There’s nothing that HR professionals would like more than to wake up to a day of easy-breezy recruitment that encompasses no more than posting a job offer and identifying a compatible candidate right off the bat. Sadly, that’s far from reality, as the hiring process is typically synonymous with challenges and multiple steps.
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But the selection activities became increasingly demanding after the pandemic due to the remote interviews and more complex job seekers’ expectations. The number of people looking for jobs is lower than the number of available vacancies.
Thus, the Great Resignation encouraged many employees to quit and look elsewhere. No wonder many companies struggle to retain their staff and attract quality talents.
As a result, it’s crucial to take recruitment to a higher level and maximize the odds of completing all recruitment process steps. Here’s everything you should know about improving your hiring efforts and what roadblocks to expect.
What Does the Recruitment Process Encompass?
A recruitment process covers all the steps recruiters take between writing and publishing the job ad and sending an offer letter. It includes the first job applications that HR professionals receive, candidate screening, the use of HR software, tweaking strategies, and onboarding of new employees.
The goal is to choose the best match and provide them with a stellar experience. Therefore, the recruitment steps are not easy and include many variables that affect the outcome.
Because of that, recruiters must map out the process and anticipate challenges. Without identifying potential roadblocks, recruitment may drag out or result in an incompatible hire.
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What Challenges HR Professionals Encounter During the Recruitment Process?
According to Finances Online, difficulties filling jobs, recruitment digitization, and hiring budget cuts are among the most challenging issues that recruiters encounter.
However, most recruiters struggle with finding adequate job applicants for entry-level roles. That often increases the time to hire and forces companies to spend additional resources.
Every business hopes to have an efficient, straightforward, and fast-paced hiring process. Otherwise, the existing employees often must perform additional assignments and compensate for the job roles recruiters are trying to fill.
But although many circumstances are out of HR professionals’ control, some challenges appear due to unpreparedness and other preventable problems. Here are the top four reasons recruitment can be strenuous, even though they’re avoidable:
1. Lack of Planning
Efficient recruitment requires thorough planning. Recruiters must determine their current and future needs and consider the skills gaps.
They should also determine the techniques they’ll use to address these necessities and how they’ll execute the hiring process. Before starting anything concrete, recruiters should know the activities they would roll out and what resources they need.
But they should also consider how much time they’ll need for specific tasks and whether they need help from a different department. Failing to plan thoroughly could lead to poor results and an incompatible hire.
2. Blurry Expectations
Recruiters should also have clarity about what they want to achieve and who their ideal candidate is. Although the principal goal is to fill a job role, it’s necessary to determine whether that role is genuinely needed.
But recruiters should also identify what skills and experiences the new employee has and how that would improve business processes. However, it’s not enough for them to understand.
Candidates should also know what the available vacancy encompasses and how their everyday responsibilities would look if hired. Because of that, recruiters should write concise and relevant job descriptions and clarify non-negotiable skills and nice-to-haves.
Both parties should know what to expect to make the process faster and more efficient. If job requirements are misleading, recruiters could receive many under-qualified or incompatible job applications and waste their time.
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3. Poor Communication
Internal communication is just as significant as communication with job applicants. Every element of the recruitment process should work smoothly, including collaboration between recruiters, hiring managers, and different departments.
If one party fails to deliver relevant information or updates about the latest changes or delays, that could hinder the selection process outcome. Recruitment teams should also have regular meetings to keep each other on the same page and ensure they work toward the same goal.
They should also encourage feedback and various opinions when shortlisting candidates. When recruiters cultivate healthy collaboration and share data, they prevent various roadblocks that may appear due to the lack of communication.
However, companies should also ensure recruitment teams can communicate seamlessly online. That requires reliable and modern collaborative platforms that facilitate virtual conversations, meetings, and feedback systems.
4. Outdated Technology
As the previous point on the list indicates, modern technology plays a significant role in efficiently rolling out various recruitment process steps. Otherwise, recruiters could encounter unnecessary roadblocks, challenges, and delays.
Hence, it’s crucial to identify tech platforms that align with the business size, objectives, and hiring volume. Even one incompatible element could hinder the hiring process and slow the activities.
