The Secret to Optimizing Your Hiring Process in a Candidate Market
In the current market, where demand for IT professionals is high, candidates are often interviewing at more than one company simultaneously. It stands to reason that the companies with the shortest and most efficient hiring process have the highest chance of securing the best candidates.
If your company is feeling the pressure of this heightened tech demand, we get it. It’s tempting to rush through the hiring process to win over that top tech talent, but that tactic is pretty risky. Here’s a handful of strategies we’ve seen work the most successfully.
Re-evaluate Your Candidate Requirements
Optimizing your hiring process starts at the beginning, with the job description. We all have our ideas of dream candidates who fulfill job descriptions 110%, but we need to get realistic about the fact that those dream candidates don’t come along nearly often enough.
In which case, we need to make sure our list of required skills and experience for any given position is optimized for both quality and quantity. Reevaluate which skills are nonnegotiable and whether you can settle for a candidate who is a fast learner instead.
Streamline and Shorten the Hiring Process
The hiring process is inherently complex. With resume screening, all those initial phone calls, applicant paperwork, in-person interviews, follow-up interviews, and job offer negotiations, it’s a surprise that anyone gets anything done. If you have a lot of candidates or if your company is large, this only seems to lengthen the process even more.
Although you don’t want to risk sacrificing quality by rushing through the process, there are ways to streamline and shorten the hiring process that can win over your best candidates before your competition snaps them up.
If you typically have multiple interviews with different members of your team, see what you can do to either combine some of those or commit to scheduling them within the space of a few days, instead of dragging them out over several weeks. Be prepared for any necessary paperwork instead of waiting till the last minute to figure it out. Consider using a quality staffing firm to help you through the process, saving time on screening applicants and streamlining communication.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Communication
It’s such simple advice that it’s tempting to wave it off out of sheer indifference. But the truth is that it’s all too easy to overlook the power of regular feedback and communication, especially in the hiring process.
For example, you may have a candidate who seems like the perfect fit, to whom you fully intend on extending a job offer. You probably need some extra time to get paperwork in order, finish other interviews, or sleep on it to make sure you’re making the right decision. In this scenario, it’s highly possible you’ll lose that candidate to a competitor if you neglect to maintain communication and feedback.
Once again, you don’t want to rush a decision only to regret it later, so the best strategy is to let a candidate know exactly where you are in the process and if you feel they’re a good fit (likewise, you don’t want to lead a candidate on if you know early on that they’re not the right fit for your company). When you keep them in the loop, they’ll keep you on their radar instead of ruling you out.
Going the Extra Mile in the Hiring Process
Optimizing your hiring process doesn’t have to be focused entirely on streamlining and shortening. Obviously you want to strive for the most efficient process, but we recognize that sometimes there’s red tape or challenges that makes this difficult.
The essential thing to understand is that if you create a truly amazing employer brand, with distinct differentiators, and make it clear to your best candidates that their career goals and work preferences are important to you, then you can often overcome the downfalls of an inefficient hiring process. After all, the best candidates aren’t the ones who grab desperately at the first thing that comes their way; they want to find a great opportunity at a great company.
Putting It All Together
Ultimately, you need to have a good understanding of your market. The IT market in Southern California is hot and candidates are often faced with multiple job offers, but there are countless factors that may change how your company is positioned with this market.
Optimizing your hiring process to attract and retain the top IT talent is important, but it’s just one part of the big picture. At KORE1, we get it. We’d love to talk to you about your hiring needs, so let us know how we can help today.