As the economy shifts and business leaders feel uncertain about the future, knowing when and how to hire can pose unique challenges. We’ve put together a guide to hiring in uncertainty, whether due to slower-than-expected global growth, ongoing inflation concerns, or other issues that plague your industry. Review our tips to make the process go a little more smoothly.
Hiring: By the Numbers
Although you may be feeling uneasy about what the future holds for your organization, the reality is that waiting too long to bring on talent can put you in a worse situation. According to the 2023 Hiring and Workplace Trends Report, put together by Glassdoor and Indeed, the labor supply is expected to remain tight. Between low immigration levels, aging populations and retirements and declining birth rates, the market remains firmly geared toward the jobseeker rather than the employer.
The result of this fact is a lower number of workers available to fill open positions. And with structural issues present in the American labor market, the supply becomes even further constrained. The fight for skilled workers won’t end anytime soon, so make sure to look at your hiring process and benefits to avoid putting off top talent, who may look elsewhere for work.
4 Tips to Improve Hiring in Uncertainty
Here are four strategies that can help you improve your efforts for hiring in uncertain times.
Focus on job descriptions
When competing with other employers for talent, your open roles need to stand out and accurately reflect the role. A clear definition of a job is a starting point that determines whether someone chooses to submit an application. Without that, you’re likely to get far fewer applicants, which narrows down the pool and forces you to choose from potentially unqualified individuals.
Create a precise, accurate and engaging job description for every role that’s open, and don’t be afraid to change it up when needed. Save time with templates, available within the ApplicantStack platform, which serve as a starting point for various roles in the business.
Build a diverse, skilled team
As you take steps to build successful, engaged and productive teams, consider the level of diversity. Different perspectives can benefit your organization overall, especially considering the fact that nearly two-thirds of workers between age 18 and 34 care deeply about diversity. In fact, a large percentage said they would consider quitting a job with or turning down a job offer from a company that lacks diversity in its leadership.
Take a hard look at compensation packages
When competing for talent, it’s essential to provide salary details. It wastes everyone’s time when jobseekers apply for roles that don’t align with their compensation needs or expectations, simply because the information wasn’t available.
As you implement salary details in your listings, you can also take a deeper dive into what your company offers. Remaining competitive is a must in a tight labor market, so consider how you can increase salary ranges or provide additional benefits to stand out.
By implementing these tips and assessing your current hiring process, you can stay at the top of the pack to attract skilled individuals and maintain steady operations. Hiring in uncertainty doesn’t have to overwhelm you. Take advantage of ApplicantStack, an applicant-tracking system that’s designed to streamline all aspects of recruiting and onboarding. You can even try it for free, so get started and post your first job today!
The journey toward hiring excellence begins long before a candidate steps into the interview room, and it starts with a strategic approach to interview planning.
Understanding the preference for structured interview planning over “going in blind” is crucial in today’s competitive job market. A well-prepared interviewer not only exudes confidence but also ensures a comprehensive evaluation of each candidate, making the process more effective, efficient and fair.
Here, we’ll discuss interview templates, including what they are, why they’re valuable and how you can go about creating your very own to take into your next interview.
What Is an Interview Template, and Why Is It Valuable?
Interview templates serve as a blueprint for the interview process, ensuring that no question is left unasked and every candidate is evaluated on a consistent set of criteria. This level of organization and foresight is what sets apart successful hiring processes from the rest. By adopting and using interview templates, companies can streamline their hiring process, reduce biases and ultimately make better hiring decisions.
An effective interview template is equal parts art and science, as it requires a deep understanding of the job role, the company culture and the qualities of an ideal candidate. With an interview template, interviewers can easily navigate interview processes, ensuring each interview is as productive and insightful as possible. This strategic approach not only enhances the quality of hires but also contributes to a positive candidate experience that can reflect well on your brand.
What Does an Interview Template Typically Look Like?
