Employers have faced unique challenges over the past few years. Between the pandemic and ensuing public health orders that required business closures and other unique situations, many struggled to maintain a consistent workforce. The Great Resignation of 2022 created a whole new set of difficulties in meeting customer needs and maintaining business stability and growth. As we move toward 2025, many employers have renewed their focus on reducing employee turnover. But how well have those efforts fared, and what could be done differently? We’re outlining three proven methods for boosting retention and keeping employees happy in their roles.
The Effects of High Turnover Rates
A high employee turnover rate creates a ripple effect that impacts nearly everyone in the organization. Here’s what we mean:
When an employee chooses to leave their role, that creates a vacancy on their team. The remaining members of that team may be asked to pick up the slack, taking on additional responsibility (at least until the role is filled once again). These individuals may experience extra stress at work due to looming deadlines and heavy workloads.
The stress often makes its way to supervisors, who may feel concern over whether the work will get completed and projects remain on schedule. They may also deal with more interpersonal conflicts as members of their team experience higher frustration levels from taking on additional work.
Those involved in the hiring process are also impacted by the departure. They are responsible for posting the open position, reviewing applications, scheduling and conducting interviews, and contacting references. Filling one open position can take anywhere from several weeks to several months, and high turnover rates can require the posting and filling of multiple roles regularly.
Since high turnover rates also impact business success, upper-level management and leadership teams will also feel the impact. Profitability and revenue are directly affected by employees leaving, whether due to the expenses of bringing on new team members, the costs associated with training new hires, lost productivity and sales, or a combination of all those elements.
Workplace morale is lower in companies with high turnover rates. Employees tend to feel less motivated when their colleagues leave, and the ensuing disengagement has an impact on productivity. Plus, low morale spreads throughout departments, particularly as people chat amongst themselves about their frustrations and concerns. These employees may wonder whether they should leave as well.
3 Proven Ways for Reducing Employee Turnover
Business leaders weighed in on the top methods for reducing employee turnover, and here’s what they believe can make a real difference.
Implement Career Development and Mentorship Programs
Most workers want to progress in their careers and reach new heights. Offering a path for your team members to achieve their professional goals can make a real difference in whether they choose to stick around or move on. According to the co-founder of Upskillwise, the mentorship and career development program implemented supported a lower turnover rate after the pandemic. Employees are paired with experienced mentors, receiving support and guidance as they navigate their futures.
Look for a way to implement a similar program in your organization. Consider who could be paired up and offer insights. Taking this step could help your company keep turnover rates low, as it did for another business leader.
Maintain Transparency around Compensation
Even if your company takes pride in offering fair or competitive compensation, employees may still feel like they aren’t being paid enough. And pay is the second-most common reason for leaving a job, according to a recent article published by Indeed.
Transparency around compensation is an absolute must in today’s world. People have access to more information than ever before, and your employees are likely looking at salary data online. If they feel they could earn more elsewhere, they will likely seek out those opportunities. But fostering an open and honest conversation around total compensation (including any available incentives or benefits) can reduce the risk.
Look for Opportunities for Flexibility First
Everywhere you turn, you may be hearing about companies implementing their “return to the office” plans. Some of the most well-known include JPMorgan, Apple, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, and Amazon, although countless others have taken steps toward a full return to in-person work. However, employees who crave flexibility may end up leaving over such a mandate.
Consider whether your company can adopt a flex-first approach to scheduling and physical work locations. Of course, not all roles are well-suited to remote work, but for those that are, try to make accommodations where possible.
The CEO and co-founder of EchoGlobal echoed these sentiments, emphasizing the value of shaping work policies around the input of employees and what they need and want from their employers. Maintain an open line of communication and keep tabs on what people are saying. Taking these steps (and a flexible approach) can make a big difference in whether employees feel valued and want to stay.
As you work toward reducing employee turnover rates, consider what might impact your organization and its workforce. By tailoring your strategies to the needs of employees, you can align the company with their ideal workplace and showcase how much you value them. These efforts are directly linked to improved morale and overall happiness, which lessens the chance they’ll be looking elsewhere for work.
