The hiring process is flawed. Don’t believe me? Just ask Leadership IQ who recently reported that:
“Almost half of all hires fail within the first 18 months on the job”
Across the board, the number one problem many companies face is hiring qualified employees who fit. Whether it’s a huge retail chain, or a small accounting firm: sourcing, qualifying, and hiring takes up a lot of time, energy, and money. When faced with a 50% chance those candidates won’t even last two years, we start to really recognize the importance of fixing the hiring process.
Even if you have many resources devoted to hiring, the number one pain point remains the same. There’s something fundamentally wrong in the actual process of hiring.
So let’s start fixing it! Not with fancy tricks, or a shiny new ATS, but by revisiting how we view the process of talent sourcing, qualification, and acquisition.
These five tips will help you improve the ROI on your hiring process, and hopefully inspire you to become a part of the recruitment solution.
1. Asses the Candidate, NOT the Resume
There is so much more to a candidate than a series of credentials, and yet often they are ruled because they fail to tick off one or two checkmarks on a list of “mandatory experience”.
I am not suggesting you don’t use resumes, they do give you a lot of worthwhile information about a potential hire. What I am saying is that you need to learn to read between the lines!
If you get too focused on details like a fancy degree, for instance, you may miss out on a candidate who took a less conventional, yet often even more educational route: like starting their own company, or pursuing various internships.
This is a great argument for checking out potential candidates LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profiles – you may just find a diamond in the rough.
2. Create Benchmarks for Fit
You know what kind of candidates “fit” at your company. What makes your employees excel, what values you need them to share. Your interview process must be specific to those needs. Along with technical skills, consider these four aspects of a candidate’s personality when interviewing:
- Motivation
- Emotional Intelligence
- Coach-ability
- Temperament
Ask behavior based questions that give you insights about each of these qualities, and any other personality traits that are important to your specific company culture.
Behavior based questions are more easily measured, and tend to elicit a more honest response from candidates.
Example of a series of question to ask if team work is one of your company’s core values is:
- Can you describe a situation where you had to mediate between co-workers?
- How did you approach the situation?
- How did they react to your approach?
- Would you handle things differently next time?
Make sure that every one of your interviewers knows what to look for in a potential hire, what questions to ask, and what specific skills your company needs them to posses. This will help your interviewing process become more unified, efficient, and repeatable.
3. Make Data Your Friend
You must understand your process in order to improve it, that’s why one of the best ways to streamline any business process is by making that process data driven.
Track your entire recruiting practice from start to finish so that you can tell what questions lead to better hires, which interviewers are the strongest, and what traits best help determine candidate success.
Make this information the basis of any changes and improvements you make to your recruiting process moving forward.
4. Attraction Trumps Sourcing
Yes, you need to post jobs, reach out to passive candidates, and actively recruit, but generating inbound candidate interest is one of the best things you can do to improve your hiring process.
“58% of employers say that a strong employer brand increases the quality of candidates”
If you can brand your company as an incredible place to work, candidates will come to you. The best and brightest candidates are more interested in your company culture than salary, so culture is one of the best tools you have to win talent.
5. Engage Your Talent Pool
Post and pray is NOT effective. Job boards are an awesome way to recruit, especially niche boards like BC Jobs, but if you want to make your recruiting as effective as possible, you need to drive quality candidates to your posts!
Social media is one of the best ways to do this. Use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and, Google Plus to engage top talent.
Tell the world what you’re working on in a fun engaging way. Show them how awesome your culture is with images and video. Even better, get your current team to comment and share what they love about working at your organization via their social channels and your own. Respond to any questions your talent community asks, and ask them questions in return.
Oh, and make sure you share the jobs you post on BC Jobs across all of your social channels!
Tags: hr, recruiting, recruiting advice, recruitment, sourcing