While there is no set-in-stone template that exists as a standard across industries (because each is unique and may require a slightly different approach), we can draw inspiration from what we know works well in any scenario and for any role.
In general, an interview template should include most of the following:
Personal introduction
Company name and introduction
Role overview
Candidate background
Behavioral questions
Role-specific questions
Problem-solving questions
Cultural fit questions
Candidate questions
Closing
If you’re unsure what some of these sections of the template entail, don’t worry! Below, you’ll find a guide to creating your own interview form from scratch.
Why Are Interview Templates Valuable?
The advantages of using interview templates are manifold. They not only save time and reduce errors but also enhance the quality of the hiring process. With templates, companies can ensure that each interview is conducted professionally and efficiently, leading to better hiring outcomes and a stronger workforce. In brief, here are the key benefits of these templates:
Time savings: Templates provide a strong starting point for interviews, helping reduce the time needed to create documents or processes from scratch. They also simplify and streamline repetitive recruiting tasks, allowing interviewers to focus on the content rather than its format or structure.
Reduced errors: Predefined structures minimize the chance of omitting crucial information or making formatting errors that can crop up during the interview. For example, with templates, you’ll be less likely to forget to ask an important question that could sway the interview one way or the other.
Improved record keeping: Templates ensure that all relevant information is captured and documented systematically. Plus, it is easier to organize, store, retrieve and extract information when needed since they’re all laid out the same way.
Creating an Interview Template
Whether you have an exciting interview template, take a moment to review this guidance and structure and either build out your own from scratch or apply some of what you see here to your existing template to strengthen it.
Step 1: Define the Ideal Job Candidate and Requirements for Success
The first step in creating an effective interview template is defining job requirements, including the role, responsibilities and necessary skills that candidates need to be successful. By clearly understanding what the job entails and what success looks like in the role, the hiring manager can tailor their interview templates to focus on the most relevant aspects. Whether it’s technical expertise, leadership abilities or problem-solving skills, pinpointing these competencies early on guides the development of targeted interview questions, eliciting responses that reveal a candidate’s capabilities and fit for the position.
Here’s an example to help you get started:
Job title and department: Specify the department or team.
Reports to: Title of the person to whom the role reports.
Location: Work location (e.g., remote, office location).
Job summary: Provide a brief overview of the role, its purpose and key objectives.
Key Responsibilities: List the main tasks and duties associated with the role. Use bullet points for clarity.
Required Qualifications (education, experience, skills, certifications): Specify the educational background needed (Bachelor’s degree, MBA); Detail the years of experience and the type of work experience required; outline the essential skills and competencies and any necessary certifications or licenses.
Step 2: Develop Questions
The most important part of the interview process is the questions. Depending on the role, questions can be vastly different. To keep this as a general guide, we’ll outline five types of questions that work well in just about every scenario, and it’ll be up to the hiring manager to tweak them as they see fit for their particular job offer.
Additionally, incorporating questions based on the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) helps interviewers get detailed and actionable insights into a candidate’s past experiences and behaviors.
Behavioral Questions Examples
Tell me about a time when you had to work under a tight deadline. How did you manage your time and priorities to ensure you met the deadline?
Describe a situation where you had a conflict with a coworker. How did you handle it and what was the outcome?
Role-Specific Questions Examples
For a software developer role: Can you walk me through a project where you implemented a new feature? What technologies did you use and what challenges did you face?
For a marketing manager role: How do you approach developing a new marketing campaign? Can you provide an example of a successful campaign you led?
Problem-Solving Questions Examples
Imagine you are given a task with incomplete information. How would you go about gathering the necessary information and completing the task?
You are facing a significant drop in team productivity. What steps would you take to identify the root cause and address the issue?
Cultural Fit Questions Examples
Can you describe an ideal work environment for you? How do you ensure you contribute to creating such an environment?
How do you handle feedback, both positive and negative? Can you give an example of how you have implemented feedback in the past?
