There's no doubt, the hiring process is challenging and will continue to be so in 2022. If companies hire the wrong employees it can bring about major problems. For this reason, you must be really careful about your hiring decisions. You'll also want to do your best to hire the best talent available. Fortunately, there are some tips that can help you do this.
Create a Large Talent Pool
When you're recruiting employees, you want to do so from as large of a talent pool as possible. You don't want to limit your choices to the candidates who walk in your door or answer your newspaper ad. Instead, The Balance suggests that you take several steps to improve your talent pool, including:
- Spend time developing relationships with university placement offices, recruiters, and executive search firms.
- Allow your current staff to actively participate in industry professional associations and conferences so they can meet candidates you could successfully woo.
- Watch online job boards for potential candidates – they may have online resumes available even if they're not actively looking for a new position.
- Advertise your staffing needs in professional association magazines and on their websites.
- Use social media outlets like LinkedIn to look for potential employees.
The key is to build your candidate pool before you even need it. This is something that actually starts with assembling a hiring team. LinkedIn says that your team should consist of more than just recruiters. While they play an important role in sourcing and screening your candidates, using some of your current highly rated employees is also beneficial. For instance, let some of your best customer service representatives help you define the position and interview the candidates when you're putting together a new customer service team. It only requires 8 – 10 hours of their time each week to make a major impact on your company and help them in the long run too.
Besides drawing on your own company's talent pool, make sure you put technology to work for you as well. Technology can also help you scan through your candidates. This is particularly helpful when you've aggressively sourced for candidates to fill a job position. The avalanche of applicants can be particularly burdensome to sort through. However, technology can scan through their profiles, identifying the strongest candidates so you'll have fewer applicants to deal with.
Think About who you Want to Hire
You don't want to simply hire anyone. There are some candidates that often get overlooked because companies do this. These include:
- In-house candidates: Offer promotional and lateral opportunities so your current employees receive a morale boost since this demonstrates how much you appreciate their talents, capabilities, and accomplishments.
- Fans: These are people who will take ownership of the company, which gives them a reason to work hard for you. Entrepreneur says that these people are also great for word-of-mouth marketing because they enjoy working for you. This will bring in more people who also want to work for you. Even if you don't have a specific role for these people yet, it's a great idea to find a place for them just so you can include this attitude in your company.
- Remote employees: When you can't find the talent you need in your local area, consider allowing employees to telecommute. This will widen your pool of talent. Even if you can't allow remote working, flexible working options may also help. This could be as simple as allowing employees to work from home a few days a week instead of spending each day coming into your office.
Clearly, these aren't your “conventional” candidates. This is why it's so important for you to structure your interview process so you can screen your candidates better – especially when you need to quickly hire a lot of people. It's also a good idea to use web conferencing to offer online interviews through which you can get to know candidates better.
During these interviews, you'll want to help potential candidates get to know your company better. Present them with your goals and needs. At the same time, you'll also want to make sure that you ask all of your candidates the same questions. Know exactly what you're looking for here so that you find the right candidates to invite in for a few follow-up interviews with structured questions, once again. This actually saves you a lot of time, makes the interview process much more objective and reliable, and brings cohesion to your entire company. If you see any problems throughout the process you can also quickly adapt since everyone is working on the same agenda.
The Onboarding Process
Make sure that you don't do all the talking throughout this process. Listen to the candidates instead. Of course, this doesn't mean you have to take them at their word. Monster says you don't even have to be satisfied simply by checking their references. You can invite certain candidates for day-long simulations or ask for a candidate's portfolio so you can see their best work.
Yes, you really should still thoroughly check candidates' references. You also need to conduct background checks. This will help you prevent any issues in the future. It's simply that you must pursue every possible avenue so you're sure that the people you hire really can do the job you've hired them for while also helping your company grow, which means they can't have any past transgressions as those could seriously endanger your workforce. What's worse is you could be liable if an assault of any kind happens within your business.
It's important to keep these tips in mind throughout the hiring process. You never want to hire someone who you “think” could change. It doesn't matter how much potential a candidate has, if their habits are questionable, do yourself a favor – don't hire them. Remember, what you see through the hiring process is what your company gets forever.
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