When someone is looking for a new job, the hiring process is often their first experience with your company. If that process feels slow and cumbersome, they don’t get the best impression of your organization—and you may lose out on top-quality talent when the candidate accepts another offer.
A detailed and thorough hiring process is critical to bringing the most qualified individuals into your organization. However, you need a vetting process that prioritizes speed and quality equally. Inefficient processes, unclear communication, and roadblocks caused by red tape create delays that make it hard to hire the most qualified candidates.
With an average opening-to-hire timeline of nearly six weeks, it’s clear that many companies need a more efficient hiring process. Streamlining your recruitment and hiring strategy allows you to onboard top talent more efficiently and gets your relationships with new team members off on the right foot.
Building an efficient hiring process
Building a more efficient hiring process begins by reviewing current processes to identify bottlenecks and roadblocks. A poorly defined roadmap for hiring, unclear job descriptions, disorganized hiring culture, and cumbersome manual processes are some of the most common issues that need to be fixed.
Regardless of why your company is taking too long to hire new talent, the problem can be solved with some of the following steps.
Establish an employer brand
Branding isn’t only for reaching customers. Companies also need to establish an employer brand that attracts candidates, even those who may not be actively searching for a new job. An employer brand can make your company more sought-after—which helps with recruitment—and helps candidates self-screen before applying.
A clearly defined company culture conveyed via an active careers page, current company profiles, social media updates, and a transparent and well-defined hiring process allows candidates to decide whether they will be a good fit before they even apply.
Provide detailed job descriptions
A job description must be written to attract the most qualified candidates. Unfortunately, many job listings fail to articulate the skills and qualifications that will entice the best applicants. The result is often a pool of less-than-perfect candidates and sometimes settling for a “good enough” hire.
The job description needs to clearly define what your company is looking for, what the role entails, and what applicants need to bring to the table to be successful. If these details can be broken down into “must have” and “nice to have” categories, you may even expand your search pool to include attractive candidates who meet some, but not all, of a long list of criteria.
Invest in automated tools
In a competitive job market, it’s common for companies to receive hundreds of resumes for a single open position. This makes reviewing applications, scheduling interviews, communicating with applicants, and performing assessments cumbersome and time-consuming.
Investing in automated tools, like applicant tracking systems (ATS), makes it easier to automatically screen applicants based on your defined criteria. The system can automatically rank candidates based on how well they match your needs using artificial intelligence. An ATS allows you to track applicants throughout the hiring process, assign assessments, and even let candidates self-schedule interviews. Although the systems have their limitations and won’t hire the most qualified candidate for you, they can eliminate many of the manual processes that extend the hiring process.
Simplify interviewing
In the early stages of interviewing, phone or video interviews can help screen applicants more quickly. When only the top candidates are invited to in-person interviews, scheduling time with executives and other stakeholders is easier. It’s also a more effective method of screening international candidates.
A structured interview is also critical to efficient and ethical hiring processes. A clear set of criteria for evaluating candidates on how well they meet the qualifications for the position makes it easier to assess candidates objectively—and compare equally qualified individuals.
Focus on candidate experience
A common complaint among jobseekers is the lack of communication from employers during the hiring process. It’s frustrating to wait for a response or to have a flurry of activity followed by radio silence for weeks before receiving an offer or a rejection. Staying in touch with candidates throughout the process, even if it’s via regular updates to the ATS, is critical to keeping candidates engaged. As mentioned, all applicants should know what to expect (and when) so they feel informed and enthusiastic about working for your company.
Get help creating a more efficient hiring process
Optimizing the hiring process for maximum efficiency and candidate satisfaction helps your company find and hire the most qualified employees—and gets your relationship with new team members off on the right foot.
If you find that it takes months to hire new people or your current processes aren’t attracting the most qualified candidates, it’s time to get some help. Oyster is here to help with an effective global platform to help you engage top talent quickly and with confidence.
About Oyster
Oyster is a global employment platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, engage, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing companies give valued international team members the experience they deserve, without the usual headaches and expense.
Oyster enables hiring anywhere in the world—with reliable, compliant payroll, and great local benefits and perks.
