5 strategies to streamline hiring processes
Hiring processes can accumulate clutter and inefficiencies over time which can leave your firm with an unnecessarily long-winded path to recruiting new staff. If your hiring process is feeling a little slow and cumbersome, analyze it to spot bottlenecks and then try out some of these targeted strategies to help streamline your hiring process.
1.Compress your 1st and 2nd interviews.
Ask yourself: do you really need to have first, second and third interviews? What do they really achieve? Do they give you any more genuine insight into the candidate? Do you have any evidence that multiple interviews lead to better hires? Are multiple interviews just a force of habit or simply down to bad planning? By compressing 1st and 2nd interviewees into one interview – taking the time to get key stakeholders in the room all in one go – you can potentially streamline and accelerate your hiring process without reducing quality.
If compressing interviews is not an option, then consider a policy of video interviews for 1st interview which can enable candidates to conduct interviews sooner as they can squeeze them in quickly during an evening after work without having to go through the time-consuming process of booking time off work. Michael Page Recruitment outlined an excellent case study here of how they accelerated a hiring process using video interviews.
2.Automated Interview Scheduling
Anyone who has ever managed an interview process knows that a considerable amount of time and effort is spent manually scheduling, booking and confirming interviews. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are plenty of commercial and free meeting booking apps out there which automate the interview scheduling process by allowing candidates to access your interview calendar and self-book and even reschedule interviews.
3.Request Employee Referrals
Research by LinkedIn suggests that around 27% of employees are hired via employee referrals. It is not a surprise really, as the modern hyper-connected workforce can give employers rapid access to the candidate market: your employees are likely to be friends and connected to individuals with similar skill sets to themselves and can act as ambassadors for business encouraging suitable contacts to apply directly, eliminating the need for recruiters or a public job posting. Most employees will be happy to refer through a sense of altruism to a friend in need or through a sense of goodwill to their employer. Some employers offer financial incentives to staff for successfully referring employees via an employee referral reward scheme. Typical incentives are around $3,000 to $5,000 per successful hire according to the LinkedIn 2020 Employee Referrals Benchmark Report, but non-financial rewards like paid trips, gift cards, and donations are also being used increasingly.
5.Develop Job Description and Creative Templates for Rapid Job Posting
In my experience as a HR recruiter, time could be saved by hiring if there was a library of hiring poster templates and advertising creatives that were ready to be deployed as soon as a vacancy happens. Instead, what often happens is that HR teams waste valuable time getting together job descriptions and getting logos and creatives produced on request by designers. Social media posting, (more than jobs boards) rely heavily on visuals and significant delays can be caused waiting for designs to be produced for online campaigns. In the past, I have used a tool called PosterMywall, a source of Instagram post templates allowing you to create high quality social media content on-the-go, such as videos, flyers and posters, without the need to invest in a graphic designer. I have used this site to develop a library of hiring-related social media post templates for instant deployment in hiring campaigns
When implementing changes, it’s good practice to do them one at a time, as this helps you measure the impact of each change and ensures you only make value-adding process alterations and retain a lean hiring process. Good luck with your next hire!