Candidate Questions Examples
What are you looking for in your next role, and why do you think our company would be a good fit for you?
Do you have any questions about our company culture, team structure or the day-to-day responsibilities of this role?
Step 3: Create an Evaluation Form
Creating an evaluation form with a rating scale and sections for detailed notes helps HR professionals or whoever is conducting the interview quickly and easily apply ratings to each competency or skill or each candidate.
This allows interviewers to systematically assess each candidate’s responses and qualifications, making it easier to compare candidates objectively later on. Here’s what this section of the template should include:
A rating scale (e.g., 1-5) for each competency and skill
Sections to jot down strengths, weaknesses and overall impressions
Space for interviewers to write additional detailed notes and observations
Step 4: Review and Finalize the Interview Form
The final step includes reviewing and finalizing the template, ideally with stakeholder feedback. This collaborative approach ensures that the interview template is robust, comprehensive, and tailored to the specific needs of the role and the company.
Once ready, take the template for a test drive and use it for one or two interviews. Afterward, consider how it went and make any necessary adjustments to fine-tune the template to your liking.
Go One Step Further Than a Template with ApplicantStack
Go a step further with ApplicantStack. While interview templates are invaluable tools for recruiting, they can leave a lot to be desired—especially when it comes to tracking and communicating with job candidates.
ApplicantStack allows HR professionals to take control of their hiring process and automate tedious, manual tasks where possible. Streamline candidate communication and put more focus on the candidate experience. Amplify job postings, get more applicants and keep everything organized—all in one platform.
Once you’ve found the right candidate (hooray!), enjoy a suite of onboarding tools that facilitate a seamless transition from candidate to employee.
Experience how ApplicantStack can transform your hiring process. Start a free trial today.
Finding and bringing on skilled individuals is a challenge across various industries. Between economic uncertainty and low unemployment rates, many employers are struggling to fill open roles, particularly those that require higher-level skills. We’ve put together four insider tips for more effective recruiting.
Tip 1: Improve the Hiring Process
One of the biggest complaints among jobseekers is how hard it is to apply for jobs. Making applicants jump through hoops in the form of lengthy applications or extensive processes isn’t a great way to improve your hiring metrics. Try to simplify what an applicant has to do to be considered for a position.
The descriptions used for open roles also impact whether people want to apply. Take a look at the current listings and how you can improve them to make them appealing and encouraging to top talent. Candidates are looking for the following in a job posting:
You can also let an applicant tracking system like ApplicantStack help you through the hiring process. With job description templates, resources that make it easy to sift through applications, and knock-out questions that ensure top candidates make it through, recruiting is easier than ever.
Tip 2: Work on These 2 Valuable Skills for Recruiters
If you’re involved in the hiring process, you may benefit from working on a few key skills to ensure effective recruiting. Recruiters have to be able to move quickly and respond to changes. Candidates can go from interested to lukewarm in an instant, requiring you to pivot and continue your search. The ability to move someone through the process rapidly is also essential, as you may lose out on a skilled individual if it takes too long.
The ability to build relationships is another must-have skill in someone who actively recruits talent. The labor market is tight, and you simply must find ways to stand out. A candidate who may not be a great fit for one role could be ideal in another that opens later on, and building that relationship can maintain a line of communication. Candidates who feel valued and seen also have better connections to the company overall.
Tip 3: Focus on Employee Expectations
Employees have different expectations than they did in the past. Many understand that companies are having trouble filling roles, so they may ask for more. Additionally, the Great Resignation of 2021 led many members of the workforce to re-evaluate what they wanted in their professional lives.
Since employees have more leverage, they can leave one company and jump to another if they don’t get what they want. The pressure lies on each organization and its leaders to create a positive, supportive culture where team members can thrive.
Take a closer look at what jobseekers might expect when coming in for interviews. For example, you could compare the salary offering with compensation resources like Indeed. Make sure your company remains competitive to attract talented individuals.
