Optimize Your Hiring Process
Implementing consistent, incremental improvements to your hiring process (even 1% changes) can have a compounding effect, boosting recruitment efficiency and aligning talent acquisition with broader business objectives.
Overcoming Hiring Uncertainty and Disruptions with Structure, Communication, and Flexibility
Employee turnover costs can equal up to one-third of the employee’s annual salary, meaning you are losing much more than just talented candidates as a result of a chaotic or poorly structured hiring process.
There’s a lot that can go wrong during hiring, making it important to anticipate and be prepared for delays, bottlenecks, or shifts.
This may include a candidate receiving a competing job offer, your hiring needs changing in the middle of the screening process, or major changes within the business that must be communicated to the candidate.
In this chapter, we will:
- Explore proactive methods for anticipating and mitigating potential hiring disruptions.
- Emphasize the critical balance of maintaining flexibility and empathy with candidates and hiring managers.
- Learn to optimize your hiring by building resilient processes, adapting to change, and prioritizing candidate experience amidst evolving circumstances.
- Explore how to make data-driven decisions
“Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good in your process. It doesn’t have to be perfect…be authentic. That applies to candidates, hiring managers, and the overall hiring journey.”
American Marketing Association, Director of People and Culture
Best Practices
Anticipating and Managing Risks
Proactive Actions to Combat Competing Offers or Changing Candidate Interests
As we mentioned previously, you need to continuously monitor industry compensation trends and competitor offers (as much as possible), and use salary benchmarking tools to stay updated on candidate expectations and deliver competitive initial offers.
Additionally, shorten your hiring timeline, when possible, to minimize candidate wait time. This will ensure each step within your interview process is efficient (and feels absolutely necessary) and encourage your hiring managers to provide timely feedback for faster decision-making (meaning a new hire joins their team faster).
Reminder, as we’ve said this many times before, maintain consistent and transparent communication every step of the way. Don’t be afraid to continually highlight things like your company benefits, culture, and growth opportunities to differentiate your organization when the time comes to make an offer.
The best candidates probably have multiple offers on the table, so be prepared to negotiate on things like compensation, benefit package, work arrangements, and other personalized perks, which you can do by having a range of options prepared before your initial offer is extended.
How to Prepare for Internal Changes that May Affect Hiring
Stay ahead of big internal changes, such as a manager leaving in the middle of the interview stage, by having succession plans prepared for key roles before you need them, especially for leadership positions. This will minimize disruption during transitions.
As part of that preparation, create alternate training plans, establish clear communication channels between HR and the departing team member to ensure a seamless knowledge transfer, develop contingency plans for how the hiring strategy will shift (if at all), and maintain a pool of qualified interim managers for critical roles – and thank us later for having this ready to go.
You should also document all hiring processes and procedures to ensure consistency, no matter who is slotted into a given role. Doing things like creating standardized interview templates and evaluation criteria is the easiest way to maintain consistency and avoid disruptions if someone leaves during the recruitment process.
Perhaps, most importantly, be honest with candidates and internal teams about any changes and how they may impact them. This will provide reassurance that they are supported and in the know about critical updates.
Maintaining Flexibility, Empathy, and Respect
Candidate Rescheduling and No-Shows
Handling candidate reschedules and no-shows requires a balanced approach; candidates are human, too.
To get out ahead of rescheduling, establish communication protocols with the candidate (so they can quickly reach you about a change, if necessary) and flexible scheduling options to accommodate reasonable changes (such as an easy-to-access rescheduling link within calendar bookings).
At the same time, try to maintain firm deadlines to keep the process moving at a steady pace. Again, this is best accomplished through clear communication.
For no-shows, implement a standardized follow-up procedure, such as email templates, to assess if the candidate is still interested. This will minimize wasted time on both sides.
Balance Candidate Considerations and Business Objectives
At the end of the day, you know what your business needs; ensure your applicants know this as well.
Respectfully, professionally, and often communicate what your organization is looking for, while also offering constructive feedback to showcase support for the applicant’s time, even if you don’t plan on offering them the role.
Finally, and yes, this is often forgotten about, verbalize respect for the time that the candidate took to apply and interview for your opening.
This holistic approach will enhance your employer brand, even when you don’t extend a job offer, ultimately attracting top talent in the future and contributing to long-term organizational success.