Finding the Best Talent First: Process, Technology, Results

Finding and hiring the best talent can be an arduous process — and one nearly two-thirds of companies choose to outsource. While hiring top candidates involves many challenges and multiple steps, establishing and adhering to a defined process is critical for success.

Process

Successful talent acquisition begins early. In fact, it should begin long before you’ve opened a new requisition, allowing you to curate potential candidates long before a job is posted. While sourcing methods vary, it’s helpful to create a set of milestones to observe as you move through the recruiting process:

1.?Create a thorough job description. As a hiring professional, you need to know exactly what candidates can expect from the job they are considering: What is required of them? What skills do they need to have in place on day one? What type of training and professional development will be offered? During this phase, communication with managers, department heads, and hiring staff is critical. Use their input to ensure the job description provided to candidates is accurate and up to date.?

2.?Create a candidate profile. With all the key information in hand, think about your “dream hire.” A candidate profile or candidate persona is a documented description of the best person to assume a certain role. It should include competencies, skills, qualifications, and experience. But a perfect candidate is more than a list of skills — a good candidate persona should also include personal characteristics: interests, career goals, soft skills, and personality traits important to matching the right candidate with the position.

3.?Identify top candidates. Software, people analytics, and recruiting partners exist to make this process easier. While developing a job description and candidate persona may be tricky, deciding which candidates to move forward may be even more challenging. If you are considering several job seekers, it’s important to make solid decisions based on reliable information.

4.?Select and contact candidates. Direct, personalized messaging is best for the initial contact. Then, consider a quick phone call to establish rapport, chatting with potential candidates to determine if they are indeed interested in the position once you’ve shared some additional details.

5.?Interview and assess. Once you’ve narrowed down your list of strong candidates, officially interview individual job seekers to see which are best suited for the open position. Create a positive candidate experience so even those who are not hired for the current role are more likely to consider interviewing for other positions down the road, building your candidate pipeline.

6.?Hiring and onboarding. Once you’ve chosen a candidate, it’s time to solidify the details and bring your new hire onboard. The importance of a positive onboarding experience cannot be overstated. It is crucial to employee satisfaction and retention.?

Technology

How does technology increase your talent acquisition reach? Social media, with its wide reach, is a strikingly effective method of finding and reaching candidates. Many potential employees take a passive approach to job searches but will respond when the right opportunity arises. Jobs boards and job fairs are useful if you’ve got a strong strategy in place. Job boards require an attention-grabbing, detailed job description, and job fairs are most successful when they’re focused on a gathering of experts in your specific field, as opposed to broad events attracting entry-level talent across multiple fields or industries. The right software makes your search more efficient, offering the ability to quickly comb through potential hires according to specific metrics. Applicant tracking systems, or ATS, scan and dissect resumes, providing instant feedback about applicants. Recruiting software can be used to streamline business processes, automate job-posting tasks, and sort through various metrics, such as skill sets and abilities, quickly and efficiently. Talent management software is especially helpful in tracking competencies and analyzing skill gaps essential to smart hiring.

Results

What will it take to hire the professionals your company needs? The post-pandemic talent acquisition environment brings unique challenges. Not only have candidate expectations around the job search experience changed, but talent recruiters themselves are faced with shallow candidate pools. Maximize your odds by taking these recruiting steps: ?

1.?Establish a talent pipeline. HR professionals take an average of 36 days to hire a new employee. Save time by establishing a close network of top talent who you know are considering a new job in the near future. Even if you don’t have a current vacancy of interest to them, continue to nurture engagement and keep their interest piqued for future opportunities.

2.?Choose the best technology. Modern tech allows HR professionals to automate assignments, maintain communication, and speed up the hiring and onboarding processes. Your company, or the hiring partner you work with, should research available software options to ensure your platform is accessible, easy to implement, secure, and versatile enough for their needs.

3.?Improve internal collaboration. HR pros should strive to include as many perspectives as possible and include multiple stakeholders in hiring decisions. Collaborative recruitment and continual internal communication not only mitigate the risk of subconscious bias in the hiring process but also provide useful insights and opinions to ensure you identify only the best applicants.

4.?Ensure a timely screening process. Screening applicants should be a concise, efficient process. When HR departments utilize the appropriate software, the procedure can move much more quickly.

5.?Design an engaging candidate experience. The quality of the candidate experience has been shown to affect the overall hiring process and future job satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

6.?Consider a recruiting partner. A recruiting or talent acquisition partner does the heavy lifting for you. They can manage the most time-consuming elements of the search: creating and updating job descriptions, posting openings, drafting ideal candidate personas, screening applications and shortlisting, and scheduling calls and interviews. Your carefully chosen recruiting partner should use software and personnel to save time, improve your ad content and placement, and bring a wealth of marketplace insight to the recruitment process.

Creating a successful recruitment strategy takes a lot more than many companies realize, but investing the time to perfect your processes pays off.

If you’re ready to partner with an expert who can help streamline and improve your hiring process, contact Maslow Media today.