Tip 4: Incorporate Insightful Questions
Conducting interviews is a key element of hiring, but not asking the right questions can make the experience far less useful for everyone involved. Rather than using the same list of questions your team has relied on for years, consider what you want to learn about a candidate.
The STAR interview format allows an applicant to provide a situation, task, action, and resolution, outlining a specific instance in which they handled a need in a previous role. You can implement behavioral interview questions to get more detailed answers, which will help you get to know more about a candidate and how they might react in a similar situation with your organization.
With these insider tips, you can ensure effective recruiting with higher returns on the investments made into the hiring effort. And if you’re relying on manual methods to find and bring on top talent, the reality is that you’re already behind.
Implement ApplicantStack, a proven hiring and onboarding system that’s designed for small-to-midsize companies. It has all the tools used by top organizations, including one-click sharing to top job boards and candidate management functionality. Try it for free today!
In a sea of potential candidates, how can you tell who among them is the right employee? Finding the right person is vital for not just the future of your business but the new hire as well. Here, we provide practical tips to hire the right person, not just any candidate, in today’s competitive job market.
Why It’s Important To Hire the Right Person
Sometimes when the candidate pool is slim, it can feel tempting to rush through the hiring process as quickly as possible. Here’s why taking your time to find a qualified job candidate is worth the extra time.
Increased Productivity and Performance
The baseline expectation for hiring is that they need to be qualified to do the job.
While some skills are teachable, others are not. When considering who to hire, it’s important to understand the job expectations and comb through their resume accordingly. Educate yourself or talk to the hiring managers about the expectations you should have before combing through applications.
The right job seeker should have a clear understanding of their role and be confident they can complete their tasks with efficiency and accuracy. What’s more, the right person will be more likely to stick around. Hiring someone proficient in their field is necessary if you want them to hit the ground running.
A Positive Work Environment
Cultural fit is often overlooked, but should never be undervalued. If the ability to do the job is at the top of the list, then company culture fit is second before you send the offer letter.
Personalities, values, and goals need to align before someone is deemed the right fit for your company. There may be a slew of people who can do the job, but who is the right person?
When you think of your business, you may not think of cliques — especially if you’re hiring the right people. But each department has a micro-culture in itself that you’ll need to pull out to find the right candidate.
At the end of the day, it’s difficult being the new person; being the odd man out is even more challenging. A great culture fit hire can support — or even boost — the morale of the office.
Additionally, a company’s culture can sometimes be the one thing that sets it apart in a competitive hiring landscape. In a 2023 survey of 4,400 employees by Great Place to Work, 15% of applicants are more likely to choose a company that’s a certified best place to work than a competitor.
The better you can understand company culture, the better the organization can perform overall.
Innovation and Growth
Organizations that have long employee tenure may seem to have it all figured out. The business runs like a well-oiled machine, and they haven’t felt a need to make any major changes in a while. But this can lead to problems.
The digital native generation, according to CornerStone Staffing, expects a level of digital innovation and proficiency in modern tools as a sign the business is committed to growth.
But if you’re not there yet, hiring candidates based on their ability to advance the business forward technologically is advantageous for the future of the company — and your attractiveness to job seekers.
Long-Term Success
The cost-per-hire according to SHRM is nearly $4,700, but could amount to two or three times their salary to fill the role. Between hiring platforms like LinkedIn, the cost-per-application rate, and the hourly wage of recruiters — in-house or through an agency — the cost to hire a new employee is significant.
When you onboard a great employee, you can save your business a lot of money while ensuring long-term success. If the company doesn’t need to budget for a hefty hiring process, it can allocate those funds to building the business instead.
Taking your time to find the ideal candidate can help support the future success of your organization.
Employee Satisfaction and Retention
Hiring, however nuanced, can help build the decision power of the business. Ever tried making a decision when you’re feeling low self-confidence? Imagine what that feels like on an enterprise level. A confident employee is likely to stick around and make a positive impact because they feel comfortable in their role.
