Hiring new team members is exciting. New employees bring fresh skills, new perspectives, and dynamic personalities to your company.
Still, hiring can be risky for companies. You can’t afford to make bad onboarding decisions or spend months waiting for suitable candidates to appear.
At iprospectcheck, we’re dedicated to helping companies learn how to hire and onboard more efficiently.
We put together this article to help you improve your hiring process with actionable insights you can implement today.
Let’s dive in.
11 Easy Ways to Improve Your Hiring Process
Whether you’re looking for a single candidate or adding an entire department to your team, these tips will help you build a better hiring process from the ground up.
Here’s what we recommend:
1. Streamline your background checks
The first step to improving your hiring process is to enhance the way you background check candidates.
Today, conducting pre-employment background checks on every applicant is critical for smart, safe hiring.
Unless you’ve optimized your screening process, though, it can make the hiring experience slow and frustrating for candidates.
Because of this, we recommend outsourcing your background checks to a skilled consumer reporting agency (CRA) like iprospectcheck.
We provide accurate, comprehensive, fast, and compliant background checks. We also integrate with the leading applicant tracking systems (ATS) and hiring software platforms, so your hiring process will be as streamlined and straightforward as possible.
In addition to saving you time and energy, we genuinely care about the candidate experience so you can screen every applicant quickly and efficiently for a better hiring workflow.
Our SwiftHire Mobile app allows applicants to begin the background screening process and submit their information online. It also provides real-time updates about the process, so your candidates never feel forgotten.
This creates empowered, happy, engaged candidates who are satisfied with the hiring experience and genuinely want to work with your company.
2. Lead with your brand identity
Today, it’s not enough to have a robust internal brand identity.
You also need to communicate that brand identity to candidates and help them understand what makes you different from everyone else.
To attract more candidates to your job posting, focus on showcasing your brand identity. Ask yourself a few questions:
- What makes you stand out?
- How are you different from your competition?
- What do you do for your team that no other business does?
Share your company’s culture, social and environmental values, and mission in photos, videos, blogs, and social media posts.
Given that 68% of Millennials, 48% of Baby Boomers, and 54% of Gen-Xers report visiting a company’s social media pages to understand the employer’s brand, this is an important step.
Showcasing your brand identity attracts like-minded applicants and ensures the people applying for your job postings are a good fit for your team.
3. Write a better job description
To improve your hiring process, write a job description that accurately represents your hiring needs.
This matters for a few reasons.
First, job descriptions are usually the primary interaction an applicant has with your organization. A good job description accurately represents your open position and helps candidates decide if they’re a good fit.
The result?
Fewer unqualified applicants that wind up in your pipeline.
Secondly, a well-written job description helps manage and improve your corporate brand, which works toward making you a more in-demand company.
For best results, focus on providing precise, specific details about the job’s requirements and responsibilities.
Use some of the language from your brand deck or content guidelines to give the applicants a sense of your company’s culture.
Finally, focus on the why.
Communicate why applicants should work at your company. What’s in it for them? What can they expect in the way of benefits and perks?
Explain what you need and expect from applicants and what you will give them in return. Give them all the details upfront, so they can make a decision that’s good for both of you.
4. Use talent intelligence software
Today, there are dozens of smart software solutions designed to help you improve your hiring process.
These platforms allow you to shortlist, identify and match candidates to open positions.
They’re also a great way to communicate with candidates, fill open positions fast, and make smart hiring decisions.
Know Before You Hire
5. Personalize interactions with interested candidates
Did you know that 43% of candidates lose interest in a job if they don’t hear back from the company within two weeks of applying?
This is BIG NEWS for hiring managers.
Ultimately, when, how, and how much you interact with interested candidates determines whether they’ll stick around or abandon your hiring process prematurely.
With this in mind, reach out to the candidate as quickly as possible after they’ve applied.
Use this initial call or email to learn more about the candidate’s goals, experiences, and strengths and conduct a preliminary assessment of whether they’ll be a good fit for your organization.
If everything looks good, use this first interaction to schedule an interview right away. Moving candidates through the hiring pipeline as quickly as possible is one great way to retain your most promising applicants.
6. Use an ATS to keep track of your hiring process
An ATS, or applicant tracking system, is a great way to manage the hiring process. ATS platforms automate the tedious, manual parts of hiring and allow you to get more done with less stress and fewer mistakes.
For example, a good ATS will enable you to create and manage job postings, send welcome emails, and seamlessly transition candidates to the next phase of the hiring process.
An ATS also allows you to screen, grade, and rank your candidates, which reduces your time to hire.
Finally, your ATS will create a database of prior candidates, so you can search through your talent pool to match interested candidates to new roles.
7. Consider assessments
There are few things worse than hiring a candidate only to realize they’re not cut out for the job.
Avoid this outcome by asking applicants to perform assessments that verify their ability to execute key role responsibilities.
For example, if you’re looking for a sales manager, ask the candidate to provide a sales pitch based on a product your company sells.
While assessments aren’t always necessary, they can help weed out less qualified candidates and make sure you hire the right person the first time.
8. Get social
Social media is critical when it comes to hiring.
In addition to strengthening your brand identity, social media channels make it easy for applicants to find and apply for jobs.
To create a genuinely applicant-centric experience, offer social media links to application forms that are concise and easy to fill out.
Use clear, inclusive language, and be sure to interact with interested candidates as quickly as possible.
9. Involve employees in interviews
Instead of limiting interviews to your HR and hiring team, involve current employees.
Panel interviews can be good for the whole team since they promote employee engagement and give candidates a real sense of your workplace culture.
Additionally, a group interview creates a conversation structure that incorporates diverse points of view and makes current employees feel like they have a real say in the company’s team-building efforts.
10. Survey new employees about the hiring processes
When you hire a new candidate, give them a few months to settle into the new position, and then survey them directly to find out what they liked and disliked about the hiring process.
What worked, what didn’t? What did they like? What did they find clunky?
By collecting and acting upon this insight, you can continually focus on improving and restructuring your hiring process for a genuinely candidate-centric experience.
11. Get rid of “magic” questions
“If you could be any animal, what would you choose?” “Who would you be if you could be any superhero?” “What kind of breakfast cereal are you?”
These so-called “magic questions” are meant to make interviews feel a little lighter and more approachable, but they just take up valuable space in the discussion.
We recommend eliminating them and replacing them with authentic questions that help you learn about the candidate’s skills, interests, character, and experience.
iprospectcheck: Your Partner in Better Hiring
The times are changing, and your hiring process should, too.
If you’re looking to bring on a few new team members, now is an excellent time to audit and evaluate your hiring process and make changes as needed.
In addition to implementing things like assessments, panel interviews, and ATS, outsource your pre-employment background checks iprospectcheck.
A leader in the pre-employment background screening industry, we provide fast, accurate, and compliant background checks that you can rely on to make better hiring decisions – and we deeply care about the candidate experience
Ready to get started? Contact iprospectcheck today to request a free quote: 888-808-9997
