Odds are you’re expending more resources than you need to on hiring. Of course, it’s always preferable to not have to dip into the market at all, which is where employee retention and development strategies come into play.
However, when new blood is needed, you can save resources by streamlining your hiring process. Here I’ll take you through 7 methods to do just that.
8 Ways to Streamline Your Hiring Process
If you're refining your process checklists, you're going to want to include the following things that you can do to streamline your hiring process and make it more efficient:
1. Effective planning
Taking the time to create a hiring plan, while it may seem a bit time-intensive at the beginning, will pay dividends in the long run.
What I mean by this is taking the time to meet with business leaders to talk about the health of their team and how the business aims will impact what resources they’ll need.
From here, you can prioritize the roles you’re hiring for based on factors such as current and future needs and what talent you already have available (could someone who’s interested in a career pivot be trained up?).
This way you’ll have a firm understanding of open roles, your ideal candidate(s), the resources you’re going to need, and everyone (*coughs* hiring managers) will be aware of their commitments.
A hiring plan will also help you create a recruiting process flowchart that helps you map out what team members are involved in hiring and what they're responsible for.
2. Develop clear job descriptions
Clear job descriptions sound like a simple solution (and they are), but companies sometimes provide too little or too much information.
The key to writing great job descriptions is to use simple, inclusive language and communicate two major aspects:
- Responsibilities and outcomes: What will the new hire be responsible for, and how does it contribute to the company's mission?
- Skills and attributes: Determine the desired skills and experience level for candidates. Specify any industry-specific qualifications that you think will add value. Prioritize things based on the role you’re hiring for. For entry-level jobs, prioritize attributes and ambition. For senior-level roles, prioritize experience and professional qualifications.
The quality of your job descriptions will directly impact the quality of your applicants, so taking a little time to craft them properly will make sifting through them all much easier, and it will create more efficiencies further down the line.
You can even use ChatGPT to help.
3. Develop clear metrics
Developing and tracking some clear recruiting metrics is vital to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization's hiring process.
These metrics help evaluate the performance of your recruitment strategies, optimize procedures, and make data-driven decisions to improve hiring outcomes.
For example, depending on your business and the types of candidates you’re looking for, certain candidate sourcing channels are going to work better than others.
To save time and money, track which channels are bringing in the best quality candidates and double down on those.
4. Structured interviewing
Interviews are make-or-break for the candidate experience and you want to ensure that they aren’t subject to more interviews than they need to (also saving time on the organizational side).
You also want to ensure the interviews are structured to be as focused and engaging as possible, ultimately saving time and resources on both ends. (Using video interviewing tools can make it easier to engage with candidates face-to-face if you're hiring for a remote role.)
Lastly, you also want to make sure that any assessments the candidate might need to take aren’t too onerous on their end or the hiring teams who have to review them. Creating standardized employee testing you can alter for different applicants is an obvious hack here.
You can read more about how to achieve all this in our guide for focused and engaging interviews.
You can also introduce automation to help schedule interviews and ensure no one is left waiting around or slipping through the cracks.
5. Automation
Over 80% of recruiters agree that recruiting automation can help increase their productivity. Automating repetitive tasks in the recruitment process can save you and your team a lot of time.
For example, background check automation tools, adding/updating job postings on job boards, and sending mass emails to qualified candidates.
Plus, recruitment automation software streamlines the hiring process, reduces manual tasks, and improves candidate quality through efficient screening and data-driven insights.
Here are the parts of the recruitment process that you can streamline by using automation within your hiring software:
- Applicant tracking: Applicant tracking systems (ATS) help collect and track the recruitment process. For example, a key ATS feature is automatically notifying candidates when you move them forward to the interview process or communicating the hiring decision to job seekers who haven’t made it to the next round.
- Sourcing applications via social media: Automating social media posts can help execute recruitment campaigns across social media websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
- Interview scheduling: In a survey by Yello, 67% of respondents said it takes between 30 and 120 minutes to schedule just one interview. Automating this process can save you valuable time that you can invest in sourcing more leads to find top talent.
6. Develop a candidate database
It’s estimated around 37.3% of people are passively open to new opportunities. Keeping candidates on file in a candidate management database, even if they're not currently a fit, gives hiring managers a go-to source for filling open positions in the future.
You can also add feedback from candidates to your database to understand how you can improve the candidate experience.
Sync pre- and post-hire data with an HRIS (human resources information system). HRIS helps generate reports that offer deep insights into referrals, requisitions, and other key metrics.
The next time you have an opening, skip time-consuming processes like posting job listings and pre-screening. Directly jump into your database and reach out to the best candidates.
ATSs will allow you to easily create a candidate database, as will candidate database solutions and recruiting CRMS.
7. Launch a referral program
The average cost of recruiting can go as high as 3x the position’s annual pay. A bad hire can cost you a ton of money, so hiring the ideal candidate is mission-critical.
Current employees are a great source for finding new employees. Your employees might have professionals in their network looking for a career switch or upgrade.
Since your current employees understand the company culture, they can refer employees who are a cultural fit as well as qualified.
"Candidates who are referred by current Grainger team members often end up doing well when they join the company. Current team members understand what is needed and are often great at spotting talent." - Randy Tosch, VP Talent, Grainger
You can also involve current employees in your recruitment marketing activities e.g. "day in the life of videos" or simply sharing your posts on their network.
8. Outsource
Especially for hard-to-find candidates that require a lot of time to source, you may want to consider outsourcing recruiting to external professionals such as a recruitment process outsourcing company (RPO), professional employer organization (PEO) or, if hiring internationally, an employer of record (EOR).
You can tap into their existing candidate pools and leverage their manpower and expertise to help hire talent at all levels. Given the nature of what an employer of record is, they can help you access international talent by acting as an employer in a jurisdiction where you don't have a legal entity.
Check out our pick of the best PEOs and best EORs to help you learn more. We even have detailed lists of the best employers of record in Canada and the U.K.
How to Stay Up to Date with Hiring Trends
Keeping up with the latest trends in hiring can be a challenge, especially as new recruiting technology enters the market that is changing the work of recruiters and the hiring landscape as a whole.
There are some things you can do to stay on top of the latest developments. For example, you might consider recruiting course that will help you adjust to any new development by seeing it through the lens of your business and its goals.
Another way, is to subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter. This isn't just shameless self-promotion, we're always looking at all the latest tech, trends and practices in recruiting, whether that's through interviews with experts on podcasts, new articles or our monthly event sessions.