When employees are well-matched to their positions, they experience higher job satisfaction, which boosts retention rates. The more you can reduce the turnover rate, the more expendable cash your organization has around to move forward to the future.
Want To Hire the Right Person? Consider the Following
We’ve all been in a situation where we hire someone we think is the perfect fit, and then before the end of their 90-day probation period, you’re ready to call in your second choice. For one reason or another, the star candidate you thought was going to transform your company ended up coming up short.
Let’s break down how to handle hiring with confidence.
Understand the Role Thoroughly
The job description is a potential candidate’s first test of deciding whether they’re a fit. How well you understand the position and the hiring manager’s needs will come through in the job description and thus who applies.
Adding a hint of the company culture can help keep your competitive edge here as well.
Build a Strong Talent Pipeline
Starting from scratch each time you have a job opening is what increases the cost-per-hire. Instead, keep in touch with past and passive candidates to cut the time-to-hire in half.
And of course, network. People trust their web of trusted friends and colleagues when making big decisions. Attending job fairs, events, and even slipping into public forums can help keep your ear to the ground to find the perfect candidate.
The more you can get boots to the ground and meet people, the better flow your applicant pipeline will have.
Utilize Multiple Sourcing Channels to Hire the Right Person
Job seekers can find a new job on any number of job boards today. So you need to be everywhere your ideal candidates are when they’re looking for a job.
Posting your open positions on your website and relevant job boards should be standard now. However, leveraging an applicant tracking system (ATS) that posts opportunities on these sites for you and helps you track applications is necessary.
Streamlining the hiring process can help ensure you hire people as easily and quickly as possible. Leveraging social media can help you as well. Know where your ideal candidate spends their time and target that platform. Targeted ads and posting a blurb on your main page can help boost interest in the position.
Finally, utilize your current employees. No one knows your company better than your fellow team members. People trust their friends when they suggest something they love. Your company could be one of them. What’s more, a referral program can help ensure participation.
Be Intentional and Thoughtful
As you move through applicants, take your time reading through each application, listen closely during the interview, and ask pointed questions. Weeding out the wrong fit takes conscious effort.
However, a comprehensive ATS can help you here. If you’re looking for a great ATS, find one that will weed out applicants based on keywords on their resume and cover letter. This can save a lot of time in manual considerations.
And don’t forget what it was like being the applicant. Following up during the post-offer process for those who didn’t make it is important. For applicants, waiting to hear back from a company can be nerve-wracking — especially if they took the time to write a cover letter and interview. This can boost your company image while building your applicant pool.
The post-offer follow-up includes checking in with new hires and making sure they’re still happy about their choice to take the job. Gaining feedback can help support the interview process and address retention issues in the future.
Hire the Right Person Faster
If you’re looking for an ATS that supports and streamlines your process of hiring the right person, look no further than ApplicantSlack. Our smart ATS posts your job in the right places, weeds out poor fits, and helps you track each applicant on a single dashboard.
Make your next hiring decision with ApplicantSlack, start a free trial today and ensure you’re hiring the right candidates.
For small businesses looking to compete for quality candidates in a competitive job market, it can be useful to evaluate your recruiting process. How much return on investment (ROI) does your current system offer? Taking a hard look at recruitment metrics can provide plenty of insight into areas where improvement can offer big results.
According to Nadine von Molke at the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR), recruitment ROI “measures the effectiveness and value of your organization’s recruitment strategies and activities used to attract, hire, and retain employees.” Though small businesses’ recruiting budgets are different from large corporations, there are important metrics applicable to all hiring. Let’s consider some of these metrics and how to measure them.
Components of Recruitment ROI Calculation
Total Costs. This refers to all costs your company accrues as part of the recruiting process, including posting on job boards, advertising, outside recruiting expert fees, software, background checks, legal fees, or any interview costs. Internal costs could include time spent by staff writing job descriptions, posting, communicating, and interviewing candidates.
