Standing Out in the Recruitment Process: Why & How?

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Finding the best candidate for the job isn’t always easy, but an investment in the right talent is an investment in the future success of your business. Creating an effective recruitment process is the best way to attract the right candidates with a minimum of stress to ensure that your vacancies are getting noticed and the right people are in line for a role. Here are some expert tips to help your recruitment drives get off to a flying start.

Nail the Job Description

When you’re writing your job description, think about what will induce the ideal applicant to pursue your listing over dozens of others. Your description should promote the role while simultaneously encourage candidates with the right skills should apply. If you’re clear about the skills and specializations needed, suitable candidates will be more likely to pursue a job that they’re confident they can handle. Vague and indistinct descriptions will only result in you spending time and money vetting unsuitable candidates during the interview process. It’s also worth mentioning the possibilities for advancement, promotion, and any on-the-job certification that the position might offer, to help attract driven and ambitious candidates.

Leverage Technology

These days, convenience plays a major factor in the hiring process. Many applicants can apply for jobs with a few clicks on their smartphones, so you need to ensure that your application is mobile-friendly and accessible for prospective candidates. If you’re hiring for a larger company, there are also software platforms that automate interview scheduling for the candidate’s convenience. 

If you know what you’re looking for in a prospect, then online solutions can also help you find and connect with the best talent. A recruitment tool like SignalHire lets you find talented professionals by searching through their online profiles for the relevant skills, and allows you to filter results by location. The service also provides you with verified email addresses so that you can approach prospects directly without having to go through a hiring agency or a professional platform like LinkedIn. Lastly, it’s worth mentioning the value of adopting digital onboarding. Not only will digital onboarding save on paper, but it also provides a roadmap for a new candidate to read any handbooks and complete any additional forms so that you can see when a candidate has accomplished these tasks.

Properly Screen Your Candidates

Every industry needs to screen recruits, but the particulars of the process are likely to vary depending on your location, business, and sector. Where candidates need specific and in-demand skills for a role, you will need to look beyond technical competencies to find the best talent. Technical certifications are all well and good for qualifying for the role, but you also need to look for soft skills like leadership, communication, and time management that will be hard to evaluate from a written resume. Ask candidates about the role and your business to see if they’ve done their research and are really interested in getting the job. Also give them the opportunity to ask questions, as this can prove just as revealing as their answers.

Keep Candidates In the Loop

Radio silence from a prospective employer is the last thing a promising candidate wants to deal with. Not only might it make them take a job offer elsewhere, but it also gives off a poor impression of you as an employer and may diminish the confidence they can bring to your team. That’s why communication is crucial at every stage of the hiring process. You can choose to employ online candidate tracking solutions to make this happen. However, you can still keep candidates up-to-date without having to rely on technological solutions. Simply getting in touch with a phone call or email to provide interview feedback and time frames for the rest of the interview process will be just as suitable, and can help build the employer-employee relationship before the candidate has even had their first day on the job.

Be Decisive

While you certainly don’t want to rush a decision when making a hire, many people make the mistake of taking too much time to come to a decision. If you set yourself three rounds of interviews, after the last is complete you should be ready to come to a decision within no more than a few days on who you want for the position. You need to act quickly to avoid the best candidates taking their talents elsewhere, and a prompt positive response also sets a good tone for the working relationship and makes the candidate feel valued.

Be Careful With Recruitment Companies

You may want to contract a professional recruitment specialist to find prospects for a position. While these consultants do offer access to a sophisticated recruitment infrastructure and a wide-reaching talent pool, they can come with certain limitations. A professional recruiter doesn’t answer to your company’s stakeholders, and their first loyalty is to their recruitment firm’s bottom line. This sometimes leads to recruiters padding positions with candidates to drive up their quotas and secure their recruitment company a commission, without necessarily hiring the best possible candidate for the position. 

Recruitment agencies may also be less aware of the most important qualities a candidate will need to thrive in the position. For these reasons, it’s often worth carrying out recruitment in-house with stakeholders and managers in the relevant departments. There’s a wealth of online recruitment tools at your disposal which will enable you to give your job vacancy the necessary visibility, or allow you to headhunt talent directly. This will require more effort than outsourcing the hiring process, but it gives you more control over every stage and ensures that important details aren’t being overlooked which might mean excellent prospects slip away.

Final Thoughts

A business is only as good as its employees, which is why recruitment is such a crucial factor in deciding a company’s success. If you’re proactively seeking and contacting candidates, you’re more likely to find talented staff than if you simply wait for them to answer a job description. Remember to put candidates at the center recruitment process, and ensure that they’re being engaged at each stage of the process. Also, stay apprised of new technologies and trends in recruitment that will impact the status of the job market. Although recruitment can be time-consuming, you need to get it right to grow your business and meet your long-term goals.

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