Hiring managers often sift through a large pool of qualified applications and narrow them down to the right fit for the right job. Sometimes that task is easier than others, particularly when trying to fill a niche job that requires a very specific set of skills. Hiring for niche roles can present challenges like a smaller applicant pool, a mismatch of skills and job responsibilities, or missing out on potential employees who opt to work elsewhere.
When your company is faced with filling a niche job, consider some of the following ideas to aid in the search.
Post on Niche Job Boards
Niche job boards may be industry-focused or affiliated with a professional organization. Though posting jobs in these forums comes with a cost, the job will be seen mainly by those who have some of the basic requirements and qualifications already. Here are some examples:
The ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) provides certification for audiology and speech language-adjacent professions and hosts a job board with 2,000 resumes uploaded.
Nurse Recruiter provides access to over 400,000 active nurses, and allows the employer to specify profession, license required, even specific shift times, details that generic job boards make difficult for nurses to search easily.
The SHRM (Society For Human Resource Management) is a trusted source of information for HR professionals and has an active job board with over 180,000 job seekers.
Some organizations have job boards that are even more focused, such as the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits, where a nonprofit looking to hire can advertise to a candidate pool who may not need to relocate and might be available within a shorter time frame.
Find the Right Recruiter
If you feel like hiring for niche roles will take more employee effort than your company has to give, you may consider hiring a recruiter to do the majority of the searching for you. Though the temptation may be to just use a familiar recruiter, it might be worth searching out recruiters who specialize in the role you need to fill. Someone who recruits exclusively in healthcare will have knowledge and vocabulary to discard resumes that don’t fit a healthcare organization’s needs. A sales-focused recruiter, no matter how talented, is unlikely to be as helpful filling the needs of a software development company as one immersed in the industry.
Niche recruiters will know the right places to look. If your industry relies heavily on recent college graduates, the right recruiters will have relationships with college counselors and career placement offices. Niche recruiters will have their finger on the pulse of the industry they represent, with an eye on competitive salaries, trends in remote or in-person working, and desirable benefits. This kind of insight can help you identify tweaks in your job descriptions and job details that will bring you the right candidates.
Improve Your Job Descriptions
If a focused recruiter or extra job boards are not in the small business budget, then a hard look at your job descriptions on more general boards may be the next move. If the person writing the description doesn’t understand the job, that will likely be obvious to someone in the industry.
Rather than write generic jargon, consult someone in the field who can help state the job objectives and responsibilities in the right language. Use formatting and keywords that put your job at the top of search results. Candidates searching for those industry-specific keywords can find your job with ease.
Similarly, avoid job description clichés like “team player” or “great communicator” in favor of concrete expectations and outcomes that define the niche job. Use free tools such as Grammarly to check and improve the readability and clarity of your job descriptions, and double-check for spelling and grammar errors that may discourage serious candidates.
Provide Competitive Salary and Benefits
Just as perfecting your job descriptions can attract the right candidates, be sure the salary and benefits you’re offering are commensurate with others in the field. Scrutiny of your employment package is particularly important if you find your company is losing out on candidates you’ve invested company time with.
If appropriate, gather data from job candidates who chose another position to find out if compensation was the issue. Reach out to others in the field – always being respectful of their time – and find out if your company is actually competitive with niche positions. This may be particularly true if the person you’re replacing has been in the position for some time, or if a historical idea of an appropriate salary prevails. If no one has been forced to consider what the market is offering, your salary offering may be low enough to keep you from your ideal hires.
Use Your Network
According to a 2022 study, approximately 82 percent of companies use referrals to source new talent. Current and past employees, job candidates with whom you maintain a good relationship, industry colleagues, customers, and mentors are all useful sources of talent recruiting. In the case of filling niche jobs, they may be even more valuable for narrowing the talent pool.
A tool like ApplicantStack can be tremendously helpful in sorting through past applicants for matching skills for current job openings. Even if they’re no longer on the market, they may be a source for referrals. Additionally, identifying those skills is useful for revising job descriptions. Making a thoughtful list of job qualifications and talents may also lead you to current employees who may be suitable for training or mentorship for filling niche jobs.
Hiring for niche roles can present challenges that expert recruiting and specialized job boards may solve. Where those options aren’t in the budget, thinking creatively about how your company is marketing itself to potential employees along with effectively using your network can help you find the right talent for the job.