Net Benefits. This metric refers to the value a new employee brings to your company. It could include productivity numbers, company revenue increases, targets reached, project completions, client acquisitions, product development, brand visibility, process improvements, or morale benefits that aid retention.
Total costs are more easy to quantify in hard numbers; net benefits require some value assignment that’s specific to your company. Taking the time to recognize what improvements are beneficial to you helps evaluate each new hire through a similar lens and gives you a company-based formula to follow.
Once you’ve gathered this data, the calculation is as follows:
(Total Value of Hires – Total Cost of Recruitment) / Total Cost of Recruitment X 100
Calculation Example
Let’s say your company spent $50,000 in total costs, and net benefits add up to $80,000.
Calculating your ROI looks like: ($80,000 – $50,000) / $50,000 x 100 = 60
Your recruitment ROI is 60%. Generally a recruitment ROI of 50% or higher is considered a favorable result. But that’s just the starting point of analyzing your company’s hiring efficiency and making a plan to move that percentage closer to 100. Where possible, it’s useful to compare your ROI to others in your industry to establish a benchmark to either meet or exceed.
Benefits of Understanding Recruitment ROI
Small businesses have a close relationship with the budgetary bottom line. Once you have the recruitment ROI number in your toolkit, you can drill down on specific recruitment metrics that can show the bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the hiring process. Consider metrics to track such as:
Time to Fill: the calendar days it takes to identify, post, interview, offer, and receive acceptance for a position. This metric can show delays in internal identification of openings, management approvals, writing job descriptions, and posting on job boards.
Time to Hire: the time it takes from a candidate applying for a job to accepting the offer. This metric can show lags in communication from the hiring department.
Application Completion Rate: the number of prospective hires who follow through to the end of your company’s application system. This metric can reveal places where the process is confusing, laborious, or the candidates encounter broken tech.
New Hire Turnover Rate: the time a new employee remains at the job for which they were hired. This metric can reveal problems with company culture, an ineffective interview process, or insufficient onboarding or training.
Each of these quantifiable metrics can reveal places where recruiting dollars are being misspent. Perhaps you see delays in writing and posting job descriptions because they get lost in an email thread waiting on approval, or missing out on candidates because of long delays in communication about the next steps in the process. Your company can benefit from an applicant tracking system like ApplicantStack to streamline those processes with ease. The ApplicantStack cost-per-hire calculator an give you a glimpse into the dollars you can save by using this powerful tool.
Utilize Technology to Boost Recruitment ROI
In terms of value of hires, tools like performance reviews, time-limited sales tracking systems, career advancement benchmarks, salary increases, or customer tracking to look at each new employee’s contributions to the revenue as well as team morale and unity. If much of your company’s tracking is feelings-based, consider some tracking tools that mark and measure an employee’s progress and development.
A focus on dialing into certain metrics can seem like the domain of very large corporations, but in fact small businesses are primed for improving the recruitment process with some simple changes. The initial time investment may feel like a barrier, but establishing the factors that go into calculating your recruitment ROI will pay great dividends in future hiring. A combination of streamlining human tasks and adding in efficient tools like ApplicantStack increases the ROI on paper, which translates to quality hires that can offer your company the dedication it deserves.
Job recovery since the 2020 pandemic has been on a mostly steady incline, with the construction industry serving as a strong contributor to the labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an average of 151,400 construction jobs will be added to the economy each year over he next decade. However, even as those jobs are created, construction hiring can still be a challenge as management companies and contractors try fill the roles with skilled and willing workers.
In March 2024, NPR reported that the industry added 39,000 jobs even in the face of high interest rates, and found nearly 48 percent of builders surveyed planned to add jobs over the following six months. Even as the industry remains plagued by supply chain concerns, high material costs, and interest rates that stall residential building demand, significant opportunity remains for construction hiring in public works, manufacturing, and other commercial segments.