Recruiters should also avoid overly complex software and blindly going after expensive tech that often fails to deliver results. Instead, they should read reviews, compare their recruitment needs with software offerings, and choose what fits their objectives.
5 Steps Necessary to Get the Best Recruitment Process Results
Here are the recruitment process steps you should take to ensure stellar recruitment results.
1. Establish a Stellar Talent Pipeline
On average, HR professionals take 36 days to hire a new employee. That period includes attracting compatible talents and stimulating them to apply for the job opening.
But wouldn’t it be easier if recruiters already had a database of available candidates waiting to be contacted? – Indeed, that would speed up the process and allow HR professionals to focus more on other activities, such as polishing their interview structure or reinforcing Learning & Development initiatives.
Because of that, it’s best to establish a close network of top talents hoping to find a job soon. That would accelerate activities, enabling recruiters to jump from attracting job applicants to hiring the most compatible candidate from the talent pipeline.
Naturally, HR professionals must look for job seekers sharing the same values, goals, and ambitions as their company. These individuals should also have relevant skills and experiences and be willing to be in a candidate database.
Recruiters should maintain ongoing communication with potential job applicants, even though no relevant vacancies might be available. They must nurture engagement and their interest and openness to new opportunities.
Talent pipelines are also a stellar method to get the best recruitment results because they give access to pre-vetted candidates who would fit various job openings within the company. However, HR professionals should keep these job applicants updated and share the latest information.
Here are a few ideas on how to develop a stable talent pipeline:
- Use social media to create engagement and reach qualified candidates
- Leverage employee referrals
- Participate in job fairs, webinars, networking events, and industry groups
- Create long-term connections with past short-listed candidates
- Seek passive job seekers and spark their attention
Nevertheless, candidates’ skills and experiences should always align with the job opening requirements. Recruiters should always know which candidates to contact and reach out easily via efficient tech platforms.
2. Choose Top-Notch Technology
Gone are the days when HR professionals depended on paper documents, manual tasks, and outdated files. Modern technology allows them to automate various assignments and speed up processes.
Companies should research HR software and identify the one that meets the highest number of their expectations and requirements. Today, various solutions are available, such as the applicant tracking system (ATS), collaborative apps, and recruitment client management (CRM).
But software providers like Manatal have a more well-rounded offering. Our system includes multiple solutions in one platform, giving access to ATS, CRM, and collaborative apps in one dashboard.
It’s also wise to choose cloud-based software due to being more accessible, easier to implement, and more secure. Moreover, these systems don’t obligate companies to pay for elements they won’t use.
Cloud-based solutions have a subscription model, ensuring HR professionals encounter lower fees and can later add more features. Thus, providers are responsible for software maintenance, and recruiters will never have to worry about installing complex updates or keeping up with compliance.
3. Reinforce Internal Collaboration
As explained earlier, a lack of communication can hinder the recruitment process significantly. Data silos and not sharing information about the selection stages and updates can make hiring inefficient and disrupt the candidate experience.
HR professionals should strive to get as many perspectives as possible and include relevant stakeholders in decision-making. Otherwise, they might allow the subconscious recruitment bias to slide into the process, causing them to hire the wrong person.
Because of that, companies should encourage collaborative recruitment and boost internal communication. Thanks to that, recruiters would hear more insights and opinions that help them identify the most qualified job applicant.
Moreover, they would also determine whether the team has preferences concerning their future coworkers, as team dynamics have a significant role in employee integration into the company. That would reinforce the company culture and result in a more productive work environment.
The combination of collaborative recruitment and stable talent pipelines could pinpoint the most compatible candidate even before the recruiters craft the job description. As a result, companies would save resources and time, allowing them to shift their focus to employee onboarding.
4. Ensure the Screening Process is Time-Efficient
The screening process should be fast-paced, concise, and decluttered. After all, job applicant vetting is often the most time-consuming hiring stage.
This undertaking typically includes evaluating resumes, short-listing top candidates, scheduling, rolling out interviews, and deciding the best match. Hence, this stage has more touch points than others, making it a demanding process.
