On average, it takes 52 days to fill a vacant position. During this time, departments are short staffed, managers spend their time performing employee tasks, and productivity suffers. Enhancing your recruiting process isn’t just recommended, it’s required to keep your business running at full capacity. Before you start searching for the perfect candidate for your next open position, consider implementing these five tips to enhance your recruiting process.
Recruit Deliberately
Too many employees take the scattershot approach to recruiting. They post on job boards, put ads in local papers, reach out to employees, and amass a huge but largely unqualified pool of candidates. Taking a more deliberate approach to recruiting can help reduce the amount of time spent pouring over resumes and get new employees hired faster. Consider only searching on industry specific sites for resumes or incentivize employees to suggest new recruits. By avoiding unqualified and unvetted resumes, you can increase your chances of a successful hire.
Plan Ahead for Vacancies
Staff turnover is always on the horizon yet few companies plan for it appropriately. Instead, a retirement or resignation results in panicking over how to find the next best employee. Don’t wait until there’s a vacancy to start thinking about the next hire and gathering new candidates. Companies can set themselves up for success by proactively looking for that next employee. Network at industry conferences and ask employees to recommend potential next hires. Encourage employees to go to industry meetings and meet others in your field. Tapping all your networks can help you build a portfolio of potential candidates for your next recruiting session.
Streamline Your Process
It isn’t just the number of interviews that can make your recruiting process grind to a halt. Involving too many people or dragging out the process by requiring too many steps can ensure you never hire the right candidate. Write your process out and find ways you can eliminate days or weeks from the process. Continually update these workflows with notes that help reduce the time between vacancy and hire or simply add potential candidates. Creating a timeline to track progress can help keep everyone on task and motivated to fill vacancies.
Consolidate Feedback
Knowledge is power, even during recruiting. Getting candidate feedback on a single platform can reduce time spent interviewing and help guide the hiring process in the right direction. Rather than waiting for meetings or sending lengthy emails, employees can discuss the hiring process or specific candidates, checking in whenever is convenient. When a candidate is recruited, it allows every person in the process the option of leaving feedback on whether they would be a good fit before embarking on the hiring process. Giving those involved in the hiring process a place to discuss openings and candidate can help speed along the recruiting process in your organization.
Increase Communication
Recruiting seems like it should be a collaborative project yet in many workplaces, it’s isolating. Each candidate makes their way through the different departments and it’s only after all the interviews that anyone sits down to discuss. Hiring the best candidates requires that different departments share their expertise and feedback with the entire group of interviewers. Departments can speak to a candidate’s technical credentials while HR may have better insight into their ability to conform to company culture. Consider group interviews or simply using your workforce management system to get every interviewer’s feedback to hire better candidates.