Wherever an industry is growing, it faces roadblocks to hiring skilled labor to fill the demand. Ryan Odendahl, the CEO of a civil and industrial construction firm, told NPR:
“Young people are starting to see the opportunity, both from an earnings potential and a growth potential that the construction industry offers. We need to do a better job as an industry of telling some of the great things that are going on in construction. We are competing with all of the other industries in the economy for people.”
4 Tips to Improve Construction Hiring Efforts
Construction Worker on Duty. Caucasian Contractor and the Wooden House Frame. Industrial Theme.
While those in the industry know all too well the challenges of getting out that message, there are some concrete ways to optimize the construction hiring and recruiting process to help build a stronger workforce.
Define Your Company Culture
The idea of company culture may sound like a buzzword more suited to the tech industry. But research performed by MIT Sloan after the pandemic workforce upheaval showed that attrition is “affecting blue-collar and white-collar sectors with equal force.” One of the most commonly cited reasons for leaving was toxic company culture; “by far the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted attrition and is 10 times more important than compensation in predicting turnover.”
Both a huge construction firm hired to build an airport and the “mom and pop” remodeling company can find value in looking for ways to meet workers’ needs. Some of these core values may include:
Equitable treatment without discrimination
Fair wages, including overtime pay
Paid leave
Flexible schedules
Benefits like health insurance or retirement contributions
Taking time to define and communicate the company’s core values can go a long way in making new and prospective workers feel like the company is trustworthy and a supportive place to work.
Identify Ways to Speed Up the Construction Hiring Process
Construction projects run on tight schedules, and delays and pushbacks can cost the company. Weather, unexpected additional work, and budget overruns are constants in construction, so maintaining a consistent labor force is key. Once you’ve set yourself apart with positive company culture, spend only the time necessary in the hiring process.
There are many tools for hiring efficiency, but one of the best is an applicant tracking system like ApplicantStack. Especially if you post jobs on popular sites, the volume of applicants may be overwhelming and lead to delays. ApplicantStack can quickly and easily sort by speciality, experience, and many other categories to help you sift through and find the worker you need at the moment.
Once you’ve flagged those you’d like to interview, quickly contact by email or text from within ApplicantStack to keep track of communication and never let anyone slip through the cracks. Follow up as soon as possible with interview dates and times, and keep communication timely throughout the process to ensure you don’t get ghosted by the applicant.
Adjust Your Requirements
Hard skills like framing, finish carpentry, or heavy machine operation are vital for certain types of construction jobs. Safety and efficiency demand that workers in some roles have completed prior training and demonstrate competency. But consider that for other roles, your recruiting could weigh soft skills and trainability as a useful way to quickly fill out your workforce. Demonstrable soft skills that are valuable on a construction site include:
Good communication
Conflict resolution
Learn new skills quickly
Adaptability to new situations
Positive attitude
Respectful
Helpful
Candidates who are looking for a career change or are new to the job market may possess a host of soft skills that, combined with some training, can produce a skilled and dedicated member of your team.
Focus on Onboarding
On a construction site, proper training is key for worker security and safety. Even employees with experience in the industry will need to learn how work is done with your company. Identify employees with good leadership skills, work ethic, and proper training to onboard new employees for a set amount of time. For those with training, that may look like observing tasks and providing feedback or encouragement. For people new to the industry, that may look like demonstrating skills and careful supervision. And always make sure new workers are aware of all federal and state safety requirements.
Proper onboarding can help workers feel like they didn’t get thrown in the deep end and left to flounder. It can be a challenge to find the right trainers and the time, but workers who feel supported from their first days are more likely to stick around and put their newfound skills to use. A positive onboarding process can play a role in improved employee retention rates, making it a worthwhile investment for any company.
A fast-growing sector like construction can still benefit from taking some time to effectively use recruiting and hiring tools and philosophies. Finding and managing prospective employees with ApplicantStack can help you identify skilled talent and build a strong workforce, boosting your organization’s success.
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