Even before the pandemic turned the situation critical, healthcare workers reported high levels of stress and burnout. For some this meant leaving the industry all together. “We’re looking at a future without enough doctors, nurses, and other critical health workers,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, said in a plea to address burnout in healthcare among workers in May 2022.
The burden of managing healthcare burnout can often fall on the shoulders of managers and supervisors, who are at risk of burnout themselves. Read on for a variety of ideas to help reduce healthcare worker burnout at all levels.
What is Burnout?
Occupational burnout is a symptom that can affect any worker in any industry. It’s defined as a pervasive sense of exhaustion and cynicism accompanied by low satisfaction with work responsibilities. Those feelings can lead to mental health symptoms like depression, anxiety, insomnia, impaired cognitive function, conflict with friends and family, and physical pain.
Healthcare workers are trained to offer focus, dedication, and compassion to their patients no matter the person or the condition. According to an advisory published by the Department of Health and Human Services, “In healthcare settings, [burnout] can manifest when health workers know the best healthcare decision to make, but feel helpless and unable to act due to limited resources or circumstances beyond their control. Sustained moral distress can lead to moral injury, which has been linked to feelings of profound guilt, shame, anger, and other psychological impacts.”
In other words, healthcare workers may feel unable to respond to potentially life-threatening situations according to their training, which makes healthcare burnout a particularly critical problem to address. Dr. Vivek Murthy described the crisis this way: “If we fail to act, we will place our nation’s health at increasing risk. As the burnout and mental health crisis among health workers worsens, this will affect the public’s ability to get routine preventive care, emergency care, and medical procedures. Equally as important, we will send a message to millions of health workers and trainees that their suffering does not matter.”
Addressing Core Issues of Burnout in Healthcare
Though Dr. Murthy’s description sounds dire, there are solutions to help whole hospital systems and individuals within your employ.
Even before the pandemic—which stretched every healthcare organization and worker to well beyond its limits—the healthcare industry has experienced changes that contributed to the problem. According to the HHS advisory, these included:
Advances in medical biotechnology accompanied by burdensome administrative tasks and requirements
Training and application of complex medical information
Decades of decreases in funding for public health initiatives
Widening disparities in healthcare availability
A population that’s living longer with increasing demand for complex healthcare needs
Difficulty in addressing patients’ social determinants of health (racial, socioeconomic, and geographic factors)
National and state regulations
Harassment and even violence
Limited flexibility
Many of those factors are out of the control of healthcare organizations, but policies and procedures can help mitigate the negative effects on workers.
Breaking the Cycle of Healthcare Worker Burnout
A 2018 study by Diedre E. Mylod and Thomas H. Lee surveyed 80,000 healthcare workers. Though it doesn’t have the effects of the pandemic in its data, its conclusions are still very relevant. The survey analyzed two factors associated with worker burnout:
Activation: “The extent to which a person is motivated by his or her work and feels it is meaningful”
Decompression: “The degree to which one can withdraw, recharge and enjoy life outside of work”
Workers were asked to rank from 1 to 5 a series of statements related to both factors to determine a correlation between the two. This data is traditionally used to determine factors like satisfaction with working for a particular organization, feeling confident in recommending it to others both for work and for receiving care, and feeling proud of its contributions to the community.
“The science of studying burnout and resilience is young,” Mylod and Lee write, “but our experience suggests that measuring decompression and activation can enrich our understanding of the multiple relevant dynamics and support an array of tailored interventions.”
They cite an example where a nurse reports having trouble sleeping. Rather than encourage the nurse to merely get more sleep, it’s vital to discover what about the work environment is making it difficult for the nurse to decompress and sleep restfully. It requires leadership to put aside assumptions or common ideas about the healthcare workforce and ask the kinds of questions that yield real answers. With that data—specific to your organization—the right interventions and solutions become clear.
