While there is no reason to settle for a less-than-perfect candidate to fill up vacant positions, waiting too long can actually reduce the quality of your hires. In a highly competitive job market, good candidates migrate fast. Slow hiring also has monetary consequences like increased recruitment expenses and costs associated with understaffed teams, such as productivity slumps and employee burnout. However, it’s no cakewalk to sift through a mountain of applications. Candidates can now apply to jobs with such ease that recruiters are often burdened with huge volumes of irrelevant resumes.
This is why it’s crucial that you look for ways to optimize your hiring process by deeply analyzing what works well, which areas are causing delays, what can be automated, and how many people are involved. Streamlining your hiring workflow, trying a different sourcing approach, working on your employer branding, and improving your talent selection methods can dramatically reduce your time-to-fill rates.
Here are ten mistakes that can damage your hiring campaigns and cost your organization money:
Not understanding the requirements of the role
Collaboration is key to ensure that everybody is satisfied with a hiring decision. It is the recruitment team’s job to fully understand all the qualifications and skillsets required for the role in order to find the best fit for the team or organization. This can be done by making sure that the hiring process is transparent to all stakeholders.
Poorly structured hiring process
One of the main reasons for hiring delays is poor planning and communication as well as the improper use of recruitment tools. It can be of great help to map out your recruitment strategy with an estimated time frame so that you can reprioritize resources and minimize workload; remove process inefficiencies and reorganize any information shared with stakeholders to accelerate decision-making.
Improper articulation of job description
A job description should be more than just a job title and list of preferred qualifications. Think about aspects of the job’s day-to-day pursuits and include all the soft and hard skills required to do the work. Also, give some insights into your employer brand by including information about your employee offerings, rewards, benefits, and culture. A more detailed description will help job seekers analyze if they will be the right fit for your organization and persuade the right candidates to apply for the role.
Not building a talent pipeline
Consider building a talent pipeline by sourcing from data providers who can provide high quality candidates, and have an employee referral scheme so that there is a constant influx of high quality candidates. Try to build a relationship with high performers by nurturing them with personalized value-based content, and share with them the company’s values, culture, and milestones. When a vacancy for a suitable job opening comes up, this gives you a good set of candidates to reach out to.
We have talked more about candidate engagement on our blog on Increasing candidate engagement amidst hybrid work with recruitment software
Inefficient sourcing of talent
Use data to analyze job ad performance, and post jobs on platforms where they are responded to most by your target candidates. Job board posting can be automated to reduce the time spent posting vacancies and monitoring them. Find candidates from diversified backgrounds, and don’t be afraid to deviate from conventional sourcing strategies
Complex application process
While it’s tempting to know everything about candidates who apply for your roles, a long application process might steer them away. In a fast paced world, people want to apply for jobs with a touch of their finger, and features like Easy Apply through LinkedIn can come in handy for this purpose. Maintain a vibrant careers page and avoid delays due to poor communication to make this process even more efficient.
Avoiding pre-screening and assessing
It’s critical to shortlist candidates before you send them to the interview stage. Using resume filters and assessment technology can facilitate this process. Applicant tracking systems can collect and organize candidate information, and assessments can give an objective view of a candidate’s attitude, behavior, and abilities. After shortlisting, all of the candidates should be a perfect fit for the job.
Learn more about Zoho Recruit’s assessments feature
Delays due to interviews
The most important reason for delays in the interview process is to find a time when both the interviewer and interviewee are available. Self-scheduling software makes this easy by allowing candidates to choose their time slot based on the interviewer’s availability. Doing remote interviews through video/phone calls is extremely convenient and saves on traveling time.
No clarity in decision-making
The hardest part of recruitment is choosing the right candidate, and too often this decision is clouded with unconscious bias and ‘gut feelings.’ Creating a decision-making checklist can help put things into perspective and simplify this process. Zoho Recruit has an ‘interview scorecard’ feature where interviewers can rank candidates based on their overall recommendation along with a comment at the end of the interview.
Handling every recruitment step manually
Automating administrative tasks can save plenty of time for your recruitment team. With the right recruitment software, it’s possible to screen resumes, organize candidate data, send emails, and schedule interviews. Zoho Recruit, for example, even has AI chatbots that can help address candidate questions quickly during times when your team isn’t available to chat.
Wrapping up
Recruiting a candidate who will add value to your organization is not something that can be rushed through, but analyzing and removing setbacks could make this ardous process a lot more efficient. Use a data-driven approach by developing a process to analyze which steps are consuming the most time for your team members so you can simplify them and start making better placements faster.
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