- Because of today’s tough job market, a business’s hiring process has to be smoother than ever.
- This is because anything that impedes bringing on a strong candidate can in turn cause the candidate to be hired elsewhere.
- Hang onto your future candidate by eliminating these 5 obstacles that can slow down your hiring process.
Suffice to say that hiring managers and business owners alike realize that if they encounter what could be the perfect job candidate, they need to act quickly in order to bring that candidate on board; and that if they don’t there’s a strong chance they could lose that candidate to someone else, even a competitor.
With that established it can benefit a business to re-examine its hiring practices to make certain nothing stands in the way of it securing new talent.
An article recently published on ERE Recruiting Intelligence lists the 5 main obstacles that can delay hiring new employees at a time in which businesses are struggling to bring on new talent. If you find your business has a slow hiring process, you’re urged to check out this article.
- Timing
Timing is everything in hiring. The more quickly you can get a candidate through the hiring process, the better chance you have of securing them and their talent.
What has to be remembered about timing is it does not favor or disfavor anyone or any business. It is rarely on anyone’s side, and in the HR world timing more often tends to work against hiring new people.
This of course does not mean timing can’t be influenced as a hiring manager nears the offer stage. The issue is most hiring managers as well as business owners don’t manage what time they do have very well.
The answer to this potential obstacle is while in the hiring process, time needs to be treated as a precious commodity. You should advance the steps to on board new candidates as quickly as possible. Call ahead to others who might be involved in the hiring, and give them a run-down on the candidate so as they don’t have to do repetitive interviewing.
In short, try as best as you can to streamline each step in your hiring process.
- Process
Aside from streamlining your hiring process, you should also query how strong your hiring process is.
As you interview candidates, do you speak about your business and the job at hand in compelling and persuasive language, or do you simply go through the canned speech of what your business is and does?
Chances are if it’s the latter, you’ve already…
- Wasted time.
- Told the candidate what he or she probably already knew about the business and its open position.
- In the end lost the candidate. Why? Because you said nothing new or compelling about your business to pique the candidate’s interest.
When hiring, the process portion speaks directly to the timing portion. No job candidate wants to hear some deadpan rehash of what the job is; they’ve undoubtedly read what the job is before applying to it, so why waste valuable time?
Check often on your hiring process. Discern if it is up to date and not a time waster. Also, if you use artificial intelligence, make sure your software is up to date.
- Unavoidable vs. Avoidable Obstacles
There are many obstacles that impact timing during the hiring process, including:
- Assessment tests.
- Take-home assignments.
- HR pre-screens.
- Interviewing a specific number of people before making a decision to move forward.
Depending upon the nature of your company, these assessments may be necessary. It’s for this reason that you should examine the assessments and assignments you already have in place. Do you need all of them? Or if so, can some of them such as the take-home assignments be shortened to speed up the process?
Remember, speed and efficiency are key in the hiring process. With that known, you wouldn’t want your own hiring process to stand in the way of netting strong candidates.
- Adjustments to Attract the Right Talent
Within a business, each job has its own unique qualities. An accountant’s position, for example, has a much different vibe than a graphic designer’s position.
In short, one description can never fit all the open jobs within a company, and to that end, one type of presentation will never work toward your candidate taking an increased interest in the job as you interview him or her.
Learn to gain the personality of the job for which you are accepting candidates. Accountants are serious individuals. Graphic designers have a bit more of a free spirit to them.
Follow this lead as well as the lead that the candidate themselves might give off. Are they serious or a bit looser? You should know this and play it to your strengths.
- Increase Probability of Accepted Offer
As the ERE article states, in making an offer, we often jump through many hoops that involve getting proper approvals from leadership, conducting references, to ensuring the hiring team that you will “make it happen.”
After all that, you may hear, “I need more than a few days to make a decision.” Or, “I’m in the final stages with multiple companies.” Or, “this is my second choice, waiting to hear from my No.1.”
Yes, hearing this from the so-called perfect candidate can be disheartening, particularly as you bent over backward to ensure they have enough company backstory and information about the open position to fully intrigue the candidate.
Nevertheless, a candidate who needs more time to decide if they’re going to take the job, or if they need to hear from their “No. 1” first (and please, in this instance, don’t be offended by not being No. 1 – that’s just how it is) is a very common scenario that occurs on a regular basis.
Sure, it’s not a pleasant experience. Nonetheless, you still need a person for the job, and if the perfect candidate who tells you he or she needs to hear from another company first, what are your options?
In situations like this, ERE suggests a hiring manager and/or the head of the division or company reach out to the candidate, and let them know the team is excited to have them join. The manager can potentially strike up an interest both they and the candidate can communicate about (old cars, cartoons, travel – you name it) and find a comfortable common ground.
While this happens the hiring manager/division head should answer any questions or concerns this candidate may have.
Of course as a last resort, the hiring manager/division head may be able to offer more money, better perks, or a title bump to incentivize this candidate to join.
Conclusion
As employers, business owners and hiring managers, it’s our responsibility when wearing our recruiter hats to continuously assess our hiring processes.
Revise and adapt them as current market conditions change, and give our organizations the best opportunity for a higher probability of success in landing ideal talent — on our time, not on the candidates’ time.