Support for Healthcare Worker Burnout
In a 2023 article published in the Journal of Primary and Medical Health, the authors identified some strategies for addressing burnout in the healthcare industry. This multi-pronged approach includes:
Counseling and mindfulness services such as individual therapy, group discussions, or resilience training
Adequate staffing and manageable workloads
Access to personal development opportunities, such as conference attendance or paid time for additional training
Provision for some autonomy and control over the work environment
Peer support activities, such as an employee book club or social gatherings
A work culture that encourages balance, with sufficient meal and rest breaks, flexibility with sick leave and PTO, financial or emotional support to cultivate interests outside of work
A work culture that encourages workers to seek help early for signs of burnout without fear of stigma or retribution
Organizational priority on worker wellbeing over efficiency or budgetary concerns
Organizational acknowledgement that the burden for worker wellbeing is not solely on the worker; management shares the responsibility for systemic support
Healthcare workers are among the most vital part of any society. They’re the first to arrive in a crisis and the last ones out, and assessing each healthcare worker’s individual wellbeing is a vital part of managing a healthcare organization. Strong evidence suggests burnout is a looming crisis with some very possible solutions. An honest assessment of how your organization is falling short is the first step in changing culture for the better.
The way you recruit and onboard new members of the team can also impact the overall success of your healthcare workforce. Explore a solution that ensures a user-friendly application experience with applicant management tools that simplify the healthcare recruiting process. Plus, a consistent onboarding experience can set the tone for each new hire’s experience.
Traditional hiring practices have long relied on filtering factors such as college degrees and work experience. While a prospective employee’s education and prior employment can be valuable assets, only applying those filters may exclude a huge swath of talented job seekers. Considering a skills-first hiring approach may reveal some hidden gems in the pool of candidates.
What is Skills-First Hiring?
Skills-first (or skills-based) hiring is the practice of primarily assessing job candidates based on their demonstrable job skills rather than education or work experience. Skills-first evaluation gives priority to all kinds of job skills: leadership abilities, effective communication, as well as industry-specific work such as programming, project management, or AI proficiency.
The pandemic dramatically and suddenly altered the job market in ways that continue to affect many industries. It disrupted people’s educational efforts, changed career trajectories, impacted companies’ ability to maintain a consistent workforce, changed production and distribution of products, and dramatically affected imports and exports. In the aftermath and recovery, companies were met with extreme labor shortages and a demand to rethink what made a job candidate viable.
A skills-first hiring approach acknowledges that the gap between a high-school diploma and a college degree is filled with candidates who possess tremendously valuable job skills, and excluding them may keep companies strapped for talent.
Why Should You Consider Skills-First Hiring?
The 2022 United States Census revealed that 37.7 percent of the adults over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree, a statistic that has not risen significantly since 2020, when it was 37.5 percent. Since the workforce is populated by many more adults than have college degrees, a huge swath of workers are developing marketable skills when given opportunities for on-the-job training and mentorship.
A study conducted by Harvard Business Review found that this shift has happened in part because of “increasing demand for digital proficiency in an ever-greater percentage of positions . . . and a deeper understanding of the specific competencies required in today’s emerging occupations.” Many of these skills are well-developed with daily practice at work. Further, rapid growth in online credentialing and learning platforms offers alternative pathways to acquiring key skills, helping to facilitate this transition.
Hiring with a skills-first approach can help previously marginalized communities with positive career advancement, and help companies meet goals and initiatives. The same Harvard Business Review study found that workers without a bachelor’s degree who are hired for a role that previously required a degree earn an average of 25 percent more than they would in a role that didn’t require it. This estimate amounts to more than $12,400 in incremental earnings annually.
In 2021, McKinsey found that 87 percent of companies believe they are in the midst of or will experience a skills gap among workers. That’s a number that proves the necessity of adjusting the old ways of hiring. In an extremely competitive job market, companies who distinguish themselves with a more expansive attitude towards hiring can attract hidden talent.
How Can My Company Implement Skills-First Hiring?
While no one is claiming that jobs like doctors or attorneys should be staffed with people without degrees, jobs like web designers, HR managers, facilities managers, and industrial designers are often staffed by competent and skilled workers without degrees. The study found large statistical gaps between people occupying those jobs without degrees and job postings that required them. For web designers, for example, the gap was 20 percent.
As you identify hiring needs in your company, you can take a hard look at factors that contributed to hiring in the past:
How quickly did you find the right candidate?
Was the job open longer than intended while waiting for a so-called “perfect” candidate?
How was the hiring budget spent (on recruiting, job posting sites, etc.)?
Were otherwise qualified prospective employees eliminated in the first cull because of degree status?
