In today’s tight labor market, the competition for in-demand talent is incredibly fierce. Candidates are in charge, and formulating a comprehensive talent acquisition strategy is essential. Not to mention, the cost of making a bad hire can be high, especially for smaller businesses that depend on strong employee retention rates.
How can you ensure that your company makes the best hire? Fortunately, there are tangible steps you can take to optimize your hiring process.
Create compelling job descriptions and advertisements
For a lot of candidates, it all starts with catching their eye with a strong job posting. This is typically your candidates’ first impression of your company and the role you’re hiring for. If your job posting is engaging, interesting, clear and concise, you’ll attract quality candidates to your company.
With employment at a record high, it’s important your job postings stand out from the rest.
It can be helpful to include the salary range, responsibilities of the role, an overview of the company, and why someone would enjoy working for you.
Avoid unconscious hiring bias
When initially interviewing viable candidates, stick to an established list of standard questions and avoid asking anything difficult to those you haven’t warmed to.
Conversely, avoid giving ‘nice’ candidates more time and the benefit of the doubt. While it may feel good wanting to staff your business with nice personalities, if they don’t have the skills to succeed, this will ultimately result in making a bad hire.
To counteract any unconscious hiring bias, consider bringing in a neutral, trusted member of your team into the interview. With their perspective, then you can ensure your candidates are given an equal amount of time and are fairly evaluated.
Optimize your interviews
Interviews are a great opportunity to evaluate all of your shortlisted candidates. Mix in a variety of questions about their experience that can reveal their projected success for the role.
Your interview questions shouldn’t be limited to the candidates’ skills and experience. Their personality and work style should play a large part in your decision, too. In fact, a study by Resume-Library and TopInterview reveals that 70% of employers believe personality plays a key role in an interviewer’s decision-making process.
Is your company interested in accelerating and streamlining your recruiting process? Contact our experts today to learn more about our full-service staffing solutions.