Many companies struggle to find great job candidates to fill open roles. While you may think this is due to a lack of candidates, that isn’t always the case. It can be because your company’s hiring process isn’t quite as sharp as it should be. 

Plenty of companies are still relying on outdated ways to attract candidates. And once candidates are interested, companies may not have the technology necessary to make the process easy. Or they may ask unhelpful interview questions that turn candidates off. If you’re not finding great candidates, it’s time to improve your hiring processes.

Table of Contents

1. What Is the Hiring Process?
2. What Makes a Hiring Process Efficient?
3. 5 Ways to Improve Your Hiring Process
4. Improve Your Hiring Process With Cisive

What Is the Hiring Process?

Put simply, the hiring and recruiting process is everything involved in finding, evaluating, choosing, and hiring an employee. An effective hiring process requires a complex blend of strategic thinking, technology (like an applicant tracking system), communication, and humanity. 

The goal of having a well-defined, structured hiring process is to attract and bring aboard the best candidates. Ideally, these new hires will contribute to the company’s growth and success for the long term.

The hiring process can vary by company size and industry, but it generally includes steps such as:

• • Identifying hiring needs
  • Planning for the hire, including desired starting date
  • Creating a job description
  • Ensuring the hiring team and HR teams are aligned on the job description
  • Posting and advertising the job
  • Screening applications
  • Interviewing candidates
  • Conducting skills assessments
  • Conducting background checks
  • Making a final hiring decision

After the final hiring decision, the process still isn’t really over. Assuming the candidate accepts your offer, you’ll need a robust onboarding plan. Without proper onboarding, even the best new hire can feel lost and frustrated. And that’s just the sort of experience that can lead them to regret their decision to join the company.

What Makes a Hiring Process Efficient?

As you can see, there are many steps involved in creating a successful hiring process. As with any complex process, there’s a risk of things becoming bureaucratic, slow, and frustrating. That’s why it’s important to try to make the hiring process efficient, which benefits both your company and your candidates. 

Here are some ways to gain efficiency in your hiring processes.

Creating & Honoring Realistic Decision Deadlines

Before beginning a hiring process, make sure your internal teams are aligned on a decision deadline. Minimize frustration by understanding when you want the process to begin and end and how long it will take to make decisions. Don’t commit to hiring someone in just a couple of weeks if you know it should take months. 

Hiring managers, HR, and the hiring committee should communicate openly to ensure that timelines are realistic. 

By the way, deadlines matter to candidates, too. They expect to know when you plan to make a hiring decision so they aren’t left to wonder indefinitely.

Using Software & Other Tools to Save Time & Resources

Manually reviewing hundreds of applications is taxing on your staff, whose fatigue can cause them to accidentally overlook a great candidate. Consider using a high-quality applicant tracking software (ATS) to help automate the hiring process.

A good ATS can sort applications by looking at keywords and filtering out applications that don’t align with the job posting. This can save a lot of time and cost and allow you to focus more energy on contacting qualified candidates.

5 Ways to Improve Your Hiring Process

Don’t let good candidates go elsewhere due to inefficiency or lack of clarity. Here are five ways you can improve your hiring process.

1. Identify Current Issues & Pair Each With a Potential Solution

Before you write a job description, take the time to think about what the company really needs. You’ll want to understand the following:

• • What are your hiring objectives? (Write them down.)
  • What are the business issues you want your new hire to be able to tackle?
  • Who should be involved in the hiring process?
  • If you’re replacing someone who left, why did the previous person leave?
  • What are you looking for in a candidate? (Education, experience, interests, etc.)
  • Which work arrangements will you offer? (Remote, hybrid, or on-site?)
  • How long will you leave the job posting open?
  • What is your process for reviewing applications?
  • By which date would you like to extend an offer to a candidate?

Once you know the answers, you’ll have a starting point for hiring. You can also outline potential roadblocks or issues and figure out how to overcome them.

2. Have a Consistent Hiring Protocol & Timelines

The last thing a company wants is to engage in bias or discrimination in the hiring process. One way to mitigate this risk is by having a consistent process that you use for all roles.

For example, you could consider blind hiring. This is the practice of masking applicants’ ethnicity, gender, and age by removing names and other information from candidate resumes. 

Further ideas for consistency include:

• • Developing a consistent set of interview questions that you ask all candidates
  • Having a script for screeners to follow 
  • Using an assessment matrix to score candidates on many factors unrelated to their identity

Having a consistent hiring timeline is also important. You should be able to let job applicants know how long it’s going to take for you to make a hiring decision. 

This means that your HR team and business team need to be on the same page. You need a well-thought-out roadmap for how long each phase of the hiring process will take. If you take too long or can’t agree on clear expectations, you’ll alienate the candidate and possibly lose out on great talent.

3. Write Accurate, Benefit-Oriented Job Descriptions

Clear job descriptions are more important than ever. Attract the candidates you want (and who want you) by clearly describing the role, responsibilities, and qualifications involved. 

It can be a good idea to include salary and benefits information in the job description. Salary information is now required in several states. Even if it isn’t required, including the salary helps candidates decide whether it’s worth their time to apply for the job. 

Including benefits information such as time off, holidays, retirement, and insurance further helps candidates evaluate whether the job is a good fit.

As a business, you benefit from including this information because candidates can self-select out of jobs that don’t meet their criteria. This will save your staff from wasting time evaluating applications from candidates whose salary expectations aren’t aligned with yours.

4. Know Where to Publish Your Job Listings

An amazingly written job description and a competitive salary and benefits package won’t help if candidates don’t see the listing. Make sure you know where you plan to post your job opening. 

Online job boards such as Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and SimplyHired can be solid options. So can LinkedIn. Most online job boards offer different options for getting more eyes on your job posting, including paying for better placement. 

If you’re hiring for a role locally, don’t forget to consider the local newspaper’s website or even a brief radio spot on a local station. If you’re looking for entry-level workers, consider advertising at a local college.

5. Always Run a Pre-Employment Background Check

Before you bring your preferred candidate on board, don’t forget to do a thorough pre-employment background check. We recommend doing this fairly early in the interview process. That way, you don’t invest a lot of time into a candidate who turns out to have some issues that disqualify them.

Background screening tools offered by Cisive provide results quickly and accurately. You can conduct employment verifications, criminal background checks, credit checks, and more. You can even do it for candidates in different countries if needed.

Improve Your Hiring Process With Cisive

If your hiring and recruitment process is outdated, it could be causing your company to miss out on the best talent. Investing the time and resources to improve hiring can ultimately enable you to hire better candidates and retain them for longer. A good hiring process helps your business grow over time. 

Whether you want to create a talent acquisition strategy from scratch or need to improve your existing methods, the hiring experts at Cisive would be happy to advise you. Speak with a Cisive expert today.