The hiring process for most companies takes between 30 and 50 days. It varies by industry, with construction taking an average of 12.7 days to fill a position. At the other end of the spectrum, an engineering position takes 49 days to fill.
What is a hiring process? It’s a system your business uses to hire employees. If you find that your hiring process consists of a job description, posting it on a job board, and hiring the first person you interview, you might use some improvements.
You want to make sure you get the right person to fill the position. At the same time, you don’t want to miss out on top talent because another company had a faster hiring process.
If you want to hire employees that stay with your company for years, it all boils down to having the best hiring process. How do you create it?
Keep reading for the most valuable tips to improve the hiring process.
1. Get a Hiring Committee Together
Who needs to get involved in the hiring process? The direct manager, the manager’s manager, and someone from human resources is the key people to bring into the room.
Your hiring committee should start with a list of the job requirements, expectations, hard skills, soft skills, and personality traits.
Reviewing past hires is helpful because you can remember why someone worked or didn’t work out in the position. In addition, if you are to expand globally and need to hire experts from outside the border, you will need to partner up with an EOR (employer of record) to handle the local employment documentation and legalities on your behalf.
2. Write an Accurate Job Description
The job description should be an accurate reflection of the job and the company. You want to show off your company’s brand personality while being serious about the hiring process.
Take the list of skills, requirements, and needs and put them into the job description. If it’s a difficult job that requires long hours, be upfront about that.
If you sugarcoat the job description, you can end up with new employees that don’t stay for long. They may only be able to work 40 hours a week and need flexible hours.
3. Know Where and How to Advertise
You’re probably going to post your job description on the same job boards as every other company. Job candidates will look at job boards, but if you want the best candidates, you need a different approach.
The best new hires probably have steady jobs. They could be open to leaving if the right offer came along. They’re not actively looking at job boards because they don’t need to.
How do you get their attention? Leverage your employees and your network. Give employees a referral incentive if they refer a new employee and they stay for a few months.
Share the job post with your social circles and professional networks.
4. Learn the Most Important Benefits to Employees
The hiring process is a two-way street. The more you understand that, the easier it will be to find new hires.
What do new employees value most in your benefits package? The most important employee benefits are paid time off, paid family leave, and flexible and remote work.
If you can’t offer all three, learn what other benefits are important and include them in your package.
5. Be Prepared for the Interview
You went through the process to screen candidates and now you’re ready to interview them. Don’t try to wing the interview or ask questions off the cuff.
You won’t get the important information you need to make a hiring decision. You and the hiring committee should have a list of questions ready to go for the interview.
You should also decide if the entire committee interviews candidates at once or one at a time.
6. Diversity and Inclusion Matter
Having a diverse workforce — not just in terms of identity, but in terms of beliefs, outlooks, and viewpoints — helps your company retain employees, have higher customer satisfaction rates, and are more innovative.
Don’t just say that you support diversity and inclusion to try to attract candidates. Demonstrate it.
Prospective employees are very savvy. They’ll know if you’re disingenuous or if you really do support diversity and inclusion in terms of viewpoints.
Show how your company fosters an inclusive environment for all employees with diverse viewpoints to thrive. If you can do that, you’ll attract amazing new hires.
7. Nurture Your Talent Pool
Do you have to start over and find candidates every time you need to hire a new employee? A talent pool is a list of candidates, which includes former staff who may be interested in returning as boomerang employees.
Instead of discarding their resumes, keep them in a database. You may find someone who previously applied or worked for your company and is now a perfect fit for a new job opening.
8. Involve Employees in the Hiring Process
Employees get impacted by every hiring decision you make. It makes perfect sense to include them when you hire new employees, but few companies do.
If there are team leaders in your organization, get them involved in the hiring process. It’s good training for management and it shows employees you value them.
9. Use Artificial Intelligence
The average corporate position gets 250 resumes. You and the committee don’t have time to review them all.
You can use artificial intelligence to screen resumes and applications. You can program artificial intelligence to screen for certain keywords, skills, or experiences.
This helps you make sure that candidates meet the basic requirements of the position.
10. Create a Careers Web Page
Does your company have a careers page? This is a great way to attract potential employees and build a talent pool.
Even if your company doesn’t hire that often, a careers page is a way to collect information from prospective employees. They can submit a resume that you keep on file.
11. Create an Onboarding Path
Companies are reluctant to have a long onboarding process. They want it to take a few days and put the employee to work.
A short onboarding process leads to higher turnover. Customer service companies that had a clear onboarding process increased revenue by 60%. Customer satisfaction increased by 63%.
It’s best for your organization to have an onboarding plan that lasts for at least 90 days.
You can streamline some of the first activities by using technology. You’ll have to collect W-4s, I-9s, and W-9s for contractors.
Depending on your industry, you might have additional safety compliance regulations to adhere to. That’s why you want an industry-specific solution.
Construction workforce management software takes care of onboarding documentation and training. It centralizes information in case you ever get audited.
12. Create a Fast Background Check Process
Do you have a clear process for background checks? Since they’re costly and take a few days to do, you should only screen the final few job candidates.
That makes the process go easier and candidates are aware of where they stand in the hiring process. They’ll be reluctant to accept another job if they know an offer might be on the way.
13. Survey Prospects About the Hiring Process
The reasons to improve the hiring process go beyond the desire to save money. You want to attract and impress the top job candidates so much that they won’t say no to a job offer.
You’re not a mind reader, and making decisions to create the best hiring process without input from prospects is wasteful.
Send out surveys to candidates. Learn what they liked about the hiring process and what they didn’t. You’ll gain the information you can use to improve the hiring process.
14. Measure Your Success
Your business should use key performance indicators to track how successful your hiring process is. Some examples of KPIs are time to hire, candidate sourcing contributions, new employee engagement, and cost per hire.
These metrics should be put in place immediately. You’ll be able to make decisions to improve the hiring process based on data. You can track, measure, adjust and repeat the process until you have the best hiring process.
How do you track things like cost per hire? Calculate the total recruiting costs for a specific time period, such as a month or quarter.
Divide that by the number of new hires and you have the cost per hire.
You can measure employee engagement through regular surveys and include a question about how long they’ve been with the company.
Create the Best Hiring Process for New Hires
Do you want your company to have a reputation as being one of the top places to work? Take a look at your hiring process.
It’s a chance to impress new employees and candidates alike. You’ll become a destination for top talent while making your employees proud to work for your business.
If you want to create the best hiring process possible, start with communication and transparency.
Most of all, have a plan to onboard employees so they feel supported. They’ll be engaged employees for years to come.
Do you want more stories and office insights? Check out the other articles on the blog.