21 Winning Moves to Dominate Your Hiring

We originally published this during the job market rebound of 2021, when many business leaders were taking a completely new path from what they had planned at the start of 2020.

A big part of achieving business goals and scaling an organization is hiring and retaining the right team. A big part of a company's bottom line is not wasting money and resources on the wrong thing.

Since 2009, we enabled scores of companies to not only recruit good people, but get better at hiring.

So as the demand for talent continues, here are 21 changes our clients implemented that could help your hiring as well.

1. Free up scheduling back and forth about interview availability by?committing to preset, weekly interview times?up front. Those calendar apps work well for this.
2. Map out what you expect the new hire to accomplish in year one, then reverse engineer the job description from those goals.
3. Acknowledge that giving a job opening to 4 external agencies won’t yield 4x the résumés. You're likely to only get 25% effort from each.
4. Put some skin in the game and get more attention from your favorite headhunter by offering an exclusive or 4 week head start to your top performing agency before sharing with their competitors.
5. Avoid starting new searches from scratch by?having recruiters constantly inform you of top talent?that has the skillsets you also need for your team.
6. Ask your current team members for referrals of their peers at previous employers.
7. If you're reopening a job that was on hold, evaluate what’s changed in your business and adjust the new job description to explain the new needs.
8. When you’re replacing an employee who resigned, audit the current team's skills gaps and redundancies for what abilities you now need more or less of, rather than trying to duplicate the incumbent.
9. Target less obvious candidates by considering what they “used to be” before being promoted to their current role.?Communicate previous job titles with your recruiters as another way to source prospects.
10. Get a better understanding of a candidate’s qualifications before you interview them by having your recruiters ask preset screening questions about their accomplishments and experiences.
11. Use interviewing as a branding opportunity.?Treat candidates so well during interviews, they'll tell their peers about the experience and are even inclined to refer their colleagues to you.
12. Even with exploratory interviews, have a role in mind to evaluate the candidate against.?“We just look for smart people”, isn’t a job description.
13. Realize that years of experience is a subjective KPI.?Instead, focus on the relevant qualifications and abilities needed to do the job.
14. If your interview process is long with many steps, be transparent with candidates about the pace and steps involved, then stay close to the contenders so they don’t lose interest.
15. Keep your recruiters focused on your search over their other clients by providing résumé and interview feedback within 24 hours.
16. Keep interviews running smoothly by preparing beforehand.?Read through candidates’ résumés prior the meeting and draft specific questions and talking points.?Make sure other team members involved in interviewing do the same.
17. If you’re concerned about a candidate’s choppy job history, ask them about what they accomplished in the short time they spent at each employer.?How did the companies they worked at get back their ROI?
18. Eliminate bias when you’re on the fence about a candidate by asking your team, “what risks do we see in hiring this person and what info would we need to feel more comfortable about moving forward with them?”
19. Employee retention starts at the interview.?Clearly define the upward mobility of an opening and talk to candidates about their ambitions, so both align long-term.
20. Eliminate last minute surprises with offer negotiations by gathering salary expectations from the recruiter early in the process.
21. Ensure a new hire will definitely show up after accepting your offer?by keeping in touch with them periodically until the start date.

We hope some of these shifts will make hiring a more efficient for your team.