How to make informed hiring decisions?

To make informed hiring decisions, your organization should definitely have a level of recruitment maturity.

 

So, what exactly is recruitment maturity?

 

Every organization follows a different strategy on recruitment. Some organizations consider recruitment as a serious business, whereas others are still learning and exploring.

 

The way organizations approach the recruitment tasks and processes affects the way hiring decisions are made.

 

Some organizations follow the basic form of recruitment, which is reactive and spins around severe skill shortages.

 

On the flip side, some organizations adopt the most evolved recruitment process that is closely tied with the business strategy and is keen on building the talent pipeline.

 

Most often, organizations are in between the basic form and the most evolved type of recruitment.

 

You can track which of these four stages of recruitment maturity does your organization belong to. The four distinct stages are:

 

Stage 1—Reactive Recruitment 

 

The early stages of recruitment maturity is often reactive recruitment. At this stage, your organization has less or no visibility on long term skill gaps or talent shortages. The recruitment is neither planned nor systematic, instead the focus is on individual needs that are momentary. The reactive recruitment follows the ‘post and pray’ mindset, where the recruiters think that they can go ahead and post a job without much thought. After the job is posted, the recruiters think that top talents will miraculously find the job post and apply for the job. This stage of recruitment maturity is not high and recruiters hire limited talents with no scope to attract passive candidates. The recruitment maturity is low with no specific process followed which provides no value-add for both the hiring team and the applicant.

 

 

Stage 2—Towards Proactive Recruitment

 

At this stage, you are aware that you need a proactive strategy and just can’t randomly post a job ad. Your approach is driven with the need for development. With a strategy in place, you target communications to varied talent groups. The overall initiative triumphs in attracting great talent and also provides a good candidate experience altogether. The hiring managers and recruiters collaborate to increase their bandwidth that facilitates in direct skill search.

 

Stage 3—Building Talent Pipelines

 

This stage of recruitment maturity is advanced and it deals with talent acquisition and does not stop with just recruitment. At this maturity level, the recruiters are not only hiring for the current open job positions but also hiring talents for long term results. Candidate experience is at its best and the hiring managers are devoted to recruitment. Come what may, they are bent on acquiring the best talents in the industry.  With this recruitment maturity, they find support from the marketing and communications team to elicit recruitment marketing.

 

Stage 4—Evolved and Strategic Recruitment

 

The last stage of recruitment maturity is fully evolved and strategic. The talent pipeline is completely formed and is now a part of the organization’s business strategy. Recruiters evolve to become creators of a widespread talent approach. This stage also encompasses professional development, training for internal employees and brand building for the organization as part of recruitment marketing. Talent communities are formed and maintained systematically. Data collection is primary and passive candidates sooner become a part of the organization’s top talents. Most of the world-class organizations have already reached the evolved stage in their journey of recruitment maturity.

 

Now, you have an idea as to where your organization stands in recruitment maturity. 

 

Next, ask yourself these questions.

 

What does it mean to make informed hiring decisions? Why should you pay attention to it?

 

Any organization that follows a structured hiring process will know the benefits of making an informed decision. When the candidate is moved from one stage to another in the interview process, it provides a complete and clear picture not only to the recruiter but also to the organization. They will be able to justify their reasons to hire or not hire a candidate. The final decision to hire will be backed by live examples and tangible data.

 

Moreover, you can also provide the candidate all the information about the organization and the role they are intending to join. The candidate can be rest assured that they have received proper and prior communication regarding the hiring process. Not only that, the candidate will also receive ample time to make a confident decision and accept the offer.

 

Only when organizations pay attention to the process-driven hiring structure, it will enable both the recruiters and candidates to make confident and informed decisions.

 

As the hiring manager, you will be solely responsible for the final hiring decision. However, you can involve leaders and department managers, and consult with them as part of the decision-making process.

 

Remember, to make informed hiring decisions, a collaborative mindset is required.

 

If you are still confused about making informed hiring decisions, recall these tips.

 

1. Know what you are looking for

It is critical to know the specific requirements before you are all set to post a job ad. Consult with experienced people working in the same role as that of the job opening and create job descriptions based on the inputs you gather from the concerned person. Don’t push yourself to hire a perfect candidate, instead have realistic expectations and roll out the offer when you find an ideal candidate for the position.

 

2. Work against your biases

Do not hold onto any biases of any form. As a recruiter, if you feel biased it will influence your hiring decision. Favoring the candidate for wrong reasons will eventually cost the organization a lot of money. However, it is important to keep potential biases in your mind before you reject a candidate. Always check, if you have valid reasons to reject a candidate? Some characteristics of candidates are protected by law, so ensure that those characteristics are not classified in your biased decision making.

 

3. Use objective hiring methods

Objective hiring methods outdo biases. Moreover, it paves way to select a candidate based on their own merit. You can use these methods to assess the candidates and their performances to make a confident hiring decision.

 

Conduct structured interviews: These types of interviews have no room for speculations and provide validation for the final hiring decision.

 

Interview scorecards: A candidate’s performance during the different phases of interviews can be evaluated and recorded in the form of scorecards. The evaluation is self-explanatory and ideal to make the final decision to hire.

 

Assessments:For many job roles, tests and assessments are conducted to analyze the capability of a candidate. The assessments determine the skill level and the area of expertise of the candidates. The assessment is a clear-cut way for hiring or rejecting a candidate.

 

4. Make the final hiring decision

After following the structured interview process and if you are confident that you had no biased thoughts to hire or reject a candidate, then you can go ahead to make the final hiring decision. It is up to you to select the best candidate out of the many you’ve interviewed. It is nothing like bringing the best talent onboard. The whole hiring process will reap its reward only when the best talent is hired.

 

At Ripplehire, we have summed it all, now the ball is in your court to make the best, informed hiring decision. Share your thoughts or tips that we can add to our existing list to make confident hiring decisions.