A tool like ApplicantStack can provide the data for this self-analysis. Sorting prior job applicants by qualifications gives you great insight into who made the cut for further interviews and why.
Steps to Create a Skills-First Hiring Paradigm
Follow these steps to make the shift toward a skills-first hiring attitude in your organization.
Change Internal Hiring Policies
While this step may seem obvious and simple, evidence suggests that four out of five hiring managers may be resistant to removing a degree requirement, believing it’s the best indicator for a valuable skill set. Adjusting these policies gives the hiring staff freedom to develop a new set of job requirements that can include hard and soft skills.
Identify Needed Skills
A recent Deloitte report found that 80 percent of workers are willing to provide information about demonstrated skills and capabilities, while 7 in 10 are willing to have data collected regarding their potential abilities. Using care and discretion, you can evaluate the vital skills that current employees use in the daily execution of their tasks.
Identifying and naming required skills can help you sort through future applications with a wider variety of categories and markers. This effort can also help with assigning roles to current employees based on their individual skills instead of a more broad and potentially limiting job title.
Rewrite Job Descriptions
Resistance to the idea of skills-first hiring means some hiring managers don’t want to explicitly invite candidates without a degree to apply, preferring more vague references. In its study, HBR found that only about a third were willing to remove references to degree requirements. That same Deloitte report found that organizations with a skills-based approach are:
107% more likely to place talent effectively
98% more likely to retain high performers and have a reputation as a great place to grow and develop
Writing new job descriptions will remove the ambiguity that can discourage job seekers from applying in the first place. Focus on writing job descriptions that emphasize that job skills are as (or more) valuable than traditional markers of quality.
Provide Continual Training
“Employees want to know their employers see their value and potential,” says Michele Sims at Forbes. “They want to grow, excel, advance their careers and be supported throughout that journey.” Beyond just hiring for skills, your company can offer training, mentorship, advanced certifications in their field, and opportunities for advancement and promotion commensurate with their contributions and work experience.
The ever-changing job market requires hiring managers to adapt to worker shortages, stiff competition for talent, and releasing themselves from traditional methods that may severely limit your company’s access to the candidate pool. A skills-first hiring approach can both cast a wider net for untapped talent and contribute to job satisfaction and retention.
A phone screening is a steadfast part of nearly every interview process, acting as an initial filter to identify suitable candidates and weed out others who may be unqualified for a particular role. They serve to save recruiters time and their company’s money by being the buffer between a candidate applying for a job and being scheduled for a full-fledged interview.
Here, we’ll discuss the art of phone screening and how to ask the right questions to help hiring managers and recruiters streamline their hiring process.
Phone Screening: The Ultimate Time Saver
Phone screenings are a popular part of the hiring process for a reason. They’re quick and effective for identifying promise in potential candidates ahead of a real interview. When a phone screening is executed correctly, the recruiter (and their organization) can benefit greatly from its streamlined structure.
Quick Elimination
Phone screenings help to quickly eliminate candidates who are not a good fit for the position right out of the gate, saving invaluable time in the hiring process. With the right phone screening interview questions, recruiters can swiftly discern whether a candidate’s qualifications, experience and salary expectations align with the job description. If they don’t, there’s typically no need to push them further through the funnel.
Efficient Filtering
Most jobs have essential criteria that candidates must meet. Phone screenings are a great way to efficiently filter out candidates who don’t meet baseline requirements, ensuring subsequent interviews are only scheduled for the most promising candidates.
Brevity
Leveraging the brevity of phone screenings is another key advantage. These screenings allow recruiters to evaluate a larger number of candidates within a shorter time frame compared to traditional interviews. While they’re not a true replacement, the concise nature of a phone screen interview enables quick assessments of candidates’ communication skills, professionalism and suitability for the role.
Flexibility
The flexibility of phone screenings can help reduce hiring delays. Unlike traditional interviews, phone screenings are lower stakes and, in some cases, a lot less formal. They’re flexible to accommodate both the recruiter’s and the candidate’s schedules, which helps maintain momentum in the hiring process.
What Types Of Questions to Ask During a Phone Screening
To realize the benefits of phone screenings, recruiters have to ask the right questions. As these calls are typically short, there’s no time to waste inquiring about information that won’t move the needle — in one direction or the other.
