Losing an employee can have a negative effect on your business. Not only does management need to contend with finding coverage for short staffed shifts, keeping up morale, and scrambling to redistribute employee job duties, but they also need to start the hiring process. When hiring is a time-consuming and frustrating endeavor, that just amplifies the stress level. There are the flood of unqualified resumes, the stacks of paperwork, and the miscommunication between departments. To optimize your hiring process, follow these three simple tips for hiring the best candidate in the least amount of time:
Create Strong Screens
Depending on how your talent acquisition process works, the initial screen for viable candidates may go directly to the manager or through Human Resources. Regardless, it's important that everyone from HR to the CEO know what degrees, traits, and experience is required for the position and what is preferred. Often, the hiring process gets held up when a prime candidate is being compared to an outdated job description or prior licensing requirements.
HR and management should work together to establish some key screening questions to weed out the worst candidates and schedule an interview for the best. An online screening process can allow employers to build questions specific for the job title. With a few simple yes or no questions and a key, any employee with the organization would be able to determine whether a candidate should advance to an interview.
Start on the Phone
Interviewing is not only time-consuming but often futile. No matter how thorough the screening process, a few people will slip through that are poor candidates through their interpersonal skills, their job history, or their lack of interest in the position. Rather than wasting an hour interviewing a bad candidate, managers can often remove them from the process through a simple phone interview. Start the hiring process with a short phone interview that describes the position, answers basic questions, and asks some job history questions. Since taking a phone call doesn't require extensive scheduling, it can be done quickly and painlessly in between other job duties. To jumpstart the talent acquisition process, start with a phone interview.
Make the Process Streamlined
Hopefully, most managers have extensive experience with hiring. While this is great for managers, it's a nightmare for HR. That once a year time managers do have to hire, they often don't remember to fill out the right paperwork or send the right forms and end up causing confusion. Simplifying the talent acquisition process through an online hiring portal can ensure that HR gets the information they need to fill the position and managers can follow that process easily. Using a workforce management system is a great way for employers to streamline the requirements of hiring. Managers can go to a one-stop shop to fill requisitions, comment on interviews, and alert HR to start the background check on a selected candidate. When information is missed, the automated system can send an email or visual cue.
Hiring can be tricky. Managers need to wait for the right candidate but once a good candidate is selected, the process needs to move fast. Creating a system that streamlines the hiring process can ensure that the right candidate is offered the job and managers don't waste time during that process. To help that process along, employers can implement a phone interview before moving to in-person interviews, create a screening process that prevents management from spending time on unqualified candidates, and reducing redundancy and confusion in the paperwork required for a new hire. Use these three tips to create a smoother talent acquisition process in your company. 