Great Job Candidates Won’t Wait
The best job candidates won’t wait for your slow hiring process. Sure, it makes sense for your hiring process to be thorough and methodical. After all, you are adding talent to your organization and talent is key to your ability to drive performance and achieve goals.
However, today’s fast-paced world demands that your hiring process be both effective and efficient; it must move quickly because the best talent rarely stays available for long.
Here are 4 steps to increase the speed of your hiring process without sacrificing the quality of your new hires.
- Build a performance profile on every role in the organization. A performance profile clearly defines the tasks and expectations of the role, as well as the attributes required to do the role well (talents, skills, education, experience). Having the performance profiles completed means you’ll always be ready to source talent for an open role and be clear about what is required to be successful in the role. In short, you will know what the role does and who fits.
- Create the interview structure for each job. Using the performance profile as your starting point, define the attributes you want and need to assess to determine a candidate’s fit for the role in your organization. Build an interview using segments, where each segment defines what will be assessed, by whom and for how long. In the segments that use questions, create the questions to ask. In the interview segments that use activities, define the specific activity. Defining and preparing these in advance gives you the ability to quickly activate them when a strong candidate appears.
- Train the interview team. Yes, everyone is busy with their regular work, but your employees are key players in accurately assessing job candidates. Help your team understand the impact of hiring quality talent and train them how to do their specific part (i.e. segment) of the interview process. Pro tip: splitting up the interview segments encourages employee interviewers to make time when they are needed because one person or role is not leaned on too heavily. They have clear guidance in what to ask or do, and what specific attributes to be aware of or assess for. Dividing the interview into segments and limiting employee participation to a segment or two, encourages a faster (and more dynamic) response.
- Share the hiring process with your candidate. Be up front and clear about your process and the components the candidate will participate in. Stay in constant touch with the candidate. Keep them informed of schedules. Value their time by keeping your interview to its scheduled time. Live to your word. Be sure your hiring process models your workplace culture in the way you connect and interact with the candidate. Document your full candidate hiring process and the time the hiring team will meet to share their comments about each candidate. Urgency and transparency matters.
The low unemployment rate has the workplace back in a war for talent. So, when a passive job candidate becomes an active job candidate, it is important that your hiring process isn’t the reason you lose good candidates. Remember, most great candidates are already interacting with other organizations.
Take Action
Commit to a sound and efficient process that lets you connect with candidates, efficiently gather information, and accurately assess abilities, respond to questions and make decisions quickly. Great people don’t wait. Be sure your hiring process is effective AND efficient to be responsive to today’s workplace.
By Jay Forte
Consider reading 3 Ways to Win in the War for Talent
This article first appeared on Vistage’s Talent Strategies Network on January 21, 2020.
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