How to Streamline Your Hiring Process

Ever identify the right candidate – a person with an ideal combination of character traits, skills and experience – only to hear “I’ll let you know” once you make an offer?

It’s not only disheartening; it’s a devastating blow to your company—and it could have something to do with your hiring processes. If those processes are lacking, you could be letting top talent slip away to other companies—including your competitors.

If your business is like so many others out there, your hiring process may be full of bottlenecks that prevent applicants from having a smooth experience. So what can you do to get talented candidates to their work desk faster, while filtering out the poor fits? Below are a few ways to streamline your hiring process:

1. Analyze your pre-screening methods

Pre-screening questions can help you gather details about applicants that they didn’t mention on their resume. Identify whether you want to pre-screen prospective hires by following up with a questionnaire, a phone conversation or another vetting method.

When used correctly, preliminary interview questions can minimize the amount of time you spend at official interviews. Plus, you can automate a specific aspect of pre-screening by having applicants complete an online questionnaire related to knowledge, experience and skill sets they require.

This will help you avoid the dilemma of conducting interviews with people who ultimately end up being ill-suited for the job.

2. Ask for referrals

Working your personal and professional contacts to connect with qualified candidates can boost recruitment at both ends of the process.

Besides initially attracting more high-quality applicants into your hiring funnel, referrals also speed up the background-checking process. When someone comes in with a stamp of approval from a person you know, that’s one less barrier you need to overcome.

Moreover, you might also get the opportunity to shorten the timeframe of the job application period as you don’t have to ask candidates to complete lengthy checks or verify their documents.

3. Invest in an applicant tracking system

Ever spent hours to connect with a perfect candidate, only to discover they’ve already applied to one of your vacancies three months earlier? This can be avoided if you deploy a time-saving process to track submissions more effectively.

This implies that from the point a candidate applies, right from their first click until their information is stored in your talent database or until they’ve been matched with a new position, you know who they are and what phase of the recruitment process they are in.

Though this might seem like a lot of manual work, recruitment tech such as applicant tracking systems (ATSs) can handle the heavy lifting, saving you lots of admin hours. A quality ATS will also enable you to be compliant with pertinent regulations so that you don’t breach any data protection laws.

Look up applicant tracking systems on the internet, and you’ll get dozens of options to choose from.

4. Conduct quality interviews

Come to interviews prepared with a list of practical and thorough questions that not only allow you to gauge a candidate’s skill set but also get a feel for their emotional intelligence. Use the same processes and questions for all applicants; this will enable you to make unbiased judgements using the same criteria.

Go through your interview questions and compare them with the relevant job description to ensure you’re focused on the primary responsibilities and skills of the position.

During the interview, make sure to go in-depth with your questions. If someone gives a generic reply on a critical point, ask additional questions until they give you a satisfactory response.

If all else fails, get in touch with the experts.

If you don’t succeed with the tips mentioned above, don’t lose hope. Our company specializes in recruiting strategies that align with the interests and needs of our customers. We begin with our tested methodology (a genuinely collaborative consultation) to understand what’s most important to clients, and then find candidates that share your aims and values.

PrincePerelson can help you with:

• Professional placements
• Temporary staffing
• Executive Search
• And more

We also understand the consequence of compromising quality when recruiting in quantity. As such, we have a dedicated team that vets each applicant in person to support your current and future hiring needs. We are a go-to for many companies looking to relocate, hire or expand across the U.S. This “hands-on” approach is what makes us different – and what makes our customers thrive.

Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help you streamline your hiring process.

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Infographic

Are you serious in looking for highly qualified employees and willing to train and keep them for good? If this is part of your organizational strategy, your company must also have established a hiring process which is proven to be effective in finding and selecting the qualified applicant. This infographic will help you streamline your process to avoid excessive costs related to recruitment.