Whether you’re recruiting a new office manager, marketing director, or executive, the stakes to find the right fit are high. After all, new additions to your team impact your dynamics and workplace culture, not your effectiveness. Furthermore, turnover can cost your organization upwards of two times the employee’s salary, imposing a barrier to streamlining and expanding your recruitment efforts.
By being proactive instead of reactive in your hiring approach, you minimize the risks associated with recruitment. This guide will prepare your team to optimize your hiring approach by discussing best practices that reach the most qualified and promising candidates.
1. Understand Common Recruitment Risks
Especially if you’re new to hiring, some of the common recruitment risks might not even be on your radar. Helping your team understand these typical warning signs allows them to recognize and address them proactively during hiring.
Here are some essential recruitment risks to consider and factor into your strategy:
- Recruiting laws and regulations. The last thing your hiring team needs is any legal trouble. Ensure you stay up-to-date on updated rules and best practices regarding equal opportunity, workers’ rights, and non-discrimination so you remain compliant.
- False credentials from candidates. Candidates might lie about their education, qualifications, skills, and experience on their resume. Vet every candidate by following up with their references, conducting background checks, and contacting institutions they’re associated with.
- Employee turnover. Recruitment aims to find and engage the most qualified and likely candidates to work with your organization. However, it’s always possible that candidates are not a good fit after being hired. As mentioned, finding and training replacements can cause significant financial strain and consume valuable team time.
Fortunately for your team, these risks can be mitigated by consistently refreshing your tactics and leveraging hiring tools.
Analyze feedback from previous recruitment cycles to pinpoint the most pressing risks to your recruitment success. For instance, you might note an above-average amount of new hires leaving within the first six months—this indicates a turnover issue that likely stems from dissatisfaction or role fit, meaning you can focus on optimizing going forward.
2. Determine Technology’s Role
Manually parsing through recruitment information to understand trends is tedious and time-consuming. The same is true for candidate communication, though it’s necessary for effective engagement.
Lever suggests streamlining these processes with recruiting tools. This technology can optimize your hiring process from top to bottom by:
- Increasing ROI. While recruiting tools are an additional expense, the investment is worthwhile, as it reduces money and time lost to turnover.
- Preventing data silos. Recruiting tools collect necessary recruiting metrics and present them in an actionable format. They also share this information across different systems via integrations.
- Simplifying management. Depending on the size of your organization, you might have tens or even hundreds of people in your recruitment funnel. Software centralizes information and activities in one location, simplifying large-scale management operations.
- Empowering collaboration. New hires impact the entire organization, meaning you should take a diverse array of perspectives into account during hiring.
- Streamlining tasks. Recruitment software can handle your routine tasks, empowering you to focus on your most pressing and intensive hiring needs.
Implementing recruitment software into your workflow takes time, trial, and error. However, once you’ve found an ideal solution, it can level up your entire approach and save you resources in the long run. Ensure you research exactly which type of system you want beforehand (such as an applicant tracking system, hiring software, or candidate relationship management software) to expedite the process.
3. Identify Your Ideal Candidate
Your recruitment process will be inherently less risky if you know (and communicate) exactly what you’re looking for. This way, you can ensure your chosen candidates are truly a good fit for your needs. Here are some key considerations that determine your candidates’ must-have qualities:
- Workplace cultural fit, such as interest in attending retreats and other bonding events
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- Soft skills, such as communication, collaboration, and learning styles
- Role-specific skills or certifications, like proven mastery of Excel or specific undergraduate or graduate degrees
- Work environment preferences, in case your workplace is fully online or in-person
- Future career goals that could include advancing within your workplace
To establish which qualities your candidates should possess, look at commonalities between recruits who perform well and are loyal to your workplace in the long term. Use the software mentioned in the previous section to streamline the process. Then, publish this information on your recruitment marketing materials to reach the most suitable candidates.
4. Fortify Your Employer Brand
Your standing is everything when attracting new people to your company. After all, 86 percent of women and 67 percent of men in the US would refuse to join a company with a bad reputation. Improve your organization’s reputation by investing in your employer brand, which is how you’re perceived as an employer by the general public.
Here are a few ways to improve your employer brand and leverage it to boost recruitment:
- Promote open discourse with both current and prospective employees to bring any issues to light.
- Enhance work-life balance by providing competitive paid time off and wellness resources for employees.
- Highlight employee success stories by collecting testimonials and integrating them into marketing materials.
Remember, you shouldn’t artificially inflate your employer brand when there are genuine issues to be addressed. Instead of covering negative spots with positive testimonials, work with your employees to fix any problems. This makes your business seem more genuine and contributes more to your employer’s brand in the long run.
Bridging the gaps in your recruitment strategy won’t happen overnight. It takes lots of careful planning and investment from your entire team. However, taking these steps now helps you build a brighter recruiting future for your company, ensuring your longevity, competitiveness, and profitability.
