Hiring people is easy. Recruiting, screening, and hiring the right candidates, however, is not such a simple process. In fact, most companies are far from perfecting the process. Nearly three in four companies admit they have been negatively impacted by a bad hire, citing lowered productivity, lost time to recruit and train another worker, and compromised quality of work as the resulting outcomes.
This is why it is so vital to develop and implement an effective hiring strategy that can guide your human resources team through the employee recruitment and hiring process. When you fail to plan, you plan to fail, so your hiring and recruitment strategies are essential to helping you source, qualify, and place the right candidates in the right positions.
With these things in mind, our team of staffing experts has put together some tips for improving your organization’s employee hiring strategies and ways to incorporate innovative recruitment methods into your processes as well to achieve better results.
Techniques To Improve Your Hiring Strategy
Clearly define every position and its responsibilities
An important part of every recruitment strategy is to clearly define each position and the expectations of the candidate. The more specific you are concerning the goals and objectives in the position description, the more targeted your applicants will be—and the more effective your talent screening efforts will be in turn.
Determine the time frame for hiring a position and stick to It
Determining the date by which a candidate needs to be onboarded helps you calculate the amount of time you have available and the resources that are necessary for recruiting, evaluating, and hiring the candidate. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the national average time-to-hire for all industries in the U.S. is about 36 days.
Once you have determined the time frame necessary to fill a position, make it part of your recruitment strategy. Hold firmly to that time frame as much as possible to ensure your hiring process stays on track and within budget. Use data from your past hiring experiences to help you determine how long it takes to bring someone onboard from start to finish so you can set even more accurate expectations in the future.
Be prompt
With that said about setting a time frame for recruiting, you should always be working to tighten up your time-to-hire metrics. If you think you can take your time when scouting for and hiring candidates, think again.
Candidates with valuable skill sets will not stay on the market for long — even a week is considered a long time in the recruitment and selection process. This is why having a speedy process as part of your strategic recruitment plan is vital to hiring the best and brightest talent.
Calculate the anticipated cost and benefit for each position
According to BetterTeam.com, understanding the cost/benefit of every hire is one of the best employee recruitment strategies you can use. This recruiting and hiring strategy helps you ensure that your return on investment (ROI) for employing a particular candidate is greater than the cost of hiring them. Knowing whether a specific candidate will benefit your bottom line or negatively impact it (and you would be surprised how many times this is the case) can help you justify the cost of hiring them.
Leverage employee referrals and recommendations
Although not one of the most innovative recruitment methods, gathering candidate referrals from your top-performing employees is a great way to recruit talent. It is one of those employee recruitment strategies that benefits everyone because:
- You get trustworthy and reliable talent to fill your vacant positions;
- Your employees can be rewarded with a bonus or “finder’s fee” of sorts; and
- Their referral gets to start a position with your organization.
Roll with changes
The rules of recruiting have changed, and it is vital that you change with them. From setting up virtual onboarding that accommodates remote workers to offering the perks top candidates want most, adapting to the new normal will keep you at an advantage in the ever-evolving hiring landscape.
Get everyone invested in hiring
While the hiring process is vital to the employee recruitment strategies of a recruiter or hiring manager, it should also be a priority for everyone across your organization — everyone from the top executives to the front-line managers. If the recruitment and selection process is a top priority, it means you will spend less time chasing people down to get them to:
- Review resumes;
- Commit to interviews;
- Provide timely feedback; and
- Make a hiring decision.
Netflix is one major organization that has embraced a collaborative approach to creating a pro-hiring culture, according to a LinkedIn article. Among the attributes that make Netflix’s recruitment and hiring strategies different from many conventional corporations is that:
- Everyone is responsible for recruiting;
- Hiring managers have more freedom and ownership over hiring decisions; and
- Recruiters and hiring managers communicate directly and honestly.
Sell your company and position
One of the most essential components of the recruitment and selection process is selling both your company and the job to prospective employees. If you have trouble doing that, you have a problem, so fix it as soon as possible.
This brings us to our next tip…
Clearly define and describe your company culture
Having a strong organizational culture is about knowing and supporting your company’s mission and values. This means that you’ll want to hire people who are a good culture fit for your organization — people whose values, beliefs, and behaviors align with those of your organization.
To ensure you find the right candidates who fit these parameters, make clearly defining your culture and being quick to describe it to prospective employees an important part of your recruitment plan.
Review & update hiring strategies periodically to reflect changes
A high-quality hiring strategy is not something that, once created, is put on a shelf to collect dust. It is a living document that needs to be reviewed and updated periodically. After you create and implement a hiring or recruitment strategy, it is essential to go back regularly and update it based on what worked well or did not during the hiring process.
This approach helps you put to use the knowledge you gain from each hiring experience. It also provides a reason to ask others for input or recommendations of ways to improve your organization’s hiring strategy and to adopt more creative recruitment strategies.
Hire a professional staffing service
Partnering with a professional recruiting and staffing agency or a headhunter does not mean that you are a bad or incompetent hiring manager. Working with a company like 4 Corner Resources as part of your recruitment strategy frees you up to focus on moving the needle for your company’s core mission and business objectives.
The team at 4 Corner Resources spends each day shoulder-to-shoulder with clients who seek to fill their vacant positions. As part of our recruitment strategy, we keep a variety of factors in mind — the client’s time frame, goals, and the culture fit of each candidate — when screening and placing candidates with every company.
To see how 4CR can help place the best candidates with your business, contact our team of recruiting and staffing experts today.
