You can change the name of the company, change the logo, and company colors, change the names and descriptions of all of its products, and the productivity won’t budge by 1%. Sure, your marketing may have more success, and the revenue may go up (or down), but the productivity won’t change because it depends on your talent.
While training, mentoring, and adjusting to your company culture does change your employees, hiring is the most important part of the process.
Still, are you using all the tricks to ensure that you’re getting the top talent? If not, here are some ideas you definitely have to try out.
1. Picking a talent recruitment software
With the help of the talent recruitment software, you can engage in an enhanced candidate screening in a simple and efficient manner. The way this works is so simple: when you set up the preferences for this tool, there are no biases, prejudices, or misconceptions of any kind.
Second, the capacity of this platform and its capability to process a large number of requests will never be matched by an actual human team. You would need hundreds of HR employees to process the same number of applicants. Sure, you’ll never have that many applicants for an actual position but this only goes to prove how well these tools scale.
All the records will be kept in a centralized database. You can later use this database or even analyze it to get a better insight.
You get to streamline the whole recruitment process in such a manner lies in the fact that you’re actually making it systemic. If you had to undergo just one hiring process, this wouldn’t be that big of a boost to your administrative structure, but you’ll hire people all the time.
By reducing administrative burden and alleviating your HR team, you’ll give your organization more operational flexibility.
2. Employee referral program
An employee referral program is a special type of recruitment strategy in which your employees recommend people they know for these positions. The benefits of this are numerous, but the biggest one is that you’re not shooting in the dark. They’re usually recommending someone they worked with, which means that you don’t have to place a bet on them performing as they’re promising during the initial interview.
People within the same industry often circulate in the same circles and work together on different projects. In fact, it’s not uncommon that you work with the same person in 3-4 companies in your lifetime. You quit, they quit and a few months later, you’re working in the same agency.
The point is that everyone knows everything, so why not squeeze this bit of extra value from your team?
Does an employee referral program have any downsides? Of course, it does. After all, an employee might try to get someone they know hired, which means that they might embellish their talents and accomplishments.
Still, it’s not like applicants don’t embellish their own CV. Now, at least, this embellishment comes from someone you actually trust.
3. Ignoring the irrelevant metrics
A lot of first-time recruiters focus too much on things that are completely irrelevant. Sure, a college GPA can mean a number of things, ranging from how well one does in their assignment to how responsibly they do their tasks. However, there are no strong correlations between one’s GPA and how well they perform in a job.
The length of one’s resume and the resume itself are not that great indicators of how well one does. Sure, a person who didn’t proofread their resume before sending it is, automatically, not leaving the best impression. However, just because one has a bit shorter resume, this doesn’t automatically disqualify them from doing good.
The most important part is that there’s so much that you can’t really know. For instance, you have no idea whether your employee is an avid enjoyer of gambling games. They could keep this habit to themselves, play only on anonymous casinos, and never allow this habit to get out of hand.
In this scenario, it wouldn’t even matter. After all, they’re entitled to their own free time and their own preferred type of fun. If it’s not impacting your business and if it’s private enough so that it doesn’t impact your brand, you really shouldn’t focus too much on it.
A lot of employers get sidetracked by these irrelevant metrics so much that they lose sight of what really matters. So, these irrelevant metrics are to be ignored.
4. Employer branding
Keep in mind that the hiring process goes both ways. The type of talent you attract will greatly differ just by the amount of money you offer for a position. With a pay that’s high enough, you can pick and choose among the top industry experts.
The problem is that you usually can’t offer that great of pay, which means that you have to find other means to attract top talent. So, what do you do in this situation? Well, you work on your employer brand.
Building your brand identity is one of the reasons why the employee referral program is so great. It’s not just that you’ll hear of promising talent; it’s about them hearing about you, as well. First of all, if the conditions in your enterprise weren’t that great, they wouldn’t recommend you to their friends and acquaintances. That’s their personal reputation on the line.
You have to keep in mind that your employees talk about you even when there’s no ongoing hiring process. So, be good to them, and the word will spread around.
Other than this, use every opportunity you can to showcase your corporate culture. You can do this on corporate events, social media, and any other means necessary. Always show the same picture because people online love to hunt for inconsistencies.
5. Talent pipelines
Another thing you want to focus on is the talent pipeline and creating them. An idealized version of the hiring process is a scenario where you just find the perfect person for the job and hire them, but, in reality, this is not the case.
These ideal candidates have other offers or jobs that they are not ready to leave. This is especially true for specialists in high-demand jobs like AI talent.
Sometimes, you’re hiring just one person, but you have multiple promising candidates. You may want to keep in touch in a scenario where your “first choice” doesn’t work out or in a scenario where you expand in the future (to the point where you need more people).
You can start by predicting your future hiring cycles. You see, there’s no reason to meet the person and retrospectively figure out that you might have a use for them in the future. What’s wrong with knowing that you’ll hire for the X spot in the future and starting to reach out and build relationships a bit earlier?
Engaging and nurturing relationships (at least contacts) takes time, so the earlier you start, the better. Just remember that you need more than the skillset. You need the right fit.
Hiring the right people is a job almost done
With the right hires, you’re almost guaranteed success. All you have to do is create a good corporate culture and map out the right strategy. However, without the right team, you won’t have anyone to execute these subsequent steps. Doing all you can in order to hire the right people is your top priority. Sometimes, this means using cutting-edge software, but sometimes, all it takes is a bit of patience and long-term planning.
