5 Ways Your Hiring Strategy is Stuck in Lockdown

Does it seem right to you that in the age of smartphones, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, most businesses are using the same hiring strategy that’s been around for decades?

Sure, we have online job boards and video interviewing, but these are just digital platforms for the same old, outdated strategies.

And the problem is even worse than you think…

You Risk Becoming Irrelevant

Think of all the different areas of your business that have changed because of advances in science and technology.

Imagine if…

· Your sales and marketing team communicated with prospects exclusively via letter-writing campaigns.

· Your accounts department completed all their work in written ledgers.

· Your administration team still used typewriters.

It sounds comical, but in reality this would spell disaster for your business.

It would be impossible for your business to keep up with your competition if you relied on outdated, defunct technology.

You wouldn’t just LOOK obsolete, you would be on the verge of BECOMING obsolete.

So, when I tell you that your hiring strategy is stuck in lockdown, I’m not saying this to spark conversation or because it’s a fun little curiosity.

Failing to modernise your recruitment is costing you time, it’s wasting HUGE amounts of cash and in all likelihood you’re missing out on some of the best candidates – a sin you can’t afford in a post-pandemic economy.

It’s inevitable that, when an economy shrinks, some firms are going to be left behind. And having the best sales candidates on your team can make all the difference.

Prior to lockdown this could mean the difference between smashing your sales targets or coming up short. But now, during the ultra-competitive bounce back…

It could mean the difference between smashing your sales targets or going under.

Now is not the time to be relying on outdated, ineffective recruitment strategies. There are dozens of ways you can bring your hiring practices into the modern era, but here are five of the most important…

1. Stop relying on CVs to judge candidate experience

Not every candidate will tweak their CV to exaggerate (or outright fabricate) their experience. But some of them will. Which only makes it harder for you to separate them from the truly experienced candidates.

And I’d love to tell you that recruiters never “polish” their candidates’ CVs to make them a little more sparkly… but I can’t.

It even works the other way around.

Not every great candidate will recognise how outstanding their experience is. Just because they’re a skilful, knowledgeable candidate, doesn’t mean they know how to reflect that in their CV.

Whichever way you cut it, using CVs to judge experience results in wasted time, at best, and bad hires, at worst.

This problem doesn’t even go away by turning CVs into digital, online profiles. You’re still relying on the candidates to accurately reflect their experience.

Try this instead…

Candidate Competency Questionnaires

Ask each of your shortlisted candidates to answer a series of questions, each of which invites them to give an example of how they handled a specific situation, related to the role.

As a recruiter, I use these extensively, and they’re HUGELY instructive.

Not only does it reveal whether the candidate understands the concepts and terminology, but it gives you a real insight into how they approach their work.

Once you’ve read through the results of these questionnaires, you’ll understand the candidates on a level that you could NEVER achieve by glancing over their CV.

2. Stop using your “gut” to make hiring decisions

When you have a number of candidates with similar levels of skill and experience (although Competency Questionnaires are a good differentiator), it can be challenging to make an entirely objective decision.

Which makes it all too easy to just go with the candidate who you best connected with during the interviews.

I’m not knocking gut decisions. If you’re an experienced hiring manager or business owner, your gut probably serves you well a lot of the time.

But not every time.

And every time you get it wrong, and you wind up firing a new recruit after just a few months, direct and indirect costs can easily exceed six figures.

Try this instead…

Behavioural Surveys

Sometimes referred to as “psychometrics,” these surveys are astonishingly accurate at assessing a candidate’s preferred style of working, management, sales strategy, communication, development and much more.

For maximum effect, survey the most outstanding of your existing employees to establish a baseline against which new candidates can be compared.

3. Stop interviewing EVERY candidate

Here’s a fun exercise…

Take the average number of candidates you typically interview for a role, multiply it by the average length of an interview, and multiply that by the number of interviewers.

