As we said on previous occasions, the hiring process has become harder and lengthier these days. However, companies and recruiters have access to a galaxy of solutions and tools to speed up the process. In a world where it can take more than a month to fill a position, something needs to change how we find employees. To give you a hand, today, we put together a list of tips and shortcuts on how to find employees faster and more efficiently using instruments that you already have or can access quickly and affordably!
Why You Need to Find Employees and Recruit Them Faster Than Everybody Else
When you employ your run-of-the-mill talent acquisition strategies, you usually learn that you lose top talent to competitors capable of offering candidates a fast, seamless, and pleasurable recruiting experience. As a CEO or hiring manager, you know that more expedite recruiting and hiring processes saves an organization a lot of time, money, and hiring mistakes. According to research,
Candidates today have higher expectations for communication, logistics, and new hire onboarding during their job search process. Moreover, when applying for a job, more than half of candidates will give up and move on if they haven’t heard from an employer within two weeks of applying. Over 60% percent of employees believe their experience as a job candidate reflects how they treat their people. Prospects today are evaluating a future employer from the first page of the job application. These findings suggest that job seekers are accustomed to their environment as consumers online, where everything is at their fingertips with a digital, mobile-friendly, and engaging process.
The data is even more crucial to consider today when all companies are fighting against time and each other to recruit and retain top talent. It is scarce enough as it is, so we don’t have to make things even harder for ourselves.
So let’s see some tips and shortcuts on how to find employees quickly and efficiently to avoid hiring mistakes and high turnover rates!
1. Recruit from the Inside
Before you write the smartest job ads and put your customized hiring system in motion, look inside the organization for capable people. Inside hires already know the company, embraced the organizational culture, managed teams, etc. When it comes to promoting from within the company, you will enjoy extraordinary benefits:
- Reduced times and costs with finding new employees and recruiting them;
- Seamless onboarding processes;
- The tactic boosts employee engagement and loyalty, thus cutting down turnover rates.
Don’t forget about the interns, either. If the interns passed their interviews and are now essential parts of your daily business, make their dream come true and offer them the chance of occupying job roles to advance in their chosen careers.
2. Improve Job Postings and Descriptions
Make sure your job descriptions are accurate, contain only essential elements, engage, and appeal to your pool of talented candidates. Moreover, are you sure you place your job ads in the right places? Do they sound honest while they boost your employer brand?
To make things easier and attract the right candidates, learn how to attract the right talent with the right job ad.
Moreover, streamline and automate your processes, as technology is here to help. A customized hiring system can help you place your job ad across various job boards, websites, and platforms with just a few clicks.
3. Boost Your Talent Seeking Strategies with Better Candidate Sourcing
Of course, you have a company’s career page, and you post your job ads across all possible platforms, but are they the only sources of talent you can tap into these days? The answer is no. Consider top performers as high-spending customers you want to attract to what you have to offer. So, to find employees, you need to go where they are instead of waiting for them to come to you. It is the way of marketing, after all.
Consider the following talent pools:
- social media in all its shapes and sizes,
- participants to industry-relevant training events and workshops,
- candidates who benefit from governmental employment programs,
- universities and colleges,
- career & job fairs,
- industry-relevant conventions or events, etc.
Observe, attend to, and use such opportunities to find candidates and offer them something they cannot refuse. Remember that you might want to hire people who are not even looking for a job, so play your cards right.
Another great source of candidates is your Applicant Tracking System, as you can check out candidates you did not hire in the past but who are excellent choices for the newly open positions you have.
4. Make the Application a Smooth Fast Process for Candidates
When you want to find employees to nurture, retain, and transform into leaders, your employer branding matters more than their work experience or skills. If your application process is long, boring, or labor-intensive, the talent you seek will go elsewhere. With more than 20% of candidates dropping out of application forms if they take more than 10 minutes to fill, you need to step up your game and focus on recruitment software that makes the process an enjoyable walk in the park.
5. Use an Applicant Tracking System
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is your surefire way to push job ads to several boards with one click. Moreover, it helps you track candidates throughout the recruitment process, help you build a database of elite candidates to contact them for new opportunities, and learn valuable statistics (where your candidates come from, demographics, experience, etc.).