These question categories are a great place to start; developing just one query for each can be more than enough:
Basic Qualification Questions
Asking about basic qualifications helps recruiters quickly understand whether or not a candidate’s background aligns with the role at hand. Learning about their education, certifications, and specific skills related to the position helps the hiring manager determine if they meet the minimum requirements. These questions, or variations thereof, are great examples of basic questions to kick the phone screening off.
Why are you interested in this position?
Can you briefly walk me through your professional experience? How does it relate to this role?
Experience and Skill-Based Questions
Diving a little deeper than the above questions, discussing a candidate’s experience and skills through project examples and tool proficiency is another effective way to gauge their suitability for the position.
Ask candidates to describe their involvement in previous projects and the tools they used to get a sense of their hands-on experience and problem-solving abilities and to identify candidates with the practical skills necessary to succeed. Try questions like:
Can you provide an example of a project or task you’ve handled that is similar to what this role requires? What role did you play in getting that project across the finish line?
What tools or software relevant to this role do you have experience using?
Cultural Fit Questions
Culture is an important part of most workplaces. Evaluating cultural fit helps determine whether a job candidate will thrive at the organization. Questions about teamwork, adaptability and conflict resolution can provide insights into how a prospective candidate interacts with colleagues and handles challenges. Consider questions like:
How do you approach teamwork and collaboration?
Can you describe a time when you had to adapt to a significant change at work?
Understanding a candidate’s work style and values can strongly indicate how they’ll integrate into the workplace and even shine a light on their potential for long-term success with the company.
Logistical and Availability Questions
Checking availability factors, such as potential start dates, willingness to relocate or ability to work specific hours, ensures that logistical requirements are addressed early on. This helps avoid misunderstandings and ensures that candidates who progress further in the interview process can meet the job’s demands. These types of questions are typically fairly straightforward, but here are a couple of examples:
What is your current availability? When would you be able to start if hired?
Are you comfortable with the location or remote work requirements for this role?
Motivation and Goals
Understanding the reasons that a candidate is seeking a new job and what their career aspirations are can reveal valuable information about what drives them and their long-term career goals. How committed are they? What’s their potential for growth within the company? To help reveal their passion and vision for their future, ask questions like:
Why are you looking to leave your current position (or why did you leave your last role)?
Where do you see yourself in the next few years? How does this role align with your overarching career goals?
Clarifying Questions
Finally, leave some time for one or two clarifying questions. If the candidate has employment gaps, specific skills or experiences listed on their resume that would be valuable to learn more about, ask about them. This allows candidates to explain areas of concern directly, giving recruiters a more complete picture of their background and capabilities. While these will be customized to each individual candidate, try questions like:
I noticed a gap in your employment history—can you explain what you were doing during that time?
Your resume mentions a skill (or experience) we’re particularly interested in—can you elaborate on that?
Tips To Apply To Your Next Candidate Phone Screening
With those categorical questions in mind, there are a few valuable tips recruiters can couple with their phone screening interview questions to deliver the best possible candidate experience and gather the most valuable information:
Prepare in advance: Review the candidate’s resume ahead of time to ensure a productive phone screening. Become familiar with their work history, skills and achievements and tailor phone interview questions to their specific background.
Introduce yourself: Set the context of the call by starting with a brief introduction. This helps put the candidate at ease and provides a clear understanding of the purpose of the call, which can help create a structured yet lax environment that encourages open and honest communication.
Listen actively: Practicing active listening during the phone screen is key to identifying a candidate’s qualifications and potential red flags. Pay close attention to their responses and read between the lines to pick up on nuances that may not be evident on their resume. Active listening also shows the candidate that the organization values what they have to say, building positive rapport from the get-go.
Take notes: Take brief notes on qualifications and red flags and consider using a simple rating system to enhance the efficiency of the phone screening process, like assigning a score of 1-10 to their answers. Documenting key points and impressions during the call provides a reference for later comparison and decision-making.
Allow the candidate to ask questions: Candidate questions can reveal their level of interest in the role, their understanding of the job requirements and their expectations regarding company culture and career advancement.
Communicate next steps: Talk about timelines and what’s next at the end of the phone screen to set clear expectations for the candidate. Transparency helps maintain engagement and respect throughout the recruitment process, ensuring that candidates are informed and prepared for what comes next.