For instance, if you interview six candidates for half a day each (it’s a senior role) and there are two interviewers, that’s SIX DAYS spent entirely on interviews for just ONE ROLE.

For bonus points, if you know the salaries of the interviewers, you can also work out the financial cost.

It starts to add up quickly.

Especially when you factor in second, and even third, interviews, time spent discussing the candidates, and time spent making a decision.

Interviews are important. Absolutely. But while you may not want to make a decision to hire someone without meeting them face-to-face, you can make a decision NOT to hire someone before this step.

Try this instead…

Pre-Assess and Compare Candidates

If you take the time to fully assess the candidates before the interview stage, you’ll almost certainly identify one or two people from your shortlist who stand out.

Interview these frontrunners FIRST, and if one of these candidates meets all your criteria, you can make a decision without having to spend the considerable time it takes to interview everybody.

Pre-assessment can include the aforementioned competency questionnaires and behavioural assessments, but can also include video introductions, key skills assessment, qualifications, benchmarking, salary expectations, and more.

4. Stop Ad-Hoc Communication

A typical recruitment campaign will generate hundreds of messages between you, the candidates and your recruiters.

And when they’re spread across email, text messages, WhatsApp messages and phone calls, things get messy.

Work gets duplicated, important notes get missed and time is wasted.

Try this instead…

Candidate Presentation Platform

At the very least, use project management software to keep all collateral and communication in one central location.

Better still, use a dedicated recruitment platform to communicate and collate candidate information.

If your recruiter isn’t using something like this, you should be asking them why (see the end of this article for my software recommendation).

5. Stop focusing exclusively on active seekers

This one is huge. And it wasn’t even a problem before technology advanced.

It’s only really become an issue because online recruitment has resulted in a certain amount of… how can I put this nicely… laziness?

Ok, that isn’t putting is nicely, but there’s no sugar-coating this one.

Between job boards, LinkedIn and email, it’s become quicker than ever to blast out a job vacancy into the blue nowhere and get dozens of responses. And a handful of those responses will result in a pretty nice shortlist.

Employers, and recruiters for that matter, have never had it so easy.

One problem with this…

That “nice” shortlist is a LONG way from being the BEST shortlist.

The best, most experienced, most skilful candidates are NOT hanging around job boards or opening LinkedIn messages. They’re too busy doing a fantastic job for their current employer (possibly even one of your competitors).

Try this instead…

Market Mapping, Talent Pooling and Head Hunting

If you’re serious about finding the best, most talented candidates, you (or your recruiter) needs to dig deep and find the BEST people, not just the available ones.

This isn’t a new strategy. It’s just become less popular because at some point the job market decided that speed was important than accuracy.

It isn’t.

You’ve upgraded everything else…

The effectiveness and efficiency of our phones, laptops, televisions and cars seems to improve faster than we can purchase the upgrades.

The software applications and operating systems we rely on for our business are upgraded constantly.

Pick any industry at random (banking, professional sports, telecommunication, etc.) and even without being an expert in that field you can probably identify many of the major changes that have occurred over the last few decades.

Yet recruitment has become this strange anachronism that is stuck in the past and that few care to address.

That means there’s opportunity to be seized.

While others are running around like headless chickens, desperately trying to stay ahead of the competition and, frankly, just trying to survive, you could be the one that is standing apart as doing things differently.

If you’re one of the only businesses in your space to upgrade your recruitment strategies, you’re in a strong position to find, attract and retain the best talent.

If you’re ready to upgrade your recruitment, keep reading…

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I provide my clients with a modern, fully-upgraded recruitment service, including the use of a candidate delivery platform that is proven to reduce overall cost-to-hire and improve employee retention rates. For a free consultation on how to adapt in a post-pandemic world, CLICK HERE!

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Written specifically for the tech industry (but actually applicable to most modern businesses), I’ve produced a white paper called “5 Ways to Boss the Bounce-Back and Land the BEST Sales Candidates”. You can download it, free of charge HERE!