That’s why it’s necessary to streamline candidate screening and reinforce efficiency. Recruiters can achieve that by implementing HR software that gives access to various features in one place and speeds up activities.
Everything runs faster when HR professionals can perform different tasks in a single dashboard and find candidate information without hassle. But they can also leverage video interviews, as these are easier to schedule and complete.
HR professionals should also structure the interviews to ensure they have consistent requirements and avoid dragging out this phase. For instance, they can introduce skills tests and questionnaires to weed out under-qualified job applicants right away.
But recruiters can also use scheduling and keyword tools within their ATS to find relevant information fast and ease their decision-making.
5. Provide an Engaging Candidate Experience
The quality of candidate experience often affects the hiring process and how fast recruiters would attract and hire top qualified talents.
Recruiters can shorten the selection process by using platforms with AI-driven analytics that improve their decision-making and point to the most compatible candidates.
They can also ensure the job application is straightforward, not requiring multiple steps. That would prevent many candidates from quitting their applications before they are done.
Companies should also put their employer branding to the forefront to attract compatible and like-minded talents. Concise and creative job ads are essential to ensure job seekers understand what the vacancy includes and what their everyday assignments would include.
HR professionals should maintain regular communication with their job applicants and keep them informed throughout the process. That increases candidate engagement and reduces the odds of changing their minds.
Top 6 Tips on How to Improve Your Recruitment Efforts
1. Create an Attractive Careers Page
Your career page will be the first touch point for many job seekers. That’s why it should be accurate, attractive, and up to date.
Candidates should find all information about the company and available vacancies on your careers page and understand what it would look like to work with you. Besides, use it to highlight your workplace culture and employee testimonials and convince job seekers to apply.
2. Practice Your Job Description Writing
Craft new job descriptions even when no vacancies are available in your company. Practice and identify the most significant points and information you should mention.
Aim to balance creativity and accuracy and understand how to hook job seekers with your words. Be informative and transparent, as employee perks, benefits, and compensation should be no secret.
Instead, these elements should show job seekers whether the job opening meets their expectations and if they would be a good fit. Also, use inclusive language and a friendly tone to attract talents from different backgrounds who could diversify the work environment.
3. Streamline the Recruitment Process
Leverage custom application templates to standardize and accelerate the recruitment process. Remove redundant activities and focus only on those that add value to your hiring efforts.
Include relevant stakeholders to identify job-related specifics and establish the ideal candidate profile. Consider how to shorten the screening stage and move job applicants through the pipeline faster.
4. Leverage Candidate Assessments
Use cognitive and skills assessments to learn more about your job applicants and determine their compatibility with the company culture, mission, and objectives. These should also give you insights into whether they have the necessary abilities, knowledge, and habits to perform the job well.
You can use online tests or create your own to align them with the company branding. Thus, these assessments also let you know if some job applicants overstated their experiences and qualifications in their cover letters and resumes.
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5. Make Interviews More Engaging
Interviews are typically the most stressful part of the selection process for candidates. That may affect their ability to show their genuine potential and motivation.
Consider turning interviews into conversations that make job applicants feel more comfortable and encourage them to be confident. You can also involve your existing employees in the process, enabling candidates to ask questions and understand the specifics of working in your company.
6. Personalize Employee Benefits
Identify your target audience's needs and struggles and turn these insights into personalized employee perks and benefits. Avoid the one-size-fits-all formula, as not everyone is interested in a gym membership or free coding lessons.
The benefits you provide should align with candidates’ expectations and make their lives easier. These would also attract a higher number of compatible job applicants and make their integration in the workplace smoother.
Recruiters must pass various recruitment process steps to get optimal results and hire the best fit for the available vacancy. However, modern technology makes this undertaking easier due to speeding up the activities and providing tools that enable data-driven decision-making.
Manatal’s cloud-based HR software comes with all the features necessary to identify the best match and reduce the number of tedious assignments. It also allows recruiters to maintain regular internal and external communication and provide a better candidate experience.
But don’t just take our word for it. Instead, try it yourself.
Start your 14-day Free Trial and see the difference Manatal would make in your hiring process.
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