Review your notes immediately following the call: Promptly reviewing notes post-call helps maintain momentum. Quick follow-up actions, such as scheduling the next interview or requesting additional information, keep the recruitment process moving. And, responsiveness demonstrates the company’s commitment to finding the right candidate and can significantly enhance the candidate’s experience.
By applying these tips to phone screenings, recruiters can maximize the effectiveness of this important step in the hiring process. A well-conducted phone screen not only saves time but can significantly impact hiring decisions to ensure the right candidate moves forward.
Take Control of All Aspects of Your Hiring Process
ApplicantStack gives recruiters everything they need to find, attract and hire the right candidates for their open roles. With built-in tools for recruiting that cast a wide net across social channels to features that make it easy to create questionnaires and score candidates, recruiters can focus more on asking the right questions at the right times during their phone screenings.Top talent is one complete recruiting solution away. Start a free trial today to see how ApplicantStack streamlines the hiring process—from job bulletins to onboarding.
Creating an effective job description is crucial for attracting the right candidates to your organization. However, many employers make common job posting mistakes that can lead to unqualified applicants, a prolonged hiring process, or even damage to the business reputation. Here are seven of the most common job posting mistakes to avoid.
1. Vague Job Titles
A job title is often the first thing a potential candidate sees, so it needs to be clear and specific. Avoid using vague titles like “superstar,” “rockstar,” or “wizard.” While they may seem creative, they can cause confusion among job seekers and may not appear in relevant search results.
Instead, use industry-standard titles that clearly convey the role, such as “marketing manager” or “software developer.” Look at the scope of responsibilities in similar roles to ensure the accuracy of the level. For example, a marketing manager typically should oversee the work of others or manage various channels. A marketing specialist may be more of an entry-level role that will attract newcomers to the workplace.
2. Unclear Job Descriptions
A well-written job description should clearly outline the responsibilities, qualifications, and expectations for the role. Avoid using jargon, overly technical language, or long-winded descriptions.
Focus on what the candidate needs to know:
What they will do
What skills they need
What success in the role looks like
Including too many or too few details can either overwhelm candidates or leave them unsure whether they are a good fit.
3. Not Highlighting the Company Culture
Candidates are increasingly looking for roles that align with their values and work preferences. If your job posting doesn’t highlight your company culture, you may miss out on top talent. Share insights into your company’s mission, values, and work environment. Mention any unique perks or benefits, such as flexible working hours, professional development opportunities, or wellness programs. This information can help attract candidates who are not only qualified but also a good cultural fit.
4. Ignoring SEO Best Practices
Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t just for marketing content; it’s also essential for job postings. If your job ad isn’t optimized for search engines, it may not reach the right audience.
Use relevant keywords in the job title, description, and throughout the posting to increase its visibility. Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help identify the best keywords to use. Avoid keyword stuffing, as this can make the post hard to read and may even lead to penalties from search engines.
5. Failing to Include Salary Information
While some employers are hesitant to include salary information in job postings, transparency in compensation can be a significant factor in attracting the right candidates. Omitting salary details can lead to a mismatch in expectations and wasted time for both parties. In some states, it’s now illegal to leave salary details out of job listings.
If you’re not comfortable listing an exact number, consider providing a salary range. This gives potential applicants a clearer idea of what to expect and can help attract those who fit within your budget.
6. Overlooking Mobile Optimization
Many job seekers use mobile devices to search for and apply to jobs. If your job posting isn’t mobile-friendly, you may lose out on potential candidates. Ensure that your job ads are easy to read and apply to from a smartphone or tablet. Use short paragraphs and bullet points, and keep the application simple to complete on a mobile device.
7. Not Providing a Clear Application Process
A confusing or overly complex application process can deter even the most qualified candidates. Make sure the steps to apply are clear and straightforward. If you require additional materials, such as a portfolio or references, specify this in the posting. Also, provide a timeline for when candidates can expect to hear back from you. This level of transparency can improve the candidate experience and reflect positively on your company.
ApplicantStack Streamlines the Hiring Process
Avoiding these common job posting mistakes can help you attract the right candidates and streamline your hiring process. By creating clear, concise, and engaging job postings, you not only increase your chances of finding the perfect fit but also enhance your company’s reputation as an employer of choice.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.