The Rapid Recruit ATS also helps you send out pre-employment assessment tests for further evaluations, utilize custom-built messaging, and collaborate with your hiring team on all stages.
6. Always Keep in Touch with Candidates
Forget about the “No answer is an answer” policy. Leaving your candidates hanging while you make hiring decisions is not a smart strategy to find employees valuable to the organization. As we mentioned already, elite candidates want you to communicate with them, and they should not wait for too long. Even if you write a short email saying, “Hey, sorry, but you will have to wait for a couple of days more to get some news,” it will do the job.
Elite candidates are probably juggling with several offers at the same time. Not hearing from you means you do not care enough, so they don’t owe you their time. Stay on top of your talent pool’s inboxes and minds to keep them engaged as viable options. It will save you from taking the recruiting process from the beginning and ensuring you brand yourself as a worthy employer.
7. Harness the Power of Employee Referral Programs
We said it before, and we will say it again, employee referral programs are more than a method of building a solid candidate pool. It is one of the most successful recruiting strategies any company can implement to find new employees and keep the existing ones engaged and loyal.
Designing such programs allows you to:
- Expedite the process of finding new employees;
- Reduce hiring mistakes;
- Lower the costs associated with new hires;
- Find better matches to your teams and organizational culture;
- Find elite candidates for the most sensitive/challenging/innovative job roles.
If you are already running an employee referral program, optimize it to maximize its success by putting attractive incentives and designing it. All employees engage in it willingly and passionately.
8. Use the Right Hiring Tools and Candidate Assessments
Long gone are the days when organizational psychologists and human resources experts used pen-and-paper personality tests and spent days quoting and interpreting the results. Today, technology is here to help us screen candidates, expedite the process, and evaluate our top picks to make sure they are the right fit.
From standardized and objective pre-assessment tools evaluating hard and soft skills to in-depth personality inventories, such instruments help you find employees fast without mistake. The benefits of using standardized candidate evaluation tools are tremendous:
- Weeds out mass applicants you can keep in check later on with your ATS for future job openings;
- Test both hard skills necessary for the job and plenty of soft skills that ensure job performance;
- You find the personality traits you need for perfect organizational fits.
9. Streamline and Standardize Your Interview Process
We have talked about Candidate Scorecards many times before as excellent tools to conduct efficient interviews that yield successful hires. A standardized interview process, no matter its type and design, can boost your hiring performance.
Candidate scorecards are crucial for any organization that wants to hire top talent and build sustainable and effective employee retention and growth programs.
10. Use an Automated Reference Checking System
Checking candidates’ references is an old practice. However, experts found it could render the hiring process even longer instead of expediting it. On the other hand, an automated reference checking system is a godsend for companies and recruiting agencies.
It helps recruiters request, gather, and use relevant information about the candidates’ previous experiences, personalities, skills, attitudes, organizational fit, etc. Check out this guide on automated reference checking tools to learn more about their benefits and uses!
11. Get a Customized Hiring System to Manage Everything Better
Do you want to streamline your hiring processes, cut recruiting times and costs, and find employees that are good fits for your company? A customized hiring system is an answer to all such issues and then some! If you are looking for reasons to use such a system, consider the following:
- Personalize the hiring process and make it more efficient;
- Embrace automated processes and innovative candidate testing and recruiting technologies;
- Screen candidates in a more objective, standardized manner;
- Increase employee retention and brand your organization as a worthy employer;
- Grow your hiring team.
For more information on a complete customized hiring system, you can contact us any time! Our consultants will provide you with all the details and help you need!
Find Employees Faster: Final Thoughts
At first glance, it is not hard to find employees when you apply all these tips, shortcuts, and strategies. However, as we all know, recruiting elite candidates is harder than one thinks. We are still surprised that companies do not use still solid employee referral programs, standardized assessment tools, automated reference checkers, or ATS tools. However, we are also proud of those who do and show outstanding achievements with their new hires.
As usual, the time has come to share insights and opinions. Have you employed any of these tips to find employees matching your needs to a T? What do you recommend to our recruiting community regarding technology, automation, tests, or job ads & talent pool strategies?
