5 Tips to Improve Your Hiring Process

Employees are the backbone of any company. This is why it's important to have an efficient and effective hiring process to get the best employees for the job. But, that's easier said than done because filtering applicants and finding the best fit for the job and company can be quite challenging.

The good news is that there are several tips and tricks that can help improve your hiring process and increase the chances of you finding the best employee for your business needs. If you are interested in improving your company’s hiring process, then you are on the right page.

Here are the top tips and tricks that can help improve your hiring process:

Write an Appealing & Well-Detailed Job Description

Most of the time, companies publish job descriptions with a list of requirements and responsibilities. Doing this follows the traditional demand-abilities approach of writing a job description. However, a study showed that this type of job description format makes candidates who are qualified feel alienated.

Another study showed that job descriptions written with a needs-supply approach are more effective in gathering excellent applicants than traditional approaches. The needs supply approach of writing a job description highlights what the company can potentially do for the applicant instead of what roles or responsibilities they will fulfill once accepted to the company.

What makes this more effective is that it allows applicants to see themselves grow within the company. It also makes the company look more appreciative and caring towards their employees, thus creating an image of an excellent work environment.

At the same time, the job description must be well detailed. Your time and the applicant's time are precious. It's important to be upfront from the get-go about what you need and what your standards are.

In addition, having a detailed job description will allow you to have a better set of questions for the interview period. Instead of asking about general scenarios, you can go on specifics about the usual scenarios in the job and assess how they would react to it.

Have a Solid Recruiting Strategy

Assuming that you now have an excellent job description by following the tip mentioned above, you can further improve your hiring process by setting up a solid recruitment strategy.

You can start doing this by meeting with the key people involved in the hiring process. Together, come up with a detailed plan in terms of your recruiting strategy.

There can be various effective recruiting strategies that you can consider. Here are some recruitment strategies that you can incorporate into your hiring process:

Enhanced Employer Brand

The employer's name is one of the biggest factors in the hiring process. This is why it is important to invest in your branding if you want to increase your applicants, hiring, and retention rates.

Utilize Niche Job Boards

Utilizing niche job boards is a strategic method of targeting the applicants that are more likely to fit your job description. For example, suppose you are looking for a seasoned Java Developer. In that case, it's more likely that you are going to find what you are looking for in StackOverflow instead of in LinkedIn.

Referral Program

A referral program is an underrated recruitment strategy, but it has so much potential as it can lead to better quality hires, shorter onboarding, and lower turnover rates, among others.

Take Advantage of Social Media & Digital Trends

Most people nowadays are interested in working with companies that utilize the latest technology trends. This is why it's only natural for you to take advantage of the opportunities and benefits that it offers.

You can take advantage of using social media to improve your hiring process by using it for background investigation. Most of the time, the applicant's social media profiles are open to the public, so you will be able to know more about them as an employee and an individual.

Doing social media checks on all applicants can be time-consuming. That's why it's only recommended to do this during the final cut of candidates. This way, you have to check only a few people, and you can know them better with their social media presence.

The advantage of a social media background investigation is that it will enable you to get information that is difficult to uncover using traditional hiring processes; for example, culture fit, personality, and passions.

However, take note that there can be some legal risks in using the applicant's social media activity as a factor in the hiring process. The downside of it is that it can create discrimination or unconscious bias.

Improve Your Interviews

Most interviews are too focused on ensuring that applicants are technically competent for the position. However, although ensuring that a person is technically competent is important, there are a lot of red flags missed out because of this.

This is why there's a need to improve the applicant interview process. Interviews must not only focus on the technical capabilities of an applicant but also on their coachability, temperament, emotional intelligence, and motivation.

One way to improve applicant interviews is to take your time. Rushing an interview creates unnecessary pressure towards the applicant and the interviewer. As a result, it can diminish the quality of the results.

Another way of improving it is by training interviewers on how to conduct holistic applicant interviews. They should have the necessary level of confidence to lead the conversation and know the right questions to ask to get the information that they need.

You could also try incorporating other interview formats such as group interviews and such. This will allow you to identify whether the applicants can work together with others and still stand out in the right way.

At the same time, the employees must also be able to ask questions during the interview. As much as possible, it is good to give them a realistic expectation of what it's like to work in the company instead of giving them false hopes. This will prevent untimely resignation and demotivation of the employee later on.

Find the Right Personality for the Job

For many companies, the number one priority when matching an applicant to a job is their skillset. However, it is also important to factor in their personalities.

In fact, there are a lot of people who have the right skill set for a particular job, but their personalities do not match. If this particular person is hired, it can significantly affect the office's team dynamics, later on, causing more problems instead of increasing efficiency and productivity.

There are several ways of knowing whether an applicant has the right personality for the job. The easiest way is to tailor your interview question according to the trait that you are looking for. For example, if you are hiring nurses, you must look for empathy and compassion on top of the right technical skillset.

Another way of identifying whether the personality of the applicant is the right fit for your company is by conducting background checks. You can do this by doing a traditional applicant background check where you call their references. These are usually their previous place of employment. You can ask them about how they are at work, etc.

You could also conduct a social media background check if you want to go the extra mile.

In Conclusion

Ensuring that your company's hiring process is both efficient and effective is very important. Doing this will allow you to get the best employees for the job and maintain and increase your company's productivity.

An effective hiring process does not only focus on the technical aspect. It must be a holistic approach for it to be successful. At the same time, using different strategies and technologies must also be applied.