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14 Strategies To Help Companies Improve Their Recruiting And Hiring Procedures

Forbes Human Resources Council

If you want to increase your company's chances of attracting and hiring the right candidates to fulfill your current business needs, then you may want to evaluate your recruiting and hiring process to get a pulse on the candidate experience—what you’ve missed might surprise you.

To help, 14 Forbes Human Resources Council members share their tips to help leaders streamline their recruiting and hiring processes and get their top prospects onboarded without a hitch.

1. Create Experience Journeys Unique To Every Stakeholder

The best way to streamline the recruiting process is to create experience journeys for different stakeholders. Once developed, these journeys will highlight pain points and then give leaders and teams the opportunity to streamline. - Sanjiv Agarwal, Swiss Re

2. Define The Interview Process

Defining the interview process will support the ability of managers to begin streamlining the recruiting and hiring process. Setting expectations between the candidate, hiring manager and the organization will also allow for more transparency between the parties. Clear communication is key to the candidate's experience, so having a well-defined plan will support these goals. - Megan McCann, McCann Partners

3. Empower Brand Ambassadors

Use your current employees! Your current employees can be brand ambassadors and demonstrate your culture through their actions and words, assisting you in your onboarding. If your workforce is full of top-notch professionals, they likely know others who share their work ethic and skill level. - Gina Deciani, Association for Supply Chain Management

4. Do A Job Candidate Survey

Ask for feedback on your candidate experience from any candidate you interact with through a simple survey. Build it into your rejection procedures and your onboarding experience so you can understand from those going through your process what is working or what is not. If you implement a suggested change, reach out to the candidate who left it, especially if they are someone you want to keep warm. - Jessica Adams, Brad's Deals


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5. Be Clear And Direct In Your Communication

Do not overcomplicate the job description and never beat around the bush during an interview. Ask questions directly and be sure to give as much context as possible. While companies certainly want critical thinkers, an interview is already incredibly stressful for candidates. If you want to select the right new hire, then ask the right questions and share exactly what you are looking for. - Jade Nikolaou, SecondMuse

6. Encourage Managers To Hire Quickly

Focusing on the candidate's experience can go a long way. Standardize how you personalize your interactions with candidates and be sure to put standards in place to get feedback in a timely manner and encourage your hiring managers to make informed decisions quickly. This will enable you to manage your recruiting processes in an efficient manner while curating a strong employer value proposition. - Cat Colella-Graham

7. Educate Your Recruiters

The best tip is to educate recruiters on the business impact of the role they are hiring for. The more that recruiters are brought into the "why" of the position needed to be filled, the more they will act as business partners to find stronger talent. Investing in the start of the process with strong impact education will eliminate wasted time on ill-fitting candidates. - Jessica Wallen, Wurl, LLC

8. Include The Salary Rate On The Job Posting

Including a reasonable salary range on the job posting will streamline the compensation discussion portion of the hiring process. Allowing the hiring manager to make a salary offer that is within the posted salary range will eliminate the need to have multiple approvals within the organization. - David Weaver, Compensation and HR Group

9. Clarify Recruiting Steps With The Hiring Team

Create a standardized process for hiring. What is the order of interviews? If there is a panel, when does it happen? What type of assessments will take place? Before you start recruiting, hold a kickoff meeting with the hiring team to clarify steps and answer questions. It’s important to empower the person driving the recruiting to keep things moving without having to reach back repeatedly for directions or clarification. - Lisa Shuster, iHire

10. Rely On Forecasting Data

One of the most effective parts of the recruiting process is having a good forecasting process based on the needs that the business requires to be effective. It’s really critical that we understand the new skills, high-volume needs and other key talents that the business needs to acquire. A good forecast can help our recruiting talent partners be more proactive and be ready with a good market scan. - Rohini Shankar, Nations Benefits

11. Create Timelines And Service-Level Agreements

Have timelines and service-level agreements for every part of the process and stick to those timelines. If someone doesn’t comply within that time frame, the process automatically moves to the next step. The second tip I would offer is to pivot on very strong and transparent communication. This avoids any confusion or misunderstanding and builds a talent brand candidates can trust. - Vineet Gambhir, DataLink Software

12. Leverage Automation In Technology

Leverage technology to make your human resources do more human tasks. The biggest challenges are longer recruitment cycles, unconscious bias in screening and candidate experience. A simple way to solve all of these is to deploy technology to automate all three and let your talent acquisition specialists spend their time with quality candidates about the vision, mission and culture of the company. - Smarthveer Sidana, HireQuotient

13. Protect Your Review Process

Some HR professionals have a tendency to not put in filters for key requirements for fear that they will miss something. Not taking full advantage of filters and disqualifiers can result in a great waste of time and this can affect recruiting significantly. The recruiter's mind and vision must be clear and vivid, so ensure the time you spend going through resumes is protected and strategic. - Tiersa Smith-Hall, Impactful Imprints, Training & Consulting

14. Implement An Applicant Tracking System

An applicant tracking system can help efficiently manage and track job applications, resumes and candidate information. Pre-employment assessments can help you quickly identify the most qualified candidates by evaluating their skills and abilities. The tool can screen your best prospects, saving you time and money. - Joseph Soares, IBPROM Corp.

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