A Guide to Recruitment Basics:  Improving Your Hiring Process
<p>Modern-day recruitment has developed to such an extent over the past decade that the idea of a non-digital hiring process has become a distant memory. Although many companies choose to operate with a strictly traditional approach, the overabundance of emerging HR Tech and Applicant tracking systems might just be the step forward that modern-day employers need.</p> <p>Improving the recruitment process means embracing the innovation stemming from the community and adapting in such a way that hiring becomes modernized, digital, and much more effective. The path to building a recruitment team’s arsenal comes in the form of HR Tech and a well-defined process.</p> <p><a is="qowt-hyperlink" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.manatal.com/2020/05/07/beyond-the-pandemic-recruitment-in-a-post-covid-19-world/" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Recruitment has evolved beyond the “post-and-pray” approach</span></a>, and meticulous attention to detail is all the more important.</p> <h2>1. A Clear Message </h2> <h3>(job descriptions, ads, social media etc.)</h3> <p>The message doesn’t strictly refer to the job responsibilities and salary package. The position’s listing itself is a conduit through which your message can be transmitted. This is an opportunity to further illustrate your brand and embellish it with company culture. An employer’s message should be something along the lines of “This is who we are, and this is why you want to work here.”</p> <p>The very tone in which the message is conveyed can be powerful. It can have a positive or negative impact on the candidate that reads it. Either it will entice them further and generate interest in your company, or it will lead them off your career page in record speeds.</p> <h2>2. Focus on Candidate Sourcing Techniques and Channels</h2> <p>The candidate’s profile can be a good place to start when defining the techniques and channels utilized to source them. In fact, the nature of the candidate gives way to a simpler and much more direct process.</p> <p>Although the ideal candidate’s profile should be defined regardless, knowing the differentiator between the best hire and an average one can help you define the digital spaces, groups, discussions, and platforms that top talent frequently visit. Employers can leverage this data to better improve their process through more effective channels and role-specific platforms.</p> <h2>3. Build a Talent Pipeline</h2> <p>Gone are the days of single interviews and 1-day recruitment campaigns. Employers that aim to fully understand their candidate and get to know them on a deeper level than a single meeting would allow, always begin by building a talent pipeline.</p> <p>This can be entirely up to the employer or the recruiter and how they best evaluate talent. The different stages within your pipeline should each unveil something about the candidate, an aspect of who they are, or how well-suited they are to the position at hand.</p> <p>What a pipeline does is help recruiters and employers make data-driven decisions that are tempered with time. Making sure to get as much information about the candidate from the candidate should be a priority. The details can always alter the decision maker’s perspective over time.</p> <h2>4. Improve Recruitment Efficiency Through Metrics and Analytics</h2> <p>If you aren’t monitoring your recruitment metrics, chances are your direct manager is doing it for you. Everyone keeps an eye on their performance and efficiency. However, leveraging analytics and data from reports is yet to be normalized into a part of the process.</p> <p>Understanding what’s working and what’s not is the first step to improving the recruitment process beyond the basics. As far as recruitment is concerned, metrics such as; </p> <p>&#8211; time to fill</p> <p>&#8211; cost of hire</p> <p>&#8211; source of hire</p> <p>&#8211; first-year attrition</p> <p>&#8211; and candidate-to-hire ratio </p> <p>can be invaluable to continued success.</p> <p>Putting leadership in this regard in the hands of the HR department and team managers is the best way to make sure that improvement stems from the team itself. When it comes to optimizing the process, employees who apply it directly within the organization should always spearhead change.</p> <h2>5. Proper Candidate Evaluation</h2> <p>When was the last time you ran a background check on your candidate or actively got in touch with whoever wrote their reference letter? How well do you know the person you’re trusting with a certain amount of responsibility? Are they innovative, punctual, always glued to their cellphone?</p> <p>Evaluating the candidate is simply a sensible approach to talent acquisition. Many employers jump the gun and skip the vetting stage entirely, going from resume credentials to salary package as if that’s all that matters.</p> <p>Evaluating the candidate on all levels is crucial. Recruiters need to properly vet candidates for the role, for the company culture, and for future growth. This ensures that the talent you onboard not only brings value to the organization but does so in a manner that doesn’t hinder or harm the company’s internal growth, but contribute to it.</p> <h2>6. Improve the Candidate Experience</h2> <p>“Treat all talent like it’s top talent.” The candidate experience should be optimized for retention. The goal is to create a brief experience, one that is well-defined and properly displayed to the candidates in the pipeline. At each point in time, candidates should be made aware of the important steps in the hiring process.</p> <p>Employers should make sure to display the need that they’re hiring for as well as its importance to the organization. Improving the candidate experience can be achieved through small activities such as writing clear job descriptions, making it easy for candidates to apply to your jobs, regularly following up with candidates, communicating with (and thanking) them during each step of the hiring process.</p> <h2>7. Invest in HR Tech</h2> <p>As far as recruitment goes, there’s always room for digital change. As an industry in itself, there’s an overabundance of solutions that simplify and largely automate the more difficult and time-consuming elements of hiring. <a is="qowt-hyperlink" href="https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/workforce-of-the-future/hr-tech-survey.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Research from PWC</a> shows that 49% of surveyed employers name talent acquisition tools as their HR Technology area of focus through 2022.</p> <p>Recruitment produces an insane amount of data. This is the elephant in the room that a lot of employers try to avoid looking directly at.</p> <p>However, these difficulties can be faced through the adoption of technology solutions and SaaS products that ease recruitment and simplify the data management aspect. More importantly, these changes allow your HR or recruitment team to shift their focus and their processes towards tackling the finer details of recruitment that software cannot achieve.</p> <p>For example, <a is="qowt-hyperlink" href="http://www.manatal.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Manatal</a>’s ATS provides AI-powered recommendations that analyze candidates and rate/score their affinity for each particular position before it matches them to the one they fit the most. From social media enrichment and intelligent candidate sourcing to interactive onboarding, this is one of the solutions that can set the groundwork for recruitment.</p> <p>The recruitment software covers each step of the hiring pipeline and provides a highly customizable interface so that it can be moulded to fit a company rather than the other way around. Investing in the right HR Tech can be the difference between a healthy and balanced recruitment process and a failing one.</p>