced flexibility, particularly in scheduling, remote or hybrid work, and higher pay. But a percentage of these individuals regretted their decision, resulting in an attempt to return to the company they left behind.
Embracing returning team members was a 2023 hiring trend we discussed on our blog. Now we’re diving into why these employees want to come back, what to consider and the benefits of welcoming them into the fold.
What is a ‘Boomerang’ Employee?
The term “boomerang employee” refers to someone who left their role and came back to the organization. Considering that the average employee tenure with a company is about five years, it makes sense that they might return to a company they worked for previously during their approximate 40-year professional run.
Why Employees Might Return to Previous Employers
A significant portion of those who quit their jobs believe that the previous role was better than their current one. People in this situation might be more excited about a return to their previous employer, which can boost morale and strengthen the company culture.
Other factors influencing decisions to return to previous employers include life situation changes, such as having children or caring for an ill family member or exploring another industry. An employee might choose to pursue a passion, taking time away from work during that period. Some people work seasonally, while others relocate temporarily based on climate conditions. These situations can all lead to boomerang employees.
The Benefits of Embracing Returning Employees
There are certainly benefits that come along with embracing former team members who want to rejoin the company. Some of these advantages include:
Familiarity with the expectations, responsibilities and job overall
A well-established relationship with the employer, which can boost retention and loyalty
An increased likelihood of understanding and aligning with the company culture
A less time-consuming onboarding process
Depending on their reasoning for leaving and what they did during the period away, returning employees may bring additional viewpoints and skills that can benefit your company.
Considerations of Rehiring Boomerang Employees
Of course, not every employee who resigned from their role will be a good fit to return. It’s worth considering what they will bring to the team and whether their presence will benefit the organization.
If a former employee left on a negative note, a return could create bad feelings in the workplace. Even remote workers may have trouble with tasks that involve collaboration or delegation from an individual who spoke negatively about the company or participated in other toxic behaviors.
Make sure to consider other applicants before determining whether the previous team member is the best fit. It’s easy to overlook well-qualified candidates when someone who is already trained and familiar with the processes requests to come back.
Understand why the employee chose to leave to get a sense of whether they will be happy working for the company once again. If they felt dissatisfied with aspects of business leadership or team workflows, they might become a higher flight risk if their concerns haven’t been resolved.
Maximize Your Hiring Efforts with ApplicantStack
Whether you choose to bring back boomerang employees or widen the search to include a range of candidates, ApplicantStack can make the hiring process go more smoothly. It includes tools to make communication with candidates easier, keeping everyone on the same page. Plus, you can share your open positions on multiple job posting sites with a single click to cast a wider net.
The ever-changing job market demands that businesses of all sizes adapt to find the best candidates in the hiring pool. Speed of hiring can make or break a job seeker’s experience with your company. According to The Society of Human Resource Management, it can take between 24 and 36 days from application to offer, numbers that can seem daunting to a company looking to grow and fill open positions.
A thoughtful analysis of your company’s hiring practices can reveal some places where you might be unknowingly hitting the brakes. Here are some steps to help you speed up the hiring process.
Write Thorough Job Descriptions
Attract top talent through honest and accurate job descriptions. Especially if you’re recycling previous descriptions, examine the language for vague clichés or missing responsibilities. Make sure benefits and compensation are clear, and that you give some information about company culture or unique things about your business.
Most people can figure out what it’s like to work at Apple, but the features that make your small business special may not be as easy to find on Reddit or Glassdoor. Let your description act as a marketing tool. It needs to attract candidates fast. Don’t let precious days pass between posting and receiving applicants.
Update Your Social Media and Website
Once you’ve piqued a candidate’s interest, their next step is likely checking you out on social media and your website. It’s easy to lose an interesting candidate who gets turned off because your last Instagram post is two years old or your website still features an announcement about Covid closures. Social media is useful for helping people understand your company culture, highlighting products or initiatives, and even advertising for open positions. It’s good for your public-facing media to not look abandoned.
Scrutinize Your Application Process
When was the last time someone from your company test-drove the application process? An internal review can reveal sections where a potential candidate may get bogged down. Make sure your tech works properly at each step. If you encourage applications through a web form, check that all the information transfers to the right people in a timely manner. Give job seekers details like what kind of documents are preferred or allowed, any file size limitations, or required information. Try to identify points in the process where someone might get discouraged or abandon it altogether. A clear and simple experience means an expansion of your pool and the ability to act quickly.
Invest in Automation Technology
You’ve got a brilliant job description and a streamlined application process: now what to do with all the data? Automation technology like ApplicantStack helps you avoid an overwhelmed inbox or a messy spreadsheet. Open jobs are laid out in an easy-to-view grid with many ways to proceed from there. Sort candidates by referral source, suitability rating, and dates to keep on top of interview scheduling, contacts, and overall view of your candidate pool. You can set tasks and deadlines that ensure nobody falls through the cracks. Handle simultaneous hiring timelines with ease, cutting down significantly on time to hire.
Keep an Open Mind for Potential
Qualifications for a job are the gold standard for advancing a candidate through to the next step. But the job pool may be full of underqualified people (on paper) who may fit in well with your company culture. Putting them on the back burner or dismissing them outright while waiting for the perfect candidate can waste precious time. Valuing potential can be very productive to the hiring process. If a person gives you every indication they’re capable of learning and adapting to something new, it might be worth giving them an opportunity sooner rather than later.
Avoid a Drawn-Out Interview Process
Hiring managers and job seekers are equally invested in the time to hire from first interaction. Along with scrutinizing your job descriptions and hiring protocols, consider the effectiveness of your interview practices. In the modern job market, phone calls and videoconferencing are ideal for preliminary interviews. They save time and travel expenses and serve as a useful tool for first impressions and determining next steps.
The ability to conduct multiple interviews in a day means faster movement through the process and gives in-person priority to serious candidates. Faster decisions also means faster communication with your candidates, which can keep them engaged and at lower risk of ghosting you or dropping out of contention.
Keep Communication Open
Notifying candidates about their place in the process ensures an open dialogue that benefits both sides, even if the end result isn’t an offer. Looking for a job usually means a fair amount of uncertainty as a candidate juggles companies’ various application and interview processes. Clear communication about next steps and dates is always welcome. A well-timed email of assurance in between can go a long way in showing your company’s interest.
With texting capabilities built right in, ApplicantStack supports your company’s efforts to communicate and meet candidates where they are—on their phones.
Issue Offers Quickly
Once the hiring managers have made a decision, issue the offer as soon as possible. Every day that passes with a candidate waiting for an answer is a day lost to the process and an opportunity for them to become discouraged by your process or take another job. Even if you decide not to extend an offer, a prompt rejection shows you respect the candidate’s time.
Set Internal Deadlines
Depending on the size of your business, you may have people wearing multiple hats of management and hiring. Organization is crucial to keep the process moving, especially with unforeseen circumstances that inevitably pop up. ApplicantStack includes candidate management functionality, reminding you of deadlines you’ve set and allowing other members of your team to help. It clearly lays out the hiring priorities in a way that makes it simple to spread out the work and keep the process moving efficiently while ensuring everyone involved stays on the same page.
Adapting to changes in the job market demands adaptability from hiring managers. Modern technology gives companies the tools to speed up the hiring process and fill open positions with engaged and enthusiastic workers.
