When it’s time for a company to hire new employees, it can be exciting, but also crucial to take a look at your hiring process to make sure you’re recruiting high-quality talent. When you are finding the perfect hire, you will not only want a person who has all the correct qualifications and capabilities required for the role, but also someone who is a right fit in terms of the company’s culture.
If you are in HR, or the hiring manager responsible for bringing on someone new to your company, or team, you should look into streamlining your hiring process to ensure the best results. In this article, we will explore some of the ways you can simplify your process through the adaptation of best practices.
A clear, realistic, and detailed job description
A job description is the first thing prospective employees see when they look at starting a career at your company. This is the one area many businesses still get wrong. We’ll see job descriptions posted that are too long-winded, too brief, or just don’t have all the relevant information.
Make sure your job description lists out the relevant qualifications and skills needed, responsibilities expected from the role, salary, some information with regards to the culture, location, whether the role is remote, hybrid, or in-person, and clear details on how to apply.
The best way to go about this would be to use standardized job posting templates that you customize as per the requirements of each role, then post these on your website, LinkedIn profile, or other job posting platforms.
Preliminary screening of potential candidates
A CV or resume, and cover letter only provide a brief overview of the candidate. The use of a preliminary screening process prior to the interview will help you vet prospects quickly and easily. You will get a better idea of whether the individual is actually ready for the role, what their expertise is, and if they’re a good fit.
Make use of scheduling software for interviews
Small business owners or HR departments with not as much manpower tend to be pressed for time. In such situations the best way to streamline your hiring process is by automating and making use of recruitment softwares.
You can send applicants assessments, quizzes, or tasks. You can also make use of interview scheduling softwares that eliminate back-and-forth emails and time-intensive phone calls, by accessing the hiring managers’ and interviewers’ calendars, identifying their availability, and giving them the option to select a time that works for them.
This can be used to help schedule screening phone calls, onsite panel interviews, and video interviews. There are many interview scheduling software available online.
The interview process
After you’ve used your screening processes, identified a strong candidate, and checked availability, it’s time for you to conduct the actual interview. Holding an interview via video conferencing, or in-person are both viable ways to evaluate candidates.
Whichever of the two you decide to go ahead with, there are a few different ways you can go about conducting the interview. You can select the one most appropriate for your company or role you’re recruiting for.
One-on-one interviews
This is the most common type of interview held face-to-face and can range from 30 to 90 minutes. The number of questions you have for your interviewer to answer will determine the time taken. However, the duration of the interview in no way can correlate to how successful it goes, as shorter, concise interviews can be just as effective as longer, detailed ones.
Panel interviews
In panel interviews there tend to be a group of people who will be interviewing the candidate. These kinds of interviews consist of senior position holders of relevant departments, and allows you to consolidate multiple smaller interviews into one. This panel takes turns to ask the prospective employee questions, and then jointly cone to a conclusion as to whether they would like to hire the said individual.
Task-oriented interviews
In these interviews the applicant will have to take part in one, or various tasks, as part of the interview process. This allows you to see and evaluate their skillset and technical abilities firsthand. Setting the task will depend on the role you’re recruiting for.
An improved onboarding process
After you’ve found the right applicant, your work doesn’t end there. You need to successfully onboard the employee to complete the hiring process. This can be expensive and time-consuming, but the best way to streamline this would be to digitize this.
Digitizing employees the on-boarding process not only saves you some time and costs, but in current unpredictable times it can be essential. There are many softwares you can make use of to consolidate your administrative tasks onto one platform. A popular one is BambooHR.
You can get your new recruit to read all relevant documentation and complete filling out all the necessary forms and information, without the risk of overwhelming them with lots of paperwork on their first day, or misplacing paper forms.
Conclusion
Next steps for you are to go through your hiring process and make sure you’ve covered the areas detailed above. Take some time to evaluate your current procedures in place, list out the positives and negatives and see how you can change the negatives into positives, and how you can further improve. Remember to always get feedback from others, including those who you interview, to make the experience better for all those involved.